“We are a nomadic space for research and creation in the performing arts.”
As a collective, we’ve created and continue to offer opportunities to expand our industry’s ideas and expectations of the creation process. Of course, we aren’t alone in this goal: companies such as Kinetic Light, founded by an internationally recognized disability arts ensemble whose work speaks to and emerges from disability aesthetics/culture, and Creative Connector, an online arts hub for Deaf and Disabled artists/creatives, are following parallel lines of research into how we define “creating”. In following this signal, Postmarginal has also had the chance of introducing various projects including Alternative Dramaturgies and new practices such as the Ethical Tapestry into the world of artistic practices. However, as we continue living in a world of complexity and continual change where everything is by necessity in relation, we’ve started thinking further about the future of our work. After many meetings, we’re excited to announce that we are starting the creation of 3 Inter-regional Performance Research-Creation hubs.
“Postmarginal is a collective movement in the performing arts that seeks to research, develop, and talk about creative works that are inspired by plurality.”
Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, this new venture will develop three centres for performance research-creation to explore new performance vocabularies and ethical creation practices.
After participating in three pilot projects in Montreal, Edmonton and Saskatchewan, we’ve had the luck of unearthing three streams of research that connected to our core values:
- How do we develop new dramaturgies and performance vocabularies that emerge from the hybridization of the work of marginalized artists;
- How can rehearsal practices hold and centre an ethical relational perspective;
- And how do non-hierarchical and equitable approaches to decision-making fit themselves into and affect performing arts training, creation and producing.
“Every person has qualities that are indispensable to the totality of all things.”
With these questions in mind, we have the joy of partnering with several companies to create these hubs and, as a result, concretize and disseminate the research into shareable knowledge and tools available online and via in-person workshops. Although there are overarching questions guiding our explorations as a collective, we also note that each hub will inherently have different contexts compared to each other within their artistic teams (both guiding and participating), company hubs, and more. Consequently, we are looking to continue cross-pollinating by concluding the project with a 2-day conference in Montreal to disseminate our findings and continue creating connections within the research hubs and the wider (non-)artistic community.
“We live in a world of complexity and continual change.”
With all this concrete work we’re aiming for, we want to assure that this isn’t going to be this project’s sole iteration. Put simply, it can’t be so because building community is a constant work filled with ups and downs. That’s why, in our desire to strengthen and develop current and new practices in the arts sector, we are looking to continue this work in a parallel manner throughout our future projects and in our conversations with the wider community. Because we’re already taking a bite of something much bigger than ourselves, the potential paths of what this might look like fill the horizon. And truthfully, there is nothing more exciting. As our projects move forward, we will continue striving towards deepening intercultural understandings, nurturing new potentials for partnerships/collaborations/resource sharing, enhancing public access to diverse art forms and cultivating a mutually beneficial and robust exchange between the arts and academia. With much support behind us, we’re excited to see how this new venture flourishes within our ever-growing collective and moves forward with our world.
If you or a friend might be interested to know more about this research, you can contact Peter Farbridge at info@postmarginal.ca.
