Project

Hyphenated Thinking: Performance (Studies) Activating Ecological Encounters

Code
bof/baf/4y/2024/01/873
Duration
01 January 2024 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Performance studies
    • Art studies and sciences not elsewhere classified
Keywords
Donna Haraway activism Theatre Studies Bruno Latour water Performance Studies Performance Philosophy Ecology art and science political ecology New Materialism
 
Project description

In the coming years, I conduct research with artists and experts from diverse fields in hydro-ecological research. The aim is to provide multiple perspectives on hydro-ecological matters of concern. Drawing on Bruno Latour's political ecology and Donna Haraway's New Materialist philosophy, this research responds to the latest developments in ecological thinking and takes an innovative stance by developing a genuinely interdisciplinary research objective, research methodology, and output. Rather than reflecting from within their field of study, the researchers engage in a Natural Contract Lab, a long-term research-based art project initiated by the Portuguese, Ghent-based artist Maria Lucia Cruz Correia. The LAB fosters new modes of knowledge production and new modes of activism in relation to ecological matters of concern. The participants engage in several multi-day expert workshops that seek to activate awareness on the particular ecological topic of water (re-)distribution of SZenne River (Brussels) and/or River Lys (Ghent). The following research questions are at stake: How does water flow through, across, and between human and more-than-human bodies politically, socially, and environmentally? How do we design a process of repair based on reciprocity, accountability, and interdependency with certain waterways? Do we need other ways of making justice and gestures of care for bodies of water?