Thursday 7th March, 7pm
Auto Italia, 44 Bonner Road, E2 9JS

In visual art spaces, dance and performance are doubly impoverished. Theoretically and materially, live arts have lacked institutional support structures. The embodied labour of a dancer is expensive, and liveness as a category is resistant to the organisational processes of static visual arts. Performance presents a set of challenges that require their own strategies of production, care and distribution. Artists must eat, but dancers need more calories.

For this first session in the series, Andrew Hardwidge, Lauren A Wright and Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe will give presentations followed by an open and informal discussion. The series will continue on May 2nd with a workshop and on May 9th with a presentation, more details on both of these to be announced.

Andrew Hardwidge works with dance and choreography in various fields. His works look to entangle matters, stories and processes of embodiments through a parasitic practice of performance making, choreography, collaboration, interpretation, hosting, research, video, performing and writing. As a performer, Andrew currently works with Dragana Bulut, Stav Yeni, Adam Linder. 

Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe is a writer and curator based between London and Berlin. Her work focuses on techniques of reproduction in performance and temporal mediums. She has recently organised exhibitions and programmes at PS120 in Berlin, Jupiter Woods in London, Ma Ma in Toronto and ESSEX STREET, The Kitchen and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 

Lauren A Wright is Programme Director at Siobhan Davis Dance. She has over ten years of experience as a visual arts curator, writer and researcher. She was formerly Director of Programme at the Hepworth Wakefield and from 2010 – 14 was Curator at Turner Contemporary in Margate. She was Artistic Director and Curator of the 2015 Biennial of the Americas in Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD from the London Consortium, University of London.