KEYNOTE LECTURERS
Ric Allsopp
Ric Allsopp is a co-founder and joint editor of Performance Research, a quarterly international journal of contemporary performance (London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis) <http://www.performance-research.org> He was an integral part of Dartington College of Arts from the mid-1970s onwards and taught at the SNDO in Amsterdam during the 1990s. He was a Guest Professor (2007- 2011) in the new Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) at the University of the Arts, Berlin, involved in the development of the Centre and the MA in Solo/Dance/ Authorship; and also visiting lecturer for the MA in Choreography at ArtEZ, Netherlands (2008-2011). He is currently editing two issues of Performance Research on 'Falling' (PR18-4, 2013) with the choreographer Emilyn Claid, and on 'Digital Writing' (PR18-5, 2013) with Jerome Fletcher. Research interests include contemporary performance practices, the poetics and histories of ‘open work’, the choreographic image, and relations between writing and movement. His work has been published in a variety of books and journals including Frakcija, PAJ, Tanz-Journal, and Theater der Zeit. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Performance and Head of Dance & Choreography at Falmouth University, UK.
Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum
Since April 2013 professor for theatre studies and dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Schauspielunst 'Ernst Busch'. She studied Theatre studies, Anglistics, Italianistics and Philosophy at the FU Berlin and University Vienna. 2000-2003 she was a research associate in the programme „Theatricality and the crisis of Representation“ at the FU (Free University) Berlin. 2003 to 2006 she was a member of the Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Boundaries Collaborative Research Center. 2008-2010 she has been a member of the Interweaving Performance Cultures International Research Center at the Freie Universität Berlin. 2007 to 2010 she was a member of the GIF-Project „Poetics and Politics of the Future“ (cooperation FU Berlin / Tel Aviv University). In 2008 she completed her dissertation on intersubjective experiences in contemporary exhibition art, published as „Kunst als Aufführungserfahrung“ (Transcript, 2011). 2010 to 2012 she was visiting professor for Dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ in Leipzig.
From 1998 to 2002 she collaborated in various projects of Christoph Schlingensief („Chance 2000“, „Bitte liebt Österreich!“, „Hamlet“). 2007 she was an assistant of Tino Sehgal for the exhibition „This situation“ at Hamburger Bahnhof berlin. She has written numerous articles and coedited various books on theatrical and performative phenomena. (Co-editor of a.o. „Schlingensiefs Nazis Rein / Torsten Lemmer in Nazis Raus“ (Suhrkamp, 2003); „Carl Hegemann: Plädoyer für die unglückliche Liebe. Texte über Paradoxien des Theaters“ (Theater der Zeit, 2005); „Auf der Schwelle. Kunst, Risiken und Nebenwirkungen“ (together with Erika Fischer-Lichte, Robert Sollich, Matthias Warstat – Fink, 2005).
Main research: relations between theatre, performance and visual arts, political dimensions of the aesthetic, theorie and aesthetic of contemporary theatre and performance, contemporary dramaturgical practices.
Miika Luoto
Miika Luoto is a Finnish philosopher, aesthetician and translator (born 1966 in Helsinki). After a period of research and teaching at the University of Helsinki, where he originally studied, he has been working mainly at Helsinki art universities: Theatre Academy, University of Art and Design (now Aalto Arts), and Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently Lecturer of philosophy and performance theory at the Theatre Academy.
In addition to numerous articles on Continental philosophy and aesthetics, Miika Luoto has published the books Heidegger ja taiteen arvoitus (“Heidegger and the Enigma of Art”, 2002) and Heidegger: Ajattelun aiheita (“Heidegger: Issues of Thought”, ed. with J. Backman, 2006). In addition to many translations of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida and others, he has edited and translated (with T. Roinila) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Filosofisia kirjoituksia (“Philosophical Writings”, 2012). Currently, he is finishing an English-language study on Heidegger reflecting on the question of art as a problem of finitude and historicity. A book called “Senses of Embodiment: Art, Technics, Media” (edited with M. Elo) is forthcoming from Peter Lang.
