BIOS
Florian Malzacher is a dramaturg, curator, and author, writing on political theatre in a contemporary context. Known as the host of The Art of Assembly (art-of-assembly.net), a series of talks and conversations about the potential of gathering in art, activism, and politics with contributions by figures such as Judith Butler, Claire Bishop, and Ann Liv Young, who visited Sort/Hvid in October 2023. Malzacher creates platforms for novel constellations of performing arts practices, thought, and politics. Previously, Malzacher has worked as the programmer of the interdisciplinary festival steirischer herbst in Graz (2006-2012), the artistic director of the Impulse Theater Festival (2013-2017), and the editor of numerous publications, including Truth is Concrete: A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics (2014), Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today (2015), and Empty Stages, Crowded Flats: Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (2017). At Sort/Hvid’s seminar, Malzacher will be presenting his latest publication The Art of Assembly: On Political Theatre Today (Alexander Verlag, 2023), surveying current expressions of political theatre, while trying to understand how theatre can “be a concrete place where the world around us – political events, social visions, major struggles, and pragmatic attempts at solutions – is not only shown, but consciously shaped.”
Solveig Gade is an Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include new dramaturgical paradigms in contemporary theatre and performance, the relation between art and politics, war and aesthetics, performance and archives, and contemporary performance and climate crisis. Gade is and has been part of several interdisciplinary research projects, including Conflict of Images – Images of Conflict (2017-2021), Aesthetics and War (2018-2022), and, currently, Oikos: Care and Crisis in the 21st century, while co-editing the books (W)Archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (2021) and The Aesthetics of War (2023). Gade is the author of the monograph Intervention og kunst: Sociale og politiske strategier i samtidskunsten [Intervention and Art: Social and Political Strategies in Contemporary Art (2010). Moreover, as a dramaturg, Solveig Gade has worked with artists such as Elisa Kragerup, Madame Nielsen, and Christian Lollike.
Sigrid Johannesen is a theatre director and playwright, currently functioning as Artist-in-Residence at Aarhus Teater with scenographer Laura Løwe. Johannesen’s work includes stage productions and inventive remediations of classics such as Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (Aarhus Teater, 2023) and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Vendsyssel Teater, 2023) as well as interventionist performances such as the public space actions preceding The Troll Show (Sort/Hvid, 2019) and the participatory formats of MEGA RICH COMPANY with scenographer Ida Grarup, a house company of Toaster at Husets Teater.
Astrid Lindhardt Iversen is a theatre director and performance artist. Graduating from The Danish School of Performing Arts in 2022 with the participatory performance INSTITUTIONEN (THE INSTITUTION) based on sociological research, Iversen explores social power relations and political activism in her practice. As a part of the performance collective Persona Non Grata, Iversen has directed and performed in several actions in public space, most recently FORSVAR KUNSTERISK FRIHED (DEFEND ARTISTIC FREEDOM) with Sort/Hvid in 2023 on the Danish government’s so-called Quran bill.
Noah Umur Kanber (she/her) is an artist, recently graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She works with sculpture and performance in immersive universes and interventionist performances – as in her recent appearance at the MFA Degree Show 2024 as a museum guard with a political agenda. Kanber held her first solo exhibition Grey Garden at OUTPOST Gallery in 2022, having participated in several group shows in the last years, among them Elitism Sucks at Art Hub Copenhagen in 2021 and Super High End Underground, running in Nikolaj Kunsthal to July 28, 2024.
Anders Thrue Djurslev is a dramaturg, curator, and researcher, functioning as dramaturg at Sort/Hvid from 2018 to 2024. From 2020 to 2023, he has conducted a practice-based dramaturgical and curatorial research project on the theatre exhibition Museum of the Future (Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus Teater, and Sort/Hvid, 2022) at Aarhus University, funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation, on the contemporary as a critical concept for aesthetic practice, submitting his dissertation in the beginning of 2024.
Nathalie Mellbye has been the artistic director of Sort/Hvid since 2023. She is an experienced scenographer and has with in the last few years debuted as a stage director with her distinctive immersive expression, which is both poetic, visual, and brutal. From 2020-2023 she was artist in residence at Aarhus Theatre where she amongst other performances created a raw music theatre version of A Clockwork Orange (2022). For this she was nominated for a Reumert Award for best director. Mellbye is a founder and member of the performance collective LOGEN.
A Stage for Art and Politics?
