Current Projects / Agenda
Theaterschrift: the complete series (June 2015)
In the framework of the Anthology Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Sarma discloses the complete series of Theaterschrift, a journal published between 1990 and 1998 in four languages (English, French, German, Dutch) by various theatres across Europe. Theaterschrift sought to write the history of experimental theatre, mapping out the artistic interests in a globalizing world in thematic issues, and this mostly by giving the artists themselves a voice in interviews and essays.
Anthology Marianne Van Kerkhoven: artist portraits (May 2015)
(c) Jochem Jurgens
The Flemish essayist and dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven (1946-2013) was a highly influential figure in the field of performing arts in Europe during several decades. In collaboration with the Kaaitheater, Sarma sets up an archival and research project to disclose her legacy. Sarma anthologizes Van Kerkhoven’s early reflections on political theatre, her interviews and ‘dramaturgical’ essays for the performing arts journals Etcetera and Theaterschrift, artist portraits written for the Kaaitheater, dispersed writings, lectures and translations.
To be published in regular installments throughout the year, the first batch is now online: the ‘focus’ artist portraits written for the Kaaitheater between 2001 and 2005, available in Dutch, English and French. They include the theatre makers Dood Paard, Josse De Pauw, Dito’Dito, Jan Lauwers & Needcompany, Guy Cassiers, Rudi Meulemans & De Parade, Tg STAN, Peter van Kraaij, Jan Ritsema, Gerardjan Rijnders and Jan Decorte, as well as choreographers Xavier Le Roy, Meg Stuart, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Charlotte Vanden Eynde, Raimund Hoghe, Jérôme Bel and Thomas Hauert.
walk + talk documents Reykjavik (May 2015)
walk+talk documents is an ongoing multimodal publication around Philipp Gehmacher's walk+talk series, in which choreographers introduce their movement language in a lecture-demonstration. It includes annotated videos, multimodal essays on utterance and on space, and a text collection on practice. Now the latest performances in Reykjavik by Margrét Bjarnadóttir, Erna Omarsdóttir and Philipp Gehmacher are available as annotated videos. Alexander Roberts wrote an essay reflecting on the significance of walk+talk in times of post-Fordist labour: Turning, turning, returning.
I Paused Halfway Up The Stairs (April 2015)
I Paused Halfway Up The Stairs brings together artists and cultural workers that have been involved in the recent migration of choreography and performance from the theatre to the visual arts context. Over the course of two evenings, I Paused Halfway Up The Stairs will raise questions about how performance practices play with this institutional border, and how they appropriate, negotiate and challenge its aesthetics and production circumstances.
I Paused Halfway Up The Stairs is a curatorial project by Tom Engels and contains works and words by Simon Asencio, Alexander Baczynski-Jenkins, Lina Hermsdorf, Clare Molloy, Thomas Puisquelaloi, Marta Ziólek, a.o.
April 16-17, 18:00 - 22:00 Grünberger Straße 12, Gießen, Germany
For more information, please visit the website of the project
Support de Fortune (April 2015)
Kristien Van den Brande will install her research on Support de Fortune in the vitrine of Recyclart. Inspired by Robert Walser, Emily Dickinson, Walter Benjamin, Martin Kippenberger, a.o. she collects and deciphers 'marginal' notes. She looks for conceptions and visualisations of the connection between tools, thinking and writing. This on the basis of a most paradoxical ‘tool’: the chance support as an old yet new medium that challenges deeply-rooted ideas and practices of writing and reading.
April 1-17, 2015, 12:00-20:00 Open lab: work in progress, talks, interviews, library
April 13-14, 2015, 16:00-22:00 Artist talks, seminar and performative readings by Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Femke Snelting and Nick Thurston
Recyclart, Station Bruxelles-Chapelle, Ursulinenstraat 21 Rue des Ursulines, Brussels
Writers in Residence (2015)
Dramaturges and theoreticians Bojana Cvejic and Ana Vujanovic are Sarma´s writers in residence. Over the next three years they will engage in a research project titled Performance of the Self, which will lay out the link between solo performances and contemporary manifestations of individualism and unfold the performative relations between the configuration of masses and the cult of personality in the public sphere. This venture is a next step of their previous collaborative research project which resulted in the publication of the book Public Sphere by Performance (2012, b_books Berlin).
