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An exercise in mourning, Part I

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07 pm (ICT–Vietnam time); 07 am (EST–Montréal time, Canada); 01 pm (CET–Central Europe time)
Thurs 19 Dec 2024
Online talk (a few days before the event, NAF will send the talk’s link to registered participants)
Registration link
**Language: English

From the organizer:

In his textual meandering for the exhibition ‘In absence, presence’, curator Bill Nguyen wrote:

How do you choose to remember your past and the pasts of others,
of loved ones, of those lost, of those still here?
Is it through the preservation of objects of memories,
the revisiting of records of time spent together,
the re-telling of exchanged words of intimacy?
What is left to remember one by,
when one’s body has ceased to exist – their warmth withdrawn, their scent dissolved,
and yours still remain?

Nguyen Art Foundation is honored to present a two-part event titled ‘An exercise in mourning’, an evocative exploration of lamentation and mourning in contemporary art, led by dance dramaturg and author Guy Cools. In ‘An exercise in mourning, Part I’, Guy will present insights from his book ‘Performing Mourning: Laments in Contemporary Art’, which begins with the ancient Greek tradition of moiroloi (laments) and unfolds through various forms of mourning across different contemporary cultural and artistic practices. Drawing from literature, anthropology, philosophy, and art, his lecture will uncover how lamentation operates as both a personal and collective tool for mourning, reflecting on dialogical strategies for processing personal grief, collective rituals inviting communities to bear witness to loss, and forms of laments that bridge distances between loved ones separated by migration, exile and death.

‘An exercise in mourning, Part I’ includes:

Screening (40 min): A pre-recorded performance lecture by Guy Cools, introducing his research and book Performing Mourning: Laments in Contemporary

Conversation: A live dialogue between Guy Cools and exhibition curator Bill Nguyen, exploring how these strategies of performing mourning resonate within the exhibition’s context and broader cultural experiences of loss and remembrance.

*This event is part of a series of public and education programs in association with ‘In absence, presence’, an exhibition organized by Nguyen Art Foundation.

About Guy Cools

Guy Cools is a dance dramaturg. He is a full-time professor in the dance department of UQAM, Montréal. From 1990 till 2002, he curated the dance program of Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent (BE). As a production dramaturge, he worked amongst others with Jean Abreu (UK), Koen Augustijnen (BE), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Danièle Desnoyers (CA), Alexander Gottfarb (AT), Lia Haraki (CY), Christopher House (CA), Akram Khan (UK), Arno Schuitemaker (NL), and Stephanie Thiersch (DE). His most recent publications include In-between Dance Cultures: on the migratory artistic identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan (2015); Imaginative Bodies, dialogues in performance practices (2016) and Performing Mourning, Laments in Contemporary Art (2021).

Follow updates on event’s page.

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