Performing Questions: Relationships in Times of Crisis
The interview is an offer of conversation, a game of questions and answers, a dialogue that can transform into a polyphonic choir of singularly plural voices. As a form of personal, localised articulation, interviews always produce situated knowledge, whether in a real or a fictional space.
From our perspective as choreographers, it is thus about embodied knowledge. The moment of self-articulation is an act of self-invention in which identities and narrations take shape, at the intersection of personal statement and speculative fabulation. In this workshop, we would like to propose the interview as a performative and speculative question machine to deal with relationships in times of crisis.
On a content level, we will develop divergent views and definitions of the terms crisis (f.e. COVID-19, political, ecological, personal crises, etc.), and relationship (f.e. with other people and non-humans). The following questions will accompany and structure our performative experiments: How does COVID-19 influence the forms in which we relate to one another? How can we talk about it? What can be imagined speculatively in conversation?
In this workshop, we will jointly develop question catalogues and interview-specific performance strategies that will allow us to experiment with different forms of interviews and their deconstruction. Experimenting with these rule systems should lead to the collective design of a performance set-up. We want to create situations in which the participants can open up to a counterpart and articulate their experiences and questions without it ever being clear when personal communication or confession and when speculative (self-)invention comes to the fore.
Martina Ruhsam is a writer, lecturer, and artist. Since 2016 she is a teaching and research assistant in the MA programme Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen (Germany). From 2006 until 2017, Martina Ruhsam realised numerous performances, interventions, transmedia projects, and artistic collaborations (primarily with Vlado G. Repnik) which were presented in various venues in Europe. In 2011, her monography Kollaborative Praxis: Choreographie was published by Turia+Kant. Martina Ruhsam gave lectures about choreography and related philosophical and sociopolitical issues internationally. Recently she completed a Ph.D. about non-human bodies in contemporary choreographies.
Rose Beermann studied Cultural Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and completed a dance education afterwards. In 2013, she successfully finished the MA in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen. Since then she has been living in Berlin and working as a freelance choreographer, director, and dramaturge. She has realized the following projects with various collaborators: Show Me How (2014), Strip naked, talk naked (2014), There is a better version of you out there (2015), My Body is the Field for Tomorrow's Battles (2016) and Soft Things (2019), which were shown at various German-speaking venues and international festivals. As a dramaturge, she continuously collaborates with Frauke Havemann, Matthias Schönijahn, and Juli Reinartz. Scientific thinking and writing as a field of inspiration and reflection have remained important for her artistic processes. This is why Rose Beermann complements it with the teaching and research assistance of Prof. Dr. Bojana Kunst at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies, which she started in October 2017.
Run period:
04.08.2021 – 07.08.2021
Course time:
10.00 am – 5.00 pm
Application Deadline:
27.06.2021
Course fee:
EUR 490
Min. number of participants:
12
Max. number of participants:
15
For further information please contact:
summer-courses[at]udk-berlin.de
