Nienke Scholts

Since her graduation from the MA Theatre Studies at the University of Utrecht in 2009, Nienke is developing a dramaturgical practice through which she works and thinks in relation to other realms than performance alone. As a dramaturge she got particularly involved in co-developing methods and practices invoked by new forms of (performance) art - with Dries Verhoeven, Emke Idema, Anne Breure, MOHA, Genevieve Murphy i.e. Since 2014 she works at Veem House for Performance as house-dramaturge, creating discursive programs. Currently she finalises her own publication series Words for the Future, a search for a language that might help to open up imaginations on the future. She lectures at the MA Scenography in Utrecht, and is a co-founder and member of Platform-Scenography. Since 2016 Nienke is researcher at DAS Research, first within the Local School and now as fellow of the second cohort of THIRD.
Recent publications include: Dramaturges that Do Not Work for a Work in ‘Dramaturgy at Work’ (by K. Georgelou et all, 2017); and Current Movements, Future Landscapes (co-edited with P-S/Research Centre Performative Processes, 2016). Nienke (1984) lives in Utrecht.

New Practices of Organising Performing Arts

Practices of organising performing arts evolve from the doings of artists and institutions that actively and radically re-invent how they work. Understood as practice, organising becomes an activity that matters who is doing it and how. This is not informed by pre-existing organisation models, but rather by the values and beliefs the people doing the organising wish to prioritise, and the attitudes and choices that result from that.
Through this research I intend to articulate and stimulate ‘new’ practices of organising performing arts, and I do this from within. Being part of the local performing arts scene that I look at, I decided to shape my research through the continuation of my artistic practice, and made my collaborations (Veem House, MOHA, Platform-Scenography) the subject of my study. By co-developing and mapping inspiring ways of organizing performing arts, I intend to make the knowledge they produce, performable and liveable for a larger field of people that are trying to change their ways.
Using the practice of dramaturgy, I am interested in finding modes of organising artistic work that move from the condition of precariousness into more sustainable ways that are based on interdependency. As ‘we are the weavers, and we are the woven’ (I. Stengers), we are also responsible for what we today realise to be ‘weaving-flaws’ in the systems underlying our ways of being. We depend on each other for unravelling and repairing these, or weaving new patterns all together.

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