Arts & Vulnerabilities
Research Project Extrapole / KDAC (2022 - 2024)
A project initiated by Agnès Henry and Claire Moryang.
First seminar in Seoul, 2023:
Recent movements of theoretical and political struggle in Anglo-Saxon countries have highlighted the need for academic research to engage in processes based on participation and joint research with communities and stakeholders (paraphrasing the phrase ‘nothing about us without us’). This principle of not opposing practices and theories in order to co-produce knowledge is at the heart of this project on art and disability and, more broadly, vulnerability. Until now, there has been a lack of common spaces bringing together artists, critics, researchers and professionals to move forward on the issues of dance/art and disability. In this respect, this project represents a very special and unique opportunity to meet and develop our practices in a transnational and interdisciplinary way in order to increase knowledge on the issue of disability art.
Given that research involves increasing knowledge on a given subject, and in our case the subject of art and its accessibility for audiences and artists including the category of so-called disabled people, it seemed obvious and legitimate to set up a Korean working group capable of carrying it out.
The first seminar was held in Seoul in 2023.
Stakes :
On the one hand, this research questions our ability to form a working group that will work mainly at a distance and to find a consensus on the urgencies and priorities related to Korean social situations and needs in the field of art and disability. On the other hand, this project aims to question and produce categories to differentiate the various issues from each other and to find relevant media to share the results with a wider international audience in September 2024.
For example, based on the interviews and exchanges, the following questions were raised:
- Do we identify with the notion of disability art categories and labels?
- What does it mean and imply to look at and talk about works involving all kinds of disabilities (questions of discourse, art criticism and looking)?
The methodology we propose is based on the Bodystorming research framework, which was initiated by Julie Nioche and Isabelle Ginot in 2019, as a support for peer groups concerned with dance and knowledge of movement. The members are artists, social workers and cultural workers concerned with implementing projects with people who are victims of social, gender, age or disability discrimination. Over time, a core group was formed and began to shape the process as a resource for a wider community of artists, care professionals and social workers concerned with the use of movement and dance as a tool for empowerment and action. In 2023, this grassroots group decided to share this working base while feeding its methodology by opening it up to other groups, thus making Bodystorming an open-access resource for other groups.
Bodystorming is a protocol for the co-production of knowledge, co-research and co-learning about dance, bodywork and empowerment. It is designed to support peer learning and knowledge sharing, as well as collective research in the field of dance and vulnerability.
Bodystorming is open to experienced people who are interested in this field and wish to engage in a collective process of knowledge sharing, peer support and research. Each group can design its own programme (in particular the objectives to be achieved) within the framework that the Bodystorming network designs and offers to the community.
By ‘knowledge’ we mean both theoretical knowledge and movement knowledge (movement experimentation), which means that research is structured by readings, conceptual discussions, as well as movement experimentation, creative processes of all kinds. By knowledge, we mean an active circulation between experimentation and conceptualisation (in both directions), without any hierarchy of value.
Bodystorming is a place for creating and experimenting with research formats. By ‘concerned’, we mean dancers, artists, educators, carers, social workers and researchers who have experience of using dance/art/movement as a political and emancipatory tool, particularly for people who are considered discriminated against, vulnerable and totally outside the social norms (in terms of body, cognition, age, gender, etc.).
