Three Workshops
Precarity and Practices of Care for Dance and the Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2022
Precarity and Practices of Care for Dance and the Museum was the first in a series of three workshops. As the first occasion for the current network of Associate Researchers to meet in person, this this workshop addressed the project's premise of precariousness: Is dance an inherently precarious art form? How might choreographers and dancers creatively respond to and harness precarity? Do these artists experience precarity within the context of the museum? How can museums respond to this? And what change might our recent experiences of instability and uncertainty provoke for both artist and museum?
With these questions in mind, the event explored new models of knowing and caretaking that can best support choreographic and dance practices — their artists, social networks, histories, futures and audiences — when these types of works are commissioned, presented, collected and conserved by museums.
Hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales on the 30th and 31st of March 2022 as an industry-oriented event attended in-person by an intimate group of Associate Researchers of the project who work across creative practice, conservation, curation, production and archives. It is focused on promoting critical inquiry, movement-based knowledges and transparent dialogue between artist and institution.
'Precarity and Practices of Care for Dance and the Museum' included artist presentations by Brian Fuata, Angela Goh, Jo Lloyd, Sarah Rodigari, Brooke Stamp and Latai Taumoepeau; a keynote response by Walker Art Centre’s Senior Curator of Performing Arts Philip Bither in conversation with Pip Wallis; a recap and response by Australian art historian Susan Best; a presentation by Juanita Kelly-Mundine, Conservator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Art Gallery of NSW; and a book launch of Choreography, Visual Art and Experimental Composition 1950–1970s by Erin Brannigan.
Transmission & Understanding, Tate Modern, 2023
On the 28th and 29th of June 2023, the Precarious Movement event, Transmission & Understanding, was hosted by Tate Modern in London, UK. The Symposium on the 28th, a series of four panel discussions, sought to facilitate conversations on the topic of how choreographic artworks are transmitted and understood by artist-performers and museums alike and crucially, what the implications of a museum site are for such works. The Workshop on the 29th elaborated on the themes of the Symposium through sessions involving movement, writing and an opportunity for participants to review some draft content of the project’s main output, the Toolkit. Overall, the event aimed at engaging a local audience of artists, curators, producers, archivists and conservators with some of the key research questions of the project through two days of exchange, discussion and – of course – movement.
Precarious Movements, National Gallery of Victoria, 2024
Marking the end of the three-year project a two-day event was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in March 2024. The event included a keynote lecture from Louise Lawson, Head of Conservation at Tate, reflecting on Tate’s learnings and outcomes regarding choreography and the museum; an artist panel hosted by curator, producer Zoe Theodore, three of Australia’s leading artists working with dance in the gallery Alicia Frankovich, Amrita Hepi, and Rochelle Haley; a book launch celebrating the release of the Precarious Movements anthology with lecture by Berlin-based artist Jimmy Robert; and the premiere of the artist case study commissions, Atlanta Eke’s Innocence and Amrita Hepi’s Liable.
Image: Precarity and Practices of Care for Dance and the Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2022. Courtesy the artist and the Art Gallery of New South Wales