Artistic Research Through Movement(s) & Writing
dance, movement practices, somatic attention, writing practices, collective lab
23 February – 12 December 2026
In 2026 Im_flieger offers the fifth edition of SCHULE@Im_flieger – a hybrid format that combines transgenerational and transdisciplinary knowledge transfer, artistic research, production, and discourse. Under the artistic direction and mentoring of the Spanish choreographer, dancer, teacher and researcher Laura Vilar, the year will once again be dedicated to the topic “Artistic Research through movement(s) & writing”, as in 2024. The aim of this part-time, year-long program is to facilitate a collective learning experience for a small group revolving around
Research through movement(s)
Research from the movement
Research with the movement
Research about the movement(s)
Research in the heat of movement(s)
and writing. Among others these questions are aimed at accompanying the research processes: What do we move when we dance/perform? How to insist on the deepening of the attention towards, from, within the movement to let other ways of doing, being, generate, emerge? How do we turn movement into dance, performance, or practices? What (values) do we embody with our movement(s)?
The study and somatic listening to the movement and different writing practices will be the nuclear place from which to branch out the investigations, taking them towards processes that can take very different forms and ways of sharing and presenting itself. The intention is to rely on the creative process from the body, from the writing and tracing and from different practices of feedbacking as tools for personal, social, and poetic transformation.
Personal as well as collective movement research will be generated. Laura Vilar will share her broad movement experience, both practical and discursive research as well as the implications on the personal and political level. Next to the research work schedule and the times within the core-group she will support the participants mentoring each process one-to-one.
The program proposes a three-day workshop/lab with guest researchers who will share different perspectives, practices, and tools to reflect on specific topics: how to approach research, how to generate artistic materials, working with text in writing and voice. Anita Kaya will provide artistic and methodological process supervision throughout the program and will contribute with her knowledge on an ongoing basis as required.
The participants will document their research through different writing practices -based on these materials, a book will be published. The research process will be deepened and developed within a residency for each participant and will be shared with a wider public in December 2026.
SCHULE@Im_flieger 2026 is realized in cooperation with Reallabor Fassfabrik.
Artistic direction/mentoring: Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
Curation: Anita Kaya, Laura Vilar
Selected artists /participants: tba.
Guests/experts: Luigi Guerrieri (IT/AT), Anita Kaya (AT), Laura Vilar (ES/AT), Josefina Zuain (AR)
Administration: Verena Herterich
Direction / project development / artistic and methodological process supervision SCHULE@Im_flieger: Anita Kaya
PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE February – December 2026
The program consists of a series of four week-long, one three-day workshop (open to external participants) and one weekend meeting (6 hours/day, 1 hour break included) together with a series of twelve bi-weekly Wednesday evening meetings. Within the core group participants will be offered extra studio time (residencies in summer/autumn 2026, 60h).
Mon–Fri 23–27 February, 2026
Core-group week – Arriving at/in the Process // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
This first week is designed to get to know the group and the different interests of the investigation. Movement and writing practices will be proposed to display the first questions of interest, a map of the initial materials that trace the routes and situate the research, both physically and theoretically as well as proposals for continuity with the work.
Fri–Sun 29–31 May, 2026
Practicing embodied perspectives # 4 within Independent Space Index Festival 2026 (optional)
Within the context of Independent Space Index Festival 2026, participants are invited to share their artistic practices. Using free formats and adapting them to the context, this is an opportunity to test materials from the process with guests and gather feedback to continue the research. These actions will be prepared during the meetings in the preceding weeks.
Fri–Sun 12–14 June, 2026
INTENSIVE LAB // Open Workshop/Lab with Luigi Guerrieri (IT/AT), Anita Kaya (AT), Laura Vilar (ES/AT), Josefina Zuain (AR) // Im_flieger Studio and Reallabor Fassfabrik
The program proposes a three-day workshop with guest researchers who will share different perspectives, practices, and tools to experiment and reflect. The focus of the workshop will be intertwined with two themes: learning about the different approaches to research from the guests artists, and experimenting and reflecting on how research changes when we vary our environment. The workshop will take place between the Im_flieger Studio (1050 Vienna) and Reallabor Fassbabrik (1230 Vienna) through body-movement practices, writing-tracing practices, text and voice work, eco-somatic listening in each of the contexts, and sharing reflections. www.fassfabrik.at
Mon–Fri 22–26 June 2026
Core-group week / Sharing within // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
Returning to the core group for a longer meeting to give us a chance to reflect on the personal and collective process and work together before the summer break. The focus will be on sharing each of the research generating a space for exchange, and the possibility of collecting new inputs to continue.
summer break for the group – working on personal residencies
Mon–Fri 31 August – 4 September 2026
Core-group week / Regathering // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
After the summer break we will meet to situate again the research, preparing the next months of work. We will put our attention on the practices that can help to develop the different materialities of the research.
