ROM for kunst og arkitektur, Exutoire and NOGOODS invite you to a series of performative lectures and discussions on Tuesday 23 August at ROM between 17:00 and 19:00. Free entrance.

17:00 – 18:00: “The Labour of Memory” with Eliot Moleba (researcher, playwright and theatre director)

18:00 – 19:00: “Performative Appropriations for Bodies in Space and Architecture” with Saúl García-López aka La Saula (performance artist, professor in performance, and co-artistic director of La Pocha Nostra)

“The Labour of Memory”

This performative lecture (which was first conceived and presented by Eliot Moleba and Merete Røstad) seeks to expand the understanding of memory by exploring it as an embodiment of sensorial practice and as an extended social vocabulary. Memory work resides in our everyday rituals and social relationships as well as in monuments and traditions of remembrance. Accordingly, in our extended artistic practice, we look at the politics of remembrance and forgetting by focusing on our participatory experiences as witnesses in the public sphere.

Eliot Moleba is a researcher, playwright, and theatre director. He is currently a Research Fellow at KHiO and an Editorial Committee member of VIS – The Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. He is also a member of MEMORYWORK, an international interdisciplinary research project.

“Performative Appropriations for Bodies in Space and Architecture” 

This collective embodied experiment will focus on breaking down power dynamics and challenging the normative structures and conceptions that govern our architectural everyday practice and interaction. We aim to discover and discuss how space is transformed with the intended use of the body to generate new cartographies of radical interactions and interpretations. Using a classic Pocha Nostra exercise called Working in the Dark, we will explore spatial and visual embodied interactions that can engender more liberating appropriations for bodies of diverse identities in space. By conceiving the body as an extension of the performance site, the spinal cord and the generator of actions that transform space, we can realise that our experiences with the space are not only consciousness driven by the mind but also consciousness driven by the senses.

Saúl García-López aka La Saula is a performance artist, Professor in Performance at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and co-artistic director of La Pocha Nostra. Saúl is co-author of the book La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook For The Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society. His work focuses on performance pedagogy, indigeneity, gender, and decolonial theory.

The project and collaboration will continue throughout 2022–2023 and culminate in a collective exhibition and public programme at ROM in May-June 2023.

Dissident Publics is supported by the Arts Council Norway (Kulturrådet), Globus Opstart - Nordisk Kulturfond, L’Institut français de Norvège, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Paris.