VOLT (2008- )

2022 - In Curatorial Work

VOLT (2008- ) Volt is a long-term curatorial project I founded in Bergen in 2008.
Volt commissions and presents new contemporary art projects with a focus on artists working across several media and modes of expression. Volt does not have its own exhibition space, but finds suitable locations for each project. Past projects have taken the form of exhibitions, time-based media, performances, discursive projects and sound art.

Volt’s programme in 2022 has received funding from City of Bergen, the Arts Council Norway and Vestland County Council.
http://www.v-o-l-t.no

Why I Write - a seminar on writing, dramaturgy and work

2016 - In Curatorial Work

Why I Write - a seminar on writing, dramaturgy and work Why I Write - a seminar in Ulvik on writing, dramaturgy and work

With Marcus Doverud, Joe Kelleher, Bojana Kunst, Danae Theodoridou

15. - 18. September 2016
Olav H. Hauge Centre
Ulvik, Hardanger

Seminar at the Olav H. Hauge Centre in Ulvik with a program of conversations, lectures, working sessions, readings, discussions, shared meals and a walk in the mountains.

Sign up: marie[at]v-o-l-t.no
Limited space available.


"I read and read and live in books and live off them, without them I’d go to pieces."
Olav H. Hauge "Dagbok Band I", 1927

The title of the seminar is taken from the title of a talk by Joan Didion. She had stolen it from the title of a text by George Orwell. She writes: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

The poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994) was born in Ulvik in Hardanger, on the farm Hakestad where he lived all his life. He worked as a farmer and gardener on his own orchard. He taught himself several languages, was internationally oriented and translated among others Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan and Bertolt Brecht to Norwegian. He wrote poems, aphorisms and letters as well as an extensive nearly four thousand-page diary, "Dagbok 1924-1994", which was found and published posthumously. It contains reflections on work and life: the literature he read, on the often hard labour at the farm, the struggle with writing and finding time for it.

Bojana Kunst writes in her latest book "Artist at Work - Proximity of Art and Capitalism" (Zero Books, 2015) about the economic and social conditions of the artist's work. She writes about how the artists often do more and more for less and less and risk through it to corrode both their own practices and bodies. She writes about the significance of the artist to do less, when confronted with the demand to do more.

As a disobedient line of argument in the defence of art: ”Doing less could also be understood as a new radical gesture that opens up speculation about the value of artistic life and rather than working towards perfection of work, starts working autunomously for life itself. It is therefore an important aesthetic and ethical attitude for the artist as worker.”

BIOs:

Marcus Doverud is working as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. He graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied aesthetics and philosophy at Södertörn University College. His work move between different stages dealing with bodily, spatial and sonic utterances and their interrelations. The performance "renaissance prenaissance" (2015) revolved around sampling and choreographic staging of music. He has made several solo performances in Sweden and has a longterm collaboration with among others artist Liv Strand which has resulted in a number of performances and book projects.

Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of Roehampton, London. His books include "The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images" (Routledge 2015) and "Theatre & Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). He is co-author with Claudia and Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Giudi and Nicholas Ridout of "The Theatre of Societas Raffaello Sanzio" (Routledge 2007). Recent essays appear in "Stedelijk Studies" (2016), and "Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage", ed. Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh (2015). He has been making performances with Eirini Kartsaki, including most recently "How to Be a Fig" (2014).

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she is leading an international master program Choreography and Performance. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively at the various universities in Europe. She published several publications, among them "Impossible Body" (Ljubljana, 1999) and "Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial" (Ljubljana, 2004), "Processes of Work and Collaboration in Contemporary Performance" (Ur)., Amfiteater, Maska, Ljubljana, 2006, "Performance and Labour", Performance Research 18.1. (ed. with Gabriele Klein), "Artist at Work", Zero Books, London, 2015.
http://kunstbody.wordpress.com/

