Party Studies

As places of alternative and temporary communities, parties are, through history – at least since the 1960s civic and sexual revolutions and countercultures – central to our communal living. They are places of resistance – we may think of the punk and rock’n’roll movements – to the official or traditional culture, and places of otherness. Parties are, therefore, a place of other subjectivities, in which the subject multiplies itself to the many “others”. Parties are also the background for the gay movement and the LGBTQIA+ new epistemology of being. So, performance, community, sharing, body, and the senses are all at play in the concept of party.

In this 2023’s edition of the Summer School, we want to dedicate a week to study (and the practice) of the PARTY, as a concept for change and for cultivating otherness, in a world in which conservative agendas are threatening the necessary and radical transformation of our democratic and civic societies. Maybe, partying will help us to see and play that radical transformation.

To help us think about these phenomena, we invited artists, directors, and performers. With Carla Filipe and Post Brothers, we evolve in the idea of party and clubbing as a place for alternative artistic performance, mixing artistic works with DJ culture. From Brazil, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca will bring their essential work on the LGBTQIA+ communities and their choreographic cinema, in which dancers dance the revolution. Marie de Brugerolle + Jazmín Lopez will join forces to talk about performance as a concept, also bringing Lopez’s filmic work to the equation, in which the Argentinian director works the idea of re-enactment through the performance of her actors. Finally, the Portuguese theatre group Teatro Praga will work on their concept of dramaturgy and the radical performativity of the sexual, gender and political identities of actors.