Female camaraderie, exploration, and being-in-place together -The site specific screendance practice of WECreate Productions

Description

WeCreate Productions has been Invited by Prof. Mariama Diagne, at the Institute for Theatre Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. to present a Research Seminar, as part of the Oberseminar (PhD and faculty)

Abstract
In this presentation Ana Baer, Heike Salzer, and Michelle Nance, of the intercontinental artist collective WECreate Productions, share their site-specific screendance practice. Drawing upon excerpts from their award-winning films including the Terra Series (HinterTerra, 2023; Úrba Terra Bartzelona, 2024; TerraMontes, 2024) and touring exhibition Latent Spaces (2018-23), they present their improvisational strategies for dance and camera and its synergistic relationship with place.
Developed through embodied research in which the somatic experience within the urban/natural landscapes is the central resource for the choreographic and cinematic process. Through the application of site-specific screendance performance and somatic camera, they consider how the transcultural perspectives of female bodies are highlighted via the choreography, the cinematography, the editing, its presentation as a screening/installation. Emphasizing key aspects of their method, they discuss how their practice is based on embodied agency and the relational aspects of the collective experience, such as: empathy, female companionship, travelling, and being-in-place together. Relating to Akinleye’s (2021) concept of emplacement, the work proposes holistic transactional notions of human interaction with place, across real and digital sites, positioning the artist’s bodies within the geographical origin, the digital screen site, and the viewer within the installation site. It engages the artists and viewer via embodied visuality, physically through empathetic making and viewing, offering a visceral, emotional, and sensuous engagement that is based on the felt lived experience. Being ambassadors for the representation of ageing bodies on the screen, their work immerses makers and spectators equally into sensitive modes of attention, enabling notions of sensing | being sensed, seeing | being seen and placing | being-in-place.
As women screendance makers, collaborating throughout the process via diverse culturally emplaced senses (Americas-Latinx; European; American; neurodiverse), the transcultural emplacement of female corporealities is brought to light, revealing ways in which women from different cultures create multidimensional sensorial ways to engage with the world and each other.

Length: 60 minutes, including Q&A

Period	2 Jul 2025
Held at	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Degree of Recognition	International