Abstracts for PPP2022 conference, 16 June 2022

Published 12.4.2022 | Updated 13.6.2022

A Key Group 1: Tony McCaffrey, Dave Calvert, Kate Maguire-Rosier and Janet Gibson

Collaboration, conviviality, and care: the problem of including learning-disabled and neurodivergent artists in performance philosophy

The Key Group will interweave and problematize the presence of learning-disabled and neurodivergent artists in performance and at the conference through Zoom performance, video and analysis: exploring how learning-disabled and neurodivergent performance thinks, and asking how to include people normally excluded as philosophical subjects.

Tony McCaffrey and members of Different Light Theatre will present The Journey of Maui a 20-minute Zoom ‘performance’ embodying the terms of participation of learning-disabled artists. Conviviality and collaboration are viewed through Derrida’s paradox of hospitality/hostility in an encounter with the Māori ‘philosophical’ concepts of manaakitanga and whanaungatanga and the recent reconfiguration of terms for disability in the Māori language.

Dave Calvert will consider how theatre operates convivially, pursuing resonances between the concept of conviviality, as discussed by Illich, Gilroy and Puar, and theories of care, particularly those of Eva Kittay. Calvert will argue that, while modes of conviviality in traditional drama are used to destabilise received notions of identity, this is rarely extended to representations of learning disability. Calvert’s presentation will involve pre-recorded performance contributions from Dark Horse theatre company, to explore the epistemic implications of conviviality.

In parallel to McCaffrey’s utilization of Derrida’s hostility/hospitality dyad, Janet Gibson and Kate Maguire-Rosier employ a performative conversational approach to explore a resistance to and an embrace of ‘care’, understood as both ethical and political concepts in the context of dance and theatre with and by people with dementia and learning-disabled artists.

Through an examination of Murmuration’s Days Like These (2017 Sarah-Vyne Vassallo), Maguire-Rosier calls for acts of disclosure to be understood as performances of care, as negotiation of risks and an enabling of possibilities. Gibson responds to these provocations by extending them to dementia theatre; she also illuminates the role of conviviality in To Whom I May Concern (2018) by focusing on the relationship between the spectators and the audience, many of whom know each other personally or professionally, and how the audience responds to the performers’ demands to change their attitudes. In conversation with Gibson, Maguire-Rosier argues that disclosure can produce a tension between a disability resistance to, and feminist ethical valuing of, care. She asks: what is at stake for the artist with hidden impairment to disclose? Finally, she claims, live performance itself can be understood as disclosure which gestures towards ideas of conviviality.

Biographies: Tony McCaffrey is a Senior Lecturer at the National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art, Christchurch, New Zealand, Artistic Director of Different Light Theatre, learning-disabled artists who have toured to Australia, USA, and UK, and author of Incapacity and Theatricality: Politics and Aesthetics in Theatre Involving Actors with Intellectual Disabilities (Routledge, 2019) and Giving and Taking Voice in Learning Disabled Theatre (Routledge, forthcoming). He is co-convenor of the Performance and Disability Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. 

Dave Calvert is Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield, UK and has published widely on learning disabled performance in theatre, radio, music and television. He is the Chair of Dark Horse Theatre Company, Huddersfield and previously worked as Director of Theatre Education for Mind the Gap theatre company in Bradford, UK. 

Dr Janet Gibson is the Program Manager, Communication, at UTS College, University of Technology, Sydney, where she lectures on the relationship between citizenship and dementia. Her recent scholarship includes a chapter in Contemporary Narratives of Ageing,Ilness,Care edited by Sarah Falcus and Katsura Sako ( Routledge 2022) and her book, er wHerand her and and Dementia, Narrative and Performance: Staging Reality, Reimagining Identities (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). Email: jintyg@iinet.net.au   

Kate Maguire-Rosier is Research Associate in the School of Arts Languages and Culture at the University of Manchester, UK where she is working on an exciting, new project exploring ‘care aesthetics’ across arts and health contexts. She reviews circus, dance and physical theatre regularly for The Conversation and has published on dance theatre performance by and with disabled artists in Frontiers, Theatre Research International and Australasian Drama Studies among other platforms. 

Ahn Autumn

Documentation as Poetic-Witness

The workshop, Documentation as Poetic Witness, accepts that we are fueled by the unavoidable experience of consuming information, both consciously and subconsciously. It focuses on the manipulation of our expectations of documentary sound by dislocating the sources of the visual and the aural. Introducing methods of interaction by its use of an automatic writing prompt employing blind defaults to the physical actions generally used when writing – to see the page and to have free control to lift the pencil from the surface of that page. These simple defaults removes these two abilities, forcing the individuals to become hyper aware to the other sensory shifts ongoing at the time. Sharpening the experience of time through this alternative network, the workshop’s “secondary” poetry technique acts as a tool to describe the subconscious influence of our fetishization of listening upon the political agendas of daily life. “Secondary” in this case, meaning a peripheral consciousness that comes forward in our use of rapid association, allowing the senses to take precedent to the consciousness. Akin to the “automatic writing” practices developed by the Surrealist & Dada-ist art movements of the early 20th century, and also recognized and employed by early psychologist philosophers such as William James and writers such as Gertrude Stein, this immersion practice makes use of available information to inform control and release control of the artistic mind. This workshop is intended to inverse the binary between analysis and experience. Originally created and shared as part of a fellowship at Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy, this performance-lecture is an expansion of artworks that go beyond the gallery and museum spaces. Originally made for 2 hour sessions, the workshop will be adapted to the needs of the conference, and/or for any governing health policies.

Biography: Autumn Ahn is an American visual artist most recently at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University further investigating her studio interests in performance as a site of live space. Since 2012, she has focused on the nature of that site as an eroding archaeological world and also as a conceptual figuration of consciousness. She trained at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts & Scuola Internazionale de Grafica in Venice, Italy. Her works have been presented: at Feria ArtBO, Contemporary Istanbul, ArtBasel-Miami, for AIDS Action Committee, ARTE, and The Boston Art Review. She has lectured at Massachusetts College of Art & Design, Boston University, Harvard, is on an advisory committee for a BIPOC artist residency in MassMoCA, will release a publication with Black Feminist Library, PrintAintDead in 2021. She lives/works from a mountain town in Western Massachusetts.

Ricardo Sarmiento and Chloe Chotrani

El cuento del tabaco/The story of tobacco

The history of tobacco told by the plants.

The smell of dry tobacco when we were approaching the factory. Our imagination of storytelling during our tours was guided by that scent. Since we were freelance tour guides, we didn’t have authorization to get into the factory. We could only invite the tourists to peak through the windows, tell them a bit about the history of tobacco. But what was the history of tobacco? Cuba is a country whose economy structure is subject the flow of tourists who can wander through the pristine color and temperature of the Caribbean waters. The inner economical structure was and still is so strangled that the country hasn’t found the means to alternatives livelihoods. This is rooted in the colonialist gaze I had to carry as a tour guide. All I was able to share with tourists was about commercial merchandise consumed as a source of pleasure. In Europe, tobacco represented position, power, and economic distinction. Concepts attached to it by means of colonisation, commercialization, and capitalism. Of which, it’s nativity and sacredness deems invisible and ignored. Noticing this colonial gaze within myself, this led to a new process of un-learning. This is my engagement in an art science exploration to discover how can we tell the history of these different processes through the biological functions of tobacco? How could the plant tell us the history of its trade? And, above all, how the future uses of the plant, and our actual and future intentions toward it, can tell something else about ourselves?