Danae Theodoridou is a Greek born performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her latest artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries. In this frame she created "One Small Step for a Man: Hello, Goodbye" (2015), "Earth in 100 Years" (2016) and "Something Dreamy" (2016) which are currently presented in different European cities. She is a co-creator of the three-year-long research project "Dramaturgy at Work" and a co-author of the subsequent publication "The Practice of Dramaturgy - Working on Actions in Performance" (Valiz, 2016). She completed a practice-led PhD on dramaturgy at Roehampton University (London), teaches in various university departments and art conservatoires of theatre and dance, and publishes her texts internationally.
http://www.danaetheodoridou.com/

The seminar is funded by Arts Council Norway and is in collaboration with the Olav H. Hauge Center.
Volt is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.
http://www.v-o-l-t.no/

Photo: Olav H. Hauge. Photo credit: Olav H. Hauge-senteret

Imagining Commons

2015 - In Curatorial Work

Imagining Commons

Institutions need to be constructed

2015 - In Curatorial Work

Institutions need to be constructed

On collectivity and collaboration in art

2013 - In Curatorial Work

On collectivity and collaboration in art

CHROMA I - IV

2013 - In Curatorial Work

Making It All Work

2011 - In Curatorial Work

Making It All Work

Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance − The Dancer as an Artist

2010 - In Curatorial Work

Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance - The Dancer as an Artist
- a seminar

Ramsay Burt, Loan Ha, Bojana Kunst, Rudi Laermans


Saturday 23 October 2010
at 10:00-16:00
Augustin Hotel, C.Sundtsgt 22-24, N-5004 Bergen


During the past few decades, substantial changes have taken place in the use and comprehension of the dancer as a creative performer in the field of contemporary dance, alongside changes in how the dancer views his/her own work and the artistic process and practice. The role of the dancer has developed more along the lines of the role of the artist in contemporary dance. What are the dancer’s artistic strategies and materials, and how does she work with these? Which parts does the dancer play in the realm of contemporary dance?

The seminar presents four new lectures by people that are, in different ways, involved in the field of contemporary dance: Ramsay Burt who is a professor of dance history, cultural sociologist Rudi Laermans, the dancer Loan Ha and the philosopher and dramaturg Bojana Kunst. After the lectures, a panel discussion will be held. The seminar is moderated by Josefine Wikström.

The field of contemporary dance maps out and tests performative concepts and dramaturgy. There is a great range of practices and methods. Many choreographers have a background as dancers themselves, and often work in both roles. Today, many contemporary dancers choose to start choreographing performances themselves, and this is a tendency we see at work in Norway as well. The artistic methods of many choreographers consists of processes in which the dancers contribute directly to the choreographies and the performance material. They provide the dancers with what may be described as artistic licence, an opportunity to help shape the performance. In other projects, however, the dancer works within the choreographer’s materials and concept.

Only rarely is the dancer shed light on. Or if she is focused on, the body is often taken as a point of departure. In Routledge’s Dance Studies Reader from 1998, Alexandra Carter writes in the introduction to «Performing Dance», a chapter which discusses the role of the dancer: «Whereas in other parts of this Reader the challenge was to find representative work from the wide section available, for this Part, the difficulty was in finding writing by dancers at all, especially on their experience of performance». It is still, as a rule, usually choreographers who comment on the performative part of the field of contemporary dance. Few dancers write. Few dancers are interviewed about their art. Few dancers are included in fora of discussion. And many dancers resist writing about, verbally expressing, or «putting into words» their artistic strategies and methods, and likewise their meanings and points of view on contemporary dance and the field within which it is situated. Dancers’ experiences and viewpoints have been largely ignored within discourse on and discussions within contemporary dance.

How does the dancer see himself in relation to being an artist? Anthoni Dominguez writes, in ballet tanz’ TEAM year book 2008, titled «DANCE IN ART»: «The use of the body as living raw material during a performance enables the artist to reduce the distance between himself and his art work. Even before any activity takes place, the body manifests itself in both material and a temporal dimension by its simple presence.» In the same publication, choreographer Ben J. Riepe states: «I appreciate dance (...) but only as a working method, as a tool, as something with which to create an artwork».

