Dance, Racism, Public Engagement and Anthropological Knowledge

Vionnet, Claire; Toggweiler, Michael (November 2021). Dance, Racism, Public Engagement and Anthropological Knowledge (Unpublished). In: Public Panel Discussion at the WBKolleg. Walter Benjamin Kolleg, University of Bern. 5.11.2021.

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This panel gathered Berner artists and social scholars from the University of Bern to reflect on creative modalities for raising scientific knowledge within artistic contexts, meanwhile engaging within society. This discussion is part of the Project THoR launched by the Walter Benjamin Kolleg about the importance and presence of Humanities in public sphere, that gathers PhD students and scholars to reflect on the interface between Academia and Science. This panel discussion draws on the project Kunda, that uses African dances to address racism in public space.
Led by the anthropologist and dance scholar Dr. Claire Vionnet, the applied anthropological project Kunda triggers a reflection on togetherness (ciekunda.com). Switzerland becomes culturally more diverse, raising the question of community building and the expression of marginal voices. Kunda means “house” in African language Mandinka, asking what kind of home we wish to create in Switzerland. The project is participative, run together with Senegalese artists and Berner activists. Through the project, asymmetrical hierarchies and politics of exclusion are expressed, for example the invisibility of black dancing bodies within the Swiss dance scene, and colonialist residues in North/South encounters. How can we prevent epistemic violence and power asymmetry in encounters between privileged and unprivileged people, between researchers and informants?
Kunda raises these questions through choreography, workshops in schools, youth centers, festivals and universities, using dance to question mechanisms of exclusion in choreography and society. As an invitation for encounters beyond language, dance creates the opportunity for intimate encounters between cultures, reaching the depth of human experience. In doing so, dance becomes an entrance door to exchange on the condition of life, reaching a space inaccessible through words.
Kunda not only engages within public space, but also highlights the potential of phenomenological engagement for anthropological theory on the body, senses, creativity and performance theory. The fieldwork experience becomes the purpose for theoretical reflection with an outcome in academic papers. The project also advocates for dance as an epistemological tool to raise anthropological knowledge (as well as knowledge for dance studies and postcolonial studies).

The panel started with a 20-minute dance and music performance. The show was followed by 1h30 discussion between a dancer (André Dramé), an anti-racism activist (Pascale Altenburger, MA in Anthropology) and academicians (Prof. C. Thurner, Dr. C. Vionnet, Dr. Rohit Jain), asking how performance can ethically “exhibit” black bodies and African tradition beyond exoticism. The discussion articulated testimonies from artists experiencing exclusion and discrimination, and dance scholars bringing their knowledge about the history of blackness in dance. Facilitated by historian Dr. Ruramisai Charumbira, the discussion (in English) focused on the transformative potentials of performance and dance scholarship to restore mechanisms of injustice. The last aspect of the discussion focused on the articulation between Science and Art, and how creative practice can lead to scientific knowledge.
The discussion was relevant for the Walter Benjamin Kolleg (THoR Project), through showing one way of bringing Humanities into public sphere. As an interdisciplinary project articulating Anthropology, History, Dance Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Dance Practice, it highlighted an experimental mode of doing research, meanwhile engaging withing society. The panel demonstrated a possible interface between science and society through experimental modes of investigation for scientific knowledge. It addressed processes of vulgarization and critical whiteness within universities.

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