Biographies: Ricardo Sarmiento’s work deals with themes of identity, migration and the relationship between art and activism. His work has been shown at contemporary art festivals around the world including the Miami New Media Festival, the 7th VideoArt Festival of Buenos Aires, The Iberoamerican Short Screening of Frankfurt, and the Late America Exposition: 25 year perspective, Madrid. He was a Member of the International Forum at Theatertreffen 2018,Berlin, and an Invited Artist at the PerfoArtNet Biennale, Bogota. Fellow to watch&talk program at the Zurcher Theater Spektakel 2019. Resident at CanSerrat Writing residency 2020. His most recent projects include Acuario, Diaries of fear, and a collaboration with Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll). His piece “And you won’t tell the truth” won the First Theater Prize of Casa de Teatro Foundation in Dominican Republic this year. Currently Ricardo Sarmiento is based in Berlin, where he’s doing the MA Spatial Strategies at Weissensee Kunsthochschule.

Chloe Chotrani dedicates her life to the deep studies of the body. Leading with endless curiosity, she is intrigued by the body as an instrument for transformation, relationship, and creative potency. This is expressed through her work as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist using consensual touch, receptive communication, and deep listening; and as a Embodiment Facilitator through body based practices that encourages connection to the body through the medium of movement. She is based in Singapore and has ancestry in the Philippines and India.

Monica Toledo Silva

Powerful bodies: from amerindian to decolonial feminine aesthetics

“powerful bodies: from amerindian to decolonial feminine aesthetics” presents an ongoing research of the aspects of feminist discourses related to ecofeminism (Bolivian theory) and decolonial studies (from Achille Mbembe and Franc;oise Verges), evolving to an investigation of common traces and aesthetics as presented in contemporary performative works (extended from dance to visual arts and installation) of Amerindian women artists. Amerindian art is understood in all its natural diversity related to the works produced by natives of the American continent, extended to Central and South Americas within their very diverse cultures and histories. These “natives” are often already miscigenized (Indigenous, Africans and Europeans), as is the Brazilian and Caribbean cases, therefore marginalizing and excluding the very concepts of origin, identity, as well as frontier and refuge.

Decolonial theories have improved and given more visibility (in media in general and official public venues) to “minor” art languages and speeches from these peoples, who often present a work much related to microativisms and micropolitics, as called. But, as American cultures diverse so much, so do their approach to a political body, running from gender violences and historical losses to ecology and a poetic aesthetic of visibility, resulting in very singular pieces. Performance art will be approached in its dance and visual languages, as the intention of the artists is both to show an embodied experience in their affected world and an attempt to reinvent an art which dialogues with both ancient and multimedia tendencies. This presentation aims to comment the work of women artists from the Americas whose performing arts operate from a the sphere of political, ethic, ecological and and culturally mixed heritage to develop a very singular and powerful image of themselves, far from cliches and easy interpretations.

Biography: Brazilian artist and researcher of body aesthetics and narratives in visual and performative arts. phenomenology and cognitive studies inspire my experimental videos, installations (as tracing mermaids/ crete, greece, body lands, pompeias and disturbing ruins, shot in detroit, johannesburg, athens and sao paulo) and published essays. doctor in semiotics

(puc sp), teacher at the post graduation course of art history (iec puc minas), leading video, semiotics and performance disciplines. organizer of the books dramaturgy of reality and performances of memory (impressoes de minas editor, brasil). dancer and researcher of the territoriality, displacement, migration, feminine arts and embodied images in contemporary arts.

Chieh-ting Hsieh

Notation as “Culture-Technique”

The research on notation presented here begins with the problem of writing with performance. It argues that “notation” is the “writing that performs.” Nonetheless, it does not mean that notation of music or dance implies the “performance of music and dance.” Rather, notation “performs” in the sense that it “asks for” the interpretation of the signs. In the sense that “to notate” is “to write something down,” it is inspiring to regard “notation” as “culture-technique” (Kulturtechnik) which explores how the cultures are developed in and through the operation of techniques. To regard “notation” as “culture-technique” means to examine how notation implies the culture-specific preconception of that which is notated a priori.

“Notation,” as “culture-technique of writing-down,” in the research presented here is not limited to the notation of music and dance. Rather, it includes the diagrams of ideas, cartographies of space and time, etc. Through the analyses of these “writings” in the different cultures, it becomes clear that the different ways of “writing-things-down” reflect the different ways of “taking-things-up.” In some instances, these “writings” are also closely related to the notation of music and dance. Notation is the writing that asks for “interpretation” not only of the signs but also of the cultures. With the reflection on the problem of writing with performance, notation which “conditions” not only music and dance but also ideas, space and time becomes the way to disclose the “preconditions” of the cultures.

Biography: Hsieh Chieh-ting teaches at the College of Communication, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. He holds a doctoral degree in dance studies from Freie Universitaet Berlin. His recent research interests include the dynamics of music and dance, the body’s sense of rhythm, and the concept of notation as culture-technique (Kulturtechnik). He was the music consultant for the documentary Le Moulin by Haung Ya-li, and the director of the research-oriented artistic project “Transnotators” at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab.

Edward Spence

Philosophy Plays

This paper provides an explanatory rationale within a theoretical philosophical framework for the Philosophy Plays project, conceived as a Way of Life and a form of communal therapy for the mind. The object of the Philosophy Plays is to introduce philosophy to the general public through philosophical presentations by professional philosophers incorporating drama. The Philosophy Plays project 􀀁rst conceived and introduced in Sydney, Australia by Edward Spence has created a public domain for philosophy where relevant issues and topics of public interest and importance, such as love, immortality, happiness, friendship, religion, knowledge, trust, pets, morality, technology, and
corruption can be presented by professional philosophers and discussed in an open forum with members of the general public. The Philosophy Plays, like Platonic dialogues, seek to engage their audiences both intellectually (primarily through the philosophical talk) and emotionally (primarily through dramatic plays). Like Plato’s dialogues, from which they draw their inspiration, the Philosophy Plays which combine dialectic (the philosophical talk) with rhetoric (the drama) seek to engage their public audiences in a realistic and shared livedexperience thus rendering philosophy a practical and meaningful activity for all participants, conceived as a way of life. Responding to the
conference question “is there thinking within performance that presents problems that standard philosophy cannot approach and philosophical problems that can only be processed through performance philosophy” the presentation will demonstrate that philosophy, as conceived by the Hellenistic philosophers and speci􀀁cally, the Stoics, as a Way of Life, can more e􀀂ectively be expressed through a combination of philosophy and performance in the form of Philosophy Plays in public venues. Through performance philosophy becomes, as intended by the Stoics, a form of “public therapy of the mind”.

