Summer school: Scenes of Transformation and Resistance: Performing in Artistic Research.

A scene of resistance encompasses a force that acts to slow down, stop or invert the progress of something. Resistance can be seen in various forms and contexts, from the politics of resistance as emancipation, to the physics of resistance as a property of materials. Yet Resistance incites a process of Transformation that challenges the totalitarianism behind the idea of the “original” and “truth,” as Walter Benjamin discussed. Moreover, Édouard Glissant demands for the right to opacity as a strategy of resistance to hegemonic, oppressive, dichotomous systems of knowledge. Embracing resistance as a performative practice for this reason blurs the boundaries among art, research, and activism. The Summer School by the Binational Artistic PhD program of the University of the Arts Bremen examines societal norms, power dynamics, and oppression by resisting dominant narratives within different fields of action. Held during the Personal Structures Biennial, the program emphasizes performance as a research method through a plurality of intersectional approaches. The program features collaborative, experimental, and auto-ethnographic practices in the specific site setting of Venice as a stage, celebrated again-and-again.