Symposium: Fri, 06.12. – Sat, 07.12.2024
My curatorial practice began via exploring collaboration and researching the conditions for performance, both in the UK and in relation to Southeast Asia. From 2013 – 2019, I had the opportunity to undertake a residency in Cambodia, where I met and interviewed artists working in contemporary practice. Visits soon followed to different collectives, organisations and live art scenes in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Alongside this research, as part of the curatorial initiative Something Human (SH | co-directed with Alessandra Cianetti from 2013 – 2018), we initiated multiple projects centred on live and experimental practices in the UK and Europe; including The Terminal (2014), which brought together ten international performance makers under holding conditions; the curatorial performance MOVE WITH (OUT) (2014-2016), From East to the Barbican (2015) tracing different disciplines in performance from East London to the City of London; CCLAP (Cross-Cultural Live Art Project) 2014-2016, and launched the Southeast Asia Performance Collection in 2017. Performance and live practice continue to inspire my thinking around bodily, architectural and spatial heuristics.
I was delighted to be invited to share my practice in this symposium at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Austria, as part of a panel with pioneering Vienna-based artist, Carola Dertnig, moderated by art historian and curator Freda Fiala.
Performance thrives on the physical presence of its actors and the spatial conditions where it takes place. It is eminently context-bound and site-specific. In this way, performance always draws attention, directly or indirectly, to the framework of its presentation and the material and social infrastructures that enable (and limit) it.
The symposium Performance Besides Itself. Infra- and Parastructures of a Contemporary Liveness examines the dynamics between performance and its institutional-infrastructural contexts. How do performance and the institution relate to one another? To what degree does the institutional set conditions for performance and to what extent may performative practices, in turn, transform the working methods and infrastructures of art institutions in the long run?
Other than usual, this two-day symposium pursues a praxis-oriented approach. In the course of panel discussions, artist-led workshops and presentations it assembles theorists, curators and artists as well as experts from the fields of production and artistic advocacy. This interdisciplinary interest is also reflected in the deliberate linking of experiences from the visual art as well as dance context, with the aim to reflect the lived experience of a growing number of professionals today.
The symposium takes place in the framework of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance 2024.
Participants: Kathrin Bieligk (The City of Vienna’s Kuratorium for Theater, Dance and Performance), Claudia Bosse, Katrin Brehm (brut Wien), Sabeth Buchmann, Carola Dertnig (Art and Time / Performance, Academy of Fine arts Vienna), Katharina Ernst, Freda Fiala, Andreas Fleck (WUK performing arts), Vasilena Gankovska (IG Bildende Kunst), Mariella Greil-Möbius, Peter Kozek und Charlotta Ruth (Angewandte Performance Lab, APL), Annie Jael Kwan, Sara Lanner, Bettina Masuch (Festspielhaus St. Pölten), Lisa Moravec, Carolina Nöbauer (Tanzquartier Wien), Johannes Maile (Partner in Crime), Denise Palmieri, Amanda Piña, Clémentine Proby (Mudam Luxembourg), Frederike Sperling (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich), Marlies Surtmann, Daliah Touré, Frank Wasser
Curators: Freda Fiala & Frederike Sperling
Annie Jael Kwan 