Student IDs will be checked at the door.
About the Event
A lecture-performance with workshop, a participatory exchange of thoughts, things and time. Henny Dörr and Vivek Sheth will offer you the opportunity to explore space from a contemporary dramaturgical and scenographic perspective.
Dramaturgy explores the building stones, the grammar of theatre and performance, Scenography offers narrative potentials beyond words. From those perspectives we will look at space with different eyes. As a stage perhaps. Or as a time machine. Or as a place where we can just be with the things that surround us. The gallery now becomes our playground. After some conceptual explorations (thoughts) through lecture and performative moments, together we will listen to the space speak, and start a dialogue with it. Experiments in the workshop will especially dive into our understanding of the gallery space as a stage for interaction on different levels that may override our conscious interpretive mind: bodily, sensual, material, performative.
About the Artists
Henny Dörr, MA, is senior lecturer at HKU, University of the Arts Utrecht, working in the field of expanding artistic practices, for the professorship of the same name. Within the educational programs of HKU, Henny Dörr developed a range of bachelor and master courses on theatre design, (interactive) performance design and scenography. Originally a dramaturg that graduated in Theatre Studies at UvA in 1986, their perspective has always been on the creative and performative processes and practices that transgress the boundaries of disciplines. The MA Scenography course they have developed is an international program, research based, and strongly focused on expanding forms of scenography and contemporary ideas on spectatorship. As course director and tutor Henny Dörr challenged conventional views of knowledge transfer. Currently they offer courses on scenography, on artistic research methods and on diversification of dissemination forms for artistic research practices. They have a vast international network within the expanded fields of scenography and conducted workshops and gave lectures over the years in Prague, Helsinki, London, Seville, Macau, Jakarta, Ahmedabad. Within the Care-Labs research environment of the professorship at HKU Henny Dörr is involved in research on co-creative strategies and transdisciplinary collaboration between art, science and (health)care. They participate in transdisciplinary research projects such as ‘In search of Stories’ (artists work with cancer patients); ‘If you’re not there where are you’ (on the experiences of Absences) and ‘Prikkel’ (on sensory integration).
Vivek Sheth is the founding & creative director of The Designship, a design & artistic development consulting firm specialising in experiential spatial design. Vivek founded The Designship after graduating from NID in Exhibition (Spatial) Design. He is also a visiting faculty at various Architecture & Design schools like The National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), CEPT University (Ahmedabad), University of the Arts, HKU (Utrecht), Bard College (New York) to name a few. Vivek has previously designed & conceptualised museums, retail spaces, installations, curated & conceived exhibitions and artistic narrative experiences. An avid but amateur trekker, Vivek, in May 2019 produced and directed a performative presentation on his ‘Sense of The Mountains’, through his personal stories and experiences, as an Artist in Residence at Metaal Kathedraal, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
