nienke schoLts
other collaborative projects
I cherish my ongoing conversations and collaborations with artists and other practitioners, as they produce cross-contamination, imagination, and in a way shape our future together. As the following projects illustrate, I have come to understand dramaturgy as a site of a collaborative dialogical work. These works have been and are of importance of the way in which my practice formed itself, and are relevant still as a larger context my current interests and research is embedded in.
Research ecologies lab
I find relevance in creating conditions and space for larger groups of people with shared concerns to meet and be in exchange, as for example the Research Ecologies LAB that I co-organized at DAS Research / Local School (Amsterdam School of the Arts) in January 2018. Research Ecologies, was the first LAB of the Local School on doing artistic research by and for researchers who are working in performing and other fields of the arts. During this first encounter we focussed on questions concerning the ‘ecologies’ of research, or in other words: the different sorts of context that we meet or initiate. Guests: Nick Shepherd, Marlies Vermeulen, Aymeric Mansoux.
The Sunday Scene
A podcast series I co-developed at Veem House in 2016. Every first Sunday of the month we did an in-depth interview with an artistic mind from the local field that we wanted to hear or voice. People could join us live at the theatre, and talk and have some food together afterwards, while online people from all over the world could tune in too. I did the co-curation of the guests and the dramaturgy of the show itself.
The presentation was by Noha Ramadan.
In September 2016, at the start of the theatre season with did a show that’s relevant to my research as well – about the state of the cultural fields of Flanders and the Netherlands. Our guest was cultural journalist and activist Wouter Hillaert.
Daylight Chamber
(a space for reflection)
Visit the Daylight Chamber: a comfort zone providing an opportunity for microhibernation in sheltered solitude. The Chamber is a temporary retreat, a hidden place, a small escape from visibility and artificial illumination. Come and shut yourself away for a moment. See outside vision. Think without direction.
Perhaps, when darkness becomes a speculation on what escapes the visual, light can be primarily a source of nourishment and generation.In response to the winter period as well as to more general and prevailing notions of ‘Dark Times’, we reconsider and play with the dialectics of light and dark - in a simulation where (non)thoughts and (non)sense can expand and take shape.
The Daylight Chamber is a reflection format I made together with Maria Rößler for Come Together at Frascati Theater, January 2017. Spatial design assistance: Martina Bauer. For one person at the time: 20 min.
Emke Idema
The past years I have been collaborating with theatre maker Emke Idema. Her work is situated on the intersection of theatre and social sciences. Being questioning and explorative it leads to diverse experimental forms. We made three theatrical games, interacting in diverse ways with an audience: STRANGER (2012), RULE (2014) and THIS CAN’T HAPPEN (2017). These works could be seen as societal laboratories, in which the visitor always takes position. With these social playgrounds Emke wants to offer the audience a possibility to investigate attitudes and actions at the point where the personal and the political meet. Cocreating new forms of art and works like these, also asked for the dramaturgical co-development of an artistic practice in the making, of its methods and tools. Part of our work together is the question of how to organise a practice, f.e. in a way that it is endurable.
Platform-Scenography
I’m cofounder and member of Platform-Scenography (P-S) - a research group consisting of scenographers, dramaturgs and theorists, which aims to stimulate debate and reflection on contemporary scenography and seeks to increase the visibility of scenographic practice. P-S is especially interested in expanded scenography – in forms of performative, spatial design that can be found outside theatre venues and contexts. Through live action research, curated talks and other modes of collaborative doing and thinking, P-S offers a platform for encounters, on which various parties meet: designers working in the field of theatre (spatial design, light, sound, video, costume design), designers from corresponding fields (like architecture, public space, fashion or exhibition design), and dramaturgs, theorists and thinkers affiliated with these domains. Through its activities, P-S provides professionals with space and time to share their practice, skills and experience, and facilitates the collaborative creation and building of scenographic knowledge, both inside and outside of the theatre.
