Conference: Expanded Choreography. Situations, Movements, Objects…
29, 30, 31 March
MACBA
Plaça dels Àngels, 1 08001
Barcelona, Spain
www.macba.cat
www.macba.cat/en/expanded-choreography-situations
In the last few years the term ‘choreography’ has been used in an ever-expanding sense, becoming synonymous with specific structures and strategies disconnected from subjectivist bodily expression, style and representation. Accordingly, the meaning of choreography has transformed from referring to a set of protocols or tools used in order to produce something predetermined, i.e. a dance, to an open cluster of tools that can be used in a generic capacity for both analysis and production.
Choreography is today emancipating itself from dance, engaging in a vibrant process of articulation. Choreographers are experimenting with new models of production, alternative formats have enlarged the understanding of social choreography considerably and are mobilizing innovative frontiers in respect of self-organization, empowerment, and autonomy. Simultaneously we have seen a number of exhibitions concerned with choreography often placed in a tension between movement, situation and objects. Choreography needs to redefine itself in order to include artists and others who use choreographic strategies without necessarily relating them to dance.At the same time, it needs to remain inclusive of choreographers involved in practices such as engineering situations, organization, social choreography and movements as well as expanding towards cinematic strategies, documentary and documentation and rethinking publication, exhibition, display, mediatization, production and post-production.
In short, choreography is currently experiencing a veritable revolution. Aesthetically, it is turning away from established notions of dance with its strong association with skill and craft, to instead establish autonomous discourses that override causalities between conceptualization, production, expression, and representation. At the same time it is gaining momentum on a political level as it is placed in the middle of a society to a large degree organized around movement, subjectivity and immaterial exchange. Choreography is not a priori performative, nor is it bound to expression and reiteration of subjectivity, it is becoming an expanded practice, a practice that in and of itself is political.
The three days conference is dedicated to choreography but will include participants from the fields of visual art, art history, performance studies, cultural studies, dance and philosophy. A series of lectures will be alternated with conversations, discussions, panels and coffee-breaks. The participants will experience the exhibition Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy at the Fundació Tàpies as well as other significant works. The intent of the conference is to introduce different perspectives and locate a departure point for a discourse particular to choreography as an expanded practice, away from artistic research and into other worlds.
With Bojana Cvejić, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Graham Harman, Ana Janevski, André Lepecki, Xavier Le Roy, Maria Lind, Isabel de Naverán, Luciana Parisi, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Mårten Spångberg, Francisco Tirado, Christophe Wavelet and others.
The conference will result in a major anthology.
An event organized by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), the University of Dance and Circus Stockholm, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Mercat de les Flors, with the support of the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, on the occasion of the exhibition Retrospective by Xavier Le Roy at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Devised by Mårten Spångberg.
MACBA Auditorium. Free admission. Limited seating
For further information write to: programespublics@macba.cat
Venues: MACBA, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Mercat de les Flors
