Date:
Location:
LUDICS
April 19th- April 20th 2024: LUDICS SEMINAR, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University; GOETHE INSTITUTE OF BOSTON; Citizen TALES Commons
Crafting the Real: Forms and Politics of the Documentary in the Interplay of Theatre, Music, Film and Digital Art
Curated by Kai Tuchmann
Through the act of crafting, artists transform real incidents into the forms of performance, composition, film or computational arts. The act of crafting records these real incidents, but at the same time it also manipulates them according to the inner logics of these aesthetic forms. This gathering assembles differently situated practices of crafting from different artistic disciplines and from across different geographical places. By so doing, it seeks to explore which protocols inform practices of crafting and which scenarios of learning (and unlearning) of craftsmanship artists (and their audiences) have to undergo. Who owns the standards of craftsmanship? How does crafting the real game with our understanding of past, present and future? How could (and should) one game with the very idea of craftsmanship itself? Why is the dilettante not automatically a revolutionary?
This two-day gathering connects the academic and artist communities of the Cambridge and Boston areas with international artists and scholars working with and/or on documentary arts. The methodology of this gathering is rooted in artistic practices: It will unpack the relationship between artistic form and real materials (e.g., biographies, historical documents, personal stories, etc.) through a series of staged readings, concerts and lecture performances. All presentations are conducted by artists or artist-scholars and are deeply informed by the application of either dramatic, cinematic, compositional or informatic craftsmanship. In extensive Q&As, as well as in panels following these artistic presentations, this two-day gathering will set out to understand, assemble, and critique the potentials, pitfalls and limits of craftsmanship.
DAY1 April 19th (Friday)@GI BOSTON
16.30 Opening Remarks Welcome and Introduction by the Goethe Institute, the Ludics Seminar and Citizen TALES Commons
16.45- 18.00 The Stinking Nose: Towards a Culinary Theater of the Real? Lecture Performance by Brandon Woolf and Q&A
18.15-19.30 Dramatizing Real Conflicts Staged Readings from Siting Yang`s Play Sky of Darkness in Collaboration with Citizen TALES Commons, followed by Q&A
20.00 – 21.00 Music as Documentation Codes of Absence – A Documentary Concert by Christancho, Tilli, and Tuchmann and Q&A
DAY 2 April 20th (Saturday)@ LUDICS SEMINAR , MAHINDRA HUMANITIES CENTER, BARKER CENTER, ROOM 133
10.00-11.00 Panel 1 Configurations of Craft in Music and Drama- Panel chaired by Kai Tuchmann with Nicolas Christancho and Yang Siting
11.00-12.00 Computing the Real Open Plants- Lecture Performance with AR by Hesse & Wakil and Q&A
12.00-14.00 Screening the Real Staged Film Excerpts from Jian Yi`s Zodiac Film-Project in Collaboration with Citizen TALES Commons and Q&A
14.30-16.30 Panel 2 Food as Document of Culture -Panel with Brandon Woolf, Yi Jian and Mitra Wakil
16.30-16.45 Closing gesture
Program Details:
DAY 1
The Stinking Nose: Towards a Culinary Theater of the Real? by Brandon Woolf
In this performance-lecture, Brandon Woolf and his collaborators Leonie Bell and Matt Korahais will present material from their upcoming work The Stinking Nose, in which a German, a Jew, and a Greek who can’t smell host a dinner-performance for the audience staring garlic, for better and for worse. On the one hand, this household allium has a tragic history: since at least the Middle Ages, it has been grossly misappropriated by antisemites and other bigots as a stand-in for Jews, migrating peoples, and underclasses around the globe. On the other hand, it is a beacon of resistance and fortitude both in our kitchens and out in the wild. Garlic has many enemies, and its only choice is to stand and fight, Allicin and aroma its most useful weapons. With the garlic as our guide, we discuss and discurse early Austrian rhinoplasties, what we know about what the nose knows, Freud's own penchant for sniffing over seeing, pickled codes of solidarity, and of course, how to make a Sunday sauce. Take a deep breath and tell us what you smell.
