Performing Mourning.

Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art.

In a poetic, meandering, personal way Cools explores cultural habits, traditions, rituals, and artists’ performances. His narrative looks into many forms of laments: literary, anthropological, philosophical, and in contemporary art practices. The latter part delves into artistic strategies to address or embody mourning: dialogical, that deal with personal losses; collective mourning rituals and how they invite communities to witness these losses; contemporary examples of laments that are not only used to dialogue with the dead but also to communicate with loved ones who are absent because of migration or exile; a very specific form of mourning that occurs when we grieve for the unrealized potential of a child’s unlived life, including that of an unborn child. And finally, the very recent phenomenon of lamenting not just the losses of the past, but also the loss of a future.

Design: Metahaven

Series: Antennae-Arts in Society

2021, Valiz | Paperback | 224 blz. | English | ISBN 978-94-92095-98-5 | https://www.valiz.nl/publicaties/performing-mourning.html

Related publications.
Performing Mourning, Podcast in the Echolot Series, Muzeum Susch, 2020 https://podcasts.apple.com/at/...

Giving a voice to Mourning. in: J. Nelis (ed.), Receptions of Antiquity, Academia Press, Ghent, 2011. pp. 145-152.

Imaginative Bodies.

Imaginative Bodies. Dialogues in Performance Practices.

Imaginative Bodies contains a series of in-depth conversations with dancers and choreographers, composers, visual artists, Hip Hop artists, dramaturges, a lighting designer and a puppeteer. The overall theme is defined by the body, both in relation to the place it takes in the artist’s work, and in relation to wider debates on the body in philosophy, science, medicine, anthropology, and the arts. It is through the sentient body that we experience, know and imagine. Imaginative Bodies reaffirms the central position of the body in many artistic practices.

Contributors: Sue Buckmaster, Jonathan Burrows & Matteo Fargion, Rosemary Butcher, Dana Caspersen, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Tim Etchells, Antony Gormley, Jonzi D & Soweto Kinch, Akram Khan, Ruth Little, Russel Maliphant & Michael Hulls, Alain Platel, Hofesh Shechter

Design: Metahaven
Editor: Lisa Marie Bowler
Series: Antennae-Arts in Society
2016, Valiz | Paperback | 344 pp. | English | ISBN 978-94-92095-20-6
https://valiz.nl/en/publicatio...

Related publications.
The Body:Language Talks. The Art of Listening. in: Nowiswere, Issue 14, 2014, pp. 10-20.
http://nowiswere.com/issues/is...

Body:language #1 - #7, Sadler’s Wells, London, 2013

In-between Dance Cultures

In-between Dance Cultures. On the migratory, artistic identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan.

Belgian-Moroccan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and British-Bengali Akram Khan are two of today's most prolific choreographers. Given their respective backgrounds and the practices they pursue, their artistic universes are largely built around their identity in-between dance cultures. Guy Cools who accompanied both, situates their work within the larger critical debate on the (post)modern and (post-)migrant identity. Cools details some of their iconic choreographic pieces. In-Between Dance Cultures offers a complementary view on questions of cultural identity taking the contemporary dancer’s somatic awareness and knowledge of the body as its starting point.

Design: Metahaven
Series: Antennae-Arts in Society
2015, Valiz | | paperback | 160 pp | English | ISBN 978-94-92095-11-4
https://valiz.nl/en/publicatio...

Related publications
Dwelling in multiple languages: the impossible journeys ‘home’ in the work of Sidi Larbi
Cherkaoui and Akram Khan. in: Meerzon, Yana and Stephen Wilmer (eds.): Handbook on Theatre and Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan (upcoming).

Akram Khan: the creative confusion of the migrating body. in: G. Brandstetter, G. Egert, H. Hartung (eds.). The Movements of Interweaving. Routledge, London, 2018. pp. 25-43.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan: intertwined journeys in-between dance cultures. in: J. Butterworth, L. Wildschut (eds.), Contemporary Choreography: A Critical reader, 2nd Edition.Routledge, 2018. pp. 372-384.

Re-membering Zero Degrees. in: B. Cochrane, K. Trencsenyi (eds.), New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives, Bloomsbury, London, 2014. pp. 180-195.

The Ethics of Art.

The Ethics of Art. Ecological Turns in the Performing Arts.

Within the arts there is a growing ethical consciousness, both in the way it relates to the larger social, political and economic challenges and in the way it reflects on its own production and distribution mechanisms. This book attempts to describe how artistic imagination can produce new situations, based on the potentials and limits of the individual 'body' within its environment.

