PROGRAMME CONTENTS 

Abstracts on different sessions of the summer school programme, reading titles related to seminar topics, lectures, workshops and other presentations. 

1. LECTURE: Idiot Bliss: Charles Ray’s Plank Piece I-II (1973)/ by Dominic Johnson, Head of the Drama Department at Queen Mary, University of London

Abstract: Charles Ray’s Plank Piece I-II (1973) stages a critical encounter between sculpture, performance art, and photography. The work is exhibited widely, but the precise means by which Plank Piece I-II makes – or forecloses – meaning has never been adequately accounted for. For Ray in the 1970s, the works ‘ha[d] no meaning — or rather their meaning is dynamic,’ and when he made such claims, “my friends laughed at me and said, “You idiot, it looks like the aftermath of a car wreck or a Goya print”.’ In an experiment in art writing, I pursue Ray’s ‘idiotic’ invocations, reading Plank Piece I-II in relation to car crashes, images of torture, the then-recent American War in Vietnam, and other contingent phenomena; I attempt to do so towards a possible refashioning of meaning and history in performance art and its documentation.

2. LECTURE, SEMINAR & QUESTIONNAIRE/// Curating Participatory Art as Means for Social Change by Suzana Milevska, PhD in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths College London, curator and theorist of visual culture

Abstract: Some of the main questions to be addressed in this lecture and seminar will be what kind of socio-political conditions and juridical structures call for, allow and/or prevent participatory art to fulfil the given promises for social and cultural change. The conundrums of participatory art are many. Curating Participatory Art as Means for Social Change is imagined as a curated participatory and self-reflexive back and forth conversation that will eventually result with a collaboratively composed cross-disciplinary questionnaire.

I’ve already discussed some of the crucial contradictions and frustrations of  participatory art practices in the context of neoliberalism-driven cultural movements. For example, in the text “Infelicitous Participatory Acts on the Neoliberal Stage” (https://www.p-art-icipate.net/infelicitous-participatory-acts-on-the-neoliberal-stage/), I looked at the challenges that participatory arts face due to the systemic and institutional conundrums in contemporary societies, preventing the potentialities of such practices from realisation and fulfilment of their aims. Some of the important issues to be discussed are related to different processual hierarchies between the artists, participants and institutions, stemming out of the socio-political and economic systems and structures that condition the work conditions, means and relations of production, etc. The main paradox of participatory art, however, stems from the promise of social change, because the question of whether it’s possible to substantially change society with art that is produced by art institutions and structures created by that very same society still remains an unresolved puzzle.

The final outcome of the seminar will be The Questionnaire of Participatory Art. It will gather the most relevant and urgent questions about the aims, potentialities, and failures of participatory art when such art projects are curated as means for social change. The Questionnaire is not conceptualised only as a usual repository of questions, but it also functions as a participatory and collaborative research tool that invites the participants to formulate their own questions, and to “feed” the questionnaire in a processual and collaborative way. This will eventually enable them to develop new participatory artistic, curatorial and educational research methodologies. Last but not least important, the Questionnaire can be used as auxiliary educational tool in alternative educational and curatorial projects that focus on participatory art, or in an academic context.

Seminar methodology:

• Part 1 – presentation of the seminar’s concept and open discussion including answers to some of the preliminary questions about the methodology and format of the Questionnaire based on the information that is to be submitted to the applicants in advance, and discussing the questions submitted by the participants in their applications (2 questions each).

​Participants’ profile: young professionals of various professions: artists, academic researchers, art historians, ethnographers, art and museum educators, curators, etc.

• Part 2 – offline: distributing a google.doc in which the participants will write their questions
• Part 3 – deadline for sending the written questions and comments and completion of the Questionnaire (offline).

