Performing Challenges EXTENDED with Bojana Kunst

November 10, 2023

PROGRAMM

ABSTRACT

Bojana Kunst: On the Politics of Entanglement: Feminist Art and my Grandmother's Knitting

In ecofeminist art and theory, entanglement is often a key concept with political and ethical potential. It is a concept that expresses an ethics of care for the complexity of interwoven relations between human and more than human beings. At the same time, entanglement brings into focus a whole range of very specific practices, such as knitting, weaving and sewing. The relationships are often described in terms of threads, lines, knots, strings. In order to show how entanglement is politicised and materialised in feminist art, I would like to address this very specific fiber and textile materiality of entanglement, and discuss it through the practices of weaving and knitting. To do this, my talk will attempt to stitch together my intimate memory of my grandmother's weaving and feminist approaches to weaving, asking different questions about the matter of thread and the entangled labour of the fingers.

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturge and performance theorist. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, where she directs an international master's programme in choreography and performance. She was a researcher at the University of Ljubljana and the University of Antwerp (until 2009), and later a DAAD guest professor at the University of Hamburg (2009 - 2012).