Playground: Gathering Kinga Szemessy ‚Standing with and embracing discomfort‘
A lecture about how participatory performance practices can function as training grounds where discomfort, as ‘a feeling of bodily change’ (Sara Ahmed), calls for exploring ‘the desirability of our desires’ (Gert Biesta). Here, discomfort is understood as an unmet craving or unavoidable aversion – an act of a wobbling stand that oscillates between going closer to and stepping away from something. A stand that is not paralysed, not stubborn but attentive, affectable, and vulnerable – and ‘in this vulnerability we are actually not alone’ (Bojana Kunst).
About the artist:
Kinga Szemessy is a Hungarian, Austria-based artist researcher. By training, she is a dancer and dance anthropologist, and is currently employed at Wissenschaft & Kunst, as well as at Mozarteum University’s “Applied Theatre – Critical theatre practice & community” MA programme.