Reading list:

• Suzana Milevska, “Infelicitous“ Participatory Acts on the Neoliberal Stage

3. WORKSHOP///Artificial Social Imaginaries: Curation of Live Events as Construction Sites for Social Alternatives/ by Danae Theorodiadu, PhD in Dramaturgy of Contemporary Theatre and Dance from Roehampton University in London, performance maker and researcher based in Brussels

Abstract:  Through a series of individual and group tasks of reading, writing, discussing, questioning, designing and testing, this workshop will involve participants in a critical process that aims to reflect on the relation between curatorial practices and the emergence of social alternatives to capitalism. In this frame, we will approach the design of any curatorial project as an artificial construction site for the creation of new social imaginaries, i.e. as a concrete alternative proposal about the way we imagine and practice our social coexistence. The act of curating will, thus, be worked as a practice that moves away from the established norms and social habits; as the crafting of social encounters towards more imaginative, unknown directions, away from capitalist demands that strive for the ‘groundbreaking’, the ‘new’, the ‘successful’, the controllable, popular, profitable and effective product.

Key terms in our exploration will be the notions of ‘social imaginary’ (as this has been discussed by C. Castoriadis and other scholars), ‘dramaturgy as a working on actions’ (as discussed in The Practice of Dramaturgy – Working on Actions in Performance, a book co-authored by the workshop’s facilitator), ‘commoning’ (as a concrete practice within the discourse on ‘commons’), as well as the relation between art, crafts and materiality. Participants will be asked to read in advance two texts related to such issues, which will be further discussed and worked on in the workshop. In addition, participants will be asked to design and, at least partly, test different curatorial frames and exchange models that could act as artificial social imaginaries, through which they will attempt to detect the processes and working principles involved in such acts.

Reading list:

• Theodoridou, Performing Arts and Social Imagination – Redefining Art’s Social Role Through the Turn to Collectively Speculative Processes:
• 3 Principles of Dramaturgy,38-62

4. PUBLIC LECTURE ///Queer Communion/Queer Performance/  by Amelia G. Jones, Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Academics and Research in Roski School of Art & Design

Abstract: This lecture will present two overlapping projects, one of which is explicitly curatorial, and both of which address the relationship between queer (as a discourse and identification), performance, and history: Amelia Jones’s single authored book In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance and her curatorial project Queer Communion: Ron Athey. What is “queer performance”, generally speaking? Can queer performance (for example, the work of Los Angeles-based Ron Athey) be “curated” into a gallery space, given the proximity and duration of live art in its original forms? Questions of community, queer survivance in the face of precarity, as well as the genealogies of the core concepts of “queer” and “performance” will be addressed.

Reading list:

• Gerald Vizenor, “Aesthetics of Survivance: Literary Theory and Practice,” Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 1-24
• Amelia Jones, “Queer Performativity: A Critical Genealogy of a Politics of Doing in Art Practice,” The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art, ed. Jovana Stokic and Bertie Ferdman (London: Methuen/Bloomsbury Press, 2020), 58-80

5. LECTURE ///On the Interventionist Potential of New Formats in Contemporary Dance and Performance by Kirsten Maar,  junior- professor at  Institute for Theatre Studies, Free University, Berlin, dance scholar and dramaturge///

Abstract: The presentation aims to build up a historiographical informed understanding of new formats of practice and presentation, which change the relationship between production and reception in an interventionist manner. Intervention in this context is not only defined as an activist approach, but rather in the micropolitics of constant change in “minor keys” – between belonging and becoming (Stengers, 2005).

Reading list:

• Haraway Donna, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
• Stengers Isabelle, An Ecology of Practices

6. ARTISTS AND CURATORS’ TALKS ///Talk 1 with Dena Davida PhD, postmodern dance practitioner as a performer, improviser, teacher, researcher, curator and writer/// Presentation of Turba Journal for Curating in Live Arts

Abstract: Turba is the first journal for the study, theory, and praxis of curatorial strategies in live arts. In its pages, we will create a platform for the exploration of ideas, concepts, constraints, expectations, and contingencies which guide and drive curatorial practices. Through this biannual hybrid publication we seek to connect, amplify, and contextualise those movements and voices in which the past, present and future of live arts are experienced and imagined. Turba will serve as a seismographic observatory for the impact of live arts on societies and cultures globally. The first issue poses the seminal question ‘Why curate live arts?’, and is launched in spring 2021.

