Taking the position that the curatorial and curating are performative, we propose exploring some of the strategies being an integral part of performance, choreography dance, and theatre that bring forward liveness, transformation, ephemerality, materiality, spacetimemattering and intra-actions (Barad), as well as the problem of responsibility in relation to the curatorial and its performative material effects on the world and sociality.
THEMES:
Body and Context – different workshops or artistic research/extended choreography strategies, practice from the perspective of choreography/dance/performance as sources of critical knowledge, and development of curatorial practices sensitive to corporeality, affect, space, context, relationality, etc.
Uncontrolling, Failure, Change – as curatorial strategies of experimentation and openness that resist neoliberal norms of success and achievement, and subvert institutional demands based on the project time logic and reification.
Corporeality, Choreography, Affect and the Political – as sources and subjects of enactment, configuration, staging in curatorial practices; choreographic analysis and social choreography as tools for analysis and sources of knowledge in the field of the curatorial.
LECTURES / SEMINARS / DISCUSSIONS:
WORKSHOP – Danae Theodoridou (Greece): Artificial Social Imaginaries: Curation of Live Events as Construction Sites for Social Change
LECTURE – Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris (Sweden): Curating the Hydrocene.
*A 30 min open discussion/conversation with the participants, hosted by Martin Sonderkamp (Germany/Sweden) and Tove Salmgren (Sweden) follows after the lecture.
Through a series of individual and group tasks of reading, writing, discussing, questioning, designing and testing, this workshop will involve students in a critical process that aims to reflect on the relation between curatorial practices and social change. In this frame, we will approach the design of any curatorial project as an artificial construction site for the creation of alternative social imaginaries, i.e. as a concrete alternative proposal about the way we imagine and practice our social coexistence. The act of curating will, thus, be worked as a practice that moves away from established norms and social habits; as the crafting of social encounters towards more imaginative, unknown directions, away from capitalist demands that strive for the ‘groundbreaking’, the ‘new’, the ‘successful’, the controllable, popular, profitable and effective product.
Key terms in our exploration will be the notions of ‘social imaginary’ (as discussed by C. Castoriades and other scholars), ‘dramaturgy as working on actions’ (as discussed in The Practice of Dramaturgy – Working on Actions in Performance, a book co-authored by the workshop’s facilitator), ‘commoning’ (as a concrete practice within the discourse on ‘commons’), as well as the relation between art, crafts and materiality. Students will be asked to read texts in advance related to all these issues, which will be further discussed and tackled in the workshop.
In the same frame, students will also be asked to design and, at least partly, test different curatorial frames and exchange models that could act as artificial social imaginaries, through which they will attempt to detect the processes and working principles involved in such acts.
BIO DANAE THEODORIDOU: Danae Theodoridou is a performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. She studied literature and linguistics in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and acting in the National Theatre of Northern Greece. She completed her PhD on dramaturgy of contemporary theatre and dance at the Roehampton University in London. The past years, her artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries and the way art can contribute to the emergence of social and political alternatives. At the same time, Danae teaches in various university departments and art conservatoires of theatre and dance in Europe, curates practice-led research projects and presents and publishes her research work internationally. She was co-creator of Dramaturgy at Work (2013-2016) and co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017). For more information visit www.danaetheodoridou.com
The lecture will present a historical understanding of Hydrofeminism and its contemporary relations to the curatorial and artistic practice. The Hydrocene is leaky and relational, and amplifies the often unexamined perspectives on the interrelation of art, water, and intersectional feminisms in relation to the climate crisis. Through gaining a deeper understanding of these artists’ and curators’ practices with water, the Hydrocene offers up a model for engaging with embodiment and response-ability (Haraway, 2016) to the interconnected zone of nature-culture.
BIO BRONWYN BAILEY-CHARTERIS: Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris is a Swedish/Australian curator, writer, and lecturer based in Stockholm. Bronwyn is currently a Ph.D. student at the department of Art + Design at the University of New South Wales, researching water and art in her thesis titled ‘Swallowing the Hydrocene: Watery thinking for artistic ‘response-ability’ to the current climate crisis.’ Her research interests are focused on processes of ecology in contemporary art, water as a social metaphor and feminist methodologies. Working with practical learning platforms, artistic research, publications, and exhibitions, she has been present internationally as a curator and lecturer. She is also working in a research role at Accelerator, Stockholm University, as a guest lecturer in the Department of Dance at Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola (Stockholm University of the Arts), as a guest lecturer in the Masters for Curatorial Practice, Stockholm University and was previously Curator at Index – The Swedish Contemporary Arts Foundation. Read more at https://su-se.academia.edu/BronwynBaileyCharteris and https://bronwynbc.com/
BIO TOVE SALMGREN: Tove Salmgren is a dancer, choreographer, curator and educator. As choreographer, she lingers in the absurd and the naïve, a space to trouble hegemonic understandings of the social, the self, relation, knowledge. Last years’ artistic and curatorial collaborations include We happen things/Manon Santkin and Moa Franzén (MDT Sthlm 2016) and a variety of playful interventions assisting The Blob – the curatorial persona initiated by Anna Efraimsson; “Blobbing the paper” at the conference The promises of Monsters, Stavanger University (2016), “The Conference Dinner”, at Deleuze International Conference, Stockholm (2015), “Blobbing” at Kunsthall Trondheim (2017). The solo performance I pretend that you speak (2014) and Objects and Speech (2016), were presented at MDT Sthlm. Since 2016, she has been co-directing, together with artist Kajsa Wadhia, the Köttinspektionen Dans, a platform and venue for experimental dance and performance in Uppsala, Sweden. Since 2017, she has been working at the Stockholm University of the Arts, and 2019, as a Lecturer in Performative Practices. Read more at https://kottinspektionen-dans.se/en/
BIO MARTIN SONDERKAMP: Martin Sonderkamp is a dancer and choreographer and lives in Stockholm and Berlin. Since 1995, he has been creating choreographies and performances for stages, but also for museums and galleries in Europe, Russia, Asia and the USA. His interest in the ecologies of collective work is rooted in a transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice. It explores the interplay of different approaches, roles and methods in the fields of dance, visual arts and experimental music, drawing on the translation of performance scripts and choreographic scores using a variety of media, materials and formats. His ongoing collaboration with visual artist Darko Dragicevic include Tonträger (2019), A Collective Body (2018), Sonic Extensions (2017) and Approximations (2015). Based on re-constructing Anna Halprin’s City Dances, he was a collaborating choreographer in City Dances Cologne, DE (2016) directed by Stepahnie Tiersch. In 2012, with choreographer Vera Sander, he conceptualized and curated the alterable, participatory exhibition Social Movement at Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne, DE. Since 2017, Martin is Professor for Choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts (SE) between 2011-2017 he was Professor for Contemporary Dance at University College of Music and Dance Cologne (DE).