Elena Giannotti
Elena Giannotti is an independent dancer. She worked with L’Ensemble Dance-Theatre, Virgilio Sieni, Yoshiko Chuma, Nicole Peisl for The Forsythe Company, Daghdha Dance Co. and Fearghus O’Conchuir amongst others. She has been Rosemary Butcher’s main Interpreter for more than 10 years. As an improviser she has danced with artists like Julyen Hamilton, Vera Mantero, Jennifer Monson, Ray Chung amongst others. Since 2011 she is collaborating with Company Blu, Italy in Improvisation Performance Practice Projects.
She started to make her own work in 2008. To date her works have been shown in Ireland, UK, Mexico, Italy, New York, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. Elena is a Chinese Medicine, Tuina and Qi Gong Practitioner and a Social Dreaming Facilitator.
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis is an originator of the homo-core punk movement and a gender-queer art-music icon. Her concept bands -- including Pedro Muriel and Esther, Cholita! The Female Menudo, black fag, and the Afro Sisters -- have left an indelible mark on the development of underground music. Like Ron Athey, Ms Davis made her name in LA's club performance scene, and has earned herself a similar notoriety as a cultural antagonist and erotic provocateur.
Set apart from gallery-centered art, and Hollywood movies, and from those systems' necessities of high-polish, low-substance production, Vaginal Davis's low-budget -- often no-budget -- performance, experimental film and video practice has critiqued exclusionary conceits from the outside. Davis has been a prolific producer of club performance, video and Xerox-produced Zines, and other forms of antagonistic low-cost, high-impact work. Such as in her drag reconstruction of Vanessa Beecroft's Navy SEALs performance, Ms Davis derails collector-friendly raciness in spectacles of femininity, queerness and blackness. She critiques both the gallery system and the larger cultural trend that it mirrors, with tongue-in-cheek self-exploitation and rude provocations of racial and gender confusion.
Vaginal Davis is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Disrupting the cultural assimilation of gay-oriented and corporate-friendly drag, she positions herself at an uncomfortable tangent to the conservative politics of gay culture, mining its contradictory impulses to interrupt the entrenchment of its assimilatory strategies.
Ric Allsopp is a co-founder and joint editor of Performance Research, a quarterly international journal of contemporary performance (London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis) <http://www.performance-research.org> He was an integral part of Dartington College of Arts from the mid-1970s onwards and taught at the SNDO in Amsterdam during the 1990s. He was a Guest Professor (2007- 2011) in the new Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) at the University of the Arts, Berlin, involved in the development of the Centre and the MA in Solo/Dance/ Authorship; and also visiting lecturer for the MA in Choreography at ArtEZ, Netherlands (2008-2011). He is currently editing two issues of Performance Research on 'Falling' (PR18-4, 2013) with the choreographer Emilyn Claid, and on 'Digital Writing' (PR18-5, 2013) with Jerome Fletcher. Research interests include contemporary performance practices, the poetics and histories of ‘open work’, the choreographic image, and relations between writing and movement. His work has been published in a variety of books and journals including Frakcija, PAJ, Tanz-Journal, and Theater der Zeit. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Performance and Head of Dance & Choreography at Falmouth University, UK.
Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum
Since April 2013 professor for theatre studies and dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Schauspielunst 'Ernst Busch'. She studied Theatre studies, Anglistics, Italianistics and Philosophy at the FU Berlin and University Vienna. 2000-2003 she was a research associate in the programme „Theatricality and the crisis of Representation“ at the FU (Free University) Berlin. 2003 to 2006 she was a member of the Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Boundaries Collaborative Research Center. 2008-2010 she has been a member of the Interweaving Performance Cultures International Research Center at the Freie Universität Berlin. 2007 to 2010 she was a member of the GIF-Project „Poetics and Politics of the Future“ (cooperation FU Berlin / Tel Aviv University). In 2008 she completed her dissertation on intersubjective experiences in contemporary exhibition art, published as „Kunst als Aufführungserfahrung“ (Transcript, 2011). 2010 to 2012 she was visiting professor for Dramaturgy at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater „Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“ in Leipzig.