Biography: Dr Edward H. Spence, (PhD) is an Honorary Research Associate, the Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, and Charles Sturt University, Australia, as well as Research Fellow at the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, Netherlands. He is author of numerous international journal articles and authored books including, Spence, E. (2021). Stoic Philosophy and the Control Problem of AI Technology: Caught in the Web; Spence, E. (2021) Media Corruption in the Age of Information. Springer; Elliott, D. and Spence, E. (2018) Ethics for a Digital Era. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell; Spence, E., Alexandra, A,Quin n, A and Dunn, A. (2011). Media, Markets and Morals. Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell; Spence, E. Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewithian Approach (2006). Maryland: Lexington Books (a division of Rowman and Little􀀁eld, USA); Brey, P., Briggle, A. and Spence, E. (eds.) (2012) The
Good Life in a Technological Age, Routledge. He is the founder and director of the Philosophy Plays project whose aim is the communication of public philosophy through performancedrama and audience participation through discussion. Several of his Philosophy plays have been performed at Arts and Cultural Festivals in Australia and the USA, most recently Ataraxia and Algorithms, ( 2021) and Zeno’s Secret (2018) for the Greek Festival of Sydney. Both Philosophy plays are on Stoic philosophy.

Laura Wahlfors and Heidi Hart

Noir/Noise/Haunting/Queer: Risk and Vulnerability in Classical Music Performance Practice

This dialogue-based lecture performance explores the “burning or smouldering problem” of perfectionism in classical music performance, perceived in the broader context of hetero-capitalist culture of progress and efficient performance. Drawing on theories of queer performativity, including work by Heather Love and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and of “exposure” (both in the Brechtian sense of “baring the device” and in Stacy Alaimo’s sense of activist vulnerability), we will begin with a dialogue on failure and shame as shadows that haunt the virtuosic model of success expected of classical performers. We will also address the Eurocentric, heteronormative, and even Anthropocentric forms of music-making that exclude and “other.”

As a pianist and singer, we will then present a (non)performance of twentieth-century nocturne music in literal darkness (& oddly directed light), making the singer effectively invisible as a gesture of making room for others, seen or unseen. Risking lapses in memory or ensemble can expose the construct of concertizing and allow for a nocturne to be a more searching than presentational approach to the phenomenon of night. Unlike Georg Friedrich Haas’ “In iij Noct.” for string quartet in darkness, which provides cues for improvisation, or John Cage’s chance-based compositions, we will work from an established score, allowing interruptions to create moments of discomfort and discovery. Exposing the gaps that usher in the “ghosts” of performance can break the comfortable spell of the concert experience while also, as Jean-Luc Nancy has ventured, making room for possibility in the sharing of fragility and unexpectedness. The lecture-recital will also include recorded, electronic improvisation on our musical material by sound-art duo Silo Portem, who have included repetitive glitches that mirror the experience of performance lapse.

Biographies: Laura Wahlfors is an arts researcher and musician based at the Sibelius Academy. She is also associate professor of musicology and comparative literature in the University of Helsinki. She has published on queer performance, Kristeva’s, Barthes’s and Nancy’s thought in the context of music performance studies, and on the interrelations of music and literature. As a pianist, she specialises in collaborating with singers. Her project “Queering Musicianship” has been funded by Kone Foundation. 

Heidi Hart is an independent arts researcher and musician based in Utah, US with ongoing projects in Scandinavia. She has published two recent monographs, on Hanns Eisler’s songs and on music in climate-crisis narrative. As a singer, she specializes in 20th-century and contemporary art song, currently preparing a virtual premiere of Lawrence Kramer’s “The Convergence: Notes on the Plague Year 2020.”

Anthony Gritten

The Philosomer

The Performance Philosophy (PP) movement is onto its fifth conference, the second generation of Palgrave books, and now plays key roles in international debates through the pages of its journal. It is time to take stock. One problem facing PP concerns its practitioners’ identities and “performative materialisation” (Butler). In terms of the disciplinary narrative linking the conferences, there have been investments in “staging a field”, in what PP “can do”, what it “does”, and how it “intervenes”. This fifth conference is configured around how PP “collaborates” in order to solve “problems”. Underlying this narrative about PP are assumptions about its practitioners: who witnesses and intervenes in events; who contributes to the field; who collaborates so that PP might contribute to the accumulation of social capital; and how practitioners manage themselves and their materials.

This paper works through these assumptions, looking at PP’s recent history and at precedents for its provocative self-positioning. For narrative ease, we term the practitioner of PP “The Philosomer”. Three particular “challenges” (McKenzie) occupy our unpacking of this artistic-political subject-position:

1: The Philosomer is a ghost. They are the result of a spectral interaction between incommensurable phenomena, namely the disciplines of “performance” and “philosophy”. Conventional concepts of hybridity are insufficiently “diagonal” (Deleuze) and thus inadequate as quasi-ontological categories for understanding what The Philosomer “can do”.

2: The Philosomer is a sophist. They are less concerned with “originality, significance and rigour” (UK REF) and more interested in dynamic vectors moving between performance and philosophy that upend arguments and logical structures in favour of “affective intensities” (Massumi). Propositions are displaced (note: not replaced) by presentations, propriety by persuasion, in what The Philosomer “does”.

3: The Philosomer is a materialist. Resolutely rooted in embodied, tactile relationships to others sharing their world, all their activities are biologically mediated. Thus, the value and nature of PP outputs are complex matters. Machinations and flows of desire, “the independence and the simultaneity” of incompossible events (Lyotard), recall The Philosomer to their body as the basis for how they “intervene”.

This paper synthesises these manifesto provocations into a tentative phenomenology of what it is like to be The Philosomer, drawing genealogically on transdisciplinary work by Judith Butler, John Cage, Thierry De Duve, Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Duchamp, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Brian Massumi, and Jon McKenzie.

Biography: Anthony (PhD Cantab) has published articles and chapters on Adorno, Bakhtin, Balakirev, Cage, Debussy, Delius, Lyotard, Nancy, Roth, and Stravinsky, and about subjects including alibis, artistic research, collaboration, constraints, distraction, empathy, ensemble interaction, entropy, ergonomics, ethics, listening, loopholes, performance, problem solving, recording, technology, timbre, and trust. Anthony has given over 300 organ recitals across UK, France, and Canada, including premieres of works by Daniel Roth and Richard Francis, and cycles of the complete works of Buxtehude, Tunder, Homilius, Brahms, and Mendelssohn.

Renate Bräuninger

The shift from process to product – changes in aesthetic appreciation required? 

In recent years one could observe a trend away from reviewing performances as such towards a study and appreciation of artistic processes. Such a change manifests itself in theatres supporting visits to rehearsals for those who are interested in the performing arts and a particular scholarly engagement which is referred to as practice as research. Numerous philosophical (Deleuze, Garcia) and sociological (De Certeau, Bourdieu) approaches have been helpful to shift from the aesthetic appreciation of a performance towards an understanding of the decision-making processes involved in it. However, there seems to be a danger that for reviewing processes still no specific discursive and perceptive strategies have been created, but rather those developed in the context of aesthetic appreciation (starting from Kant) are transferred onto an understanding of process. Consequently, process might become the new product and the perception of it could be filtered through frames of understanding that are not sufficiently reflecting the underlying intuitive and energetic impulses as sources for decision making. Therefore, not only audiences might be limited in their understanding of arts making, but also those who study arts might be inhibited in their creative growth. At the same time, those frames operate also within enclosed cultural spaces and often cannot accommodate a cross cultural understanding. Performance philosophy could provide a link between traditional concepts of aesthetic appreciation and an understanding of the underlying process, because in this context the logocentric of the theoretical philosophical argument could be left for a review of the intuitive understanding and experiences of the performing arts. I will illustrate possible approaches through examples from my interdisciplinary research into choreomusical relationships. What is the difference between am interpretation of perception and a review of processes?

