Actes du colloque / Proceedings Association des commissaires des arts du Québec / Association of Arts Curators of Québec Illumination : Symposium international sur le commissariat des arts de la scène, une pratique à consolider Envisioning the Practice : International symposium on performing arts curation Sous la direction de / Compiled and edited by Helen Simard Colloque organisé par / Symposium organized by Dena Davida & Jane Gabriels En collaboration avec la / In collaboration with the Faculté des arts Université du Québec à Montréal Montréal, Québec, Canada À / At L’Agora des science 10 au 13 avril 2014 / April 10‐13, 2014 Table of Contents / Table de matières 1. What Can Contemporary Art Perform? And then Transgress? De/by Emelie Chhangur p. 1 2. Curatorial practices as counter-spaces: the expansion of a field De/by Elisa Ricci p. 14 3. Noticing the Feedback: A Proposal to the Contemporary Dance Field, and/or This Revolution Will Be Crowdsourced De/by Michèle Steinwald p. 22 4. “Cognitive Dissonance” and Performative Diversity in Spoken Word Performance and Curation De/by David Bateman p. 39 5. Entretien de Lynda Gaudreau autour du commissariat en performance De/by Lynda Gaudreau p. 45 6. Perverse Curating De/by Jacob Wren p. 50 7. Performing Arts Curating in South Africa: Context and Possibilities in Rostrum Roulette Festival De/by Ofonime Inyang p. 55 8. The Public Program as a Performative Curatorial Act: Audience engagement, experimental pedagogy and performance in self-initiated art institutions in the Middle East and North Africa De/by Valerio Del Baglivo p. 71 9. Las política y estéticas de la curaduría del performance en Puerto Rico: de la práctica al discurso/ The Politics and Aesthetics of Curating Performance in Puerto Rico: From Practice to Discourse De/by Awilda Rodríguez Lora & Marielys Burgos Meléndez p. 78 10. Le travail du commissaire-musicien d’après la notion de « scénario de concert » De/by Marie-Hélène Breault p. 86 11. Curating Performances in Public Spaces: The SensoriuM presents Hunter, Gatherer, Purveyor De/by Natalie Doonan p. 98 12. Food=Need: Constraints, Reflexivity and Community Performance De/by Pam Patterson p. 105 i 13. Curating Audiovisual Performances in London, UK De/by Oli Sorenson p. 112 14. Rehearsing Collectivity: Choreography Beyond Dance De/by Elena Basteri, Emanuele Guidi, Elisa Ricci p. 117 15. Pseudo-, Anti-, and Total Dance: on Curating an Experimental Dance Series De/by SALTA Collective: Olive Blackburn, Chani Bockwinkle, Maryanna Lachman, Olive Mckeon, Elizaberth McSurdy, Mara Poliak, Brianna Skillie p. 128 16. Reflections on Equity in Curatorial Discourse and Dance Presenting De/by Naomi M. Jackson p. 137 17. Precarious prestige: Curator as a producer of culture in Europe after the year 1989 De/by Marta Keil p. 150 18. Curating Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Curatorial Practices De/by Helen Simard p. 157 19. Re-enact History? Performing the Archive! De/by Julia Kurz p. 172 20. Performance Patina: Notes from a Lecture on Curating the Material Traces of Live Events De/by Abigail Sebaly p. 186 21. How to be when we see: Social codes, spatial domestication, and the performance of viewing De/by Sky Fairchild-Waller & Cara Spooner p. 193 22. Curating Performance on the Edge of the Art Museum De/by Judith Schwarzbart p. 201 23. The city, the community, the contemporaneity. 'Malta – the Idioms' as a proposal for a programme strategy of a festival of applied ideas De/by Katarzyna Tórz p. 208 24. Curatorial Approaches to Site Specific Performance, Action and Participatory Intervention in the Public Realm: Beyond Commemoration - Hit and Run at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin De/by Dovrat Meron p. 215 ii 25. Curation as a form of artistic practice: Context as a new work through UK-based Forest Fringe De/by Deborah Pearson p. 231 26. L’in situ, l’implication communautaire et la mobilité : stratégies pour le commissariat et la création de performances participatives De/by Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte p. 238 27. Site Specific Theatre Curation: An Italian case study De/by Kiara Pipino p. 248 28. Appel aux arts mitoyens De/by Jean-Paul Rathier p. 263 29. Are you not entertained? Curating Performance within the Institution De/by Rie Hovmann Rasmussen p. 275 30. L’œuvre du commissariat : Histoires et expériences de l’événement chez Tino Sehgal De/by Véronique Hudon p. 284 31. The Tempo of Things: Reconsidering Exhibitions as Performances in Modern Art Museums De/by Erin McCurdy p. 296 32. Commissaire en art de la scène au Québec, un militantisme De/by Sylvie Lachance p. 307 33. Collective Creation and Improvised Curation: A Discussion with the Body Slam De/by Body Slam Improv Collective: Gregory Selinger, Helen Simard, Roger White, Xavier Laporte, Victoria