ATLAS and READER — REVOLVING HISTORIES publication on translocal performance art Switzerland

* from the Zurich-map on performance art | Andrea Saemann interviews Dorothea Rust *

ATLAS — REVOLVING HISTORIES on translocal performance art Switzerland: my text contribution

... A queer cross-reading of Zürich’s performance movements: from their assumed, speculated and negotiated beginnings until ca. 2021 ...
link to heading 'Text Publications' on this website 

READER — REVOLVING HISTORIES on translocal performance art Switzerland: content and my text contribution

BETWEEN CHOREO­PO­LITICS AND COLLEC­TIVITY OR IS 'BETWEEN CHOREO­PO­LICINT AND COLLEC­TIVITY' MORE APPRO­PRIATE?
link to heading 'Text Publications' on this website

List of questions and comments on the answers given in Andrea Saemann’s interview with Dorothea Rust regarding her written contribution.

1.   How did you approach your text?
. Like any encyclopedic or lexical work, this one is necessarily incomplete and selective; it aims to serve as a working tool and a fragmented memory of what is to come, in order to help imagine new concepts—and perhaps even (new) communities and relationships.
. The text is influenced by my perspective as a practitioner of dance and movement ...
. The source material for this text consists of what I heard in approximately 50 interviews, my performance «criss-cross-performance» at the conference «Revolving Documents#1: Narrations of the Beginnings of Performance Art», and a biographical journey along my own life’s path in search of traces of the inner police within me—within us—and of the 'politics' of choreographing the movements of artists past and present, read in a que(e)r and intersecting manner. Also, a text by Sabine Gehardt Fink and me, «Mapping and Cross-linking the History of Performance Art in Switzerland through Collective Research for Deviant Perspectives” ...

2.   You write: «Just as I was drawn into the Zurich performance scene, I want to draw readers into my text as well.» What was it that attracted and drew you in back then?
. How imaginatively and energetically artists and allies have engaged in artistic activism—in incredibly diverse ways—and created ambivalent, autonomous, alternative, and improvised spaces, conjuring up surprises even when viewed from today’s perspective ...
. Because I interpret the Zurich map through the lens of choreographic movements, (Dorothea looks outside) because we all choreograph our way through spaces and their furnishings in daily life, through the lens of choreopolitics (by André Lepecki, Performance Studies)—that is, based on the understanding that no one moves outside the social, value, and economic systems ...
. From this viewpoint, this perspective, I actually always interpret the movements in the performance as being in a state of friction and tension with these social and spatial conditions or constraints ...
. It is also from this perspective that a sort of queer reading of all the data marked on the map in relation to current events has emerged—precisely because, when viewed through this lens, bodies are always situated in relation to space, their surroundings, and the specific time in which they act and live ...

3.   You begin your exploration of performance in Zurich with Dada and continue through to the present. Why do you consider Dada to be an essential part of this?
. No, no, I start before Dada, in the 19th century ...
. I’ll read from my text: «Carnivalesque Collectivity and Dada at the Beginning of the 20th Century» and «On Circles and Communities in the interim war years and afterwards» ...

4.   What were the key locations, which groups shaped the events, and what social protests were behind them? These questions seem to be the central theme of your text: Do all the map references actually appear in your text? Why is this wealth of information important to you?
. First, regarding the sheer volume: The experience of mapping—and also the desire to do justice to everyone who is mentioned there—is incredibly overwhelming, even a struggle to cope. It’s like in the performance: there, too, I always have too much information and material at once. It probably has to do with the attitude of dealing with many things simultaneously, of decentralizing, defocusing, and including what isn’t explicitly mentioned ...
. That's why I don't like to create hierarchies—I view everything as being on the same level, so to speak—and why I don't use the label 'performance art', but rather take a look at performance movements in their respective eras ...
. Mapping is actually a highly democratic format, as is the online platform—or rather, the online catalog «Performance Art Collections Switzerland»—but also formats such as the LEGS performance relay ...
. Important places—I have my doubts? There are striking things that happened at certain times that intrigued and amazed me, where social norms, it seems to me, were asserted with confidence in deliberately defined circles and places (KÜMA, Kreis, DADA), yes, back when things were really happening in Zurich with actions by women close to the FBB, such as the anti-birth-control-pill vending machine at Bellevue and the Fraune-Rakete (Women’s Rocket) or the Panzerknacker Ballet, the F+F with Doris Stauffer, the glamorous and cult-status MANON by Urs Lüthi, the energetic—and at times even violent—AJZ, youth unrest, the dance performances of the ’80s and ’90s with ties to New York, or groups and collectives that simply did their own thing while networking internationally—such as Vänçi Stirnemann, Chrig Perren and their associates, and Mark Divo with the Cabaret Voltaire troupe—they all challenged societal norms. And then there was the explosion of performance art in the 2000s. It’s actually almost impossible to keep track of it all ...
. The city’s cultural policy has also played a role, attempting to lay the groundwork here and there ...
. Zurich’s society has always been very diverse, and this collection here is fragmentary—a snapshot ...
.I did some research here and there and discovered new information while checking names and dates (movies, newspaper articles, etc.) ...
. Everything is meant to be read in a queer way that transcends its time, and everything here also represents what has fallen through the cracks of our map ...

5.   Which discourses were important to you in New York in the 1980s—and why didn’t these debates take place in Switzerland, which had otherwise always been interested in performance art (F+F, Giswil, Festival Boom Performance Index, Bone, etc.)? To what extent have your experiences in New York influenced your understanding of performance art in Zurich?
. There are many possibilities—take the Judson experience and postmodern dance, for example. Later, it evolved into postmodernism, just like so many other new movements that ended up with the suffix '-ism'. Everything is performance art; at least that’s how it was in downtown New York ...

6.   Are there any other trans-local experiences you'd like to share?
. Yes, my experiences in India, South America, Canada, Shetland, etc. ...

7.   Which discourses are relevant to you and your understanding of performance art today?
. I’ll read from my text: «Collectives and networks explore contexts and perspectives of social realities that are discri- minatory, using art and a variety of other performative practices.» Afterward, I’ll comment on public space today and how performance, for me, is a cultural practice that frays in all directions, that constantly eludes a hegemony of meaning, that is perpetually in tension with society and other arts and practices, and that can temporarily—or perhaps even sustainably—puncture the existing normative order. It thrives in the interweaving of the practices alluded to here and in the system of  my 'footnote references' ...

Andrea reads my last paragraph as a hint and an invitation to consult the footnotes that could not be included in the ATLAS:
. This ATLAS of Zurich’s performance movements is also an encyclopedia—albeit an incomplete one: The QR code leads to the text containing the 151 footnotes. The footnotes are just as important as the text presented here, which really ought to be read aloud to experience how this journey into the unfurled past—as present—resonates in our present.