Iris Julian: Singular Plural as a Method of Contemporary Staging
Lecture on experiments with co-authorship in contemporary dance and the overwriting and bundling of individual choreographic manuscripts into a singular plural as part of the Academy Librar’s Wer A.. sagt event series
In her cultural studies research developed at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Iris Julian examined the staging processes of contemporary dance performances. Since the 1990s, conceptual dance artists working in collectives have countered the singular of individual authorship with methods that both preserve the individual choreographic signature and weave it into the plural of the group. Thus, working schemes were made possible that would be unthinkable in the context of a traditional staging process, which is based on a leading choreographer who, acting as a singular author, passes on movement figures, rhythm, and spatial structures to the dancers. Groups such as Deufert & Plischke, Collect-if by Collect-if, Damaged Goods and individual artists, such as Xavier Le Roy and Bojana Cvejić, reflected on and published experiences resulting from their collaborations. This enabled Julian to transfer these into precise investigation grids.
With her lecture on staging methods in dance, Iris Julian also returns to one of the locations of her research: the University Library of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. This inspired to stage the publication itself as a singular plural of all the theorists and to record their voices once again in the original. Quotes from the publications authored by Gerald Raunig, Michaela Ott and Jean-Luc Nancy are presented in their interweaving and their processing into the concept of the book, the thought process in the development of the research becomes comprehensible.
Iris Julian is a cultural scientist, author, university lecturer and lives in Vienna. Before completing her doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2022), she was an associate member of the research group "Mediale Teilhabe" [Media and Participation] based in Konstanz. She is currently expanding her diploma thesis on feminist-inspired video and performance art into a comprehensive interdisciplinary study, which will be published by Routledge in 2025.
The Grey Room Studio hosted by Julian offers a space for collaborations—with colleagues and/or visitors. Understanding space as a temporal-spatial opening and as a framework, the singular-plural explored in theory is guided through the eye of the needle of different artistic practices and public spheres.
www.grey-room-studio.at / https://vimeo.com/user216621664
Iris Julian: Singular Plural Ways of Staging Together. Perspectives on Contemporary Dance, Art Performance and Visual Art
384 pages, softback, ISBN: 978-3-8376-7247-3, Bielefeld: transcript, 2024
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7247-3/singular-plural-ways-of-staging-together/