Sat–Sun 17–18 October 2026
Core-group week / Feedback sessions // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
This weekend will be dedicated to rehearsing the formats and materials that will be shared at the end of the process. Feedback sessions will be the focus of the work.
Mon–Sat 7–12 December 2026
Core-group week / Sharing with the public // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
This full week will be focused on preparing the public presentations. The proposal is to present a process of the research. Every format of presentation is welcome.
Bi-weekly Wednesday Meetings // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
11 & 25 March, 8 & 22 April, 6 & 20 May, 3 & 17 June, 16 & 30 September, 14 & 28 October, 11 & 25 November 2026, 17–21 Uhr
The regular evening meetings will be held in two part, the first as a movement practice open to the public, sharing a warmup, and the second part working on the research within the core group – we ask that you attend at least 75% of these dates.
Personal Mentoring // Laura Vilar (ES/AT)
5-8 hours one-to-one mentoring during the weeks of each participant’s residency (schedule to be agreed upon)
(Subject to change)
More thoughts from Laura Vilar:
SCHULE@Im_flieger 2026 – Artistic Research Through Movement(s) & Writing is proposed as a process and space that supports the participants’ own research through different working methods based on the following anchors:
1. PRACTICES _ moving
2. WRITING _ generating an archive
3. FEEDBACK _ sharing
4. CONDENSATION _ composing
5. PUBLIC SPACES/MOMENTS _ publishing processes
Writing, generating traces and archiving will also accompany and guide the research. This working method between moving and writing will be a cross-cutting theme throughout the research. At the end of the process, we plan to produce a collective written document.
This research space is proposed as a collective laboratory. The group is proposed as a support element with the capacity to generate knowledge. At the same time, individual accompaniment will be very present to support the generation of devices, practices and processes that allow for deeper personal research. The proposed guidelines are to support each person so that different materials can emerge in different formats.
Methodologically and epistemologically, it will commit to giving consistency and space to the diversity of ways in which research practices are carried out based on body movement.
The main objective is to accompany personal research by creating together a path that can account for the specificities of each research project, as well as the common aspects of the work while moving.
Abstract of Laura Vilar’s research during SCHULE@Im_flieger 2024:
Losing oneself in the twists and turns while maintaining a continuum opens up the possibility of making space for complex relations, those that are non-frontal, non-vertical, non-binary. It opens the possibility of adding options indefinitely, a ‘what if’ that becomes a body in a chained way. At the end of this practice, I propose to twist the experience and place the research as an object of study in itself, capable of being transformed by making its relations more complex.
“We artists do not make work. We invent practices. Centuries of exploitation have fetishized and commodified our activity and alienized our subjectivities to culture and market’s power devises. The artwork is secondary to the artistic practice we do. What we do is invent sensitive practices. These practices are ways of use and experimentation protocols concerning space, time, body organs, movement, perception. As an effect of these uses, we artists and public or artists not yet self-perceived as such, compose affections and unprecedented concepts. The work only matters as an archive of the future and as a material support for the perceptual experience of the present.” (Lang, 2022: 6)
We are always in relation. Research is always in relation and that implies the potential for transformation and change. To venture to spiral the terms and habits with which we begin our work is to allow ourselves to be touched by unexpected relations with the potential to disorganise the known order, which in the first place is bodily, in order to anchor different experiences, and with them, other ways of perceiving and thinking. This gesture, like that of the spiral, is infinite.
