DÆNCITY, reflexive workshop, drawing by Léo Perrin-Livenais
EPFL researcher Sascha Nick and performance artist and Performance Lighthouse coordinator Simona Ferrar, led a reflexive workshop during the four-day residency, that lasted 90 minutes every day.
The aim of the workshop was to stimulate reflections on the relevancy of activating a project such as DÆNCITY within the EPFL context, and to collect students’ impressions and questions related to the experience.
The following questions structured the workshop :
• Why am I here?
• What do I learn about myself during DÆNCITY?
• What does DÆNCITY bring to my student life and/or professional aspirations?
• How does DÆNCITY influence the way I perceive myself in the world and in relation to others?
• What do I want to do now? Is there a project I would like to initiate that I wouldn’t have dared to imagine before this residency? How can I translate this experience into something that can be activated for our society?
The workshop also resulted in a performance, presented as part of the public performances that were held after the residency.
Summary of the reflexive workshop by Sascha Nick, EPFL :
The workshop revealed to what extent the body can become a powerful vector of encounters, understanding and authenticity. Movement offered a direct, instinctive language, that allowed everyone to connect with others without masks nor expectations to perform.
The reflexive space also allowed a critical distance with everyday life. Quite a few participants expressed a form of relief at having the opportunity to temporarily suspend the productivist rythm imposed by society and the university. This crucial physical and collective slow-down gave way to broader questions on how are needs are or aren’t satisfied in our modern lives : the need for contact, for being heard, for creating together. A number of participants shed light on the gap between immaterial satisfactions they experienced in this context (play, presence, solidarity) and habits related to consumption and performance.
One of the highlights of the workshop was the presentation of selected emblematic personal objects : notebooks, a t-shirt, a game or pictures – which revealed aspects of the participants’ identity, interests, values, and their manners of interacting with the world.
Finally, the discussions lay an emphasis on the strengths and limits of collectivity. The group can be supportive, it can stimulate and inspire, but it can also be tiring or even create an implicit pressure. The caring environment enabled the expression of vulnerabilities, as well as the confrontation of personal defence mechanisms. Many participants discovered they could be more daring, as well as set limits. A central question came up : how can one preserve the freedom to be and the quality of the relationships, beyond the safe context of the residency ? An invitation to reinvent spaces, elsewhere, in which freedom, listening, and physicality occupy their rightful place.
