The Practice of Practise: Teaching as Artistic Research
performative art, dance and somatics
In 2023 Im_flieger offers a second edition of > SCHULE@Im_flieger: a hybrid format that combines transgenerational and transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, production and discourse. Under the direction and mentoring of Malcolm Manning, the year will be dedicated to the topic „The Practice of Practise: Teaching as Artistic Research“
Malcolm Manning will teach his work “Choreographing Subjectivities” through the lens of developing practices and supports participants to develop and share theirs. Two guest-researchers, the architect and Feldenkrais practioner Auxiliadora Gálvez (ES) and the dance maker and societal animator Pia Lindy (FI), will share their specific approaches in weekend workshops. The intention is to: refine existing practices; develop new practices, both individually and collectively; become more skilled at sharing our practices. We will blur the lines between what we traditionally think of as class and performance, searching for new formats to share the results of our artistic research. The participants will document and deepen the developed practices within the residency and share it with a wider public.
Artistic direction / mentor 2023: Malcolm Manning
Curation: Anita Kaya, Malcolm Manning, Agnes Schneidewind
selected artists/participants 2023: Carola Fuchs, Fiona Hanley, Therese Leick, Asher O’Gorman, Christina Rauchbauer, Nina Sandino
guests/experts 2023: Pia Lindy, María Auxiliadora Gálvez
Coordination / Production: Anita Kaya, Sara Lanner
Supported by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and Austrian Federal Ministry for the Arts, Culture, Public Service
The Practice of Practise
The concept of this part-time, year-long program is to facilitate a collective learning experience for a small group revolving around sharing movement-, perception- and transmedia practices. Practices are simply what we do when we go to our studio, actually or metaphorically, to engage in our artistic processes. Practices are processes that we repeat again and again; because they intrigue and fascinate us; because maybe they make us feel good; or offer a container for us to work something out. They can be practices that we learned. Or that we make up ourselves. Or things once learned. No matter what their origin, they transform, mutate, synthesise and hybridise into something else over time. Participants will share a common interest in transmedia practices of movement and perception, and be open to diverse practices such as writing, drawing, imaging, walking, dreaming, growing …
Teaching as Artistic Research
We will share practices that we have each developed in our work by teaching them to each other so that we can do them too. We will work with a definition of teaching not as transmission but creating the conditions for learning to happen. We will pose teaching as the performative face of our artistic research. We will practise performing teaching for each other! The intention is to: refine existing practices; develop new practices, both individually and collectively; become more skilled at sharing our practices. We will consider sharing through teaching both as a mode of artistic research and performance. We will blur the lines between what we traditionally think of as class and performance, searching for new formats to share the results of our artistic research.
School
The idea is to meet regularly over nine months to unfold our practice of sharing practices. School begins and ends with a full-week together. The first full week is for arriving as a group, getting organised, clarifying what we mean by practice and starting to practise. The final full week is an opportunity to open up to share practices and reflect on them with a wider public. Throughout the rest of the school year there will be fortnightly Tuesday evening meetings and seven weekend meetings. Five of the weekend meetings will be open workshops; three taught by Malcolm and two others by guest artists. The other two weekends will be closed core-group meetings. The participants will be artists-in residence @Im_flieger and there is the possibility to have extra studio-times for self-study, self-organised sharing/teaching events and/or to develop the practice further to an artistic work. We will take a seven-week break through July and August.
Background / Malcom Manning
“In 1995, I wrote: ‘The truly radical potential of dance is realised not through watching a dance, but through experiencing dancing.’ Around ten years later, I followed through on this by setting aside performance making and choosing instead to make the process of creating dance classes my artistic practice. I believe in dance as a transformative force for good in the world and borrow from Anna Halprin her definition of dance as a “particular way of paying attention”. By this definition, any activity can be experienced as dancing, and we can apply the skills we learn through studying dance to any activity.
Besides teaching in contemporary dance educations, centres, festivals and companies, I made it my personal mission to facilitate dance experiences for as wide a range of non-dancers as possible. Teaching is often regarded as something an artist ends up doing to support their ‘real’ artistic work; something ideally to be avoided. And teaching also has an unfortunate connotation of the transmission of knowledge from one who knows to others who do not know.
This is not what I do. My concern, after Moshe Feldenkrais, is rather to “create the conditions for learning”. I often do this through the careful use of language to facilitate others to create for themselves an experience from which they can learn something.
My process is first to develop practices on my own and then to share them by teaching to others. I consider my artistic research cycle as one that oscillates between solo studio work and presentation in classes and workshops. More and more contemporary artworks involve creating experiences for an audience where the lines between a class and a performance become blurred. Just as a choreographer might chose the form of a performance to be watched by an audience as a way to share the results of their artistic interests and research, I view the form of the class experienced by participants as a way to share mine.
My current interests are in how we imagine ourselves into being in the sense of how the models we hold of the mind body relationship shape our experience; and how inviting in new models can shift our experience of ourselves and our relationship to the world.”
