Embodied Activism

In this “embodied activism” reading group session we will be researching anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist ways of reading, sensing, observing, and perceiving the world. Through body awareness practices, performative games and non-hierarchical discussion exercises we will be researching ways of gazing beyond binary paradigms of body-mind, subject-object, woman-man and dominant-submissive. We will be reclaiming the politicality of the flesh while moving back and forth micro and macro power structures, learning to hack the bio-political technology of zooming in and out. Here the focus will be on the creation of autonomous/self-determining algorithms that will allow us to reflect, re-feel-think and re-engage with our surroundings; updating the ways we exist, position and transit within. Speculating on the construction of commons and resisting the capitalist hydra with our flesh!

Paula Chaves is a Colombian choreographer, performer and queer activist based in Amsterdam. Born and raised within the boom of narco-paramilitarism and the expansion of globalised politics, she conceives art as a survival strategy and device able to hack the hegemonic power structures at play. She studied dance and circus in Bogotá, New York and Berlin and later obtained a degree in Choreography at the University of the Arts in Amsterdam (AHK). Since 2015 she works as a professional choreographer and her works have been presented in: Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. In 2019 Chaves became an artist of 'Veem House for Performance' and in 2020 part of the 'Life Long Burning' platform, one of the biggest dance platforms in Europe. She was awarded the 3Package Deal fund for International Talents by AFK for the year 2019-2020 within the ‘engaged art’ coalition. Marked by her migratory paths, Chaves' artistic research is located at the intersection of non-western feminist practices, journalism, dance and fiction as sites where to imagine transnational, anti-capitalist and anti-colonial modes of existence.

paulachaves.net/

To read: "The-white-to-be-angry" by Jose Esteban Muñoz - Cuban US American academic in the fields of performance studies, visual culture, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical theory. Please make sure to read the intro and first chapter "Who's that girl?" that goes until page 9. The rest of the essay's lecture is optional.