Ramsay Burt's lecture is titled Contemporary dance and the politics of historical consciousness. A number of European dance artists in the past fifteen have cited past dance works either through reconstructions, re-stagings and re-enactments, or through making new works that explicitly respond to works from the past. Given that history and memory are important to the construction of identities, reconstructions are an important means of understanding the relationship between past and present. An articulation of historical consciousness can be used to assert the right to define one's own chosen history rather than accept an official canon. Some European dance artists have articulated concerns about the way a globalised market for contemporary dance that has developed since the 1970s often influences and determines the kinds of works that are taken up and shown at key dance festivals and performance venues. One aspect of the workings of this market is a flattening of history. This paper argues that radical experimental work which articulates historical consciousness, challenges its beholders to pay attention in a focused, intense, active, engaged way that is very different from the diffuse inattention that is all that is required when beholding the same old tired choreographic devices within blandly uniform dance works. Through a discussion of a few recent examples, this paper will argue that the development of a historical consciousness among experimental dance artists can be seen as an act of resistance to the anaesthetising effects of the globalised dance market.

Rudi Laermans' lecture is titled Creating Together: Artistic Collaborations in Contemporary Dance. Based on extensive in-depth interviews with dancers from the Brussels dance community, the lecture will identify some of the principal motivations behind and stakes involved in collaborative practices in contemporary dance – such as unrecognized co-authorship, the production of a social and artistic 'common', and the dynamics of trust between a choreographer and the dancers during a rehearsal process.

Bojana Kunst's lecture Dancing Labour will connect the question about the strategies of the dancers to the ways in which dancers work today and how their work has changed with the expanded notion of choreography, research and new discursive contexts. She will relate this to political issues like postfordism, the continual nomadism of dancers and the multiplicity of time. What has changed in the work of the dancer today, with new ways of production, and how does this influence the body?

Loan Ha’s lecture is titled Tracing My Questions: About Becoming a Dancer. She will reflect on becoming a dancer and how the questions she has asked herself have continued to inspire, affect, and change her work. In 2005, while still a student at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, she interviewed teachers, dancers and choreographers in her educational environment about what it meant to them to be a practitioner.

Biographies:

Ramsay Burt is professor of dance history at De Montfort University, U.K and founding editor, with Prof. Susan Foster, of Discourses in Dance. He is the author of The Male Dancer: Bodies Spectacle, Sexualities (1995, 2007); Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, Race and Nation in Early Modern Dance (1998); Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces (2006); and, with Valerie Bringinshaw, Writing Dancing Together (2009).

Loan Ha has studied at the School of Contemporary Dance in Oslo (2000-2002) and the P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels (2002-2006). In addition to working on her own and other co-choreographer’s projects while at P.A.R.T.S., she danced in several repertoire performances by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and toured with productions by William Forsythe (Die Befragung des Robert Scott) and Trisha Brown (Set and Reset and ”Lateral Pass - Reworked”). Since the summer of 2006, Loan Ha has worked as a freelance dancer, her projects including the Norwegian multi-medial performance ”Terje”, which was staged in Yokohama, Japan – and The Kansas City Shuffle for Canadian Sandy Williams, which was staged in Ghent, Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. Since 2006, she has worked with impure company/Hooman Sharifi. She is also involved in projects with Kristina Gjems and Human Works (Anne-Linn Akselsen og Adrian Minkowicz).

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She works as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg (Performance Studies) and teaches at the Slovenian University of Primorska. She also works as a dramaturg and artistic collaborator. She is a member of board of editors in the journals Maska, Amfiteater, and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has taught and lectured extensively in Europe. She has published three books, including Impossible Body (Ljubljana 1999), Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Ljubljana, 2004).

Rudi Laermans is senior professor in sociological theory at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and also a permanent guest teacher in the theoretical programme at P.A.R.T.S. He has published extensively on dance policy, general trends within contemporary dance and the work of particular choreographers such as Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker, Vincent Dunoyer, Jan Fabre, deepblue and Meg Stuart. He has recently directed research projects on globalization, modes of believing within Western Islam, cultural heritage, the cultural omnivore and alternative pop music. He has published widely on social systems theory, French poststructuralism and cultural theory, and is currently writing a book on contemporary dance which will appear in Spring 2011.

