STIFF NECKS COLLECTIVE

Stiff Necks is an artistic collective formed in 2024, operating across choreography, performance art, visual practices, writing and sound; comprised of Eleni Vasilonikolou (she/her), Joana Cunha Pinto (they/she) and zoe antypa (they/she).

We are interested in challenging dominant individualistic narratives and creating space for alternative modes of relation to emerge - between bodies, theories and the structures we inhabit. We embrace difference in tools and aesthetics, seeking intersections rather than uniformity.
The relationship between art and everyday life is central to our practice, as we understand the two to be inseparable. Performance, therefore, becomes a space where we experiment, explore, and negotiate different possibilities of being together. In this sense, we are committed to artistic processes that are socially informed. For us, performance is a site where imagination is actualized, interconnection is practiced, and both desired and existing realities are negotiated.

FRIENDSHIP AS A TRANSIDIVIDUAL FIELD

IMAGINATIVE PERFORMANCE AS METHOD

PERFORMING GIFTS

DIGITAL COLLAGES

This map situates our work within a constellation of ideas and practices that inform its development. It brings together systems thinking, feminist epistemology, relational ontology, performance practices, and transindividual theory as overlapping terrains rather than separate disciplines.
The diagram visualizes proximity, influence, and resonance. Some connections are methodological, others conceptual or affective. What matters is not origin, but entanglement.
This is an attempt to make visible the field in which our practice moves, a relational structure that remains dynamic, unfinished, and open.