Artistic Collectives, Sustainability, and the Perpetual State of Emergency

The iCoDaCo 2024-2027 series of online conferences will explore, throughout the four-year project, what sustainability means in the context of artistic practice—considering everything from time management and self-care to navigating political and social pressures, from the environmental disaster to the AI revolution.

We are pleased to announce the first iCoDaCo conference, “Artistic collectives, sustainability, and the perpetual state of emergency.” Live captioning in English by The National Captioning Institute.

This first conference invites participants to explore contemporary dance beyond the act of art making itself. We will delve into how dance as a collective practice is situated within society and influenced by the environments which surround it such as climate action, migration, gender, or labor rights. The conference will seek to foster a dialogue on the sustainability of artistic practice in the twenty-first century, considering not just the artistic process, but the necessary conditions that surround and sustain it.

In some regions, dance collectives operate within a supportive infrastructure which allows for a flourishing of experimental work. In other places, dance artists function in frameworks that are more constraining, navigating lack of resources and opportunities. At a time when the cultural ecosystems across wider Europe are being disrupted by increasingly restrictive frameworks, further marginalizing artistic practices, we will ask ourselves what strategies artistic collectives can develop to prevent, address, or resist the challenges of limited resources, censorship, and repression in its various forms.

Artistic collectives have long been investigating alternative methods of creating, presenting, and making art accessible. They test out strategies to align their work with the values they champion and encourage the proliferation of voices. Here, dance becomes a powerful tool for political expression and community engagement, challenging dominant narratives and addressing societal inequalities.

While the theme of politics will inevitably surface in our discussions, we will explore how power structures, exclusion, and dismantling processes, represent dangers for sustainability. Through the lens of contemporary dance and socially engaged artistic practice, the conference will also address what does it truly mean to operate collectively in today’s local, political, and social conditions; how do we apply the artistic knowledge gained through such experiences to the real-world challenges artists face today?

Program

   Welcome words by Yohann Floch, director of FACE and host of the conference
   Provocation by Dr. Katja Praznik, associate professor at the University at Buffalo
   Panel discussion facilitated by Mila Pavićević, dramaturge and PhD candidate at the department of Critical Dance Studies, Free University Berlin, gathering Israel Aloni, artistic director and co-founder of ilDance, and other international guest panelists