Performing Mourning - Performance Lecture by Guy Cools

• Performance lecture by Guy Cools in Biel, Switzerland
• With Biel-based artist and choreographer Gregory Stauffer

What: Public event
With: Guy Cools and Gregory Stauffer
When: Wednesday, 16 March, 17:00 - 22:00 
Where: Espace libre, Seevorstadt 73 CH-2502 Biel / Bienne, Switserland
Presented by: Espace libre
Part of: Frühjahrsschmelze / Petit Festival du Printemps​
Language: English
Admission: Free

Every Ending is a New Beginning
Guy Cools and Gregory Stauffer

17:00 Meet in front of the Biel train station for a collective walk in the forest of Malvaux with Gregory Stauffer. The bus departs at 17:12

19:30 - 20:00 Apéro, espace libre

20:00 Performance lecture, Guy Cools

On the occasion of his new book, Performing Mourning, Laments in Contemporary Art, the Belgian dance dramaturg Guy Cools and the Biel-based artist/choreographer Gregory Stauffer will continue their ongoing artistic dialogue on creative and artistic practices and research.

​Guy will give a short lecture-performance on the background of his book: his personal experience with mourning and his research of the Greek moiroloi (laments) that forms the backbone of his book. Gregory invites the public to participate in a practice-led introduction in the Malvaux/Biel forest, sharing his current research, Sustainable creative processes on how to translate the principles of permaculture into artistic contexts.

​What links these two practices is a strong belief in the natural cycles and rhythms of nature and life as a base for any creative practice. As such, the moment of this exchange, close to the Spring Equinox has been a conscious choice. Every ending is a new beginning.

​Guy Cools' lecture performance was created during residences at Theater Polis, Nicosia on invitation of Lia Haraki and Acziun Susch on invitation of Joanna Lesnierowska.

​Gregory Stauffer's 'Sustainable creative processes' is undertaken in partnership with the research department of La Manufacture, Lausanne between 2021 and 2022.

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Guy Cools is a Belgian dance dramaturge. He has worked as a dance critic and dance curator. He curated from 1990 till 2002, the dance program of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium. As a production dramaturg, he worked amongst others with Jean Abreu (UK), Koen Augustijnen (BE), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Danièle Desnoyers (CA), Alexander Gottfarb (AT), Lia Haraki (CY), Akram Khan (UK), Joshua Monten (SUI), Arno Schuitemaker (NL) and Stephanie Thiersch (DE).

As a dramaturgical mentor, he has been mentoring a.o. the project Danse et Dramaturgie in Switzerland; the Biennale Dance College in Venice and the Atlas program of Impulstanz in Vienna. He lectures and teaches at different universities and arts colleges in Europe and Canada. With the Canadian choreographer, Lin Snelling, he developed an improvised performance practice Rewriting Distance (see also: www.rewritingdistance.com) that focuses on the integration of movement, voice, and writing.

His most recent publications include The Ethics of Art (co-edited, 2014); In-between Dance Cultures (2015); Imaginative Bodies (2016); The Choreopolitics of Alain Platel (co-edited, 2019) and Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art (2021). Cools lives in Vienna.

​Gregory Stauffer (born in 1980) makes work which is deliberately located in a transverse and blurred territory between dance and performance, with touches of video here and there. Since 2006, he has been developing site-specific choreographic work, videos and performances. His shows are linked to ecosophical thought. They question the contexts within which they are created, playing with relationships of perspective and measure between human and environment, and the fictions they generate individually and collectively. His multidisciplinary practice favours collaborative work.He lives and works in Biel/Bienne.

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