Tickets
A SEMINAR ON POLITICAL THEATRE TODAY
Sort/Hvid and The Bikuben Foundation’s invites you to a one-day seminar, featuring keynote lectures by Florian Malzacher and Solveig Gade, followed by a panel with Sigrid Johannesen, Astrid Lindhardt Iversen, Noah Umur Kanber, and Nathalie Mellbye on political theatre today in theory and practice.
Seven years ago, Sort/Hvid opened its new theatre in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen as “a stage for art and politics. But what does it mean to be a stage for art and politics? What does the notion of political theatre implicate, aesthetically and politically? In Denmark and abroad, then and now? What political role can art play in a time of climate emergency and conflict, escalating inequality and endemic insurgency, political polarization and pandemics?
Occasioned by Florian Malzacher’s recent book The Art of Assembly: On Political Theatre Today (Alexander Verlag, 2023), the seminar features keynote lectures by Malzacher and Solveig Gade, sketching current movements in contemporary political theatre in Europe and Denmark, before opening a panel featuring select artist presentations. Directors Sigrid Johannesen (Artist-in-Residence at Aarhus Teater), Astrid Lindhardt Iversen (Persona Non Grata) and artist Noah Umur Kanber will share their work, before engaging in conversation with Malzacher, Gade, artistic director of Sort/Hvid Nathalie Mellbye, dramaturg, curator, and researcher Anders Thrue Djurslev, and the participants of the seminar.
PROGRAMME
09H30 Doors open, grab a cup of coffee
10H00 Welcome by Anders Thrue Djurslev
10H15 Florian Malzacher
11H15 Break
11H30 Solveig Gade
12H30 Lunch
13H30 Panel discussion
15H30-16H30 Mingling, snacks etc.
The seminar marks the ending of a long-term grant from the Bikuben Foundation to Sort/Hvid, enabling experimentation across art forms, media, and genres, occassionally transgressing the stage to enter public spaces, political debates, and research contexts. To conclude the grant, Sort/Hvid invites practitioners and scholars, professionals and students, audiences and critics to join a seminar on political theatre today. Gathering thought and practice on theatre seeking to intervene in current urgencies, the seminar serves to inspire the future programming at Sort/Hvid and more generally in the performing arts field in Denmark and beyond.
The seminar is organized by Sort/Hvid and Anders Thrue Djurslev, dramaturg at Sort/Hvid from 2018 to 2024.
Please note that the seminar is held in English.
A Stage for Art and Politics?
Tickets
A SEMINAR ON POLITICAL THEATRE TODAY
Sort/Hvid and The Bikuben Foundation’s invites you to a one-day seminar, featuring keynote lectures by Florian Malzacher and Solveig Gade, followed by a panel with Sigrid Johannesen, Astrid Lindhardt Iversen, Noah Umur Kanber, and Nathalie Mellbye on political theatre today in theory and practice.
Seven years ago, Sort/Hvid opened its new theatre in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen as “a stage for art and politics. But what does it mean to be a stage for art and politics? What does the notion of political theatre implicate, aesthetically and politically? In Denmark and abroad, then and now? What political role can art play in a time of climate emergency and conflict, escalating inequality and endemic insurgency, political polarization and pandemics?
Occasioned by Florian Malzacher’s recent book The Art of Assembly: On Political Theatre Today (Alexander Verlag, 2023), the seminar features keynote lectures by Malzacher and Solveig Gade, sketching current movements in contemporary political theatre in Europe and Denmark, before opening a panel featuring select artist presentations. Directors Sigrid Johannesen (Artist-in-Residence at Aarhus Teater), Astrid Lindhardt Iversen (Persona Non Grata) and artist Noah Umur Kanber will share their work, before engaging in conversation with Malzacher, Gade, artistic director of Sort/Hvid Nathalie Mellbye, dramaturg, curator, and researcher Anders Thrue Djurslev, and the participants of the seminar.
PROGRAMME
09H30 Doors open, grab a cup of coffee
10H00 Welcome by Anders Thrue Djurslev
10H15 Florian Malzacher
11H15 Break
11H30 Solveig Gade
12H30 Lunch
13H30 Panel discussion
15H30-16H30 Mingling, snacks etc.
The seminar marks the ending of a long-term grant from the Bikuben Foundation to Sort/Hvid, enabling experimentation across art forms, media, and genres, occassionally transgressing the stage to enter public spaces, political debates, and research contexts. To conclude the grant, Sort/Hvid invites practitioners and scholars, professionals and students, audiences and critics to join a seminar on political theatre today. Gathering thought and practice on theatre seeking to intervene in current urgencies, the seminar serves to inspire the future programming at Sort/Hvid and more generally in the performing arts field in Denmark and beyond.
