Where there is a person and persons, there is a possibility of an intense exchange, merging or collision of (personal) stories: they might either be told or never uttered, but in both cases they exist in the air that surrounds us. The stories of what we are or what we’re becoming are often those most difficult to work with. At the same time, we are always running the risk of not being able to step out of the story and see it as a possibility of the visual narrative. But we are willing to take the risk just for the sake of it.
“Art is the only power to free humankind from all repression”, insisted Joseph Beuys. The participants of the workshop are invited to work with and through autobiographic material, in order to target repressions that each of us are subject to, the ones that make us shiver and stop before uttering a word, although uttering a word would be exactly what is sometimes needed most in order to heal. A variety of traumatic experience cause feelings of shame and inadequacy, low self-esteem, negative body image, self-neglect. These responses to traumatic experiences are mostly repressions of something else. And sometimes this “something else” might become a story we want to tell in performance through our movements, sounds, materials and glances.
An intensive performance art workshop is crafted for (art) students or working young artists, both those that explore the possibilities of performance art as well as those who wish to explore this discipline and themselves within it.
The workshop will take place on 19th-21st January at the Studio BWA Wrocław Gallery, and will consist of a three meetings: Friday evening (6PM – 8.30PM), full day practice on Saturday (10AM – 6PM), full day practice on Sunday (10AM – 5PM) and an open presentation of work Sunday evening (6PM – 8PM).
Daina Pupkevičiūtė – sound and performance artist, organiser of the International Performance Art Festival CREATurE Live Art in Kaunas, Lithuania. Through the work with autobiographic material, she explores questions of identity (individual and group) and belonging (to real or imagined communities etc.), physical and political resistance and the instruments thereof, relationships people have with themselves and with others, and other adjacent questions arising subsequently. Pupkevičiūtė is the AIR Wro resident, who was selected within the framework of the call for artists from the partner (sister) cities of Wrocław.
