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show notes:
This is the second episode of the LACE Symposium podcast, the official podcast of the LACE Symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices.
The host of this episode, dance artist, educator, and curator of LACE Symposium pavleheidler (pav) (they/them) (adhd/autism), talks to Tereza Silon (ona/they), dance artist, herbalist, and one of the hosts of this year's LACE Extended spaces.
This conversation travels through the intimate terrain of the queer body, its messiness, its beauty, and its entanglement with land. We talk about care, resistance, eroticism, and queerness, and reference gender, patriarchy, and the sanitization of bodies and spaces. Including but not limited to bodily functions and meandering critical reflections on power, pleasure, and precarity. Take care while listening.
The central question the conversation revolves around is, What does your experience of being a dance artist and communicating through the medium of dance affords you; what kind of observational capacity, what kind of capacity to act?
This is the second in a series of conversations held with contributors to this year's symposium. With this series we are hoping to introduce the symposium, its curators, and the contributors to the public in anticipation of the event itself. In our conversations, we are committed to "leading by example". We're hoping that what we say and how we say it will introduce us in an affective way, in a different capacity perhaps from our bios and CVs. To find out more about who we are, and read our bios, please visit www.lacesymposium.com.
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Tereza talks about Barbora Lungová, whom you can learn more about here. You can learn more about about the land protection union note we talk about here. The website offers a short description in the English language. For full translation, please contact your favourite online translator for help.
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LACE Extended takes place the week after the Symposium, offering the participants of the Symposium the opportunity to extend the amount of time spent in-relation to presenters and their practices, and other participants of the event.
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LACE Symposium is curated by Deirdre Morris (she/they), Sylvia Scheidl (she/her), and pavleheidler (they/them). LACE Symposium takes place in July in the context of ImPulsTanz -- Vienna International Dance Festival. LACE Symposium is supported by Erasmus+.
t𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒛𝒂 s𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒏 (ona, they) is an interdisciplinary artist working in the area or performance and performance research, a social-critical bodyworker and energy worker, poet and experimental herbalist with a foundation in clinical naturopathy. they try to facilitate spaces for sharing awe and curiosity, self- & collective- responsibility and for rubbing against discomfort in a way that either teaches us stuff or allows us to find new ways to get off on it while preserving awareness of connections. silon’s way of thinking about oppressive structures is thinking about what needs to go so we can (all) play together and make expansive (but not pompous) choices eventually.
since 2023 they have been thinking through a “solo” performance making that was presented in multiple iterations called GOOD GARDENS weaving together physical and sound performance, self-suspension and climbing rope, exploring the lore of atropa belladonna not only as one of european “witch” plants, but also as a force beyond binary with a multifaceted lore. the deadly nightshade has been vilified and also used to beautify and in folkloric love magic. tropane alkaloids have been feared but also used in modern pharmacology and oculometry as well as a chemical possibly countering effects of certain types of chemical weapons that seem to be used by certain nation-states (destroying ecologies and human nervous systems non-metaphorically). between forests and gardens, beyond the sanctimonious binary of good and evil or gendering of seduction, the queer exists. GOOD GARDENS is a fairy tale expanding upon earlier works such as ESOPHAGUS:EVERYBODY ECSTATIC that counters the narrative of the body as a vessel and (gendered) experiences of shame while exploring the somatics derived from the act of swallowing. they have also created installations as temporary clinics, first APOTHECA (2021) and then RAJSKÁ ZAHRADA (”paradise garden”, 2024) as a part of a social housing project. earlier, they have worked explicitly with the topics of intimacy, touch, the erotic and grief and performed at (queer) club and burlesque events. since 2022, silon with their collaborator efemér have been running outdoor spa installations in public spaces called VODOLÉČBA (”hydrotherapy”).