Curator, art historian, and dramaturg, Lou Forster works at the intersection of dance and human sciences.
His interest in dance and performance grows since 2010. He writes about Alain Buffard, the Encyclopédie de la Parole, Anna Halprin, Franck Leibovici, Rabih Mroué, Steve Paxton, Walid Raad, Yvonne Rainer, Claudia Triozzi, among others, for A prior, Le journal des Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Art 21, and joins the editorial bord of the latter from 2012 to 2013. From this first experience as an art critic, he wishes to deepen his knowledge about choreographic practices and diversify the way to account for it.
During these early years, he also develops his work as a curator. He assists Pierre Bal-Blanc for The Living Currency in 2013 and takes part to documenta 14 as a curatorial assistant for the projects about Cornelius Cardew, André du Colombier, Anna Harplin, El Hadji Sy, and Yianni Christou, among others. He also collaborates with W, as freelance researcher, Thiago Granato, as dramaturg, and Gerard and Kelly, as performer.
In 2014, he initiates an ambitious project about the choreographer Lucinda Childs. He curates the first retrospective exhibition about her work, Lucinda Childs, Nothing Personal (1963-1989), at the Centre National de la Danse and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, during the Festival d’Automne à Paris in 2016, and at the Centre Chorégraphique and the Scène Nationale d’Orléan in 2018. He supports the donation of the choreographers’ papers at the Centre National de la Danse, and he is currently writing his dissertation at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences under the supervision of Béatrice Fraenkel and Carrie Lambert-Beatty (Harvard University). He proposes an historical anthropology of her dance company attentive to the crafts and technics allowing the embodiment of minimalism.
Since 2018, his knowledge about dance benefits from the research program “Chorégraphie. Écriture et dessin, signe et image dans les processus de creation et de transmission chorégraphique” of the National Institute of Art History where he works as PhD fellow. He also graduated from Kinetography Laban at the Conservatoire de Paris in 2020.
In parallel of his individual researches, he founded abd with Lenio Kaklea in 2010 to develop projects that explore the intersection of dance, research and critical theory. He works as the dramaturge for Fluctuat nec Mergitur (2010), Arranged by Date (2012), Margin Release (2015), and part take to Iris, Alexandra, Katerina, Mariela et moi (2016) at the festival DansFabrik, Quartz-Scène Nationale de Brest.
In 2017, Praticial Encyclopeadia is a turning point in their collaboration. In this project, dance becomes a tool to explore the practices of 600 inhabitants in six different European cities. Following this survey, they write Encyclopédie pratique, Portraits d’Aubervilliers (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and abd, Aubervilliers and Paris, 2017) and Practical Encyclopaedia, Detours (Les presses du réel and abd, Dijon and Paris, 2020).
Artistic direction: Lou Forster
louforster@abd-contents.com