March 22 – 24, 2022 / 19:00 – 22:00
Art Academy – Møllendalsveien 61, Bergen / with Riccardo Benassi, Nico Dockx Brandon LaBelle, and the Big Wild Spring Exhibition
For the sixth gathering of The Pirate Academy, we focus on the topic of Dance. What does it mean to move together, and how are such movements positioned or situated within given settings? If movement acts as a fundamental expression of freedom, how might we follow dance into questions of migration, exile, and the capacity to move through the world? As Adrienne Rich reminds, being able to move is always a question of the politics of identity and location, not to mention an ethics of hospitality. Where do we find welcome? And how do certain movements fall in line or interrupt given social orders? To take a step is always already to step in or out of line.
Extending from such questions and views, we’ll jump into dance, exploring movement as what sets in motion a whole range of possibilities and problematics. Through presentations, shared discussions, screenings and group explorations, we’ll talk through and test out experiences of embodiment, gesture, and shared movement, allowing for a deeper inquiry into social choreographies: from walking down the hall to entering a building, hitting the dancefloor to running out of town, dance will be exposed as an intensely dynamic and distributive practice, one that expresses a general bodily intelligence.
Tuesday, March 22 / 19:00 – 22:00: we’ll start with introductory thoughts and perspectives by Brandon LaBelle on the topic of Dance, considering questions of movement and space, rhythm and ritual, transience and loitering – this will include reflections on queer phenomenology, the dialectics of duration, and what the artist Nicole Sabella terms Choreo:Spheres, where dance is never a singular act but always drags along a world of frictions and tensions, escape routes and digressions (to walk on the wild side…) /// we’ll continue with our visiting guest Riccardo Benassi, whose recent video works on life on the Dancefloor will lead us into an appreciation for dance as an arena of freedom: as what carries not only the pleasures of bodily action, but the deep recesses of memory, relationships, and the search for love.
Wednesday, March 23 / 19:00 – 22:00: We continue exploring Dance with a presentation by our guest Nico Dockx, an artist based in Antwerp working across the areas of architecture and spatial practice, cooking and collaboration, archives and publishing – Nico will share his practice and activities, posing the idea of collaboration as a process of dancing together (which can assist in entering the writings of Erin Manning, whose book Politics of Touch captures the ways in which we are always already in touch… touching and being touched becomes a primary dance, where pressings and leanings, caresses and holdings, lead the body this way and that way, into experiences of intimate contact as well as a range of scars and bruises: dance is not without pain…) /// we’ll finish the evening with a screening of Jonas Mekas’ film, “As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of happiness” (2000), which captures dance as a way of looking at the world.
Thursday, March 24 / 19:00 – 20:30 and More: to conclude this edition of the Pirate Academy, we’ll raise the question of Dance by reflecting on the writings of Giorgio Agamben, and in particular, his thinking around Gesture: gesture will allow us to consider dance as what steps out from under the matrix of the productive self, rather, gesture is pure means: the pleasure of movement itself, where going is never about arriving anywhere – Dance as gesture, instead, supports an expansion of the intelligence of the body, and the collective distribution of that intelligence which is always close to passion, and the inoperative joy found in human flourishing /// we’ll then move on to join the Grand Opening party celebrating the Big Wild Spring Exhibition in the Øvre Hall, where we can dance our hearts out to the DJ-sets on offer!! setting our collective intelligence in motion ….