2022
POSTAPOCALYPTIC ENCOUNTERS
> online encounters and movement workshops
Postapocalyptic Encounters are a series of events gathering people interested in ways of thinking, moving and creating which stem from non-Eurocentric bodies of knowledge.
A favorite topic in Hollywood movies and fictional books, the apocalypse performs a catastrophe that can take a myriad of forms in Western imagination. Caused by the last great war, an enormous meteoro, an alien invasion, or a climatic catastrophe that renders the Earth uninhabitable, the scenario develops either into the extinction of the human race, or the total collapse of the planet.
But, what if, for some human populations, the apocalypse has already happened and they are currently dealing with the state of survival after the event? As proposed by Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, in South America, the apocalypse started 500 years ago with the arrival of Europeans. Today, the surviving native populations still struggle with colonial attempts to erase their cultures and ways of life. Regarding possibilities of ends-of-the-world belonging to Western imagination as situated constructs, how about looking at the current condition of Indigenous populations and their multiple cultures as postapocalyptic?
Postapocalyptic Encounters are a series of online events and workshops in physical presence between thinkers, artists and activists interested in ways of thinking, moving and creating which stem from non-Eurocentric bodies of knowledge. The events propose conversations and artistic practices that acknowledge and engage with ways of knowing and living that have been invalidated by colonial processes.
During each online encounter, two guests are invited to engage in a conversation about ways of knowing and living within non-anthropocentric and/or non-Eurocentric paradigms, having their own practices as starting points. Together, we imagine and speculate on the logics of forests and the peoples who ‘are’ the forests, non-human animals, rivers, spirits, and ways of knowing that are not validated by Western modernity. And we think together of how artistic practices could contribute to the imagination of diverse ways of living.
During the workshops in Cologne, Berlin and Munich, the choreographers and curators Korina Kordova and Bianca Mendonça share artistic practices that investigate the body, its borders, and relationality with environments. These practices have emerged from their artistic research projects focusing on intra-connectivity between human bodies and beings that are considered ‘non-living’ from a modern Western perspective, within South American non-urban landscapes, specially the Amazon forest.
Team
Curation and artistic direction: Bianca Mendonça and Korina Kordova
Dramaturgy and Production: Lena Peters
Graphic Design for online documentation: Florian Egermann
http://postapocalypticencounters.com/
Postapocalyptic Encounters wird gefördert und unterstützt durch das Nationale Performance Netz – Stepping Out (DE). Unterstützt durch das Residenzprogramm des Quartier am Hafen (Cologne, DE).
Unterstützt durch das NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ – STEPPING OUT, gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen der Initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz.