Community of Practice

Community of Practice is an approach that is applied in crisis and conflict studies and in educational theory, as well as elsewhere, to approximate a problem or a concrete complex issue from different perspectives, with consideration towards solutions and practice. A group of persons who are active artistically, producing, curating, writing, and filming in the dance, performance, and choreography sectors have been transferring this approach to the artistic field over the course of five workshops since 2021.

Through the exchange on each respective, partially widely varying work practice, they identified common aspirations and formulated questions such as “How can we learn, together and from each other, in the exchange of specific practical knowledge? How can we develop strategies to react to the distribution of power, to mechanisms of structural exclusion and disparate representation practices in the arts? How can we actively influence them?”

At the end of this process, a shared gesture emerges: A poster series titled Körper machen Kontexte (Bodies Create Context). The poster series picks up the format of terms and conditions that define important aspects that make up the basics of any collaboration. The six-point terms and conditions are an invitation as well as an incitement to consider, both within as well as without the field of the arts, disparate conditions and necessary changes in existing and forthcoming collaborations.

Ana Lessing Menjibar

Ana Lessing Menjibar is a German-Spanish performer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist from Berlin. In her performances, she interweaves body and sound to form multimedia installations, striving for the creation of poetic worlds. She continuously explores a conceptual interpretation of flamenco, expanding the genre and its movement vocabulary, in order to situate its transformative potential within the context of performance and contemporary dance.

Barbara Lubich

Barbara Lubich is an Italian filmmaker, sociologist, and historian. She is a co-founder of the Zentralwerk Kultur und Wohngenossenschaft eG and lives in Dresden. Her artistic research flows into film and performance works that she realises within interdisciplinarian constellations. www.barbara-lubich.net

caner teker

caner teker is a survivor, supporter, and choreographer.

Mamady Wegat

Mamady Wegat studied cultural sciences in Berlin. His work and research focus lies on sound studies, post-coloniality, as well as on science and idea history. He has been accompanying various artistic projects as production assistance, most recently as production manager as well as on staff of the public relations team, since 2018. He is currently busy with the traces of colonial production of knowledge in historic sound recordings.

Dr. Sandra Noeth

Dr. Sandra Noeth is a professor at the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)/ Berlin University of the Arts, and she works internationally as a curator, and in both freelance as well as institutionalised contexts. She is mainly occupied with ethical and political perspectives on body practice and theory; her publications on the topic: Bodies of Evidence (with Gurur Ertem, Passagen 2018); Resilient Bodies, Residual Effects. Artistic Articulations of Borders and Collectivity from Lebanon and Palestine (transcript 2019).

ZOE (Marie-Zoe Buchholz)

ZOE (Marie-Zoe Buchholz) is a performance artist working in multi-media environments, a creative director, curator, and coach from Düsseldorf. She reflects on rehabilitation and re-appropriation, magic and marginalisation, reappraisal and futurism in her art, wherein the emphasis lies on the inclusion, the visibility, and the empowerment of structurally discriminated persons and their stories. She was among the first generation of voguing performers in Germany and also a member of the first German “house” that went on to establish the scene over here.

Community of Practice is part of the festival VOLUME UP. VOLUME UP is funded by Kunststiftung NRW.