HOW TO DO THINGS BY THEORY

PERFORMANCE AND THE PUBLIC: Open Studio
Les laboratoires d’Aubervilliers
December 8, 2012
5pm – 11pm

TkH [Walking Theory] will end their three-year long project How to Do Things by Theory with Open Studio: an occasion to present, share and discuss outcomes of various lines of investigation that this editorial collective from Belgrade pursued in Les Laboratories d’Aubervilliers from 2010 to 2012. Open Studio will show materials from Re-Hallucinating Contexts Paris-Belgrade (2010-2011), which confronted two independent art and cultural scenes; illegal_cinema, the practice of uncurated self-organized screenings of films in alternative production and knowledge exchange,   which is still going on in Les Laboratoires; Exhausting Immaterial Labor in Peformance, the joint issue of the journal TkH and Les Labos produced in public editing sessions. Finally, a special focus of this Open Studio is on the research project Performance and the Public that Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda carried out in 2011 and 2012. During Open Studio, TkH will launch the book Public Sphere by Performance written by Vujanović and Cvejić, and present the study for Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, a film made by Marta Popivoda. TkH will also offer video materials from the workshop Performative Technologies of the Group that Cvejić conceived in collaboration with Popivoda, and Christine De Smedt and Siegmar Zacharias, with the participation of students from Paris VIII Dance studies and others.

The point of departure for this research is the recurrent problem of the public: the eclipse of the public sphere throughout the twentieth century as a marker of the crisis of representative democracy. The theoretical and political perspectives of this transdisciplinary research stem from the discontinuous experiences of participation in the public sphere in former socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neoliberalism.TkH proposes an analysis of and discussion about the public––and its discontents––through several models of mass, collective and self-performances, such as social drama and social choreography. In numerous collaborations with artists, theoreticians, and activists in 2011, TkH have closely observed transversal social, artistic, and cultural artifacts and practices: movements, images, laws, habits, and discourses. The core motivation for the research that ranges from performance studies to political theory and social science can be illustrated by the following questions from the book’s preface:

…What has the role of the public been in all these historical and current moments? Even if the public has not been passive and invisible in all of them, what has its position and its power been? Did it effectuate changes? Moreover, even if it has had political and social effects, we are inclined to repeat John Dewey’s question: was this public aware of the consequences of its actions? …What did we ask for when we as a public arose in protest? And how does this correspond to what we got in return, supporting or opposing the one or the other political actor on the public scene? …What can we as citizens do with what we know and have “in our hands,” or in our case, with theoretical and practical expertise in the field of performance?

Programme
5-7pm Display of materials from How to Do Things by Theory with informal talks with Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda
7-8.30pm Talk about the research Performance and the Public and launch of the book Public Sphere by Performance by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić
8.30-9.15pm Dinner
9.15-10.15pm Screening of the study for the film Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body and aftertalk with Marta Popivoda
from 10.15pm Drinks

Walking Theory @Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers presents:

“Performative Technologies of the Group”
a workshop at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Ile de France
April 5-11

How can choreography and performance be used as instruments to form a group of individuals ad hoc who will collaborate on a project? What are the techniques of forming a group body of workers who never worked before? How does a worker exercise the skills of immaterial labor required for a “successful” collaboration: flexibility, communication skills, “openness,” curiosity in the other, non-conflictual problem-solving? How do individuals develop tactics to “dance” together in a group of equals? 

The workshop will simulate two distinct, but comparable situations of contemporary forms of labor: building a team of business workers, and gathering a group of performers for a project that relies on collaboration of all members. The aim of the workshop is to explore “group technologies” in the two different contexts: simulated situations with role-playing, games and exercises of group formation, individual and mass gestures etc.

Conceived and organized by Walking Theory (Bojana Cvejic)
Led by coaches Siegmar Zacharias and Christine De Smedt, and Bojana Cvejic
Filmed by Marta Popivoda and Maja Radosevic
Coordinator Virginie Bobin

The workshop is part of the project «How to do things by theory» (2010-2012) by Walking Theory collective comissioned and produced by cultural center Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers.

With: Antonia Baehr, Bojana Cvejić (TkH), Ole Frahm (Ligna), Isabell Lorey, Torsten Michaelsen (Ligna), Marta Popivoda (TkH), Nicolas Siepen (b_books), Ana Vujanović (TkH) and Siegmar Zacharias

In the frame of TkH [Walking Theory] residency “How To Do Things By Theory” at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in Paris (2010-2012), the theoretical-artistic platform from Belgrade started a research about “Performance and the Public”.

Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda examine state performances as well as performances of the public and its citizens informed by two different contexts, socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neoliberal capitalism.

For their OPEN DAY they featuring heterogeneous artifacts: movements, images, laws, habits, writings in various formats, e.g. “sharp thoughts” or “running commentaries” debate that include a few artists and scholars as guests and collaborators in this research phase.

