i.





collective initiatives
experiments in alternative political visions

self generated collective care

Experimenting with alternative political visions

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We are witnessing the emergence of a planetary consciousness signalled by the dramatic rise in collective initiatives and experiments in alternative political visions. Talking about the “explosion of all the phenomena outside of unions and political parties”, Catherine Malabou invites us to question and imagine new “dawning anarchisms”, organisations and modes of decision that are based on self-generated gestures of collective care.

ii.



¹ Jonas Staal

² Ana Vujanović & Bojana
Cvejić’ 
Dancing New Ecologies

embodied collective practices
restoration of a politicised public space

constructing alternatives to capitalism

Cultural Activism

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“Reclaiming the means of production of our future”¹ and rejuvenating our “social imagination”², through art and community building.


Dancing New Ecologies aims at investigating how embodied collective practices may contribute to the restoration of a politicised public space by envisioning, experimenting with and constructing alternatives to capitalism, through dance. 

iii.



reinstate the body
from an object of knowledge and mastery to a site of learning

the Unknown as a valid starting point to decision-making

‘mistakes’ are merely seen as paths of exploration

constant (re)examination

Rehabilitating the body 

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In a moment of human history where the body is kept at bay and where touch is perceived as growingly threatening, we aim to reinstate the body as a reliable site of documentation - through listening to other bodies and one’s environment. The body feeds an instinctive decision-making process that bypasses rationality. Here it shifts from an object of knowledge (and mastery) to a site of learning which relies on the Unknown as a valid starting point to spontaneous decisions, where ‘mistakes’ are merely seen as paths of exploration. The absence of set choreography or instruction eliminates pre-ordained outcomes of the field of action. This encourages constant (re)examination and questioning that produces unique, singular, creative, ‘on-the-fly’ solutions.

iv.







openness
porosity
improvability

permeability

giving form

plasticity

plastic

Vulnerability as a site of emergence of
post-pandemic ecologies

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It is precisely where the body's vulnerability lies (its openness, its porosity, its improvability in attuning) that one may find its ground for relevance and strength: it is the body’s permeability (its capacity to receive form, its penetrability) that makes the body capable of giving form (to inform, to have an impact on the world):

Catherine Malabou may say it is the body’s plasticity - as in plastic clay, that makes the body plastic - as in plastic surgery. 

Attunement

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In Contact Improvisation, acute awareness of one’s own embodied experience and deep listening to others are required by the improvisational nature of the dance. It is a form that both invites and trains dancers to focus on sensing movements, as opposed to reproducing a choreographed set of performative shapes.

While doing so, it teaches dancers to be present and responsive to an open field of potentialities for the emerging demands of the interaction.

vi.



facilitating experiences


curating frameworks









reexamining and
critiquing

through embodied practices

refoundation of our systems

Curating frameworks

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My practice has been shifting from producing objects (sculptures and installations) to facilitating / experiences / for others. From manufacturing objects to curating frameworks that invite participants to deepen their own understanding of what it means to relate to the other, in particular through the practice of Contact Improvisation and that may produce political change.

My ambition is to create and promote contexts in which people can experience this collaborative investigative lens for reexamining and critiquing capitalist and patriarchal frameworks through embodied practices, allowing for the possible refoundation of our systems.

vii.







strict etiquette

the body informs the ethic

laboratory

substitute

value and welcome the Upredictable 

build creatively from it

better equipped 
Navigate
sustainable forms of being

upright position of certainty

collapsed position of endless questioning 

From an upright position of certainty to a collapsed position of endless questioning

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In Contact Improvisation, a strict etiquette states that one ought to move towards what feels right, and to move away from what feels wrong. This means that the body, the senses, inform the ethics. For its practitioners, the discipline is a fascinating laboratory to explore new ways of encountering and being together, of supporting one another. It is a space where one learns to substitute a predatory logic with a collaborative one. A space for training one's body and mind to value and welcome the unpredictable and build creatively from it. A space shaping minds and bodies to interact in entirely new ways with the world around, leaving us more agile and better equipped to navigate unexplored territories and deftly respond to the unexpected, characteristic of post-pandemic times. More agile and better equipped to design sustainable forms of being together. This is how the body becomes political. How it holds the tremendous potential to disrupt the traditional orthodoxies of Western canons and become a critical force debunking stifling ideologies from an upright position of certainty to a collapsed position of endless doubt and questioning.

viii.






untrained dancers
embodied co-creation
elaborate ideas

device

experiment

thinking new kinships and ecologies

Imagining new ecologies through role plays

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Inviting untrained dancers to an embodied co-creation on the dance floor, based on principles that can be exported and leveraged outside of it, in the public sphere. Similarly to the way in which Ancient Greek theatre operated: through a direct participation in a staged framework designed to help participants elaborate and argument positions and ideas.  A device inviting dancers to learn and experiment what collaboration can bring about, as a starting point to imagining new kinships and ecologies for the world that we want to shape.