ASSEMBLIES § Il/legal Fictions
Danae Theodoridou is a performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her artistic research focuses on social imaginaries, the practice of democracy and the way that art contributes to the emergence of socio-political alternatives. She teaches in Fontys Academy of the Arts (NL), curates practice-led research projects, and presents and publishes her work internationally. She is the co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and the author of Publicing: Practising Democracy Through Performance (Nissos, 2022).
Danae’s residency is part of the ongoing research Il/legal Fictions. It is supported by the Flemish Ministry of Culture. Thanos Papadogiannis will act as a critical responder to the residency and provide written documentation for it.
‘Performing the Public Body’ Creation of public space and time through performance by Danae Theodoridou
Saturday, 17 February, 15.00 - 18.00
Participation in the workshop is FREE, but the number of participants is limited. Please reserve your place by 14 February here
The workshop will focus on the embodiment of the ‘public body’ and the relation between performance, audience participation and political emancipation. Drawing on the maker’s five-year long artistic research on the Practice of Democracy and her recent book publication Publicing – Practising Democracy Through Performance (Nissos, 2022), participants will experiment with the way performance can operate as a frame for constructing public space and time anew providing alternatives to capitalism.
Performance theorist Rebecca Schneider, defines politics as a primarily performative practice, closely related to the forms the body takes in front of others in public space. As she notes, politics is the act of “appearing to others as others appear [to me]”. Such understanding denotes the fundamental relationship between performance and politics, given that the performing arts are mostly concerned with the public forms and appearances of the body in space and time.
In the workshop, participants will explore the forms and operations of the ‘public body’, namely the everyday citizen’s body, the body that takes (a more or less active) part in contemporary democracies. Through sharing and experimenting with concrete examples, writing, moving and thinking tasks and processes involved in the maker’s projects, participants will elaborate on their positioning on public space; examine the conditions under which art can create communities able to question established social configurations and power relations; practice bodily operations related to democratic practices.