Josefine Wikström is an independent curator and writer. She has written for various dance and arts magazines, and guest-edited Paletten with choreographer Malin Elgán in 2008. She works with the independent project Word on questions about the production and distribution of art, and is involved in the performing arts collective IINPEX, in which she has initiated projects such as Hula-Hula To Tensta Konsthall. She has collaborated with artists International Festival in among other projects The Theatre. In collaboration with Malin Elgán, she created a choreographic score for the exhibition Undersöka Form at the National Museum in Sweden in 2008, and curated the lecture series Publishing and other activities in 2009. She was invited as “satellite-curator” to Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm in spring 2010. Wikström has a BA in Comparative Literature, and has studied dance at London Contemporary Dance School. She recently completed an MA in philosophy at Middlesex University in London.


The seminar is part of the international dance festival Oktoberdans. The seminar is presented in collaboration with BIT Teatergarasjen and is funded by Arts Council Norway.


On Correspondence

2009 - In Curatorial Work

On Correspondence
- three lectures

Tony Chakar, Eyal Weizman, Pieter T'Jonck



The Impact of the Space on the Performance
Pieter T'Jonck

24 October 2009
Rom 8
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

Pieter T'Jonck is an architect, but equally active as a dance and theatre critic for various media since 1983: Veto (1983-85), De Standaard (1985-2000), De Tijd (2001-06), De Morgen (since 2006) and Klara (since 2006). Besides, he published regularly about performing arts, architecture and urbanism in journals such as Etcetera, DWB, Ballettanz and A+, and contributed to books. From 1999 - 2005 he was teaching at the University of Ghent and he has been teaching stage design and scenography at the Academy of Antwerp.

Several thematic strands meet in T’Jonck’s oeuvre. Dance and theatre concern representation, they allow us to gain insight in the world and ourselves. In the 18th century theatre (both as space and concept) was a social laboratory in which new models of living together were being explored. Though this notion of theatre is no longer valid today, T'Jonck has a particular interest in the transformation of these concepts and practices in today’s performing arts. Fuelled by a historical awareness, newspaper reviewing is T’Jonck’s medium to probe the manifold ways in which dance and theatre create a present-day portrait of the world. Criticism as a testimony that links fascination for what is still all too close with the need to take distance and develop a language that facilitates analysis. (from Sarma.be)


The Eighth Day
God Created the World in Seven Days. This Is the Eighth Day

Tony Chakar

1 December 2009
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

The Eighth Day is an ongoing investigation, currently taking the form of a lecture-performance series, that began in the aftermath of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in July 2006, however not directly related to these attacks. During and after the Israeli military operation, images from Lebanon's recent past (the civil wars of 1975-1990) inundated public realms (space and psyche) as well as discourse – becoming, at times, very difficult to endure –, proving that the Lebanese wars (regarded as Catastrophic) are still cast in the unspoken.

The Eighth Day weaves a collection of elements – texts, images, songs, videos, publicity spots, etc. - that are metaphorical manifestations of the space and time of the Catastrophe, and attempts to identify the necessary strategies for redeeming the past-as-image.

Tony Chakar is an architect and writer. His works include: A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (1999); All That is Solid Melts Into Air: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2000); Four Cotton Underwear for Tony: Ashkal Alwan, TownHouse Gallery, Cairo, also shown in many European cities as part of Contemporary Arab Representations, a project curated by Catherine David (2001-02) and in the exhibition Closer at the Beirut Art Centre (2009) ; Rouwaysset, a Modern Vernacular (with Naji Assi): Contemporary Arab Representations, the Sharjah Biennial and Sao Paolo, S.A.(2001-03); Beirut, the Impossible Portrait: The Venice Biennial (2003); The Eyeless Map: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2003); My Neck is Thinner than a Hair (2004), a lecture/performance with Walid Raad and Bilal Khbeiz, shown in different locations around the world; A Window to the World (2005): Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; Various Small Fires (2007): The Royal College of Art, London; Memorial to the Iraq War (2007): ICA, London; Yesterday's Man (2007): a play-performance with Rabih Mroué and Tiago Rodrigues showing in several European cities; The Eighth Day (2008): an ongoing project in the form of a lecture/performance. He also contributes to European art magazines, and teaches History of Art and History of Architecture at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux arts (ALBA).



