Research Academy 2022

with Florian Malzacher (Germany) and Dana Yahalomi (Israel)

15–20 October 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland

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Performative Interventions

A choreographer is standing on Istanbul’s Taksim Square, alone. A diverse choir together with a seemingly out-of-control Anglican preacher squatting a New York bank’s foyer. A square dance in the middle of Tel Aviv’s traffic. A fake company spokesman appearing on BBC promising billions to compensate the victims of a deadly chemical accident. A fax machine distributing protest leaflets through a window in Istanbul. Effigies of politicians carried through the streets of Manila. Pantomimes stopping cars in Bogotá. A big Black Lives Matter mural on a street leading to the White House in Washington D.C. Drawings sent out of Ukraine, day by day …

Artistic interventions have become an avid part of political activism all over the world. They stand for an understanding of an art that is not autonomous and does not happen outside of the social realities it is embedded in.

This year’s Research Academy invites artists and researchers that use art as a means to intervene into the surrounding reality, to interrupt and to challenge our societies and at the same time create imaginaries for a different world.  Through investigation the art of “pre-enacting” which introduces a political fact into the public realm, exercising choreographies of resistance and protest, and understanding forms of compassion and care, we will map and mark the ways in which a choreographed performative act can crack or change our understanding of the public sphere as we know it. 

This year’s Research academy puts its focus on the ways in which participants can develop and expand their set of skills and tools into new arenas of thought and practice/movement. We will explore events and actions, initiated by artists whose works of art are discourse- specific and can only happen at a particular place and at a particular point in time. Actions that are governed by a specific constellation of social trauma and political ambition. We will examine the different possibilities of moving as a group in public space, experimenting with notions such as conflict, the political body and the embodiment of politics.  Together we will learn how theatre, dance, and performance reveal their very potential to actively engage with and suggest a trajectory to a society.

  • if you are at a point of your artistic career where you want to question strategies of performative interventions…
  • if you have a specific project that you want to elaborate in more depth…
  • if you have a research idea, a research question or a research project that connects to this year's topic… 

Please apply until 22nd of May.

 

Call for applications

Faculty

The RESEARCH ACADEMY will be directed by an expert faculty consisting of

  • Dana Yahalomi (Israel)
    Dana Yahalomi (Tel Aviv) is the director of Public Movement (co-founded with Omer Krieger), a performative research body which investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. The group studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Recent performances include: MAXXI Rome, Public Art Agency Sweden, Stockholm, Museo Novecento, Firenze, CCA Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gothenburg Biennial, Sweden, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv.
    Public Movement is a performative research body which investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Since it was established, Public Movement has explored the regulations, forces, agents, and policies, formations of identity and systems of ritual which govern the dynamics of public life and public space. The group was founded in December 2006 by Omer Krieger and Dana Yahalomi, the latter assumed sole leadership in 2011.
    → Website

  • Florian Malzacher 
    is an independent performing arts curator, dramaturge and writer. He was artistic director of impulse theater festival in Cologne, Dusseldorf and Mulheim/Ruhr (2013–2017), co-curator of the multidisciplinary arts festival Steirischer Herbst in Graz/Austria (2006–2012) and curatorial advisor of the Ruhrtriennale (2018–20). Among his current projects is the discoursive program “The Art of Assembly” (since 2021) and “Training for the Future” (together with Jonas Staal, since 2018). Florian Malzacher has worked as a freelance dramaturge at theatres like Burgtheater Vienna or Mousonturm Frankfurt with artists like Rimini Protokoll, Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, Tania Bruguera and regularly with Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Florian Malzacher (co-)curated next to his festivals e.g. the 4th and 5th International Summer Academy (Mousonturm Frankfurt 2002 and 2004), the “Dictionary of War” (2006/07), the series “Performing Lectures” (Frankfurt, 2004–06), the 170 hours non-stop marathon camp “Truth is concrete” on artistic strategies in politics (Graz, 2012), the congress “Artist Organisations International” (together with Jonas Staal and Joanna Warsza, HAU Berlin, 2015), and “Sense of Possibility” on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the revolution (St. Petersburg, 2017), “Training for the Future” (together with Jonas Staal, since 2018), and “After Supervising the Machinery” on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Friedrich Engels (Engelskirchen, 2020), as well as performative conferences like “Appropriations” (Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, 2014) and “Acting and Preenacting” (HZT Berlin, 2018). 2021 he was a guest professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. He taught and/or lectured among others at universities and academies in Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Frankfurt, Vienna, Oslo, Stockholm, Taipei and Zurich and was a member of the advisory board of dasarts – master of theatre, Amsterdam (2009–2014). He was series editor of “performing urgency” published by Alexander Verlag Berlin & Live art Development Agency, London (2014–2017) and is a co-editor of the book series “Postdramatisches Theater in Portraits” (Alexander Verlag, since 2019). He is (co-)editor of books like “Not even A Game Anymore. The Theatre of Forced Entertainment” (Alexander Verlag, Berlin, 2004), “Experts of the Everyday. The Theatre of Rimini Protokoll” (Alexander Verlag, 2008) or “Curating Performing Arts” (Frakcija/Zagreb 2010). His latest publications include “Truth is concrete. A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics“ (Sternberg Press Berlin, 2014), “Not Just a Mirror. Looking for the Political Theatre of Today“ (Alexander Verlag Berlin/Live Arts Development Agency London, 2015), “The Silent University. Towards a Transversal Pedagogy” (Sternberg Press, 2016), “Empty Stages, Crowded Flats. Performativity as Curatorial Strategy” (Alexander Verlag Berlin/Live Arts Development Agency London, 2017) and “The Life and Work of Nature Theater of Oklahoma” (Alexander Verlag Berlin, 2019). His latest book include “ancompany&Co.: The & of History” (Hg., Alexander Verlag Berlin, 2021) and  “Gesellschaftsspiele. Politisches Theater heute” (Alexander Verlag Berlin, 2020). Florian Malzacher lives in Berlin.