WALKING TERMS
designed & curated by Andreas Bürgisser, Judith Franke, Ulrike Hatzer, Milena Maier and Georges Pfründer
An open exchange, characterized by not-knowing and improvisation, is to be contrasted at the PAC meetings with the academic lecture of already written knowledge and the defence of it. An example of this is the format Walking Terms, which was tested in the lead-up to the founding meeting in Salzburg 2021, with students from Salzburg, Brugg and Zurich as well as artists from all time zones: Walking Terms.
We believe that there is a way of learning and knowing which is triggered through movement in space, and through an informal way of sharing thoughts and ideas which take form as we hear and respond.
Walking is an embodied presence in motion, presence at once with ourselves and with the world. With this awareness we wish to send tandem partners on walks which are of exploring nature; the terms we walk might be mere pretexts for an experience or could gain on their own new meaning never imagined by both walkers at the start of the journey.
We wish to give to the experience shared by two a larger space of resonance which could trigger again further dialogues and make available this learning to a larger group. These walks would thus expand possibilities of mapping ideas concerning terms in new, different and astonishing ways. The walkers would be jointly part of a creative process leading towards a shared, unfinished, contingent awareness of what terms can become to mean beyond a normative standardized meaning.
Festival of Walking Terms
10.04.2021 via Zoom and Cellphones
Concept and realisation: Univ. Prof. Ulrike Hatzer & Judith Franke (Univ. Mozarteum Salzburg), Georges Pfründner & Milena Meier (Pädagogische Hochschule Fachhochschule Nordwest-Schweiz), Andreas Bürgisser (ZHdK)
Convinced that the pandemic, for all its interrupted communications, also enables new forms of community, exchange and solidarity, the Walking Terms format was developed and put into practice in a first edition in April.
12 international "Senior Walkers" from Scotland, the USA, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, India and Ethiopia, among others, explored together with "Student Walkers" from Austria, Switzerland and South Africa what it can mean to share which terms are virulent, relevant or missing in the field of Performing Arts in Context. In the joint movement in physical and mental space, voids and possibilities for mapping and expanding concepts beyond normative meanings were found.
A second edition of the development of an "ongoing and on growing Glossary" took place within the framework of the working conference "Glossary. Performing Arts in Context. Dynamic Practices - Static Terms".