Performing Knowledge: What Does Learning Feel Like?
Thu, Dec 12, 2019
12:00 PM–3:30 PM
The James Gallery
Join Aaron Finbloom and Bibi Calderaro for performances in the James Gallery as part of the Performing Knowledge festival. What can knowledge feel or look like? How might it move us? What might the emotional and aesthetic effects of knowledge be, in addition to the cognitive? How does one know or come to know? What place do repetition, gesture, rhythm, mimesis, rehearsal, meditation, and travel have in knowledge?
Now in its second year, Performing Knowledge is a one-day festival of knowledge performances that accommodate and celebrate contradiction, that find their meaning in specific social contexts, and that may end with a question mark. Prominent scholars and graduate students across disciplines come together to reframe research and knowledge as happy human and intrinsically social occasions.
Title: Question Begging (Participatory Installation)
Aaron Finbloom
Description:
Six computers are mounted to tripods and arranged in a circle. Each computer displays a different conversational prompt. For a performer to enter the conversation they must walk towards the prompt they desire and speak accordingly. Off to the side one master computer contains a discourse map that any performer or audience member can use to control which sets of prompts are displayed. These discursive sets are drawn from conversational grammars (for example: questioning, para-linguistic modifiers) and conversation practices (for example: psychoanalysis, Circling, Philosophy for Children). As interlocutors our language is limited and constrained by each discursive model. Sometimes this control is unbearable. Other times we find ourselves saying something radically other, an invigorating rupture from our habituated responses. In either case, our agency as interlocutor is muddied by the power of language, and the ever-present implicit rules of discourse lie before us, ready for our play.
Performance times: From 12:30-3:30pm, members of the public are invited to play the conversation game. It is advised that you come with a friend (or come to our demo or performance) since the game requires 2+ players to play. At 12:30pm there will be an activation of the game with a team of performers. At 2:30pm there will be a scheduled audience demo of the piece for those who want to try it themselves.
Title:Post Nightingale: Translation in Process
Performers:Bibi Calderaro, Iréne Hultman Maria Litvan
10 minutes long performed 3 times in the James Gallery
Description:
Post Nightingale: Translation in Process is an experiment in performing knowledge, where theory is translated into nightingale songs to be heard, held, and interacted with. In order to experience thoughts, words, and actions as they unfold in a moment, this accidental collaboration explores the intersection of potentiality and entanglement. Leaning on theorists Patricia Clough, Luciana Parisi, Henri Bergson and Karen Barad together with poet Ethel Adnan and other sayings, this process intends to explore and allow the gaps in between the known and unknown to be elucidated. What connective tissue does knowledge nest in?
Performance times: 1:15pm, 2:15pm, 3:15pm
Special thanks: Cory Tamler, Margit Edwards and Maria Litvan; Lyndsay Karr, Sandra Moyano Ariza, Jason Nielsen, and Talha Issevenler.
Co-produced by Margit Edwards and Cory Tamler, PhD Program in Theatre, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
FREE + Open to public. First come, first served