Reading from Siting Yang`s Sky of Darkness:
Sky of Darkness is a documentary adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Heart of Darkness—it recontextualizes the 19th century British imperial story through the lens of a modern-day Chinese pilot in West Africa. Sky of Darkness features investigatory, documentary methodologies that might seem unusual in literary adaptations. The plot is interwoven with verbatim interviews, and the story also features polyphonic discourses assembled from news in Chinese and Western media, popular Chinese social media where heated discussions on African issues take place, academic research on Chinese infrastructure investments in Africa and the racial issues they bring about, as well as lectures and articles by post-colonial critics including Chinua Achebe himself. Sky of Darkness extracts its plotline from Conrad’s novella. However, it replaces the time and space with a contemporary one: the sailor-narrator Marlow becomes a Chinese pilot Ma-Luo, who works for CATIC, a state-owned enterprise that exports military aircrafts to African countries. At the same time, it introduces the Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, as a ghost figure that frames the narrative with his African point of view, challenges the protagonist with questions of ethics, race, history. Sky of Darkness explores a series of questions in the racial aspect of socioeconomics, geo-politics, and cultural production: What does colonialism and imperialism look like in our time, in the Third World? We are all too familiar with the discourse of post-colonial critiques, but what do we make of our culpable selves when we are part of the totalizing blueprint of colonialism?
"Codes of Absence"- A Documentary Concert by Nico Christancho, Elena Tilli, and Kai Tuchmann
"Codes of Absence" brings musician Nico Yurgaki on stage and takes us with him on a personal vigil, that has its point of departure in Nico´s experiences of migrating into the EU from Colombia. These experiences were often dominated by feelings of saudade and the absence of loved ones. So during the performance, he invites his mother, Bertha Ouinthero, who founded the first female Salsa Ensemble in Colombia, to improvise live music with him -by using the technology of an Internet call. During these improvisations, they emerge on an intimate conversation that discusses topics like motherhood, rebellion against patriarchy, masculinity, love - and the feeling of absence in a seemingly globally connected world. The structure of their musical improvisations is grounded in the concept of the five Claves (translated into English as Codes) in Colombian/Pacific and Caribbean music. These five codes are rhythmic patterns that are present in many music pieces played in Columbia. They have come into existence through hundreds of years of interweaving different musical cultures across the Latin/Afro/Caribbean realm. Thus turning these patterns into a symbol for the unstableness of identity- and its transgression.
DAY 2
Configurations of Craft in Music and Drama- Panel chaired by Kai Tuchmann with Nicolas Christancho and Yang Siting
Based on the previous day`s presentations of "Codes of Absence" and "Sky of Darkness," this panel explores the different approaches towards composition in music and drama.
Lecture Performance "Open Plants" by Hesse & Wakil
The artist duo Mitra Wakil and Fabian Hesse work at the interfaces of fine art, new technologies and democratic self-empowerment. Their interest lies in the creative and critical examination of computer technology, especially 3D technology. Hesse & Wakil track down errors or communication disruptions in these new technologies in order to consciously undermine them and make them artistically usable. For example, they use databases from biotechnology: specifically, 3D scans of agricultural plants such as millet, tobacco and tomato plants as well as weeds. Hesse & Wakil re-organize these plant parts using a human-assisted random principle and combine individual elements into new hybrid shapes using an independently calculating algorithm. These appear partly floral, partly physically iridescent and merge into each other as leaves, tubers and fruits into new, fantastic hybrids. Hesse & Wakil then use AR technology to grow the resulting data sets into abstract aluminum sculptures, giving their fictional depictions a new physicality.
Staged Film Excerpts of Jian Yi`s "Zodiac"
Everyone born and raised in China has an animal “dearest” to them based on their year of birth. It is conceptually interesting that 12 animals levy this huge influence on the world’s largest nation. Over its long history, the Chinese civilization has offered great wisdom regarding to how humanity relate to Nature and to other beings. Unfortunately, the reality today for the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac isn’t that rosy. As the single largest market for almost all animal products—meat, dairy, eggs, fur, leather, ivory, products tested on animals, companion animals and animals for performance, China today is in general not treating these 12 or most of its non-human animals with compassion or care, except for perhaps a small handful of most "useful" animals such as pandas. Yet many people in China will find this surprising, since the vast majority of us haven’t seen this treatment with our own eyes, because the harsh reality is always hidden from us.
