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Cecilia Lagerström

Professor

Performing Arts
Mail
cecilia.lagerstrom@hsm.gu.se
Visiting address
Eklandagatan 86
41259 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 210
Göteborg

About Cecilia Lagerström

Cecilia Lagerström is a director, researcher and professor of Performance practices at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. Cecilia has a background in laboratory theatre and performance studies (PhD 2003) and she has been directing performance work in theatres and other venues since 1993. Since 2005 she has been active in the development of artistic research in the field of the theater in Sweden. Her practice is moving between theater (often movement-based), performance art and artistic research.

During 2013-16 Cecilia was conducting the project GångART together with actress and tight rope artist Helena Kågemark on walking in urban spaces where techniques and strategies from the theatre were applied on walking actions in the city of Gothenburg. The project was presented in various forums and formats in collaboration with museums, galleries, art spaces and urban locations. The book Konsten att gå: övningar i uppmärksamt gående (The Art of Walking: Exercises in Attentive Walking) was published by Gidlunds in 2019. During 2017-19 Cecilia was directing a series of performance projects that investigated complex dramaturgy in relation to movement-based and cross-disciplinary theater work and socially engaged issues (Suffering: On our perception of pain, Xenophobia and Nuckan: Epilogen with the artist collective Alkemisterna). Since 2020 Cecilia is engaged in the international collaboration The Kraken Skool of Finance, which examines the Nordic countries involvement in the transatlantic slave trade with the Caribbean, through performance, action and game-play. She is preparing a new project on the colonial sugar trade in Gothenburg studied through site-specific artistic investigations. Part of this is conducted within the research platform Hidden Sites, a collaboration between the Gothenburg City Museum and the Center for Critical Cultural Heritage Studies (GU): https://goteborgsstadsmuseum.se/besok-oss/lilla-anggarden/forskning-lilla-anggarden/hidden-sites- lilla-anggarden /

At the academy, Cecilia is head of subject for research and postgraduate education in Performance practices, she supervises and teaches doctoral students and master's students.

Cecilia is regularly commissioned as a guest teacher and workshop leader, but also as an opponent, committee member and adviser in research contexts in different countries. She is active in several international research networks and artist communities. Cecilia’s research interests include performance with a focus on site-creating and site-critical activities, physical performance training connected to directing and dramaturgy, decolonial aspects on place and body, performative writing and walking as art.