READING GROUP
Since 2006, If I Can't Dance... has been organizing regular gatherings of artists, critical thinkers, writers and various other readers from in and outside the field of contemporary (performance) art to discuss new topics and directions in performative art practice and their relation to social and political issues. Taking as point of departure a spirit of exchange and open-ended discussion, these gatherings facilitate a space for in-depth debate, unexpected links and creative disagreement.
Previous sessions of the If I Can't Dance... Reading Group explored the paradigms of performativity, theatricality and feminism(s) by engaging in the discussion of critical texts and relevant visual material. Visit archive.
READING GROUP sessions: masquerade
Currently, If I Can't Dance… is undertaking an ongoing collaborative investigation in consonance with its third edition regarding the conceptual framework of Masquerade, a heterogeneous concept that takes shape within very different contexts and genres. Through its 'think tank' If I Can’'t Dance… explores both the possibilities and limitations of Masquerade from an interdisciplinary perspective by drawing on the rich plurality of material that already exists on the subject and focusing on questions such as artifice, transgression, gender identity and subversion, gesture, the carnivalesque, mimesis, alterity, among others. Visit archive.
January 13, 2010: this sessions was dedicated to the discussion of Suely Rolnik's 'Anthropophagic Subjectivity' and Frantz Fanon's 'The Fact of Blackness'.
December 14, 2009: the discussion revolved around the notion of 'Mimesis/Mimicry'. Assigned texts were: René Girard: 'From Mimetic Desire to the Monstrous Double', Homi Bhabha: 'Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', 'Michael Taussig: 'Excerpts from his book Mimesis and Alterity', and Jorge Luis Borges: 'On Exactitude in Science'.
November 18, 2009: this sessions was dedicated to the discussion of 'Death Masks'. We will be reading: Hans Belting, 'Image and Death' in 'Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology'. Giorgio Agamben, 'Sovereign Body and Sacred Body' in 'Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life'. Roland Barthes, chapters 'Flat Death' and 'The Photograph Tamed' in 'Camera Lucida'. Francoise Frontisi-Ducroux, 'The Gorgon Paradigm of Image Creation', in 'The Medusa Reader, Garber and Vickers' (Eds.), 2003.
September 23, 2009: Discussion of Jacques Derrida's lecture; Cogito and the History of Madness' in conjunction with Michel Foucault’s text 'This Body, This Paper, This Fire' and screening of select film excerpts: 'The Passion of Jeanne D'Arc' (Carl Dryer, 1928), 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' (Milos Forman, 1975) and 'Opium: Diary of a Madwoman' (János Szász, 2007).
(Mis)reading Masquerades
This publication focuses on the notion of Masquerade. For the past two years, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution has been exploring the cultural, social and political meanings of this concept from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective together with more than fifty artists, curators, writers and theoreticians. '(Mis)Reading Masquerades' comprises a selection of theoretical texts drawn from different fields of knowledge that address questions such as transgression, gender identity and subversion, gesture, the carnivalesque, the construction of subjectivity, authorship, mimesis, and alterity. For orders, please visit www.revolver-books.de.
'(Mis)reading Masquerades', 512 p., edited by Frédérique Bergholtz, Iberia Pérez. Produced by If I Can't Dance... in collaboration with Dutch Art Istitute, Piet Zwart Institute, Van Abbemuseum. Published by Revolver. ISBN 978-3-86895-071-7
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Reading Group
24/02/2010, 19:30 hrsReading group sessions Winter 2010. The last Reading Group session dedicated to the notion of 'Masquerade'. We will be reading and discussing Peggy Phelan's text 'Failed Live(r)s: whatever happened to her public grief?'.
