Festival Conference

Scenkonstens roll i en snabbt föränderlig värld

Under 2016 års festivalkonferens sätter vi ljuset på förhållandet mellan scenkonst och socialt ansvarstagande utifrån det senaste årets stora politiska och humanitära fråga: bemötandet av människor som befinner sig på flykt och som söker en ny framtid i Europa.

Världen som den är nu, är inramningen för hur vi gör konst. Vi ser drastiska förändringar i attityder, självbilder, förutsättningar, insatser. Vad blir konstens roll och plats? Vilken plats får konstnären? Hur verkar vi i en värld som förändras så snabbt? Konferensen kopplar samman rörelser i samhället och världen med scenkonstaktivism – art and/as social change. Vi vill tala om konstens roll i samhället genom att vara både banbrytande och inkluderande, på samma gång.

Välkommen till en konferens under två halvdagar som tillsammans med inbjudna scenkonstnärer, forskare och aktivister vill undersöka och diskutera scenkonstens roll i en snabbt föränderlig värld. Varje dag börjar med en keynote speech, följd av valbara presentationer/workshops och avslutas med ett panelsamtal med samtliga medverkande.

Medverkande

Hagar Kotef (key note)
Hagar Kotefs inledande föreläsning kommer att handla om den skiftande politiska terrängen i Israel, och om hur radikal konst och aktivism riskerar att driva israelisk politik längre åt höger, trots motsatt syfte.  På vilket sätt kan kritik gestaltas och formuleras utan att samtidigt approprieras?  Vilken roll kan radikal konst och aktivism spela inom områden som ligger utanför den offentliga debatten?

Arkadi Zaides (presentation / workshop)
I workshopen utforskar Arkadi Zaides relationen mellan rörelse och gränser, med fokus på Schengenområdet. Det ökande antalet migranter och asylsökande som dagligen anländer till Schengens yttre gränser har lett till nya EU-strategier, med hastigt förändrade förhållanden i hela området till följd. I workshopen kommer Zaides att använda koreografi som ett praktiskt verktyg för att undersöka nya relationer mellan gränser och kroppar.

Chto Delat (presentation / workshop)
Presentation och workshop fokuserar på relationen mellan konst och politik, utifrån en film producerad av Chto Delat 2011. Dmitry Vilensky kommer också att presentera hur Chto Delat-kollektivet arbetar i den nuvarande repressiva situationen i Ryssland, där de skapar en stadig, performativ motkultur baserad på konfidentiell solidaritet.

 A neshast (presentation / workshop)
Neshast är farsi och beskriver ett tillstånd då tid delas, till exempel över en kopp kaffe. De som medverkar talar vänligt med varandra, kanske vill de komma fram till svaret eller lösningen på en fråga som de ställer sig eller för en situation som de befinner sig i. Vid denna neshast är frågan och situationen huruvida en (asyl)intervju måste se ut som den gör vid ett svenskt migrationsverk.

Christian Lollike (key note)
Christian Lollike har under de senaste åren i allt högre grad arbetat med interdisciplinära projekt som bl a resulterat i en balett, ett minnesmärke, en opera-installation och bildandet av ett politiskt parti. Drivkraften i hans konst är viljan att förstå händelser, sociala trender och förändringar i politik och samhälle. Just nu är han aktuell med Martyrmuseum, en iscensatt installation på Teater Sort/Hvid i Köpenhamn.

Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt och Andreas Liebmann (presentation / workshop)
I workshopen undersöker Liebmann och Schmidt den estetiska representationen av flykt: vilka möjligheter finns det bortom det skenbart objektivt dokumentära? Hur kan vi undvika att gång på gång avsiktligt förmedla känslor som avsmak, rädsla och ömkan?

Khaled Harara and Morirah Hashemi (presentation / workshop)
I workshopen lyfter Khaled Harara och Monirah Hashemi vikten av den personliga berättelsen genom att använda exempel från deras pågående samarbete i Riksteaterns projekt Zouqaq – Jada – Grander. De utgår också från egna erfarenheter av att använda teater och hiphop som verktyg för egenmakt.

America Vera Zavala (moderator)
Dramatiker, aktivist och journalist.

