Stockholm Dansfilmfestival participates at the inauguration of Teaterkvarteren in Sundsvall, Sweden. 24 dance films will be presented by creators from all over Sweden. The event takes place on 12th March 2016.
The Economic Body is screened in Block 3: 14.00-14.30. Free entry.
More information: Norrdans
A short film of The Economic Body was featured at Stockholm Dansfilmfestival at Zita the 21 December. More screenings are to be announced during spring 2016.
More about Stockholm Dansfilmfestival
An event on the crossover between dance and social science. Collaboration between Fredriksson (SE), Steil (LU), Brandão (BR).
With kind support from La Maison des Etudiants Suédois, Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.
Photos © Liv-Kristin Rød Korssjøen
Fredriksson (SE), Steil (LU), Brandão (BR)
“There is a correlation between the way you use your body and what role you’re playing”
Friday 30 October 2015 at 20.00
PROGRAM
20.00-20.10: Introduction to concept
20.10-20.45: Film screening of “The Economic Body”
20.45-21.30: Discussion and refreshments
Fredriksson, Steil and Brandão co-create their first interdisciplinary event on the intersection between dance and social science. The three met in the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, and gathered in their mutual but diverse explorations of the fields. Fredriksson presents film excerpts from her interdisciplinary project “The Economic Body” (2014), and invites Steil and Brandão to elaborate on their current research and performance projects.
Anna-Mi Fredriksson is a choreographer and economist from Stockholm, Sweden. After working as a dancer with The English National Ballet, she studied at Stockholm School of Economics, where she co-founded the organisation Art Division, exploring and developing the relationship between arts, business and society. She is currently residing in Paris where she studies International Economic Policy at Sciences Po.
Laura Steil recently obtained her PhD in anthropology from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE). She spent the last decade researching the social and cultural dynamics of several “non-academic” dance scenes in France, most notably the hip-hop or “afro” scenes. She uses dance as an ethnographic research tool, considering the (dancing) body not only an object but a locus and vector of knowledge. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the GSRL (EPHE).
Carolina Brandão is a dancer and sociologist from São Paulo, Brazil. She was classically trained and worked in various contemporary projects throughout her career. After studying Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo, she alternated for 8 years between works in contemporary dance and in consulting, evaluating social projects. She is currently studying International Public Management at Sciences Po – Paris.
Bienvenue! Welcome!
La Maison des Etudiants Suédois
La Cité internationale universitaire de Paris
7F Bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
(RER B, Tram 3, Bus 21, 67 : La Cité universitaire)
has released their annual report for 2014-2015, featuring The Economic Body. The report highlights the unique collaboration between the academic field and the arts, and allows a public transparency into the project, regarding how it evolved, and what insights have been generated.
See full report.
“Genom projektet har jag lärt mig att det krävs ett sammanhang för att tvärdisciplinär diskussion och reflektion ska uppstå, och en koreograf har möjligheten att skapa detta sammanhang genom den konstnärliga processen.” – Anna-Mi Fredriksson
På vilket sätt koreograferas individers beteende av socialt konstruerade system och strukturer? I en process bestående av reflektion, diskussion och koreografiska experiment skapades The Economic Body, ett verk som belyser och problematiserar koreografins och ekonomins performativa aspekter. Bakom projektet står Anna-Mi Fredriksson, klassiskt skolad dansare tillika student vid Handelshögskolan i Stockholm. Hon har genom den studentdrivna organisationen SASSE Art Division etablerat ett unikt samarbete mellan Handelshögskolan och Weld, en konstnärsdriven plattform för dans och konst. Anna-Mi Fredriksson upplever att intresset för projektet har växt både inom och utanför samarbetsinstitutionerna.
Projektet har presenterats för en bred publik vid den internationella forskningskonferensen Art of Management & Organization (AoMO) Conference på Copenhagen Business School (CBS), på Handelshögskolans doktorspromotion i Blå Hallen, samt under två föreställningar på Weld. Vid dessa tillfällen bjöds publiken in att delta i interaktiva moment, som till exempel i processens initiala skede då en diskussion hölls med forskare och studerande inom ekonomi, sociologi, filosofi och konst, samt vid föreställningarna på Weld, där interaktiva reflektioner från publiken dokumenterades. Kulturbryggan menar att liknande frågor har ställts inom konsten tidigare, men när projektägaren ställer dessa från rätt plats – inifrån ekonomins egen högborg på Handelshögskolan i Stockholm och ges tillgång till både lärare och studenter, har man möjlighet att på allvar påverka attityder och tänkande i den ekonomiska sfären. Projektet fortätter att utvecklas. Med utgångspunkt i publikens reflektioner från Weld drivs processen vidare tillsammans med dansarna Kajsa Sandström och Mia Hjelte. Nu planeras, i samarbete med organisationen Fluxum Foundation i Schweiz medverkan i MIA Milan Image Art Fair i april 2015 samt en kortfilm för framtida utställningsmöjligheter.
