Tag: performance

The Verbatim Formula

The Verbatim Formula is a participatory performance-based research project which works with young people in the social care system including a high proportion of refugee children, unaccompanied minor, and young asylum-seeking migrants. This project is carried out in partnership with the Greater London Authority Peer Outreach Team, and has been primarily created by Maggie Inchley, Sylvan Baker, and Sadhvi Dar, in collaboration with Mita Pujara (Artist/Evaluator) and is produced by People’s Palace Projects. Using an earpiece, performers relay the exact words of a previously conducted interview to the audience. In this portable testimony service, listening is made visible through a performance illustrating sections of interviews which have been edited together into an audio file. These performances help people to listen, create open and meaningful dialogue, as well as share and take action. The Verbatim Formula allows participants to be co-researchers on the project and places their voices at the centre of the research; the young people ask the questions, gather data by interviewing, and disseminate the findings through performance.This research aims to create an environment where a diverse number of children and young people can express themselves freely and anonymously, giving those working in social care an insight into the lived experiences of the system, the concerns children may have, and their overall livelihood in the care system. This participatory project illustrates the different experiences of migrant children in social care, as well as ethnic and gender differences where worldviews of participants are examined, then shared through drama performance. Drama allows for a diverse interpretation of life in social care from individuals who experience the system in diverse ways.

Researchers: Maggie Inchley (Queen Mary, University of London), Sylvan Baker (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London), and Sadhvi Dar (Queen Mary, University of London), in collaboration with Mita Pujara (Artist/Evaluator)

Rhizomatic Assemblage

Spending several years in various departments enabled me a long-term development of research on the human body and mind in relation to the environment we inhabit. By responding to thematics that regard drastic shifts in the era of the Anthropocene I propose models of living in a balance with new developments in technology and culture. I analyze the permeable relation between the Self and the Group on historical and anthropological examples of isolation and group behavior. My work is influenced by my German, Polish and Lithuanian roots that were marked by the trauma of sociopolitical events. As my grandfather and father both had to flee their countries of origin due to political problems, I was particularly compelled to dedicate myself further to sociopolitics and the recent refugee crisis. My dissertation Reclaiming the alienated Self (2017), published on LABS, elaborates on the importance of rhizomatic and creative actions for the well-being of the ever changing society. This experimental research is activated through, among others, my workshops with performers at Tate Exchange (2017, 2018) and the upcoming Refugee Week Berlin, which is related to the ongoing project that was started by Counter Point Artsin 1998. These creative projects allow room for new constellations between participants and the audience, to acknowledge similarities, instead of differences, and to understand the relation between hierarchical systems in the body, mind and society.

Researcher: Monika Dorniak

Creation-research: New approaches to contemporary migration history in Germany

This Spring 2017 course at Bard College Berlin is a continuation of the Fall seminar In Search of a History: Migration in Germany from World War II to the Present, focusing on students’ individual projects that seek to give visual, verbal, spatial, musical, and general aesthetic and sensory expression to previously collected knowledge of migration history and experience. The projects need not have the ambition of entering the realm or category of “art”: we consider them “notations,” recording our perceptions and thoughts in the modes of articulation that suit us best. First, we will review the historical data, tools, and concepts of migration history that allow us to achieve an analytical distance and conceptualize as well as historicize our material. Subsequently, we will work on a collective visualization project. The major part of the course is dedicated to developing and completing the individual projects and findings solutions for exhibiting them. We will cooperate with a number of renowned artists who will add creative, formal, and practical input and advice to our historical and linguistic framework. The project will be exhibited as part of an international conference on migration history. One panel has been reserved for us to present the projects and to reflect on the relations between migration, research, education, and creativity that we will have uncovered through our work.

Professor: Marion Detjen