«Live Art Workshop» is a series of collaborative professional exchange workshops in the field of performance art, supported by the partners ICA –Institute for Creative Arts [Cape Town, South Africa], Khoj [New Delhi, India], Explode! [Sao Paulo, Brazil], NAVE [Santiago, Chile], platforms led by Zhao Chuan [Shanghai, China], Noor Abuarafeh, Mohamed Abdelkarim [Cairo, Egypt] and, in Switzerland, Arsenic, Lausanne, and Kaserne, Basel. The «Live Art Workshop» brings together cultural organisers and artists in the field of performance art, to exchange and develop on a professional level. The different cultural contexts of the participating partners, hosts and artists, constitute a central point in the joint discussion.

For its last edition, artists from Switzerland invited their counterparts from all over the world to interact digitally. From South America, Chilean curator María José Cifuentes and Brazilian artist João Simões were the guests. María José worked alongside Chilean choreographer Domingo Del Santi, with us a few insights on the collaboration process: «With Domingo, we started a process of previous work to decide together the contents of our workshop and how we could collaborate with our expertise, he, from his body practices, and I, from my theoretical research and my creative practice as a curator and manager. Before starting Partout we worked generating texts, audios, our main tools were WhatsApp and Google Drive. We built a workshop that sought to offer knowledge, practices and experiences, so we made: a lecture by a scientist, a somatic practice and a theoretical-meditative audio where we integrated all the 17 concepts towards the body and human consciousness of the vision of plants and the principles of biodiversity.»

João Simões, from EXPLODE! Platform, partnered with Swiss-based Brazilian performer Ivy Monteiro. Collaboration was core to this process, and as João Simões says: «It was very important for this collaboration that we both had the same principles, visions for common futures, for shared intersectional communities, and a deep connection through shared or similar backgrounds and contexts (as human beings, as racialised people), spiritual practices».

Through this collaboration, Swiss and European participants connected with the wider view of Pro Helvetia’s global network. LAW launched a professional network on a programmatic and practical level, exposed Swiss artists to an international network, and helped to promote and internationalize Swiss performance art.

Live Art Workshop takes place alternately in the different partner regions and, at each time, it is docked onto an existing structure. The Swiss edition of the Live Art Workshop [LAW CH] was hosted by Arsenic, Lausanne, and Kaserne, Basel, in collaboration with PANCH–Performance Art Network CH and linked to the international performance art platform PARTOUT.

 

About João Simões 

João Simões, b. 1979 in Brazil, lives and works in São Paulo [BR]. He works as an artist, curator, researcher and teacher. Together with Cláudio Bueno, he founded the platform Explode!. Through a cultural and artistic practice, that is often perceived as peripheral, he explores ideas of gender, race and class, while touching upon areas such as education, town planning and social justice. Simões is a member of the study group Extremidades, which deals with audiovisual networks, film, performance and contemporary art. 

As curator, speaker or performer, he has appeared in the following institutions: Sesc SP, CCBB-SP, Paço das Artes, MASP and PUC-SP. He presented his performance «Vera Verão» in collaboration with Aretha Sadick, at the exhibition «Agora somos todxs negrxs? » (Are we all blacks now?) at Videobrasil (São Paulo, 2017); and at the exhibition «Arte veículo» at Sesc Pompeia (São Paulo, 2018), in which he thematized «queer blackness» in the media and arts by means of speech, music and video. 

 

About María José Cifuentes 

María José Cifuentes Miranda, lives and works in Santiago de Chile [CL]. She is a professor, researcher, manager, and curator in the field of the performing arts. Author of the books «Historia Social de la Danza en Chile 1940-1990» (Social History of Dance in Chile 1940-1990) and «Danza independiente en Chile, Reconstrucción de una Escena 1990-2000» (2009) (Independent Dance in Chile, Reconstrucción of a Scene 1990-2000), and co-editor of the book «Repensar la Dramaturgia, Errancia y Transformación» (2019) (Rethinking Playwriting, Vagrancy and Transformation). Member of the Investigation and Performing Arts in Chile Center (CIM) and investigator in ARTEA. Director of MOV-S Chile (2015), curator and playwriter in Espacios Revelados, Chile (2016). Director of the Festival Escena Doméstica (2011-2014). Currently she is the Artistic and Executive Director of NAVE, Creation and Residency Center in Santiago, Chile (since 2014).