Symposium: Losing Ground

In this symposium, framed in the context of the Creative Europe Project “Common Ground”, we will invite artists, theatre-makers and researchers from Poland, Italy, Spain and Germany, among others  to discuss the themes of this year’s Winterwerft Festival and share insights into their work in their specific local context.

In what metaphorical and non-metaphorical ways can we understand this “ground” that is in the centre of both the EU Partnership and the Festival? What does it mean in each participant’s field and place of work? What is the role of performing arts in the task of re-cultivating a sense of responsibility and connection to a place that goes beyond exclusive concepts like nation states?

Special Guests from Serbia and Brasil will enrich the discussion with their perspectives.

Guests:

Ondadurto Teatro (Roma/Antrodoco, Italy)

Teatr Brama (Goleniow, Poland)

Piero Partigianoni (Granada, Spain)

Protagon – international performing arts (Frankfurt, Germany)

Special Guests:

Jadranka Andjelic, DAH Teater, Serbien. Co-founder of the DAH Theater Research Center in Belgrade, Serbia in 1991. Theatre director based in Brazil from 2008 – 2019 where she worked with Sequência Filmes, Música e Cênicas, Rio de Janeiro.

Graduated on the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, she developed her techniques with ODIN Theater and Torgeir Wethal (1990–1994) and at ISTA-International School of Theater Anthropology by Eugenio Barba in 1996 and 1998. ARTS LINK Fellowship in New York, 1998. In Belgrade, Serbia, directed Terra [2020], Dancing Trees and You Must be Zenitis [with Dijana Milosevic] with DAH Theatre. Organise, direct and coordinate different projects and festivals in DAH Theatre team. www.en.dahteatarcentar.com

Eliene Benício Amâncio Costa is a permanent professor of the Graduate Program in Performing Arts –PPGAC/UFBA. She holds a degree in Theater Direction from UFBA, an MA (1993) and PhD (1999) in Arts from USP and carried out her postdoctoral studies at UNESP (2010). She is full professor of the Department of Performing Techniques at UFBA School of Theater. She has worked with Arts, focused on Theater Direction, mainly in staging arts, performance, dramaturgy and popular culture. She coordinates the research group Núcleo de Estudos em Teatro Popular (Theater Studies Center), approved by CNPq, and is a member of the research group O Circo e o Riso (Circus and Laugh), coordinated by Professor Mario Bolognesi –UNESP. She also participates in the working group Etnocenologia (Ethnoscenology) of ABRACE.

Nilza Nascimento, IMBRADIVA e.V.

A legacy of modernity is that “soil”, that “earth”, that “land” is for us today an abstract category, something that is viewed through the cartographer’s gaze, something that is yours or mine, that has to be divided up, parceled out, and if necessary defended. Something that can be shaped and molded to our liking, into which trenches and pits are dug and from within which all that keeps the machines of modernity running is extracted.

At the same time, we have lost any real connection to the soil that sustains us. Where our food, our livelihoods come from, how much we are tied into a web of human and especially non-human communities that depend, as much as ours, on clean water, air, fertile soil – but are at the same time the source of all these livelihoods – all this we no longer understand in a way that goes deep enough.

About COMMON GROUND:

With “Common Ground” we want to shift the focus back to our immediate surroundings, the city, the village, the landscape that sustains us and ask: What can we do, now and here?

It is time for us to return to our connection to our living space, to see ourselves again as rooted and connected beings, and to enter into dialogue with each other about reclaiming and reshaping this common public space.

The project aims to use the means of expressive arts and theatre to create these dialog spaces.

 Key terms: crisis resilience / local empowerment / transnational change networks

Common Ground unites four established and experienced players of the European Cultural Creative Sector (and two Junior partners with specific tasks), bringing together decades of experience with performing arts in public space and theatre education with local communities and vulnerable groups.

Language: English, no translations