Reading list:

• Turba leaflet vol.5 –pdf
• Cica programme pdf

7. ARTISTS AND CURATORS’ TALKS/// Talk 2 with Voin de Voin, performer// presentation of his artistic work

8. PUBLIC DISCUSSION/// ARTISTS AND CURATORS’ TALKS/// Talk 3 with Jasmina Založnik, dramaturge, writer and producer/ Paz Ponze, independent curator, writer & researcher of contemporary artistic creation / Jovanka Popova, curator in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Mira Gakjina, senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje
   Moderators: Biljana Tanurovska–Kjulavkovski and Slavcho Dimitrov /// COLLECTIVE CURATING OR CO-CURATORIAL COLLABORATIVE PROCESSES//

This discussion will include curators from diverse contexts, discussing about their experiences on collective curating, the processes involved, the ways concepts are developed and decisions are made. They will also try to explain what would be collective in curatorial, and their perspective on what would co-curatorial stand for.

9. ARTISTS AND CURATORS’ TALKS/// Talk 4 with Barbara Bryan, Executive Director of Movement Research New York, independent art producer and curator///presentation of her work as a curator and Executive Director in Movement Research.

Abstract:  As the Executive Director of Movement Research, my role is to innovate curatorial and programmatic structures that hold space for the amplification of artists’ voices in curation and programmatic planning. My goal is to conceive fluid and malleable formats that support evolving and emergent practices, and new voices in the field. Questions that I ask from a curatorial framework are how to be responsive, rather than reactive, to evolving discourse and trends in experimental dance and the intersections of socio-political contexts and activism? How do we develop frameworks that have flexibility built in to the fabric of the format, and thus are not formulaic, but are rather ideations that can be stretched, reshaped and reimagined by artists.

Since its beginning in 1978, Movement Research has operated through a visionary grass-roots leadership structure in which the organization is powered by artists from the very community it serves. My work is to curate structures that amplify the voices of artists through artist-driven and artist-initiated formats – curatorial, editorial and selection processes that engage groups of artists from our constituency, alongside a staff of working artists who are embedded in the artist community. Through programmatic offerings, Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of our moving community, inclusive of race, national or ethnic origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, and family/parental status. An inclusive participatory structure is thoughtfully calibrated to give agency to diverse voices and to centre equity, and is committed to ensuring that voices are heard through rotating curatorial, editorial, and teaching structures.

To offer an example, artists selected for the well-known Movement Research at the Judson Church series are selected through multiple processes that ensure a diverse representation of voices and perspectives. Artists may apply through an open call, and are reviewed by a Selection Committee of five artists recommended by the Artist Advisory Council, the Artists of Color Council, and the Accessibility Advisory Team in collaboration with MR programmes staff. Committee-selected artists show work alongside Artists-in-Residence, artists curated by the Artists of Color Council, artist participating in GPS & MRX Exchanges, and staff curated guest artists. By creating a range of contexts and allowing for several points of entry for artists, this multi-pronged programmatic strategy dismantles the historically predominant curator-as-decider model, which has limited access for artists and has often forced artists to fit into a constraining or reductive curatorial vision. As curators and programmers, we are called to continually reimagine and reshape our practices in order to advocate for and give primary agency to artists – honouring their ideas, visions, and the contexts in which they create.

