Performative forms of documentation and writing

Education is a key site through which we share in and contribute to the field of performance. We teach yearly courses at the Dutch Art Institute (ArtEZ) and the School of New Dance Development (Academy of Theatre and Dance), and guest teach and give workshops at institutions in the Netherlands and abroad.

Long-term collaboration with artists and researchers is central to our work. These endeavours take shape in artistic practice (Artist Commissions) and research into performance genealogies (Research Commissions). While these new productions follow their own unique paths, they remain in dialogue with the field of inquiry underlying each respective biannual programme.

Every two-year cycle coalesces around a field of inquiry invested in performance and performativity. Fellows lead a Reading Group to theoretically and artistically explore this material that is grounded in the social and political rituals of daily life. The gleanings are shared in Open Reading Groups guided by guests, and unpacked in conversations with local practitioners on Radio Emma and in Exhibitions presented in our Library. Finally, Readers document this dynamic and collaborative research.

2025

Amsterdam Art Week

Voice as Landscape

horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion

Performance Programme

Saturday 24 May 2025, 16:30–23hr

For Amsterdam Art Week’s West Night, If I Can’t Dance is thrilled to host the second day of horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion, a performance programme by Voice as Landscape.

After an evening at Stichting Perdu on 23 May, the programme unfolds into a day-long gathering — an invitation to experience the different materialisations of time in daily life through eating, shifts in light, mood, and place.

The programme begins in the afternoon at Emmaplein with an offering of food by Kaixin Chen and Sankrit Kulmanochawong, followed by a guided collective siesta by artist Aitana Cordero. The gathering then gently moves to the WG-terrain for artists María Jerez and Élan D’Orphium’s imaginaries of inter-species communication. With the change of light, the programme enters the If I Can’t Dance theater for a dance performance by artist duo Kike García and Jesús Bravo, and culminates with a concert by artist, musician and composer Phantom Wizard.

Voice as Landscape is a performance platform focused on the relationships between body, vibration and territory. It is also an editorial line at Perdu, where it explores poetic experimentation beyond verbal language and into other fields. Voice as Landscape is initiated and curated by Alec Mateo and Lorenzo García-Andrade. This year, Voice as Landscape is working with the notion of ‘correspondence’, both as a theme and as methodology.

Programme*:

16:30 Gather at Emmaplein

17:00 Dinner with Kaixin Chen and Sankrit Kulmanochawong

19:00 La Siesta with Aitana Cordero

20:00 Gather at old plane tree in front of If I Can’t Dance, WG-Plein 881

20:15 Reclamos with María Jerez and Élan D´Orphium

21:00 Paisaje Tres with Kike García and Jesús Bravo at If I Can’t Dance theatre

22:00 Phantom Wizard at If I Can’t Dance theatre, WG-Plein 881

*Subject to change. Final programme will be communicated to participants via email.

With Kaixin Chen & Sankrit Kulmanochawong, Aitana Cordero, Kike García & Jesús Bravo, María Jerez & Élan D´Orphium, Phantom Wizard

Curated by Voice as Landscape

Image description

A pair of dancers in a slow-dance embrace. One partner, possibly male, faces the camera with short brown hair. Their head is bowed, resting softly on the other’s shoulder. The other dancer, less tall, and is seen from behind. They wear a flowery shirt and have short white hair.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

horseshoe to heart / togethers in motion is co-hosted by Perdu and If I Can’t Dance and supported by het Cultuurfonds (with support by the Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds), Acción Cultural Española, and the Spanish Embassy. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

Emmaplein, WG-Plein & If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam

(meeting point at Emmaplein at 16:30hr)

Tickets

Jennifer Scappettone

Poetry After Barbarism

Reading & conversation

Thursday 22 May 2025

20:30hr (doors open 20-22hr)

We kick off our programme for the Amsterdam Art Week with a special evening featuring poet, translator and scholar Jennifer Scappettone, who will give a preview presentation of her forthcoming publication Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism (Columbia University Press, September 2025). Following a reading from the book, Scappettone will be in conversation with fellow poet Mia You and If I Can’t Dance curator Sara Giannini.

Coalescing two decades of research, the book uncovers a stateless, polyglot poetry of resistance—the poetry of motherless tongues. Raised within or in the wake of fascism, authors who write this poetry occupy languages without a perceived birthright or sanctioned education; they compose in ecstatic “orphan tongues” that rebuff nationalist ideologies as well as globalization, uprooting notions of belonging ensconced in nativist metaphors of milk, blood, and soil.

Studying experiments between languages by immigrant, refugee, and otherwise stateless authors—from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven to Emilio Villa, Amelia Rosselli, Etel Adnan, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Chika Sagawa, and Sawako Nakayasu—Scappettone explores how these poets practice strategic forms of literary and linguistic barbarism, proposing modes of collectivity that exceed geopolitical definitions.

Jennifer Scappettone is a professor of literature, creative writing, gender studies, and environmental humanities at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice (Columbia, 2014) and the cross-genre verse books From Dame Quickly and The Republic of Exit 43. She is also the translator of Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli.

Mia You is author of the poetry collections Festival (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2024) and I, Too, Dislike It (1913 Press, 2016), as well as the chapbooks Rouse the Ruse and the Rush (Nion Editions, 2023) and Objective Practice (Achiote Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Chicago Review, Cordite Poetry Review, the PEN Poetry Series, and Poetry. She currently teaches Anglophone literature at the Universiteit Utrecht and in the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Institute.

Image description

Book cover of Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism by Jennifer Scappettone. The title appears on the right side against a black background, with the colors of the letters echoing the hues of the artwork on the left half of the cover. This artwork is a watercolor fragment of an open notebook, with horizontal lines layered in turquoise, yellow, orange, and ochre. Arabic words are written along the lines, with a larger, thicker black letter at the center.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The event is co-organized with the Utrecht University’s Network for Environmental Humanities. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

DAI-COOP Study Group

The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing
An Invitation to think-in-assembly

Conversation & Performance

Friday 23 May 2025

17–19hr (doors open 16–2hr)

A group of people sits in a half-circle on a blue-and-white patterned tiled floor in a historic space with stone columns and carpets along the walls; painted cloths hang above.

As part of Amsterdam Art Week, If I Can’t Dance’s COOP Study Group at the Dutch Art Institute The Word and Wound: And Now You Are Ready to Sing will convene in our theatre space for a three-day workshop and a public sharing on Friday 23 May. With this event, the group opens up their ongoing practice of ‘thinking-in-assembly’, a method that connects thinking and listening, deepening the relations between personal experiences and collective voice.

Study group tutors Snejanka Mihaylova (artist), Lisa Montan (music composer) and Frédérique Bergholtz (If I Can’t Dance), students Anna Buyvid, Nada Gambier, Patrick Freriksen, Agnese Krivade, Bel McLaughlin, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Alva Roselius, Hannah van der Schaaf, Agnese Spolverini and Mia Tamme, and If I Can’t Dance curators Anik Fournier and Sara Giannini invite you to engage in a conversation about the acts of listening and singing, focusing on their potential as reparational practices in times of grief, violence, and harm.