PROVISIONAL SCHEDULE March – December 2023 // Temporary School for „The Practice of Practise:
Teaching as Artistic Research“
The school year consists of a series of two week-long and seven weekend meetings (6 hours/day, 1 hour break included) together with a series of sixteen bi-monthly Tuesday evening practice meetings. Five of the weekend workshops are also open for additional participants to join. Within the core group participants there will be extra studio-time offered.
15-19th March 2023
Core-group week – Arriving Into The Process // Malcolm Manning
An introduction to the group, sharing of interests and artistic practices.
22-23rd April 2023
Biotensegrity: Anatomy for the 20th Century (open workshop) // Malcolm Manning
Originating within the medical profession, Biotensegrity offers a simpler, more organic, holistic model of our anatomy that at the same time gives rise to more complex and subtle interactions with ourselves and the world.
20-21st May 2023
Extended Minds (open workshop) // Malcolm Manning
What if we’ve got that mind-body relationship thing the wrong way around? What if it’s not the mind that lives in the body but the body that lives within an extended mind? We’ll explore one possible explanation of this; panpsychism.
10-11th June 2023
Dancing outside the box (open workshop) // Pia Lindy (FI)
What happens to our moving, thinking and choice making when working as artists in different contexts and environments? Exploring, sharing and reflecting on experiences, ideas and questions on process-oriented artistic practices and potentialities of dance, movement and improvisation in everyday life and society.
8-9th July 2023
Core-group weekend (closed group)
Returning to the core group for a longer meeting to give us a chance to reflect on the process so far.
2-3rd September 2023
Radical Calmness Practice (open workshop) // Malcolm Manning
You’ll be guided to experience your expansive perceptual body in a process something like experiential anatomy, but different, and then encouraged to move to find rest and stillness, in a process something like authentic movement, but different.
30th September – 1st October 2023
Sentient Ecologies (open workshop) // Auxiliadora Gálvez (ES)
This workshop will cross somatics with architecture and landscape approaches, but also with the imaginaries able to make revolutions in our daily practices through new awareness and renovated perceptions. Theory and practice will be intertwined with active environments.
28-29th October 2023
Core-group weekend (closed group)
Returning to the core group for a longer meeting to share and reflect on our own practices and the process so far. Planning for the final meeting in December.
29th November – 3rd December 2023
Sharing Our Practices with the public
The conclusion of the project would be a sharing of our practices in whatever setting is most appropriate and sympathetic to our individual and collective work: performative work; taught classes or workshops; lectures; exhibition of artwork; panel discussion.
Asher O’Gorman (UK/IE/AT) Irish-British artist works as a dancer, maker and hosts workshops in various kaleidoscopic settings. Her work is a meeting of choreographic and visual art practices that open out the metaphysical manner in whichwe engage with objects and each other. She collaborates closely with raw materials drawing out their physical performative agency. Highlighting the tactile, visual, sensuous and existential nature of things to reveal the wonder of the “ordinary”; Thus challenging the hegemony of anthropocentrism. In 2021 Asher initiated HOOD for Artist Parentsand is a member of the APL. She holds a B.A. in Choreography Dartington College of Arts;Graduated from dance and choreographic training in (SEAD) 2008;Gained her MA TransArts University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Recently her work stroke all the colours out of the skywas premiered at brut. www.asherogorman.com instagram.com/asherogorman
Carola Fuchs (AT) studied Comparative Literature inVienna and Aarhus, Denmark. Later she spent 3 years in France where she studied at the University Paris 8 and completed an M.A. degree in dance and Art Theory. In addition, she is trained in Martha Graham technique. For 8 Years she is working in the field of arts and education, as a mediator, tour guide and researcher(Belvedere, Kunsthalle Wien). She participates in various projects in Vienna ́s art scene and abroad. In her practice, she attempts to combine performative aspects with knowledge exchangein order to create new formats of artistic dialogue. www.carolafuchs.com
Christina Rauchbauer (AT) is a choreographer and performer, who engages herself in transdisciplinary and participatory art projects. She creates art for and with a young audience. In 2017 she completed her Masters in Arts of Physical Theater at the Accademia Teatro Dimitri. In 2020 she founded FUORI -queer, wild, outdoors-a platform for performative artists who combine cultural and social science approaches with physical-participatory concepts. Her pieces can be seen at Dschungel Vienna, Next Liberty Graz, WUK and in public spaces. Her projects have been awarded the STELLA, Social Impact Award, Child Protection Award Austria and honored by the BMBWF. She teaches at Impulstanz, Dschungel Vienna, Accademia Teatro Dimitri (CH) and heads the theater department at the MZW. www.christinarauchbauer.com
Fiona Hanley (IE) is a writer originally from Ireland. She is currently exploring connections between somatics and poetry; movement and writing. She is interested in a perspective that attempts to write-with the more-than-human-world. Recent work of hers canbe found in The Interpreter’s House, Howl: New Irish Writing, The Storms, Fearless, and Cassandra Voices. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Edinburgh and teaches writing in various contexts.
