Bodily Intelligence: Decentralising the Performance of ‘Intelligence’
A 4-part transdisciplinary workshop series, organised by Lisa Moravec (FWF project The Performance of Critique, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, Summer Semester 2026) in collaboration with Tanzquartier Wien.
The 4-part transdisciplinary workshop series explores connections between body and mind in creative and critical practices: Jurij Konjar guides us through principles of Contact improvisation; Diana Damian Martin towards writing nonconforming criticism; Adam Nocek/Stacey Moran workshop boarders between bodies and technologies; and Doris Uhlich provides space for inclusive and collective pleasures.
In performance practice, diverse kinds of bodily intelligence and subjectivity are explored, reimagined, and transformed. This transdisciplinary four-part workshop series brings together embodied practice with critical writing to investigate how bodily experience shapes theoretical reflection. Rather than doing theory through the appropriation of established concepts, the repetition of inherited movement forms, or critique based on hegemonic values that underpin the marginalization of underrepresented social groups, the workshops invite participants to engage with individually and collectively shaped conscious and unconscious processes. Through this exploration, we consider how bodies shape their minds, and how minds, in turn, shape bodies. While techno-capitalist narratives increasingly speculate about artificial intelligence becoming fully conscious, the series recenters the aesthetics of embodied knowledge to envision how we want to live with other living beings and AI systems, and how these relations could facilitate the conditions for a more democratic and socially inclusive future.
To keep the size of the interactive workshops small and consistent, people interested in participating should email l.moravec@akbild.ac.at with 2-3 sentences outlining their motivation to participate in one or several workshops.