Why I Write - a seminar on writing, dramaturgy and work
2016 - In Curatorial Work
Why I Write - a seminar in Ulvik on writing, dramaturgy and workWith Marcus Doverud, Joe Kelleher, Bojana Kunst, Danae Theodoridou
15. - 18. September 2016
Olav H. Hauge Centre
Ulvik, Hardanger
Seminar at the Olav H. Hauge Centre in Ulvik with a program of conversations, lectures, working sessions, readings, discussions, shared meals and a walk in the mountains.
Sign up: marie[at]v-o-l-t.no
Limited space available.
"I read and read and live in books and live off them, without them I’d go to pieces."
Olav H. Hauge "Dagbok Band I", 1927
The title of the seminar is taken from the title of a talk by Joan Didion. She had stolen it from the title of a text by George Orwell. She writes: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
The poet Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994) was born in Ulvik in Hardanger, on the farm Hakestad where he lived all his life. He worked as a farmer and gardener on his own orchard. He taught himself several languages, was internationally oriented and translated among others Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan and Bertolt Brecht to Norwegian. He wrote poems, aphorisms and letters as well as an extensive nearly four thousand-page diary, "Dagbok 1924-1994", which was found and published posthumously. It contains reflections on work and life: the literature he read, on the often hard labour at the farm, the struggle with writing and finding time for it.
Bojana Kunst writes in her latest book "Artist at Work - Proximity of Art and Capitalism" (Zero Books, 2015) about the economic and social conditions of the artist's work. She writes about how the artists often do more and more for less and less and risk through it to corrode both their own practices and bodies. She writes about the significance of the artist to do less, when confronted with the demand to do more.
As a disobedient line of argument in the defence of art: ”Doing less could also be understood as a new radical gesture that opens up speculation about the value of artistic life and rather than working towards perfection of work, starts working autunomously for life itself. It is therefore an important aesthetic and ethical attitude for the artist as worker.”
BIOs:
Marcus Doverud is working as a dancer, choreographer and teacher. He graduated from the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied aesthetics and philosophy at Södertörn University College. His work move between different stages dealing with bodily, spatial and sonic utterances and their interrelations. The performance "renaissance prenaissance" (2015) revolved around sampling and choreographic staging of music. He has made several solo performances in Sweden and has a longterm collaboration with among others artist Liv Strand which has resulted in a number of performances and book projects.
Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance at University of Roehampton, London. His books include "The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images" (Routledge 2015) and "Theatre & Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan 2009). He is co-author with Claudia and Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Giudi and Nicholas Ridout of "The Theatre of Societas Raffaello Sanzio" (Routledge 2007). Recent essays appear in "Stedelijk Studies" (2016), and "Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage", ed. Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh (2015). He has been making performances with Eirini Kartsaki, including most recently "How to Be a Fig" (2014).
Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she is leading an international master program Choreography and Performance. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively at the various universities in Europe. She published several publications, among them "Impossible Body" (Ljubljana, 1999) and "Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial" (Ljubljana, 2004), "Processes of Work and Collaboration in Contemporary Performance" (Ur)., Amfiteater, Maska, Ljubljana, 2006, "Performance and Labour", Performance Research 18.1. (ed. with Gabriele Klein), "Artist at Work", Zero Books, London, 2015.
http://kunstbody.wordpress.com/
Danae Theodoridou is a Greek born performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her latest artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries. In this frame she created "One Small Step for a Man: Hello, Goodbye" (2015), "Earth in 100 Years" (2016) and "Something Dreamy" (2016) which are currently presented in different European cities. She is a co-creator of the three-year-long research project "Dramaturgy at Work" and a co-author of the subsequent publication "The Practice of Dramaturgy - Working on Actions in Performance" (Valiz, 2016). She completed a practice-led PhD on dramaturgy at Roehampton University (London), teaches in various university departments and art conservatoires of theatre and dance, and publishes her texts internationally.
http://www.danaetheodoridou.com/
The seminar is funded by Arts Council Norway and is in collaboration with the Olav H. Hauge Center.
Volt is funded by Arts Council Norway and City of Bergen.
http://www.v-o-l-t.no/
Photo: Olav H. Hauge. Photo credit: Olav H. Hauge-senteret