Biography: Renate Bräuninger`s main research area is choreomusical relationships particularly with regards to the choreography of George Balanchine and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker touching also at questions of the archive, notation and meaning gaining processes. Her training is interdisciplinary in both musicology and dance. She has an MA in Musicology from the Ludwig Maximillian’s University Munich and a PhD in Performing Arts from Middlesex University, London. A scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service allowed her to study at New York University. She has taught at numerous German and British Universities, lately at the University of Northampton and she has published widely both in her native language and in English.

Tuomas Laitinen

Receptivities

“Agency” is a much-used term, highlighting the ability to make an effect, to produce or set in motion something, to change the world from its current state. “Performance” has similar connotations and etymologies, referring to doing and accomplishing something. Action, agency and performativity (situated on a concrete or a conceptual stage) are highly valued and much studied registers in the present age of political art. My proposal is that the medium of theatre (maybe also of performing arts in general) is not limited to performativity but could be instead seen as a kind of a polar structure, where the performative, agential or active register is only half of the story, i.e. one of the poles. The phenomenon of audience introduces the other pole, another kind of sensibility: a receptive mode or register. This polar system would not be a dichotomy, in which two sides of a binary model are separate, instead it is based on a charge between the poles, a movement of forces between two extremities which exist in their pure form only as concepts. The stage is not only for action, yet it is an active reserve. The audience is not only for reception, yet it is a receptive reserve. Becoming an audience of a performative event enables a register of thinking which remains in a charged, restless state of receptivity, or receptivities, where we do not by default set things into motion or where our function is not productive. What appears when a performative event is approached as a dialogue between agencies and receptivities? How to attend and study these receptivities? What are their political implications? I aim to study these questions through a receptive experiment – to prepare few tools which we can use in the session, in order to make some receptive modalities, typical for an audience of a performative event, appear. The presentation will preferably be realized on site or in a hybrid format, but can be adjusted to a remote setting if needed.

Biography: Tuomas Laitinen`s background as an artist is in participatory and experiential forms of contemporary theatre and performance art. Since 2005 he have been focused on creating spectator­ oriented art and its environment in Finnish cultural sphere as a director, performer, writer, teacher and curator. His work has been situated on the freelance field and for example in the artist collective Reality Research Center. He have taken part in the public dialogue on these art forms through publishing articles, reviews and essays in various periodicals and books and through working in several editorial boards. Since 2017 he have conducted a doctoral research project called at present “Audience as a Condition”.

Katarina Blomqvist

Performing Philosophy by Listening: An Audio Documentary Encounter 

In our communities we often know how to speak but not how to listen and thus we avoid genuine dialogue. I want to contribute to solving the problem of listening. As an audio artist who do mainly audio documentaries my question is: how to listen and think together with my main characters. In my presentation I will show examples of how I apply philosophical practice in my artistic work. It is possible to make a case that philosophy is something that happens between people, not on the pages of a book. Thinking is difficult and it is easier to think out loud than silently in your mind.

This was something philosophers knew already in the ancient/ Greece. In my artistic research I concentrate on how to capture those rare, precious moments of thinking, record them and create an audio art work around them. How to listen so that it is possible to help people to formulate their thoughts, not to impose one’s own thoughts to them? How to create an artistic work around recorded authentic thinking? And, how listening can be a philosophical performance? Philosophical practice is an emerging field trying to give everyone a possibility to join the philosophical discussions. It can be practiced in group settings i.e. as a structured group dialogue called Socratic dialogue or it can be practiced as one-on-one conversation called philosophical consultation. In philosophical practice the discussion starts with person’s own experiences and moves then to abstract level. Standard, academic philosophy do not operate that way. All this gives artistic research a great opportunity to show different ways of philosophizing. Phenomenology has studied the structure of I – You encounter, but in recent years the interest has emerged to study the structure of the sense of We. This is extremely important shift for our communities and also as a question concerning artistic research. How to attain the essential sense of we while making art together with people who are going to be main characters in our work of art. Thequestion of shared authorship is also addressed. Key words: audio art, audio documentary, encounter, labor of listening, sense of we, theory of recognition, shared authorship, listening as performance.

Biography: Katarina Blomqvist comes from Department of Film and is specializing in audio documentaries. She is doing pioneering work in the intersection between documentary encounter and philosophical practice. Her background is in philosophy (MA, University of Helsinki) and she has completed a two-year education in philosophical practice. She is, however, audio artist doing artistic research. She is part of a research group which has funding from Kone Foundation and the working title of her thesis is Listening to the Social Death – Documentary Encounter and Endurance. The research group is part of Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care (CoE AgeCare), that the Academy of Finland has chosen for the period 2018-2025.

Leena Rouhiainen and Kirsi Heimonen

Shadows and Site-Specific Choreographic Writing 

This presentation introduces projects in site-specific choreographic writing that aim at corporeally encountering areas left in the shadows of the neighborhoods that we live in. The project problematizes a conventional understanding of choreography with extending its medium from the body to writing and at the same time explores the potentials such writing can offer artistic research through a phenomenological orientation. This interest arises from several motifs, the hybridization choreographic practice is undergoing, the challenge artistic research places on choreographic practice as well as our personal need to address encountering strange environments as well as to override live audience dependent performance. As dancers and choreographers residing in wider Helsinki in Finland, we consequently explored the strange and its impact on the unfolding process of site-specific movement exploration and writing. We were specifically curious about what in everyday life is left unnoticed and how a sense of this impact could be maintained through sensuous and affective writing. With this interest in mind, we created a performative form of experimental writing that aims at appreciating the vitality of the sensuous. We consider the texts we have produced phenomenologically-oriented task-based, site-specific choreographic writing. Our lecture-demonstration introduces our related artistic research projects, the task-oriented method we generated and examples of the written choreography as well as visual imagery of the sites we have explored. In so doing, we discuss our approach and the writing generated in relation to timely conceptions of choreography by, for example G. Brandstetter, B. Cvejic, J. Joy and A. Lepecki. We address both the fertile and tense relationship choreography, the body and writing have with each other. By underlining the performative and motional opportunities involved in both contemporary choreography and the practice of writing, we aim to substantiate choreography as a form of reiterative poetic writing with a difference that carries with it a shadow, a trace of the inexpressible or non-thinkable. We argue that this approach is a form of practical or artistic phenomenology on the basis of insights offered by phenomenologists E. Levinas and J-L. Nancy. Here we appreciate the friction between the bodily exposure to the sensuous and writing and highlight that the choreographic writing that we propose arises from an affective event of encounter as a saying in the said and as a kind of excription.

Biographies: Dr. Kirsi Heimonen is an artist-researcher with a background in dance, choreography, somatic movement methods and experimental writing, and her recent interests in artistic research have been circling around silence and insanity.

Dr. Leena Rouhiainen is Professor in Artistic Research at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. She is a dancer and choreographer whose research interests lie in somatics, dance performance, choreography, experimental writing, phenomenology and artistic research. She has published articles and volumes in these areas and has acted as peer-reviewer for journals, examiner of artistic doctorates as well as a board member in Nordic Forum for Dance Research and the Society for Artistic Research.

