Ania Nowak
Democracy, You’re Breaking my Heart: performative tools for tomorrow
19. – 31. 8. 24
About the Course
In this course, we will practice being un/familiar with our knowledge of the world—its definitions, modes of existence, our and others’ bodies and identities. We will explore desire, attachment, and breakup as performative strategies to tackle the complexities of interdependence, attention, and democracy. If society is broken and we are divided, how can improvisation become a tool for expanding our capacity for delight and discomfort? How can performance support the ruination of forces which stifle us and the activation of multiple, often inconsistent desires? What does disobedience look and feel like today and tomorrow?
The US-American cultural theorist Lauren Berlant wrote, “Cruel optimism is about how people will stay in relation to their object even if it destroys them because they can’t bear giving up the pleasure of knowing the world in a particular way.” In the classroom, we will create tools to embody, move, think, speak, sound, read, and perform with others; in other words, how we stay connected. We will witness each other and seek an appropriate language of feedback collectively and individually.
Information
- Venue
- Festung Hohensalzburg
- Date
- 19. – 31. 8. 24
- Teaching language
- English (Polish possible)
- Requirements
- The workshop is open to everyone, with a special invitation to participants with queer, crip, BIPOC, and migration experience.
- Maximum number of participants
- 20
- Participation fee
- 670 Euro (reduced 495 Euro)
Ania Nowak
Ania Nowak approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can and cannot do. Nowak develops formats such as live and video performance, installation and text. In her practice Ania engages with bodies in their nonlinear feeling and thinking capacities to tackle the difficulties of companionship and care in times of perpetual crisis. Her work attempts to reimagine the notions of disorder, pleasure, disease, intimacy, pain, sexuality, class and accessibility as sites of binary-free living. Nowak collaborates with alternative educational programs in Eastern Europe, such as Kem School in Warsaw and the School of Kindness in Sofia. Ania’s works have been presented at Berlinische Galerie, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Akademie der Künste, KW Pogo Bar, Sophiensaele, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Nowy Teatr, Warsaw; 14th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius and 12th Gothenburg Biennial, a.o. Nowak recently held solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Galerie Wedding in Berlin. She lives and works between Berlin and Warsaw.
