Walking Narratives and Affective Cartographies

'Walking Narratives and Affective Cartographies' is the working title of Haris Pellapaisiotis’ forthcoming exhibition at Point Centre for Contemporary Art due late 2018. In advance of his exhibition the artist, in collaboration with Point Centre are holding a series of experimental presentations that bring audience, scholars and artists together to discuss how city space is re-narrativized and re-invented through affective ways of mapping to create new bodily archives using aesthetic tools of engagement.

On November 1st 2017 professor Rebecca Schneider will be responding to fragments of narrativized walks that are being presented by Pellapaisiotis and were conducted with anthropologist Peter Loizos, writer Stephanos Stephanides, anthropologist Yael Navaro and dancer / philosopher Susan Kozel. In an atmosphere of open conversation Schneider will be intersecting with her own research interest by thinking through such issues as reenactment, embodiment, walking, listening, memory and history. In the second half of the evening the conversation will extend to comments and discussion with the audience.

Pellapaisiotis is working in the area of “art research” – where the term research is used by the artist to refer to the use of tools of engagement that have been developed within art to actively engage with the re-appearance of and the re-participation with place as a space of experience. Bearing that in mind Pellapaisiotis explores Nicosia as a fluid space that engenders individual narrative connections, which emerge through lived experiences and are developed into affective mapping strategies through a process of engagement, dialogue, and collaboration between invited contributors and the artist. Situatedness and embodiment on the one hand and relational, dialogic, and collaborative practices on the other define the working methodology of his project that results in a set of art products.

Light snacks and refreshments will be available.

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Rebecca Schneider is Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, USA, where she teaches performance studies, theatre history and theories of intermedia. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Studies (Connecticut College), an MA and PHD in Performance Studies (New York University). She is the author of  the books 'Theatre and History' (Palgrave 2014), 'Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment' (Routledge 2011) and The 'Explicit Body in Performance' (Routledge, 1997). Schneider has published essays and co-edited several anthologies. In addition, she has collaborated with artists at such sites as the British Museum in London and the Mobile Academy in Berlin, and delivered lectures at museums such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw,  Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, and the Centre de la Dance in Paris.

Haris Pellapaissiotis is an artist/photographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Graphic Communication and Multimedia at the University of Nicosia. He lectures on photography, visual art and cultural studies. Prior to his re-settlement in Cyprus in 2001 he lived in London where he lectured on photography at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. He holds a B.A. in fine art, Post-graduate in Media and Communication (photography) and is currently completing his PhD art research. He is the founding director of the Artalk seminars (Nicosia), which he co-organised and presented between 2004-2009. His work has been shown at various international venues including The Photographer’s Gallery, London, The Museum of London and Witte de With, Rotterdam. Recent publications include the essay 'The Art of the Buffer Zone', 2014, I.B.Tauris. He is currently working on a major new collaborative art research project that will result in a series of art products including a mixed media and interdisciplinary exhibition, a publication and a series of performance seminars.