VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.
Abstract
‘Fitness for Unlikely Species’ introduces an intersectoral and multi-disciplinary research, with the aim to establish a new ecopedagogical methodology through blending conceptual and performance art with physical training and environmental education. It combines theory of eco-performativity with a practice-based research, that challenges humans to rethink their fitness practices as connected to the environmental concept of entanglement by mimicking more-than-human worlds. By using an enactive approach as a theoretical framework and storytelling as pedagogy, the project is developing a series of fitness exercises with the aim of transforming human bodies into a choreography which mimics other-than-human entities whose shapes, movements and existence are affected by ecological and biodiversity changes. Unlike traditional sports with binary division, hypermasculinity and exclusion – this fitness program welcomes participants of all movement abilities, physical limitations, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore these shape-shifting somatic exercises can be regarded as relational tools for finding new ways of learning, understanding, connecting, and moving in our ‘world in trouble’. In particular, the exercises might also become an alternative ecopedagogical tool for navigating eco-anxiety and environmental grief. As Donna Haraway would put it, in order to have a collective future, we have to learn to ‘stay with the trouble’ through both joy and terror, but most of all through collective thinking and doing. ‘Fitness for Unlikely Species’ proposes complex entanglements and reparative attention across disciplines and methodologies, times and spaces, species and beings in order to prepare for our common possible future(s).
Andrea Palášti [b. 1984] is a Hungarian/Croatian/Serbian artist and educator based in Novi Sad [Serbia], who works across artistic, curatorial and pedagogical boundaries experimenting with ways of knowledge production. She has presented, performed and workshopped at the Royal Academy of Art KABK [the Hague]; ELIA Biennial Conference [Helsinki]; Second Summit on New Media Art Archiving, ISEA2022 symposium at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona; the Amsterdam University of the Arts – Research Group Arts Education; the University of Applied Arts Vienna – Art & Science department; etc.