Artists

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After sudden isolation struck like sunrise to an over-dilated eye, a new and uncertain world seeped into focus.

Dance and uncertainty are by no means strangers: congregation and movement when in response to personal and collective crises, becoming a dance of urgency. Such a dance aims to empower the individual and the group—it builds communities of survival and coping; it can perform as a powerful agent of urban renewal and political resistance*. From cultural spaces reinvigorating decaying neighborhoods to international protests against gentrification and fascism—dance is the weather of the cultural and political climate and a potent form of defiance. Though, when a medium is so dependent on presence and closeness—how does it manifest over enforced distances? What did it mean to you once dance was not allowed?

Far from dissolving, dance migrated to digital networks— navigating new formal boundaries and visual languages in the process. From pop star Britney Spears’s SOS encoded dance feeding the #FreeBritney movement to family dance battles over Zoom; dance (having been determined a health hazard) unbound itself to place and geography—re-materialising itself online. Zoom, virtual reality, TikTok and an evergrowing assembly of social media platforms became vital means of participation and cultural production.

During the pandemic governments were granted new powers of surveillance—some taking oppressive measures to crack down on protest rights under the guise of national health measures. This most greatly impacted vulnerable communities, whose right to assembly was threatened. On top of this many gathering spaces were left without financial support—deemed “non-essential”, “for entertainment”, or “culturally insignificant”. In response, communities rallied to self-organize online and eventually—in public space. This new state solicited new questions: can protest, outcry and resistance against oppressive governments keep momentum under these circumstances? Further, can dance offer us the tools to destabilize the ones created to coerce and surveil us?

As tragic as it was dynamic, this has been a period of significant loss—of life, intimacy, expression and language itself. These new voids haunt: fragmented bonds, loss of freedom, social unrest and death silhouetting themselves against celebrations of survival. Calling some to violate the rules—illegal raves performing as a kind of “danse macabre” in acceptance of risk and death, or demonstrating escapism as emotional self-care. Almost entirely produced during the pandemic, No Dancing Allowed maps and bears these contradictions—integrating recent history with these last three years, it asserts dance and dance spaces as entities whose transformational natures grant us the power to thrive in times of great adversity—and bravely reemerge.

* Encountering club culture and dancing as a form of protest during the NATO bombing of Doringer’s native Serbia, he discovered how socio-political instability and collective coping mechanisms of movement are linked. Sparking a research investigation and later a PhD at the University of Applied Arts Vienna—providing dance culture knowledge since 2014. It is a continuation of the online events that happened during lockdowns, in cooperation with the department of ‘Social Design—Arts as Urban Innovation’ of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Lockdowns saw club spaces’ doors close for the sake of public health. These bastions of cultural activity were vibrant landscapes - collaborative hives, creating immersive audiovisual experiences for crowds of engaged, writhing bodies.

Where larger fine art institutions self-muted, these spaces filled the silence. DJs and visual artists quickly learnt to navigate online platforms as a solution to social distancing. Whilst museums and galleries closed their doors - many creative producers from their respective club scenes invited you into their homes and private spaces - streaming from living rooms, basements and even bathrooms. Some even created digital gathering places using VR headsets and body tracking, allowing their crowds to project themselves into virtual space and gather online. Further, no longer bound to physical presence many fan bases bloomed - expanding across borders and time zones.

Escape 010101

Yannet Vilele & Jesper Frederiksen (Jesperino)

In 2020 the pandemic hit and locals of Yannet Villele’s Peru went underground. Though necessary, this retreat into their homes left local performers without performance spaces - threatening both the cultural vibrancy of the city and the livelihood of many inhabitants. Together with DJ and music producer Jesper Frederiksen, they co-created Escape 010101 - a virtual reality space built to safely revitalise a threatened music-scene. In doing so, they created a parallel world and digital bunker to protect and sustain their local art ecosystem.

They lay their foundations in the open-source metaverse of Mozilla Hub’s “Invu”, before migrating to another virtual reality platform: “Sansar”. The space became a canvas to experiment with new configurations of club-experiences, where they could investigate new ways to unite through music and continue sharing art and various other creations. Along the way they developed not only an entirely new production house and program, but a digital sound system they named BQestia. The virtuality of such a space broadened its global reach and artists from all over the world joined to collaborate, building international bonds of friendship, unity and inspiration. As club doors began to slowly and shyly reopen, this hub burst forth into the physical realm. The BQestia sound-system was manufactured and rolled-out for use IRL- in real life exploding into physical space, what was once VR now booms at outdoor raves.

