Goal(s): Sharing results on ARTwork and ARTIcle; Intertwining networks; Multiplying knowledge and sharing findings of the RELAY project to a wider community
Activity
Our third and final symposium was held in collaboration with Impulstanz Wien, the largest European festival for contemporary dance. As part of the LACE Symposium, RELAY's findings, tools, and methods were shared through practical, hands-on formats. This included a "Deep Dive," which began with a project presentation on RELAY, followed by three parallel workshops, and a "smuggling" session where participants exchanged insights, findings, and methods explored during the workshops.
RELAY team´s first contribution to the symposium program was to facilitate a panel that served as a summary and further discussion of the first day of the program. Invited were 5 colleagues that had facilitated workshops during that day, and the participants of these workshops.
As the symposium encouraged the participant´s initiatives, we felt that it would be important to mirror this also in the panel. In addition, we wanted to use some of the exchanging methods we have developed during RELAY, to prioritize connections between the day’s different presentations and to make sure that everyone got to speak, and not only the panelist, as it often happens.
We set up a very simple structure, dividing the plenum into groups of 5-7 people and give them 30 minutes to discuss their experiences of the day, and towards the end of the given time coming up with a question or a topic to be shared or further discussed in the plenum, which the they did, and a very inspiring discussion took place for about 50 minutes. Afterwards, we left 10 minutes of time for even smaller groups - between 3 and 4 people - to summarize and wrap up the panel among themselves.
Like this, we could give space for a broader multitude of perspectives than we would have had through a plenum panel, and put to use this principle we had developed throughout our project time. Also, through this more dynamic use of time, space and constellations, relays and passing on of information was implemented, and for many participants the method provided a sustainable use of time, as the smaller groups create more space for each participant.
Just like on the first day, the second was rounded up through a panel. Here, everyone from the RELAY team got a chance to discuss and reflect in smaller groups together with the participants from the day’s workshops.
Workshops
We were invited to the symposium to facilitate what was called a “Deep Dive”, which meant a 90 minute slot to be organized as we wished. To mirror the project's concepts of diversity in perspectives and transitive knowledge development we created 3 different workshops, each of them led by a team of 3 RELAY team members. After a 15 minute introduction to the project, led by Konstantinos Tsakerelis and Rasmus Ölme, sketching the conceptual and administrational backdrop of the project,, the participants divided themselves between the 3 proposals.
The workshop Catalin Cretu, Andrea Duta and Jan Burkhardt facilitated started with the practice of listening and positioning oneself to the source of sound, and letting oneself be touched and moved by it. Already this exercise created choreographic- compositional constellations that made the transition into sensing and moving from, with and into fields of resonance very organic. „Fields of resonance“ here means a space ( often between 2 or more bodies, but also between bodies and objects, or features of the space, and similar regarding renounce in time, a time span between 2 moments, that are filled with more intensity, more vibrancy, more vitality and potential than conventional fields of space and time. These intensities or vibrancies can be objectively measurable, but also subjectively experienced - or anything in between.
Very dynamic negotiations of relationship and spatial and timely compositions emerged, which could be experienced as a hands on expression of RELAY principles in motion: passing on and picking up information, allowing multitude of perspectives ( already on an individual base, and of course taking in those of all the other fellow participants negotiating the tasks), taking care of one's own and other's needs while negotiating the tasks, which is a fundamental requirement to contribute to sustainable relationships and structures, and be open to learn in the first place, which is the always underlying invitation in any RELAY encounter.
The workshop Max Wallmeier and Maia Means facilitated gave participants an insight into the scores and practices of ARTwork. The participants were guided through a version of the "travel score", a method used during the travels to and from LTTs, in order to bridge the events and think more sustainably about travel. Then, participants were guided through the score "starting a sculpture", an introduction to how we have been practically working with building the ARTwork. Participants gathered objects, sound or movement materials from the nearby area and placed them in relation to each other. We discussed the potential of working through materials and gave a short insight into the process of the sculpture and time capsules of ARTwork.
The workshop facilitated by Vera Sanders, Evita Tsakalaki and Stella Malliaraki drew on learning methods and tools from the Cologne and Crete encounters. The three facilitators worked complementary to each other starting from a score that used observation and drawing, moving on to open questions about love, attention, care and finishing with a suggestion on what sort of boundaries we set as individuals and as communities and how these can be expressed through our bodies.
After these tasks, which took an hour to play with, the 3 different workshop groups met again, and we invited participants again to split up into groups of 3-5, making sure that each group would have at least one member of each workshop, and share their experiences. Like this naturally information could flow between the different workshops, and instead of only missing out 2 out of 3 options, at least through others' shared experiences each one could gain some kind of knowledge of the offered scope the workshop provided.
Through both our facilitated panel and our workshop, we aimed to not theorize on previously found results, and instead give participants a real time experience of how RELAY principles can unfold.
We raised awareness for our soon to be published exposition on Research Catalogue , and had many conversations about our project also in between the workshops and program points throughout the symposium and entire festival.
Impulstanz is the most important and by far largest festival for contemporary dance in Europe, and this year's issue even broke the record of number of participants. We experienced that the integration of our project into this large hub of information was very successful.
Contributions by: Konstantinos Tsakirelis, Rasmus Ölme, Stella Malliaraki, Vera Sander, Evita Tsakalaki, Jan Burkhardt, Cătălin Crețu, Andreea Duta, Maia Means, Max Wallmeier
Presented Results: ARTicle, ARTwork