RND: Affection

Lucy Havelock, Cynthia Nkiruka Anyadi, Olia Sosnovskaya. Host: Jovana Maksić

00:00

Free entry

In a short welcome word, Anita Jóri (CTM Festival, Leuphana University Lüneburg) introduces CTM 2025's Research Networking Day and the three thematic strands–Affection, Resynthesising the Traditional, and Anarchy in the AI–that will be explored through the day's talks and presentations.

Module 1 is hosted by Jovana Maksić (Trust) and focuses on the theme of »affection« as explored in the CTM 2025 Radio Lab.

A Dance of Agency: The Constitutive Role of Care in Extended Improvisation

Lucy Havelock (Goldsmiths University London, UK)

The presentation will explore findings of a practice-research project that considers care to be a co-constitutive method and outcome of my performance practice. Specifically the project examines performance of long-form solo works on saxophone, at times with the use of electronics or other technologies.

I consider how my embodied knowledge and technique encourage me to perform a ‘dance of agency,’ (Pickering, 2010). I ask how, and where, is care present within this performance practice; what does it mean for myself and my instrument to be partnered; how can the interplay between bodies (both human and non-human) be caring and demonstrate affection? The presentation explores how the interaction between the interdependent performer and instrument can be regarded as a generative act of care. Thus, what opportunity does engagement with a practice of care open for performers and their experience of agency?

I explore these ideas through the lens of Pickering’s concept of a ‘dance of agency,’ or ‘a dialectic of resistance and accommodation’ (Pickering, 2011), and through the lens of Maggie Nelson’s writings on freedom and care: ‘Treating [care] ... as a negotiation of needs that involves assuming strength in the other, resisting the temptation to provide all the answers, inevitable failure and disappointment… and making space for pain, individuation, and conflict without falling apart.’ (Nelson, 2021).

(Im)material Affection

Cynthia Nkiruka Anyadi (Royal Holloway University London, UK)

This presentation draws on my experience conducting mixed-method research within my small, connected Igbo Nigerian community. It attends to affection not in the form of reassuring words or physical closeness, nor in the sense of being intimately known. Instead, it is affection that emerges in generosity of time and of knowledge. It is care disguised in interrogations about personal and career choices. It is even expressed in fear—about my distance from home, the loss of language skills and cultural knowledge.
 
The presentation seeks to begin addressing three questions; 1) How do developing technologies for research foster new spaces for affection?; 2) How do we recognise intimacy, affection, and love within our work when it doesn’t take the forms that we have culturally come to expect?; and 3) What are the politics of making this private affection, and the access or knowledge which comes with it, public? I propose to present alongside my talk a collage of footage, audio, photographs, and models from my ongoing PhD research that might begin to reflect the richness of the research space.

Exhaustion is a Practice

Olia Sosnovskaya (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, AT)

The project addresses political movement and its exhaustion, through the concept of a movement score. Specifically it focuses on collective movements (bodily and political), such as choreographies of protest actions, celebrations, and raves. Referring to specific collective choreographies, it traces transformations in understandings of the political and crises of collective movements. What are new forms of collective choreographies that enact political agency, and in what way is that agency enacted?

In this project, a movement score is understood as any kind of graphic transcript of movement (including text) that intersects multiple temporalities of its enactment. It is used as a tool to critically approach the temporality of political action and to question the linear time of political events. Speaking from the point of a smashed revolution in Belarus and ongoing war in Ukraine, I question the notion of »aftermath« and employ the concept of repetition or rehearsal embedded in the movement score to address political movements and shared bodily experiences. What stays in the body after an event? Can an event be treated as a score, acknowledging both its untranslatability and the possibility to be activated and shared? The project brings together archival materials and bodily experiences, urging the reestablishment of corporeal relationships with the past and with recent political events, and the reassembly of collective choreographies by developing their experience and practices into a shared tool.

Event Access

Note: this event is not included in festival passes. Please consult our Accessibility section for information on mobility and other needs.

Presented in collaboration with the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Berlin-based network and project space Trust.

The RND module »Affection« is supported by SHAPE+, which is co-funded by the European Union and Pro Helvetia. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.