Forskning – Performance Design

Toxic Climates – a video paper in the making

On a hot summer day Michael Haldrup, Kristine Samson form Performance Design and Madeleine Kate McGowan from the media activist platform, Other Story went to Sjælsmark deportation camp and to Nørrebro Station to record a video paper on Toxic Climates.

In both form and content we wished to address the toxic climates we are living in. And change this climate by activating a new environmental awareness starting with ourselves by cultivating an art of noticing.

The video paper will be published in the journal Performance Philosophy in 2020. Until then, the abstract and some pics from the recordings.

Abstract: Toxic Climates

Planet Earth is toxic. Its atmosphere unbreathable. Its environments deadly intoxicated by the dehumanizing forces of xenophobia, environmental degradation and violence. As its peoples are increasingly on the move to make a worthy living exclusion, borders and conflict is a norm rather than an exception. And – as toxic substances dissipate and spreads through media and circulating representations they clouds the sight to the human beings in front of us. In the face of the intoxicating and dehumanizing forces at play, we need remedies for sobering up rather than intoxication. Remedies for living with contamination and hybridity rather than altering these states. Partly inspired by Levinas and his ethics of the “nakedness of a face, the absolute defenseless face, without covering, clothing or mask” (1998: 21) and partly by Anna Tsings’ more recent call for “contamination” as a catalyst from which future ”world-making projects, mutual projects and new directions – may emerge.” (2015: 27) we propose a radical humanizing intervention in – and beyond – institutions. A contamination of academic institutions and media with testimony from people living the change. A contamination of thought with action. A contamination of activism with thinking. In a cooperation between academic performance researchers and media activist collective Other Story we explore media activism as ways of expressing and enacting citizenships. Conceiving of thinking as a practice that “interrupts all ordering activities and is interrupted by them” (Ahrendt 1971: 197), we think through and with embodied others and their material lives rather than about them. Hence, the presentation will address interventions and evidence of staging a “radical softness” in the meeting with people who live through current planetary change and explore potentials for emerging shared sensibilities affecting our own embodied citizenships in the encounter with others in these toxic climates. The video paper consist of the following sections:

Acts of Citizenship
The triple crisis
Toxic Climates
The Capacity of a body

Acts of Citizenship

Seminar om medborgerskab, medieaktivisme og mobilitet afholdt på IKH, Institut for Kommunikation og Humanistisk videnskab.

Af Michael Haldrup og Kristine Samson

I dag er mobile mennesker mere normen end undtagelsen, har den canadiske politolog Engin Isin fornyligt udtalt (2018: 115). Med udgangspunkt i denne iagttagelse stillede VISPER-gruppen på Performance Design i september skarpt på de udfordringer som dette skaber for at tænke og påberåbe sig medborgerskab og rettigheder i en verden domineret af territorielt baserede statsinstitutioners forsøg på at håndtere de forandringer skabt af den ”tredelte krise” (Sheller 2018) som vekselvirkningerne mellem de globale klima-, urbaniserings- og migrations-kriser forårsager.

Seminaret var tilrettelagt som en blanding af analyser konflikter om rettigheder knyttet hertil samt eksempler på dokumentaristers og aktivisters arbejde med at synliggøre disse.

Kristine Samson fra Performance Design tog i sin introduktion udgangspunkt i Isin’s forståelse af medborgerskab som konkrete handlinger (Isin og Nielsen 2008) og betonede, at det påtrængende spørgsmål i dag ikke så meget er knyttet til teoretiske eller begrebslige sondringer, men spørgsmålet om, hvordan man skaber et grundlag for handlinger; handlinger der åbner for mangfoldige formuleringer af medborgerskab og rettigheder for de berørte grupper. På denne baggrund formulerede hun ideen om et tredelt agency i forståelsen af medborgerskab: handlinger foretaget af de berørte befolkningsgrupper, handlinger foretaget af forskere, aktivister og dokumentarister som arbejder med at synliggøre disse, og handlinger som berører og engagerer et publikum og andre medborgere.

Herefter præsenterede Jilly Traganou, New School, New York en analyse af protestlejren ved Standing Rock, US i forbindelse med den amerikanske regering s beslutning om at føre en olierørledning gennem det drikkevands-reservoir som områdets Sioux-indianere er afhængige af som et kollektivt og materielt design; et ”leksikon af ting og praksisser” som foregreb radikalt alternativer former for ikke-statscentrerede former for medborgerskab. Juan Corvalán, Universidad de las Americas, Santiago de Chile præsenterede efter en global analyse af den rolle som territorielle grænsers geografiske arkitektur spiller for at regulerer mobilitet og medborgerskab symbolsk, materielt og praktisk.

Jilly Traganou on acts of citizenship relating to the Standing Rock manifestations against the Dakota Pipeline.