Taking its cues from the histories, methods, and reflections that the group has encountered in their process of study, the assembly will reflect on questions like: What does it mean to be ready to sing? And what does it mean to sing with others? What is the relation between the individual voice and the voice of the group? How does it connect to the body and to (bodily) memory? What are the resonances of singing (together) in the context of the present wounds? In what way does singing mobilize our critical, political, and artistic potential? How can singing be not only an emanation of sound but an embodied practice of listening?

The event also marks the launch of a new section on If I Can’t Dance’s website dedicated to our long and rich history in teaching workshops at the Dutch Art Institute. This Master Programme works at the intersections of theory, art, activism, performance and curating, and operates as an itinerant school with the students and tutors convening seven times per year at different places throughout Europe (and beyond) to engage in collective study. Since 2008, If I Can’t Dance has been developing workshops for the DAI, engaging over the years the lustrous course tutors Tanja Baudoin, Phil Collins, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Jon Mikel Euba, Sara Giannini, Susan Gibb, Emma Hedditch, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Snejanka Mihaylova, Sarah Pierce, Rory Pilgrim, Jimmy Robert, Stefanie Seibold, Hito Steyerl, Ian White, Geo Wyex, and Arnisa Zeqo. On our website we have now added an overview of our successive study groups, sharing a wealth of material, including texts, documentation, and syllabi through which you can get an impression of the different thematics, as well as the performance and pedagogical methodologies, these courses have proposed.

In our physical space, you will find a display of DAI student-made publications and a variety of archival material gleaned from our most recent study groups, composed by Anik Fournier and Frédérique Bergholtz, as well as a reading table focusing on the current COOP The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing.

We look forward to welcoming you in our space and to thinking and singing together!

Image description

Aerial view of a circle of people seated on a floor with blue floral-patterned tiles, surrounded by stone columns. Adjacent to the circle is a slightly elevated surface covered with red-tinted carpets and a white fabric, on which lie threads and other undefined objects. On the sides hang two white fabrics featuring paintings of circles.

Accessibility information

– If I Can’t Dance is located on the second floor with unfortunately no elevator

– Seated event

– Gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The Word and the Wound – And Now You Are Ready to Sing is organized in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute. If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund.

If I Can’t Dance
WG-Plein 881

1054 SM Amsterdam

Tickets: €7.50 & €5 (students)

2024-25

Master course

DAI-COOP

The Word and the Wound 2 / And Now You Are Ready to Sing

Course

2024-25

1/16

The focus of this study group remains on practice. As a continuation of last year’s study group, the encouraging rephrase of guest tutor Lisa Montan’s “And now you are ready to sing”, is reformulated to reflect on what it means to be ready to sing? What does it mean to sing with others? What is the relation between the individual voice and the voice of the group? How does it connect to the body, to (bodily) memory? What are the resonances of singing (together) – in time and space? In what way does singing mobilise our critical and artistic potential? Singing is proposed not only as an emanation of sound, but as an embodied practice of listening. Therefore, the research is articulated around questions of acts of listening, (a)tuning, transmitting, testing and exercising with sounds, with a particular interest in the somatic element of singing, as well as storytelling, folk traditions, the re-interpreting and re-writing of text. In her workWords to write it. The Word and the Wound (after which the study group is named) the Italian feminist Wanda Tommasi identifies the practice of writing as a process of symbolic creation that leads to repair. Special attention is thus brought to the relation between the performative and the restorative, thinking of the potential of performance to be a reparational practice.

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Frédérique Bergholtz

Guest tutors: Lisa Montan, Angelo Custodio, Sara Giannini, Anik Fournier

Students: Anna Buyvid, Agnese Krivade, Alva Roselius, Agnese Spolverini, Bel McLaughlin, Hannah van der Schaaf, Javier Rodriguez Perez, Mia Tamme, Nada Gambier, Patrick Freriksen

Gatherings

PAF, St. Erme

NIDA Art Colony, Vilnius

Nicosia, Cyprus

Bachelor course

SNDO

Codes of in/accessibility within performance practices

Course

2024

In dialogue with If I Can’t Dance’s current research on disability justice and accessibility, this class looks at the different implications that accessibility can take, as well as, the functions it can serve in the creation and circulation of performance practices. In thinking with and alongside access, concepts such as presence, embodiment, perception, interpretation, scoring, and communicability become more layered, leaving space for questioning and deepening. How do bodies-in-performance appear for publics on-stage and off? What are the unconscious ableist structures that enable or disable access within our field and beyond? The dichotomy between abled and disabled bodies is misleading; bodies are rendered enabled or disabled by an uneven construction and distribution of access within racial capitalism and ongoing colonial violence. The seminar aims to unpack those entanglements and explore the correlations between disability and wider mechanics of exclusion, marginalization and harm. Working with material from the If I Can’t Dance archive, a selection of readings, and visits to exhibitions presently open in Amsterdam, the students will be given opportunities to work on small exercises in which they will be asked to explore accessibility in their own work and life.

Course tutors: Anik Fournier and Sara Giannini

Read full syllabus

Sites

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

2023-24

Master course

DAI-COOP

The Word and the Wound

Course

2023-24

1/11

The study group opened a series of reflections on practice and its roots in everyday life. The “word” is synonymous with work; the “wound” denotes an environment. In this sense, the title is open to different questions about the relationship between artistic practice and context. This form of ‘work’ can be viewed in connection to what we can call the creative process. But what is creation? How do we actually initiate a process of creation? How do we form, and how are we formed by, daily life? And how can we – as proposed by Italian feminist Wanda Tommasi – understand working as a process of symbolic creation that leads to repair?

These questions are used to encourage the study group to think about their daily (artistic) practices, and to find methodologies through which individual and collective work can be performed and sustained.

Course tutors: Snejanka Mihaylova, Frédérique Bergholtz

Guest tutors: Angelo Custódio and Lisa Montan.

Students: Ania Yilmaz, Ariell Zéphyr, Cristina Ramos González, Elif Cadoux, Helena Estrela, Lisa Vlamings, Maria Miguel Pratas, Sam Mountford, Seán Bean, Stephen McEvoy, Tereza Darmovzalová, Valeria Moro, and Yi-Hong Wang (Hong).

Read full syllabus

Gatherings

Essaouira, Marrakech

PAF, St. Erme

Vleeshal, Middelburg

2024

Symposium

Chandra Frank

Chandra Frank is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the 2024–2027 Taft Professor of the Public Humanities and will be working on collaborative and multi-modal methodologies related to art, ecology, and public histories. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on feminist and queer of colour movement work, possibilities of dissent, and the ways in which race and the environment work as terrains of power. She is completing her first monograph in progress, Tidal Politics: Feminist Queer Diaspora & Refusal in the Netherlands, which charts the creative and strategic interruption of feminist queer movement work in the 1980s alongside the literal and figurative sinking landscape and racial climate of the Netherlands. Over the last decade, she has been active as an independent curator working across continents and with various institutions such as the Bonnefanten Museum, Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center, 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, and District Six Museum.

Wigbertson Julian Isenia on Tidal Gatherings

Visitor report

December 2024

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For Tidal Gatherings, we invited anthropologist and cultural analyst Wigbertson Julian Isenia.

Read the visitor report

Tidal Gatherings

Symposium

4, 5, 6 October 2024

1/15

A three-day symposium on the intersections between water, ecology, and Dutch colonialism curated by Chandra Frank. Connecting different sites and modes of convening, it includes talks, film screenings, and a study group featuring the work of Paula Albuquerque, Sharelly Emanuelson, Desiree Mwalimu Banks, Toni Giselle Stuart, Lisandro Suriel, and Geo Wyex.

Through these different facets, the programme invites to think with water alongside ideas of belonging, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as artistic production.

Acknowledgements

The project continues If I Can’t Dance multi-year collaboration with CBK Zuidoost and takes place in the framework of Sound System Ecologies: Music and Visual Cultures in the Dutch Kingdom & South Africa, a collaborative project between DJ Lynnée Denise and Chandra Frank funded by the Mondriaan Fund Open Call Slavery Memorial Year Grant (2023–2024). Many thanks to SHEBANG.

If I Can’t Dance & CBK Zuidoost,

location SHEBANG, Amsterdam

2022–23

Edition IX

Bodies and Technologies

Finale

September 2023 – February 2024

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to the Finale of Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies, featuring artists (collectives) Black Speaks Back and Constantina Zavitsanos, and researchers Susanne Altmann, Devika Chotoe, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Grant Watson. During a seasonal festival, taking place from September 2023 through February 2024 across Amsterdam venues, they present their new productions and publications. Each in their own way, they tackle the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies – from experiences of pleasure and intimacy to the ongoing embodied realities of colonial and ableist frameworks.

Image description

Cover of the programme booklet, with text in Times font on white background, stating: Finale Edition IX – Bodies and Technogolgies; names of the participating artists and researchers: Susanne Altmann, Black Speaks Back, Samia Henni, Nuraini Juliastuti, and Constantina Zavitsanos; dates: September 2023-February 2024; and the city where the programme will take place: Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

The Edition IX commission series is curated by programme curators Sara Giannini and
Megan Hoetger in conversation with the If I Can’t Dance artistic team.

Venues across Amsterdam

Programme booklet

Artist Commissions

Black Speaks Back

Black Speaks Back (est. 2016, Brussels. Based in Amsterdam) is a Belgo-Dutch grassroots media platform for multidimensional Black narratives. Their film tackles issues of hyper-sexualisation, cultural fragmentation and collective remembrance at the boundaries between intimacy and sexuality, freedom and conditioning, and myth and reality. The Zwarte Ibis project is led by Chris (Ci) Rickets and Alexine Gabriela in collaboration with Smita James.

Musoke Nalwoga on ZWARTE IBIS

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Musoke Nalwoga, photo by Simara van Bochove.

1/2

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the premiere of Black Speaks Backs’ film ZWARTE IBIS we invited curator and researcher Musoke Nalwoga.

Read the visitor report

Inside ZWARTE IBIS

Artist talk and Film screening

Saturday 3 February 2024, 17hr

Behind-the-scenes documentation of 'Zwarte Ibis', 2023, photo: Henck Pengel.

This moving artist talk connects BSB’s installation at CBK Zuidoost with the Bijlmerbios movie theater. Members of the collective gather to discuss their collaborative production process, as well as the central role of Amsterdam’s Bijlmer neighbourhood within their project.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The artist talk and screening are realised in partnership with CBK Zuidoost and the Bijlmerbios. Special thanks to CBK event programme curator Claudio Ritfeld for his support of the artist talk.

Begins at CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

Free with registration for the film screening

ZWARTE IBIS

Film premiere

Friday 12 January & Saturday 13 January 2024, 19hr

Poster for 'ZWARTE IBIS'. Design by Naomi Quartey.

1/11

The collective invites audiences to join them for world premiere of ZWARTE IBIS, their newest short film, which portrays a young Black woman’s quest for intimacy in a world where the boundaries between the individual and the collective, the political and the personal, the past and the present, become ever blurrier. The screenings are accompanied by a welcoming DJ set, singing bowl performance, and post-screening panel discussions on black intimacy featuring members of the cast and crew.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as the film’s production supervisor. The production of the film was made possible with the support of a “Research, Act & Reflect” grant from Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, and the premiere programme is realised in partnership with Africadelic, Caribbean Creativity, and Re/Presenting Europe. Special thanks to Melkweg, Amsterdam for hosting the programme.

Co-producer: La Fam

Director: Emma-Lee Amponsah

Composer: Chris “Ci” Rickets

Writing team: Nohely Koeyers, Emma-Lee Amponsah, Chris “Ci” Rickets, and Alexine Gabriela

Director of Photography: Henck Pengel

Edited by: Chris Tjong Ayong

Color grading: Yavuz Salim Isler

Text: Mathieu Charles

Narrator: Burnice Hiwat

Lead Actress: Henriette “Aelia Sapph” Valies

Melkweg

Lijnbaansgracht 234A

1017 PH Amsterdam

Tickets:

€11 regular / Cineville free

First screening (fully booked)

Second screening (fully booked)

Zwarte Ibis: An Exploration of Black Intimacy

Exhibition

Thursday 7 December 2023 – Saturday 3 February 2024

Exhibition Opening Thursday 7 December 2023, 17–20hr

Free with registration here

1/8

As a culmination of their time in CBK Zuidoost’s BijlmAIR residency, the collective’s presents an installation featuring audio and visual materials from their production process, including: recordings from their 2022 Kitchen Table Talks, collective notes from scriptwriting in February 2023 and behind-the-scenes footage from filming in summer 2023.

Accessibility information

– Seats available

– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: Dutch and English

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The installation is realised in the frame of the CBK Zuidoost BijlmAIR Residency programme as part of the exhibition ‘AIR in Zuidoost #2023.’ Special thanks to Renske de Jong and Yazan Maksoud for their support with constructing the installation.

CBK Zuidoost
Anton de Komplein 120
1102 DR Amsterdam

Opening times: Tuesday – Friday 11–17hr; Saturday 10–17hr

Free

The Making of Zwarte Ibis

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: Preliminary Experiments’ (2022), performance presentation for the If I Can’t Dance Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies Introductory Event, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

The grassroots media collective introduces aspects of their film-in-the-making Zwarte Ibis through a series of three media campaigns that share elements of their research, scriptwriting and filming processes. Featuring a Zwarte Ibis music playlist, the studio page includes re-broadcasted material from the group’s Instagram story archive and a wide network of hyperlinks to follow, taking visitors inside the topic of intimacy, histories of (Black) cinema and the behind-the-scenes of their film set.