Georgio Papadopoulos

Epistemic and ethical implications of performing economies

The aim of this exposition is to present and discuss the epistemic and ethical implications of a series of collective experiments on the intersection between performance, economics and critical theory. The motivation behind my involvement in performance was the realization of the limitations of the economic discourse and the urgency for formulating a critique of professional economics in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. Having no training in performance myself, I had to rely to collaborations with artists, where I some time acted as the initiator but often as a ‘stage hand’ recruited for my expertise in professional economics and sometimes as a performer. Instead of relying to mainstream analysis, we tried to tap into the potential of gestures as tools of economic thinking, the creativity and the inherently speculative ideas that resulted from action based cognition. The outcome of of our experimentation was a series of apparatuses comprised of both linguistic and non-linguistic elements (gestures, graphemes, illustrations, movements, narratives and sounds) that allowed for the decoding economics by actualizing and materializing its symbols; be it letters, words, numbers, mathematical equations or diagrams. Decoding was often followed by a re-coding of economic narratives through performance, poetry, fiction and visual art. My contribution will present some of these performances/ experiments raising three sets of questions. The first interrogates the possibility of practice based research developed through performance to interrogate economics in general, and the role of money in particular. The second speculates on the idea of the emergence of an epistemic collective out of the creative process behind a performance (that can also include an audience) and the potential of transdisciplinary research. The last set of questions is connected with the political and ethical challenges of participating in a collective research project developed performatively.

Biography: Georgios Papadopoulos PhD, combines economics and philosophy with artistic research. His work gravitates around the tension created by the competition between social value and individual desires. In 2012 he won the inaugural Vilém Flusser Award for Artistic Research by the transmediale festival and the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin for his project on the cultural analysis of the Greek currency. He has presented his work at the ICA London, Centre Georges Pompidou, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MQ21 and the Acropolis Museum. Currently Papadopoulos is responsible for the Erasmus+ research project Creator Doctus exploring new models for 3rd Cycle Education in the Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

A Key Group 2: Alice Lagaay, Anke Haarmann, Tom Bieling, Torben Körschkes, Petja Ivanova, Barbro Scholz and Frieder Bohaumilitzky

Speculative Epistemologies. Triangulating zones of entanglement between knowledge, embodied practice and belief

An apparent legacy of the ‘Enlightenment’ (with a big E) is the assumption that knowledge is universal and that all societies and cultures are knowable from a singular ‘bird’s-eye’ point of view. This has resulted in what some might call a ‘tyranny of logic’, the boundary-defining framework of science that excludes any episteme that cannot be grasped by its methodological norm, defining thereby what can or cannot constitute the ‘knowable’ or ‘true’. The same generalising framework also defines what is regarded and valued, what counts, as knowledge in the first place. The focus tends to be on the communicable (and therefore marketable) outcome, the ‘results’: ideally discrete nuggets of information that can, in principle, – or so it is assumed – be further digested and imported into other contexts, independently and regardless of the actual embodied processes that led to the original formulation of these results, and regardless of the original (and local) context in which their significance might be embedded.   

Related to this are the challenges of post-colonial thought. In particular, the fact that any effort to think through and to overcome the violence of exclusion, implied and continuously enacted by the academic straitjacket, faces the problem of how to define and reframe what constitutes knowledge and truth as opposed to, say, belief, dogma, ideology or mere speculation. Increasingly, however, ‘rebellious’ epistemes are emerging on the fringes of academia, demanding, for instance, that more subjective, non-quantifiable experiences (as opposed to strictly empirical experiments) be equally valued as knowledge.

Speculative Design offers a methodological toolbox with which to explore, and potentially legitimize, alternative models and modes of knowledge through world-building not based on, or not yet based on, socially normalised ‘truths’. However, a problematic dichotomy remains: whilst a neutral, transparent and universal truth may be a fantasy construct, the disturbance of such a construct through individual embodiments is no simple alternative. It requires a careful observation of the modes and assumptions, the premises and processes of different knowledge-generating practices within the confines of academia and beyond. In short, it requires actual (not simply professed) inter- and trans-disciplinarity; in other words: actual working together. So: How do we work together?

Drawing from a range of different disciplines and hybrid forms of research, including artistic research, design, philosophy, and various types of embodied practice, the team members of Spec Space, the Laboratory for Speculative Design Research at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), will attempt to perform this inter- and trans-disciplinarity on the stage of the Performance Philosophy conference in Helsinki. They will demonstrate different ways of knowing, approaching and triangulating the question of what can emerge, once the traditional domains of academia and science (“Wissenschaft”), are no longer regarded as exclusive sites for knowledge production.

Before beginning to address how we work together, our first step has been to describe how we work individually. Depending on the type of work involved, and also, perhaps, on our individual personalities, our approach to this self-analysis has been different in each case. Some of us have described the practical and strategic methods they use to develop concepts for design projects: building with ready-mades, identifying dichotomies, juxtaposing and contrasting contexts, enhancing paradox. Others have delivered a close phenomenological description of specific skills involved in various phases of their work, for instance the actual process of typing words and sentences on a keyboard (using just two fingers) in combination with writing notes by hand, or the physical, rhythmic, embodied vocal experience of speaking thoughts out loud, of discovering thoughts by speaking.

These skills are invariably necessarily implied in the idea of what our work “is”, but not usually considered as contributing significantly to its outcome; not normally worthy of mention or attention. A close observation of the actual processes involved in carrying out these everyday work tasks – speaking, writing, experimenting with materials, listening, waiting, doubting, procrastinating, reading, re-reading, editing, reading out, going for a walk, marinading, starting over, collaging, connecting, refashioning, sewing, letting grow, feeding… –  suggests, however, that they are not just simply subsidiary methods or neutral service providers, as it were, but intricately, methodologically involved in the creative process of (speculative) design, especially when highlighted by the sensitivities of a performance philosophy paradigm. The action of observing and describing what we actually do as we carry out our daily work is understood here as an essential methodological step in the infinite process of situating and localizing, of thereby decolonialising, our labour practices, a process which must necessarily accompany, and be valued equally to, the connected and infinite process of enlightenment (with a small e).

Biographies: Tom Bieling (Dr. phil.) teaches design theory and design research at HAW Hamburg, and Designwissenschaft at HAWK Hildesheim. He is a co-editor of the BIRD series (Birkhäuser/DeGruyter) as part of the Board of International Research in Design, co-editor of the book series Design Meanings (Mimesis) and founder of designforschung.org. Head of the Social Design research cluster at the Design Research Lab / UdK Berlin (2019–19), previously at TU Berlin (2007–10), his recent publications include: ‘Inklusion als Entwurf’ (2019), ‘Design (&) Activism’ (2019) and ‘Gender (&) Design’ (2020).
www.tombieling.com

Frieder Bohaumilitzky is a designer and design researcher. He creates exhibitions, designs objects and spaces, intervenes in structures, and examines the socio-political contexts of design, its tools and conditions of production. Frieder studied Politics at Hamburg University and Design at Hamburg Art School (HFBK) as well as at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He is currently a research assistant at the Centre for Design Research at HAW Hamburg and is pursuing his doctorate at HFBK Hamburg with a project on the connection between design and right-wing populism and right-wing extremism.

Anke Haarmann (philosopher, artist and design theoretician) earned her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Potsdam, founded the “Centre for Design Research”, a platform for practice-based, design research as well as critical theory, at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, currently co-heads the German Society for Artistic Research and directs the PhD Arts Program at the University of Leiden, Netherlands, as Professor of Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts.