The first section, Ecosophy, focuses on eco-art practices and how the ethical turn in the arts implies a greater receptivity for the environment we live in. The second section, Caring for the Body, focuses more on dance and the renewed interest in ‘the body’, both on the level of the individual and on that of the larger ‘body politic’ of cooperation and collaboration.

The book focuses on the European contemporary dance scene, but it embeds this in the larger context and history of eco-art practices, while also providing some striking examples of best practices from the USA and Canada. In The Ethics of Art the singular voices of individual artists, discussing their own creative practices, are equally important as the more scholarly contributions.

Co-edited with Pascal Gielen, Professor cultural sociology at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA), University of Antwerp.

Contributors: Karolien Byttebier, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Guy Cools, Arne De Boever, Pascal Gielen, Kathelin Gray, Sébastien Hendrickx, Naomi M. Jackson, Navtej Johar, Denise Kenney, Mala Kline, Jeroen Peeters, Frans Poelstra, Christel Stalpaert, Robert Steijn, Lise Uytterhoeven, Benjamin Verdonck, Sara Wookey.

Design: Metahaven
Series: Antennae-Arts in Society
2014, Valiz| paperback | 352 pp. | English| ISBN 978-90-78088-87-5 |
https://valiz.nl/en/publicatio...

Related publications
Counteracting Movements, Precarious Labour and Civil Action in the Viennese Art Scene. in: Gift, Zeitschrift für freies Theater, 03/2018, Vienna. pp. 10-16.

Dance Dramaturgy

In 1994, Marianne Van Kerkhoven, the Flemish godmother of dance dramaturgy wrote a short, seminal article on the subject – Looking without a pencil in the Hand – of which the title alone is already a manifesto. My own writings on dance dramaturgy build further on Van Kerkhoven’s insights: how the dramaturg has to stay necessarily invisible in the creative process (s)he is supporting and how in order to capture this invisible role, a lot of metaphors have been created.

I describe in more detail the different roles of my own dramaturgical practice: that of somatic witness, dialogue partner and editor. Dance dramaturgy for me is a creative practice in which the whole body is involved and in which somatic proximity to the creative process is as important as critical distance.

Recent publications
O plesni Dramaturgiji. On Dance Dramaturgy. in: Brezavscek, Pia and Bozovicar, Rok (eds.), Maska, Voice of Dance, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2003/2004, Fall 2021. pp. 44-54 (Bi-lingual English/Slovenian)
https://maska.si/en/journal/gl...

The Dramaturg as witness, dialogue partner and editor. in: Nakajima, Nanako, Dance Dramaturgy.
Text Collection. 2021. (Bi-lingual English/Japanese)
http://www.dancedramaturgy.org...

Invisible Diaries, Dramaturgy Network, UK, 2020
https://www.dramaturgy.co.uk/s...

Dance: a translating art. The body as a ‘transmutator’ of identity/ taniec: sztuka ttumaczenia (ciato jako ‘transmuter’ tozsamosci). Wyktad w czterech czesciach. in: Keil, Marta (ed.), Choreography: Autonomies/Choreografia: Autonomie. Poznan: Art Stations Foundation, 2019. pp. 62-85. (Bi-lingual English/Polish)

Sobre Dramaturgie de Dança. in: Cena 29, 2019. (Bi-lingual English/Portuguese)
https://seer.ufrgs.br/cena/article/view/97634/55068

La Drammaturgia dela danza, in: Pontremoli, Alessandro and Ventura, Gerarda (eds.), La Danza : Organizzare per Creare. Milano: Francoangeli, 2019. pp. 140-151. (Italian)

Correspondence and ekphrasis. Dance Dramaturgy as a dialogical practice. in: K. Georgelou, D. Theodoridou, E. Protopapa (eds.), The Practice of Dramaturgy. Valiz, Amsterdam, 2016. pp. 99-107.

Dance Dramaturgy as a creative and somatic practice. The Art of Witnessing. in: Re_Research Dance Dramaturgy. Torino: Ricerca Workspace. 2017. pp. 112-135.

Körperliche Dramaturgie. Der Dramaturg als ‚äußerer Körper’ und somatisch Miterlebender. in: Zeitschrift der dramaturgischen Geschellschaft, 02/17, Berlin, 2017. pp. 65-66. (German)

Who needs a dramaturg! in: Aparté/Arts Vivants, Nr. 3, UQAM, Montréal, 2014. pp. 86-91.

Dance dramaturgy as a creative and somatic practice. in: B. Nieuwboer, L. Wildschut, W. Zoet (eds.), Danswetenschap Nederland, Deel 7, Vereniging voor Dansonderzoek, Amsterdam, 2012. pp. 67-75.

De la dramaturgie du corps en danse. in: Cahiers de Théâtre JEU, 116, Montréal, 2005. pp. 89-95. (French)