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Nonconforming Criticisms: Practices, Strategies, Poetics

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Workshop
Art Theory and Cultural Studies
Academy Building
Schillerplatz 3
1010 Vienna

Two-day writing workshop followed by a lunch lecture by Dr. Diana Damian Martin (Royal School of Drama and Speech, University of London). Organized by the FWF project “The Performance of Criticism: AI, Bodily Intelligence and Posthumanist Aesthetics” (Led by: Lisa Moravec, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies), in cooperation with Tanzquartier Wien.

Monday, 20 April

12–13:30 h:        Lunchtime Conversation
13:30–14:30 h: Lunch Break
14:30–17:30 h: Workshop 1/3

Tuesday, 21 April

10–13 h: Workshop 2/3
12–14 h: Lunchbreak
14–17 h: Workshop 3/3

In this two-part workshop, we explore criticism as a practice with entanglements between art, theory, politics, and performance. We focus on forms and approaches to criticism and criticality that are less legible or visible in established contexts. We turn to the borderlands and look to the gaps, peripheries, and experiments where criticism emerges as a practice, set of methods, and political commitment. How might criticality offer ways to attend to current moments, and what relations do we want to foster in these borderlands? This workshop welcomes those (artists, theorists, researchers, arts workers, etc.) who are interested in a collaborative and experimental approach to criticism.

A Lunchtime Conversation on Non-conforming Criticism

In this dialogue between Diana and Lisa, Diana will discuss non-conforming criticisms, tending to many experiments and practices of thinking at the borderlands of performance that dispute, defy and resist the category of criticism itself. What might abolitionist thought teach us about the role of hope, joy, and imagination in critical engagements? Where is performance in criticism? How might we orient ourselves more radically in relation to critical practice? 

Diana Damian Martin is a writer and researcher working on experimental critical and artistic practices through the lens of border work and politics. Over two decades, she has worked transnationally as a writer, dramaturg, and curator. She is a Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies and Research Lead in the Department of Practice at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London), where she also supports artistic research. Publications include: Nonconforming Criticism: Political Practices and Poetics at the Borderlands of Performance (Bloomsbury, forth. 2026), co-ed. Performance Pedagogies: Objects, Transfers, Formations (2026), co-ed. Routledge Series in European Entanglements: Performance Interventions and Cultural Politics. Diana is a member of several collaborative research networks, incl. Generative Constraints and Ends, co-host of collectives Something Other, Department of Feminist Conversations and Critical Interruptions.

 To keep the size of the interactive workshops small and consistent, interested parties are asked to send an email to l.moravec@akbild.ac.at with 2-3 sentences explaining their motivation for participating in one or more workshops.