The Jaguar Talks (LectureSeries)

The School of the Jaguar is an attempt at decolonizing contemporary arts and culture, by introducing critical perspectives from the fields of anthropology, dance history, philosophy, and contempo-traditional indigenous knowledge . The latter encompassing not only contemporary shamanism but also oral transmitted knowledge, social knowledge, knowledge about the body, about healing, about plants, about perception, and also diplomatic knowledge applied to the relationships with other beings.

The school is an invitation to share an artworld. A place where different forms of knowledge can enter into dialogue without the habitual hierarchies between them, exploring a variety of formats in which to operate, including the performative, the experiential, the discursive and the visual.

The Jaguar Talks are also an exercise to bring these forms of knowledge into new connections. The main interest lyes in the creolizing potential of these conversations. The members of the school come from very different contexts: Two are Wixarika shamans and political leaders, two are decolonial dancer / choreographers together with an anthropologist and a dance theorist, share ideas about the notion of “sacred land”, healing as a form of activism, the decolonization of the senses, about textiles and the weaving of social fabrics, about indigenous contemporaneity and ritual art, about animals, humans and plants, and about the theatre as a space of resistance.

With Fabian Barba, Nicole Haitzinger, Johannes Neurath, Juan José Katira Ramirez, and Anja Veirman.

This lecture series was organised in collaboration with the KU Leuven Culture Office.