Malcolm Manning (UK/AT) is a movement researcher, educator, and artist who specialises in teaching somatically oriented dance and movement classes. He is certified as both a Feldenkrais Method® and Body And Earth® practitioner. His current research is into how the images we hold of our anatomy and the relationship of mind and body shape our experience of ourselves and the world we are moving through. This work, “Choreographing Subjectivities”, is in part a response to Rosi Braidotti’s book The Posthuman, in which she argues that to meet the multiple challenges facing us in this historical moment, thinking differently is not enough; we need to experience ourselves and the world differently; we need new subjectivities. He has taught in dance educations throughout Europe including the Finnish and Danish national schools of contemporary dance and the Vaganova Academy; dance festivals such as Impulstanz, TanzBozen and Tanzwerkstatt Europa; dance centres such as TanzQuartier, Independent Dance UK, K3 Hamburg; and was part of developing the Dance And Somatics course at ISLO/FI. He also applies somatic and contemporary dance techniques in other disciplines such as the architecture department of the San Pablo CEU University Madrid, the Somaesthetics Study Group at Helsinki University, and Situation Lab at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. www.movetolearn.com www.morethanmovement.at
María Auxiliadora Gálvez (ES) is PhD in Architecture and Landscaper. She is also teacher of the Feldenkrais Method. Since 2016, she directs the “Platform of Somatics for Architecture and Landscape” (PSAAP) and its associated Laboratory (LSAAP). She is professor at the Institute of Technology of the U.S.P – C.E.U in Madrid, Spain. She has been distinguished in national and international urban and architectural contests, highlighting the VI, VII and IX editions of EUROPAN. Her work has been published an exhibited worldwide featuring her presence in the 8th and 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. She is author of the books “Espacio Somático. Cuerpos Múltiples” (2019) and “Descampados. Caminar los paisajes revolucionarios en la ciudad somática” (2022). As researcher, she has been in between others co-director of “We Are All able Bodies. From Sensory Deprivation to Sensory Augmentation” celebrated in Spain in 2018. As performer she has developed happenings and installations in between others in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, in the Angewandte in Vienna or in the Art Gallery Nieves Fernández. Nowadays she works in Landscape, Arts and Architecture from an embodied point of view and explores the possibilities of “Somatic Architecture”. She is member of the “International Ambiances Network” (France), part of the research directory of the “Centre for Sensory Studies” (Canada) and participates in the project “Navigating Dizziness Together” based in Vienna. www.psaap.com/en/
Nina Sandino (NI/AT) (She/her/they) was born in Nicaragua in the Caribbean and grew up on the Pacific coast, where they later completed a master’s degree in architecture. In Vienna, Nina works as a choreographer, performerand dance educator. Their work reveals a desire to unite artistic expression and political statement. Sandino’s artistic practice focuses on ancient knowledge ⟬old practices⟭that promotes and strengthens connection within a community through touch and movement ⟬collective dances⟭. www.ninasandino.com instagram.com/mairinina
Pia Lindy (FI) performer/dancer/writer, has produced various solo pieces & projects and worked in collaboration with artists of different fields in Finland and other countries as well being a member of several committees organizing festivals and events. Pia Lindy graduated from Amsterdam’s School for New Dance Development in 1995 and since then has worked on solo/group works and collaborative projects with different artists, professionals and other people both in Finland and abroad. Pia´s working, facilitating and performance practices are based on improvisation, experiential- and process-oriented approaches, and happen in many different environments and contexts. The work draws also from sociological and societal thinking, and from a longtime engagement with somatic movement practices. In the latest projects the focus has been on experiences, the moving dialogues, and the exchange of mixing of skills and knowledges between people of different ages and backgrounds. Pia has worked in the long-lasting collaborations and projects: Joku kohta tanssii – About to Dance 2001-2010, Joku kohta tanssii, välittämisestä -About to Dance, about Care 2011-2016, Vaelluksia Lähiöissä – Tracing Suburbia 2017-2022 among others. A strong emphasis has been on process-centered working and on exploring with possibilities to share work and practices on different stages of the processes. Pia has written articles on dance and movement in the surrounding society and how contemporary dance and movement artists based in Finland are working in different environments and contexts. Pia has been a member of Zodiak the Center for New Dance´s artistic team with the artistic director on the programming performances in 2016-2019 and she has been a founding member of the Sidestep and Lonely in the Rain? festivals and also a member of other artistic boards and committees. Pia has been a visiting teacher in the course on Dance and Somatics at the Easter Finland´s Sports Institute during years 2007-2019, in the Live Art and Performance-programme in Kankaanpää Art School 2014-2021, and on applying dance/ Social Choreography in Uniarts Helsinki, Theatre Academy 2011-2022 among others. www.pialindy.weebly.com
Therese Leick (AT) is an architect, performer and holistic movement and dance educator. She uses somatic practicesas a method in addressing social issues such as the pressure to perform and produce in our high-performance society. In her practice, she is not looking for an end-product, but for process-oriented, transformative collective experiential spaces.