Sheena McGrandles

A perfromative work and presentation of collective admiration and active remembering of feminist performances and practices from 1960’s & 1970’s. During Tanzkongress 2016 we worked with intervention as a contemporary contextualization – a mode of making visible forgotten or marginalised artists works, asking, how can we work with re- enactments as a political means, an act of duty that asks: what gets remembered, what gets forgotten, by whom and how? How can we perform (our) history in the present, how can we put ‘now’ in dialogue with the past? And what does a second-look (perspective) on these works tells us about the situation in dance and performance today?

Tanzkongress text:
WHO’S THE PARTY NOW SISTER?: VISIBLE ACTS

Sa 18. Juni, 16:00 – 17:30
Cumberlandsche Bühne
Lecture, Talk, Artistic intervention

[DE]

Zahlreiche Werke feministischer Künstlerinnen der Vergangenheit sind längst in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und der Tanzgeschichtsschreibung in Vergessenheit geraten. Diesen möchten sich die Performerinnen Sheena McGrandles, Winnie Ho, Joy Mariama Smith und Tove Sahlin widmen, indem sie die unsichtbaren, vergessenen oder sogar zensierten Performances feministischer Künstlerinnen durch Live-Interventionen und Aktionen während des Tanzkongress in unser Bewusstsein zurückholen.

Den Spuren verlorener Erinnerungen folgend, spielen sie mit Formen der Wiederaneignung oder des Zurückverfolgens. Ein Vortrag der Kuratorin Bettina Knaup sowie ein Gespräch der vier Performerinnen mit dem Berliner Kollektiv Female Trouble ergänzen und kontextualisieren die Auseinandersetzung: In welcher Weise können der historische Blick auf feministische Kunst ein heutiges Verständnis des Politischen, aber auch die gegenwärtige Situation von Tanz und Performancekunst neu beleuchten?

[EN]
Numerous works by feminist artists of the past have long been forgotten by the public and in dance historiography. The performers Sheena McGrandles, Winnie Ho, Joy Mariama Smith, and Tove Sahlin dedicate their live interventions and actions during the Dance Congress to the invisible, forgotten, or even censored performances of feminist artists in order to make us aware of them again.

Following the traces of lost memories, they play with forms of reappropriation or backtracking. A lecture by the curator Bettina Knaup as well as a talk of the four performers with the Berlin-based collective Female Trouble supplement and contextualize the debate: In which way can the historical view of feminist art shed new light on today’s understanding of the political and also on the current situation of dance and performance art?

Winnie Ho (CN) dance performance artist
Roni Katz (DE) performer, Female Trouble collective
Bettina Knaup (DE) cultural producer, scholar
Sheena McGrandles (DE) choreographer, performer
Tove Sahlin (SE) performer, choreographer
Agata Siniarska (DE) performer, Female Trouble collective
Joy Mariama Smith (US/NL) artist, activist, curator
[†] Xenia Taniko Dwertmann (DE) performer, Female Trouble collective