On Sunday 25 August, If I Can’t Dance will convene a Summer Open Reading Group exploring voicing, feminism and gendered vocality, in the frame of our ongoing research into appropriation and dedication. The afternoon session will be led by artist Alex Martinis Roe, and will be accompanied by contributions from students of the Dutch Art Institute.

On this occasion If I Can’t Dance’s Reading Group will open to interested participants who can sign up to join us for a day of reading, workshop exercises and discussions in a meadow outside of Amsterdam. We will depart from our office on Westerdok at 12pm and cycle for about an hour to the location.

Sign up for the afternoon to receive a package of reading materials and directions for the bike-ride by writing to bookings@ificantdance.org. Space is limited.

Summer Open Reading Group outline
Alex Martinis Roe will lead a workshop exploring the theories of Italian feminist Adriana Cavarero and drawing upon the praxis of the Milan Women’s Bookstore collective.

These speculative strategies will also consider gestures of ‘appropriation’—and through either discarding this term, or extending its scope will think through what it might mean to intentionally resonate with another’s voice as a feminist political practice. Extending this to an inquiry into the politics of speaking for another, with reference to the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective’s practice of affidamento, the afternoon will explore practices which foreground the inter-subjective constitution of each unique voice.

Further extending this understanding of appropriation, a group of students tutored by Emma Hedditch will present their working process by connecting to the notion of personal enunciation. The past year If I Can’t Dance has organised a workshop for students of the Dutch Art Insitute/MFA ArtEZ titled Occupation Evacuation Transmission. This workshop was conceptualised by Ian White, Emma Hedditch and Jimmy Robert, and assumed the model of a research group that explored ways in which to consider appropriation using the resources of their own work and that of others, through a performance-based mode of enquiry. With Anneke Ingwersen, Sarah Jones, Louis Liu, Momu & No Es, Abner Preis, Kim Schonewille, Tommie Soro, Silvia Ulloa, Sofia Ocaña Urwitz, and Mariana Zamarbide.

Alex Martinis Roe
Alex Martinis Roe’s current projects focus on feminist genealogies and seek to foster specific and productive relations between different generations, as a way of participating in the construction of feminist histories, which is also the production of feminist futures. Her work explores the affectivity of theoretical exchange and seeks to bring these moments between authorships into art contexts. She completed her PhD in Fine Arts at Monash University Australia with the Silver Jubilee Scholarship in 2011. In 2006-7 she was a resident at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; in 2011 undertook a residency at Seoul Artspace Geumcheon; and since 2009 has lived and worked at Kunsthaus KuLe, Berlin.