10. ARTISTS AND CURATORS’ TALKS/// Talk 5 with Ron Athey, performance artist ///presentation of his artistic work 

 

BIOGRAPHIES OF THE LECTURERS, ARTISTS, AND CURATORS

PROGRAMME CURATORS

 
Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski is a curator, researcher, activist in culture and producer, an active part of the independent art and culture scene in North Macedonia. She is a co-founder and executive director of Lokomotiva – Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture, co-founder of Nomad Dance Academy (NDA), Locomotion festival for contemporary dance and performance (2008-2015) and Kino Kultura (KK) – project space for contemporary performing arts and culture (2015-2020). With Lokomotiva she also co-founded Jadro – Association of the Independent Cultural Scene and Kooperativa- Regional Platform for Culture. Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski is committed to initiating, curating and managing diverse projects and programmes. Some of her latest projects include “Dissonant (co)spaces”; “Cultural Spaces for Active Citizens”, the “Art, Politics, Institution, Body” curatorial programme and ongoing research on issues of cultural workers’ rights, public spaces and institutions in culture. Together with Slavcho Dimitrov she is currently working on research and development of Macedonian archive of performing arts (contemporary dance, performance and theatre) as part of NDA project Non Aliened Movements, while together with Ivana Vaseva she is doing research on political performance in the 90s, which was also part of the regional research and exhibition “REALIZE! RESIST! REACT! Performance and Politics in the 1990s in the Post-Yugoslav Context” in the Museum of Contemporary Arts Metelkova in Ljubljana. As part of Lokomotiva, she is currently working on the projects: Curating in Context supported by Erasmus +, and two European projects Art Climate Transition and Non Aliened Movements. She has worked as a consultant of the European Cultural Foundation and the European Commission. Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski is the author of various texts, (co)editor of numerous publications, journals and books. She has been a guest lecturer at different programmes, as well as universities. From 2011-2020 she has been working as visiting professor at the Faculty of Music Arts in Skopje. She holds a BA in the History of Art and Archaeology, an MSc in Interculturalism, Cultural Management and Cultural Policy from the University of Arts in Belgrade, and PhD from the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade. In 2019, she won ENCATC International Research Award on Cultural Policy and Cultural Management for her doctoral thesis. In 2021, she won AICA Macedonia “Ladislav Barishic” Award for the research “Political Performance as Extended Field in Macedonia in the 90s”. Her book “Modelling Art and Cultural Institutions” is now released in English language.

Slavcho Dimitrov (born in 1984) graduated at the Department for General and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology at the St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. He got his first Master’s degree in Gender Studies and Philosophy at the Euro-Balkan Institute, and his second Master’s degree from the Department of Multidisciplinary gender studies at the Cambridge University. Currently he is working on his doctoral thesis at the Euro-Balkan Institute. He has worked as a teaching assistant at the postgraduate gender and cultural studies at the Euro-Balkan University, and at the undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Faculty for Media and Communications – SINGIDUNUM, Belgrade. In the past few years, he has coordinated a large number of academic projects and summer schools, as well as projects in the domain of human rights and marginalized communities, with special focus on queer activism. He is the founder of the international Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics. He is one of the founders of the Research Center for Cultures, Politics and Identities (IPAK.Center) in Belgrade. He has been working at the Coalition since its beginnings, as a member, coordinator and executive director. His activist interest is directed towards the politics of queerness (queer politics), sexual and gender citizenship and equality, rights of marginalized communities and their transaction with questions concerning social justice.

 

PROGRAMME LECTURERS/PRESENTERS:

Amelia Jones is Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Academics and Research in Roski School of Art & Design, USC. Recent publications include Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (2012); Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, co-edited with Erin Silver (2016). The catalogue Queer Communion: Ron Athey (2020), co-edited with Andy Campbell, and which accompanies a retrospective of Athey’s work at Participant Inc. (New York) and ICA (Los Angeles), has just been listed among “Best Art Books 2020” in the New York Times. Her book entitled In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance is published in 2021 by Routledge Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barbara Bryan is the Executive Director of Movement Research and is an independent performing arts producer, manager and curator currently working with Sarah Michelson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Extended Life Residency Programme and Pentacle’s ART programme. From 2000-12, she was the Managing Director of John Jasperse/Thin Man Dance, Inc., Producing Director with Wally Cardona, and Project Director with Jennifer Monson/iLand, Inc. She was guest curator of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Inside/Out Series (Becket, MA) from 2002-12. She was the Associate Director of Danspace Project from 1997-99. She has served as a faculty member, mentor, guest speaker and panelist at various events and convenings in NYC, nationally and abroad. She participated in Race Forward’s New York City Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab in 2017-18. While serving as its Executive Director, Movement Research received a 2015 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. Barbara received her MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

