Laura Cemin

Referring to Gloria Anzaldúa's notion of 'wild tongue' (Borderlands/ La Frontera, 1987), the publication departs from the questions: How to tame a wild tongue? How to carry language? The verbs 'taming' and 'carrying' imply certain dynamics of permission and restriction of movement, and suggest the entanglement between language and the body. The project delves into the notion  of 'tonuge' as an archive: the 'tongue' as a muscle shaped by the physical practice of moving/ talking, having memory; the 'tongue' as a 'cultured' part of the body. It addresses accent as part of our linguistic identity, but also something that defines access or restriction. (From Monika Charkowska's preface to the publication)

Artists: Bianca Hisse, Laura Cemin
Curated by: Monika Charkowska

Texts by: Monika Charkowska, Claire Goodall, Kübra Gümüsay, Bianca Hisse, Laura Cemin
Edited by: Monika Charkowska

Translations: Epp Aareleid (ENG to EST), Ksenia Krimer (ENG to RUS), Keiu Krikmann (ENG to EST), Anita Kodanik (ENG to RUS)
English Proof-Reading: Epp Aareleid
Graphic Design: Kersti Heile

Edition of 200.

A Book of Dances is a collection of written choreographies by Finnish-based artists Anne Naukkarinen, Laura Cemin, Mikko Niemistö, and Marika Peura, and Swedish-based artists BamBam Frost, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, and Pontus Pettersson. It’s edited by Anne Naukkarinen.

Book explores language as a writing-based approach to choreographic practice. It brings attention to the contradictions, translations, and intimate relationships between dance and language.In A Book of Dances, multiple languages are intertwined with the situated knowledge and histories of the participating artists, each embedded within specific social contexts.

The book’s aim is not to define choreographic practices as such, but to create a space for writing that engages with and embodies diverse perspectives on world-making. Thus, the process of meaning-making becomes situated, relational, and unstable—it shifts constantly.

Anne Naukkarinen is a choreographer, visual artist, and dancer-performer based in Helsinki, Finland. She uses methods from dance and somatic practices, as well as writing, to explore intimate and complex human experiences that are in relation to changing situations. Her work pays attention to the poetic, social, and ecological aspects and structures of art-making, and it is situated at the intersection of contemporary dance, visual art, and the expanded field of choreography.

Bringing together thirty authors variously invested in dance, performance and/or choreography; This Container is a zine for texts produced through and alongside dance, performance and choreography. Some write more than dance; others dance more than write. Some practice choreography explicitly; others implicitly. However varied the authors gathered here may be, the expansive field of performance produces all kinds of texts that deserve public recognition, a readership, and an infrastructure for feedback and editing. This issue is another attempt at making this possible.
 
With contributions by: Paula Almiron, Jani Anders Purhonen, Simon Asencio, Mélanie Blaison, Oda Brekke, Juan Pablo Cámara, Laura Cemin, Matt Cornell, Stina Ehn, Emma Fishwick, Lucija Grbic, Sara Gebran, Andreas Haglund, Hugo Hedberg, Alice Heyward, Madlen Hirtentreu, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Nikima Jagudajev, Sonjis Laine, Yoojin Lee, Denise Lim, Theo Livesey, Naya Moll, Caterina Mora, Rhiannon Newton, Zander Porter, Lena Schwingshandl and Stav Yeini.
 
Since its inception, This Container has hoped to contribute to a feminist lineage of textual production. What constitutes this lineage? This is a vast question. The beginning of an answer might start by saying something about genre. If , as Lauren Berlant writes, genre is an “aesthetic structure of affective expectation”, a “formalization of aesthetic or emotional conventionalities”, then genre crafts expectation by pointing to what is recognizable in form.1 If feminism is about wanting the world to be otherwise, the multiplication of genres inducing the multiplication of (imagined) stories helps to recraft expectation toward a less oppressive, less boring, and more just world. Feminist work includes genre work. Poetry, diary, diagram, notes, recipe, critique, the sound file, the epistolary, the essay, the art project: they have all found their way in, sculpting a diverse set of readerly structures of affective expectation. They are to shift your worldly expectations.

More info at http://www.thiscontainer.com