From its origins as a New York City subculture amongst gay, black and Latino/Latina practitioners, and its transition into the mainstream, to its subsequent lives across international scenes, disco poses pivotal questions about the entanglements of art, industry, identity, and community. Disco is the site of many significant and lasting debates in popular culture, including those surrounding the figures of the DJ and the diva, the status and significance of dancing bodies, the tension between what is authentic and what is synthetic, and the historic maligning of society’s others.

Join us for a major interdisciplinary international conference at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts on 21-23 June, which aims to examine and expand these debates. We hope to explore disco as a tentacular phenomenon that reaches across multiple sites of production and consumption, from music and dance to fashion and film.

Keynote presentations by:

Melissa Blanco Borelli (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Tim Lawrence (University of East London)

SYLVESTOR: Artist, Icon, Diva

Featuring artist David McAlmont

Organised by the University of Sussex.