Maska - Volume 37, Issue 211-212, 2022

This paper is based on the lecture held on 11th May 2022 in the context of Maska seminar at Nova Pošta and it examines general conceptual distinctions at work in the history of the life sciences (namely agency, form, force, and form) and how these have been emphasized or neglected in the various ontological and ecological turns within the humanities (from the critical humanism of Marxism to post-humanism and the nonhuman). More specifically I look at the work of Sylvia Wynter and how her project of decolonising the notion of ‘Man’ makes the possibility of a counter humanist uptake of a politically critical philosophy of biology.

This article, which is based on a thesis written for an MA in Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy at Utrecht University, considers the ecological potential of performing arts through a lens of a newly proposed concept of ecological choreography with reference to a stimulation of ecological experience of interconnectedness and an attention on the format of a geolocational soundwalk (through a study case of Sandbox). A geolocational soundwalk is an example of ecological choreography due to its characteristics of practical mechanics and the use of sound. Choreography, here defined as an organisation of things in space and time, refers to performance’s way of producing such ecological experiences. Relying on a combination of geographical location and sound excerpts instigated by these coordinates, a geolocational soundwalk’s audience experiences interconnectedness immediately when encountering the medium itself. The interdependence of its elements is ingrained into the artwork’s structure and any missteps from the audience which disturb the interconnectedness are visible, revealing the web of complex connections. In combination with presenting topics such as degradation of public space and the return of natural sounds during the pandemic, Sandbox produces an experience of interconnectedness for the attendee. When listening to sound excerpts and stories about the physical place they are walking, the web of connections between the location, the mechanics of the soundwalk as well as ecological topics is revealed. The embodied experience, which is the ecological contribution of performance, is what makes the soundwalk an example of the concept of ecological choreography.

The activities of the Acoustic Commons network for live environmental streams draw attention to the unique sounds of particular places and explore the acoustic ecology of bio-anthropo-genic locations. The network connects sound ecologists, live streamers, sound artists and experimental musicians who reflect in various ways upon the role of sonic explorations in promoting biocentric thinking that rejects the primacy of human rights and needs over those of other living and nonliving beings such as birds, spiders, trees or stones. Attentive listening goes beyond the notion that music is purely a human activity and opens the ears to sonic structures that may inform human culture in becoming more inclusive of nonhuman entities. Indeed, acoustic sensitivity is one piece of the puzzle in raising awareness and helping prevent numerous sound-sensitive creatures from declining into extinction.

This article is built with excerpts from the MA thesis written in the program Contemporary Theatre, Dance, and Dramaturgy at Utrecht University titled ‘More-ThanHuman Practices: Feminist Ecological Potentials of Working With More-Than-Humans in the Performing Arts.’ The thesis was finished in August 2021 under the supervision of Konstantina Georgelou. The theoretical framework takes feminist discourse on water from Mielle Chandler and Astrida Neimanis’s article ‘Water and Gestationality: What Flows Beneath Ethics’ as a departure point to conceptualize more-than-human collaborations in the performing arts and to generate grounds for articulating ethics that enable responsivity to the entanglements with ‘natural others.’ This framework is intertwined with the discourse on dramaturgy to reapproach the practice of dramaturgy through collaborations and articulate it as a shared practice and collective thinking that emerges from the relations between diverse bodies. The text maps some of the main aspects and challenges posed by co-working with more-than-humans by drawing on the two longer artistic practices and researches, Rooted Hauntology Lab by Ingrid Vranken, potted plants, and ghosts, and Cosmologies of Attention and Spectatorship, practice-based research by Julia Willms and Andrea Božić in collaboration with the Moon.

The Hydrocene is the watery epoch that I propose to name the tide of art going into the blue in response to the climate crisis. In this essay I analyse and argue for the potential significance of waves as hydrochoreographic materials in eco-critical performance practices. I look to the work of Swedish based artist-choreographer Pontus Pettersson in his expansive and watery body of work All Departures are Waves (2018-) and British based artist, dancer and choreographer Temitope Ajose-Cutting in her video work How to Move Like the Ocean (Liquefaction, Lubrication & Expansion in Twelve Easy Steps) (2019). I relate Pettersson’s queering of water practices to theorist Stefan Helmreich work in The Gender of Waves. Further I look to the wave as a hydro-choreographic offering in the Hydrocene and point to the potentiality of the wave as a queer and disruptive force in contemporary eco-critical performance practices.

The paper discusses the concept of planetary action between contemporary performance art and political climate action. By focusing on the extensive assemblages of actions created by artists such as Khvay Samnang or Tomás Saraceno, it develops a planetary approach to performance. Between artistic and non-artistic actions, their historically and geographically farstretching infrastructures, and the interplay of human and non-human actors, the paper proposes a planetary politics that addresses the ecological catastrophes of our times on the bodily level of action and its relation to knowledge.

This essay is a reflection on the ecological potential of artistic performances developed and performed in a time of ecological crises. By discussing two recent performances – Climatic Dances by Amanda Piña and To See Climate (Change) by René Alejandro Huari Mateus in co-authorship with Romuald Krężel – the author discloses the ecocritical dimension of these works and at the same time points out how the performing arts are entangled with the growth/productivist ideology upon which the capitalist economy with its ecological unconscious is based. If artistic work is to become more ecological, this implies more sustainable modes of working.

While eco-aesthetics and ecocritical discourse have been reflected in (recent) performance studies, their relation to operational ecology and sustainable modes of production needs to be further developed terminologically and methodologically. The paper discusses the intersection of aesthetic, discursive, and operational approaches of the performative arts to ongoing environmental and climate destruction. It positions itself vis-à-vis their diverse forms of knowledge and action and proposes ways of their transformative interweaving. Rather than continuing to pit artistic and administrative interests against each other, thereby reaffirming or even deepening the Great Divide between aesthetics and operations, the paper argues for connecting these fields in theory and practice in such a way that they can respond to each other conceptually, question their respective assumptions, and experiment with transformative potentials that approximate the radicality, magnitude, and complexity of current and future environmental challenges.

This text that aims to speak about the paradoxes of artists travelling for work, was produced under the conditions it discusses. It is a product of travel, it is informed by travelling, and it is written while travelling. Notes were made at the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, then revisited at various European airports, as well as during the breaks at a conference, and finished while under covid quarantine. A lot of the arguments and examples were accumulated over the course of the last several years in similar conditions, on the move, in conversations and talks, while attending festivals, residencies, and dance houses across Europe and beyond.

In this article, the New Sh*t platform at Dansehallerne in Denmark is analysed and criticised, as a means to investigate the fruition of its motivation to help strengthen the Danish dance ecosystem. By introducing thoughts on the transindividual self and the ecological self, I argue that as long as the platform mainly allows young Danish choreographers to show solo work, it cannot bring much change about to the conditions of production under which they already work. I argue why I believe the Danish dance scene could be at the forefront of changing the individualistic production mode of modern day Europe and how the (forgotten) mode of collaboration holds a potential for an ecological shift away from the neoliberal impetus.

A reflection on the works of Katalin Ladik: mogu li da živim na tvom licu? (Could I live on your face?, re/konekcija, 2021) and raspjevane žeravice. Izabrane pjesme 1962. – 1982. (Singing embers. Selected poems 1962 – 1982, DAF, 2022)