PROGRAMME
16.00-19.45 Social Choreography and Social Drama, introductory lecture by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić, Yugoslavia: How Ideas Moved Our Collective Body by Marta Popivoda (selection from video archives, screening with discussion), Sharp Thoughts with Antonia Baehr and Siegmar Zacharias

19.45-20.30 dinner break

20.30-23.00 The Occupy: Non-representationist, Presentist Democracy, lecture by Isabell Lorey, public interview with Ligna collective, Running Commentary by Nicolas Siepen on Shifting/Sitting by Aernout Mik.

Antonia Baehr (photo: Marta Popivoda)

“If the body I dance with and the body I work and walk with are one and the same, I must necessarily entertain the suspicion that all of my body’s movements are, to a greater or lesser extent, choreographed”. This would be a concise statement of the social choreography thesis, as Andrew Hewitt develops it in Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement (2005). Social drama, as developed in social anthropology by Victor Turner‒with significant contributions by Arnold van Gennep, Richard Schechner, Roberto Esposito, etc.,‒serves as a rhetorical counterpart to social choreography. Social choreography and social drama then become interpretative tools for exploring the performances in the public and social spheres on the basis of their claim that social order isn’t just reflected but is enacted and rehearsed as an aesthetic order. The two interpretative models focalize bodily gestures and movements, organization of bodies in time and space, mise-en-scène, and dramaturgy of public gatherings and mass social events and thus discuss the functions of “liminality” and “communitas” in shaping social community between the public and the private spheres.

In this phase of the research “Performance and The Public”, Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić and Marta Popivoda examine state performances as well as performances of the public and its citizens informed by two different contexts, socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neoliberal capitalism. On January 7th 2012, they organize an Open Day featuring heterogeneous artifacts of the studied: movements, images, laws, habits, writings in various formats, e.g. “sharp thoughts” or “running commentary” debate that include a few artists and scholars as guests and collaborators in this research phase .

Program:

Introductory lecture by Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić (4pm),  How Ideas Moved Our Collective Body by Marta Popivoda (selection from video archives, screening with discussion) (5.30pm), interview with Dana Yahalomi from Public Movement (6.30pm), “sharp thoughts” debate around the Occupy Movement by Julie Heintz and Vanessa Theodoropoulou (8.15pm), running commentary by Franck Leibovici on “Communitas” / “Raw Footage” by Aernout Mik (9pm)

(dinner break: 7.15 pm ‒ 8.15 pm).

With Bojana Cvejić (TkH), Julie Heintz, Marta Popivoda (TkH), Franck Leibovici,
Vanessa Theodoropoulou, Ana Vujanović (TkH) and Dana Yahalomi (Public Movement)

More information

www.tkh-generator.net
www.leslaboratoires.org
www.howtodothingsbytheory.info

Walking Theory at hetveem theater:
PERFORMANCE AND THE PUBLIC
OPEN DAY #1

What is public space, and do we have one, or several, today? Is it only that which we produce, but can’t own? Who governs the public space today? Who are “we” who address the public space as “our” concern? Are we as citizens, especially artists and intellectuals, politically challenged or even dispossessed to the extent that we cannot conceive of the public as the site of action today?

With these questions, Ana Vujanovic, Bojana Cvejic and Marta Popivoda, from the collective Walking Theory (Teorija koja Hoda) from Belgrade, have begun a two-year long theoretical-artistic research about performance and the public, within their project “How to do things by theory” in les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in Paris. They focus on contemporary forms of social choreography and social drama, “artivism”, biopolitical technologies of self-performance in public, etc. Their research involves examining and fabricating heterogeneous artifacts of artistic and everyday practices: movements, images, laws, habits, discourses… Their perspectives are informed by two different contexts, socialist Yugoslavia and contemporary Western neo-liberal capitalism.

On July 1^st, 2011, Walking Theory in collaboration with hetveem theater and les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers organize an Open day as part of the first phase of their research, featuring a few artists, scholars and activists as guests and collaborators in discussion, lecture, and video-presentation.

Program

16.00 – 18.00
The Word of Host; Bojana Mladenovic
Performance and the Public: Mapping Out  A Research; introduction by Ana, Marta, Bojana
Can We Only Perform the Public Now?; lecture by Ana Vujanovic and Bojana Cvejic 
Yugoslavia: How Ideas Moved Our Collective Body;
Marta Popivoda’s selection from video archives. Screening with Discussion

18.00 – 19.00 Dinner

19.00 – 22.00

Aernout Mik: Communitas; Running Commentary with Bojana Kunst
Private – Public: Undoing the Binary; sharp thoughts with Igor Dobricic (proponent) and Sigrid Merx (opponent)
A Response; Joe Kelleher
Netherlands: When the State Expels Art from the Public. A Debate

www.tkh-generator.net
www.hetveemtheater.nl
www.leslaboratoires.org
www.howtodothingsbytheory.info