Lecture and workshop with Bojana Kunst Dec 4 to Dec 7

Working out contemporaneity – performing, writing and working together

Lecture with performance theoretician Bojana Kunst on contemporary dance, writing communities and performing arts organization Maska. Kunst wants to show connections between different ways to produce the body and political, economical and cultural conditions. She will specifically talk about the relationship between choreographic method and modes of production in today's post-industrial world, where she sees artistic practice as part of a wider social practice. Kunst will also bring up Maska and Maska Journal for Performing Arts where she is active. Maska and Maska Journal for Performing Arts are involved in contemporary art and theory, research, experimental performance practices, interdisciplinary arts and critical theory www.maska.si.

The lecture is curated by choreographer Malin Elgán and freelance writer Josefine Wikström, whom during 2009-2010 invites a series of international guests to Weld in order to place a focus on the possibilities of publications to broaden the aesthetic discourse of choreography. A new collection of texts will be presented at each lecture gathering.

Co-workers are Tove Salmgren and Sara Ludvigsson. Weld produces the lecture in cooperation with Inpex, International Dance Programme at Arts Grants Committee, Mychoreography at University College of Dance and    Re Act.

Byline: Olga Egorova (Tsaplia), Nikolay Oleynikov, Dmitry Vilensky. Builders,video installation, 2005 

Bojana Kunst will also give a workshop (see info).

Bojana Kunst, ph.d. is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is currently working as a researcher at the Department for Sociology at the University of Ljubljana and is assistant professor at the University of Primorska, where she is teaching a course on philosophy of the body and performing arts at the postgraduate course Philosophy of Visual Culture. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Journal for Performing Arts, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has taught and lectured extensively in Europe. She has written three books, among them Impossible Body (Ljubljana 1999) and Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Ljubljana, 2004). She is also working as a dramaturg and is leading the international Seminar for contemporary performing arts in Ljubljana.

Abstract
Having developed through the 20th century in connection with the principles of Fordism, the development of contemporary dance over the last two decades has reflected the deep changes brought about by post-Fordistic ways of labour (cognitive and affective virtuosity, multilayered temporality, proximity, collaboration processes, etc.). In this sense, potentiality of choreographic practices should not be understood only as aesthetic practices, but also as wider social practices of distributing bodies in time and space. Contemporaneity of these kinds of practices no longer spring from in the speed and autonomy of the industrial movement.  What unfolds before us is cognitive and sensorial potentiality of movement. This shift in the practice of producing the body therefore goes from the autonomy of movement to the affective proximity of embodiment, which is also at the core of the political, economic and cultural distribution of bodies in contemporary society and its political and economic relations.

Bojana Kunst

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INVITATION TO WORKSHOP 4-6 DECEMBER 2009

During 2009 – 2010 choreographer Malin Elgán and freelance writer Josefine Wikström curate a series of workshops and lectures in cooperation with Weld, MyChoreography at University College of Dance and the International Dance Programme at the Arts Grants Committee.

The workshops are held in connection with international guests visiting Stockholm attending a lecture series at Weld, dealing with publications in relation to artistic production.

The workshops are independen from the lectures, and are formulated out of each guest's specific topic. Welcome to participate are theoreticians, choreographers and dancers as well as artists from other fields.

Registration at info@weld.se
Please give your name, a short description of who you are. The language is English and numbers of places are limited. The workhops are held at daytime. No fee.

5 – 6 December
How are ”many” on the move?
– On embodiment and collaboration
Workshop with Bojana Kunst (Ljubljana)

"There are many disillusions about the political movements and artistic communities in the 20th century, however in the present cultural and political situation, there is also a strong need to rethink the notion of plurality as a specific force of change. In the workshop we will approach this need from the perspective of the body and processes of embodiment, which are deeply intertwined with the ways how do we reflect and think about collaboration and movement of the group. We will analyse and discuss significant examples from the history of performance (particularly from the second half of 20th century), especially the ways in which the processes of embodiment are tightly intertwined with the formal and aesthetical approaches to community. The potential for change, sensorial togetherness, belonging, counting, community, immunity, all those issues are connected with specific understanding of the body and are strongly influencing the aesthetic and formal procedures of performance in the last decades. Today the notion of embodiment and collaboration touches new fields, where bodies are part of augmented space, moving as swarms, multitudes, deterritorialized communities. What can be then the body of a group? How to think about the body of a group after deep disappointments with collective body? How are “many” on the move today?"

Bojana Kunst