(2023)

It is partly closely bonded, partly permeable group learning about strength and tenderness from the stories of particles and songs of ancestresses.

Draźnięta i czahary (in Old Polish - nipples and scrubs on marshy ground) are embodied now by Dorota Michalak, Agnieszka Róż Różyński and Ola Zielińska.

Their practice is rooted in rural singing traditions of so called Eastern Europe and somatics. Focusing on touching visions, erotic oscillation and resonance, they re-work disco-polo music aesthetic challenging patriarchal cultural conditioning.


POSŁUCHAJ WSPOMNIEŃ ZGROMADZONYCH W SWOIM CIELE. ZAPACH SUCHEGO SIANA. TRAWY PO DESZCZU. SPALINY SAMOCHODÓW. DŹWIĘK PRZELATUJĄCEGO SAMOLOTU. ŚWIERSZCZE. ŹRENICE. GŁĘBIA. 
POSŁUCHAJ HISTORII CZĄSTEK, KTÓRE CIĘ OTACZAJĄ I PRZENIKAJĄ. MIEJSC, KTÓRE CIĘ ZAMIESZKUJĄ. SUBSTANCJI, KTÓRE WDYCHASZ i TRAWISZ. DZIAŁAŃ I PRZEDMIOTÓW, KTÓRE CIĘ KONSUMUJĄ. FAL, KTÓRE ZMIENIASZ NA IMPULSY ELEKTRYCZNE, OBRAZY I DŹWIĘKI, ZAPACHY I FORMY, SMAKI I EMOCJE. HISTORIE DWUTLENKU WĘGLA W TWOICH PŁUCACH I MIKROPLASTIKU W TWOIM KRWIOBIEGU. PODĄŻAJ ZA ICH PRZEPŁYWEM. W RYTM PULSU. ZANURZAMY SIĘ W GŁĘBOKIM CZASIE.



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SUPPORTED BY:

︎ Municipal Gallery Aresnał - Białystok


PERFORMED AT:

“Duby Smalone” exhibition as part of the performative program by Kasia Hertz, Municipal Gallery Aresnał - Białystok (PL), 1-13.08.2023

(2023)

Lush blast follows the concept of wilderness as a tool to let go of control and celebrate the richness of life. A performative walk where attention is drawn from the intricacies of biological processes, to the orchestration of the various bodies that help shape Hellerau. The walk begins on Portikus in front of the Festspielhaus and continues through the immediate surroundings of Hellerau. Along the way, stories, songs and exercises are tried out to direct attention and perception and stimulate the imagination. Senses are drawn to the small movements, connections, and impulses of the sentient wilderness residing in the surroundings and our bodies. The narrative is woven in a hybrid fashion, combining live performance, archival footage, and a live sound installation. 

WE ARE TURNING THE AIR INTO FLESH. WE ARE A FABRIC OF SUGAR. WE ARE A SWEET ENERGY STORAGE. WHISPERING STORIES OF SENTIENT WILDERNESS.




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Choreography & performance:
Alica Minar, Dorota Michalak

Sound & performance:
Ola Zielińska

Dramaturgical assistance:
Maikon Kempinski


SUPPORTED BY:

︎ HELLERAU - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste


PERFORMED AT:

HELLERAU - Dresden (DE), 20.05.2023

(2022)

A choreographic research on European Wilderness initiated with a visit to the Carpathian Mountains (Kôprová and Tichá Valley in Slovakia). It has been developed in collaboration with Alica Minar within the #TakeHeart residency in Hellerau over the summer and autumn of 2022.

WILDERNESS IS AN AREA OVER WHICH HUMANS HAVE LITTLE OR NO CONTROL. IT PROVIDES CONDITIONS FOR THE RICHNESS OF LIFE TO THRIVE. IT IS A PRACTICE OF LETTING GO. INTIMATELY IMBRICATING BODY AND ENVIRONMENT. CELEBRATING FLOWS OF ENERGY. LISTENING TO STORIES. MAKING DECISIONS AS A RELATIONAL PROCESS.


Working with the notion of wilderness touches on several aspects simultaneously: the question of power relations between humans and land, the practice of letting go of control in favor of building collaborations, zooming into biological processes enabling alliances between living and dead matter, and shifting attention from static objects to dynamic fluxes and interdependencies. It became a mixture of dance, cooking and carpentry. Within the process, we collected multiple stories about woods and wilderness focusing on relationality and biological processes, we worked with dance scores and storytelling as practices of intimately imbricating body and environment and celebrating energy flows. We focused on glucose as the primary substance that all living beings exchange and wood from the perspective of craftsmanship. The research became a space for reflecting on work organization and collaboration. Making joint decisions as a relational process allowed us to generate a third quality beyond our individual agendas and capabilities.