Image description

Full colour photo depicting in the foreground a row of three, loosely positioned full-length mirrors, free standing on wheels, with each having several wax lights on their base. In the background are two people sitting on a table, in front of a wall covered in a red glow and depicting the video-projected sentence: ‘Has your Blackness formed your experience of intimacy?’. The mirrors reflect fragments of a theatre tribune, flight cases and the audience.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies

Screening & Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Black Speaks Back, ‘Zwarte Ibis: The Spirit of Black Intimacies’ (2022), screening and performance. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

1/4

A multimedia performance in which the collective experiments with audio, visual and somatic strategies for approaching the question, ‘how do Black people navigate the intimate sphere in a context where their bodies are heavily politicised and under constant interrogation?’ The mirror plays a key role, foregrounding the frameworks of projection and internalisation through which intimacies with self and others are formed.

Image description

Square graphic logo in black-and-white monochromatic colour scheme where ‘the ground’ is flat black and ‘the figure’ a stark white pairing of the words ‘Zwarte’ and ‘Ibis’. ‘Zwarte’ appears more-or-less in the centre of the graphic, and ‘Ibis’ is right-centred with the ‘Ibi’ aligned directly below the ‘te’ of Zwarte. The ‘s’ in Ibis transforms into the long-beaked head of an ibis bird.

Acknowledgements

ZWARTE IBIS is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

If I Can’t Dance is structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts); the productions in Edition IX are realized with financial support of Ammodo and Cultuurfonds.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Jessika Khazrik

Jessika Khazrik (b. 1991, Beirut. Lives in Beirut and Berlin) is an artist, composer, writer and technologist whose ‘indisciplinary’ practice involves performance, machine learning, ecotoxicology, cryptography, visual art, history of science and music. Working towards a hyper-media performance, she explores the convergences of the histories of science and magic through fieldwork and rehearsals in environmental medicine research centres and scientific laboratories for sonocytology, biomedical imagery and exposome studies.

قرابادين Pharmakopoeia

Essay-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

1/6

The artist maps out the plural strands of research that depart from pharmacopoeia, the formularies of shared remedies that would, up until some centuries ago, thoroughly instruct how to identify ailments and prepare compound medicines. Questioning the linguistic, environmental and techno-political links between remedies, medicine and media, Khazrik delves into the divinatory afterlives and militarised roots of biomedical practices of sonification, sensing, imaging and anamnesis.

Image description

Palimpsestic project image of قرابادين Pharmakopoeia. Realised digitally, the graphics mixes, almost in a steganographic way, different colours (ranging from acid green, to red, purple and pink), geometric patterns (mainly circles, crescents, lines and triangles), slightly floral shapes, images and Arabic scripts. The composition has a square landscape orientation. It centres the project title in light fluorescent green and an image of colourful small balls or pearls. These two elements are positioned against a light, patterned, square background that is framed by stronger green- and purple-coloured shapes.

Acknowledgements

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and co-produced with Iaspis – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts as part of their Holes, Spirals, Waves (2022) programme. Part of the research is carried out at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Munich where Khazrik is an artist in residence from spring 2022 to spring 2023.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Constantina Zavitsanos

Constantina Zavitsanos (b. 1977, Reading, United States. Lives in New York City, United States) works in sculpture, performance, text and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency and means beyond measure – sometimes sculpting inaudible sound waves or the performance of everyday life like school loan debt or years of sleep. Continuing their interference with what is perceivably accessed, they experiment with heat, infrared light, infrasound, haptics and written scores beyond sight and fixed form.

Staci Bu Shea on Entrophy

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Staci Bu Shea, photo by Zazie Stevens.

1/2

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For Entrophy we invited curator and writer Staci Bu Shea.

Read the visitor report

Entrophy

Performance(s)

Saturday 30 September 2023, 15hr & 18hr

1/24

A set of three performances (on-site and online) catalysed by the artist and conjured with the performers who co-create them through an experimental score belonging to no one. In a space of collaboration and not-knowing, the works unfold through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire. Moving across thresholds of perception, the performance(s) are inhabited by sound, infrasound and infrared light. Each has air and water; some have fire and only one has earth. Repeated twice at different tempos, time flows in many directions as well as through layered descriptions, interpretations and captions.

Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex

Image description

A cropped photograph taken in a two-mirror Schlieren system (with knife edge) shows a black background that hosts otherwise invisible entropic air currents against the shadowed ground of a telescope mirror. Two fingers curl over an igniting open flame that lights a candle. It’s serving something in the blur of mourning and celebration; the vibe is a bit of a full moon feel.

Accessibility information

– Hybrid performance(s), online and on-site
– Live-stream on Zoom
– The on-site performance(s) are seated. There will be priority seats for wheelchair users as well as for deaf and hard of hearing audiences. If you come a bit earlier, our hosts will help you find a spot
– Ground floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC downstairs via elevator; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English
– The performance(s) employ sound and infrasound (vibrations)
– Sign language interpretation (NGT on-site, ASL online)
– CART captioning (Dutch and English on-site, English online)
– Poetic audio description (English, both on-site and online)
– Masking during the performance(s) is welcome and highly encouraged; masks are available at the entrance
– Splendor has a café where you can hang out before and after the event

Acknowledgements

Concept: Constantina Zavitsanos
Initiator of the score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex
Curator and production manager: Sara Giannini
Stage manager: Annick Kleizen
Set design: Constantina Zavitsanos with the performers
AV: Leroy Chaar
Light design: Marion Tränkle
In-house technician and floor manager: Thomas Myrmel
Live-stream production: Hans van Eck, Barry Jonas and Zsolt Szederkényi
Production assistance: Sancha Meca Castro
NGT interpreters and Dutch CART: Faye Schippers and Clarissa van den Elzen
ASL interpreters: Candace Davider and company
English CART: Veerle Haverhals
Audio description on-site and online: Constantina Zavitsanos
Front of house team: Naomi Collier Broms and Sancha Meca Castro
Accessibility advisors: Staci Bu Shea and Annick Kleizen
Zoom production advisors: Patrick Mahaney and Lauren Parrish
Accessibility financial support: I Wanna Be With You Everywhere

We would like to thank I Wanna Be With You Everywhere for their generous contribution in making the event more widely accessible. We are also very grateful to Eliane Baudet, Staci Bu Shea, Marja de Kinderen, Annick Kleizen, Patrick Mahaney, Lauren Parrish and Simon(e) van Saarlos for sharing their expertise and advising us in different phases of the project. Finally, a warm thank you to the Splendor collective, and in particular to Nora Fisher, for hosting the programme.

