An evening on and through collaborative poetry by Lucie Berjoan, Divya Nadkarni, Anastasija Pandilovska and Cole Verhoeven. The four writers and artists will present joint work stemming from the prompts renga, tapestry poem and exquisite cadaver. Aiming to move beyond a mere drawing from each other’s writings or responding to each other, the focus of the project lies on the dynamic interweaving of poetic practices. What kind of work is generated when poetry, which is often considered as intensely personal, becomes something shared in its creation? And in what ways are artistic practices always already inherently collaborative practices? The programme will be introduced by Dean Bowen and woven together through a performance by Cathalijne Smulders, together with aphasic speakers and the Genetic Choir.

Programme in English

Lucie Berjoan (US) is a poet and writer based in Amsterdam. She is interested in using personal narrative as a tool in theory and critical writing. Her current work focuses on writing queer memoir through poetry and collaborative process-based composition. She is a second-year student in the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Instituut.

Cole Verhoeven began her study with the New York City Ballet school and the Dance Theater of Harlem, later winning a scholarship to the the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. She then went on to study Performance and Studio Art at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Since moving to the Netherlands she has worked extensively on productions with theatre directors Brett Bailey (South Africa) and Fernando Rubio (Argentina). She currently lives and works in Amsterdam as a composer, poet, painter, performance/endurance artist and occasional co-curator for abstract painting collective The Act of Painting.

Divya Nadkarni is a writer and PhD researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. Her research focusses on the value and impact of political poetry today, asking the question 'what makes a poem political?'. She writes poetry and fiction alongside her dissertation.

Anastasija Pandilovska (Skopje, 1991) resides in Amsterdam, the Netherlands where in 2015 she graduated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Parallel to her studies she took part in the Honours programme ART and RESEARCH. Since January 2018, Pandilovska started her research with the Lectorate Art & Public Space (LAPS) which is focused on the importance of culture as commons when dealing with public space affected by political regimes and complex histories.

Cathalijne Smulders completed her artistic education at Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, where she participated in the Cure Master program. In her performances she makes people with different identities interact through touch, gesture, and movement. She created performances together with people suffering from schizophrenia, with contemporary dancers and people with spasticity and with people with aphasia, a speech impediment, and a choir. Her performative way of working often results in porous and poetic interactions and the experience of alternative, sensuous ways to relate to the other and our environment.