multilingual | Etcetera

One or Several Tigers – Ho Tzu Nyen & Macaquinhos – Macaquinhos

The Tiger and the Anus: How KFDA Decolonises Cosmopolitanism

The Kunstenfestivaldesarts (KFDA)’s commitment to promoting ‘cosmopolitan vision as an antidote to intolerance of all kinds’, at least for its 2018 edition, has gone beyond the fashionable inclusiveness. The incorporation of the Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s One or Several Tigers and, especially Macaquinhos from Brazil in its 2018 programming shows KFDA’s engagement in redefining ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a condition which involves self-criticism, ‘resist[ing] all kinds of self-centredness’—the most hegemonic and perennial of which is Eurocentrism.*

Rathsaran Sireekan

review 01.06.2018

Deep Present – Jisun Kim

A shallow learning-play

In ‘Deep Present’ (2018) Seoul-based director Jisun Kim stages four artificial intelligences (AIs) that either dialogue or ruminate about ‘outsourcing’ and its implications, i.e. the displacement and delegation of the production of goods or services to subcontractors, typically in regions where labor is cheaper.

Claire Swyzen

review 31.05.2018

La Reprise – Histoire(s) du théâtre (I) – Milo Rau / IIPM

Between re-enactment and appropriation: the as-if strategy of Milo Rau

Acclaimed director Milo Rau knows like no other how to deal with collective traumas. In La Reprise, however, he overplays his hand as he tries to combine the violent murder of Ihsane Jarfi with a meta-theatrical reflection about reality on stage.

Charlotte De Somviele

review 15.05.2018

Nieuwsbrief

‘The grander nationalist ostentatiousness gets, the smaller and quieter bodies become.’

A conversation about movement, nationalism and collectivity

Nationalist questions have been addressed regularly in performing arts over the past years. Etcetera asked curators Nat Muller and Sandra Noeth to enter in conversation about the connection between the body and identity politics. During the editing process Tunde Adefioye, member of Etcetera’s circle of advisory editors made some notes alongside this dialogue.

Nat Muller, Sandra Noeth

conversation 13.11.2017

Mercurial George – Dana Michel

Illegibility, Identity, Blackness

The lack of black choreographers/ black voices in Contemporary Dance has created a large gap in the understanding of blackness, allowing that label to be thrown at any choreographer who bears the racial marking of being black. In the solo work Mercurial George by the Montreal-based choreographer Dana Michel, she confronts this racial imposition heads on, creating an anarchist ecology of things where identity and blackness can emerge in this illegible yet affectively charged mode of experience.

Anh Vo

essay 25.10.2017

Hello Hi There

Algorithm, composition and metaphor

What is algorithmic theater?

The American director Annie Dorsen has been working for some years on a series of projects she calls ‘algorithmic theater’. Etcetera asked Dorsen to ellaborate on this notion. What inspires her? What problems or questions arise when working with algorithms?

Annie Dorsen

essay 18.08.2017

Daniel Linehan / Hiatus, Flood

Structured Flood

Challenges and restrictions in the work of choreographer Daniel Linehan.

Choreographer and dancer Daniel Linehan places dancers in a hyper-structured environment. In this way, his performances investigate how society conditions us and puts our bodies and psyches under pressure. His most recent work, Flood, takes a step beyond the establishment of this condition and for the first time short-circuits this structure.

Kristof van Baarle

interview 13.07.2017