Anani Dodji Sanouvi
Multi-Translation
Block seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
2 weekends, Saturdays/Sundays, 13.12./14.12. and 20.12./21.12.2025, each 10-17 h, Hardenbergstraße 33, room 110

Multi-Translation is a transcultural, fluid territory of investigation, training, creation, and performing resilience and regeneration. Grounded in Ewe epistemology and queer strategies, it fosters critical reflection on how we perceive, relate to, and generate knowledge, nurturing cognitive and somatic capacities in conversation with extra-human dimensions of knowing. As a creative pedagogy and research practice, it encourages participants to shift away from logocentric and linear thinking, interweaving performative and sensorial dimensions through a visceral, physically and mentally intense experience. With a view of pedagogy as a political practice, it engages knowledge systems and cultures that sustain non-anthropocentric sensibilities – functioning as a trans-subjective way of sensing and transiting between worlds. Each module proposes sets of practices of varying complexity, informed by specificities and principles from embodied rhythmic knowledge of various African ethnicities, intertwined with contemporary creation. These are grounded not in choreographic premises but in performative, relational foundations activated through primarily sensory exercises. Participants develop a movement vocabulary from relational/sensorial experience and memory, while addressing pre-colonial epistemologies and how their technicities respond to contemporary urgencies – expanding perception and countering colonial imprints on creation.

Literature:
Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Regular and active participation. Interest in the multiple fields of cultural studies in connection with performance and embodied knowledge.

Anani Sanouvi is a transmedia and dance creator, researcher, and educator who investigates the epistemological shuffling between his Ewé culture and contemporary life through transcultural and transdisciplinary intersections. He has received international recognition as a laureate of UNESCO, Africa Center, Sacatar Institute, and the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Award. His work has been presented in various venues worlwide. With his “Multi-Translation” pedagogy and his “Agama-Fo” method, he has taught courses and workshops at various universities, dance and theater companies in several countries. He holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts-Dance from Bennington College. In addition, he has participated in significant conferences, including “Colonialism' Remembrance Concept for Berlin” (2024) at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). He is currently a researcher at the Graduate School (BAS/UDK).