University of Antwerp
Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13a,
October 28–30, 2026
Ends Collaborative Performance Research calls for participation in a performance studies symposium at the University of Antwerp from 28 to 30 October 2026. We begin with a shared premise that we are living through durational end times—not for the first time, and not for all equally. The world ends—again and again—across scales of ecology and climate, ideology and action, extraction and collectivity, the planetary and the immediate. We might ask whether the metanarrative of finitude is an historical constant. Has the end always loomed ever so close to us as it does today? There is something absurdly performative in the idea that humans can now calculate our own extinction better than at any other time in our history just as we also fail to avoid it. We pin our end to the planet’s, only to realize that we, like everything else, share different ends. As Eva Horn reminds us, “the fantasy of the future as catastrophe is the emblem of a new, highly ambivalent attitude toward the future, marked by a strange fixation with catastrophe as a moment when an ultimate truth is revealed.”
All ends are not the same. But will we end together? And what is the meaning of togetherness when facing the end? Whose and which worlds are ending? This symposium seeks to explore further how we think, work, and be together amidst ongoing conditions of endings. The ends are inflected with and performed through capitalist and colonial purposes. In the face of planetary extinctions and systemic unravelings, we are interested in how performance troubles and resists such ends and also how it facilitates and accelerates such conditions. A key aspect of this gathering is to consider how we might cultivate practices of cooperation, share knowledge generously, and foster sustainable modes of research grounded in reciprocity, attentiveness, and mutual care.
Conference Organizers
Luca Domenico Artuso, University of Antwerp
Marco Caracciolo, University of Gent
Felipe Cervera, University of California, Los Angeles
Renata Gaspar, i2ADS/ESMAE, Porto
Sozita Goudouna, Goldsmiths, University of London
Kyoko Iwaki, University of Antwerp
Eero Laine, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Sarah Lucie, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Juliana Moraes, University of Campinas
Evan Moritz, University of Toronto
Jonas Schnor, University of Antwerp
Theresa Spielmann, University of Antwerp
Christel Stalpaert, University of Gent
Aneta Stojnić, Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York
Nilüfer Ovalıoğlu Gros, Paris Sciences et Lettres University- National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts
About Ends
Ends is an open-access and multipolar organisation that initiates research projects at the intersection of posthumanism and collaborative theatre and performance research methods. The 2026 symposium builds on three iterations of online international symposia called World Ends Day (https://performingends.com/world-ends-day) and the recent publication of Mourning the Ends (https://punctumbooks.com/titles/mourning-the-ends-collaborative-writing-and-performance/), a collectively authored book by fifteen scholars and artists. We are based across the planet and operate in a lab-based model where ideas can be tried and tested cooperatively with peers. Our work remodels and revamps established models in academia that center singular voices and outcomes. Instead, our vision de-centers singular authorship and works towards epistemic co-finitude. Symposium updates will be posted here: https://performingends.com/ends-symposium-2026
Inquiry: If you have any questions about the symposium, please email us at: PerformingEnds2026@gmail.com