panel 2The Weight of Care: Artistic Knowing and Un/doing
Artists as Unique Yet Fragile Knowers of the World: How to Care Well for Their Unique Ontological Contribution
Emilie Dionne
In his work Le partage du sensible (Distribution of the sensible), Jacques Rancière argues for the great social, political, as well as ontological and epistemological importance played by arts and artists in a given society. The creation of art requires the development of corporeal sensibility, which renders artists available to the world in new and unique ways. Through such embodiment, artists participate in what Rancière calls the redistribution of the sensible, a process that can make visible that which has otherwise gone unnoticed. Such redistribution is essential to social and political projects that aim to address the ills resulting from an increasing neoliberal economic and political landscape where ideals of individual responsibility and autonomy have been co-opted to justify the marginalization of others and maintain the status-quo. This, however, requires the artist to render herself vulnerable to these sensibilities. Care ethicists, therefore, must reflect on the care that ought to be provided to artists to ensure their continued contribution to social and political progress and what it means to care for these particular, diverse, and essential members of society. Drawing on cultural anthropologist Anna L. Tsing’s concept of arts of noticing and her insistence that knowers and researchers ought to cultivate and practise such arts to develop ethical knowledge, in this presentation, I will draw on philosophical concepts as well as empirical research conducted at the living lab VITA-Lab, a host for diverse art-based projects and practices where artists, social scientists, and community members (e.g. aging adults with diverse experiences, health and social organizations) collaborate to transform the social imaginary and care to older adults. In so doing, I will elaborate ways in which carers and care ethicists can “care well” for the arts and artists, and further support their contribution and involvement in various health endeavors and knowledge practices.
Emilie Dionne is a sociologist of health and healthcare, a feminist thinker, qualitative researcher, and feminist science scholar at VITAM – Research Centre for Sustainable Health, and Université Laval (Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology), Université Laval, Québec, Canada. Drawing from insights in feminist new materialisms, care ethics, material ecocriticism, poststructural philosophy, and science and technologies studies (STS), her current research projects involve: the impact and transformation of care in the context of neoliberalism and advanced capitalism; the impact of digital technology on knowledge practices and care; the contribution of arts and culture to health and wellness; the transformation of primary health care through social innovations and interprofessional collaborations. In 2021, she cocreated the living lab VITA-Lab which aims to transform the social imaginary of old age and aging adults through collaboration and experimentations between arts and sciences.
Callisthenics: Stories of Support, Aversion, and Love
Paloma Bouhana, Henny Dörr & Philippine Hoegen
Abstract
A performance piece about being untrained, unprepared, and unwilling for care giving and receiving.
The piece deals with unmentionable aspects of informal care, through the lens of intergenerational personal experiences. Drawing from the heavy emotional and physical load of caring for parents, partners, or siblings, the narrative explores themes of conflicting needs and desires, paradoxes in care relationships, and the interplay between love and revulsion.
The performance brings together a constellation of three generations of artworkers who believe in, and practice, art as a place of mutual care, artistic exchange, and solidarity. Performance is the medium that connects us, both as method and as dissemination of our work and research.
The performance is rooted in lived experiences of informal care, collaborative explorations and research-through-doing.
The performers embody various roles shifting between them fluidly to speak of the multifaceted nature of care relationships. Through “showing doing”, they explore the physical and emotional weight of caregiving, the contrasts and the paradoxes of responsibilities.
Paloma Bouhana is an artist based in Brussels (BE). After a Master in Economics she graduated from the Design Academy of Eindhoven in 2018. Shifting her approach permitted her to orient her artistic research towards blind spots in mainstream economics like radical equality, feminist ethics of care, or the social relationship of value-labor. Her installations combine mediums like performance, video, scenography, and costume design. She has been working with artists like Rossella Biscotti, Laure Prouvost, Goda Palekaite. and Philippine Hoegen. In her last installation, supported by the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie and entitled “A matrix is a plate of biscuits”, she questions through field research, mold-making, and songwriting, why the thinking that grows from physical labor has been relegated to a lower status. In September 2024, she started a six-month residency at Morpho, Antwerp, during which she will develop an economically abnormal work song.
Henny Dörr (MA), theatre scientist and dramaturg, works as a researcher and lecturer at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. Their focus has also always been on creative and performative processes and practices that transgress the boundaries of disciplines.
Between 1990 and 2021, they developed a range of bachelor and master courses on theatre design, (interactive) performance design, and scenography. Until 2021, they headed the international MA Scenography program, which strongly focuses on expanding forms of scenography and contemporary ideas on spectatorship. As course director and tutor, they created an inclusive learning and research environment and challenged conventional views of knowledge transfer. The international context in which they work as a teacher leads to ongoing, in-depth critical reflection on their pedagogy, their biases, and their “constructive” naivety within an intercultural art and design context.
As researcher in the professorship Expanding Artistic Practices of HKU, Henny Dörr works in transdisciplinary teams that develop co-creative processes between art and (health) care. This artistic research practice is supported by detailed investigation into the impact on the agents and voices involved, the artistic methods and strategies that are put in operation, and the ethical dilemmas that come to the surface.
Philippine Hoegen is an artist based in Belgium and The Netherlands, working mainly with performance as an artistic medium and as a research strategy. Hoegen is currently a researcher and PD Candidate at the Professorship Expanding Artistic Practices, HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, with the project Performing Working*, in which she looks at work through the lens of performance and performance through the lens of work. Who are we when we work, and who are we when we don’t, or can’t? She problematizes the championing of waged work above all other activities and its status as a condition for citizenship and social participation. She looks at the social exclusion that this causes for different people, exploring the value of hidden and unwaged work and the dynamics of the invisibilization of those doing it.
* Performing Working is a Professional Doctorate project conducted in HKU University of the Arts Utrecht as part of a new, practice-led professional education line that started in 2023 within Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences, equivalent to a PhD.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
Images homepage: Merel Visse, Christine Leroy
design website: Johanne de Heus and Marielle Schuurman