Risking Repetition: Aesthetics of “Survival”
Symposium
Tanzhaus & BINZ39 Zürich (2024)
Initiated by SOHERE (wolf engelen, Vanessa Jane Phaff, Joseph Baan), co-curated with Joshua Wicke and Luc Häfliger
This two-day polyphonic format looks at how “survivors” of sexualised violence perform “survival”. The aesthetic strategies and performative modes in the works of many of those affected often undermine melodramatic expectations of the performance of traumatic aftereffects. Instead, there is a tendency towards «underperformed emotion» (Lauren Berlant) in such works and many artists are «risking repetition» (Ann Cvetokovic) rather than avoiding the revision of trauma. Such aesthetic strategies complicate the notion of «survival»: instead of yearning for a state of integrity and healing, they integrate negativity and incompleteness, and employ aesthetic strategies of confusion, dissociation and underperformance.
The symposium included the performance Zones of Resplendence by Carolina Mendonça, concerts by bela, gotgha, and Ronce and a late-night lecture by psychoanalyst and theorist Avgi Saketopoulou entitled Lingering in the wound: sadism and confusion as aesthetic practice, followed by an open, participatory roundtable discussion about these topics starting with Avgi Saketopoulou, Carolina Mendonça and Joshua Wicke.
The symposium included the performance Zones of Resplendence by Carolina Mendonça, concerts by bela, gotgha, and Ronce and a late-night lecture by psychoanalyst and theorist Avgi Saketopoulou entitled Lingering in the wound: sadism and confusion as aesthetic practice, followed by an open, participatory roundtable discussion about these topics starting with Avgi Saketopoulou, Carolina Mendonça and Joshua Wicke.
