The Stickiness of Privilege
Janina Rohlik
Sunday
14:00 - 16:00
SAB 3
Workshop
Our world is structured by systems of power and oppression; they run through our bodies and form the landscapes we move within. How do we embody them? Can we, through (re-)embodiment, understand their impact and sources physically and emotionally? Could this be a step towards transformation into a society beyond hierarchies?
As we can learn from various scholars such as Federici, Lorde, Ahmed or Mombaça and from activists confronting power systems, we have different positions in society and thus different privileges. But we also have agency.
This Lecture Workshop aims to encourage reflection and awareness about one's own position and privileges through embodiment, as a basis for change. It will consider different layers of power structures such as whiteness, race, gender, class, ability. We will explore how they materialize in our bodies, as well as through and in urban space. How do incarcerating and policing institutions maintain and constantly renew these structures? Thoughts and reflections interweave with embodied research tasks, including perception, moving our bodies and minds, activating the different senses, questioning their hierarchization.
Finally, through embodied practice a.k.a. dance, are we able to explore our bodies not only as ground for oppression, but also as a site of resistance?
Janina Rohlik is exploring matters that make her move, think, dance, resist, write, protest, perform... She loves to share her practice with others in workshops or collective researches, as in her feminist performance/art collective donna’s gym. Janina’s work is informed by poetry, dance improvisation techniques and dancing the night away. She explores the body as a place of social negotiation of power, empowerment and resistance. Since 2009 Janina presented several performances with donna’s gym, most recently ""donnagrollen – ein Wutjahrmarkt ""(2019). She shared her solo work and researches at different occasions as at the dreizehn°festival (2018), Explosive Festival (2019) or at a Lecture Performance evening in Kassel (2020). Janina holds a diploma in Applied Cultural Sciences and has been an attendee in different programs for dance & performance. She is an educated dance trainer for children and adults and worked as a facilitator in the community dance project „La igualtat es mou“ (Spain, 2017).
Since 2020 Janina is a research resident in “Postgraduate Residence Studios and Performance Research Studies (PReS)” at “SOZO – visions in motions” (Kassel). She is currently deepening and expanding her ongoing research about power structures and their embodiment as well as the power of dance to transform.