This is the third episode of the second season of the LACE Symposium podcast, the official podcast of the LACE Symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices. In this episode, pavleheidler (they/them) (ADHD-autism)—artist, body worker, and curator of the LACE Symposium—talks to Kerstin Kussmaul (she/her). Kerstin is a dance researcher and artist whose work focuses on somatics and embodiment. Her most recent work, the matter of fascia, emerged from this research and can be accessed at www.fasciamatters.info. Kerstin collaborated with artists such as Jan Burkhardt, Lizz Roman, Nita Little, and the collective SOMEX (Sabina Holzer, Mariella Greil, maRia Probst, Sylvia Scheidl, among others), as well as many further collaborators from dance and somatic practices. She is the director of the Embodied Myoreflex Practitioner training program, developed in collaboration with Dr Mosetter (Konstanz) and ImPulsTanz. Parts of the training take place at Artis Umbria, which she is developing as an ecosomatic site for movement and non-doing. Kerstin Kussmaul is the founder of IDOCDE and its associated symposium, now known as the LACE Symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices. You can read the origin story of the LACE Symposium here. In this episode, pav and Kerstin talk about absence, presence, and agential cuts, as they reflect on Kerstin’s interest in the nature of things. What is a thing? What is not a thing? And how do the two relate to one another? pav asks about gardening, which becomes a metaphorical bridge linking different fields of interests explored in this conversation. What happens if I compare soil to the extracellular matrix? Did observing your garden inform the way you’re able to observe the people you work with? and, as a manual therapist, the people you touch? How did gardening inform the way you’re able to work with time, to know time? and its impact on growth and healing? and how do you think these days about the what separates and what merges art, academia, and activism? In the promotional image, Kerstin is holding a T-shirt they wore to the Venice Biennale in protest of the removal of Gabrielle Goliath’s work from the South African pavilion over—according to the Guardian—”its supposedly ‘highly divisive’ tribute to a Palestinian poet” Heba Abunada. Printed on the back of the T-shirt—in the original Arabic and English translation—is an excerpt of a poem written by Heba Abunada. Goliath’s contribution to the South African pavilion, Elegy, was to celebrate the lives of a number of women, including Heba Abunada, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza, in October 2023. Elegy was put up as an independent exhibition in Venice, at Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, and will remain on display until July 31st . Kerstin’s contribution to LACE #4: Fractalising Touch, entitled What Is Not A Thing (Fascial Ontologies of the Interstitial) on the 31st of July, a Friday, at 2.30PM. The LACE Symposium is curated by Deirdre Morris (she/they), Sylvia Scheidl (she/her), and pavleheidler (they/them). LACE #4 is made in partnership with PART International Residency Austria, and ImPulsTanz — Vienna International Dance Festival! Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or OeAD-GmbH. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. www.lacesymposium.com #ImPulsTanz2026 #impulstanzfestival #artisticresearch #lacesymposium This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lacesymposium.substack.com
