12.30-13.00: walk in & coffee
13.00-14.30
thinking containers: amy pickles
Dissenting Decisions
The name of this workshop stems from a mishearing while transcribing, of a conversation about the inner workings of a self-organised space*. Then it seemed exciting when reading it back, during further discussion on decision making models with a coordinator of another collective space**.
Responding to the second curatorial axis, ‘feminist models of governance’, in Dissenting Decisions we will experiment with different decision making protocols***. We will learn together, about structures and actions needed for group consensus.
Consensus is not a majority vote, but a place we can reach where everyone is in agreement.
Exercises will include reading aloud, using case studies to enact scenarios and (if we have time) pathologically stereotyping our characteristics.
Dissenting Decisions is open for all, the contents may be of particular interest for people who are involved in collective work and self-organising.
* with Othy of Frontyard in Sydney, AU
** with rori of Level Five in Brussels, BE
*** collected with Luke & Cristina of Varia in Rotterdam NL, a collective that amy is a part of.
Thinking containers: If you would like to participate in the workshop Dissenting Decisions, please send an email to [email protected]
bio
amy pickles is an artist, organiser and educator. She experiments with ways to hold onto, and consider, colonial infrastructures we are a part of. Studying is both the form and content of her practice, which is articulated as workshop, curriculum or works that restage debris from collective learning.
14.30- 16.00: lunch break
16.00-17.00
open mic: Ana Letunic
Choreographies of the Commons: Feminist and Participatory Governance as Solidarity in Praxis
What does it mean to choreograph the commons? How can solidarity move beyond sentiment into embodied praxis? This lecture explores feminist and participatory governance as a transformative response to the precarity entrenched in neoliberal cultural policies, particularly within the dance field. It asks: how might care, relational ethics, and shared responsibility -core feminist values- reshape the way we organize cultural work? Drawing from the histories of collectivity in contemporary dance in the post-Yugoslav region, we examine grassroots movements resisting hierarchical, patriarchal power structures. These movements propose participatory governance models rooted in equity, inclusivity, and the dismantling of oppressive systems, engaging in a choreography of the commons where artistic autonomy and community well-being are intertwined. We will also reflect on the concept of curatorial care—not just as an ethical, nurturing practice grounded in feminist ethics, but as an active resistance to the alienation and instrumentalization often faced by cultural workers in precarious systems. By considering how collectivity in the dance field can break existing hierarchies and create spaces of solidarity, we explore how feminist governance might transform cultural organizations into commons: spaces where governance becomes a shared choreography and care a radical, feminist act.
bio
Ana Letunić is a performing arts curator and cultural policy researcher, currently Associate Professor at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, University of Zagreb. She holds an MA in International Performance Research from the University of Warwick and specialized in Curating in Performing Arts at the Universities of Salzburg and LMU Munich. Letunić has collaborated with diverse cultural organizations and networks across Europe and beyond, such as IETM, APAP, Nomad Dance Academy, Life Long Burning, Kooperativa and produktionsbande. Her work focuses on cultural policy, curatorial practices, and the sociopolitical dimensions of performance, addressing themes such as inequality, crises, and the creation of more equitable and sustainable conditions for artistic practice. She has co-curated discursive programs for festivals such as Tanz im August and Zürcher Theater Spektakel. Her publications include “How to Build Networks and Why?” and “Performing Arts Between Politics and Policies,” alongside articles in journals such as TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation and The Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy. Letunić earned her PhD from the University of Hildesheim and the Faculty of Drama Arts in Belgrade.
17.15-18.15
open mic: Betina Panagiotara
Wor(l)ds that (dis)Appear
Τhis presentation examines the complex relations between art –and in particular contemporary dance- work and everyday life, drawing examples from the local dance scene in Athens. It seeks to decipher what it means to engage with feminist practices of care and co-dependency, as well as to share and create common grounds in the arts, amidst the dominance of economy over society and politics. To this end, this presentation will re-examine key-terms that have gained popularity in contemporary performing arts discourse such as accessibility, precarity, invisible labor, care and the commons among others. These concepts often lose their significance through overuse and are then disempowered. Hence, it seems at times that words and their worlds disappear. Could these terms re-appear, be re-imagined in the present time creating shifting futures?
bio
Betina Panagiotara is a dance theorist and dramaturg. Her latest research focuses on cultural policies and educational practices for dance and disability in Europe. Her PhD explored how an artistic scene operates in periods of crisis, drawing examples from the local scene in Athens, focusing on collaborative working modes. She teaches Dance History at professional dance schools, collaborates with dance artists in dramaturgy and research, curates and organizes educational workshops. She participates in international research conferences and has published in academic journals and books. She is a member of the Dance Studies Association (DSA), Springback Academy (Aerowaves), the European Arts & Disability Cluster, and has been a member of the Dance Advisory Committee of the Greek Ministry of Culture (2021 & 2023).
18.15-19.00: pause
19.00-20.00:
open mic: Bojana Kunst
Sonorous leanings: ecofeminist approach to care and artistic labour
If we are looking for more figurative, physical and sensual images to describe the role of care in everyday life, care is best described by its sonority: care is noise, the incessant murmur of everyday work, the sonorous density of space and the vibrating string of time. Care is a sonority torn between noise and silence, between the intensity of the kitchen and the stillness of footsteps near a tired or sick person, it is the constant murmur of the dependency and plurality of our lives, especially when care is seen as reproductive labour. Caring is something dense, chaotic and noisy, and at the same time it is a rhythm dictated by repetition and constant new beginnings. This sonority touches us all transversally through everyday life, bending over us; when we care, we listen to bodies, not look at them. Ecofeminist approaches to care show that care needs to be constantly demystified from its essentialist qualities (that it belongs to women, that it belongs to people) and linked to the constant establishment of situations of dependence and interconnectedness that are often noisy, chaotic and dense. In this talk I am particularly interested in the sonorities of care at work in collective, entangled, communal forms of artistic work. Why is care crucial to an understanding of the existence of artistic communities and their collaborative labour today, especially from the perspective of the ceaseless production of capitalist despair? And how is the labour of care heard in artistic work itself?
bio
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. She was a researcher at the University of Ljubljana, a guest researcher at the University of Antwerp (2002) and a DAAD guest professor at the University of Hamburg (2009 – 2012). She has lectured and taught seminars, workshops and laboratories in various academic institutions, theatres and artistic organizations across Europe, and has continuously worked with independent artistic initiatives and groups of artists. Her research interests are contemporary performance and dance, art theory and philosophy of contemporary art. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. She published Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism, Zero Books, Winchester, London, 2015 and The Life of Art. Transversal lines of Care (in Slovenian 2021, and German 2023).
20.00-22.00: closing party
dj set AMR
bio
Anna-Maria Rammou (AMR) is a sound artist and composer of electronic music. She creates site-specific compositions for live performances. Her work has been released on cassette in various labels, most notably by the Parisian imprint “Vice de Forme”. She has written music for the award-winning short film animation Pulsión (2019) by Pedro Casavecchia. Her sound is characterised by noise and electroacoustic elements. She uses analog gear as well as programming languages to produce sound and processes live sound derived from semi modular synthesisers, acoustic instruments and field recordings. She is a resident host on a bimonthly radio show at stegi.radio. She has completed a series of seminars in Contemporary Music and Sound Technology at the Department of Electronic Music at the Athens Conservatoire, Contemporary Music Research Center (KSYME). She has a Master’s degree in Physical Oceanography.