What is a school: #2 dancing at the edge of the world

Online conversation with: Ania Nowak, Natalia Sielewicz, Katarzyna Słoboda and Mateusz Szymanówka

2nd of December 2020

The conversation departs from the title of Ursula K. le Guin’s book, of which the subtitle reads – Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. We will speculatively move through the title “Dancing at the edge of the world” to think about what it means to be dancing at the edge – both in art practice and socially? How do choreography and movement create places and spaces of resistance? How do we move along edges? How do queer-feminist choreographies practice worldmaking and create different ways of being and coexisting? What are choreographic strategies of resistance through pleasure, words and gathering? How do we practice empathic communities?

link: https://fb.watch/2Jq8e7fYDC/

Participants:

Ania Nowak’s expanded choreographic practice approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can do. She develops formats such as live and video performance, performative exhibition and text. Nowak’s overall inquiry is into the political dimension of the body material and its immaterial aspects —affects, feelings and intuition— to think of new, embodied practices of care and companionship. She is especially interested in the latter when taking into account the unstable, transnational character of our lives and work in the Western world today; experiences of sexuality, sickness and grief, as well as, ethics of pleasure in times of climate and political urgency. Nowak’s works have been presented at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensaele and Akademie der Künste in Berlin; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art and Nowy Teatr in Warsaw; Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, CAC Vilnius, ICK Amsterdam a.o. She lives and works between Berlin and Warsaw. http://technologiesoflove.tumblr.com

Natalia Sielewicz – art historian and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Graduated from Central Saint Martins College and Courtauld Institute in London. Curator of exhibitions: Paint, also known as Blood: women, affect and desire in contemporary painting (2019), Hooligans (2017), that problematized performativity and dance as a tool of female resistance, Ministry of Internal Affairs. Intimacy as Text (2017), dedicated to the affects and poetics of confession in literature and the visual arts. She is also curator of the Private Settings (2014), one of the first institutional exhibitions looking at the impact of new technologies on the human condition in late capitalism, and Bread and Roses. Artists and the Class Divide (2015, together with Łukasz Ronduda). Curator and producer of numerous performances and film screenings.

Katarzyna Słoboda – curator, researcher. At Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź she curated exhibitions such as You come, We’ll show you what we do. On dance improvisation (2013) (with Sonia Nieśpiałowska-Owczarek), Frames of Reference. Choreography in the Museum (2016) (with Mateusz Szymanówka), Moved Bodies. Choreographies of Modernity (2016), Prototypes 4: Agata Siniarska, (Land)slip (2020) among others. Edited several publications on dance, choreography and contemporary art. She is a recipient of Grażyna Kulczyk fellowship in the field of contemporary choreography and Młoda Polska (2018). Finalizing PhD on the issue of embodied attention in contemporary dance/choreographic practices. Member of Kem School programme development team.

Mateusz Szymanówka is a dramaturge and curator, currently working at Sophiensæle in Berlin, where he is responsible for the dance program and the curation of the festival Tanztage Berlin. As dramaturge he has primarily collaborated with the young generation of choreographers and performance makers living in Berlin and Warsaw whose artistic practice is rooted in questions of contemporary feminism and queer theory. He has worked with and for institutions and initiatives such as Ujazdowski Castle CCA, Nowy Teatr and Teatr Studio in Warsaw, Pomada Queer Festival, Art Stations Foundation in Poznan, HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Performing Arts Festival Berlin.

The event is financed by the Capital City of Warsaw as part of the ‘Centrum Jasna’ program.

This conversation will take place in Polish.