Schema

Torsdag 25 augusti 13:00-17:00

14-14:30 Kaffe

14:30-15:50 Konferensens deltagare väljer en av nedanstående workshops:

1: Chto Delat

2: Arkadi Zaides

3: A neshast

15:50-16 Paus

16-17 Sammanfattande panelsamtal

Fredag 26 augusti 9:00-13:00 (frukost från 8:30)

9-10 Keynote: Christian Lollike

10-10:30  Kaffe

10:30-12 Konferensens deltagare väljer en av nedanstående workshops:

1: Khaled Harara, Monirah Hashemi

2: Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, Andreas Liebmann

3: Den sista workshop-sloten är öppen tillsvidare och tillkommer inom kort

11:50-12:00 Paus

12-13 Sammanfattande panelsamtal

Konferensen är öppen för allmänheten och hålls på engelska.

Läs mer om konferensens workshops och de medverkande nedan:

THURSDAY AUGUST 25

At 1pm – 5 pm (including coffee)

Keynote speaker: Hagar Kotef

Political action, Hannah Arendt has argued, has its own life. Since it is carried through in conditions of plurality (in a political space), it is inherently unpredictable and can never be reduced to the actor’s intentions. My talk will look at the shifting political terrain in Israel to show how left-activism can go astray. I will examine the role of critique in fortifying, rather than undermining the powers to which it objects. Is it possible that in attempting to stop the institutionalization of Apartheid in Israel/Palestine critics from the Left have pushed Israel further to the right? And if so: how can a critique be made without being appropriated and turned against itself? What is the role of critique on spaces that increasingly limit public contestation?

Hagar Kotef is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Comparative Political Thought at the Department of Politics and International Relations, SOAS, The University of London. Her book Movement and the Ordering of Freedom (Duke University Press, 2015) examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces (focusing on Israel/Palestine). Currently, she works on the construction of political belonging in settler colonies. Before joining SOAS she held positions at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University; the Society of Fellows, Columbia University, and the University of CA, Berkeley.

Three parallell workshops (all participants choose one):

 1 Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat collective

Art is not life?

The workshop will focus on the current composition of the relation between art and politics, based on the case study of the film Museum Songspiel: The Netherlands 20XX. (Chto Delat, 2011). This film tackles many issues, but we focus on how the position of refugees radically question the particular role of the museum and therefore also the role of art under political circumstances, borrowed from the realities of Russian current political situation. The film is a kind of acid test on how socially concerned art might operate under severe pressure of control by nationalistic populist governments. The film is an experiment with the possibility of performative body languages – the refugees in the film do not speak – they are trying to communicate through gestures, movement, gazes. Could this language be treated as universal or is it just a subjective form of an exotic and helpless way of establishing new forms of power relations? How can art act at the moment of danger?

In the seminar we will also discuss how the collective Chto Delat operates in a current repressive situation in Russia and create a sustainable counter-culture model of communities based on performative, confidential solidarity.

Chto Delat (What is to be done?) is a collective that was founded in 2003 in St. Petersburg, and counts artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from St. Petersburg and Moscow among its members. The collective came about following the urgency of merging political theory, art, and activism. Its activity includes art projects, educational seminars and public campaigns, and ranges from video and theater plays, to radio programs and murals. The collective also publishes the Russian-English newspaper Chto delat? that covers questions of culture and politics within an international context. In 2013 the collective initiated an educational project: The School for Engaged Art in St Petersburg.

2 Arkadi Zaides

In this workshop, Arkadi Zaides would like to explore the relation between movement and border, focusing primarily on the Schengen area. The growing number of migrants and asylum seekers arriving daily to its outer borders has led the EU to change its approach, causing a rapid shift in reality throughout the area. In the workshop we will observe borders not simply as barriers that prevent movement, but as spaces that generate motion and provoke ethics. Choreography will be used as a practical tool in order to investigate new relations between these spaces and physical bodies.
Arkadi Zaides presents his piece Archives at Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival.

