Lectures

Lectures

Every year, we invite lecturers from various fields of contemporary art production and theory to present their reflections on contemporary art. Here we publish their valuable contributions.

Blaž Lukan
THE PANDEMIC AS A SPECTACLE

Apart from its real dimensions, the pandemic also possesses a strong symbolic note, since it is accompanied by fear, violence, various methods of excommunication, and other trauma transposed from the physical onto the social body – and vice versa. We can speak about pandemic signs marking the social body and its skin, signs akin to those detected and used by performative arts.

The article draws from PARL 2021 seminar Body and/as Contagiousness. First published in Maska Journal, no. 205-206 (winter 2021). BLAŽ LUKAN is a professor at the AGRFT Ljubjana, researcher of contemporary performing arts, dramaturg, and theatre critic. 

Jasmina Založnik
POWER-GAMES BEHIND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF CONTAGION

What does it mean to see the contagioned body as infectious toward other bodies? What is the impact of the medical-epidemiological concept of infection on the wider political discourse? How have the metaphoric notions of contagion been used as its counter-side? How contagious are social and artistic practices and what are the reasons for their success or/and their downfall?

The article draws from PARL 2021 seminar Body and/as Contagiousness. First published in Maska Journal, no. 205-206 (winter 2021). JASMINA ZALOŽNIK is a dramaturg, theatrologist, critic, producer, member of the Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia and co-curates CoFestival.

Jernej Markelj
INFECTED/ AFFECTED: THEORISING AFFECTIVE CONTAGION WITH DELEUZE

“Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire”, writes Anna Gibbs, “affect leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage, exciting fear—in short, communicable affect can inflame nerves and muscles in a conflagration of every conceivable kind of passion”. To be able to make a claim like this, and theorise the contagion of affect, philosophy needs to stand on its head.

The article draws from PARL 2021 seminar Body and/as Contagiousness. First published in Maska Journal, no. 205-206 (winter 2021). JERNEJ MARKELJ, PhD, is a lecturer in New Media and Digital Cultures at the University of Amsterdam.

Pia Brezavšček
RETHINKING CONTEMPORANEITY
IN CONTEMPORARY DANCE

What we understand under the vague term »contemporary dance« today, is a dance genre, historically opposed to classical ballet and developed from modern dance. But as such, contemporary dance has its own history, which makes us think about what are the times contemporary dance is contemporary to? How much can a »now« be expended into history? Something can be contemporary only if it changes all the time with the time.

The lecture was a part of PARL 2020 seminar Troubles with contemporaneity. PIA BREZAVŠČEK is the co-editor of the journal Maska and the portal Neodvisni, performing arts critic, dramaturg and co-author of several theatre pieces.

Lana Zdravković
THE PERFORMANCE (OF) CONTEMPORANEITY: BETWEEN ESCHATOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY

How do we think contemporaneity through performance? How do we think performance within contemporaneity? What position performance takes and what role it (might) have in the time of potential return of the big ideological confrontations shaped by attempts of equalization of fascism and antifascism, radical equality and radical inequality, the radical good and the radical evil?

The lecture was a part of PARL 2020 seminar Troubles with contemporaneity. LANA ZDRAVKOVIĆ is researcher, publicist, political activist, producer and performer.

 

Jurij Krpan
MICRO PERFORMANTIVITY AND MOLECULAR SCULPTURING

In order to understand what the non-cognitive intelligence is the artist are investing their research in the domains of simple living organisms from where the principles of life can be observed. The ethics of working with living systems in art is sometimes different from the ethics in science what is creating a certain tensions in understanding the values that are binding our society together.

The lecture was a part of PARL 2020 seminar Troubles with contemporaneity. JURIJ KRPAN is artistic director and senior curator at Kapelica Gallery – Gallery for Contemporary Investigative Art, Ljubljana.