spatial forensics
Eyal Weizman

1 December 2009
Bergen Academy of Art and Design

Eyal Weizman is an architect based in London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium, Birkbeck College. He is the director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College (roundtable.kein.org). Since 2007 he is a member of the architectural collective decolonizing architecture in Beit Sahour/Palestine (decolonizing.ps). Since 2008 he is a member of B'Tselem board of directors (btselem.org). Weizman has taught, lectured, curated and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include The Lesser Evil (Nottetempo, 2009), Hollow Land (Verso Books, 2007), A Civilian Occupation (Verso Books, 2003), the series Territories 1, 2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books. Weizman is a regular contributors to many journals and magazines he is a member of editorial board several journals and magazines. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007


The seminar is arranged by BIT Teatergarasjen and Danse og Teatersentrum.
Pieter T'Jonck's lecture is part of the theatre festival Meteor 2009.
The seminar is funded by Fritt Ord.

Listen for the body of the other

2008 - In Curatorial Work

”Listen for the body of the other”
- On choreography, relations and diversity


The seminar presents lectures by Goran Sergej Pristaš, Ivana Ivković and Tomislav Medak, Solveig Gade, Hannah Hurtzig and Thomas Frank. They have in common a theoretical approach to the fields they are working within; artistic, dramaturgic work, curating and writing about contemporary art, dance, theatre and performance. The title of the seminar is from an interview in the magazine Frakcija no. 20/21 with the choreographer and dancer Nikolina Pristaš from BADco. The poetic sentence contains different aspects and key words for the seminar; relation, the body, to listen and the other.


Zagreb's independent cultural scene - innovative self-organization models
Goran Sergej Pristaš, Ivana Ivković and Tomislav Medak

Friday 24th of October 2008 at 15.30
Røkeriet, USF Verftet

Zagreb's non-institutional cultural scene includes an interesting underlying communicational web of several self-organized platforms of exchange. In the lecture Pristaš, Ivković and Medak will briefly describe 5 key initiatives: an independent policy discussion platform - Policy_Forum that grew from the need to be more vocal in advocating changes in cultural policy issues in Croatia bringing together operators from the non-institutional cultural scene because of official cultural policies on municipal and state levels being either non-existent or sorely lagging behind the actual cultural production; Clubture (Klubtura) – a tactical network of independent cultural organizations from numerous Croatian cities based on programme exchange, decentralization of cultural production and intensification of cultural activity in smaller towns and cities; EkS-scena (Experimental Free Scene), a self-organized working platform of young dancers and choreographers, coordinating programmes that have almost single-handedly revitalized Croatia's contemporary dance scene education and production in the past six years; Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000 (ZCK3000), a collaborative platform by eight of Zagreb's more prominent and active non-institutional cultural organizations from different fields (performing arts, social and media theory, architecture and urban planning), visual arts); and Reclaim the City, an urban and public domain oriented, activism driven initiative stemming from the cultural scene, but with a real impact in the political life of the city of Zagreb.

Goran Sergej Pristaš is a dramaturge, a professor at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb, a program co-ordinator in Centre for Drama Art in Zagreb. Founder and until recently editor-in-chief of the performing arts magazine Frakcija and one of initiators of the project Zagreb – Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000.

Ivana Ivković studies at the Department of Dramaturgy at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb. She is a member of the editorial board of Frakcija Journal for Performing Arts and also collaborates wit the 3rd Program of Croatian Radio, several publications, the Center for Drama Art and has worked as the general coordinator of Zagreb-Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000. She collaborates as dramaturge with two Zagreb based independent companies oour and BADco. She is co-editor of the textual and pictorial reader “DemoKino- Virtual Biopolitical Agora” with Davide Grassi (Aksioma and Maska, 2006)

Tomislav Medak studied Philosophy, German and Literature at the Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb. The focus of his work is social, biopolitical and media theory, in particular socio-theoretical implications of new technologies and new media. He is currently co-ordinating a theory and research program and the publishing activities at the Multimedia Institute in Zagreb. Recently he directed his research work at social and cultural policies - investigating wider implications of and alternatives to existing IPR frameworks, protection of the public domain and regimes of management and representation of creative production. Tomislav Medak is active as performer and choreographer with the Zagreb based dance company BADco.




