“The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present” Haraway, D. J. (2016)

I have started reading Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble recently and have been thinking about what might our world be in a couple of years forward – and yet the book asks us to stay with the “trouble” to be in the thick of the present and move through it (Haraway 2016, p:1).  What does it mean for us to move through the thick of present? For me, it is co-curating this festival with a wonderful and inspiring team of women, and together we are moving through the thick of present and re-imagining what an online Magdalena festival might be like and what are these (re)new aesthetics to performance-making?

It is heart-warming that the artists that the team had approached jumped and welcomed the challenge to re-imagine their works online. At the same time, we also have artists who have been working on this online space for over two decades. And I hope that through these, we can create spaces of sharing and (re)discoveries.

For me, this is very inspiring and exciting – because, as artists, we have the capacity, creativity, and imagination to find inventive connections while working through the present. But, are these the best solutions? I don’t know, but we have to inhabit the current space we are in and respond while remaining connected.  There are so many questions, but we have programmed an inspiring festival line-up with workshops happening three weeks before the festival.

The festival and the workshop are curated to address the theme of the festival and to create spaces for discussion on:

1. What are LIVE-ness and LIVE?
2. What are the shifts that some of us had to make in our practice?
3. What might the future be, and what is this new space of creativity/connectivity?

About the programming: 

We are pleased to present these fantastic works by artists who have had over two decades of experience creating online performance and those who are new to this new space. Please go to the tab “performance”, and you will find all the necessary information.

We have artists talks by women from Asia, Europe, South Americas, UK. All who have to “stayed with the trouble” and made shifts in their practices.

And over the first three days (24 June to 26th June 2021) of the festival, we will bring together a diverse group of women theatre and performance practitioners and researchers in a panel to share how their artistic practices have shifted due to the pandemic and to discuss the questions of embodiment and live-ness with/in an online space that this shift raises.

Let the count-down begin. But most importantly, let’s continue to have the courage.

jiā yóu,

Elizabeth de Roza

Reference:

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.