” Jag upplever att det finns ett behov av att skapa fler möjligheter till utbyte av kunskap och idéer mellan den ekonomiska och kulturella samhällssfären kring hur kulturell verksamhet kan samverka med det ekonomiska området för en bättre samhällsutveckling.”
– Anna-Mi Fredriksson
Six performances were presented at Milan Image Art (MIA) Fair 2015 with dancers Mia Hjelte and Kajsa Sandström in collaboration with Fluxum Foundation and FLUX Laboratory.
More information about the performances at MIA 2015
More information about the collaboration with Fluxum Foundation and Flux Laboratory
Following the performances at MIA Fair, the project caught a life of its own as many captured the essence of the performance in their own way. Thank you for sharing! Here are some of the photos I found on instagram at #theeconomicbody
and research is approaching for The Economic Body as the project has been invited to present at MIA Fair Milan in April 2015. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the organization Fluxum Foundation and their interdisciplinary art space, FLUX Laboratory.
Process images
Mia Hjelte and Kajsa Sandström
How can different systems in society co-exist under unequal conditions?
you see the reality
you create a model
that changes your perception of the world
into a new world
you see a new reality
create a new model
that changes your perception of the world
into a new world
into a new reality
– Audience reflection, 24-09-2014
like the two poles of a magnet
as though they almost hate each other
they are inseparable
interdependent
what happens when they meet on equal conditions?
can they meet on equal conditions?
do they want to meet on equal conditions?
will one overcome the other?
or are they like the poles of a magnet
destined to never meet?
– Audience reflection, 23-09-2014
in drawings and text from the audience at Weld in Stockholm, September 2014. The analysis is part of the iterated phases that generate progress throughout the project. Further choreographic material is created based on the audience’s reflection and in that sense the choreographic process is interactive.
Many different systems
Co-exist in society
Some are more powerful than others
– Discussion participant, 31-07-2014
collected were expressed through drawing whereas 77% were expressed through text. A total of 115 reflections were collected out of which 27 were drawings. Results from two performances a Weld in September 2014 in response to the phrase “Please draw or write down your thoughts”.
“Could these thoughts and ideas have been expressed if drawing was not an option?”
– Participant, 24-09-2015
of the project based on previous work.
More than 100 reflections from the audience at Weld in September 2014 are being processes and analyzed. This work is done together with Mia Hjelte and Kajsa Sandström, two Stockholm-based artists.
I keep thinking about the difference between asking a question and doing a question. Only through doing can an understanding be achieved of what has been done. Perhaps that is where ‘the economic body’ is – in the doing of the question.
– Audience reflection, Weld, 2014-09-24
phase is documented as a short film from the Weld artist residency in July 2014.
A film by Anna-Mi Fredriksson
Dancers Sandra Gerdin & Kajsa Sandström
Cinematographer Erik Widman
A: So, can’t we be intuitive?
B: I don’t think we can ever be purely intuitive. Because we are born into a culture. We are formed already. But we have an intuition and that’s always negotiating against this choreography that we are born into.
– Discussion participants 05-06-2014
the interdisciplinary process so far, a PechaKucha presentation was held for Kulturbryggan’s annual meeting at Solliden, Stockholm. PechaKucha is a creative presentation format developed in Japan, consisting of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
“In order for interdisciplinary discussion to occur, one needs to create a situation for it. A choreographer has the ability to create this type of situation through the artistic practice.”
– PechaKucha 10-15-2014
were showcased as a short film at Stockholm School of Economics Installation & Conferment Ceremony in the City Hall. The film was accompanied by a speech about interdisciplinary processes between art and science. Central questions were decision making processes and gender structures in the business world.
“In the business world, top positions are usually dominated by men. Once there is a woman, the discussion usually goes ‘She acts like a man’. The body language shows that there is a difference in how you get up on the ladder of success. It has a correlation to how you perform and what role you’re playing.”
– Discussion participant, 2014-04-06
were held at Weld in Stockholm 23-24 September. As a part of the presentation, the audience was invited to participate by sharing their personal reflections about the performance.
Notes and drawings from the participating audience at Weld,
23-24 September. Photos of the performance by Erik Widman.
is arranged by the Social Committee within the Student Association at Stockholm School of Economics. In collaboration with Art Division, Culture Week invites all SSE students to participate in the performances at Weld 23-24 September.
at the 7th International Art of Management & Organization Conference 2014, held at Copenhagen Business School 28th-31st August. As a part of the conference opening, a choreography was performed by dancers Kajsa Sandström and Sandra Gerdin. Insights from the process were presented in the conference stream for Dance, Choreography and Organisation.
