la facultad - Catalina Insignares and Myriam Lefkowitz. Residence at Bétonsalon and at the CHUM of Paris-Ivry EMMAÜS Solidarity

From April to June 2021, Bétonsalon hosted la facultad, in residency for a first phase of research and meetings. The links created with the CHUM, Centre d’Hébergement d’Urgence pour familles migrantes de Paris-Ivry – (Emergency Housing Centre for migrant families in Paris-Ivry) – EMMAÜS Solidarité materialized with the opening up of a space in a yurt at the centre, dedicated to la facultad. From October to January, la facultad regularly presents its practice there: three days a week, Catalina Insignares, Myriam Lefkowitz and Julie Laporte offer meetings around a somatic-choreographic practice for people accommodated within the association and those assisting them: actors from the social, legal and care fields, volunteers, and cultural partners.

la facultad
la facultad is a site where the dormant sensory faculties within each of us that we want to be able to hear, study and amplify in collaborative local situations, can be exercised.
This “practice chamber” designed by Catalina Insignares and Myriam Lefkowitz, and activated in collaboration with Julie Laporte, targets exiled people and those who assist them. It mingles somatic, choreographic, and energetic practices, sometimes influenced by tarot readings, hypnosis or even telepathy so many mediums they make use of to experiment other forms of relationship to the self, to others and to our social environment.
“Through these sensory experiments, together we can invent means of communication that use the body, the imagination and memory means that are not dependent on language, and that can be invented working with our differences rather than against them, with them, rather than without them. For la facultad art thus becomes a place where we invent communication tools and begin to tell other stories about who we are, where we are and what the future could be like.”
A walk in the town as a duo, where one of the walkers has their eyes closed, a choir – le groupe/a chorus le chant for supine bodies, a dance with the hands, sent to someone who is absent, a landscape of objects and materials made up of recumbent bodies, the reading of a text accompanied by touch, a practice that focuses on the heart as the main vector of connection…

Catalina Insignares
Catalina Insignares is a Columbian choreographer and dancer, settled in Paris. She studied dance in Canada and France and completed a master’s in choreography and performance at the University of Giessen, Germany. Her plays question artistic production systems and their relationship to society. She seeks the moment where dance gives rise to intelligible subjectivities and collectivities. She mainly works in collaboration and creates long-term associations for choreography, dramaturgy, teaching and interpretation that can last years (Caroline Creutzburg, Carolina Mendonça, Miriam Schulte, Else Tunemyr, Zuzana Zabkova). Her practice notably includes a duet danced with a male or female participant over several weeks (us as a useless duet) (in Giessen, Frankfurt, Bogota), a nocturnal reading addressed to sleeping bodies (useless land) (performed in Brussels, at Precarious Pavilions, the Beursshouwburg; in Berlin, Klosterruine and MärzMusik; Paris, La Ferme du Buisson) and sensory practices that listen to the links we have to the dead (ese muerto se lo cargo yo). Since 2017, she has been working with Myriam Lefkowitz as both a performer and collaborator, seeking to infiltrate sensory practices drawn from their work, into various social contexts (la facultad). In 2019, Catalina Insignares began a research study at DAS THIRD in Amsterdam and she is co-curator at the Gessnerallee in Zurich.

Myriam Lefkowitz
An artist choreographer, since 2010 Myriam Lefkowitz’s research has focused on questions of attention and perception, using different immersive mechanisms involving direct relationships between spectators and artists. Myriam Lefkowitz’s work was presented at the 55th Venice biennale (“Oo”, Lithuanian and Cypriot Pavilion), the CAC Vilnius, Med15 (Medellin), the Garage (Moscow), the Creative Time Summit (Stockholm), Situations (Bristol), the Talbot Rice Gal¬lery (Edinburgh), the Kadist Foundation (Tokyo and San Francisco), the Kaaitheater (Brussels), the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, La Galerie (Noisy le sec), La Ferme du Buisson... After following the SPEAP programme (master’s in art and political experimentation, Science Po, Paris founded by Bruno Latour) in 2011 she became a member of the programme’s teaching committee for 2 consecutive years. Deeply involved in teaching, she is regularly invited to conduct workshops (HEAD, ERG Brussels, Mejen in Stockholm, the Beaux-Arts in Reims, Besancon, Quimper, Angouleme, Bourges, as part of the master Ex.Erce, the dance department at Paris 8). From 2017 to 2018, she was commissioned by If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (Amsterdam). Currently she is working on a film in collaboration with the artist Simon Ripoll-Hurier and teaching at TALM (an art and graphic design school in Angers). She also continues her choreographic research in the context of several invitations: the Kunst Centrum Buda (Courtrai), the Monheim Triennial and the Belluard Festival (Friburg).

This project is part of the Bétonsalon Academy
A project hosted by the socio-cultural team of the CHUM of Paris-Ivry EMMAÜS Solidarity in the context of the 2021-2022 season