Arkadi Zaides was born in 1979 in Belarus and immigrated to Israel in 1990. He currently works as a choreographer in Israel and Europe. Zaides holds a Master’s degree from the Amsterdam Master of Choreography program at the Theater School (NL). He performed in a few Israeli companies such as the Batsheva Dance Company and the Yasmeen Godder Dance Group. In 2004, he embarked on an independent career. His works have been presented in numerous festivals and venues around the world. In his work Zaides addresses social and political issues, previously focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian context, and now on the European one. Zaides’ artistic practice aims to initiate critical debate, concentrating on the body as a medium through which social and political issues are experienced most acutely. http://www.arkadizaides.com 

3 A neshast

We, the participants, put our political selves in the situation of an asylum interview. By staging what has to be staged by the interviewee him/herself, we investigate the density of objectivity and narrativity. Emphasizing on our personal experiences from such role-plays, we enlarge the elasticity of each of ours positions, to be reconsidered and remade. Reading a narrative in a pre-defined space with a table and many chairs, we perform the meeting; the interview. But, instead of reinforcing the positions constituted through the conduct of speech acts, the relation between speaker and receiver is turned into a space for the renegotiation of the socially constructed positions that we ordinarily carry with us, transferring to ourselves and onto others. Reconfiguring the socio-linguistic resonance that is taking place within the reading, we end up in-between conduct and consequence: could we make possible for new, dissonant narratives emerging out of the ruins of speech? This might be the turning point: a neshast. It is a Persian notion for spending time together, talking in a friendly way, with the aim of finding answers to questions that you pose yourself or situations that you are put into. As audience, you are asked to have a seat in relation to the table around which the reading happens – a relation that is also a point of orientation, a positioning and a care-taking: a broken participation. You are not included, and therefore, you are.

Samira Motazedi was born and raised in Iran where she, among other things, studied business management. In Sweden she works as a writer, and can be read in Glänta, where she gives insight into the Swedish asylum policy and the situation in which asylum seekers find themselves (glanta.org/motazedi). She has also been published in Aftonbladet and Feministiskt Perspektiv, and has visited a number of activist and artistic / literary events. Samira is also working for the ICIA – Institute for Contemporary Art and Ideas, where she curated the seminar A neshast – art as a space for action last winter.

Frida Sandström is an artist, writer and critic based in Stockholm. She has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and is currently taking a Master’s degree at New Performative Practices Department at Stockholm University of the Arts. She works as a producer for the art collective MYCKET, and is part of editorial board of the magazine Paletten. Frida Sandström was until recently editor for the magazine Kritiker #39 i rörelse. 2012-2015 she was part of artist-run platform Skogen in Gothenburg.

Masoud Vatankhah has studied sociology and works as a recreation instructor. He has worked with human rights issues for many years, against racism and for the right for asylum. Masoud Vatankhah came to Sweden as a refugee in the late ninetees.

FRIDAY AUGUST 26

At 9 am – 1pm (including coffee)

Key note speaker: Christian Lollike

Christian Lollike works with stage and installation art in theatres, public areas and virtual platforms. He has produced a comprehensive amount of theatre texts performed all over Europe. During the last couple of years, Lollike’s works have been dealing more and more with inter-aesthetics which has resulted in a ballet, a memorial, an opera installation and a political party. His artistic drive derives from wanting to understand events, social trends and changes in politics and society. Christian Lollike will address the connection between performing art and society.

Christian Lollike (1973) is a Danish playwright, with a degree from Aarhus University. He is known as one of the most progressive playwrights and artists in Denmark and has received several awards. Selcted works: “Det normale liv”, performed also in Germany, Austria and Sweden, “I Føling – en krigsbalett” and “Uropa – en asylbalett”. Lollike was much renowned for ”Manifest 2083”, based on Anders Beiring Breivik’s manifest, related to the massacre in Utøya in 2011. Christian Lollike is the Artistic Director of the Copenhagen based theatre Sort/Hvid.

Three parallell workshops (choose one):

 1 Regarding the Flight of Others (Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt and Andreas Liebmann)

The images of intercepted boats and anonymous bodies populate the daily press, and have become almost interchangeable from one day to another. They participate in the reproduction of an imaginary of invasion, they heat up a pan-European fear and justify xenophobic arguments on border control and anti-migration. Even the benevolent motive of suffering refugees, meant to produce compassion and pity, is employed to produce an excluding counter-narrative: “send them back, they suffer only more in Greece!”