(Extract from: Vilar, L. 2024, ACCOMPANYING ARTISTIC RESEARCH PROCESSES. Composing a collective archive. SCHULE@Im_flieger 2024. p.24-25)
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Anita Kaya (AT) born 1961, is a freelance choreographer, performer and curator living in Vienna. Under the label OYA-Produktion (1988-2005) she created dance productions, site-specific performances, performative installations and dance videos that were presented internationally. In 2000, she initiated the artists for artists initiative Im_flieger – research laboratory for dance, performance and transmedia art (Concept funding from the City of Vienna 2022-25). In artistic direction and in collaboration with numerous artists and theoreticians, she develops new concepts and structures of artistic cooperation and mentoring programmes: e. g. the European residency programme for young choreographers TERRAINS FERTILES 05 (Innovation Prize 2005 of IG-Kultur Vienna). She is engaged with the body as a reservoir of individual and collective memory, and its potential for communication with the environment, the human and more than human: e. g. Translocations / One-to-One Performance located at the intersection of history/trauma, archiving, installation and performance. 2023 she cooperates with Theatercombinat/ Claudia Bosse as performer/ choreographer in the production Bones & Stones. In 2019/20 she completed the university course “Curating in the Scenic Arts” at the University of Salzburg and Munich. She is co-editor and author of the publication VISCERAL FICTION – Im_flieger schreibt Geschichte/s – 20 Jahre Künstler:innen für Künstler:innen. 2021, monocrom. www.imflieger.net, www.stffwchsl.net
Josefina Zuain (AR) is a dancer, writer, and art historian. She has studied modern techniques (Humphrey Technique), composition, and improvisation through somatic techniques (Feldenkrais, Eutony), stretching, and ballet for biomechanics (Gurquel Technique), among others. She has trained in Twerk and Sexy Style, Bounce, and Heels techniques in Madrid, Salamanca, Rome, and other cities. She coordinates writing workshops for artists and works as a consultant on projects related to art and related fields. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Buenos Aires and in 2019 successfully completed her master’s degree in advanced studies in Art History at the University of Salamanca. She is currently developing her doctoral research at the University of Salamanca, examining historical dance documents from the medieval era alongside moral judgments and discourses that criticize Twerk. Her research explores the arguments used to justify the persecution of certain ways of dancing. She is the editorial director and creator of 2da En Papel Editora, a publishing house specializing in the dissemination, creation and distribution of content related to dance. In 2009, she created cuadernosdedanza.com.ar ISSN 22508708, a virtual platform that stores 14 years of writing about, on and from dance in archive format. @segundaenpapel, @josefina.zuain
Laura Vilar (ES/AT) is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and researcher, based in Vienna and Barcelona. She has a PhD degree from the Philosophy department at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with an artistic research trough dance(s). She is Co-directing nunArt – artistic research center in Barcelona. She is teacher at the dance pedagogic department at the Institut del Teatre of Barcelona. She has been director of the Professional Training at Area Barcelona dance school from 2017 to 2021. She has taught nationally and internationally at several art centers such as: Bad Lemond’s profi training Münich, CODARTS Rotterdam, Saineb dance co Istanbul, Linz Anton Bruckner University, in Spain: Cobosmika seeds, nunArt Barcelona, Area, Varium, La Caldera; Back Pulver feedback training Vienna, Im_flieger Vienna, among others. She has danced in several companies as: Compagnie Taffanel based in Montpellier (2003-2010), Cobosmika company / Russell Maliphant (2006-2013) toured internationally, Hermanas de Castro, Trànsit (2000-2001), La Inconnexa 2002-2003, Lanònima Imperial (2004), Comediants, Salvatge cor (2006-2008) or Dance Theatre of Ireland (2010), a. o. Her latest works as a choreographer: Tentativas de (des)aparición (2022), #quéhayenelmundo (2021), Voyager (2019-2020), Sanjiao (2017). www.lauravilarblog.wordpress.com www.nunartbcn.com
Luigi Guerrieri (IT/AT) is a performance artist with a background in anthropology based in Vienna. His work focuses on the meeting point between movement, improvisation, and storytelling, combining academic, artistic and physical research. Luigi often questions strong enfleshed cultural concepts such as hegemonic masculinity or the dictatorship of well-being in FLOWERS. He loves to obsessively repeat common sayings like “son of a bitch” in DEINE MUTTER and to literally apply daily expressions like “to jump for joy” in BOUNCING JUMPING. Guerrieri’s ‘autoethnographic’ monologue POOR GUY humorously and light-heartedly performs the double-edged nature of self-discovery and self-promotion – ‘a narcissistic project that beats a narcissistic world at its own game.’ His works have been presented in venues as WUK Performing Arts, Theater am Werk or Schauspielhaus Wien/Impulstanz. Luigi takes care of his kids, sometimes writes a Blog, from time to time publishes short video-performances on Instagram and TikTok and occasionally works as a cook. www.luigiguerrieri.com