In 2025, choreographer Philippe Blanchard, dramaturg Maika Knoblich, and Skånes Dansteater initiated an ongoing exploratory project on how performing arts practitioners can take a more active and responsible role in addressing the ecological crisis. In this panel discussion, they invite the audience to jointly explore what art can communicate and offer in times of crisis that other disciplines may not. The discussion will be held in English.

In a time when the climate crisis is accelerating, their questions move beyond emissions data toward a critical reflection on the ethical dimensions of our methods, the infrastructures that support them, and the symbolic economies within which they circulate. In this context, they are developing a dance work based on philosopher Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity. In their research, they ask: Can we imagine artistic practices that embody such an ethics—practices that do not seek to extract or explain, but to relate, resonate, and respond?

Participants: Philippe Blanchard (FR), lecturer, educator, curator and artist working with sustainable methodologies in performative practice; Max Liljefors, Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at Lund University; Lucy Smalley, project manager at KOAS, Malmö Konsthall.

Moderator: Maika Knoblich (DE), performance artist, choreographer, and lighting designer.

The conversation is part of the democracy week “Malmö Möts”. Read more here.