Re-Worlding lecture & seminar: Manuela Infante Güell

Lecture by Manuela Infante Güell

Manuela Infante Güell is a Chilean theater director, playwright, scriptwriter and musician. MA in Cultural Analysis at University of Amsterdam. She is well known for offering scenic articulations of contemporary theoretical issues, creating work that stands somewhere between music, theater and literature. Her plays have been published and translated into English, German, Italian and Portugese.

For years now Manuela has been working in resonance with the ideas of a current of thought sometimes labeled as the “non-human turn”. Taking on the task of envisioning how to make a non-anthropocentric theatre, she has explored several scenic strategies in order to question the notion of the human from post-colonial and gender perspectives. Her polyphonic monologue Estado Vegetal or 'Vegetative State' (2017) investigated plants looking into the uncanny or impossible dialogue between humans and plants.

• Timing lecture: 15h30-16h30 - 28.04.2022
• Open to all
• Location: CCHA (kleine theaterzaal), Kunstlaan, 3500 Hasselt

About Manuela Infante Güell

Her work has toured important theaters and festivals in U.S.A, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Singapore, Corea and Japan. She has produced work with Festival de Modena (Italy), The Watermill Center (New York), FIBA (Buenos Aires), KVS (Belgium), La Rose De Vents (France), TheaterWorks (Singapore), Schauspielhaus Bochum (Germany), Teatre Nacional de Cataluña (Spain), amongst others. She is currently producing work with, Theater Basel (Switzerland), Volksteater Vienna (Austria), Schauspielhaus Hannover (Germany), and KVS (Brussels).

In 2015 she was the first woman to be appointed director of The National Festival for Dramaturgy in Chile. In 2019 se was the first Chilean theater maker to be invited to the Venice Biennale 2019 with her plays “Estado Vegetal” and “Realismo”. That same year she won the Stükemarkt First Prize at 2019 Theaterreffen Festival in Berlin. As a musician she has composed, written and produced two albums with her band "Bahía Inútil". "Stand Scared" (2011) and "Bahía Inútil" (2015).

She has also been in charge of the sound design of most of her works. As a scriptwriter she has worked with renowned Chilean film directors such as Cristián Jiménez, Alicia Scherson, Francisca Alegria, Marialy Rivas and Sebastian Lelio.

Doctoral seminar by Nadia Sels: Art and the non-human turn

In recent philosophy and cultural studies, there has been a growing interest in rethinking the relation and even the distinction between the human and non-human.

The so-called ‘posthuman’ or ‘non-human’ turn covers a variety of theories: from Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory that draws attention to non-human forms of agency up to Donna Haraway’s reflection on how we are all already cyborgs, from Graham Harman’s ‘object oriented ontology’ to the rehabilitation of animism in thinkers like David Abram or Graham Harvey. Of course, much of these philosophies are fueled by the ecological crisis we’re in: finding a less arrogant way of relating to our material and non-human environment, and reinventing ourselves in the process, might be one of our most urgent concerns right now.

It is no surprise that many artists, architects and designers have drawn inspiration from all this. Manuela Infante, who in her theatre pieces Vegetal state (2019) and How to turn to stone (2021) has explored the idea of acting or communicating like a plant or a rock, is only one example.

In this seminar, following Infante’s lecture, we will critically look at some of these theories to see which of these concepts (and which not) can be useful and fertile in the context of artistic research. After all, is a reshaping of our sensuous, practical and emotional relation with the world not always what is at stake?

A small selection of key texts will be made available and should be read in preparation.

• Timing seminar: 13h-15h - 29.04.2022
• Open to PhD students of all organizing partner schools
• Location: PXL