{Performative Practice}
Online workshop with Ania Nowak
Infect yourself! Intimacy and practices of resistance in the time of plague
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Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art invites to online workshop with Ania Nowak that accompanies Bik Van der Pol exhibition Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box.
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During three experimental online sessions (using the Zoom app) we will explore the sense of isolation, typical of life during a pandemic. We will look at the sense of powerlessness in the face of global violence of the socio-economic virus and the longing to be together – the longing for off-screen intimacy of touch. The workshop will be a combination of a discussion club, support group, and a massage parlour with a performative potential.
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- Pandemic, plague, crisis. According to commentators, the current pandemic is a time of mourning. Many of us know from our own experience that it is also a time of forced time-out and fear for the future. One coping mechanism in the face of the unknown is an increased need for self-improvement and productivity. Madonna recently said that coronavirus is a “great equalizer.” However, there is hardly anything that would reveal the deep divisions and socio-economic inequalities as strongly as the current pandemic. This is why Britney Spears' call for a balanced redistribution of wealth resonates particularly strongly today. For those of us who can afford it, a pandemic is a time of slowing down, choreography of distance, and isolation at home. It is also the time of the “shock doctrine”, that is, the use of the social crisis by governments to introduce changes in the law that restrict civil liberties.
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The workshop will focus on the following topics:
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→ plague, AIDS, coronavirus, fear of illness, loneliness and death vs. rest and self-care;
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→ live arts – the scourge of video-recordings and online theatre – how not to die of the longing to breathe the same air as others?
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→ bodies in public space vs. protest in isolation – social distancing and social control tools; bans that come from the top vs. bottom-up empathy;
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→ choreomania, or the dancing plague; bodily ecstasy during suffering; longing to be together and collective emancipation.
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We invite people with existing artistic or activist practice (or those willing to develop such a practice) who are interested to learn in the experiences of others. English can be useful.
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Ania Nowak
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works in the field of widely understood choreography. She creates solo and collective works examining the tensions of language, ambiguities, and body transformations. She conducts research on love as a strategy for generating knowledge, in which she explores affective economics, asks about the practices of care in the context of aging and illness, and attempts to redefine sensuality. Her works were presented, among others at HAU, Sophiensaele and Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Nowy Teatr and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw and Arts Santa Mónica in Barcelona. She works between Berlin and Warsaw. http://technologiesoflove.tumblr.com
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Cover photo
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Author unknow, Triumph of Death, flamand school, circa 1562
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