Fatigue
19 June 2023
Dance Alone
16 May 2023
Alternative Practices
24 April 2023
Residencies
14 March 2023
Cultural Practices
28 February 2023
Planetary Care
26 January 2023
Correctness
8 November 2022
Leaderships
4 May 2022
Screen Fatigue – global inclusion in the post pandemic age
After more than three years of pandemic-related restrictions, everyone has happily ditched their face masks and cannot wait to look away from their computer screens to replace long Zoom meetings with in-person meetings.
It is as good an opportunity as any to look back at our work at OpenScape and to receive feedback from similar initiatives. It is also an important moment to prospect about the future of online exchanges: digital platforms have brought the global community of art practitioners together and, for a while, transcended the mobility issues afflicting the citizens of most countries outside of the Global North. But what happens next?
This event, moderated by Raafat Majzoub, will be preceded by a collection of video interviews. The event will take place on 19 June 2023 at 15:30 CEST and will be held in English.
19 June 2023 (all times CET)
15:30–17:30
Guests: Ant Hampton (Showing without Going), Sandra Dagher (Correspondaences, LB), Yi Kai Kao (SEA Residency)
Watch the preliminary conversations below!
Watch the "Screen Fatigue" event here:
You Never Dance Alone - new ways of working collectively
For the longest time, the performing arts game has been basically played according to the same set of rules: institutions curate projects and support the artists behind them, from the ideation and fundraising phases to the production and public presentation of the work on stage.
This status quo rests on two tacitly accepted constraints. On the one hand, it seems artists have no choice but to produce a work and show it to an audience, on the other hand, it seems that most of the forces that are actually moving the market are controlled by the presenting institutions.
Recently, artists have begun to reclaim their sense of agency by formulating new paradigms for their profession, such as the idea of not producing just for the sake of it, working collectively, deploying the artistic process towards different purposes, and connecting to other fields of relevance outside of the theatre stage. But one has to be very creative to challenge the production-centred funding cycle...
This online gathering hosted by Tanzhaus Zürich will be held on 16 May 2023 at 15:30 CEST. It will be in English and is free of charge.
16 May 2023 (all times CET)
15:30–17:30
Moderated by Rosemary Cisneros (Sheffield, GB)
Guests: The Field (CH), Avni Sethi/The Conflictorium (IN), Omar Abi Azar/Zoukak Theatre Company (LB), Er Gao/Southern Dance House (CN), Ianah Maia/Nacional Trovoa (BR), Golf Thanapon Yindee/Makhampom Theater Group (TH)
Watch the full conversation here
Watch an additional conversation here between Rosa Cisneros and Golf Thanupon about the practice of Makhampom Theatre Group in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Rest, Care and Alternative Practices
What have the last few years taught us about how performance work can be made differently? What are the practices that we have (re) discovered that centre, rest, care and process? What is there to learn from a feminist, joyful, liberatory orientation to making performance work and what are the slow, non-product based, community-oriented, embodied artistic experiences that continue to inspire us? These are some of the questions that will animate our OpenScape Working Session on Rest, Care and Alternative Practices.
In this session, we invite you to be part of a DreamStorm conversation and sharing of resources and practices of collective care for artists from around the world. The aim of this working session will be to co-create an open source tool kit of practical, adaptable, resources and inspirations for how to approach theatre and performance work differently from a range of different contexts and perspectives.
This OpenScape event is organised and facilitated by Shiva Pathak of the Sandbox Collective, Mwenya Kabwe and Nika Parhomovskaia, three women who are active performance makers in their respective parts of the world and interested in exploring ideas of how we might create healthier, more equitable, more nurturing, and more sustainable artistic working environments to work against what Tricia Hersey calls “the machine-level pace” of many of our arts industries. We hope you can join us for this collective DreamStorm.
This online gathering will be held in English on 24 April 2023 at 15:30 CEST and is free of charge.
24 April 2023 (all times CET)
Revealing Residencies: How to Talk about the Invisible Work
The nature of artistic residencies is fundamentally different from productions and performances: they are rarely meant to directly generate a public outcome but rather provide a safe space for artists to experiment. In many ways, residencies are simultaneously an essential component of artistic research and a difficult object to communicate about.
It is worth asking ourselves how to involve local audiences in this somehow invisible work, how to justify residencies towards governmental and private funding bodies, and how to inscribe them in the artists’ ecosystem with a proper role and identity.
NAVE (Santiago / CL) will host this OpenScape gathering on 14 March 2023 at 14:30 CET and showcase strategic conversations between nine representative institutions organising residencies and funding bodies and is open to the arts practitioner community as a whole.