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Concept, research & performance:
Alica Minar, Dorota Michalak

with the generous contribution of Erik Baláž and  Matthias Nuss


SUPPORTED BY:

︎ Fonds Darstellende Künste aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen von NEUSTART KULTUR, #TakeHeart Residenzförderung

︎ HELLERAU - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste


PERFORMED AT:

HELLERAU - Dresden (DE), October 2022

(2022)

A choreographic and body-based field research initiated within Kinship Residency in Studio ALTA, Prague, developed in collaboration between Xenia Koghilaki, Dorota Michalak, and Julek Kreutzer.

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM THE GARDEN ABOUT COLLECTIVENESS, TIME, AND IDEOLOGY?

Three choreographers attempt to "conspire with” the local gardens embedded in the infrastructure of the city. Through the notion of nakedness, we search for a sense of belonging to what goes beyond being and acting human.

We consider a garden a protected space of co-existence and encounter between humans, plants, insects, vegetal and mineral agents as well as different kinds of particles like chemicals, dust, or noises. Using the notion of nakedness as our basic choreographic tool we want to explore how the conspiracy between all those agents can be reinforced. In the notion of nakedness, we search for the potential to approach what is “underneath”. With this as a starting point, we develop choreographic strategies to explore contradictory dipoles like permeability and resistance, camouflage and exposure as well as the possibility of hijacking concrete (architectural or imaginary) structures. On another note, we explicitly turn to the garden as a site that depends on human intervention. We are interested in observing the staging of human relationships* with what grows and lives. Following this understanding, the garden reveals for us an implicit writing of ideology, power relations, time and society in which it is shaped.

The overall project is approached through the collective mode of working centered on a non-hierarchical exchange, based on sharing choreographic tasks, field observations, speculations and principles of sustainability.

*quote from Edenic Apocalypse to Gardens against Eden by Natasha Myers



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Concept, research & performance:
Xenia Koghilaki, Dorota Michalak, Julek Kreutzer


SUPPORTED BY:

︎ Studio ALTA

︎ Goethe Institut


PERFORMED AT:

Studio ALTA - Prague (CZ), August 2022

(2021)

It is a study that ventures into the somatic, botanic, and activist fields, weaving them together. It aims to observe and foster alternative ways of 'taking space' in the urban setting learning from ecosomatic knowledge and plants' relational abilities.
Throughout the process, we expose our tangible selves and investigate our material co-extension with the environment to re-imagine the infrastructures we inhabit and look for the (im)possible ways to interfere with the urban fabrics.


PERHAPS OF THE FUTURE
TURNING THE SKIN INSIDE OUT
TO ACCEPT TO WELCOME HYPERSENSITIVE BODY
MERGING AND COINCIDING WITH THE VERY SUBSTANCE OF THE WORLD
WHAT DO THEY NEED TO BE TAKEN CARE OF?
WE ARE EXCITED AND WE ARE HELPLESS
LEANING TO THE SADNESS
LEANING TO THE NUANCES OF THE NOISE
LEANING TO THE VOID
LEANING TO THE SURPRISES AND DOUBTS
MICRO RAVES OF THE FIELD




The research stems from my interest in plant communication sparked in 2019, influenced by exploring the sensitive capacities of plants through dance practice. It directed my attention to environmental awareness and opened up a question about the sources and conditions of our relating to the world. Throughout the research, this question’s urgency became more apparent. Within my two-year involution in this subject, I heard many voices that helped me position my research as a response to the specific cultural problem formulated by Valeria Graziano as the “collapse of the oikos” relating to the “ecology as much as economy.” [1] 

The concerns about decreasing environmental awareness and disconnection with nature have been diagnosed by Richard Louv as “nature-deficit disorder”. Following a rediagnosis of Richard Louv’s theory by Elizabeth Dickinson, the core of the problem can be placed in “how psychological, interpersonal, and cultural fracturing promote disconnection in the first place, leading to the notion that nature is outside of humans who suffer from decreased contact with it.” 

“The problem is not caused by technology, urbanization, fear, and overprotective homeowner’s associations or by decreased contact with nature but by over-rationalization, objectification, suppressed emotion, a decreased sense of place, and anthropocentrism. Retheorizing shifts the problem from a modern fall from nature to a long, gradual history of psychological and cultural estrangement with nature and place—a notion that needs to be added to nature education discourse.” [2] 

Indigenous scholars like Vanessa Watts and Zoe Todd contribute to the inquiry by questioning the Euro-Western approach to human-environmental relations based on the epistemological-ontological distinction and problematizing the concept of Anthropocene.