On-site:
Splendor
Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116,
1011 LX Amsterdam

Tickets:

€16,50 regular / €10 students

– First slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 15-16:30hr (Fully booked)*

– Second slot: Saturday 30 September 2023, 18-19:30hr (Fully booked)*

Online:
The event will be live-streamed on zoom
Free with registration

* Each slot includes all three performances.
They are presented one after the other with no intermission.

Entrophy

Score

A twist on the deductive reasoning game Twenty Questions, this performance score reflects the artist’s research into entropy, polyvocality and indeterminacy. Initiated by the artist, it is formed collectively with the performers who will stage it. With Zavitsanos in the role of the guesser, the performers are asked to think of ‘absolutely nothing’ before answering a set of twenty yes/no questions about the performance they will enact. Their answers determine the performances in a space of collaboration and not-knowing, unfolding through chance, improvisation, shared in/capacities and desire.

Acknowledgements

Concept and score: Constantina Zavitsanos
Performers, interpreters and co-creators of the score: Angelo Custódio and Pedro Matias, S*an D. Henry-Smith and Geo Wyex

Experimenting with Entrophy

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Two images of the glowing filaments mounted above the central plane of the methanol pool fire

In their studio room, the artist opens a window into their own studio while working towards Entrophy, a series of collaborative performances riffing on questions of entropy, heat, interdependency and shared in/capacities. Here they share the research and experimentations that underlie these performances: from visual references and tests with heat and infrared cameras, to different engagements with accessibility and modes of seeing.

Image description

Two side by side images. Against a dark background, cold blue smoke-like shadows are scored by repeating horizontal lines of bright light.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Entrophy

Lecture-Performance

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

1/5

The artist shares their experimentation with heat through technologies and performance tactics that unravel at the perceived limits of the sensorial, opening up sight, sound and measurability to a dimension of feeling. Instead of treating heat as something that can be captured for observance by an audience, the artist works with the felt, shared qualities of heat among bodies in space.

Image description

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicates the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads as: ‘Slick in the The way up and down is the same the Heisenberg cut like a band Each lives the death of the other cedes our birth.’

A black screen hosts two lines of overlapping projected captions in white and grey. The two texts interrupt and join one another in partial occlusion that complicate the legibility of one and produces new texture. Joined text reads: ‘Hotel, motel, you don’t tell. She got a boson for her birthday and wore it out in quar.’

Acknowledgements

Entrophy is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Sara Giannini.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Research Commissions

Susanne Altmann

Susanne Altmann (lives and works in Dresden) is a feminist art historian, curator, and leading scholar in the contextualisation of women’s artistic production in former East Germany, working to reorient historical understandings of the region in relation to Eastern Europe rather than to the West. Her new research investigates media experimentation connecting women’s art and working methods, from the early Soviet avant-garde through the last years of the Eastern Bloc.

Elisabeth Rafstedt on When Technology Was Female

Visitor report

Spring 2024

Portrait: Elisabeth Rafstedt, photo by Rietlanden Women's Office.

1/2

At If I Can’t Dance we see the visitor report as a method of documentation. The affectual, relational and embodied nature of performance work is not always easily captured in audio-visual formats. To supplement such formats, If I Can’t Dance commissions written visitor reports, which offer subjective responses to a lived experience of a work and its context. The visitor report is, therefore, not to be confused with a critical review. It is first and foremost a form of witnessing. The people commissioned to write the report span a range of positions and practices within and outside the field of art. For the conversation and film programme accompanying the launch of Susanne Altman’s publication we invited designer Elisabeth Rafstedt.

Read the visitor report

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

Continuities and ruptures between the early Soviet (c.1917) and late state socialist (c.1980s) periods are examined through detailed discussions of a wide range of women’s artistic practices, including Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Tina Bara, Sibylle Bergemann, Věra Chytilová, Natalia LL, Dora Maurer, the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, Běla Kolářová, Evelyn Richter, Zorka Ságlová, and many others. Featuring over one hundred images of works ranging from costume sketches and stage maquettes, to photographs and film stills, the book offers a sweeping study of over seventy years of women’s artistic production and is meant for any reader engaged at the intersections of feminist and (post-)socialist art histories.

Author: Susanne Altmann
Graphic design: Experimental Jetset
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Copy editor: Janet Grau
Page count: 320
ISBN: 978-94-92139-22-1

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female: Histories of Construction and Deconstruction, 1917-1989 is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication.

Special thanks to all who allowed for image reproductions, including: A.Lupas, P420, Bologna, and the Pejkoski Collection, London; The Art Institute of Chicago/ Art Resource, New York/ Scala Florence; the Deutsche Fotothek; Dóra Maurer and the Vintage Galéria, Budapest; Else Gabriel; the Estate of Běla Kolářová; the Estate of Zorka Ságlová and Hunt Kastner Gallery, Prague; the Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig; Jan Krumbach and the Ester Krumbachová Archive; the Kunstsammlung Jena; Lindenau-Museum Altenburg; the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; MOMus – Museum of Modern Art – Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki; Monika Andres; the Museum of Modern Art, New York/ Scala, Florence; the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Ostkreuz – Agentur der Fotografen GmbH; the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Tina Bara; Verena Kyselka; and Zofia Kulik and the KwieKulik Foundation.

When Technology Was Female

Film programme

Saturday 20 January 2024, 14–18hr

1/4

Taking over all three floors of the Goethe’s canal house on Herengracht, the installation features a selection of works from across different geographic, temporal and aesthetic constellations, including greater- and lesser-known works like Aelita (1924, dir. Yakov Protazanov); Zemlya (1929, dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko); Fraülein Schmetterling (1965, dir. Kurt Barthel); Daisies (1966, dir. Věra Chytilová); Wäscherinnen (1972, dir. Jürgen Böttcher); Getting to Know the Big Wide World (1979, dir. Kira Muratova); and Signale (1989, Erfurt Women Artists’ Group).

Accessibility information

– Seated event
– First floor, no elevator
– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender neutral WC
– Language: English

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

Technical preparation of the programme was supported by Julia Sokolnicka with installation assistance from Viola Karsten and the team of Goethe-Institut Amsterdam.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470

1017 CA Amsterdam

€7,50 regular / €5 students
Purchase your ticket here

When Technology Was Female

Book Launch

Saturday 20 January 2024, 18.30-20hr

1/5

Following an afternoon film programme is a lively conversation between the art historian and design collective Experimental Jetset with whom she worked to realise her book’s experimental form. Moderated by Megan Hoetger (managing editor), they discuss performativity, strategies of enactment, and the intersections with political histories of design that link the early Soviet avant-garde, the (post-)punk era and today. They also touch on works by artists including Alexandra Exter, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Sibylle Bergemann, Kira Muratova, Věra Chytilová, Tina Bara, Evelyn Richter and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group.

Accessibility information

– Seated event

– First floor, no elevator

– No wheelchair accessible WC; gender neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication.

