Tentacular thinking in storied places : a deep-mapping of an art-science-activist worlding in 'Necropolis' (2017 onward)

With the Institut des Croisements, choreographer, dancer and curator Arkadi Zaides unfolds a continuing engagement in human rights issues. His research-based art practice thinks through the entanglement of politics and the ways bodies (are allowed to) move. In 2017, Zaides embarked on the long-term performance project Necropolis, considering the movements of people who are systematically and brutally stopped by border policies, highlighting the choreography that occurs in the social sphere. The performance project entails a documentary approach to the contemporary geopolitical reality of migration. Rather than providing a coherent, consistent analysis of the performance Necropolis, this text testifies of a co-production of knowledge from within the research-based, long durational performance project of Necropolis, and its many off-springs, such as the NecropolisLAB and the continuously constituted virtual city of the dead called NECROPOLIS. Rather than writing “about” an art practice, this text came into being in collaboration with an art practice. As another process of knowledge production is at stake, this text is not single-authored, but rather presents a hybrid constellation of different voices from within the collaborative process itself