On Blind Spots and Deep Experiences

13.08. – 16.08. 

Artists from dance, choreography and performance come together at tanzhaus nrw in the sense of a community of practice. Their starting points will be their specific artistic and theoretical approaches as well as their production modes and work realities that they will share with each other in a series of workshops. How can we learn from each other and with each other in the exchange of specific practical knowledge? How can we develop strategies therein that react to the blind spots regarding the distribution of power, structural mechanisms of exclusion and unequal practices of representation in art?

Ana Lessing Menjibar is a German-Spanish performer, dancer, choreographer, and visual artist from Berlin. She weaves body and sound into multimedia installations through her performances, in order to construct poetic worlds. She continually explores a conceptual interpretation of flamenco, pushing the boundaries of both the genre and its movement vocabulary to locate its transformative potential within the context of performance and contemporary dance.

Barbara Lubich is an Italian filmmaker, sociologist, and historian. She is a co-founder of Zentralwerk Kultur und Wohngenossenschaft eG and lives in Dresden. Her artistic research flows into film and performance works which she realises in interdisciplinary constellations.

caner teker, they, graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a master-class student* and has been studying at Amsterdam’s SNDO since 2019. First creations were presented at venues such as tanzhaus nrw, Sophiensaele and Theater Neumarkt as well as within festivals like Radikal Jung and Favoriten. Within the context of visual arts, caner taker presented performances at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen and at the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, and elsewhere. caner taker received the Visual Arts Support Award of the City of Düsseldorf and was a guest fellow* at Pact Zollverein in 2019, while also being among the Norbert Janssen Stiftung stipendiaries* in Munich.

Mamady Wegat studied cultural sciences in Berlin. His work and research emphasis lies on Sound Studies, post-colonialism, and science history as well as on the history of ideas. He has been involved with several different artistic projects as a production assistant since 2019, most recently as production manager and member of the public relations department. He is currently busying himself with the traces of colonial production of knowledge as evidenced in historical sound recordings.

Prof. Dr. Sandra Noeth works internationally as a curator and dramaturge in freelance and institutional contexts, and as a lecturer. In her position as the director of the dramaturgy and research department at Viennese Tanzquartier Wien (from 2009 until 2014), she developed several research and event projects about concepts and practices of responsibility, religion, integrity, and protest in connection with bodies. Sandra Noeth mainly deals with ethical and political perspectives on body practices and body theory and with dramaturgy in the context of body-centric performance arts. She co-edited several books.

ZOE (Marie-Zoe Buchholz) is a multimedia performance artist, creative director, curator, and coach from Düsseldorf. She reflects on rehabilitation and re-appropriation, magic, and marginalisation, reprocessing and futurism in her art, wherein inclusion, visibility and empowerment of people who experience structural discrimination, and their stories receive the focus. She is among the first generation of German vogueing performers and was a member of the first German “house” which laid the foundation for the national scene.