Methods in multiplicity: Embodied and contemporary ancestral knowledge in times of transition
🗓️ Thursday, 25 June — 10:10am
- 11:10am
(60 mins)
Presenters
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Abstract
Gwen Rakotovao’s artistic research practice is grounded in embodied knowledge and diasporic epistemologies that honour ancestorhood. In her work, method is understood not as fixed or instrumental, but as relational, inherited, and continuously formed through lived experience, memory, and historical entanglements.
She positions her practice through multiplicity, refusing a singular or stable identity in favour of layered and coexisting selves. This positioning informs how she responds to contemporary conditions shaped by dominant narratives.
Her work moves across geographies and temporalities in which past, present, and future coexist within the body. Through these crossings, she explores how knowledge is carried, transmitted, and transformed.
Central to her practice is the question of what art through the medium of dance and artistic research can do in times of societal transition, and how attending to embodied and ancestral forms of knowledge might open up alternative modes of relation, care, and intervention.
She positions her practice through multiplicity, refusing a singular or stable identity in favour of layered and coexisting selves. This positioning informs how she responds to contemporary conditions shaped by dominant narratives.
Her work moves across geographies and temporalities in which past, present, and future coexist within the body. Through these crossings, she explores how knowledge is carried, transmitted, and transformed.
Central to her practice is the question of what art through the medium of dance and artistic research can do in times of societal transition, and how attending to embodied and ancestral forms of knowledge might open up alternative modes of relation, care, and intervention.
Biography
Gwen Rakotovao is a choreographer, dancer, and artist-researcher working at the intersection of performance and cultural inquiry. She received her MA in Performance Studies from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Her work unfolds internationally across stage and research contexts. Bridging choreographic practice and academic inquiry, her research engages cultural memory and diaspora, with a particular focus on a Malagasy funeral ritual as site of embodied knowledge and choreographic thinking.
Her work unfolds internationally across stage and research contexts. Bridging choreographic practice and academic inquiry, her research engages cultural memory and diaspora, with a particular focus on a Malagasy funeral ritual as site of embodied knowledge and choreographic thinking.
