This roundtable brings together artists, researchers, activists, and students to explore performance as a form of critical historiographic practice. Combining artistic research and collective experimentation, the programme addresses how embodied practices make time and produce counter-histories amid collective dreams, political upheaval, and social struggle. It reclaims cabaret and lecture performance as contemporary methodologies for artistic research, historiographic inquiry, and critical reflection on knowledge production, political imagination, and practices of shared world-making and dwelling.

The programme features guest artist and researcher Jess Dobkin (Canada/USA), Hemispheric Encounters co-investigator, internationally recognized for her work at the intersection of contemporary cabaret, pedagogy, archives, queer and feminist performance practices, alongside Juma Pariri (Brazil), Hemispheric Encounters co-investigator and Post-Doctoral Researcher at York University, whose artistic and research practice engages Indigenous world-making, audiovisual experimentation, performance, and indigenous territorial struggles in the Cariri region of Brazil. It also includes presentations of ongoing lecture-performance research by ASH Visiting Researchers and PhD candidates Laís Castro and Rúbia Vaz, with performance presentations and film screenings by the invited guests. ASH members and organizers of the event, dr. Sérgio Pereira Andrade (Theatre Studies/UvA) and dr. Selena Savić (Cultural Analysis/UvA), will participate in the roundtable as responders.

Presented as part of the programming of the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (ASH) and developed in partnership with the Hemispheric Encounters Network, in dialogue with the lecture-performance cabaret series developed in the context of the course Practical Project, MA International Dramaturgy/ UvA.

Programme

May 26 (Tuesday)

Roundtable, “Performance as Critical Historiographic Practice: Time- and World-Making Through Lecture Performance and Cabaret”

Where? Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam,

When? At 15:30h

May 28–29 (Thursday and Friday)

Lecture-Performance Cabaret Series, “Friction Generates Heat: A Cabaret of Transformations”

Where? Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam,

When? Always at 19:00h

Taking place at the University of Amsterdam’s theatre, be prepared to enter our territory of transgression, a space where we explore sin, skin, and forbidden bodies. Four groups of students will present their research across two cabaret nights where everyone will be invited to converse with us, drink with us, consume with us, and celebrate with us. And of course, join us for some specially curated free cocktails each night.

Night 1, May 28th, 19.00

Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam, Netherlands

1. Metamorphosis
2. What I Eat is What I’m Stuffed (With?)

Reserve your space for free here
Content warnings: 18+

Night 2, May 29th,19.00 

Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, 1012 CP Amsterdam, Netherlands

1. Hysteria
2. Borders - who owns the land?

Afterparty! Come celebrate with us. Drinks, dance and good company!

Reserve your space for free here 
Content warnings: 18+

Organized by Sérgio Pereira Andrade (Hemispheric Encounters and Theater Studies, ASH/UvA), Selena Savic (Cultural Analysis, ASH/UvA), Laís Castro (PhD candidate, Theater Studies/UvA), Rúbia Vaz (PhD candidate, Theater Studies/UvA), and Mila Narjollet (MA Arts and Performance Research Studies/UvA), with support from the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies and the Hemispheric Encounters Network (SSHRC/Canada)