This seminar (designed in collaboration with PerLA – Performance Epistemologies Research Lab, IUAV University of Venice) looks at genealogies of performance pedagogies and perspectives in blue dramaturgy. The talks will touch on interdisciplinary pedagogies and the emerging current of studies of “blue humanities” which engages with complex questions surrounding ocean and sea imaginaries.
Opening Remarks:
Barbara Faedda (Executive Director, Italian Academy)
Speakers:
Roberta Bernasconi (IUAV University of Venice)
“Threading Knowledges: Genealogies of Performance Pedagogies”
Bruna Bonanno (University of Milan)
“Offshore dramaturgy: How to Spin a Yarn”
Moderator and Organizer:
Piersandra Di Matteo (IUAV University of Venice; current Fellow at Columbia University’s Italian Academy)
Click here to register.
ABOUT THE TALKS
Roberta Bernasconi
Threading Knowledges: Genealogies of Performance Pedagogies: Assuming performance as a site of learning, and through the analysis of interdisciplinary pedagogies developed between Europe and the United States throughout the twentieth century, the talk follows a trajectory from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College, retracing genealogically the emergence of immaterial, embodied, and non-technically codified pedagogies that emerged at the intersection of visual arts, theatre, dance, and music. Through archival research materials, the talk explores the hybrid lineages of performance pedagogies, using them as a lens to identify an ecosystem invested in laboratorial and transdisciplinary, practice-based education.
Bruna Bonanno
Offshore dramaturgy: How to Spin a Yarn: Following what Laurent de Sutter (2011) calls an epistemology of piracy — a radical form of scholarly hijacking — this talk situates dramaturgy as a site where blue studies and performance can entangle. Moving beyond a hermeneutic paradigm that confines dramaturgy within land-centred thinking, the contribution advances an expanded pirate epistemology that unsettles dominant, terrestrially grounded conceptual frameworks and articulates pirate categories as alternative, offshore modes of perception.
PerLA – Performance Epistemologies Research Lab is a research unit at IUAV University of Venice, founded in 2024 by scholars coordinated by Professor Annalisa Sacchi. The lab investigates performance through dialogue with multiple fields, including cultural studies, environmental humanities, and radical pedagogies. PerLA disseminates research through conferences, seminars, symposia, research projects, and public programmes developed with Italian and international partners, as well as cultural and artistic institutions. The name PerLA pays tribute to Perla Peragallo, a key figure of late twentieth-century Italian theatre.
Doors open at 2:30pm. Registration does not guarantee a seat; registrants are seated first-come, first served.
This event is in-person only.
Image: Flag created by Elie Laucher for the 2025 myctoforme exhibition
