Footfalls: walking and contemporary performance practice
Footfalls, a two-day seminar, brings together an international group of writers, academics and artists to discuss this central theme to ANTI 2009.
The participation fee is 25€/ day or 45€ both days. For students, unemployed, and members of artists’ associations the fee is 20€/ day 35€/ both days. Registration by 15th September.
Registration information: Johanna Hänninen +358 50 305 2005 or e-mail: info(at)antifestival.com
SEMINAR Thursday Sept 24th 2009
We will follow Antti Laitinen’s performance Walk The Line on screen during the seminar.
2pm - 2.15pm OPENING COMMENTS Introduction: Jennie Klein – seminar chairJennie Klein teaches art history at Ohio University in Athens. She is the editor of Letters from Linda M. Montano (Routledge, 2005) and a contributing editor for PAJ and Art Papers. Klein is presently working on A History of Live Art, co-edited with Deirdre Heddon for Palgrave about the history of British Live Art.
2.15pm - 3pm Strengthening walk Lecture: Anne Keskitalo - discussion in Finnish
”Throughout times, walking has inspired poets, authors, artists and people at leisure. In my lecture I present a cultural history of walking, famous walkers from art history and the position of walking in modern art. During the lecture, I will focus on walk-based performances by artist Timo Vartiainen. I will particularly reflect on what the strengthening significance of walking is based on.”
Doctor of Arts Anne Katarina Keskitalo works as an arts teacher and art researcher. Her PhD from 2006 dealt with walking and journeying in art, on the meaning of walking in terms of cultural history, art history and modern art.
3pm - 3.30pm ARTIST STATEMENT Stephen Hodge introduces his own work and that of the collaborative group Wrights & Sites
3.30pm - 3.45pm BREAK
3.45pm - 4.30pm Käynti - Gait Lecture: Tero Nauha - discussion in Finnish
In the past six years Tero Nauha has executed eight walking pieces in various forms and in different environments. Documentation in written form will be published in an artist-book in 2009. This is part of his doctoral studies in the program of Performance Studies and Theory in Theatre Academy in Helsinki.
“In my work and research the focus is in how the fine arts are affected by the general changes in the cultural, social, economic and environmental production in society.
4.30pm - 5 pm DISCUSSION AND CLOSING COMMENTS
The seminar moves outside, taking a bus ride to join Daniel Gosling as he arrives into Kuopio following his 4 day, 160km walk from Kiuruvesi.
SEMINAR Friday Sept 25th 2009
9am - 9.15am OPENING COMMENTS: Jennie Klein – seminar chair
9.15am - 10.00am Going out - Walks, performances and public relationships: Thomas Frank
This contribution focuses in an exemplary way on performative approaches that conceive of public space as a social habitat. The act of walking puts time at a particular place under strain in order to bring out the stories that are inherent in these places. As a result of the actions, the web of relations of performance, reception and the relationship to the place is changed. It is performance art as public-relationship work.
“From 2000 to 2007 I worked as curator, dramaturge and producer for interdisciplinary performing arts projects in Frankfurt and Berlin. In 2007 I founded together with Haiko Pfost ‘brut Wien’ as an international co-production venue for contemporary performing arts and since we are running the place with an annual program as artistic & managing directors; http://www.brut-wien.at”
Publications: ‘We Love You – on audiences’, Thomas Frank & Mark Waugh (Ed.), Frankfurt a.M. 2005. ‘Cross the border, close the gap. Über die internationale Produktion interdisziplinärer Kunst’, In: ‘Spielräume produzieren’, Berlin 2006.
http://www.brut-wien.at.
10am - 10.30am ARTIST STATEMENT Samo Gosarič
10.30am - 11.15am Walking & Talking - The Art of Walking: An Embodied Practice: Deirdre Heddon
In 2008, Deirdre Heddon published a book in which she stated that though she knew of many male ‘walking’ artists (Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Lone Twin, Mike Pearson…), she knew far fewer women. Was this because there were fewer women, or just because she didn’t know of them?
In 2009, collaborating with Wrights & Sites member Cathy Turner, she started seeking, walking and talking to women artist walkers, including walkwalkwalk, Hilary Ramsden, Rachel Gomme, Simone Kenyon, Tamara Ashley, Sorrell Muggridge, Amy Sharrocks, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre…
“I am a Reader in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. I have published many books and articles on contemporary performance, including Autobiography and Performance (Palgrave 2008) and Devising Performance (Palgrave 2005). My own practice relates autobiography to place (what I call ‘autotopography’), as seen in the One Square Foot Project, documented in the forthcoming Walking, Writing and Performance. In addition to women walking, my latest research focuses on the relationships between forests and performance”
11.15am - 11.45am ARTIST STATEMENT Daniel Gosling
11.45am - 12.15p BREAK
12.15Pm - 1pm A Long Walk: Esther Pilkington
A lecture performance about a re-enactment of Crossing Stones (1987), in which artist Richard Long walked, carrying a stone, from Aldeburgh on the east coast of England to Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales and back again. In April 2009, Pilkington retraced Long’s walk, alongside walking between the two places that she has a personal relationship with: the place where she is living now and the place where her grandparents lived.
“My work focuses on notions of journey and mobility. It explores various ways of writing for and about journeys and different modes of giving an account of a journey. The relationship between performance and documentation is therefore a key theme in my practice which often makes the process of documentation part of a live performance event. I am a co-founder of Random People, a platform for the research and practice of performance, photography, writing and related fields.”
http://www.random-people.net
1pm - 1.30pm ARTIST STATEMENT: Lukáš Hájek
1.30pm - 2pm DISCUSSION AND CLOSING COMMENTS