Petja Ivanova, artist & designer, founder of the Studio for Poetic Futures. In her intersectional feminist and trans-disciplinary practice, Ivanova combines biology and computation with spirituality and poetics. By fusing electronics and sensors with plants, microorganisms, insects and bacteria, Ivanova seeks to carve out spaces of liberation from the dichotomous chasm between what is considered natural and what is seen as man-made and technological. Her practice employs a non-linear, mythological, non-quantifiable approach that strives to overcome simple causalities in quantification. She is currently a research assistant at the Center for Design Research at HAW Hamburg.

Torben Körschkes is part of the design and research collective HEFT, which explores questions of socio-political spaces. He studied design at Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen and Hochschule Für Bildende Künste Hamburg, where he completed his MFA (on contemporary salons) in 2018. Grants and residencies include Hamburger Zukunftsstipendium, Elbkulturfonds, Bibliothek Andreas Züst, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Hamburg, Spiegel Online Social Design Award. He is currently working towards a PhD on chaotic arrangements and de-totalized communities at TU Berlin and works as a research assistant at the Center for Design Research at HAW Hamburg.

Alice Lagaay, Prof. Dr. phil. has been a professor of theory in the design department at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg) since 2018. She is a founding member and core convener of the Performance Philosophy network and co-editor (alongside Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Will Daddario) of the performance philosophy book series at Rowman and Littlefield international. Her research in recent years has focused on the theory and practice of creative indifference (Friedlaender/Mynona) while seeking innovative formats for the generation and communication of philosophical content.

Barbro Scholz is an e-textile interaction designer whose research focuses on the aesthetic experience of e-textiles on the body. She obtained her MA degree in Textile and Fashion Design at the Swedish School of Textiles where she was involved in the Smart Textiles Design Lab. She is co-founder of Stühmer|Scholz Design in Hamburg, Germany (2012). Since 2020 she has been a member of the Center for Design Research at HAW Hamburg in the “Speculative Space”-Group and the interdisciplinary research project “Klima-ACT”.

Abhay Ghiara

Gandhi, J. Krishnamurti & U.G. Krishnamurti: If the body does not exist who/what is the performer and how do I develop the avatar of my persona?

Lecture performance on a key idea of some esoteric yogic traditions of Indian philosophy (the body does not exist) applied to the problem of developing the avatar (Sanskrit for incarnation) of my persona Red Pencil fish for Every house has a door’s large scale performance Aquarium, a commission from the Croatian National Theater, for the European Capital of Culture 2020 (Postponed to 2021). If the body does not exist who/what is the performer? If the body does not exist how may I, as a performer charged, by my director Lin Hixson and dramaturg Matthew Goulish, with developing the avatar of my persona, the endangered Red Pencil fish, proceed? Who to be and how to be if my very beingness is under question? The problem was further intensified by the Pandemic. After initial rehearsals in 2018 and 2019, Every house has a door’s planned rehearsals in 2020 were cancelled. How do I, as a performer, continue to develop my avatar when isolated in Pink House (housepink.org) on the small island of Bohol in the Philippines for all of 2020 (and so far, 2021)? In developing the avatar of my persona, the endangered Red Pencil fish for Aquarium, I used three fundamental equations that I derived from the Indian philosophers M. K. Gandhi, J. Krishnamurti, and U.G. Krishnamurti. Briefly, Gandhi: x = y; JK x = l; and UG x = 0. Gandhi argued an essential equivalence of all things. Thus to Gandhi economics = religion and means = ends. So from Gandhi, one of the threads I held on to while developing my avatar was the idea of essential equivalence. I am not special, not specialized, I am general, ‘I am’ in the most generalized sense as equivalence to all life. J. Krishnamurti argued for the essential unity of all: things, thoughts, beings, non-beings. So I held to the thread of oneness, which I had experienced first-hand at age thirteen when initiated at the Aurobindo Ashram in India by my teacher. U. G. Krishnamurti has often been called the anti-philosopher. Though himself possibly enlightened, he denied the very idea that enlightenment was possible, denied the unity essential to Hindu teachings especially of Advaita philosophy, and insisted that his life, and all life amounted to absence or the zero. How does my avatar exist, knowing the null ness of all existence, became the third thread for me to hold on to. To summarize, the contradictory divergent solutions that I had to hold in developing the avatar of my persona, the endangered Red Pencil fish were: Gandhi: x = y; JK x = l; and UG x = 0 Or ‘I AM’ equivalence (Gandhi); unity (J. Krishnamurti); null ness (U. G. Krishnamurti).

Biography: Abhay Ghiara is an Indian-American Gandhian economist, performance-artist, & yogic meditation master who lives part of the year on Bohol island in the Philippines where he is Master of Pink House, a complex consisting of a community home, store, koi meditation pond & yogic meditation center and part of the year in Bend, Oregon, where he teaches economics at Central Oregon Community College. Since 2018 Abhay has been a performer and co-deviser with Every house has a door working on the large scale performance Aquarium, originally a commission from the Croatian National Theater for the European Capital of Culture 2020. Abhay has been a professor at Northwestern University, DeVry University, and at the Goat Island Summer Schools in Chicago and Bristol. He has been a Fulbright scholar to India and a peer reviewer for the Fulbright Scholar Program. He has published thrice in Performance Research (twice in collaboration with Matthew Goulish). 

Minerva Juolahti; Tea Andreoletti and Sabrina Hart

Perspectivist Performance – A Gesture of Backward Gaze

This performative gesture seeks to explore the idea of perspectivism through the different socio­ political cultures and histories of our collective that is an encounter of different nationalities: Finnish, English, Kosovan, and Italian, as well as many traditions and religions, including Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish. Starting from the Amazonian perspectival ontologies Viviero De Castro presents in his writings, we use a non-verbal language of performance to investigate its philosophical understandings. The aim is to decentralize our way of thinking and to welcome radical pluralism. The performative gesture welcomes the audience, both present and online, to step outside of the verbal communication by veering away from the text and language orientated method of discussing philosophy. We propose a performative language made of gestures that allow us to expand philosophical concepts. The performative method of the gesture develops around the idea of gazes. First, a gaze towards history (backwards). We address perspectivism by referring to historical figures closer to us. In particular, we take examples from the Italian Middle Ages, St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi. The two saints perceive humans as contemplative, as those who recognize and enter into a relationship of listening, dialogue, and care with their surroundings. Their relationship with other living beings – siblings – can bear similarities to the idea of perspectivism. Second, a gaze towards the present political and cultural interconnections. Our interaction with the audience plays with the awareness of a human perspective oriented culture that is based on Eurocentric philosophies and projects a complex conception between power, society and truth. Lastly, a digital gaze. Keeping the question open to our own surprise, with our performance, are we going to highlight the use of the digital as a further presence, a means to an end or something else entirely? The internet agency is considered as a means of connection between our collaboration, the different locations and with the audience. With this gesture, we aim to create an interruption, a rupture in our ways of thinking, to negotiate the truths of our culture, the common ways of thinking, the common sense. What could radical pluralism mean? How can we build a sustainable framework and enter a coalition with the other, be it our cultural divergences, our approach to philosophy via non verbal performance, our interactivity with the audience or the utilization of the technological gaze, to dismantle systematic power hegemonies?

