Taking Up Positions: Embodied Theories and Time-Based Participatory Practices

Taking Up Positions attempts to resolve, or propose possible solutions to, a range of questions common to time-based and participatory art practices concerning exhibition making, power, authorship and definitions, as well as their implications within a contemporary politics of protestation and image creation. This work is based on two distinct workshops which were facilitated leading up to this exhibition. These workshops were experiments in the embodiment of theory. Axis of Agency involved trained dancers exploring a theory of political agency mapped onto the floor in a Cartesian graph. This graph functioned dually as a visual guide to a theory and as a piece of choreography. The Contingent Sculpture Workshop was a series of workshops held over several months which engaged a material practice of student activism through the lens of artistic theory. They considered how protest creates images and what artists can contribute to a theorization of that process.