Eftermiddagen fortsatte herefter med den medieaktivistiske del af programmet. ArtiziaLab, Santiago de Chile (José Abasolo) viste dokumentarfilmen ”Santiago Babylon” og fortalte om samarbejdet med sydamerikanske sexarbejdere om at synliggøre deres hverdagspraksis og medborgerskab i Santiagos gader. Danske JamBoy (Lasse Mouritzen og Peter Kærgaard Andersen) viste resultatet af deres samarbejde med en Eritreansk flygtningegruppe bosat midlertidigt i et Nordsjællandsk plejehjem om en dokumentation af fælleskabets hverdag, sorger og glæder, og endelig viste Other Story (Madeleïne Kate McGowan og Marie Bjørn) kortfilmen Um Firas: The Mother of the Revolution som eksempel på deres arbejde med en radikal humanistisk tilgang til produktion og cirkulation af kortfilm om migranter og flygtninge for at styrke synlighed, deltagelse og medborgerskab.

Dagsordnen for den afsluttende paneldebat mellem repræsentanter for de tre medieaktivistiske kollektiver og modereret af Michael Haldrup blev især sat af Elias Toumeh fra Other Story som via Skype fra Tyskland på baggrund af sin dobbeltrolle som syrisk flygtning (og deltager i én af Other Story’s tidligere produktioner) og medieaktivist stillede spørgsmålet: har samarbejde mellem forskere, aktivister og berørte befolkningsgruppe en rækkevidde udover disse til et bredere publikum af borgere og beslutningstagere, og hvordan kan dette perspektiv styrkes?

Um Firas, the Mother of Revolution speaks, on war and love in the film by Other Story

Dette spørgsmål gav anledning til diskussion også efter seminarets formelle afslutning i Roskilde og videre forløb forskellige lokationer i København. Sikkert er det at seminaret har bidraget til en øget opbygning af netværk og opmærksomhed omkring de forskelligartede og dog fælles udfordringer for samarbejdet mellem aktivister, forskere og berørte befolkningsgrupper på tværs af kontinenter og landegrænser om synliggørelse og handlingsberedeskab knyttet til mangfoldige og mobile former for medborgerskab.

José from Ariztia Lab and Peter from Jamboy in conversation

Masterstudents, Nils and Mia from Performance Design and Maria from Other Story after the seminar.

Referencer

Isin, E. 2018. ‘Mobile Peoples: Transversal Figurations’, in: Social Inclusion 6 (1) 115-23.

Isin, E. F. & Nielsen, G. M. 2008. Acts of Citizenship, London: Zed Books.

Sheller, M. 2018; Mobility Justice. The Politics of Movement in an age of Extremes; London: Verso.

Se mere om Other Story

Se mere om Jamboy

Se mere om Ariztía Lab

Se mere om Jilly Traganou, Parson’s School of Design, New School.

Se mere om Juan Pablo Corvalan Hochberger, Universidad de las Américas, Chile

Se video dokumentation af seminaret på RUC’s videoportal

Performance Design’s new Professor

Who speculates on time, design and performance by aligning science fiction, design theory and a giant avantgarde clock work? The newly appointed professor of Performance Design, Michael Haldrup, of course.

In his inaugural lecture on Futurability. Speculations on Time, Design and Performance we followed Michael Haldrup through a theoretical journey collecting perspectives and speculations on design theory, cultural geography, critical thinking and philosophy along the way.

Michael Haldrup argued that both design thinking and social and cultural studies experience an increased interest in speculating about futures. This interest is in some ways paradoxical, as it emerges in a moment in which our ability to shape planetary futures seems to be slipping away from us at an unprecedented pace; a moment that is characterized by the lack of ‘futur-ability’ rather than its opposite. On this backdrop, Haldrup wishes to explore speculative approaches to performance (and) design. He proposes that we may rethink speculation, experimentation and intervention as parts of an experimental approach to exploring futures. An approach working through the creation of situated pockets of ‘futurability’ in order to experiment and reshape relations with future temporalities and, in so doing, also carving out a space for critically rethinking prevalent assumptions of relations between performance and design.

During the lecture we came to experience various forms of speculations. From the major clockwork to the academic intermezzo in which Haldrup performed the a speculative pause in his academic tour de force.

At Performance Design we look forward to further investigations and speculations with you Michael. Congratulations to you and to us all!

See the inaugural lecture here.

See Michael Haldrup’s academic profile here.

Performing Institutions

How might a contemporary institution be designed and performed?

Has the time come for Performance Design to (de/re)institutionalize as an independent academic post-disciplinary research field and artistic paradigm that resists conventional organizations?

These were some of the questions asked at the 3rd International Performance Design Symposion held in Fara Sabina, a small town on a mountain hill outside Rome in Italy.

7 researchers and teachers participated in the event from performancedesign at Roskilde University. We had some fruitful discussions on how institutions – museums, theaters, universities, academies and cultural venues – could be performed. Among the proposals were Performance Design as education of Desire, Performance Design as Nomad Knowledge and The Institution as Structures of Care.

After three days of intense workshops, the initial proposals were enacted and performed collectively in the scenic surroundings of Teatro Potlach and Fara Sabina.