Choreographies of the Archipelago: Artists in Conversation

On December 3-6, 2020, the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance will host Choreographies of the Archipelago: Artists in Conversation, a series of online exchanges between interdisciplinary performance artists who work across diverse aesthetic and political contexts. Artist pairings include: Yasuko Yokoshi and mayfield brooks, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Okwui Okpokwasili, Arkadi Zaides and Ligia Lewis, as well as Eleonora Fabião and Jelili Atiku. All sessions are free and open to the public.

How do singular, dispersed artistic gestures teach us ways of listening, touching, and assembling across distance and difference? How can interdisciplinary performance practices articulate the felt and embodied relations of global uprisings happening both through and against the networked ecologies that capitalize on our attention? Staging a series of conversations, Choreographies of the Archipelago invites artists who work across a variety of geopolitical and disciplinary contexts to reflect on both their shared and differing understanding of what vital concerns, methods, and gestures are called for by the pressing challenges faced at both local and transnational levels. From the immediacy of state violence and the rise of autocracy, to the ongoing and ever intensifying struggle against the separatist and extractive logics of capitalist and colonialist regimes, art’s world-making capacity has never been more essential to forging a collective future. These dialogues invite artists to discuss how their creative and critical practices may participate in this diverse endeavor, while pushing back against the demand that art serves as a symbol of global salvation.

The title draws on Édouard Glissant’s foresight that “the entire world is becoming an archipelago” to reaffirm the necessity of thinking singularities in common while resisting epistemological fixity and political homogeneity. Instead of dictating a way forward, these online dialogues emerge as a score for movement and variation; they stage a virtual rehearsal for the metamorphosis of an era and the dissolution of a stable paradigm of “the global.”

Part One
Yasuko Yokoshi & mayfield brooks
Thursday December 3, 7pm EST / Friday December 4, 9am JST. RSVP here

Part Two
Tanya Lukin Linklater & Okwui Okpokwasili
Friday December 4, 3pm EST. RSVP here

Part Three
Arkadi Zaides & Ligia Lewis
Saturday December 5, 12pm EST / 6pm CET. RSVP here

Part Four
Eleonora Fabião & Jelili Atiku 
Sunday December 6, 12pm EST / 6pm WAT. RSVP here

There will be live closed captioning for all sessions.

Support
Generous support for this event has been provided by the Ford Foundation.

About ICPP 
The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance is dedicated to the collective study of performance and its histories with a focus on developing new critical methods for curating time-based art. Learning alongside interdisciplinary and experimental artistic practices, ICPP offers a unique forum for exchange and collaboration between practitioners and thinkers in the field. ICPP provides opportunities for collaborative and individualized research to reimagine the material, conceptual, and affective infrastructures that accompany artists across shifting social, political, and economic landscapes. Co-founded by Sam Miller and Pam Tatge at Wesleyan University in 2011, ICPP currently hosts a 2-year, low-residency MA in Performance Curation.

Choreographies of the Archipelago is convened by Josh Lubin-Levy and Noémie Solomon.