 

 

Danae Theodoridou is a performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. She studied literature and linguistics in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and acting in the National Theatre of Northern Greece. She completed her PhD on dramaturgy of contemporary theatre and dance at Roehampton University in London. The last years, her artistic work focuses on the notion of social imaginaries and the way art can contribute to the emergence of social and political alternatives. More recently, she looks particularly into the practice of democracy through performance. At the same time, Danae teaches in Fontys University of Applied Sciences (NL) and in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR), curates practice-led research projects and presents and publishes her research work internationally. She has been the co-creator of Dramaturgy at Work (2013-2016) and the co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017). For more information: www.danaetheodoridou.com

 

 

 

 

Dena Davida, PhD, has practiced postmodern dance as a performer and improvisor, teacher and researcher, and curator and writer for fifty years. Born in the U.S. in 1949 into a family of Jewish artists of Eastern European heritage, she immigrated to Canada in 1977, where she co-founded and curated Tangente (1980-2020), Quebec’s premiere dance performance venue. At the Université du Québec à Montréal, she taught in the Dance Department (1979–2010) and completed her doctorate in artistic dance ethnography (2006) through the Programme d’études et pratiques des arts. She has published widely on dance and culture from a humanistic and politically engaged perspective, co-editing the anthologies Fields in Motion (2012) and Curating Live Arts (2014), and recently founded Turba: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts. Curation. www.denadavida.ca

 

 

 

 

Dominic Johnson is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture in the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London (UK) and Head of Department. He is the author of four monographs including most recently Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s (2019). He is also the editor of five books including Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey (2013). His writings have been published in Art History, Art Journal, Porn Studies, Contemporary Theatre Review, Social Text and elsewhere; and he is a frequent contributor to Art Monthly.

 

 

 

 

Jasmina Založnik is a dramaturge, publicist and producer primarily engaged in the field of contemporary dance. Over the last years, she has focused on recent histories of contemporary performing art and choreography, and their multiple relations to everyday life. She is interested in strategies of social politicization and emancipation. Her work is mainly developed in a dialogue with various colleagues, most often in close collaboration with Rok Vevar whit whom they are not only part of curatorial team of CoFestival, Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia and its wider regional network but are co-authors of number of articles, and initiations of various forms of work. Založnik is also a member of the Dialogi and Maska editorial board and a steering committee of the Contemporary Dance Association Slovenia. She holds a PhD in film and visual culture from the University of Aberdeen.

 

 

 

 

 

Jovanka Popova (1980, Skopje) is a curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, and curator and programme coordinator at Press to Exit project space, organization for contemporary art and curatorial practices in Skopje. She is PhD candidate at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University in Belgrade, Serbia. She completed her B.A. and M.A. at the Faculty of Philosophy, Institute for History of Art in Skopje, where she was a teaching assistant on the subject of Macedonian Contemporary Art. She has curated exhibitions in the contemporary art field in Macedonia and worked on international curatorial projects. She was curator of North Macedonia’s Pavilion at the 58 Venice Biennale in 2019. She has also presented her work at the Humboldt University, Central European University Budapest, Goethe University Frankfurt, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Kunst Historisches Institut, Florence, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts and other institutions. She was executive director of JADRO – Association of the Independent Cultural Scene,  and she is president of the Macedonian Section of the AICA International Association of Art Critics.

