Performative Symposium for Ecological Spectatorship

Juriaan Achthoven

This page consists of the program of the Performative Symposium for Ecological Spectatorship, that took place on the 16th of October in Het Huis Utrecht. *** The symposium is organised by Gaia’s Machine: an upcoming artistic research collective exploring the intersection between art, technology and nature. Aims for the symposium are: - Exchange knowledge between arts and sciences leading to a cross-fertilization of ideas and practices related to ecological spectatorship - Reflect on our positioning as young artists & scientists at a time of ecological crisis - Open a space for a young generation to question our responsibility and to explore potential methods of moving forward The term ecological spectatorship draws awareness towards humanity’s entanglement within an ecological web. We approach ‘ecology’ from an ethical perspective, addressing the responsibility we have as a human species in relation to the earth (our oikos). Furthermore, we focus on ‘spectatorship’ – a branch within theatre studies that is concerned with the relation between makers and performers and the audience. We emphatically include the spectator in the performative space. Ecological spectatorship expresses a concern that in our view is not only relevant for theatre makers but also for politically engaged scientists. In the symposium we will not only take the placement of the spectator into account but we will allow the spectator to become actively engaged in making sense of ecological spectatorship. We are keen to create ample space for the audience to reflect on their experience and to open an exchange of knowledge between both objective and embodied knowledge, and between the collaborators as well as the audience. We will be researching the proposition of ecological spectatorship through the form of a performative symposium – a play on the traditional form of the symposium by making it both artistic and participatory.

Open Dialogue

For this method of open dialogue we will be experimenting with ecological spectatorship to position ourselves within a collective organism. This method is about putting our individual identity to the side, and coming in to a collective space where we can openly listen and value each other’s voice as if it were our own.

by Rhian Morris (scenographer) and Juriaan Achthoven (dramaturg)

How to belong to the world again?

Submerged into videos of traditional Bolivian rituals and its loud sound, the visitor is invited to participate to a strange ceremony mixing Bolivian and Dutch elements to create a basic dance around a huge totem. Through moving permanently back and forth between a modern and a traditional culture, this work interrogates the possibility for our technological society to relearn how to belong to the world again.

by Pierre Arnau (visual artist) and Claire Second (documentary maker)

Outside Within

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