Mackenzie, and Claudia Chan Tak p. 318 34. Call for new ways of curating performing arts: theatre.now case study De/by Jonna Strandberg p. 328 35. What We Talk About When We Talk About Curating the « Unexpected » Syreeta McFadden (Poets in Unexpected Places) p. 333 36. L’espace urbain est un univers de récits: Fragments narratifs du paysage olfactif montréalais / The Urban Space is a World of Stories : Narrative fragments of the Montréal Smellscape De/by Natalie B p. 342 37. ARC.HIVE of Contemporary Arab Performing Arts: Memory, Catastrophe, Resistance and Oblivion De/by Adham Hafez p. 351 iii ____________________________________________________________________________ Auteur(e)s en ordre alphabétique/ Authors in alphabetical order Natalie B David Bateman Body Slam Improv Collective : Gregory Selinger, Helen Simard, Roger White, Xavier Laporte, Victoria Mackenzie, and Claudia Chan Tak Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte Marie-Hélène Breault Marielys Burgos Meléndez & Awilda Rodríguez Lora Emelie Chhangur Valerio Del Baglivo Natalie Doonan Sky Fairchild-Walker & Cara Spooner Rie Hovmann Rasmussen Adham Hafez Véronique Hudon Ofonime Inyang Naomi M. Jackson Marta Keil Julia Kurz Adwila Rodriguez Lora Sylvie Lachance Erin McCurdy Syreeta McFadden Marilys Burgos Meléndez Pam Patterson Deborah Pearson Kiara Pipino Jean-Paul Rathier Elisa Ricci Salta Collective: Olive Blackburn, Chani Bockwinkle, Maryanna Lachman, Olive Mckeon, Elizaberth McSurdy, Mara Poliak, Brianna Skillie Judith Schwarzbart Abigail Sebaly Helen Simard Oli Sorenson Michèle Steinwald Jonna Strandberg Katarzyna Tórz Jacob Wren iv Symposium Proceedings « Envisioning the Practice: International symposium on performing arts curation » April 10 to 14, 2014 Proceedings editor: Helen Simard This international symposium examined the emerging practice of performing arts curation. Organized by the Arts Curators Association of Québec in partnership with Tangente and the Faculté des arts of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), “Envisioning the Practice” was held in Montréal (Canada) on April 10-13, 2014. Artistic partners Studio 303 and SAT. /La Société des arts technologiques offered performance programming for this special event. An open call for papers in 2012 and 2013 resulted in ninety propositions, and forty-six were chosen by an international blind jury. Thirty-seven of these papers were submitted by their presenters for inclusion in the proceedings. Over the last thrity-five years, numerous conferences, organizations, publications and graduate university programs have been devoted to developing the profession of contemporary visual arts curation. During this period, the concept of “performing arts curation” – a métier variously known as presenter, programmer, artistic direction, creative producer and cultural agent -- has previously been little discussed among practitioners. In 2010, a collection of texts entitled “Curating Performing Arts” was produced by Frakcija Performing Arts Journal No. 55 in Croatia and, in spring 2014, the journal Theater from Yale University in the United States proposed the theme of “performance curators.” An initial meeting of artists and arts curators was organized in 2011 in Essen, Germany and called “Beyond Curating: Strategies of knowledge transfer in dance, performance and visual arts” was held with support from Tanzplan Essen. Additionally, a premier graduate certificate program, the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), was inaugurated at Wesleyan University (U.S.A) in 2011. Building on these events, “Envisioning the Practice” served to create further parameters and grounds on which to foster theories about the practice. This symposium brought together a wide variety of recent discourses on curation in all performance disciplines (dance/movement, music/sound, theatre/text-based, interdisciplinary, media arts, performance art and emergent practices) in order to enrich, structure and theorize possibilities of curating in these fields, with an interest in “best practices”. Curators (institutional, independent, artist-curators), artists, artistic directors, programmers, presenters, producers, arts administrators, art historians, art critics, scholars and university students proposed papers exposing various aspects of current practices in performing arts curation. v Les actes du symposium « Illumination : Symposium international sur le commissariat des arts de la scène, une pratique à consolider » Du 10 au 14 avril 2014 Sous la direction d’Helen Simard Ce symposium international examinait la pratique et les fondements théoriques du commissariat des arts de la scène. Organisé par Dena Davida et Jane Gabriels de l’Association des commissaires des arts du Québec, en partenariat avec Tangente et la Faculté des arts