Performative Centre is conceived as a research and artistic practice laboratory which creates and elaborates discourse around contemporary performing arts practices. One of the core tasks of the Centre is to build and develop discourse and critical reflection related to contemporary choreographic and performative practices. The programme of the Centre will consist of research and residency projects, seminars, discussions and workshops with the participation of Polish and international creators and theoreticians, always combining critical and artistic practice in the field of contemporary performing arts.

PC is a new initiative by EEPAP (www.eepap.culture.pl) and the Centre for Culture in Lublin, Poland (ck.lublin.pl/en/) and is curated by Marta Keil.

The Centre’s mission is to create a space which enables an open, animated dialogue, not subordinated to the market principles and free from hierarchical academic structures. The Centre’s main goal is to offer the artists, thinkers and culture workers time and space to think and practice instead of forcing them to produce a new event, “a cut-and-dried commodity.” The space of the Centre is liberated from the necessity to continually produce new shows, plays, events, premieres and showcases. Instead, the Centre offers a space which is focused on developing the choreographic and performing arts practices and, by doing so, on strengthening a critical reflection around them in the social, political and economic context.

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturg and performance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at Justus Liebig University Giessen, where she is leading an international master’s programme – Choreography and Performance. She is a member of the editorial board of Maska Magazine, Amfiteater and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has thought and lectured extensively at various universities in Europe. She published several publications, among them Impossible Body (Maska 1999), Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Maska 2004), Processes of Work and Collaboration in Contemporary Performance (ed., Ljubljana 2006), Contemporary Performing Arts (Ljubljana 2006, ed. with Petra Pogorevc), Performance and Labour (Performance Research 2012, ed. with Gabriele Klein), Umetnik na delu (Maska 2012), and Artist at Work — Proximity of Art and Capitalism (Zero Books 2015). Website: www.kunstbody.org