 

 

Kirsten Maar works as a dance scholar and dramaturge. She is currently junior-professor at the Dance Department at Free University Berlin. Her research fields are the intersections between visuals arts, architecture and choreography, ethics of curating and dramaturgy, social choreographies, scoring practices and composition. Among many other publications she is co-editor of Assign and Arrange. Methodologies of Presentation in Art and Dance (Sternberg 2014) and Generische Formen. Dynamische Konstellationen zwischen den Künsten (Fink 2017).

 

 

 

 

Mira Gakjina (Skopje) is an art historian, art critic and senior curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje. She completed her postgraduate studies at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy (2010) and she received her PhD in Art Management on the subject “Management of the cultural institutions – case study MoCA Skopje” (2017). From 2006 till 2009 she was teaching assistant at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Skopje on the subject „History and Theory of Art“. She has curated a number of exhibitions in the country and abroad and presented her work in New York, Chengdu, Taipei, Texas, Stockholm, Warsaw, Thessaloniki, Athens, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Pristina etc. She has published her writings  in publications, catalogues and art and culture books and magazines as “Large Glass”, “Art Republic”, “Brooklyn Rail”, “Plasticity of the Planet: On Environmental Challenge for Art and Its Institutions”, “From Consideration to Commitment: Art in Critical Confrontation to Society” among others.  She was curator in residence as part of the Prohelvetia Cultural program in Zurich, Bern and Geneva; Limiditi Temporary Art Project, Morocco; “Close connection”, curatorial program in Amsterdam; International Partnership among Museums programme organized by the American Association of Museums at Weil Gallery – Texas etc.; She is the commissioner of North Macedonia’s Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2019. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practices “Project Space Press Exit Skopje”; From 2013 till 2017 she served as President of AICA Macedonia. Since 2017, Gakjina is Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje.

 

 

Paz Ponce (Cádiz, 1985, Spain) is an independent curator, writer & researcher of contemporary artistic creation, actively involved in culture exchange networks between Asia, Europe and Latin America. With a background in art history (Universidad Complutense, Madrid / Freie Universität, Berlin), she investigates the collective context in which art is produced and mediated, with a special focus on self-organization, culture of cooperativism and biographical research. She specializes in the development of process-oriented formats such as archival and research exhibition projects, public events programs, art in residency projects, learning platforms and professional networks, collaborating with: NON Gallery, Galerie Wedding, Agora Collective e.V., ZK/U, 48 Neukölln, Uferstudios, nGbK Berlin — in Berlin; Casa Tomada (São Paulo, BR), B-Tours Festival (Tel Aviv, IR), Cinema Lumbardhi (Prizren, KV), Laboratorio Artístico de San Agustín (LASA) & Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam (Havana, CU), Esplanade – Theaters on the Bay (Singapore, SG), Academy of the Arts (Szczecin, PL). Artistically she works with Club Real devising participatory dramaturgies within contextual art projects (13 Havana Biennial, CU; Impulse Theater Festival, DE). She is an external research consultant for the Erasmus + program “Curating in Context (2019-21), and has published on contextual artistic practices in Cuba. Currently she is founder & co-director of neue häute e.V. project space at Uferstudios (Berlin-Wedding). www.pazponce.com

Ron Athey  is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally (especially in the UK and Europe). Athey’s work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront preconceived ideas about the body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography. Ron Athey’s earliest work dates back to collaborations with Rozz Williams during the early 1980s. Athey and Williams performed as “Premature Ejaculation,” staging actions in clubs and galleries and producing experimental recordings and performances for camera. Their work together was photographed by Karen Filter and published in the punk magazine No Mag in 1982. The practice for which he is most known grows from performances developed for club contexts in Los Angeles, such as Club Fuck! and Sin-a-matic. In 1992, he staged his first major ensemble performance, Martyrs & Saints. This is the first of what the artist calls his Torture Trilogy. It was followed by 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life (1993-1996) and Deliverance (1995). These works were performed in the U.S., Mexico and in Europe. In 1998, he appeared in Sex/Life in L.A. Jochen Hick’s adult documentary about the sex lives of the guys who make L.A. adult movies. His work has expanded into solo performances, collaborations, and into experimental theatre and opera. Solo performances include Solar Anus (1999), Self-Obliteration solos (2008-2011), a series of performances inspired by St. Sebastian (e.g. Sebastian Suspended, 1999; Sebastiane, 2014). His collaborative performances include the Incorruptible Flesh series, (1996-2013), commenced in collaboration with the late Chicago-based performance artist Lawrence Steger and continued in solo and collaborative instalments. His most recent performances, such as Incorruptible Flesh (Messianic Remains) (2013) expand on aspects that define his earlier ensemble and collaborative work. Joyce (2002) is an experimental theatre work which uses projection and live performance to offer a portrait of the women who defined the artist’s childhood. He and the artist Juliana Snapper developed Judas Cradle (2004-2005), an experimental opera. In 2010 he initiated a series of works investigating the rituals of spiritualism and Pentecostalism, Gifts of the Spirit.