Kunst, sted og offentlighet
Solveig Gade

Friday 31st of October 2008 at 13.00
Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Marken 37, 3rd floor

The lecture will start with a mapping and critical discussion of several major theoretical positions in the relations between art, public space and the site-specific. With this as a background and with a special focus on inclusion and exclusion, Solveig Gade will look closer on Christoph Schlingensief and Center for Urbanitet and Dialog’s attempt in several relational orientated and site-specific projects to create temporary spaces for critic publicity. Her lecture will bring some theoretical reflections to one of the major projects at this years Oktoberdans, Dans til folket (Dance to the people) which take place at several locations in the City of Bergen.

Solveig Gade is cand. mag. in Nordic language and science of literature. In spring this year she finished her PhD. thesis about relational and intervening strategies in contemporary art. She has written articles about contemporary art and performing art in the anthology Performative Realism and for the magazines Kritik, Glänta, Peripeti and 3t. Gade was co-editor of the Danish magazine Teater 1 from 2000-2004 and since 2005 co-editor of the magazine Peripeti. She is working at the University of Copenhagen and as a dramaturge at the Royal Danish Theatre.


On Experts, Non-Knowledge and the Buzzing of the Archive
Hannah Hurtzig
Saturday 1st of November at 13.00
Hordaland Kunstsenter

Hannah Hurtzig is directing since 1999 the Mobile Academy, a temporary art institution frequently changing its location, combining interdisciplinary courses with fieldwork, theory and activism (Bochum 1999, Berlin 2002 and 2004 and Warsaw 2006). As part of Tulip House, a company dealing with the construction of public spaces experimenting with new narrative formats for the production and mediation of knowledge, she has been presenting different installation projects: “KIOSK for useful knowledge” (Kunstverein Köln, KW Berlin, MQ Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe, Volksbühne am Rosa - Luxemburg - Platz Berlin), BLACKMARKET FOR USEFUL
KNOWLEDGE AND NON-KNOWLEDGE” (Kunstverein Hamburg 2005, Technical University Warsaw 2005, Hebbel am Ufer 2006, sterischer herbst Graz 2007, Istanbul Biennal 2007, Vienna Festwochen 2008), ”Future Perfect Advice Bureau” (Hebbel am Ufer Berlin 2008) og ”Night Lesson No.1” (Manifesta7 2008).
http://www.kiosk-berlin.de
http://www.mobileacademy-berlin.com


Changing Places
Thomas Frank

Saturday 1st of November 2008 at 13.00
Hordaland kunstsenter

For the last eight years, Thomas Frank has worked as curator, dramaturge and producer for international performing arts projects with different institutions in Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna. In every place, he had to cope with introducing unknown artists with experimental projects and unfamiliar content. The presentation by Thomas Frank will reflect on the continuities in the development of artistic principles in contemporary theatre and the reflection of the production circumstances in the different places. About changing from one place to another with certain artistic proposals in the baggage and how the places changed the ways of collaborations with artists.

Thomas Frank has background from theatre, communication and media studies at Universität Leipzig and University of Glasgow. From 2000 to 2004 he was assistant artistic director, dramaturge and curator at Künstlerhaus MOUSONTRUM in Frankfurt a.M. where he was curator of international arts programs such as ‘plateaux – international platform for young theatre directors’ and the ‘international summer academy’. In 2004 he gave lectures for independent theatre / off theatre at the University of Music & Theatre Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig. From 2005 to 2007 he worked as dramaturge and head of the artistic program at Sophiensaele in Berlin. He has been an executive producer of national and international performing arts productions. In 2006 he was artistic advisor of the ‘breathing space’ program at Arnolfini Bristol, Green Room Manchester and Tramway Glasgow (UK). He has been a guest dramaturge at Sydney Theatre Company and the National Playwrights Conference Perth 2006 (Australia). In 2007 the founder of ‘brut Wien’, an interdisciplinary production centre for performing arts in Vienna where he works as artistic director and business management (brut-wien.at).

