Susanne Martin
Susanne Martin (PhD) is a Berlin based artist, researcher, and teacher rooted in contemporary dance and performance. She works internationally as soloist and in collaborative settings. Her artistic practice and research focus on improvisation, practices and narrations of the aging body, humor and irony in dance, artistic research methods, improvisation-based and art-based approaches to learning, knowledge production and knowledge dissemination.
Her book Dancing Age(ing): Rethinking Age(ing) in and through Improvisation Practice and Performance was published in 2017. She currently holds a postdoc position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where she examines dance improvisation in its potential to rethink and advance processes of learning and researching in a technical university. In her teaching she currently focusses on artistic research, contact improvisation, instant composition, and improvisation-based workout.
Her PhD dissertation Dancing Age(ing): Rethinking Age(ing) in and through Improvisation Practice and Performance was published 2017 by transcript. In her postdoctoral research at EPFL, Switzerland (2018-2021) she examined dance improvisation in its potential to rethink and advance processes of learning and researching in a technical university.
She has lectured at the following academic institutions: Middlesex University, UK; University of Northampton, UK; University of Roehampton, UK; Bowdoin College Brunswick, USA; Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy, Hungary; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL); and Transart Institute for Creative Research.
Practice Statement:
My doings sit right at the heart of what is currently called artistic research. In other words, I stubbornly defy the dichotomies of practice/theory, art/academia, body/mind, action/reflection, as well as the divide between object/subject in research processes. The sensing body, reflection in action, reflection after action, and play are my basic tools.
Practice includes (media, genres, e.g. curating, photography):
Practice choreographing, improvising, teaching, curating, collaborating, performing, coaching, writing.
I mainly work through the body, the stage, the voice, text, live encounters and their residues.
Related research & practice areas:
movement, dance, choreography;
sense-able and response-able bodies; performance practices; improvisation & learning; practices and images of aging;