 

Suzana Milevska is a curator and theorist of visual cultures. Her theoretical and curatorial interests include postcolonial and feminist critique of representational regimes of hegemonic power in arts and visual culture, and collaborative and participatory art practices in marginalized communities. From 2016-2019 she was Principal Investigator for the project Transmitting of Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts (TRACES – EU Programme Horizon 2020), Polytechnic University Milan. In 2013 Milevska was appointed the first Endowed Professor of Central and South Eastern European Art Histories (2013-2015, Academy of Fine Art Vienna). She taught history and theory of visual art (2010-2012, Faculty of Fine Arts Skopje). She initiated and directed the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research Skopje (2006-2008). She holds a PhD in Visual Culture from Goldsmiths College London and was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Library of Congress. Milevska curated the exhibitions Contentious Objects/Ashamed Subjects (2019, Politecnico di Milano), The Renaming Machine (2009-2011, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Vienna) and the Roma Protocol (the Austrian Parliament, Wiener Festwochen), and Call the Witness, BAK Utrecht (2011). She was the initiator of the project Call the Witness – Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2011). She published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans (2010) and edited The Renaming Machine: The Book (2010), and On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency (Sternberg Press, 2016). Milevska is the recipient of ALICE Award for political curating, and she won the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory (2012).

 

 

Voin de Voin – Born in 1978. He lives and works in Sofia. He holds an MA from DasArts,  Amsterdam, and diploma from Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, Goldsmith College,  London, EICAR –International School for film and cinema of Paris.  Since July 2016 he is running an independent art space in Sofia called ÆTHER with a sibling sitalite space in The Hague called Æther Haga together with Marie Civikov. Since 2016 and he the initiator and organizer of SAW Sofia Art Week that happens each year since, in Sofia city. Together with the Dutch curator and educator Lisette Smith, he set a new platform for fugitive learning called School of Kindness, that complete its first cycle in the summer of 2021. His foundation and space Æther were partners of Schloss Solitude Academy, Stuttgart for a program of expansion of Eastern European Networks of the Academy between 2018 and 2021. Voin de Voin works in various fields of the visual arts, ranging from performance to installation, incorporating his research in collective rituals, psycho-geography, sociology, psychology and new media. The list of his individual artistic and curatorial work, has more than 30 titles/ productions that include wide international collaborations. He is also a freelancer in the field of organizing and curating events and exhibitions: ÆTHER  program; Next Balkan Platform (Belgrade, 2021), Nordic Biennale (Doma arts Fest, 2015);  Manisensations, Leap Gallery Berlin; Dutch Fashion Biennale Performance programme, Arnhem and others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Summer school Curating in Context is co- curated by Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski & Slavcho Dimitrov; Produced by Lokomotiva- Centre for New Initiatives in Arts and Culture, North Macedonia, as part of a collaboration with Brain Store Project within the Performance Situation Room activity of Life Long Burning project; supported by Creative Europe, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia and the City of Skopje.

 

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For more information download the booklet and below:

CIC 2021 BOOKLET

AGENDA