Gaia Vimercati

Queering the Leadership in circus: what do we need? What can we achieve?

The keynote will explore the possibilities given by the interpretation of leadership as a collective process rather than an individual skillset. Taking on the keywords of responsibility, agency and dissident friendships, the keynote will try to deconstruct the dominant narrations of leadership based on (individual) success and self-assertion. Can we conceive practices of growth based on negotiation and rest? What do we hope for future leaders in circus? Gaia will shed light on the importance of feminist forms of leadership in order to create and maintain safer spaces for circus.

About the speaker

Gaia Vimercati is an independent researcher and cultural project manager of Quattrox4, a contemporary circus centre in Milan. She received a MA in Comparative Literature at Trinity College Dublin (2015). She created CENSIMENTO CIRCO ITALIA, the first map of circus companies in Italy (2016). She published 'Chaplin, Brecht, Fo: toward a concept of epic clowning' in the book 360° CIRCUS. CULTURE. MEANING. PRACTICE edited by Franziska Trapp (2023) and several contributions about circus for magazines and journals. In 2021 she participated in a residency program at La Biennale di Venezia, where she investigated Monk and Mnouchkine’s work in the La Biennale Archives together with dramaturg Federico Bellini. Since 2021 she is the curator of LA PAROLA AI CORPI, a hybrid residency for 7 circus artists aimed at deconstructing the binary relations between theory and practice in circus. She took part in EASTAP (2020, 2022), CaIO (2021, 2024) and BIAC (2021).