This online gathering will be held in English and is free of charge.
14 March 2023 (all times CET)
14:30 Welcome
14:40 Panel 1 how we communicate residency programmes within the profession
15:20 Q&A
15:35 Panel 2 how we communicate towards the public and or the communities surrounding the residency venue
16:15 Q&A
16:30 Goodbye
Prototyping Cultural Practices
In OpenScape's next online event "Prototyping Cultural Practices“, we will explore the possibilities of world-making in the culture sector. Everyday, artists and cultural institutions are practicing and envisioning new models of living, building, destroying, relating and being in the world. These models come as art projects, new technologies, institution building and critique practices, funding policies, open calls, texts and experiments that (both intentionally and not) prototype and test new cultural practices that have measurable impacts on the world around them.
The Khan (Tripoli / LB) and OpenScape will explore mutual and lateral relationships between institutions, artists and local communities through a series of one-to-one online dialogues that will take place over the next few weeks. These public conversations will then converge on a digital town hall meeting on 28 February where different stakeholders will be able to directly address the audience’s questions.
28 February 2023 (all times CET)
14:30–16:30 Townhall meeting moderated by Geoliane Arab
Panels & Q&As
Live preparatory conversations
The one-to-one conversations will be streamed live on our YouTube channel:
- 6 February, 12:30 CET (Yazan Al-Khalili, Radio Alhara Palestine - Vikram Iyengar & Dana Roy, Pickle Factory India)
- 14 February, 11:00 CET (Lia Rodrigues BR - Zyad Al-Seblany LB)
- 15 February, 18:30 CET (Khyam Allami UK/IQ - Jozef Wouters BE)
- 20 February, 11:00 CET (Cees Vossen, Moussem Belgium - Iris Hung, curator, Taiwan)
Townhall Meeting
Practices of Planetary Care
With the beginning of the new year, OpenScape looks into questions of sustainability with the online panel «Practices of Planetary Care», hosted by Taghmees (JO) on 26 January 2023.
As a species, we seem to have failed in retaining and preserving what we originally used to have: a reasonable and sustainable relationship to our planet. So how can we unlearn our damaging practices and turn to rediscover the ancient knowledge in the current times of climate crises and climate (in)justice?
OpenScape and GreenRoom have entrusted Jordanian collective Taghmees to design a sharing moment with artists and activists from around the world, open to persons interested in taking a different, non-anthropocentric view. This online gathering will be held in English and is free of charge.
26 January 2023 (all times CET)
Let’s (not) Talk about Political Correctness
On 8 November 2022, OpenScape organised an online discussion hosted by Shanghai-based collective iPANDA and dedicated to the topic of “Political Correctness”, an issue that resonates very differently depending on the region or political context in which one lives. During an online residency spanning over two weeks, fourteen participants from fourteen countries exchanged on this notion, comparing their local point of views and personal practices. This collaborative research was concluded by an online public sharing and networking event on Zoom.
8 November 2022 – 14.30 CET
14:40 - 16:40 CET
14:40 - 15:20 - on Language
Twenty-minute conversation followed by twenty-minute breakout rooms Q&A.
15:20 - 16:00 - on Control
Twenty-minute conversation followed by twenty-minute breakout rooms Q&A.
16:00 - 16:40 - on Humour
Twenty-minute conversation followed by twenty-minute breakout rooms Q&A.
16:40 CET
From 16:40 CET on - Hanging Out & Networking
Spend time with your peers and converse informally.
OpenScape Presents...
Khuli Khirkee is a loosely held bunch of people who practice various forms of performing arts in this co-shared world
On Practices - Presentations
Arundhati Ghosh talks about the India Foundation for the arts and the different processes they have put in place to manage leadership towards serving the community as well as the team of IFA in Bangalore (IN).
Fernando García Barros tells us how Proyecto mARTadero was designed to become not only a venue for the arts but above all a physical and mental space to collectively generates new modes of leaderships.
Yuliya Churilova
Yuliya Churilova shares her professional history with the OpenScape community, particularly highlighting her work at and dismissal from a state theatre in Novosibirsk /Siberia).
On Practices - Panel discussion
Fair Leaderships ✕ On Practices
This panel features Arundhati Ghosh, Yuliya Churilova and Fernando García Barros sharing their vision of leadership through the prism of institutions they are helming, and how they create the conditions to challenge the traditional models. It is moderated by Chilean artist and cultural operator Horacio Pérez.
On Frameworks - Panel discussion
Fair Leaderships ✕ On Frameworks
Lilian Abou Zeki, Jehan Manekshaw and Sara Matchett reflect on their experiences and thoughts of leadership, moderated by Raafat Majzoub.