Choreographic Devices

Choreography is no longer simply the art of making dances: complex models of the choreographic are increasingly tasked to investigate and animate the intersecting spatial, corporeal, affective and informational dimensions of being entangled with the world. Reflecting and building on this expansion, the symposium Choreographic Devices extends an invitation to activate the choreographic as a methodology, or device, for trans-disciplinary rehearsal and speculation, as a form of inquiry, and a mode of doing research.

What kind of choreographic arrangements can we compose to put diverse thinkers and practitioners in relation to one another? What kinds of time spaces can be plotted, imagined and enacted, when the symposium itself is choreographed and takes shape as a sequence of sessions, each brought to life by different hosts? Through contributions and interventions by over 30 international protagonists from across an expanded ecology of practices, this multi-format symposium speculates on the affordances of choreographic (re-)arrangements and their complex forms of co-production, and tests how organisational formats, material assemblages, and modes of being alongside each other, might be choreographed otherwise.

Choreographic Devices assembles contributors operating across multiple disciplinary boundaries, including Murat Adash (artist), Edwina Ashton (artist), D. Graham Burnett (teacher, writer, interdisciplinary maker), Ofri Cnaani (artist), Augusto Corrieri (artist), Critical Interruptions (Diana Damian Martin + Bojana Janković) (artists), Lou Forster (art historian, curator), keyon gaskin (artist), Martin Hargreaves (dramaturg, writer, performer), Vlatka Horvat (artist), Lenio Kaklea (choreographer, dancer, writer), Sarah Keenan (writer, theorist), André Lepecki (performance studies theorist, curator), Jason Edward Lewis (digital media theorist, poet, software designer), Raimundas Malašauskas (silk painter), Tavi Meraud (artist), Samaneh Moafi (architect, investigator), Rebecca Moss (artist), Harun Morrison (artist, writer), Sandra Noeth (body theorist, curator), Lara Pawson (writer), Daniela Perazzo (dance and performance theorist), Stamatia Portanova (theorist), Filipa Ramos (writer, curator), Irit Rogoff (educator, theorist), Florian Roithmayr (artist), Georgia Sagri (artist), Edgar Schmitz (artist), SERAFINE1369 (artist), Noémie Solomon (theorist, curator), Matthias Sperling (artist, choreographer, performer), Starhawk (author, permaculture designer, teacher, activist), Soap Bubble (complex mathematical problem), and Arkadi Zaides (choreographer).

Choreographic Devices was developed by Murat Adash, Ofri Cnaani, and Edgar Schmitz, in close dialogue with the ICA, London. It is generously supported by the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE). Choreographic Devices was made possible with additional support from the Art Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. The symposium is a new iteration of an event under the same title originally scheduled for March 2020.