Cross pollination

a platform for the dialogue in-between performative practices and research

Cross Pollination (CP) runs an expanded, nomadic laboratory for the dialogue in-between practices, both scholarly and performance-based, as an integral and essential part of the politics of embodied research in theatre and performance. In CP, performers, theatre makers and researchers work together on the transmission, transformation and generation of knowledge, while exchanging highly specialized techniques. CP bases it’s framework on the principles of fertile differences, dialogue and collaboration between practices of art, community building and academic research.

The platform was founded in 2017 by Adriana La Selva and Marije Nie after the 10th ISTA session in Albino, Italy, and it has been a resident group at the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium since then. The actions of the collective have been taking place in many different settings across Europe.
Many performers, theatre makers and researchers build unique and personal constellations of practice and (embodied) knowledge about the art of the performer, theatre and its relation to society at large, with angles that challenge, inform and complement each other.

Cross Pollination gives individual artists and researchers a way to connect outside of production pressure and bureaucratic hierarchies, with time for creative research, nourishment, making professional friendships and colleagues. It investigates the craft, ethics and resistance that lie in breaking through the pressure of competition and isolation, in connecting to personal lineage in a time of a-historic and eternal ‘nowness’, in seeing each other through the invisibility of the ‘fame-less’ and offliners, in connecting the local with the global, the craft with the thought, the individual with the collective.

Working Structure of Cross Pollination

Cross Pollination is organised into three pillars.

1. Cross Pollination sessions: intensive closed laboratory sessions for performers, artists and
researchers where new practices are developed.

2. The Parliament of Practices: a broader network of performers and researchers, investigating
modes and forms of (embodied) dialogue.

3. CROP: production house of CP for public events including performances, work demonstrations, educational activities and workshops

The Parliament of Practices

The Parliament of Practices is a discursive strategy, an action that has generated an interdisciplinary platform for artists and scholars who are interested in the dialogue in-between practices and research.

The Parliament breaks through professional boundaries, fragmentation and isolation and creates an ongoing dialogue through devised strategies. It provides the opportunity and space for sharing, exchange and knowledge creation based on personal practices and artistic genealogies.
Our strategies are multi-voiced, co-created and flexible in form. They include studio work sessions, the development of platforms for exchange through various online media and offline contexts, creating opportunities for writing collaborations and performative actions.

Central to the Parliament is the idea of ‘speaking from the practice’. Practice is the anchor of the Parliament, which grounds it in direct and embodied knowledge that comes from doing. It resonates with a particular genealogy of theatre laboratory research and Third Theatre. From this anchor the Parliament connects and extrapolates to other levels of social organisation, civic life and society at large.

CROP

CROP is the nomadic production house of Cross Pollination, concerned with producing events of affiliated artists that are related to the Cross Pollination research. CROP facilitates the development of new forms for creating and sharing performative material, in all stages of the work and including in non-theatrical and public space.

All CROP productions are built on the principle of merging personal knowledge and skills with the perspectives and principles of others, while using the Cross Pollination working structures and strategies for creation. Workshops are always given by at least two members and focus on the intertwining of practices. Our practices have been implemented in different European Universities and theatre and dance institutions.

CROP wants to contribute to a healthier ecology for art and artists, research and production. This involves connecting performances and research networks, increasing the sustainability of collaborations and the exchange and connections between artists themselves and their work practices. This production house thus fills a gap within the arts landscape: a group of diverse and independent working theatre makers/artists enter into a consistent relationship with each other and with different institutions, in order to build up long- term and sustainable opportunities for artistic development.