But what is the role of the arts in this spectacle of the border regime? Liebmann and Schmidt examine the aesthetic representation of flight: what are the possibilities of going beyond the seeming objectivity of documentary material, and how can we avoid a repetition of intended affects of disgust, fear and pity? In the workshop “Regarding the Flight of Others”, Liebmann and Schmidt will propose an analysis of current aesthetic representation of flight in art and discuss strategies of anti-identification, absence, affirmation and disobedience.

Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt and Andreas Liebmann present their performance concert “Exdus”, a sung medieval tale about the new Europeans, at Gothenburg Dance and Theatre Festival.

Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt is working as a performance artist in Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland, and curates the festival WORKS AT WORK. From 2011 to 2015 she was artistic research associate teaching at the BA “Dance, Context, Choreography” at Inter-University of Dance in Berlin and from 2016 she is writing a Ph.D in the Dept. Arts and Cultural Studies at Copenhagen University on temporality in artistic labour. In 2013 she was in Gothenburg curating the symposium “Kriegstheater: modelling the wars of tomorrow” at Göteborg Konsthall and performing “Schützen” at Skogen.

Andreas Liebmann is working in the field of site-specific performance and theatre, integrating impulses from natural science, personal encounters, anthropology and politics. His works are presented in a.o. Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Bolivia. As an author he has been writing radio plays as well as texts for Theatre Freiburg, HAU Berlin, Burgtheater Vienna and Schauspielhaus Zürich. From 2015 he’s been teaching concept based directing at the Danish National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen.

2 Khaled Harara and Monirah Hashemi

In this workshop Khaled Harara and Monirah Hashemi will highlight the importance of personal stories within the current situation, by using examples from their ongoing collaboration in the Riksteatern project Zouqaq – Jada – Gränder. They will also give some insights in previous projects where they, separtely, have used theatre and rap as a tool for empowerment. Monirah Hashemi will share her experiences in how theatre games and practices can give a voice to voiceless women, and to experience how theater and art can be used as a tool for change and development. Games and other acting practices will be explored to see how they can be used in a situation of conflict. Khaled Harara will talk about his work and experiences in Palestine, the importance of rap and the power hip-hop gives to the youth. He will share experiences of working with kids in different countries – to help them writing their stories and rap them.

Monirah Hashemi was born in 1985 in Iran and came to Afghanistan in 2004 where she settled in Herat. Monirah and her friends established the Simorgh Film Association of Culture and Art in 2005 and they started producing films. In 2010 they established a women short film makers department.

Monirah has been a playwright, director and actor since 2007 and her plays have been performed in Kabul, New Delhi, Mumbai, Berlin, Hamburg, Turkey and Sweden. She has also created theater for social development in Herat, Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar, performing theater for isolated areas, especially for women in border areas, women in the prisons, juvenile correction centers, women drug addicted centers, shelters and also for schools and villages. In 2012 her work was presented at the Women Playwright International Conference (WPIC) in Stockholm.

In 2013 she wrote “Sitaraha – The Stars” based on facts from women’s situation in Afghanistan. The was directed by Leif Persson, performed by Monirah was one out of five plays invited to WPIC 2015 in South Africa and has been touring extensively for the past three years. Together with Khaled Harara she works with unaccompanied minor refugees in the project “Zouqaq, Jada, Gränder”, commissioned by Riksteatern Värmland.

Khaled Harara was born in 1987 in Yemen. He is a renowned Palestinian hip-hop artist who has lived as a refugee in Gaza. His texts discuss the political situation in Palestine from a humanitarian and social perspective, and criticise the lack of freedom of expression and the suffering in Palestine under the Hamas rule.  In Gaza, Khaled Harara was the first to organise hip hop workshops for youth, focusing on writing texts, and on different ways of expressing oneself. The workshops were banned. As a result of his artistic expression, and his participation as a soldier of the PLO forces before Hamas took control of Gaza, Harara is considered an “enemy of the state”. Khaled Harara was Gothenburg City of Refugee’s guest writer – and the first musician that ICORN accepted – from 2013 to 2015. Khaled Harara is now  studying music at The Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, working on several cultural projects that are using music as a strong tool to reach people.

The conference is curated by Catharina Bergil in collaboration with a working group at the Academy of Music and Drama, consisting of Kristina Hagström-Ståhl, Cecilia Lagerström, Nicholaus Sparding and Kenneth Hedlund.

For booking, please click here.