Book launch "Toward a Transindividual Self"

Starting from a concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Toward a Transindividual Self examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies, and dramaturgy intersect, and thus critically asks: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? 

For this book launch, Ana Vujanović and Bojana Cvejić invite four guests, Femke Snelting, Anna Franziska Jäger, Silvia Mollicchi, and Nadia Fadil. They will choose a passage from the book to read, one which speaks to their practice. Their responses will spark an argued dialogue with the authors. The evening will be moderated by Tom Engels.

• Ana Vujanović is a dramaturge, researcher, and writer, based in Berlin and Belgrade. A remarkable part of her work is cultural activism and she has taken part in numerous self-organized, leftist, and independent organizations and initiatives in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, and internationally.

• Bojana Cvejić’ research spans performance theory, philosophy, and dance studies. As a dramaturg, she has collaborated with many choreographers and collectives on performances and independent self-organized platforms for artistic production, theory, and education in Europe and former Yugoslavia. Since 2017, she divides her time between Brussels, where she teaches at P.A.R.T.S., and Oslo, where she is Professor at the National Academy of the Arts.

• Femke Snelting develops projects at the intersection of publishing, feminisms, and free software. In various constellations, she works on re-imagining computational practices to disinvest from technological monoculture. With Miriyam Aouragh, Seda Gürses, and Helen Pritchard she runs the Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, a trans-practice gathering of activists, artists, engineers, and theorists. Forthcoming publication: Volumetric Regimes: Material Cultures of Quantified Presence (with Jara Rocha, OHP, 2022).

• Anna Franziska Jäger is a theatermaker, actress, and performer who obtained her master's in Drama at KASK School of Arts in Ghent in 2020. Together with Nathan Ooms they created several pieces including As a matter of fiction (2018), Some Things Last A Long Time (2019), Bartlebabe (2021), and recently Ambient Theatre Fury (2022), which will be presented at Kaaistudio's in December 2022. She has acted in several (short)movies, is part of the performance-platform Ne mosquito pas, and has written articles and essays for Etcetera and Sabzian.

• Silvia Mollicchi is a researcher and has recently moved to Brussels. She gained her PhD at the University of Warwick and is interested in philosophies of mind and language.

• Nadia Fadil works as an Associate Professor, Program Director, and Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. Her research centers on Islam in Europe (taking Brussels as ethnographic site), which she examines both as a living tradition as well as an object of regulation. She draws on this empirical question to reflect on a vast set of theoretical issues such as subjectivity and power, ethical selfhood, the body, postcoloniality, governmentality, race, and secularism.

• Tom Engels works as a curator, editor, writer, teacher, and dramaturg at the intersection of performance and visual arts. Since October 2021, he has been artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein. He was Associate Curator of trust & confusion (2021) at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, in collaboration with Xue Tan and Raimundas Malašauskas. Next to this, he also collaborated with choreographers such as Alexandra Bachzetsis at documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, and Mette Ingvartsen for steirischer herbst, Graz, as well as with Mette Edvardsen, Bryana Fritz and PRICE/Mathias Ringgenberg.