Food as Document of Culture- Panel with Brandon Woolf, Yi Jian and Mitra Wakil
This panel will unpack the problem of form by discussing the content of the works of Mitra Wakil, Brandon Woolf, and Jian Yi: food - and the role it is playing in shaping individual and social identity.
About the Speakers
Kai Tuchmann graduated in directing from Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch in Berlin. He works as a dramaturge, director and academic. As a visiting professor at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, he helped develop the curriculum for the BA Dramaturgy program there. Kai has also researched the history of dramaturgy as a Fulbright Scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University New York, and he is a Fellow of the Mellon School of Theater at Harvard University. In his internationally shown documentary theater works, Kai has explored the afterlife of the Cultural Revolution in contemporary China, the impact of urbanization on migrant workers in Europe and Asia, and the role of the body in the face of digital technologies. He is the co-editor of www.connectingrealities.org, which examines Indian and Asian performance practices, both traditional and contemporary, that relate to performing reality. He is also the co-translator of Li Yinan`s 当代剧场访谈录. "Juchang Performance in Contemporary Chinese Society (1980–2020)." His recent publication is the edited volume "Postdramatic Dramaturgies-Resonances between Asia and Europe" (transcript, 2022).
The Citizen TALES Commons Cambridge-based non-profit organization fosters creative scholarship and co-creation around narratives of citizenship and belonging and strives for equity in academia and beyond. Like a Greek chorus, Citizen TALES Commons amplifies our collective voice, while empowering each individual.
Nicolás Cristancho, Composer and multiinstrumentalist specialized in Jazz and Afro-Caribbean music. Sound designer for theater and performing arts. He was first exposed to the music environment when, still very little, his mother, Bertha Quintero, rehearsed at home with the female Salsa orchestra she directed. In 1999 he went to Cuba to study sight-reading and composition with the teachers Elvira Fuentes and Tulio Peramo. Ha gained a double degree in Jazz Piano from the Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá, Colombia, and the Escuela Superior de Música de Catauña, Spain. Nicolás is the co-founder of the Cistifellea Theater Collective together with the director and stage designer Elena Tilli, where he works as a sound designer, performer, and writer. His practice of improvisation and his emphatic approach during the process offer unique possibilities. He loves to play with what the audience participation can offer to sound by developing specific tools for interaction and building custom-based small-scale instruments. By using software and electronic sounds, together with live played instruments, Nicolas allows himself a fullscale exploration that together with his wide versatility as a musician and composer, opens up a high level of complexity that translates into a beautiful, inspiring, and sometimes provocative experience for the public.
Fabian Hesse is an interdisciplinary artist working with digital fabrication. In his practice Hesse focuses on the tech-knowledge of digital production and material transformations in the course of the technological transition. He uses 3D printing, modeling processes and algorithms from which he creates abstract sculptures, performative situations, scores and experimental workshop formats. Collaboration is a major element of Hesse’s work. Next to other joint projects, he works closely with Mitra Wakil under the name Hesse & Wakil. In his often experimental formats, Hesse explores new approaches to social, material and structural transformations of society within the rapid development of technology. He uses the possibilities of technologies and materials to investigate in the impact of the digitization process on art and society. In doing so, he reflects on subjects such as human-machine-interaction, copy, glitch, visualization and the concealment of information. His work is an ongoing process of this translation and transformation, which ultimately leads to questions about memory, visualization, surveillance capitalism and knowledge society.
Elena Tilli is a multidisciplinary artist. She creates experiences for the audience, inspired by humanity and the human body. Elena is the co-founder of the Cistifellea Collective together with the musician Nicolas Cristancho, in which she practices her love for directing and media design. She is also a video designer in the theater and her collaborations have been seen at The Kitchen Theater in New York, at the Barichstaadt Opera in Munich and in public theaters in Barcelona. Graduated in mechanical engineering (MA), Elena completes her education at Yale School of Drama studying Technical Design and Production and Design for Theater. She is currently in the second year of the program held by Claudia Castellucci at Scuola Conia Raffaello Sanzio focused on the Theory of Scenic Representation.