Special thanks to Viola Karsten and the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam for hosting the public conversation.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470

1017 CA Amsterdam

Free

Pants Wear Skirts: The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, 1984–1994

Panel conversation

Friday 26 May 2023, 16.30hr

Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Anna Seidl, Susanne Altmann and Megan Hoetger in conversation, ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ (2023), panel conversation. Photo: Sara Giannini.

Susanne Altmann, Introduction for ‘Pants Wear Skirts’ (2023), panel conversation. Photo: Frédérique Bergholtz.

1/3

In conversation with programme curator Megan Hoetger and University of Amsterdam professors Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes and Anna Seidl, the art historian discusses the new publication Pants Wear Skirts: The Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, 1984–1994. Published to accompany her recent co-curated exhibition at the nGbK Berlin, the book is the most extensive examination of the prolific production of the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, which was formed by artist Gabriele Stötzer in the early 1980s, as a space for women in East Germany to meet, share experiences and, eventually, to collectively create films, music and fashion together.

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

Special thanks to Viola Karsten and the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam for hosting the public conversation.

Goethe-Institut Amsterdam
Herengracht 470
1017 CA Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Free, reservation required

Visiting information

Three Seminars from When Technology Was Female

Work-in-Process

From May 2023

Zorka Ságlová, ‘Kladení plín u Sudoměře’ (‘Laying Diapers at Sudoměře’), series of bw photographs, 30 x 40 cm each, 1970

In a series of three seminars, programme curator Megan Hoetger brings together visual and textual materials from across the art historian’s project. Each seminar shares a different facet of the research, ranging from explorations of women’s artistic practices in the early Soviet Union (c. 1917) and late East Germany (c. 1980s), to interests in forms of feminist writing and samizdat, or self-publishing, legacies in the former Eastern Bloc. Each seminar also features an episode of the podcast series Talk Me Through…, which takes listeners inside the art historian’s method of close reading analysis.

Image description

Black and white photograph depicting a group of five women putting big sheets of white fabric on a meadow, with around eight pieces lying on the grass in the foreground of the image.

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived the seminars in conversation with Susanne Altmann and realised the online studio room in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

Special thanks to Kirila Cvetkovska for assistance with audio editing of the Talk Me Through… podcast series, and to Naomi Collier Broms and Marta Santos for their research assistance.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Workshop

Thursday 10 November 2022, 13–17hr

Four black and white film stills. The first three show elements of reproductive labor (breastfeeding, children and men eating), and the last shows productive labor (farm machines in the fields).

1/6

In a masterclass workshop at the University of Amsterdam, the historian leads students through an examination of the concept of ‘the collective’, as it was ideologically envisioned through texts, as well as visually represented across films. Directors and artists under discussion are: David Maryan, Lev Kuleshov/ Aleksandr Rodchenko, Kira Muratova, Jürgen Böttcher, Evelyn Richter and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group (Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt).

Image description

Four black and white film stills feature elements of reproductive and productive labour. The first three stills focus on reproductive labour: two women feeding children a long dining table; three women sitting in a line and breastfeeding; and another long dining table, this one filled with young men waiting to eat the food. The final still shows agricultural equipment in transit. In each still there is a strong perspectival line and repetition of elements, emphasising a machine-like understanding of human work and social relations.

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the workshop appears as part of the Collectivities and Technologies Entangled masterclass seminar, organised by Hoetger and Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes at the University of Amsterdam.

Altmann’s participation in the programme is generously supported by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

Full programme:

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture by Susanne Altmann and roundtable discussion with Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger

9 November, 17hr (Spui 25, University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)

Free with registration

White Papers of Dissent

PhD defence by Barbara Cueto with responses from Gregory Sholette, Massimiano Mollona, Nishant Shah (ArtEZ), Jeroen de Kloet, Margriet Schavemaker and Paula Albuquerque

10 November, 10hr (Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 229-231, 1012 EZ Amsterdam)

Free

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Masterclass workshop with Susanne Altmann

10 November, 13–17hr (closed session)

For student registration only

Principles of Internet Criticism: Aesthetics and Social Imaginaries

Appointment lecture by Geert Lovink

18 November, 16.30hr (University Aula, Singel 411)

Free

University of Amsterdam

Location OMHP (oudemanhuispoort) E2.01

Closed session

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture and Roundtable

Wednesday 9 November 2022, 17hr

Susanne Altmann and Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes in conversation, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović.

Megan Hoetger, Eszter Szakaćs, Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, Susanne Altmann, and Robbie Schweiger, ‘Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces’ (2022), lecture and roundtable. Photo: Temra Pavlović.

Group portrait with five women, all wearing fantastical costumes.

1/7

The art historian presents research-in-process, examining the entanglements of industrialisation with notions of ‘the collective’, and tracking moments in which the latter was reclaimed and rearticulated by artists working outside and alongside the socialist party apparatus in East Germany and the erstwhile Eastern Bloc. The presentation is followed by a discussion with programme curator Megan Hoetger, Professor Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, and researchers Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger on contested notions of collectivity operative across (post-)socialist spaces then and now.

Image description

Group portrait with five white women, all wearing fantastical handmade costumes. Four of the women are standing and one kneels. The kneeling woman peers out from behind a large mask that she holds like a shield in front of her torso. The mask is assembled from olive green, chocolate brown and ash gray textile remnants pieced together to form an ominous face. Behind her, the other four women strike robotic poses, with arms and legs extended in awkward and unexpected angles. From left to right: one of the women wears a plastic suit and hat stitched together with pieces of newspaper and red vinyl. Her right leg is lifted and slightly bent, as if in mid-step. Next to her, another woman stands naked with white body paint covering her head, as well as right shoulder, breast and arm. The rest of her body is marked with black stripes, which also appear on her painted face, demarcating the brow bone with a heavy line. Her arms are slightly bent, as if about to plie, and she looks directly into the camera. The third standing woman wears a loose-fitting patchwork dress. She is positioned behind the others with her arms fully extended away from her body and her gaze is also fixed on the camera. The final standing woman is completely concealed behind a large polyhedron-shaped mask made of thin metallic sheets held together by riveted metal strips. These strips extend down her torso and right arm, forming the suggestion of a suit of armor. Behind the armor, she wears a shirt and pants, head-to-toe black, and her right arm is lifted perpendicular to her body with a slight crook at the shoulder. The group is posed in front of a nondescript wall, which is half flat-blue paint and half covered with black and red line drawings on newsprint. The newsprint extends out onto the floor below them.

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the lecture appears as part of the Collectivities and Technologies Entangled masterclass seminar, organised by Hoetger and Professor Dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes at the University of Amsterdam. Altmann’s participation in the programme is generously supported by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis and the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture.

Special thanks to University of Amsterdam Faculty of the Humanities and SPUI25 for their support of the public presentation.

