beginning with Sokrates ~

I have been awarded to be artist-in-residence at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy from May 8th to June 16th and look forward to this time of extended focus on my choreographic work, to make another move forward after the encouragments of last year.

During the coming weeks I will start with re-enacting "Sokrates" a piece that I developed 2000/2001 in public space in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Sokrates is a conceptual dance work and the actual realizations may vary greatly: The basic concept is that like the Greek philosopher Socrates whose daily work, according to legend, was to go to the Market place of Athens and engage passers-by in philosophical conversations, my daily work will be to meander through Venice and engage the city and the people I meet in moments of performance. An important feature when I developed this piece was the state of not-knowing, and that Socrates apparently eschewed the more abstracted modes of his times to write ABOUT philosophy, and PRACTICED it directly, instead.

While re-creating this work in Venice, almost 14 years after its inception (which later became the con·sens·us series) documentation of the results will be done by Berlin-based visual artist Jean-Ulrick Désert - perhaps encountering what he has termed "conspicuous invisibility" in his own work.

I will also consider Venice as a city that has played a significantly in the temporary dominance of European empires and its historical background, and my processes from more recent works (Pelléas material / b.a.n.q. and domain/domein in 2013, my involvement with Occupy Rotterdam and the community-dance-project Delfshaven Dans! in 2012)

Finally, my overall theme for this year is Körperemotionen (German for "corporal, literally: body emotions")
I am curious and eager to find out to what extent I will be able to realize these Körperemotionen with the upcoming Venice residency.

Stay tuned ☺
#sokratesvenice

photos made in Rotterdam, NL ©2001 by Cor Kapaan