[Virtual] MELT – Three days for collectively reading on movement and power.

Movement Research offers this MELT workshop virtually over Zoom.

Workshop description:

Over the span of three sessions, we will gather, as best as we can under the pandemic, to read together and discuss some texts that might help us imagine movements, bodies, and lives away from the viral recrudescence of more or less blunt, more or less veiled, neo-liberal fascism and its racist expansionism that we have experienced over the past few years in Western democracies. Our readings will help us address a constitutive paradox at the heart of the kinetic imagination fueling state power. The paradox is this: “freedom of movement” is the promise of full citizenship held by the liberal democratic state to its properly constituted subjects; and yet, and precisely for that reason, movement becomes what power must rigorously control, model, produce, reproduce, surveil, block, discipline, and punish (often times with lethal force). The implications derived from this kinetic logic of power for dance and choreography are urgent not only for art, but for life. The proposed texts for our collective reading are: Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: on Blackness and Being (excepts); Giorgio Agamben’s “Movement”; and Alex Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus (excerpts). As the days pass, and our conversations meander, we will for sure bring up a few others.

In English.

MELT Zoom Etiquette Guidelines:

• We ask that you please "Mute" yourself when you are not verbally participating.
• Please do your best to arrive on time and stay for the duration of the session. If you plan to leave early, inform the faculty member at the top of class using the "Chat" function in your Zoom window.
• Experiencing connectivity or technological issues? Either use the "Chat" function to communicate with the MR administrator, or email “[email protected]" and someone will assist you as soon as possible.