Welcome to the Spider Festival 2019. 2019 year’s edition followed the tagline Zone of Co-Existence and was dedicated to a display of various artists, each of whom follows their own artistic form, as well as their own rules of assessment.
© Anna Van Waeg
Choreography is everywhere. Its epiphanies ramify from subjectified daily routines to large-scale socio-political structures. Over time, choreography stepped forward as a crucial agent in the formation and dynamics our co-existence. As a means of progress and prosperity it is accompanied by advanced tools of techno-logy and it plays a crucial role in the formation of rules of engagement. Choreography is closely tied to the space–time continuum and empirical evaluations. Choreography is knowledge embedded in contemporary being. It belongs to statistics and quantification. It can foresee, predict and announce. Choreography teaches us how to be and how to exist in our environment. As a system, it conditionsforms of co-existence. Choreography stands for and represents a system of stability. Choreography is the knowledge in our world. Or, to be more precise: it is a condition for our (limited) knowledge. Choreography is a specific epistemology. Choreography is a way of collective being.
But how come that, despite our possession of such a highly sophisticated knowledge about the systems of co-existence, time feels everything but stable? At the same time, could it be that choreography is in a way static, even though we know that everything in our world is in constant motion? Could it be that a collective occurs by default? Is choreography, as a way of perceiving our co-existence, perhaps neglected among and deprived of other systems of ‘togetherness’? We shall say: regulated rules of assessment are a seemingly bulletproof wall of a bunker set up to protect its own territory.
New forms of being are emerging beyond the dominant epistemologies, thereby challenging knowledge and perceptions of our co-existence. These new forms are not in favour of the dominant structures which (still) propel exploitation, gender inequality, fear and racial intolerance. Throughout history, we have developed and mastered the choreographies of hurting and damaging each other. Even more, we know that choreography can serve as a wall for preventing us from reachingeach other. It feels like some sort of blindness has arrived. Modernity is providing us with highly sophisticated technologies, again and again, and yes, we understand that we are more and more in this world – but how come that we are still oscillating around the same blind point, still in denial of other existences and other cultures’ contributions to the variety of co-existences? How come that our knowledge is still deeply focused on surveillance of territories? Could it be that choreography is a way of taking control over space-time continuum?
And what about findings that teach us that space and time are two separate entities, both acting as agents in their own right? If materia is changing independently of time, and if we are dealing with the reality of dependency and independency at the same time, what is choreography in that respect? And then: what does choreography depend on? What are the rules of its assessments? Human and natural resources? And yet our obliviousness has brought our existence to the edge of distinction. Is induction that natural phenomena which keeps life in balance? Could it be that choreography came to its induced finality?
On the other hand, we know that choreography exists. We apply it to facilitate the very systems that have proven to work in favour of limited knowledge. Burning of witches, for example. We know that, in order to make us blind, we must build walls. We know that, in order to keep our co-existence choreographed and stable, systems will be applied. We also know that our existent epistemology, our choreography, our system of co-existing, is a system that engineers would term a very poorly constructed system. We also know that a ‘choreography of blindness’ is way faster and much more effective than investments in distribution of knowledge. Knowledge takes time, and time is independent of space; yet choreography is all about keeping knowledge in place.
So, if we possess certain knowledge, and if choreography does exist, why can’t we accept that? Evidently, the very acceptance of our ability to hurt each other and that the fact that damage has been done seems to remain our greatestchallenge. Acceptance is probably not a key solution, but it has the capacity to bring the wall down. Could acceptance contribute to the construction of structures which would enable a different perception of our environment and a possibility to reach beyond the choreographed wall? Acceptance wouldn’t heal any wounds, but it might have a large impact on the forms of our co-existence. We can not experience these forms, which lay beyond the wall of existent epistemologies, if we don’t bring the wall down.
The surface of Earth is dense and filled with living organisms that are all there at the same time. What a marvelous cacophony. Our cultural differences are face to face with one another. But, despite knowing that – or perhaps precisely because of that knowledge – a progressive vision of tomorrow seems to elude us. Once we have realised that we are more and more in the world, and if we know that there are holes in the realm of collectivism (hence collective thinking turns out to be difficult whenever error emerges, as well as it appears to be a highly regulated domain in its search for errorless and sustainable structures; yet error is a part of a learning curve), how are we to think and cultivate our forms of co-existence? Could we think about forms of togetherness in domain of aggregate structures full of empty holes to be filled? Could we fill them together? Could we perhaps focus our thought on traces of choreography as a core structure? Aggregate structures are part of our environment, they are part of our human environment, and our environment is the knowledge we possess about our world. An aim to provide compact forms without any regard of our environment will always result in limited knowledge and walls. Gaining knowledge is channeling knowledge in itself.
Welcome to the Spider Festival 2019. This year’s edition follows the tagline Zone of Co-Existence and is dedicated to a display of various artists, each of whom follows their own artistic form, as well as their own rules of assessment. Do not expect them to teach about how to co-exist. We seize the zone of co-existence on a larger scale, thus allowing for a variety of artistic expressions to emerge. Starting from the idea of a dance floor as the grounds on which various rhythms are brought into co-existence, we don’t follow only one topic; instead, we display expressions over the borders of the dominant epistemologies. We are aware that we are heading towards the 2020’s, towards the significant environment already experienced as roaring 20’s, années folles, which ended up in horrifying totalitarian systems and World War II. We have a deep understanding of what effects a wrong perception of time can have. By embracing various artistic dynamics we seek to enable a zone of a dance floor as a dynamic territory which allows for these artistic expressions to emerge. From critically acclaimed dance battles to elaborations of dance and choreography, all of which are accompanied with the voice of the Earth, our intent is not to offer a partial experience of only a singular show, but an experience of a festival as a whole. We invite you to fully immerse yourself in a wall-free zone of togetherness. A dance floor is acondition which plausibly shifts from the realm of intention to that of attention. We are different and we are in the roaring zone.
Matej Kejžar
Spider Artistic Director
Spider festival 2019: Festival of Radical Bodies
The international Spider Festival, annually presenting a selection of ground-breaking European and Slovene productions in the field of dance and performance, was spread its’ net of radical performative practices between the 12th and 16th of June 2019 in the Slovene capital of Ljubljana.