In most contexts of learning, what matters is what is passed on, what knowledge or information it is that is being consolidated. Performative learning instead focuses on how an individual or community learns, how knowledge is many things and that the purpose is to allow the engaged persons to develop agency, a sense of confidence, in and through themselves.
Through different forms of engagement in learning, homogenising tendencies can be opened up and awareness can be experienced in regard to privilege, diversity, power and accountability. Alternative and non-hierarchical learning context is not a matter of being nice, but instead to make possible for the engaged individual to continue his, her or their struggle.
Today we live in societies where knowledge, information and data are central and imply enormous economies. Where learning is an ongoing practice that is imposed over us and required in every field as a necessary accumulation of information. In this reality, it is more urgent than ever to insist on forms of learning that are wild, non-aligned, slow, frustrating, shared and forgotten. Learning and knowledge, as in creating one’s own learning, means to carry the power to create communities, solidarity and to stand united.
In the form of a conversation between Silvia Bottiroli, Marten Spangberg and the curatorial team of Salmon, this opening session sheds light on different perspectives on learning and asks questions about how art can offer safe environments, places where freedom can be practised and alternative ecologies of learning can flourish.
This conversation is part of a program that opens a reflection on the notion of transmission and critical thinking about practices and knowledges in performing arts today. A four-day program activated in different spaces of the Mercat dels Flors.
Silvia Bottiroli is an independent curator, researcher, organizer and educator in the field of performing arts. She was the artistic director of DAS Theatre in Amsterdam (2018-2021) and of Santarcangelo Festival (2012-2016). She curated the program The May Events for KunstenFestivalDesArts in Brussels and Vooruit in Ghent (2018) and co-curated various artistic, discursive, and educational platforms. Since 2011 she has been teaching Methodology, Critique, and Research in the Arts at Bocconi University in Milan and since 2019 she is co-curating together with Kee Hong Low and a new performative platform for Freespace in Hong Kong.
Mårten Spångberg: Multidisciplinary choreographer and writer living and working in Berlin and Stockholm. His interest concerns dance and choreography in an expanded field, something he has approached through experimental practice in a multiplicity of formats and expressions. He has been active on stage as a performer and creator since 1994, and since 1999 has created his own choreographies, from solos to larger scale works, which have toured internationally. His more recent performances La Substance, but in English, The Internet, Natten and Gerhard Richter, une pièce pour le théâtre has gained extensive international recognition. His current work concerns ecology and post-anthropocene aesthetics.
