Myriam Lefkowitz. Practising Attention

Through the Practising Attention workshop Myriam Lefkowitz collectively searches, invents, and exchanges practices and ideas that address contemporary modes of attention, and which are guided by the enquiry: What practice to be could create conditions for our attention to shift? What practice to be could dig into the intimate connections between perceiving and imagining, opening them as resources to perform other forms of relationships?

In the workshop, Lefkowitz shares sensorial, perceptive, and imaginary tools that she has developed over the years of her practice. These tools predominantly use touch, different modes of seeing, states between sleep and wakefulness, and silent forms of communications, which are activated in the city and indoor spaces. Across the workshop, these practices are opened up and mapped via the collective conversations that the experience of them produces with the participants, and the issues that emerge from these modified states of attention.

No prior performance training is required to participate in the workshop, though participants should be comfortable with relating to others through touch, as well as working in darkened spaces. The workshop will take place in Centro Municipal de San Francisco, a community centre located at Plaza Corazón de María, 48.003-Bilbao.

Myriam Lefkowitz (1980) is a performance artist based in Paris. Since 2010, her research has focused on questions of attention and perception, through different immersive devices involving one spectator and one performer. Lefkowitz’s work has been presented at LISTE Art Fair Basel (Basel, 2017), Public Art Agency (Kristianstad, 2017), Plymouth Art Weekender (Plymouth, 2016), Nouveau Festival at Pompidou Centre (Paris, 2015), Venice Biennale (Venice, 2013), Vilnius Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius, 2013), among others. Currently an artist in residency in La Ferme du Buisson, Paris, she is on the teaching committee of SPEAP, at Science Po, Paris, a master’s program of experimentation in art and politics founded by Bruno Latour.

Myriam Lefkowitz’s Practising Attention is commissioned and produced by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), and co-produced by Bulegoa z/b as part of Corpus, network for performance practice. The workshop has been developed in partnership with La Ferme du Buisson, Paris, where Lefkowitz is currently on residency until the end of the year.

Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK Kunstencentrum & M-Museum, Leuven), and Tate Modern (London): www.corpus-network.org.

Corpus is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.