Photos © Benedicte Damslora
Download full conference program
Analysis (CEA) is a practice developed through discussions, research, video documentation and choreography. The ambition has been to create an interdependence between artistic creation and theoretical research, a relationship that holds for all parts of the project, from sources of financing to supporting platforms and institutions, participating audiences and presentation format.
Choreography is commonly analysed through movement analysis (e.g. Laban 1966). However, I am interested in choreography as an analytical tool for studying organisational behaviour. This implies that the choreographic process is an analytical process in itself. Consequently, movement is not used as a means for illustration or representation but rather in a performative sense. I use the term elaboration to emphasize an ongoing dialogue with an audience of diverse ideological standing points. The elaborating format has been particularly important in cross-disciplinary discussions about economics, since it is an ideologically charged field with following friction between the art and commercial spheres. The aim has been to generate insights together with a participating audience, thus there is a reflexive aspect to the practice – it has impact on participants, and participants affect the outcome.
The practice consists of five iterative stages. In the first stage, drawings and notes evoked personal reflection, similar to practice-based research influenced by phenomenology (Kozel 2007, p. 53). Secondly, reflections were connected to relevant theories in social science through a research phase and literature review. In the third stage, interdisciplinary meetings were held with participants from related fields. Two discussions, 2-3 hours each, were held with a total of 16 participants: 1 choreographer, 2 dancers, 1 art curator, 1 art critic, 1 artist, 1 sociologist, 2 MSc in Marketing, 1 PhD in Philosophy, 2 PhD in Economics, 4 BSc in Business and Economics. In the fourth stage, a choreographic concept was developed, based on drawings, discussions and movement experiments. Finally, documentation was summarised into text and visuals. The process was then reiterated to explore further questions that evolved.
Reiterating the stages, a choreographic process was held with two dancers, involving movement experiments and analysis of the recorded discussions. A semi-public viewing was held with 20 participating students and professionals in economics and arts, with a following discussion. Documentation of the process includes photos, audio, moving image, drawings and notes. The project is presented in an experience based format, involving a performance, fragments of process documentation and individual reflection.
References:
Kozel, S. (2007) Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology. Leonardo Book Series, Cubitt, S., Eds.
Laban, R. (1966). Choreutics. L. Ullmann., eds. London: MacDonald and Evans.
one day of work at Weld, art photographer Caroline Foerster was present during our artist residency in July 2014.
Photos © Caroline Foerster
in the 7th international Art of Management & Organization Conference, The Economic Body received the AoMO Bursary. The conference is held at Copenhagen Business School 28th-31st August.
Photo © CBS
Date: 28 August, 7.30 pm
Dance: Sandra Gerdin and Kajsa Sandström
Venue: Kilen at Copenhagen Business School
Information: http://www.artofmanagement.org/
of The Economic Body is becoming a short film, documenting the interdisciplinary process so far.
What is it to act within a system?
A: “There are many systems that co-exist in parallel in society. Some systems are more powerful than others. Dancers are used to being a part of a system in the sense that we are used to being choreographed, organised. Therefore, a dancer may have a certain distance to the systems that one acts within, even though one can never be completely objective to it.”
B: “The question of how we are being choreographed by society is very broad. It can range from technological development, to how furniture is designed, or what norms we are surrounded by and how we think. It is a critical approach that allows us to step outside of a situation and look at it as a social construction. Thus can the economy be approached as a social construction that consists of our individual economic actions.”
Photos © Erik Widman
at Weld with dancers Kajsa Sandström and Sandra Gerdin.
to act within a choreographic setting or framework?
Individual behaviour as outcome of scarce resources, such as time, or quantitative measures, codes and norms. Approaching society as a choreography, is it possible to identify the choreographic setting and re-choreograph it in order to redefine current structures?
choreography are not commonly combined. The main research methodology for the intersection between arts and social science is arts-based research, a field within qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Gnowles and Cole 2008; Leavy 2009). However, this project is initiated as an art project, and thus artistic research in choreography and dance is also included in my framework. Following is a brief description of similarities and differences between arts-based and artistic research.