Biographies: Minerva Juolahti (1987, Helsinki) works with sound performance and noise. She holds a Master of Social Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in folklore studies from the University of Helsinki. Fjolla Hoxha (1984, Prishtina) is a playwright and performance artist from Prizren, Kosova. She studied Dramaturgy at University of Prishtina, Theater & Drama Critique at Istanbul Universitesi (University of Istanbul/Faculty of Philology). Tea Andreoletti (1991, Gromo IT) works as a storyteller, water-sommelier, future major, student, radiators’ dust observer, guided tours writer, and unprofessional fencer. She comes from the visual art field and oral tradition. Fjolla Hoxha is a writer / artist / MA student in Live Art and Performance Studies, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Tea Andreoletti is an artist/ MA student in Live Art and Performance Studies, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.

Tom Drayton; Andrew J. Corsa; Thalia R. Goldstein and Pavlos Christodoulou

I Really Don’t Care, Do You?: The Philosophical Problems of Producing or Performing Empathy in Contemporary Performance

This panel will explore how contemporary performance practices perform, produce or practice empathy, referring to both the Greek ‘pathos’ and the German ‘Einfiihlung’ as the act of “feeling into” both the body of another and/or an artwork. The panel is concerned with ways that performance artists can develop specific real-world practices, informed by the research of psychologists, that might overcome theoretical problems posed by philosophers. As four scholars across the fields of philosophy, psychology and performance, the panellists offer a unique, international and interdisciplinary articulation of the problems that arise on the interstice of performance, philosophy and empathy. Dr Andrew Corsa responds to claims that the empathy that audiences feel for characters, and the empathy that actors feel for characters, can sometimes have a negative impact on them or their societies. He discusses the ways that specific dramatic methods – like those employed by Theatre of the Oppressed and by the Tectonic Theatre Project in the development of ‘The Laramie Project’ – are not subject to some of these worries. Pavlos Christodoulou discusses his praxis-based understanding of the importance of consciously constructing spaces that encourage empathy between participants and communities through his work composed of gamified structures that facilitate reflection and an empathetic disposition between participants. In this talk, Pavlos dissects his practical experience in attempting to promote empathy within a performative space, offering critical reflection on his mistakes and unconscious biases. Dr Thalia Goldstein offers critique in her discussion on how psychological research on theatre requires the reduction of complex behaviour to operationalized and measurable constructs. She links this to the ways psychology has reduced empathy to various behaviours, emotions, and cognitive states, leading to confusion over definitions and measurement. This will lead to insight into where experimental research on the links between empathy in audience members and empathy in theatre performers exists, and how it can be explored going forward. Dr Tom Drayton further problematises Einfiihlung in post-immersive practices that ‘validate intimacy, tenderness, empathy and care’ (Lopes Ramos et al., 2020) in that the act of welcoming is now radical. As participatory practice moves online, Tom combines the Zoom-related meaning of the term ‘host’ with its basis in the ethics of ‘mutual, reciprocal […] protection, shelter or companionship’ (McAvinchey et al, 2018) whilst addressing the problematic, exclusionary power imbalances that occur when developing such structures.

Biographies: Andrew J. Corsa holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is an Assistant Professor in Lynn University’s Dialogues of Learning Program. His research on empathy and performance is published in Journal of Moral Education and Polymath.

Dr. Goldstein’s work focuses on social and emotional skills, particularly theory of mind, empathy, and emotional control and regulation, and how such skills intersect with engagement in pretend play, theatre, drama, and other imaginative activities.

Pavlos Chistodoulou is a performance maker, educator and facilitator who uses games and play to explore socio-political themes in performance and to disrupt pedagogical norms.

As the director of Pregnant Fish Theatre, Dr Tom Drayton’s work focuses on storytelling, activist theatre and intimate performance practices. His research concerns post­ postmodern culture and emerging political performance practices.

Simo Kellokumpu and Tuukka Perhoniemi 
In collaboration with Thomas Wesphal and Outi Condit

KOSMOSOMSOK – The Universe in Four Acts 

The age of the universe, 13.8 billion years, is impossible to comprehend. Equally difficult is to understand what has happened during that time and how it has shaped humans. How can we as bodily beings experience being part of the Universe that has made us? What can we do to reach and embody its incredibly long periods of time or incomprehensible proportions? Will time be experienced only by transforming it into a place or movement, and locating yourself into them?

KOSMOSOMSOK is a four-act outdoor performative plunge into the Universe and its history. Contemplating the passage with the participants the work brings in the questions of nonlinearity of time and problems of simultaneity as they are the discoveries of modern physics. The performance and the discussion shares the practical problems we are facing while trying to combine philosophy, performance, history of site-specificity and its amplification towards Outer Space, and contemporary scientific understanding of the universe.

The presentation of the KOSMOSOMSOK -project is facilitated outdoors. We will meet in front of Theatre Academy’s main entrance according to the conference schedule. The participants are kindly asked to prepare with weatherproof clothing.

Biographies: Simo Kellokumpu (Doctor of Arts) is a choreographer and researcher, currently conducting his post-doctoral artistic research project xeno/exo/astro- choreoreadings as a visiting researcher in the Performing Arts Research Center, TUTKE, in the University of the Arts Helsinki. He completed his doctoral artistic research project Choreography as Reading Practice in TUTKE in 2019 in which he developed the notion and practice of choreoreading. Kellokumpu’s works examine the entanglement of contemporary speculative fiction, space culture, and site-specificity. The research questions of the post-doctoral project re-open site- and place-responsive choreoreading practice by taking the scale of the notions of ‘site’ and ‘place’ to outer space.

Tuukka Perhoniemi (PhD) is a philosopher at the Astronomical Association Ursa. His earlier research has concentrated on the history of sciences and democracy. He has also worked with planetariums and other science education tools and environments popularizing difficult scientific contents to all kinds of audiences. Currently he is writing a book on non-human participation in the future democracies and starting a research on astrophilosophy. The aim is to put the traditional questions of human condition into the context of current cosmology, which gives a very different view of the universe and Earth.

Karolina Kucia

The Practice of Inhabitation

The Practice of Inhabitation is based on the concept of parasite and parasitic relations. The figure of the parasite is used here to be able to discuss a question of access, procedures of inhabitation and ways of leaving. Further, it examines, in dynamics of dwelling once established, if the possibility of flipping up the existing power structure from minoritarian point of view, actually exists. Parasitic relations work through troublesome generosity of hosting, the noise of interruption, infectious negotiations, theft, expulsion and implanting of interdependency. Presentation guides through a discussion on parasites and parasitic with Michel Serres’s “The Parasite” (1980), Anna Watkins Fisher’s “The Play in the System; The Art of Parasitical Resistance” (2020), and my artworks and research. The presentation builds fictional and analytic connections between the wheels of precarization, neoliberal and post-neoliberal forms of production in the artistic field.

Through the stories of parasitic inhabitations my performance-lecture/workshop guides through the space of the conference itself, allowing to find a place to leech on, to rest. Before the next necessity to move on, can “we” ponder for a while on “our” state of interdependency.

What if we imagine that in knowledge production, there are no communal meals? What if, with the flow of nutrition, there is not a common that is produced but an undeniable power structure of one-directional growth on one side and decrease on the other? As not only one meal is served, many of those one-directional flows, where one chews on another, become a complex system – the network of a network, relations to relations itself, the system of relations, the labour structure and body/mind of the labourer. Or, might we conceive a cultural omnivore self, engaged in forming an aggregate, propertizing time, accruing knowledge, mobility and multicultural otherness to refashion and re-tool itself (Beverley Skeggs), producing a monstrosity of some kind, that has no idea who speaks while stating I. The one who makes the sound? The one who casts the content? Or the one who is produced as the result of that relation? What is the act and medium of receiving and what is an act and medium of expansion? Or who?… 

The presentation is conducted as a part of my doctoral research: Monstrous Agencies – Resisting precarization, Organisational models and tools for cooperation and authorship in the production of art.

