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DANCE PLATFORM

08.11 / 12:00

NU Performance Festival II:
in Kanuti Gildi STUDIO
SEMINAR- Learning from history

NB! The seminar is in English

TIMETABLE:
12:00 Introduction by Anders Härm
12:15 Goran Sergej Pristas (CRO) - Operation, Re-Enactment, Reconstruction
13:00 Danjel Anderson (SWE) - The Audience, The Western Canon and Memory
13:45 Hanno Soans (EST) - The Song of Songs of Salomon Non Grata...
14:30-15:00 Pause
15:00 Janez Jansa (SLO) aka Emil Hrvatin - Three reconstructions: "Pupilija", "Triglav" and "Baptism under Triglav"
15:45 Tiit Ojasoo *(EST) - The Possibility of Performance Art in Theatre
16:30-17:00 Discussion

NU Performance Festival will also hold a small one-day seminar that focuses on using historical performative practices and “learning” from history, but also on construction and reconstruction of history.
Performative arts have been rather resistant to their preservation. Performance art, the youngest and most radical among them, has sometimes downright methodically fought against becoming history and a convenient commodity, refusing from documentation and a schedule that could be followed (long actions that last for days) or taking place somewhere far and out of reach. And in fact, to be honest, video recordings, photographs, interviews and descriptions cannot give a clear overview of these works anyway. The most important that performative arts have to offer – immediate experience – is gone. During the 2000s, however, the history of performative arts has been approached in a way that probably stands the closest to their initial “state”: these are comprehensive reconstructions, realized as close to the original as possible. Examples of this could be found from further away – in the beginning of the decade the Whitechapple Art Gallery in London had an entire program, where historical performances were reconstructed – but also in Estonia: Siim-Tanel Annus recently reconstructed his performance from twenty years ago. Naturally, reconstruction too has its deficiencies, as the initial context of the performance is gone, as well as everything else that vanishes with it. But in any case it allows us to experience the work in a similar way we experience art history in a museum – as texts, messages inevitably detached from their addressee. On the other hand, reconstruction adds an important dimension, namely, the historical perspective. We are able to see the work of art in the light of “what came later”.
At the same time we would not like to reduce the experience of learning from history to reconstructed history only, but most of all, it is the applicability of certain strategies, methods and manners of thought in contemporary context that requires critical analysis. Questions “if”, “how” and “why” are the most relevant here.