The seminar is organized by Sort/Hvid and Anders Thrue Djurslev, dramaturg at Sort/Hvid from 2018 to 2024.
Please note that the seminar is held in English.
BIOS
Florian Malzacher is a dramaturg, curator, and author, writing on political theatre in a contemporary context. Known as the host of The Art of Assembly (art-of-assembly.net), a series of talks and conversations about the potential of gathering in art, activism, and politics with contributions by figures such as Judith Butler, Claire Bishop, and Ann Liv Young, who visited Sort/Hvid in October 2023. Malzacher creates platforms for novel constellations of performing arts practices, thought, and politics. Previously, Malzacher has worked as the programmer of the interdisciplinary festival steirischer herbst in Graz (2006-2012), the artistic director of the Impulse Theater Festival (2013-2017), and the editor of numerous publications, including Truth is Concrete: A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics (2014), Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today (2015), and Empty Stages, Crowded Flats: Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (2017). At Sort/Hvid’s seminar, Malzacher will be presenting his latest publication The Art of Assembly: On Political Theatre Today (Alexander Verlag, 2023), surveying current expressions of political theatre, while trying to understand how theatre can “be a concrete place where the world around us – political events, social visions, major struggles, and pragmatic attempts at solutions – is not only shown, but consciously shaped.”
Solveig Gade is an Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include new dramaturgical paradigms in contemporary theatre and performance, the relation between art and politics, war and aesthetics, performance and archives, and contemporary performance and climate crisis. Gade is and has been part of several interdisciplinary research projects, including Conflict of Images – Images of Conflict (2017-2021), Aesthetics and War (2018-2022), and, currently, Oikos: Care and Crisis in the 21st century, while co-editing the books (W)Archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (2021) and The Aesthetics of War (2023). Gade is the author of the monograph Intervention og kunst: Sociale og politiske strategier i samtidskunsten [Intervention and Art: Social and Political Strategies in Contemporary Art (2010). Moreover, as a dramaturg, Solveig Gade has worked with artists such as Elisa Kragerup, Madame Nielsen, and Christian Lollike.
Sigrid Johannesen is a theatre director and playwright, currently functioning as Artist-in-Residence at Aarhus Teater with scenographer Laura Løwe. Johannesen’s work includes stage productions and inventive remediations of classics such as Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (Aarhus Teater, 2023) and Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Vendsyssel Teater, 2023) as well as interventionist performances such as the public space actions preceding The Troll Show (Sort/Hvid, 2019) and the participatory formats of MEGA RICH COMPANY with scenographer Ida Grarup, a house company of Toaster at Husets Teater.
Astrid Lindhardt Iversen is a theatre director and performance artist. Graduating from The Danish School of Performing Arts in 2022 with the participatory performance INSTITUTIONEN (THE INSTITUTION) based on sociological research, Iversen explores social power relations and political activism in her practice. As a part of the performance collective Persona Non Grata, Iversen has directed and performed in several actions in public space, most recently FORSVAR KUNSTERISK FRIHED (DEFEND ARTISTIC FREEDOM) with Sort/Hvid in 2023 on the Danish government’s so-called Quran bill.
Noah Umur Kanber (she/her) is an artist, recently graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She works with sculpture and performance in immersive universes and interventionist performances – as in her recent appearance at the MFA Degree Show 2024 as a museum guard with a political agenda. Kanber held her first solo exhibition Grey Garden at OUTPOST Gallery in 2022, having participated in several group shows in the last years, among them Elitism Sucks at Art Hub Copenhagen in 2021 and Super High End Underground, running in Nikolaj Kunsthal to July 28, 2024.
Anders Thrue Djurslev is a dramaturg, curator, and researcher, functioning as dramaturg at Sort/Hvid from 2018 to 2024. From 2020 to 2023, he has conducted a practice-based dramaturgical and curatorial research project on the theatre exhibition Museum of the Future (Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus Teater, and Sort/Hvid, 2022) at Aarhus University, funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation, on the contemporary as a critical concept for aesthetic practice, submitting his dissertation in the beginning of 2024.
Nathalie Mellbye has been the artistic director of Sort/Hvid since 2023. She is an experienced scenographer and has with in the last few years debuted as a stage director with her distinctive immersive expression, which is both poetic, visual, and brutal. From 2020-2023 she was artist in residence at Aarhus Theatre where she amongst other performances created a raw music theatre version of A Clockwork Orange (2022). For this she was nominated for a Reumert Award for best director. Mellbye is a founder and member of the performance collective LOGEN.
