The Curative Act

By applying a series of methods and approaches, this research aims to investigate the artistic and discursive potential that a work process between curator and choreographer can bring forth. In the project, five choreographers, Irina Anufrieva, Sybrig Dokter, Frédéric Gies, Anne Juren and Anna Koch, are invited to work individually with me, as curator, researcher and project leader, providing five different experiences, methodologies and processes, within a shared context. 

The research also questions the prevailing idea of choreography as an artform being performed in the singular by suggesting an exploration of, and an experiment with, making apparent the intra-relations and intra-action that occur in a more weaving model. What happens with the understanding of choreographic works when they are not performed one after the other but rather side by side, layered, parallel or in a weaving form, deliberately, or undeliberately, intra-acting with each other? What I propose with this research is the format of the group exhibition, singular choreographic works framed by a shared score, exhibited/performed simultaneously. 

Another concern in this research is to, by engaging in artistic processes, further the understanding of the curator as a performing relational artist within choreography, the curator as part of the choros.

The aim, topics and questions of this research is threefold: 1) How can a shared artistic process between curator and choreographer challenge, support and effect both practices, 2) to explore the potential of the choreographed curator as a performing artist, 3) to research methods and forms for curating singular choreographies in a performed group exhibition, a choros.

The first two years will focus on a series of one-to-one, two weeks long, experimental work sessions with scores (the research takes its starting point in Cornelius Cardews score The Tiger’s Mind, 1967), reading dance, asemic writing and choreographing. The third year will focus on the curation of a group exhibition of danced choreographies, an online publication and the writing of a book containing, among other, transcribed conversations between the choreographers and the researcher. This research, that targets both curating and choreography, writing and dancing, is critically reflecting on the role and function of the curator of/in choreography and proposes a radical shift in how we gain more, and new knowledge on this relation by experimenting with the curator’s role and performativity/choreography. In this research, the curator role is formed through, and in, the artistic work processes with the choreographers, thereby overthrowing traditional relations and hierarchies between curator and choreographer/artist, inviting instead an intra-active relation between these two artistic practices. By experimenting with, examining, formulating and documenting these processes and outcomes, the research adds new insights to both the field of expanded choreography and the field of curating choreography.

The Swedish Research Council

2023-2026