From 1998 to 2002 she collaborated in various projects of Christoph Schlingensief („Chance 2000“, „Bitte liebt Österreich!“, „Hamlet“). 2007 she was an assistant of Tino Sehgal for the exhibition „This situation“ at Hamburger Bahnhof berlin. She has written numerous articles and coedited various books on theatrical and performative phenomena. (Co-editor of a.o. „Schlingensiefs Nazis Rein / Torsten Lemmer in Nazis Raus“ (Suhrkamp, 2003); „Carl Hegemann: Plädoyer für die unglückliche Liebe. Texte über Paradoxien des Theaters“ (Theater der Zeit, 2005); „Auf der Schwelle. Kunst, Risiken und Nebenwirkungen“ (together with Erika Fischer-Lichte, Robert Sollich, Matthias Warstat – Fink, 2005).
Main research: relations between theatre, performance and visual arts, political dimensions of the aesthetic, theorie and aesthetic of contemporary theatre and performance, contemporary dramaturgical practices.
Miika Luoto
Miika Luoto is a Finnish philosopher, aesthetician and translator (born 1966 in Helsinki). After a period of research and teaching at the University of Helsinki, where he originally studied, he has been working mainly at Helsinki art universities: Theatre Academy, University of Art and Design (now Aalto Arts), and Academy of Fine Arts. He is currently Lecturer of philosophy and performance theory at the Theatre Academy.
In addition to numerous articles on Continental philosophy and aesthetics, Miika Luoto has published the books Heidegger ja taiteen arvoitus (“Heidegger and the Enigma of Art”, 2002) and Heidegger: Ajattelun aiheita (“Heidegger: Issues of Thought”, ed. with J. Backman, 2006). In addition to many translations of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida and others, he has edited and translated (with T. Roinila) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Filosofisia kirjoituksia (“Philosophical Writings”, 2012). Currently, he is finishing an English-language study on Heidegger reflecting on the question of art as a problem of finitude and historicity. A book called “Senses of Embodiment: Art, Technics, Media” (edited with M. Elo) is forthcoming from Peter Lang.
Elena Giannotti
Elena Giannotti is an independent dancer. She worked with L’Ensemble Dance-Theatre, Virgilio Sieni, Yoshiko Chuma, Nicole Peisl for The Forsythe Company, Daghdha Dance Co. and Fearghus O’Conchuir amongst others. She has been Rosemary Butcher’s main Interpreter for more than 10 years. As an improviser she has danced with artists like Julyen Hamilton, Vera Mantero, Jennifer Monson, Ray Chung amongst others. Since 2011 she is collaborating with Company Blu, Italy in Improvisation Performance Practice Projects.
She started to make her own work in 2008. To date her works have been shown in Ireland, UK, Mexico, Italy, New York, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. Elena is a Chinese Medicine, Tuina and Qi Gong Practitioner and a Social Dreaming Facilitator.
Vaginal Davis
Vaginal Davis is an originator of the homo-core punk movement and a gender-queer art-music icon. Her concept bands -- including Pedro Muriel and Esther, Cholita! The Female Menudo, black fag, and the Afro Sisters -- have left an indelible mark on the development of underground music. Like Ron Athey, Ms Davis made her name in LA's club performance scene, and has earned herself a similar notoriety as a cultural antagonist and erotic provocateur.
Set apart from gallery-centered art, and Hollywood movies, and from those systems' necessities of high-polish, low-substance production, Vaginal Davis's low-budget -- often no-budget -- performance, experimental film and video practice has critiqued exclusionary conceits from the outside. Davis has been a prolific producer of club performance, video and Xerox-produced Zines, and other forms of antagonistic low-cost, high-impact work. Such as in her drag reconstruction of Vanessa Beecroft's Navy SEALs performance, Ms Davis derails collector-friendly raciness in spectacles of femininity, queerness and blackness. She critiques both the gallery system and the larger cultural trend that it mirrors, with tongue-in-cheek self-exploitation and rude provocations of racial and gender confusion.
Vaginal Davis is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Disrupting the cultural assimilation of gay-oriented and corporate-friendly drag, she positions herself at an uncomfortable tangent to the conservative politics of gay culture, mining its contradictory impulses to interrupt the entrenchment of its assimilatory strategies.