SE.S.TA Blog

The second edition of the Dance Reading Club series When the Dancers Know the Answers took place on 17 June, again in the Living Room of Studio ALTA in Invalidovna – but this time in a more Decameron-like chiaroscuro mood. Under the name Good Night Readers, the ladies from the platform Bjornsonova hosted a two-hour-long live and online reading of excerpts from texts by feminist authors such as Alice Munro, Linda Stupart, Octavia Butler, Ariana Reines, Justin Frank, or singer Eartheater – meandering from detective and sci-fi narratives to erotica and poetry. Good Night Readers started as an initiative by the Bjornsonova platform during quarantine, as a sequel to Boccaccio’s Decameron – following the plague pandemic in the 14th century into today’s viral times.

The first edition of the Dance Reading Club series When the Dancers Know the Answers took place in the Living Room of Studio ALTA on Thursday 21 May 2020, and it hosted a two-hour-long discussion which started with the question: When the dance fails as a gesture? Observing how the piece Assemblage by Martina Hajdyla Lacová found its audience in the park due to the pandemic restrictions – sandwiched later with the video excerpts of performances mentioned in the discussed text Writing Laughter – Violent Desire by Jenn Joy – brought the discussion back to the core of what is the artistic gesture and why it requires gaps, stumbling and failures.

How do we care for each other in these times of pandemic isolations? When borders and social distancing lock us into our own bodies – forced to be detached in small bordered units, prohibiting us from meeting the other. Hapticality is denied by the only contact we have through screens. We need to touch, to feel the other – and through the other.

Pandemic commons brought Václav Janoščík to share his book Sleeplessness online on Monoskop. He is a theorist, curator and Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts based in Prague. Here you find a short excerpt from his philosophical diary – and if you follow the link, you can read the whole precious book.

We live in an interconnected world, where borders are porous, more like living membranes than physical walls. Excerpt from the text by professor of philosophy Michael Marder published in New York Times on March 3rd, 2020.