Martina Ruhsam: The autonomous will of things: Garbage, Residues and Sediments in Posthumanist Performance Practices
What is the political potential of staging a granted autonomous will? Many theoretical movements and experimental artistic practices have explored and continue to explore the autonomous will of (partially) independently acting elements in non-human bodies – in a highly digitised socio-economic context that encourages endless self-performance and in which self-sufficiency is a priority, non-human bodies are relegated to the level of profitable raw material resources. In her lecture, artist and theorist Martina Ruhsam discusses posthumanist performance practices that both explore and reflect on the different relationship between the human body and the more-than-human world that surrounds us, and offers a political reading of several concepts that have emerged within the framework of New Materialism.
Can a new politics of materiality be formulated and can choreography – as Karen Barad develops this idea in her work “Agential Realism” – be understood as intra-action? Martina Ruhsam cites as examples of such practices the artistic works of artists such as Unknown Fields Division, Kate McIntosh and Sarah Vanhee, who move away from anthropocentric dramaturgies and seek to destabilise established dualisms such as nature/culture and human/non-human.
But what can artistic practices contribute to political ecology?
In cooperation with MGLC Švicarija
About the Author
Martina Ruhsam is an assistant professor in the Choreography and Performance Programme (CUP) at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, and is the author and co-author of many performances and events. She has worked in the theoretical department of the Tanzquartier in Vienna and was a member of the editorial board of the online dance, choreography and performance magazine, Corpus. She is the author of the book Kollaborative Praxis: Choreographie (Turia + Kant, 2011). In 2020 she completed her PhD with the dissertation “Moving Matter. Non-human bodies in contemporary choreographies“.
