CALL FOR PROPOSALS

ANALOGUE vs. DIGITAL HUMAN feat. ART 

Join the Conversation   

"Why do we expect more and more from technology, while expecting less and less from people?" 

How many of your key meetings, both professional and personal ones, began with a phone call, text message, or click on a social media profile? Have you ever been moved by a New Year's voice message from family on the other side of the world? What did you search for on the internet the last time you were arguing with your partner? And when did you first realize that the voice speaking to you from a washing machine commercial no longer belongs to an actor earning extra money for their work, but to generative AI?

Our communication with others increasingly relies on technological tools. We live in an age where digital relationships are entirely real, and we experience their physicality with our own skin and soul. Communities that we can be part of thanks to technology are easily created, changed, and dissolved, and we are learning to understand that closeness is not measured by physical distance or ontological categories, but primarily by the quality of interaction. Our evolutionary adaptations developed for environments that were completely different from those of today. Through digital interfaces, we are experiencing new forms of intimacy and, for the first time, operating in a mode of global empathy.

The conference focuses on the tension between analogue and digital communications and asks whether art can serve as a means of recalibrating this seemingly dualistic relationship. The ambition of the meeting is to address humanity and reflect on its forms. We are interested in what it means to be human in an augmented communication field and whether art can function as a strategy for remaining perfectly human in an era of ever-accelerating technological sprint.

Key thematic areas:

• The relationship between art and techno-pessimism (technology as a tool for emancipation and a catalyst for new forms of solidarity)
• Creation as a path to humanizing technology: forms of empathy in the digital environment, analogue principles in digital communication (metaphor of closeness and authenticity)
• Co-creative techniques (the democratic and participatory dimension of digital-human-artistic creation) 

Theatre Conference JAMU 2026 is a platform for the exchange of practices, insights and methods of artistic work. We want to explore art and creativity as strategies of understanding, acceptance, rejection, denial, transgression, or embracing of digital realms in which we have settled and which colonize us. 

Together with you, we will try to go beyond the usual conference format towards creating a (safe) space for the mutual exchange of not only knowledge and know-how but also questions and feelings. The conference invites lectures of different kinds as well as workshops/masterclasses.  

We offer thee ways to participate in the event: as a presenter, a community member, or a visitor. For each of these, you can register separately. If you are interested in participating both as a presenter and community member, please fill in both application forms.  

1. Presenters 

Become part of the conference program. Here is the list of formats in alphabetical order: 

Lecture 

Masterclass 

Performative lecture 

Work demonstration 

Work-in-progress presentation 

Send us your proposal by December 2, 2025, via the application form for Speakers. 

2. Community members 

Do you have a specific practice of transforming experience into an artistic output that you want to share in depth with a close circle of other artists? Are you interested in the experiences and practices of others? Do you want to develop the ability of collective thinking, sensing, and doing? Become part of the close Community of practitioners that will accompany and reflect upon the conference program. 

The community platform provides dedicated, autonomous space tied to the conference yet freely open for exploration. Over the course of three days, as a community member you will explore the posed questions in a collaborative, creative environment, using methods like situational interactions, interpersonal dialogue, shared experiences, and artistic expression to reflect on the conference’s themes in fresh and meaningful ways. The mode of existence will be shaped by a unique group dynamic, and the design of activities will be entirely and exclusively in the hands of the Community members. 

Members of the Community will meet online in January and February 2026 to prepare their topics and activities. In person, they will meet the day before the conference and then in between the program sessions. The group will be accompanied by a facilitator. Meetings of the Community may include pre-arranged joint activities (e.g., a movement lesson, guided meditation, walk...) developed by its members or offered by the facilitator. The Conference Board offers space and a timeframe for concentrated collective work and topics to think about. However, the content and form of the Community meetings and their participation in the conference are up to its members. 

The Community is expected to shape the program of the closing event of the conference—a dinner with presenters and visitors (food will be provided by the organizational team). 

Send us your letter of motivation by January 10, 2026, via the application form for Community. 

3. Visitors 

Join the conference as an audience member and participate in discussions and masterclasses. Let us know you are coming via the application form for Visitors. 

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