“With the prevalence of the Anthropocene as a conceptual “building” within which stories are being told, it is important to query which humans or human systems are driving the environmental change the Anthropocene is meant to describe. What “modernist mess,” as Fortun eloquently describes it, characterizes this moment of “common cosmopolitical concern”—Latour’s term to describe the fact that the climate is a shared heritage, cross-roads, site, or milieu that we all inhabit, and one which deserves our deep attention as a commons and context for engaged involvement in the crises of climate change—that is the Anthropocene? And, finally, who is dominating the conversations about how to change the state of things?” [4]

The recognition of this problem opens up a field for action. It invites us to look for alternative ways of understanding human-environmental relations and their practical consequences.

In Exposed. Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times, Alaimo writes about the trans-corporeal subjects enmeshed with the world and exposed to material-semiotic interactions that create uneven hazards in the context of climate change.[5] The work of Alaimo inspires the title of the research and helps to formulate two research objectives:

I. Opening a group reflection on human-environmental relations in a situated urban context. Drawing attention to the notion of being exposed by recognizing vulnerabilities, sensitivities and potentials deriving from our embeddedness in specific material-semiotic interactions. Opening question about situating one's sense of agency concerning one's environment and the role of (trans-)corporeality in it.

II. Fostering the sense of enmeshment with surroundings and the experience of porosity. Sensitization to feel the complex entanglements and the subtle process of interweaving tissues, sensations, affects, and meanings.


“WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR PRACTITIONERS TO RE-VALORIZE ART AND CULTURE, NOT AS KINDS OF SPECIALIZED PRODUCTION, BUT AS ELEMENTS OF A BROADER PROCESS OF PARTISAN SOCIAL REPRODUCTION?”

/Valeria Graziano · Partisan Welfare: Group Phantasy as Social Infrastructure [in:] Solidarity Poiesis: I will come and steal you · Berlin 2017/



The research working methods have been shaped by mixing my choreographic interests, dance practice and cultural studies. I apply an ecosomatic approach following the wish for knowledge production to be rooted in material, kinesthetic, sensuous intelligence. Thanks to the dialogue with prof. Marta Kosińska and following the meshwork metaphor, the Exposure became for me a space for problematizing the way of generating knowledge about human-environmental relations. In this regard, I can distinguish two additional objectives:

III. Building a space for creative involution where the knowledge is generated not through extracting and interpreting data but through facilitating an engagement with the problematic and opening up a critical dialogue. Research is approached here as a collective process of becoming attentive and critical. On this basis, the research aims to create a space of “dense relations, energy flows, and co-constitution of the involved actors” what Andrea Ghelfi calls an ecology of proximity, [6] as a place from which to reflect on human-environmental relations.

IV. Proposing the meshwork choreography as a research practice following a “partisan mode of inquiry” and placing it within a broader discourse of qualitative methodologies.

Can choreographic research building on the meshwork approach be a receptive and generative place to reimagine human-environmental relations?



[1] Valeria Graziano, Partisan Welfare: Group Phantasy as Social Infrastructure [in:] Solidarity Poiesis: I will come and steal you, (ed.) Robin Vanbesien, Berlin 2017.

[2]Elizabeth Dickinson, The Misdiagnosis: Rethinking ‘Nature-deficit Disorder’. “Environmental Communication”, 7:3, 2013.

[4] Zoe Todd, Indigenizing the Anthropocene [in:] Art in the Anthropocene. Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, (eds.) Heather Davis, Etienne Turpin, London 2015.

[5] Stacy Alaimo, Exposed. Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times, Minneapolis 2016.

[6] Andrea Ghelfi, Worlding politics: Justice, commons and technoscience, PhD diss., University of Leicester 2015. (after: Dimitris Papadopoulos, Experimental Practice. Technoscience, Alterontologies, and More-Than-Social Movements, Durham 2018.)



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Initiated by Dorota Michalak

Substantively and energetically the study is nourished by Dorota Michalak, Katerina Delakoura, Iro Grigoriadi, participants of the workshops at Utopia Laboratory and Self-organized Free TheaterEMPROS in Athens. All coincidental encounters, places, weather, atmosphere have a very high impact on the work being a huge resource feeding the study.

Thanks to:
Μυροβόλος Μεταξουργείο, Mariana Kastalia, Ελπίδα Ταξιάρχη, Sunayana Shetty, Stergios Dinopoulos

Documentation:
Sunayana Shetty, Stergios Dinopoulos, Alekos & Christos Bourelias

Poster:
Yiannis Selimiotis


SUPPORTED BY:

︎ Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (in the frame of MA thesis in Intercultural Communication)

︎  Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Programm NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland

︎ Utopia Laboratory in Athens

︎ Self-organized Free Theater EMPROS in Athens


CARRIED OUT:

Athens (GR), June-July 2021

Berlin (DE), August-November 2021


︎ ︎ ︎dorotmich@gmail.com