Biography: Karolina Kucia (b. 1978), Polish visual artist with a background in sculpture, intermedia and performance studies; currently a doctoral candidate in artistic research in Theatre Academy, Uniarts, Helsinki. She combines theoretical and practical work with objects, group processes, performances in site-specific, staged context and moving image. Her main interests are lapse, parasitism and monstrosity in the context of precarization of labour in current form of art institutions.

A Key Group 3: Darja Filippova, Pavel Mitenko, Anastasiia Spirenkova, Antonina Stebur and Vera Zamyslova

Performativity of Death in post-Soviet art

The link between performance and philosophy is a permanent question that animates independent post-Soviet culture: from Moscow Actionism of the 1990s to the House of Culture Rosa, run by the St. Petersburg art-group “Chto delat?,” to performance collective Party of the Dead. At the same time, the subject of death is one of the main topics of post-Soviet political art and performance practice in Russia. It was reflected in the ideas of Russian Cosmists, the late Soviet Necrorealists activities, Moscow conceptualists, the practices of the first post-Soviet women’s art group Factory of Found Clothes, {rodina} (motherland), to Techno-Poetry today. The COVID-19 pandemic became a pretext for artists and activists to resurrect the problem of death and methods of working with it. Now after the beginning of full scale Russian military invasion throughout the whole territory of Ukraine it became clear that artists anticipated reality in many ways. Since the 24th of February 2022 the Russian state turned many hundreds of Ukrainian neighborhoods into cemeteries. One of the important slogans of Party of the Dead is “The dead don’t fight”. The slogan refers to the understanding of human life as a resource. Death turns out to be not only the ultimate experience of existential existence, but also part of necropolitics, the hidden statistics of the dead by the Russian army. The corpses of Russian soldiers remain abandoned by its own army. This attitude not only towards the dead of the “enemy” but towards their own dead soldiers makes the issues of performativity of death crucial.

Russian invasion of Ukraine can be viewed from a colonial point of view as imperialist aggression for control of territories. Then the war in 2020 is directly related to the annexation of Crimea, the war in Chechnya, invasion to Georgia, etc. One month after the invasion to Ukraine Party of the Dead wrote, “The Russian army continues the ‘glorious’ war traditions [do not take the bodies of Russian dead soldiers – Agitatsia note] of the Afghan and Chechen wars, as well as many other conflicts sometimes not even called them as ‘war’.”

We believe that the theme of performativity of death brings together two important lines of an involved, independent art – death and performance – which constitute the “burning and smouldering” problems of the contemporary cultural process in Russia. The question of death in Russia is haunted by a question of justice – both philosophically and in relation to the perceived failures of the system of law. The necro-performances of the collective Party of the Dead, which took place in streets and cemeteries of a quarantined St Petersburg (and in transgression of the stay-at-home order) manifest the importance of performance as a ritual of mourning in this strange time. As a key group, we would use the framework of the conference to establish a Party of the Dead fraction in Helsinki.

Our research group AGITATSIA unites people connected with the postSoviet history (from Belarus, Russia, USA, France, Estonia), and with interest in collectivity and multidisciplinary approach, to produce multimedia texts about art. Our areas of study include philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, art criticism, artistic performative activity; we are united by an interest in the most radical line in contemporary Russian art, which is Actionism and political performance. As Jacques Derrida noted in “Signature, Event, Context,” a sign receives its performative power, that is, the ability to produce an action, only due to the institutional framing of the situation. The ongoing weakness of contemporary Russian art institutions results in a failure to provide enabling spaces for artists, whether through advocacy for freedom of expression or material support. Therefore, post-Soviet art operates outside the institutions, on the margins of power and authority. In such a situation, the creation of independent institutions and quasi-political associations, such as Agitatsia, becomes the basis of performativity and effectiveness of the statement.

Biographies:

AGITATSIA is a research group dedicated to political performance art practices, actionism, and art activism. Members are: Dasha Filippova, a writer, artist, and PhD student at Princeton University, New Jersey; Pavel Mitenko, a philosopher, researcher, performer, curator, and PhD student at State Academic University of the Humanities, Moscow; Anastasiia Spirenkova, a researcher, curator, and PhD student at the Center for Art and Languages at EHESS, Paris; Antonina Stebur, a curator and researcher, affiliated member of European Humanities University living in Berlin; and Vera Zamyslova, art historian, researcher, Moscow. In 2021 Agitatsia won Russian Art Focus prize for the best research paper on Russian contemporary art.

Dasha Filippova is an artist-scholar; born in the USSR and raised in Estonia, lives in NYC. She holds an MA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from Central European University, Budapest; currently pursuing a Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Dasha worked for Rapid Pulse performance festival (Chicago) and the Off-Biennale  (Budapest). Dasha collaborates with performance collective Antibody Corporation and works under the mentorship of Pocha Nostra. She is co-founder of an independent research platform Spaika.media and teaches at Princeton and in a New Jersey state prison. www.darjafilippova.com

Pavel Mitenko, philosopher, researcher, editor, art-critic, performer and curator. His research focuses on political and aesthetic philosophy and sociology of art. Mitenko works on a thesis on Moscow Actionism. Participated in Radek Community (“Manifesta”, “Utopia Station”); Oссupy Movement, Independent Research Center of Manifestations, “MediaUdar” festival; Research project of Garage Museum, co-founded the “Union of Convalescents” — (anti)psychiatric performance group. His works were published at Moscow Art Magazine, New literary review, FlashArt, Colta, OpenSpace, ArtChronika etc.

Antonina Stebur is a curator, art historian, and researcher from Minsk and Kyiv but now lives in Berlin, MA in Sociology (Visual and Cultural Studies). Lecturer in The Universität der Künste Berlin. Co-founder of International Coalition of Cultural Workers Against the War in Ukraine (www.antiwarcoalition.art). Member of the femactivist group #damaudobnayavbytu, which analysis the feminist agenda in the ex-Soviet context. Co-founder of an independent research platform and festival Spaika.media.

Anastasiia Spirenkova, researcher, curator, Ph.D. student at EHESS. Born in Moscow, lives in Paris. Anastasiia worked in such cultural institutions as Gogol-center, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, AZ Museum and NET Festival. Her thesis “Actionism in Contemporary Russia : action, language, power” focuses on the discourse around artistic actions and on the linguistic policies that Russian power enacts towards them. Her articles were published at Art Margins, Russian Art Focus, The Art Newspaper Russia, Theatre and Decorative art. Co-founder of an independent research platform Spaika.media.

Vera Zamyslova is an art historian, researcher and MA in Art History; thesis titled “The Theme of the Death in Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century Russian Performance Art: An Analysis of Form and Content.” Lives in Moscow, Russia. Vera works as a lecturer, methodologist, and cultural columnist for several cultural institutions (V-A-C, SredaObuchenia, the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Art Margins, K.R.A.P.I.V.A.). Co-founder of an independent research platform and festival Spaika.media.