Image: general march during 2020 anti-government protests in Minsk, Belarus. Author of drone footage unknown.
BODIES IN ALLIANCE.
Score as a methodology in times of crisis of political action.
155.902 World Building
Convened by Olia Sosnovskaya
The course invites students to reflect on live gatherings in public spaces as a form of political participation, examining the crises surrounding such gatherings. We will approach this subject using the methodology of a score.
What is the political potential of performative practices in our current socio-economic conditions? What forms of gestures and live gatherings could enact political agency today, and in what way? By looking into concrete examples of political mobilisation and close readings of performance, dance and feminist theory, including texts by Ana Vujanocić, Livia Andrea Piazza, André Lepecki, and Johanna Hedva, students will study feminist critique of traditional approaches to political agency. They will develop critical thinking on the relationship between performance and politics, agency and vulnerability, political movement and exhaustion. Through a series of writing, reading, and movement exercises, students are invited to reflect on embodied knowledge and how they affect research and knowledge production. They would then explore the methodology of movement-score by engaging with the praxis of Fluxus, Pauline Oliveros, and contemporary choreographers. For their final task, students will create a series of scores that engage with the topics and problematics of the course.