Dramaturgies of Withdrawal

DRAMATURGIES OF WITHDRAWAL: ON GESTURES OF REFUSAL IN SEARCH OF MORE NURISHING ARTISTIC AND INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICE

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Two year research project

Promoters: Anne-Lise Brevers en Magda Thielemans

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Image: Tim Etchells, 'All the things', Komuna Warszawa, (c) Marta Keil

Many artists and art institutions seem utterly tired. Stretching their bodies beyond limits to navigate between unstable working conditions, funding cuts and constant competition, they are too tired to imagine they could not be. This exhaustion leads some to (temporarily) withdraw from their work: they are leaving their positions, studies, projects, dance companies, theatre groups etc. Often, their refusal leads to creating new, alternative paths: when one goes off the trail, a new one needs to be paved.

Seen from this perspective, a withdrawal is not a defeat, but an affirmative, creative strategy to imagine new, more restorative ways of creating and teaching. How can we learn from the experiences of those who decided they could not go on like this? This research project engages with the pressing issue of exhaustion, which permeates not only the arts field but society at large. It examines cases of withdrawal as a form of active refusal that has the potential to transform the field by creating conditions to imagine the way we work differently.

Specifically, the project explores how withdrawal creates cracks in the dominant system of art production. The main hypothesis is that it is precisely through these cracks that the possibility of creating alternative imaginaries emerges, and where the political potential of withdrawal materializes. Stories of withdrawal offer conditions for practicing letting go in order to make space for the new to come. They are a promise that other, more regenerative modes of living and working are possible.

Marta Keil

researcher

Image © Danuta Keil

Marta Keil is dramaturge, curator and researcher, born in Poznań, and currently based in Utrecht. She works as tutor at DAS Theatre at the Academy for Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts. Her curatorial and research practice focuses on re-enchanting the ways of instituting in the performing arts. She collaborates as freelance dramaturg, curator, teacher and advisor with various European institutions and artists, e.g. Ira Brand, Ainhoa Hernández Escudero, Samara Hersch, Milla Koistinen, Lina Majdalanie, Rabih Mroué, Jagoda Szelc. In 2023-2024 she was a fellow of BAK Fellowship for Situated Practice in Utrecht. In 2022-2023, Marta curated an artistic research project Breaking the Spell, co-produced by Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, München Kammerspiele, Performing Arts Institute in Warsaw and Viernulvier in Ghent and collaborated with the New Theatre Institute of Latvia in Riga and Rosendal Teater in Trondheim for The Shake Down project, involving teenagers to curate two internationally renowned festivals. Marta edited several books on curation, choreography and performing arts and holds a PhD in Culture Studies. She is a member of Performing Arts Institute collective in Warsaw.