In the frame of this residency, Sarma will host the launch of Bojana Cvejic´s upcoming book Choreographing Problems: Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance later this Summer. More details will follow soon!
The Dancer as Agent Collection (December 2014)
(c) Brynjar Abel Bandlien
The Dancer as Agent Collection is an unwrapping of The Dancer as Agent conference (DOCH Stockholm, November 2013). Several dancers who attended the conference accepted commissions from DOCH to draw, write and speak about ideas that had been present there and have continued roaming since, occupying other times and places. Various objects were made, including essays, conversations, maps, films, materials and active texts. Eight booklets, a card and a map appeared in print, and the complete collection is housed on Oral Site. It creates a context in which the contours of agency that emerge from dancers' artistic practices can be bounced off, wandered through, felt, fit and shared.
The Dancer as Agent Collection was launched on Dec. 1st, 2014. Edited by Chrysa Parkinson with the assistance of Jeroen Peeters and Julien Bruneau. Produced by Sarma and DOCH, Stockholm University of the Arts.
Oral Site: Artist publications in a digital environment (December 2014)
On Tuesday 2 December 2014, 6-8.30pm at 50°49’19.50’‘N 4°21’25.53’‘E, ERG´s gallery, Rue du Page/Edelknaapstraat 87, 1050 Brussels.
David Weber-Krebs, from `Miniature´, Berlin 2008
Oral Site is an online platform for expanded publications. It proposes an experimental approach to the documentation, study, dissemination and creation of art works. During this evening organized by Sarma and hosted by Erg, the public got introduced to some art works as well as to the unique tool that enabled them. Alexandre Leray (OSP) and Kristien Van den Brande (Sarma) presented Olga, the new architecture behind the current updated version of Oral Site, choreographer and visual artist Julien Bruneau navigated through the intricate landscape of his publication Strata and artists Alexander Schellow and David Weber-Krebs gave during their performance a glimpse of their upcoming publication for Oral Site. The evening was framed by artist and founder of Oral Site, Myriam Van Imschoot.
Book presentations: Through the Back (May 2014)
In his book Through the Back: Situating Vision between Moving Bodies (published in May 2014 by Theatre Academy in Helsinki), Jeroen Peeters reflects on spectatorship in contemporary dance.
On February 20, 2015 at 18.30 at the Municipal Theatre Rivoli in Porto: Jeroen Peeters in dialogue with Alexandra Balona.
On February 23, 2015 at 18.30 at Espaço da Penha in Lisbon: Jeroen Peeters presented his book with a lecture in the series My Dance History, an initiative of O Rumo do Fumo with Fórum Dança.
Audio documentation of presentations at Kaaitheater in Brussels (with Gerald Siegmund and Chrysa Parkinson), at ImPulsTanz in Vienna (with Philipp Gehmacher and Jennifer Lacey), at Oktoberdans in Bergen (with André Eiermann and Mette Edvardsen), and at HZT/Tanzfabrik in Berlin (with Stefanie Wenner and Martin Nachbar) is available here.
Through the Back can be purchased online via Sarma (Belgium), Books on the Move (Europe) and Contact Quarterly (USA).
Anthology of Jeroen Peeters’ critical writings on dance (May 2014)
On the occasion of Through the Back, Sarma realized an online anthology of Jeroen Peeters’ critical writings on dance, including unpublished lectures, hard-to-find essays and many translations.
Lars Kwakkenbos wrote an essay about the main themes in Peeters' critical writings on dance (1998-2012), his poetics, the philosophical frames for his work and the development of his thinking in the proximity of dance (De hordes van een uitgestrekt denken, The hurdles of broad thinking). Special attention goes to texts that appeared only in Dutch.