Movement Songs
Umlazi/KHAYELITSHA

KAMVA Collective | Chris Kets & Amílcar Patel
MENZI + DJ LAG

(2022)


During the lockdown European creativity seemed to rest. This new quiet opened space for international talent. Those seeking art and entertainment found it beyond euro-centric YouTube algorithms and Spotify playlists. When Europe's infrastructure and supply-chain seemed to collapse, creatives for whom urgency and threat were familiar thrived.


Nyege Nyege festival was founded in Kampala, Uganda in 2013. It began as a hub for outsider, primarily electronic music. This festival united artists from around the continent and their energy did not fade even during the pandemic. During which, Cultural production house KAMVA Collective worked closely with Future Gqom Producer Menzi to create a visual-sonic short film for Nyege Nyege. Its immense diversity and production value shows just how ready these creatives were to flex their talent when given the airwaves to do so.

Choreographic Camouflage

Liam Young

(2022)

Choreographic Camouflage is the collaborative performance of speculative architect/director Liam Young and acclaimed choreographer Jacob Jonas. The performance and film presents a new vocabulary of movement, designed to disguise the proportions of their body from the skeleton detection algorithms used by modern cities’ surveillance networks to identify and track individuals. The work engages with the context of these systems - which have been deployed against protestors in Hong Kong by Chinese authorities, having developed similar methods to follow an individual by mapping their unique walk or gait. This displays a worrying evolution in surveillance technology - it is no longer only our faces being harvested for greater control, but our whole body.


The necessity of facemasks to prevent the spread of the CoronaVirus restricted the effectiveness of facial detection systems. Body tracking and gait detection have now become the dominant form of surveillance in Asia and soon globally. These programs scan massive databases of collected images and CCTV footage, searching for predefined human forms and proportions that suggest two legs, a torso, two arms and a head. Working with dancers from The Jacob Jonas Company, a series of new dance movements were developed to distort the proportions, symmetry and form of the body in order to render it invisible to this detection software. Software that is now being deployed in cities around the world.

GMO Video Mixtape

Gabber Modus Operandi & Rimbawan Gerilya

(2022)

Expanding on this idea of unity through dance culture is 'GMO Video Mixtape' 2020, a long-distance collaboration between Gabber Modus Operandi & Rimbawan Gerilya. Premiering at the streamed Nyege Nyege in Uganda and CTM festival in Germany during the lockdown, the work highlights how the pandemic boosted digital art production due to the circumstance of remote collaboration. Resulting in hybridised high-intensity dance music, 'GMO Video Mixtape' culminates in an eclectic vision of utopia: in a future of free energy and production through automated machine labour, they imagine conflict to have given way to joy, backed by a trance-inducing soundtrack influenced by modern rave, punk, metal, experimental noise and traditional Javanese jalithan and Dangdut Koplo. Unable to travel or perform, the work is a testament to the artists’ capability and drive to undergo the rigours of production over distance - creating work so spectacular and dynamic it seems to move our bodies with its own energy.

Yokhor

Natalia Papaeva

(2022)

Through Natalia Papaeva's video work, Yokhor, 2018 - she authentically performs a tension of absence. The piece documents Papaeva coming to terms with the loss of her native Buryat (Siberian) language. Its sonic texture is a subtle invitation to dance - its pattern evokes bass rhythms, becoming a booming entrance/exit speech either introducing you to or summarising the shared losses experienced by artists throughout the exhibition. Buryat is one of 2600 indigenous languages to disappear. In her performance, she repeatedly sings the only two sentences she can remember in a powerful display of mourning oral heritage. As she recalls the last remnants of her disappearing mother tongue, her guttural protest embodies the human desire to participate in the universal muscle memory triggered by rhythm, free spaces, speech and the collective body.

el violador eres tú danceurgencia

Colectivo LASTESIS

(2022)

With public activism at the forefront of Colectivo LASTESIS's work, their videos displaying groups of women protesting in choreographed formation went viral on social media. In their piece for the exhibition, 'el violador eres tú danceurgencia' (2020), the collective confronts the worldwide issue of rape, femicide, and domestic violence through a performance filmed at home during lockdown. With violence against women exacerbated by the isolation of the pandemic, the work delivers shocking facts about rape cases in their native Chile while tapping into a global problem.  Much like Chile, Austria’s domestic violence rates soared as women were isolated with their at-home abusers; with fewer means of social connection, support and outreach. This violence is not limited to the domestic; it is seen in regressive policy, lower wages and poorer economic opportunity. Borrowing from writer Rita Laura Segato they propose that rape is a disciplinary act, a crime of power. Using repetitive techno beats, we are immersed and engaged with their powerful speech directed at the patriarchy – as if by dancing we can better incorporate these truths into our body, Colectivo LASTESIS demonstrates dance culture's empowering, freeing energy – exposing these woefully ignored facts and statistics.