Study Cycle
Gain insights into our 2023 Study Cycle.
University of the Arts Dance MFA Program
July 10–14, 2023
A series of daily situations for collective study
“Critical Bodies:borders|ACCESS|care”
ICI CCN Montpellier, France
Guest curators and directors: Thomas F. DeFrantz and Isabelle Ginot
Invited guests include
Barak ade Soleil
Nicolas Bourriaud
Donna Faye Burchfield
Yve Laris Cohen
Anne Kerzerho
Isabelle Launay
Josep Rafanell
Myriam Suchet
Arkadi Zaides
A shift in paradigm is currently in process, according to Paul B. Preciado, toward a nonbinary epistemology.
An epistemology where oppositions that structure hierarchies of values in post-industrial societies—body vs. mind, masculine vs feminine, productive vs. unproductive, abled vs. disabled—are challenged by global movements of resistance.
Trans bodies, subaltern bodies, migrant bodies …
What are body experiences of being in transition? Realignments in age, gender, expressions of sexuality? What are practices of training and untraining?
Geopolitical borders are crucial in our world, and stand as strict material and political limits that many bodies transgress for survival. Other borders, although less material, shape our lives and actions. Aesthetic borders and formations of art. Social differences. City neighborhoods. Academic disciplines. Conceptual categories. A nagging sense of belonging or not being part of ... Feeling conformity or feeling strange. Our moves continuously shape and extend the limits of borders, shaping and unshaping them, twisting their lines, blurring form.
Access, Care; Learning, Study. What do we need to access shared spaces of learning and unknowing? Crafting common spaces through discourse and listening, moving and unmoving. Orienting towards difference; a discourse of criticality and care. Political renderings of need and desire made manifest through interaction and change. How do we constitute a commons that cares toward our variety?
During this symposium, we will explore what practices of dance and art, activist actions or researches are supporting, embodying or resisting aspects of this paradigm.
– Thomas F. DeFrantz & Isabelle Ginot
En français
“Corps critiques: Frontières|ACCÈS|soin”
ICI CCN Montpellier, France
Un changement de paradigme serait en cours, selon Paul B. Preciado, vers une épistémologie non binaire. Dans cette épistémologie à venir, les oppositions qui structurent les différences de valeurs de nos sociétés post-industrielles – corps vs esprit, masculin vs féminin, productif vs improductif, handicapé vs valide, etc. – sont mises au défi par des mouvements globalisés de résistance. Corps trans, corps subalternes, corps migrants …
Quelles sont les expériences des corps en transition? comment se redéfinissent les âges, les genres, les expressions des sexualités? Quelles sont leurs pratiques d’entraînement, et de dés-entraînement?
Les frontières géopolitiques sont au fondement de notre monde, et forment des limites matérielles et politiques strictes que de nombreux corps tentent de traverser pour survivre. D’autres frontières, quoique moins matérielles, imposent leur forme à nos vies et à nos actions. Celles des esthétiques et des genres en art. Les différences sociales. Les quartiers de nos villes. Les disciplines académiques. Les catégories conceptuelles. Une impression tenace de faire partie de quelque chose et d’en être exclu.e. Se sentir conforme ou étranger.e. Tous nos gestes ne cessent de consolider ou défaire ces frontières, en tordre les lignes, en brouiller la clarté.
Accéder; prendre soin; apprendre; étudier. Quels accès avons nous à des espaces communs d’apprentissage et de non-savoir? Comment fabriquer des espaces communs par le discours et l’écoute, le mouvement et sa suspension? S’orienter vers la différence, et construire une parole de critique et de soin?
Quels sont les effets politiques du besoin et du désir qui se manifestent dans l’interaction et le changement? Comment fabriquer un commun qui prend soin de notre diversité?
Durant cette semaine de symposium, il s’agira d’explorer comment nos pratiques de danse et d’art, nos actions militantes ou nos recherches participent à certains aspects de ce changement de paradigme, ou a contraire lui résistent.
– Thomas F. DeFrantz & Isabelle Ginot
Intervenant.e.s confirmé.e.s
Barak ade Soleil
Nicolas Bourriaud
Donna Faye Burchfield
Yve Laris Cohen
Anne Kerzerho
Isabelle Launay
Josep Rafanell
Myriam Suchet
Arkadi Zaides
Fifth Quarter is out now!
This book is published on the occasion of the University of the Arts Dance MFA in residence at BOK, Philadelphia, June 28 - July 2, 2021 a week long study cycle engaging in independent and collaborative learning exercises that respond to the site of the gym. This publication can be seen as “an archive of the time spent together”.
Reach out to esiddiquie@uarts.edu if you are interested in purchasing a copy.
The School for Temporary Liveness, Vol. 2
June 15 – 19, 2020
A series of daily situations for collective study
Watch, listen, speak, practice and reflect with Morgan Bassichis, Tina Campt, rile*, Rebecca Schneider, Julie Tolentino, Simone White, Wilmer Wilson IV and Arkadi Zaides
Co-Curators: Lauren Bakst and Niall Jones
Photo: Constance Mensh.
On the closing day of the first School for Temporary Liveness in October 2019, we found ourselves assembled on a staircase. Spilling from steps onto landings and into hallways, this was where we had to be. Inhabiting architectures of transition opened other possibilities for thinking together. In those spaces between and alongside, collective assembly became an occasion to exchange knowledge, share experiences, and continue dreaming of the world’s futures.
We are coming back to school, even though we never left. As the third annual Study Cycle for the University of the Arts MFA in Dance program, the School for Temporary Liveness, Vol 2. continues our investment in experimental pedagogies within and alongside dance and performance. Imagining ourselves together in liminal spaces as we gather virtually from bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, closets, basements, porches and fire escapes, how might we propose and enact models for living in and with the world?
We invoke hallways—those transitory spaces of sociality and encounter—to hold our collective and experimental study. In this critical movement between before and after, how do we learn? We will let ourselves not know so that we might more accurately feel what we already knew. We attend diligently and effortfully to the inquiries and practices that call us toward our experiences of liveness. This is school and study is an activity best done together, with all of the pleasures and difficulties. We are all students.
Original support for the School for Temporary Liveness was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia.
Notes on the School for Temporary Liveness is out now!
This publication gathers reflections on and responses to The School for Temporary Liveness, Vol. 1—a week-long event that brought performances, workshops, talks, conversations, and new formats for study together within the poetic frame of a school. It includes contributions by Lauren Bakst, Jon Baldwin, Donna Faye Burchfield, Thomas F. DeFrantz, VK Preston, Rebecca Schneider, Andrew J. Smyth and Connie Yu. Their reflections offer glimmers of what the School for Temporary Liveness was, and have embedded within them tools and inquiries for ongoing collective study.
View the publication online here or email lbakst@uarts.edu to order yours in print for $10.
Notes on the School for Temporary Liveness has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
