Droppin' Science Hip Hop Conference 2024

In May 2024, i was invited for a keynote panel about "Breaking and the Olympis" within the DROPPIN’ SCIENCE: Hip Hop Ciphering and Deciphering in Cork, Ireland.  

With Mary Fogarty, Imani Kai Johnson, Tobi Omoteso, myself and morderated by Jason Ng, we discussed the inclusion of Breaking in the Olympic Games 2024.

Keynote Panel "Breaking and the Olympics" Cork, 2024

The international hip hop conference, organised by the ERC CIPHER Team in collaboration with University College Cork’s Centre for Arts Research and Practice, was an amaizing meeting of hiphop practicioners and scholars from all around the world, and at the same time the seventh annual Meeting of the European HipHop Studies Network. 

Additionally, I presented my lecture-format "Dialogic Movement, Dialogic Chaos", that works with the cultural tradition of call&response and discovers its role in Breaking, as well as the disruption of the academic space when using call&response as guiding principle for a lecture. 

Through call&response, i created a "lecture game" that lets go of hirarchical setups and set roles in academic space and looks for the participation and interaction of every person in the room. My "leading principle" is the quote of the dancer, choreographer and dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild, who states that

„In the call-and-response interaction, it can be difficult to tell who is leading and who is following. In fact, the concepts of ‚lead‘ and ‚follow‘ lose much of the hierarchical connotations attached to them by traditional Europeanist usage [...] Call-and-response implies that every part of the community is important to its continuity and richness, that every one has a voice and, through it, the power to act, enact and react“ (Gottschild 1998, 143-144).

The conference was one of the best I attended so far, with a range of topics, deep and thriving discussions, and great exchanges between scholars, artists and practicioners who love the culture of hiphop.

Source: Gottschild, B. D. (1998). Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance. Dance and Other Contexts (2. Aufl.). Westport, Conneticut: Praeger.