What-now Festival 2014 by ID London

What-now Festival 2014 at Siobhan Davies Dance Studios- organised by Independent Dance London

Fantastic and inspiring weekend.

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• what are we?
• who are you?
• who do you think I am?
• what do you imagine me doing in the future?
• who do you think you are?
• who do you think you can be or you will be?

I have witnessed a collection of artists-curators who were asking a lot of questions in regards to dance through different ways: talks, movement, drawing, writing, discussing, etc. It was shaped as a public residency, a festival of processes and activities.

There were a few interesting talks:

1. Derek McCormack - Thinking and moving with atmospheric things. Increased understanding of atmospheric things, a sense of happening in process, a sense of affective doing. Enable constraint for thinking in movement. 
2. Caroline Bergvall - Writing Gestures. What a performance, what an unexpected beginning. Performative talk. Cells of Release, Matta Clark, What is fugitive nature? Bilingual, transcriptions, interruption, calligraphy. Ann Hamilton 
3. Joris Vlieghe - Being-Entirely-Flesh. Philosopher and Educationalist - human corporeality. He argues that the bodily experiences are of the greatest importance. Existence. He investigates bodily dimensions and he also refers to theories of Merleau- Ponty; all of this related to my dissertation topic. He investigates notions such as attention and presence- key to both my dissertation and final major project.
4. Laura Cull - A(n Interrupted) Lecture on Attention in 9 Parts. Further research: Franco Berardi's notion of attention, Henri Bergson, Allan Kaprow. Can performance and philosophy produce counter-forms of attention? Thought as an embodied perceptual practice available to us. 

This festival was proposed by Frank Bock and curated by Katye Coe, Hamish Mac Pherson and Efrosini Protopapa.

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Just being in that building was fascinating. I have listened to a few talks and learned and I use this learning as stimulation for further research and investigations. A lot of questions. It was useful to hear different artists talking about their condition as artist and to understand what life as artist means. Maybe my life expectations are different now and I think a bit softer about my future as a movement artist. Being included in this art network feels like a gift and I do value it a lot. I felt happy when I recognized a few faces and people, I met lovely Amy Voris, a few tutors and another artists. We were participating to different workshops.