Another Image of Existence

Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri on their practice of Poethical Readings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need for a radical reevaluation of modern politics. An interview by Eve Katsouraki and Georg Döcker

Authors

  • Denise Ferreira da Silva
  • Valentina Desideri
  • Georg Döcker
  • Eve Katsouraki

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Abstract

Since 2015/2016, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri have been engaging in a joint practice of so-called Poethical Readings, a device that engages the poetic and the ethical at the limits of the epistemology and ontology of the modern Subject. In this interview, Ferreira da Silva and Desideri provide insight into the singular and theatrical dynamics of Poetical Readings, as well as The Sensing Salon, a format for the collective exercise of Poethical Readings. They consider their practice with respect to the issue of power and the image of existence that undergirds modern politics, suggesting that Poethical Readings partake in the construction of a different image of existence no longer founded on the violent operations of the Subject. Having taken place in the autumn of 2020, that is, in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the interview is framed by and addresses these issues through the discussion of the social ramifications of the corona crisis.

Author Biographies

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a philosopher, writer, and filmmaker. Her academic and artistic works address the ethico-political challenges of the global present. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007), A Divida Impagavel (2019), Unpayable Debt (2021) and co-editor (with Paula Chakravartty) of Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime (2013). Her artistic work includes the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), in collaboration with Arjuna Neuman; and the relational art practices Poethical Readings and Sensing Salon, in collaboration with Valentina Desideri. She lives and works on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) people.

Valentina Desideri

Valentina Desideri explores art making as a form of study and study as a form of making art. She trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London (2003–2006), later on did her MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (2011–13) and is currently a PhD candidate at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, and is one of the co-organizers of Performing Arts Forum in France, she speculates in writing with Stefano Harney, she engages in Poethical Readings and gathers Sensing Salons with Denise Ferreira da Silva, she is part of the Oficina de Imaginação Política, she reads and writes.

Georg Döcker

Georg Döcker is a PhD-student at the University of Roehampton, London, and the recipient of PhD stipends from both the University of Roehampton and the AHRC Techne Consortium. His PhD research invests in an analytics and genealogy of “practice” (also referred to as “daily practice, “studio practice”, “performance as practice”, etc.) as dominant tendency in contemporary theatre, dance, and performance. Georg's overall research interests include: theatre, dance, and performance considered through the triad of power – action – life; self-organisation; mimesis and theatricality; and the work of Antonin Artaud. From 2015–2018, Georg was a researcher in the framework of “Theatre as Dispositif”, a research project located at Giessen University, Germany, which was funded by the German Research Foundation. He has published in English and German peer-reviewed journals and anthologies, written essays for magazines, theatre institutions, and festivals, and runs a blog at: https://georgdoecker.wordpress.com/.

Eve Katsouraki

Dr. Eve Katsouraki (University of the West of Scotland) is one of the main editors of the international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed Performance Philosophy journal, and has two co-edited collections: Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Radical Democracy (Palgrave 2017) and Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance (Routledge 2018). Both are pioneering investigations that rehabilitate perceived notions of the political from the point of radical vulnerability, brokenness, and resilience. She is also currently co-editing a themed journal issue for Performance Research 'On Biopolitics’ (July 2022). She is currently working on two monographs, the first examines the intersections between philosophy and the modernist director and the second explores posthumanist theatre.

References

Artaud, Antonin. 1976. “Mise en scène and metaphysics.” Translated by Helen Weaver. In Antonin Artaud. Selected Writings, edited by Susan Sontag, 227–239. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Desideri, Valentina, and Denise Ferreira da Silva. 2015. “A Conversation between Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva.” Booklet published as part of Hand Reading Studies by Valentina Desideri. Amsterdam: Kunstverein Publishing.

Desideri, Valentina, and Stefano Harney. 2013. “Fate work. A conversation.” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 13 (1): 159–176.

Ferreira da Silva, Denise. 2014. “Toward a Black Feminist Poethics.” The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research 44 (2): 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2014.11413690 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2014.11413690

Ferreira da Silva, Denise. 2014. “No-bodies. Law, raciality and violence.” Mertium 9 (1): 119–162.

Ferreira da Silva, Denise. 2007. Toward a Global Idea of Race. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Nelson, Lisa. 2018. “Keyword Interviews: Image.” Interview by Myriam Van Imschoot from 24 April 2001. Oralsite. http://oralsite.be/pages/Interviews_Lisa_Nelson

Safatle, Vladimir. 2020. “Welcome to the Suicidal State.” Translated by André Lepecki. Contactos (March). Accessed 1 August 2020. https://contactos.tome.press/welcome-to-the-suicidal-state/

Published

22-04-2022

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2022): Power and Powerlessness in Performance

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2022 Valentina Desideri, Denise Ferreira da Silva

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