Joseph Baan (also known as Josephine, Jo, or any variation thereof) is interested in the complexities of collectivity and in the possibility of establishing a solidarity that does not homogenise, but affirms difference. They make performances, installations, texts, group works, collaborative formats, and scores that explore the spaces and relationships between the flesh and the word; change and preservation; and roles and readings of power and control in relation to affect and gestures of care. Their practice engages in art, education and collaboration as ways to forge creative resurgence and to investigate ways of beings together otherwise. Their current research focuses on the liberatory potential of performance practices, proposing performance as a means to—individually and collectively—interrogate and negotiate the constraints (gender, nationality, race, economic mobility, etc.) that one is borne into.
Joseph Baan
SHARING: Fugue State
With Fugue State (working title), Josephine Baan and collaborators will use their Tanzhaus residency to work from an ongoing research into invasive species – in particular, Japanese knotweed – as a source to unearth modes of existence beyond what has already been established. The work engages with that which is absent, obscured, or willfully erased; constructed holes in the collective consciousness; lives that manifest through the cracks between existing historical and social infrastructures. Departing from incoherence and illegibility as necessary traits for a politics of non-sovereignty, it investigates the idea of sleeping memory; memories or knowledges that lie dormant until they are awoken.
The work-in-progress Sharing will be followed by a short audience discussion.
Artistic direction Josephine Baan
Performers Teo Ala-Ruona, Josephine Baan, Emmelien Chemouny
Sound and music Luc Häfliger
Dramaturgical support Bendix Fesefeldt, Nils Amadeus Lange
Images Mik Matter, Josephine Baan
