9:30 - Welcome

10:00 - Introduction Marine Thévenet (Cifas)

10:30 - Discussions:

Nolwenn Peterschmitt (FR), Dance, disorder and contemporary ritual: the case of UNRUHE, a collective experience inspired by the Dance of Saint Vitus

UNRUHE’s inspiration is the phenomenon known as the Dance of Saint Vitus, an epidemic of dancing that affected the inhabitants of the city of Strasbourg in 1518. Through the study of this curious phenomenon and the socio-political context from which it emerged, UNRUHE investigates individual and collective impulses, and dance as a vital necessity. This permissive rite reveals an unconscious narrative of the collective body, its obstacles, its violence, its poetry. This intervention will document the different stages of the dramaturgical and energetic construction of the UNRUHE rite, as well as the issues that emerged during its experimentation with audiences.

Nolwenn Peterschmitt was born in Strasbourg. With Laurène Fardeau she co-directs the Marseille collective Groupe Crisis. Formally trained as a performer at the Académie de l’Union in Limoges, she continues her investigation of the stage through encounters with butoh, krump, contemporary dance, clowning, and research in social sciences. Her artistic practice constantly shifts between exploring actor's play, raw embodiment, and dance as manifested desire.

crazinisT artisT (GH), Performance as an Act of Radical Resistance

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) will be sharing her practice as a multidisciplinary artivist, curator, mentor and philanthropist. As the founder/director of perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) which is currently at risk due to the proposed anti LGBTQIA+ Bill in Ghana, Va-Bene will detail the genesis of her advocacy and performance practice. Her presentation will also unveil the persecution of LGBTQIA+ community in Ghana and the draconian anti LGBTQIA+ Bill that seek to criminalise and jail queer people, allies, parents, landlords, sympathisers etc.

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, aka crazinisT artisT, is a mutlidisciplinary artivist, curator and mentor from Ghana. She works with performance and installation to investigate gender stereotypes, prejudices, queerness, identity politics and conflicts, sexual stigma and their consequences for marginalised people. With rituals and a gender-fluid persona, she employs her own body as a thought-provoking tool confronting issues such as disenfranchisement, injustice, violence, objectification, internalised oppression, anti blackness, systemic indoctrination and many more.

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Isa Frémeaux & Jay Jordan) (FR), From artivism to animism, between resistance and ritual : the challenge of becoming the territory

Rituals are the ancestors of all art, a biotechnology of transformation and connection. Yet the contemporary art world often promotes individualistic, detached and hypermobile lifestyles, where the creative gesture has no real roots in a community or territory. In 2012, Labofii deserted the metropolis to live on the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. There they co-founded the Ritual Action Cell with the duo -h- to design rituals, in an attempt to bring culture back to the etymological roots of cul-terra, ‘taking care of the earth’. Isa Frémeaux and Jay Jordan will share some aspects of this sometimes bumpy journey towards magic.

Isa Frémeaux (she) was Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) for 10 years before leaving the institution to breathe in the winds of freedom and collective action. She now lends her skills to various collectives, associations and institutions as a trainer and consultant. She is co-author with Jay of the book- film Les Sentiers de L'utopie (La Découverte, 2008) and We are Nature "Defending" Itself: Entangling art, activism and autonomous zones (Pluto, 2021).

Described as an 'Domestic Extremist' by the police and a 'magician of rebellion' by the press, part-time author, witch, sex worker and full time trouble maker, Jay Jordan (they/them) is a lover of edges, especially between art and activism. They have worked in a variety of contexts, from museums to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate action camps. They co-founded Reclaim the Streets and The Clown Army, and co-edited We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism (Verso, 2003) and worked as cameraman with Naomi Klein on The Take (2004).

→ Labofii will give a Magick Desobedience workshop as an introduction to Feral on 10-11 September. They will explore the use of rituals and magic as tools for radical social movements fighting petro-patriarchal-colonial capitalism with the participants. This way to apply.

Désorceler La Finance (BE), Unbewitching late capitalism's narratives

Désorceler La Finance uses the tools of magic to unravel the fiction of late capitalism and imagine its alternatives. It combines rituals to remove the spell of finance, cartomancies to re-open horizons, exhibitions of economic curiosities, speculative practices, documentary and sound creations... Its members will tell us more about their strategy and their work.

Désorceler La Finance is a wild, independent and self-managed laboratory. This transdisciplinary space brings together artists, researchers and activists. It activates witchcraft practices as tools of anti-capitalist struggle.

12:30 - Q&A

13:00 - Lunch

Pay what you can