Mitra Wakil focuses on participatory formats, open workshops for digital fabrication and 3D technologies. Wakil's work asks questions about the formation of identities through forms and structures, and the political, gender and social contradictions we face on a daily basis, often in close collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Fabian Hesse under the name Hesse & Wakil and with FabLabs. Through artistic and collaborative workshops, study groups, political activism and a critical understanding of technology, she developed several collective works on the reformulation and marginalized knowledge of female organs and the gender structures associated with them. She exhibited, organized workshops and did projects in, among others, the Pinakothek der Moderne München, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Haus der Kunst München, the 54th Venice Biennale, M1 Boskamp-Stiftung Hohenlockstedt, WUK Vienna, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Lenbachaus München and Kunstverein Göttingen. She also received various prizes and scholarships for her work, such as the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize and together with Fabian Hesse, she holds a professorship at HGB Leipzig (Germany).
Brandon Woolf is an interdisciplinary theater artist and clinical associate professor of English at New York University, where he directs the Program in Dramatic Literature. Both his scholarship and performance practice work to facilitate connections and collaborations between artists, academics, arts and other administrators, and activists. Brandon’s monograph, Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin (Northwestern University Press, 2021) shows how theater and performance can help us rethink our public institutions both in and beyond the arts. His co-edited volume Postdramatic Theatre and Form (Bloomsbury, 2019) intervenes in ongoing debates about contemporary experimental performance by developing a theory of theatrical form. Concurrent with his scholarship, Brandon’s artistic work investigates theater’s potential as a public, and fundamentally civic practice. Over the last fifteen years, he co-founded and co-directed three public performance ensembles – Culinary Theater, Shakespeare im Park Berlin, and the UC Movement for Efficient Privatization [UCMeP]. Brandon has recently presented work at 14th Street Y, Fulton Center, Target Margin Theater, Drama League, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center, Kennedy Center, Harlem Stage, and a USPS mailbox on Prospect Park West. www.brandonwoolfperformance.com
Siting Yang is a theater maker and scholar of literature born and raised in Beijing, China. Her research focuses on dramaturgy, theater of the real, documentary/archival media, material culture, and intersections of non-fiction, history, and theatricality from the age of modernism to the present. In her creative practice, she seeks to explore possibilities of the crafts of documentary theater, playing with investigative interviews, non-fiction materials, and literary adaptation. Her recent credits include: Phaedra’s Love (2024, New York), Cherry Orchard (2022, New York), The Sea Does Not Reach Naples (2022, New York), Ward No. Six (2022, New York), Sky of Darkness (2022, New York), and V. A. B. E. L. (2022, Augsburg). She received her B. A. in History and German Studies at Peking University, her MFA in dramaturgy at Columbia University, and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in German Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.
Jian Yi is a Chinese independent filmmaker, social innovator and food activist who currently conducts research at the Animal Law and Policy Program at the Harvard Law School since 2022. His films Bamboo Shoots and Super, Girls! won a number of international film festival awards. Jian Yi co-founded the ground-breaking China Villager Documentary Project with filmmaker Wu Wenguang in 2004, and founded the IFChina Original Studio in 2008. His works have been shown at numerous film festivals, museums (including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York) and university campuses across the globe. Since 2014, Jian Yi has been at the forefront of promoting sustainable food system in China. He founded and preside the Good Food Fund under the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, one of the ten global Top Visionaries named by the Rockefeller Foundation for its 2050 Food Systems Vision Prize. He was frequently interviewed by international media for his views on China's food systems and appeared on Eating Animals, a documentary produced by Natalie Portman. Jian Yi served on the Core Leadership Team of Action Track 2 of the United Nations Food Systems Summit between 2020 and 2021 and led the initial Workstream 1 on Food Environments.