Practice(!) Symposium — Tracing Presences
Künstlerhaus Factory & AIL (Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab)
Vienna
Oct 27–29, 2022

A three-day symposium combining the independent art scene with academic research contexts. "Tracing Presences" investigated the spectrum of immediate and mediated presence from the perspective of performative practices, aiming for knowledge through practice, participatory understanding, and applied awareness.

Concept & Organization: Angewandte Performance Lab (APL)
Morning Practices: Veza Fernández, Sofie Fatouretchi, Anne Juren, Bita Bell, Asher O'Gorman
Participatory Sessions & Research: Mary Maggic, Performatorium (Olivia Jaques/Marlies Surtmann), Charlotta Ruth, Jasmin Schaitl, Mariella Greil, Lucie Strecker
Supported by: Künstlerhaus Wien, University of Applied Arts Vienna, INTRA

Tracing presences. 


Conceived and organised by the Angewandte Performance Lab, the symposium traced the artistic and theoretical spectrum of presence. The program was structured to move from embodied experience to reflective discourse.

The days opened with Morning Practices, (curated by Timothy Nouzak), inviting participants into specific somatic and sonic worlds: from Veza Fernández's "Messy Polyphonies", exploring visceral vocal practices, to Anne Juren’s "Fantasmical Anatomies" and Asher O'Gorman’s "AfforDances" which guided dialogues with inanimate objects. These sessions set the ground for a day of "learning-by-doing," moving away from frontal lectures towards a laboratory format where the body itself acts as the primary site of research.

Following the physical engagement, Participatory Sessions (curated and organised throughout the week by various APL members), deepened the inquiry into specific methodologies. Notable contributions included "Morphogenesis" by Mary Maggic, investigating the micro-performativity of hormones, and the collaborative research "Withdrawing the Performer" by Anne Juren & Christian Schröder, hosted by APL-members Charlotta Ruth & Jasmin Schaitl.

Archives in Practice

Performatorium & Charlotta Ruth
This workshop session questioned who or what carries, develops, and transmits knowledge in performance and socially engaged art.

Rather than a well-organised storage, we imagine the archive as a vibrant memory field. How can we better include intersubjective and embodied knowledge inside archival practice?


Led by Performatorium (Olivia Jaques/Marlies Surtmann) and Charlotta Ruth, PhD participants engaged in "mapping" performative practices. The session understood the process of collecting and exchanging knowledge not just as documentation, but as a moment of creating networks and contributing to a critical feminist art historiography of performance art.

Research Stammtisch & Dinner

Curated by Mariella Greil, PhD
Eating experience by Marianna Mondelos

Radical Intimacy with Research Questions
The "Research Stammtisch" served as an experimental format to rethink the signifying codexes of table culture. Not a structured meeting, but a loose encounter for exchanging experiences with a focus on praxis. [cite_start]It provided a space for radical intimacy with research questions, shared interests, and the precarities of the artistic research field. Accompanied by a "Research Dinner" designed to explore a range of different tastes—of foods and otherwise.

The symposium concluded with formats extending beyond traditional performance. This included fantasmical anatomie Anne Juren as well as the "Breeding Exercise" by Charlotta Ruth and Cordula Daus (a new institutional anatomy for performance) and a Guided Exhibition Tour of "Holobiont. Life is Other" with Lucie Strecker, focusing on microperformativity—the modes of action of the smallest biological and technical units applied in aesthetic processes.