Sept 6th, 16:00 – 18:00
online, on zoom

*Free participation based on prior registration through mail at contact@bidff.ro, mentioning your full name, a phone number and the event for which the registration is made.

ABOUT the online lecture

Much of my thinking these days is engaged in the attempt to explain to myself the extent of the influence Descartes and his work on what is popularly referred to as the theory of the mind-body split had on the way in which standards of value become defined and successfully upheld in the context of the neoliberal and colonising, culturally white west. In this talk that I was invited to give, I will try my best to present evidence of the way the theory of the mind-body split is integrated in the white western cultural canon by portraying the way the theory manifests in practice, in the assumptions that cultural white westerners traditionally make, for example, and/or in the way in which cultural white westerners traditionally jump to conclusions. In other words, I will be attempting to tell the story of how I think a theory that discriminates against the body became not just embodied (!) but embodied as a dominant global culture whose practices are competitive, anxious, self-centred, object-oriented and obsessed with power. This is the story of dystopia, one we’re all – I’m sure – already intimately acquainted with.

The reason I’d like to tell you the story of dystopia is because deep within its folds lays hidden another story, the story of utopia. This is the story of an integrated dynamic between the mind and the body; the story of embodiment in which reality is not measured in “hard facts” but is a matter of negotiation, participation and motivation.

If utopia (this is a mind exercise), folded within dystopia, exists in the state of a seed exists in relative to the soil inside of which it is buried, my hope is to be able to suggest what it is that we need to know, what elements there are that we need to be able to relate to in order to encourage utopia to sprout and grow. This is the final story I'd like to tell on this occasion, this is the story of gardening.

ABOUT pavleheidler (se)

pavleheidler (they/them) has been dancing-performing, studying, writing and teaching dancing professionally since early teenage-hood; inevitably considering their varied engagements with the field of experimental dancing and choreography – where choreography is understood to be an expanded practice. Their recent fascinations include “The Physical Consequence to Knowing” (2020), published by the Journal of Performance Philosophy and presented at conferences hosted by the Middlesex University, the University of Newcastle, and the Amsterdam Biennale; two books of experimental erotic fiction co-written with Unn Faleide; a book of poetry meditating on the question “What makes green from blue?” co-written with Alys Longley; and Dances Writing Poetry, a series of video works that study the narrative in-capacities of dance. Pavleheidler is the recipient of the 2018 International Choreographer’s Stipend awarded annually to a Swedish dance artist by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

For more information about their work, please visit their website.