momentum IX: ‘How to move as bodies on the edge?’ A conversation with Petra Kuppers on scars, performance and disability culture

‘How to move as bodies on the edge?’ is the ninth episode of VestAndPage’s momentum series, offering crucial insights into how to approach and think about performance-making in a time torn by inequalities, exclusion and global political extremes. Here, artist and writer Andrea Pagnes engages with Petra Kuppers, a leading figure in performance studies and an internationally renowned disability culture activist and community performance artist, to explore how performance operates within disability culture today: as resistance, ritual and co-created presence. They reflect on what it means to perform without reproducing ableist norms and on how performance offers alternatives that help craft new spaces where people with disabilities, neurodivergences and chronic illnesses are not only visible but also central. In the conversation, Kuppers draws on her long-standing interdisciplinary art practice and research, integrating methods from disability culture, performance art, dance, somatics, community art and speculative poetics to envision more socially just futures. Welcome to the momentum of summer 2026. The video recording of this interview is available at https://youtu.be/3f5UjL5w7hU.