We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the XTREMERS — Symposium on Body as Interface for Extreme Users (https://six.fba.up.pt/Xtremers.html), with submissions open until 20 September 2026. XTREMERS will take place at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Portugal, on 13 November 2026.
XTREMERS explores the body as an interface. Not a body served by interfaces, but the body itself as the medium through which intention, expression and meaning take form.
The symposium convenes at two extremes, held in equal view. The first is Bodies of difference: bodies that operate outside normative assumptions through impairment, neurodivergence, or virtuosic expertise, bodies whose interfaces, designed from rather than around them, tend to produce insights we later cannot imagine living without. The second is Bodies in extreme circumstances: conditions that push any body past its ordinary range, from microgravity and deep isolation to disaster and sensory overload, where the normative body ceases to exist just as surely. What these extremes share is a single rupture: an interface built around a normative body stops working, and the body's own grain [rhythm, reach, timing, tremor, residual and minimal movements] becomes the matter of interaction.
We look forward to your participation and encourage you to share this information with colleagues and doctoral students who may wish to submit their work.