Arts-Based Research using Choreography and Dance
“Grounded in exploration, revelation, and representation, art and science work toward advancing human understanding.” (Leavy 2009, p. 2)
Arts-based research practices are a set of methodological tools used in all phases of social research, including data collection, analysis, interpretation and representation (Leavy 2009). The field is an expansion of the qualitative paradigm, as opposed to the quantitative paradigm, where paradigm is a worldview through which knowledge is filtered (Kuhn 1962). Whilst quantitative research emphasizes the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables, qualitative researchers “[…] stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the situational constraints that shape inquiry.” (Denzin and Lincoln 2000, p. 14). Qualitative research crosscuts disciplines, fields and subject matter, and has historically moved across traditions such as those associated with foundationalism, poststructuralism, postmodernism and posthumanism (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Gnowles and Cole 2008). Arts-based research spans from literary to visual and performative practices, and is still in its formative stages. Instead of the more conventional term “method”, the term “practice” is frequently used in arts-based research, referring to the practice-based process of knowledge production in arts (Leavy 2009). Arts-based researchers use dance and choreography as a form of embodiment for representation or as interactive exercises in data collection.
Artistic Research in Choreography and Dance
“In dance the kind of knowledge that is not considered acceptable elsewhere becomes important; our physical memories emerge as events of significance. Scents, tastes, movements, feelings, thoughts… The unexpressed.” (Lilja 2006, p. 29)
Globally, artists increasingly engage in research, as a way of developing art forms beyond the demands of growing commercial art markets (Borgdorff 2010; Lilja 2006; Swedish Research Council 2007, P. 6). Artistic research has no common philosophical-methodological basis but rather acknowledges diversity in epistemological-ontological starting points (Bergdorff 2010, p. 13; Hannula et. Al. 2005, p. 23). However, artistic research mainly operates in the sphere of practical, embodied, knowledge of how to do something, rather than theoretical knowledge of knowing that something is the case (Bergdorff 2010, p. 12). Most artistic researchers both develop new products, such as performance or composition, as well as a unique understanding of the world, that is “embodied in the products generated by the research” (Borgdorff 2010, p. 10). The research can not be separated from the artistic practice (Borgdorff 2010; Lilja 2012), since a researching artist is both “subject and object for and within the research” (Lilja 2012, p. 73). As opposed to traditional artistic production, artistic reseach is characterised by participation and transparency, where the audience is an active part of shaping the research through discussions, as well as taking part of process documentation (Swedish Research Council 2007, p. 106).
Integrating Arts and Science
Since 1977, arts have been represented in the academic context in Sweden and interdisciplinary research has been encouraged in order to contribute to progress within the knowledge society (Swedish Research Council, 2007). Today, all higher education in Sweden is based on either science or art (Högskolelag 1992:1434, 1 kap 2§), and the number of artistic research positions within academia are increasing. However, processes and evaluation techniques within arts and science differ, and “[…] relevant examples and methods for simultaneously assessing both scientific and artistic merits are lacking.” (p. 163).
Arts-based research and artistic research operate within a common intersection of arts and academia. However, a number of fundamental differences are important to acknowledge. First of all, the purpose of the artistic process within the research as primary or secondary. In artistic research, the artist’s creative practice is the subject of research (Borgdorff 2010, p. 12), as opposed to arts-based research which uses artistic practices for qualitative research into social sciences (Leavy 2009). Secondly, the researcher’s relationship with the subject of study. Arts-based researchers acknowledge the intimate, reflexive relationship with the subject of study (Gnowles and Cole 2008; Leavy 2009). However, in artistic research the artist’s practice can not be separated from the research, since it is both subject and object for and within the research. Thirdly, the final aim of the research as to provide empirical evidence or to generate insights through dialogue with an audience. Artistic research emphasizes insights and comprehension rather that an explanatory purpose (Bergdorff 2010, p. 12).
References:
Borgdorff, H. (2010) Where are we today. The state of the art in artistic research. (eds) Lind, T. Forskning och kritik – granskning och recension av konstnärlig forskning. Årsbok KfoU (Yearbook for Artistic Research), Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council), pp. 17-31.
Denzin, N. K.; Lincoln Y. S. (2000) Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research, in Denzin, N. K.; Lincoln Y. S. eds. Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hannula, Mika, Juha, Vadén, Tere. (2005) Artistic Research: Theories, Methods and Practices. Helsinki: Academy of Fine Arts.
Knowles, J. G., Cole, A. L. (2008) Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Kuhn, T. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leavy, P. (2009) Method Meets Art: Arts-based Research Practice. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Lilja, E. (2006) Movement as the Memory of the Body. Stockholm: Efva Lilja.
Lilja, E. (2012) What is "good" in art? The artistic research dilemma. In Formation. Nordic Journal of Art and Research. Volume 1, No 1. pp. 69-74.
Swedish Research Council. (2007) Kontext – Kvalitet - Kontinuitet. Utvärdering av Vetenskapsrådets anslag till konstnärlig forskning och utveckling 2001-2005. Vetenskapsrådets rapportserie. 6:2007. Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet.
The Economic Body 