Full programme:

Collectivities Otherwise: Party Lines, Counterpropositions and (Post-)Socialist Spaces

Lecture by Susanne Altmann and roundtable discussion with Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Eszter Szakaćs and Robbie Schweiger

9 November, 17hr (Spui 25, University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)

Free with registration

White Papers of Dissent

PhD defence by Barbara Cueto with responses from Gregory Sholette, Massimiano Mollona, Nishant Shah (ArtEZ), Jeroen de Kloet, Margriet Schavemaker and Paula Albuquerque

10 November, 10hr (Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 229-231, 1012 EZ Amsterdam)

Free

Socialist Collectivity and the Aesthetics of (Dys)Functionality

Masterclass workshop with Susanne Altmann

10 November, 13–17hr (closed session)

For student registration only

Principles of Internet Criticism: Aesthetics and Social Imaginaries

Appointment lecture by Geert Lovink

18 November, 16.30hr (University Aula, Singel 411)

Free

SPUI25 (University of Amsterdam Academic-Cultural Centre)
Spui 25–27
1012 WX Amsterdam

Free with registration

When Technology Was Female: A Cultural Investigation of Former Socialist Europe, 1917–89 and After

Lecture

Saturday 2 July 2022, 11–19hr

Surrealist social-realist painting of two female factory workers, one outside and the other inside as viewed through a window

1/4

The ideological and infrastructural geographies of socialist industrialisation, from the post-revolutionary climate of soon-to-be Soviet territories (c.1918) up through the final decades of the Eastern Bloc (c.1980s) offer an uneven map. From visual detail to production methods, the historian explores how ‘industrialisation’ meant widely varied things across contemporaneous socialist contexts and, by extension, across artistic practices operating therein.

Image description

Two female factory workers are painted in surrealist social-realist style with uncharacteristically vibrant colours including a tangerine orange representing the factory’s exterior brick wall, a bright kelley green portraying the machinery inside the factory and a rose-pink worker’s headscarf. The women look directly at the viewer, appearing neither particularly happy nor sad but in the midst of work. One stands outside at the corner of the building, wrapped in a blue-brown apron and surrounded by industrial springs and coils. The other, in the pink headscarf, peers out from within with right arm raised to pull the lever of one of three assembly line machines moving back into a deep single-point perspectival space. This strong perspective line reinforced by receding lines of the fence that closes on the left side, has a counterpoint in the window on the right through which the worker can be seen and which seems to open up the composition.

Acknowledgements

When Technology Was Female is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger.

Special thanks to Likeminds for hosting the event.

Likeminds (formerly Dansmakers)
Gedempt Hamerkanaal 203
1021 KP Amsterdam
The Netherlands

€17 regular / €13 student
(includes meal)

Part of Edition IX Introductory Event

For tickets see Introductory Event listing

Samia Henni

Samia Henni (lives in Zurich) is an architectural historian, exhibition maker and educator who through text and visuals interrogates the built, destroyed and imagined environment. Continuing her anti-colonial and decolonial research in close dialogue with the activists and archives of Lyon-based demilitarisation research centre Observatoire des armements, the publication and exhibition expose France’s atomic infrastructures in the Algerian Sahara and their archival, economic, environmental and social impacts.

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Exhibition

Friday 22 March – Sunday 16 June 2024

1/4

The Mosaic Rooms presents Performing Colonial Toxicity, an archival survey exhibition documenting France’s secret nuclear programme in Algeria during and after the Algerian Revolution (1954-62). This expansive research project, put together by architectural historian and exhibition maker Samia Henni, unfolds across a series of audio-visual assemblages — each consisting of maps, photographs, film, stills, documents and archival testimonies.

The public programme running in tandem with the exhibition offers multiple entry points to further engage with the concerns and research in the exhibition. The programme embraces Henni’s methodologies, engaging in alternative approaches to archival investigations to interrogate colonial histories and untold stories.

Friday 22 March 2024

11 am

Exhibition Tour with Samia Henni

Tuesday 30 April 2024

7pm

Radiant Matter

Online talk by scholar Jill Jarvis to examine the role of art and literature as a witness to trauma endured by Algerians during and after French colonialization

Tuesday 4 June 2024

7pm

Nuclear colonialism

Panel discussion with David Burns, Samia Henni, Alisher Khassenaliyev and Maïa Tellit Hawad on the historic and ongoing impacts of nuclear colonialism, toxicity, and extraction

Thursday 6 June 2024

7pm

Ciné-Sahra: An unknown part of us lives in this desert and an unknown part of this desert lives in us

Film programme curated by Abiba Coulibaly and Emma Bouraba

Acknowledgements

The exhibition is a co-production If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and Framer Framed, which was realised within the frame of Henni’s Performing Colonial Toxicity, a two-year research project commissioned for the If I Can’t Dance Edition IX – Bodies and Technologies (2022-23) biennial programme and curated by If I Can’t Dance programme curator Megan Hoetger. The project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Special thanks to the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah for use of images and film excerpts in the exhibition; as well as to Prof. Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Simon Fraser University for her support for the Tamasheq-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies.

The exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England.

The Mosaic Rooms
226 Cromwell Rd
London SW5 0SW
United Kingdom

Mrinmayee Bhoot with Samia Henni on Performing Colonial Toxicity

Interview

January 2024

Mrinmayee Bhoot and Samia Henni in conversation about Samia Henni's ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’, published by Stir World magazine, January 2024

An in-depth interview about the Performing Colonial Toxicity project between Mrinmayee Bhoot and Henni, published by Stir World magazine.

Read the interview

Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara

Publication

Available via the If I Can’t Dance webshop

Between 1960 and 1966, the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs, thirteen underground nuclear bombs and conducted other nuclear experiments in the Algerian Sahara, whose natural resources were being extracted in the process. This secret nuclear weapons programme, whose archives are still classified, occurred during and after the Algerian Revolution, or the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). This publication brings together nearly six hundred pages of materials documenting this violent history of France’s nuclear bomb programme in the Algerian desert. Meticulously culled together by the architectural historian from across available, offered, contraband, and leaked sources, the book is a rich repository for all those concerned with histories of nuclear weapons and engaged at the intersections of spatial, social and environmental justice, as well as anticolonial archival practices.

Acknowledgements

Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance.The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who also serves as managing editor for the publication, which is co-published with edition fink, Zürich and Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Special thanks to all who allowed for image reproductions, including: the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah.

Author: Samia Henni
Graphic design: François Girard-Meunier
Managing editor: Megan Hoetger

Contributing editor: Georg Rutishauser
Series editor: Frédérique Bergholtz
Copy editor: Janine Armin
Co-publishers: Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Edition Fink, Zürich

Page count: 592
ISBN: 978-94-92139-24-5

Finissage conversation with Samia Henni and Nuraini Juliastuti

Conversation and Book launch

Sunday 14 January 2024, 15–17hr

1/6

For her exhibition’s finissage, the architectural historian invites fellow If I Can’t Dance researcher Nuraini Juliastuti to join her for a conversation on counter-archive practices and anti- and decolonial research methods and distribution strategies. The discussion also marks the launch of Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, offering an introduction to the experimental form of the book and the “acts of rehearsing” it proposes.

Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events
– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English

Acknowledgements

The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived this event with Henni, Juliastuti, and programme curator Sara Giannini. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

Free with registration

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

And still, it remains

Film screening

Saturday 13 January 2024, 15–17hr

Within the frame of the Performing Colonial Toxicity exhibition, the new artists’ film And still, it remains by directing duo Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah is presented. Spending time with residents of a village in Algeria’s Hoggar Mountains who live surrounded by ancient rock art and the legacy of France’s nuclear bombs, the film asks: What does it mean to live in such intimacy with toxic colonialism? The filmmakers join programme curator Megan Hoetger for a post-screening discussion to reflect on sonic landscapes and modes of listening taken up in their work.

Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events
– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible
– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC
– Language: English

Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who conceived this event with Framer Framed head of exhibition production Jean Medina. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

Free with registration

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Lecture and Tour

Sunday 14 January 2024, 13-14hr

Sunday 26 November 2023, 15-16.30hr

Detail from Samia Henni, ‘Performing Colonial Toxicity’ (2023-24), exhibition. Co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: Maarten Nauw.

1/5

Samia Henni guides us through the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity (2023), providing background into her seven-year research on the subject of French nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara and its ongoing effects. Henni will also provide more insight into the connections between the different components of the project including the forthcoming publication Colonial Toxicity: Researching French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara.

The exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity can be visited until Sunday 14 January 2024 at Framer Framed.

Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger, and the tours with Henni form part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co- produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

Free

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity Tour: The Testimony Translation Project

Conversation and Tour 

Saturday 28 October 2023, 15.30-17hr

1/2

The architectural historian’s exhibition is activated through a special tour that focuses on the testimonies of Algerian and French victims of the France’s secret nuclear detonation programme, which feature in the installation. The testimonies are drawn from the Testimony Translation Project, an open access digital database built in the If I Can’t Dance Studio, and have been developed in collaboration with a global network of twenty “translator-participants.” Moving between the exhibition and online repository, programme curator Megan Hoetger leads the tour, and she is joined by a group of translator-participants who share their reflections on the translation process.

Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who is facilitating the tour in collaboration with Framer Framed head of exhibition research and development Ashley Maum. Special thanks to Anik Fournier, Martine Neddam, and Alice Rougeaux from the Testimony Translation Project for their participation. The event forms part of the public programme for the exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity, which is co-produced with Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

Free with registration here

For accessibility information, visit
www.framerframed.nl

Performing Colonial Toxicity

Exhibition

Saturday 8 October 2023 – Sunday 14 January 2024

Exhibition opening on Saturday 7 October 2023, 19–21hr

1/9

An immersive multimedia installation organised into a series of thirteen stations meant to be traversed and engaged by bodies. Each station presents an assemblage of materials spanning audio-visual and textile-like displays, which trace and name the spatial, atmospheric, and geological impacts of France’s atomic bombs in the Sahara, as well as its colonial classification vocabularies, and the (after)lives of its radioactive debris and nuclear wastes.

Accessibility information

– In the exhibition seats are available, the public programmes are seated events

– Ground Floor, wheelchair accessible

– Wheelchair accessible WC; gender-neutral WC

– Language: English

Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The exhibition is a co-production with Framer Framed, Amsterdam and is realised within the frame of Henni’s two-year commission, which is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger. The project is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Special thanks to the Observatoire des armements, Centre de documentation et de recherche sur la paix et les conflits; the Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la Défense (ECPAD); and to filmmakers Élisabeth Leuvrey and Larbi Benchiha with producer Farid Rezkallah for use of images and film excerpts in the exhibition; as well as to Prof. Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Simon Fraser University for her support for the Tamasheq-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies. Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.

Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS Amsterdam

Opening times:
Tuesday – Sunday, 12–18hr

Free

Performing Colonial Toxicity: Testimony Translation Project

Online work

Monday 15 May – Saturday 30 September 2023

Fragment of a scan of original testimony. To protect the privacy of the individual who gave their eye-witness account, as well as the family of that individual, identifying information has been redacted.

Together with a network of twenty collaborators from around the world, the researcher develops an open access digital database, which begins the long process of digitalizing and translating the over seven hundred pages of written and oral testimonies from Algerian and French victims of the French nuclear detonation programme in the Algerian Sahara (1960-66). Drawn from three key sources, the online repository includes a selection of forty testimonies ranging from individual recollections to intergenerational familial and community memories.

Image description

Fragment of a black and white scan of an original testimony. The document is written in French, for the larger part in Times font, with at the upper part in the centre, in capital letters, the word ‘attestation’. To protect the privacy of the individual who gave their eye-witness account, as well as the family of that individual, identifying information has been redacted through black bars covering these parts in the document.

Acknowledgements

Performing Colonial Toxicity is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance. The commission is led by programme curator Megan Hoetger who serves as managing editor for the database, which is realised in collaboration with Kommerz design studio.

Much gratitude to the people and institutions responsible for having collected together these testimonies, including: Patrice Bouveret and the Lyon-based anti-nuclear NGO Observatoire des armements (est. 1984); the former European Parliament politician, co-founder of the Green Party in France and environmental activist Solange Fernex (b. Strasbourg, FR, 1934; d. Biederthal, FR, 2006); and the Paris-based Algerian photographer Bruno Hadjih (b. Kabylia, DZ).

Special thanks also go to the twenty translator-participants: Raoul Audouin, Adel Ben Bella, Omar Berrada, Megan Brown, Séverine Chapelle, Simona Dvorák, Hanieh Fatouree, Alessandro Felicioli, Anik Fournier, Jill Jarvis, Augustin Jomier, Timothy Scott Johnson, Anna Kimmel, Corentin Lécine, Natasha Llorens, Miriam Matthiesen, Martine Neddam, M’hamed Oualdi, Roxanne Panchasi and Alice Rougeaux. Funding support for the Tamazight-to-French translation of Algerian testimonies has generously been provided by Dr. Roxanne Panchasi, Associate Professor, Department of History, Simon Fraser University.

If I Can’t Dance Studio

Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?

Lecture

24 March 2023, 17–18.45hr

Megan Hoetger introducing ‘Toxic Coloniality or Colonial Toxicity?’ (2023), lecture. Photo: Temra Pavlovic.

The trace of the explosion of France’s first nuclear bomb in the ground zero, the Algerian Sahara © 1960, Raymond Varoqui / SCA / ECPAD

1/4

Continuing her work of tracing and naming the spatial, atmospheric and geological impacts of the French nuclear detonation programme in the Algerian Sahara (1960–66), the historian explores the lives and afterlives of radioactive debris and nuclear wastes, exposing the coloniality toxicity – or toxic coloniality? – of the norms and forms of France’s weapons of mass destruction, including the classification of its very sources.

Image description