Martina Ruhsam / Moving Matter(s). Nonhuman Bodies in Contemporary Choreographies

For a few years now, there has been a lively debate in the art world about (partly) autonomous objects and the entanglements between human and nonhuman actors. What issues are related to staging a specific autonomy of objects? How can the emancipation of objects be defined in an age of digitalisation, an age in which values are specified in terms of disembodiment rather than objectification? Martina Ruhsam’s lecture will try to relate natural scientist Karen Barad’s agential realism to issues of performance studies in order to propose a new political reading of materialism. Ruhsam will question the outcomes that resulted from neglecting the human body in dance in favour of a renewed focus on objects and whether choreography can be defined in terms of Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action.