Publications: We Love You – on audiences, Thomas Frank & Mark Waugh (Ed.), Revolver, Frankfurt a.M. 2005. Cross the border, close the gap. Über die internationale Produktion interdisziplinärer Kunst, In ‘Spielräume produzieren’, Theater der Zeit Verlag, Berlin 2006.

Prices: 30, - for each lecture. The seminar is part of Oktoberdans.
The seminar is in collaboration with BIT Teatergarasjen and is supported by Arts Council Norway and Fritt ord.

Støyfest

2007 - In Curatorial Work

Støyfest Ryfylke
John Hegre + Lars Myrvoll
DJ Spykidelic (Knives ov Resistance)
with the club concept Weirding Module

Launch of 3t issue 25: NOISE
Admission: 60, - (including a copy of the journal)

http://www.myspace.com/ryfylke
http://www.myspace.com/knivesovresistance
http://www.myspace.com/spykidd

The event is organized by 3t / Marie Nerland in collaboration with Landmark / Bergen Kunsthall
With funding from City of Bergen

http://www.trete.no

On Dramaturgy and Discourse

2006 - In Curatorial Work

On Dramaturgy and Discourse
- a seminar

Bojana Cvejić, Jeroen Peeters, Helmut Ploebst, Mårten Spångberg

Friday 20 October 2006 at 11.00 - 17.00
Saturday 21 October at 11.00 - 12.30
Sardinen
USF Verftet

The seminar presents four of the most interesting theorists in the contemporary dance field. They will give lectures based on topics they are concerned about and are working with now. With the seminar the aim is to present four thinkers that together give a very good introduction to what is happening within contemporary dance theory and research about dance. They represent different focus within the theoretical fields of contemporary dance. They combine all artistic and/or dramaturgical work with writing about dance - activities which they see as closely interrelated.

Bojana Cvejić is a performer and performance theorist. She works among others with the director Jan Ritsema in Brussels. She has written several articles among others published in the Slovenian journal Maska and the Croatian Journal Frankcija. Her works and texts are highly political and challenge ideas of contemporary dance and performance. Cvejić is teaching performance theory at PARTS in Brussels.

Jeroen Peeters has studied history and philosophy and works in Brussels as a critic, dramaturge and curator. He is working on a book about and with the choreographer Meg Stuart on how the body and perception in dance and performance becomes a discursive area, a place for critical approach and analysis of the world we live in. Peeters is a writer and critic with dance and performance as his field of study and he is the founder and editor of the website sarma.be Peeters has collaborated with, among others Frankfurter Küche, Sabina Holzer, Anne Juren, Thomas Lehmen, Vera Mantero, Sarah Michelson, Martin Nachbar, Lisa Nelson, Carlos Pez and Superamas. He is currently artistic collaborator for Meg Stuart / Damaged Goods.

Helmut Ploebst has a background from media studies and art history at the University of Vienna and a Ph.d from 1989 on the ideologies of art in Vienna between 1918 and 1938. As a writer, he has published a large number of articles and reviews on dance and performance. As a guest curator he has worked for dietheater vienna and the festival ImpulsTanz. In 2001 he published the book "No wind no word. New choreography in the Society of the Spectacle " with portraits of nine choreographers. Ploebst also works as a critic and writer for Der Standard (Vienna), as well as ballettanz (Berlin), tanz-journal (Munich) and several other print media. He is initiator and one of the founders of the site CORPUS, a website devoted to contemporary dance. corpusweb.net

Mårten Spångberg is an artist who lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm. His own artistic practice focuses on distribution, accountability and ownership, particularly in relation to decentralized modes of experience. Together with the architect Tor Lindstrand he runs International Festival that is working with an expanded and immaterial form of performance. Spångberg has worked as dramaturg for a number of choreographers and as a curator in addition to his own artistic projects. His solo performance "Heja Sverige" is presented at this year's Oktoberdans.


The seminar is part of BIT Teatergarasjen's festival Oktoberdans 2006.
It is funded by Arts Council Norway and Fritt ord.