DAY 8 May 9

And what about those who prefer not to appear*?

Simon Asencio, Martina Leeker

VIDEO

Lecture Performance

And what about those who
prefer not to appear*?

Time: 4pm ~ 6:30pm CEST

Simon Asencio explores different modes of presence to reflect on notions of publicness, anonymity and performance on- and offline. Martina Leeker employs Theory Theatre and hyper-affirmative performing on topics of digital cultures as a critique.

"Once I tutored a student who, over the course of our work together, became psychotic. This happened before my eyes and yet presented itself as a deep mystery. It was, among other things, a mystery in language. After the break the sentences in his essay paragraphs made no sense but they had great rythm and were very interesting. They possessed a leaping energy which seemed to be liberated (as if language were a demon which had been suffering under constraint).

One day he asked me if characters chose their authors. I sat for a moment silently, transfixed by the prospect of characters floating through the ether as they searched for the right "host". What should I say? Where did characters come from?

The silence lengthened and began to feel weird. I came up with something calm and rational, mostly because I didn't want my peculiar behaviour to impact a vulnerable student. But I would like to leave that question open (...)"

Camille Roy, Under Grid: An Essay On Obscurity in From Our Hearts to Yours, New Narrative as Contemporary Practice, Rob Halpern, Robin Tremblay-McGawn ed.

4pm CEST Keynote by Fanny Cybert(r)on*

BREAK (with Smokers Room)

5pm CEST Jessica* in conversation with Simon Asencio*

5:30 CEST Discussion

* Judith Butler’s words sourced from the first chapter of her book Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly

* Fanny Cybert(r)on performed by Martina Leeker

* Jessica and Simon Asencio performed by Paulina Lara and Stefan Govaart

Martina Leeker

Marina Leeker has a background in theatre studies and media studies, as well as in theatre/ performance practice. She held an assistant professorship in “Theatre and Media” at the University of Bayreuth from 2002 to 2010 and was a senior researcher at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Centre for Digital Cultures from 2013 until 2018. She had been guest professor for media studies, and theatre pedagogy. Her research interests include: digital cultures; theatre/performance and media; theatre, performativity and digitality; art and technology; critique; posthuman (art) education; mimesis. As part of her academic work, Leeker is building on research with artistic methods, in particular performative methods, within lecture-performances and speculation-labs.

Websites:
martina-leeker.de
projects.digital-cultures.net/e-i

Contact:
ml@martina-leeker.de.

Simon Asencio

Simon Asencio creates performances that question the notions of liveness, stage and audience. His work takes the form of exhibition scenarios, text-based ephemera and covert acts. He often uses imposture and the expression of doubt as means to develop and present his work. Since 2014, he is a body for Jessica’s work, a protracted performance of real-life background acting; and works on the publication The Book of Rumours, an extended project on deceptive narratives and the performance of information. In 2018, he launched Memes, a series of text-based experiments to enable transferences of subjectivity. Recent presentations of his work include the Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Arts, in Warsaw; Immaterial Performance programme, in Mexico City; Celje Center for Contemporary Arts, in Slovenia; Jan Mot and Bureau des Réalités, both in Brussels. Residency projects include Triangle France, Marseille and BAR Projects, Barcelona.

Paulina Lara

Paulina Lara (Mexico, 1990) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Madrid. Her work explores the relation between architecture, identity and space through different media such as photography, sculpture and ceramics often collaborating with other artists and professionals from different fields. Her collaboration with artist and filmmaker Nicolás Combarro for the project Spontaneous Architecture, an exhibition and a photobook has been exhibited in Madrid, Barcelona, Galicia, Paris and Chicago. As a performer she has collaborated with Dora García on several occasions for different pieces, highlighting the retrospective exhibition of the artist at the Museo Reina Sofía, under the direction of Michelangelo Miccolis. She collaborated with Simon Asencio for the piece Extr Jessica during the performance program of Material Art Fair 2019, Mexico City.

Stefan Govaart

Stefan Govaart engages dance, performance, poetry and theory to draw out histories, gestures and locution that have a convoluted relationship with their own sense of continuity. Govaart works as a dancer (Eszter Salamon, Chloe Chignell, a.o.), co-organizes SpringMeeting at Performing Arts Forum (France), and holds an MA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam.