You might be asked to close your eyes, then led into darkness to rest between wakefulness and sleep so that your attention is tuned to tactile and sonic experiences, or otherwise guided through a city’s street via the alternating touch of a hand on your own until the occasional whisper of, “open, now close”, offers you the chance to take in an unexpected view of familiar surroundings. This may also occur during a visit to a public swimming pool, which has become a stage for a collective of choreographers to share their tools while other swimmers continue to lap or play. Such are examples of direct encounters between artists and spectators that have been designed by Myriam Lefkowitz, and through which she creates the conditions for augmented perceptive experiences that favour attention, trust, and the negotiation of emotions and relations.

As one of four artists commissioned to produce new work for VII (2017–2018), Social Movement, Myriam Lefkowitz will design a new situation in a public space in Amsterdam. For this she will establish a collaborative context—which might include gatherings of artists, students, social workers, researchers, healers, activists, to name a few—for the transmission and dissemination of their respective tools, which will become not only the way of working but the work itself.

Myriam Lefkowitz (b. 1980, Paris). Lives in Paris.

Myriam Lefkowitz’ new work is commissioned and produced as part of Corpus, network for performance practice. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Leuven), and Tate Modern (London). Corpus is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.