postgraduate program, research center

2012 BLOCK II

1 May-31 July 2012

Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
Carlotta Scioldo
Catherine (Clé) Lé
Elise Goldstein
Elizabeth Ward
Fleur Ordoukhani
Helena Dietrich
Ive Leemans
Jaime Llopis
Luanda Casella
Lucie Eidenbenz
Oshin Albrecht
Simon Loeffler
Veridiana Zurita

Partners

PAF Performance Art Forum
Nadine
De Singel

Contributors for workshops

Anja Steglich
Ant Hampton
Caroline Daish
Elizabeth Ward
Elke Van Campenhout
Julie Pfleiderer
Nicolas Galeazzi
Paz Rojo
Vladimir Miller

Coordinators a.pass

Bart Van den Eynde
Elke van Campenhout

Mentors

Ana Hoffner
Nicolas Galeazzi
Peter Stamer
Pierre Rubio

07 – 11 / 05 & 14 – 18 / 05 / 2012

‘HIGHER PERFORMANCE’
workshop by Nicolas Galeazzi & Elizabeth Ward

The current economic crisis is not only a result of some major failures in speculating practices, it is the outbreak of the constant crisis inherent to the system. Since many years a precarious and dangerous economic climate has been created through the exploitation of the society and the environment in the believe in constant growth and a policy relying on the infinite creation of money for some through the creation of infinite debt for the majority.
The current cuts of public funding and the absence of interesting jobs are just some visible signs of the consequences of governmental reaction towards the 2008 crisis. Arts all over Europe are now more concretely targeted for cuts then ever in the last 40 years.
In this climate, artists are forced to rethink their relationship to economics. We have to leave our triple position as critiques, prototypes and profiteers of the system, and rethink our relation to the protection through governmental funding. This can not be done by making art in a more ‘economic’ way.
This workshop rather launches a discussion about the repositioning of the economic field towards the arts by “occupying” and appropriating the “economics” and its terminology and fill it with new practices and new meaning. We will occupy the vocabularies, the practices and the appearance of the economy and to open it to a wider spectrum of life than just a financial success. For that we have to ask, what do we expect from future life? What is it what we really are ‘dealing’, ‘trading’ with? What is our currency? What kind of an economy could we establish out of an artistic (researching) practice which will make a real difference?
In order to compare and relate the differing understandings of ‘performance’ in a practical and discursive way, we will setup a lab where artistic performances and economic performances should coexist, contradict and corrupt each other.

21-25 / 05 / 2012

‘SEEING SOUND’
two workshops by Julie Pfleiderer and Ant Hampton

‘Soundwalk’
German director Julie Pfleiderer and performance artist Caroline Daish have invited guest artists, including David Helbich, Joanna Baillie & Paul Craenen for the May Soundlab “Seeing Sound”. The idea is to create 10 days around Sound and Performance in the context of Soundwalks and inviting an expansive interpretation of the form ‘Soundwalk’.
‘Fantasy Intervention’
“Fantasy Intervention” is a workshop by Ant Hampton on imagination and writing for site-specific theatre and live urban interventions. With a focus on observation imagination and writing and involving walks in the city, discussion, film and photography the workshop culminates with a series of presentations.

28 / 05 – 01 / 06 / 2012

‘COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH’
a.pass Basics workshop by Elke Van Campenhout

Every block, a.pass organizes some ‘B-workshops’: workshops that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a working environment. Every B-workshop is accompanied by a reader of texts and information that will be the starting point for discussion and a platform for (re)-thinking the a.pass working environment. In the upcoming blocks we will gather around topics like ‘collaboration’, ‘self-organization’, ‘tools, cases and other methodologies for artistic research’, ‘feedback and critique’, ‘collaborative work spaces’, ‘transdisciplinary research practices’, ‘What is political about research?’, ‘Who’s afraid of the Institute?’, etc…
This first B-workshop on ‘collaboration and collaborative learning’ opens up the field of collaborative practices as ‘open collectives’, as it grew in the artistic practices of the last 10-15 years. We try to get a grip on the social, political, economic and aesthetic context that has produced this proclivity for communal working, and look at some interesting examples of collaborative research projects.

25 – 29 / 06 / 2012

“WHATEVER MOVING LIKE THIS”
workshop by Paz Rojo

How could we experience the question “what, why, who, where, what for, how we live the tension between individuation and the necessity of collectivity?” What are the conditions that make WE a problem to sustain rather than a problem to solve? How can we address such a question assuming that the sites where the sensible, the corporeal and unspeakable are the battlefield where to challenge our existence? How could we do so without addressing pre-existent models and protocols? Could we experience (the) body as the very battlefield where the “somatic” prime on the “cognitive” where “creation” prime on the “creative” where “tacit experience” primes over “negotiation and responsibility” and where softness, empathy and dispersion prime over self-representation, self-management and self-control? What does being “democratically in contact means today” as a performative and experienciable gesture?
This workshop takes place within the framework “C O R E O G R A F X S”, an investigation that departs from a series of choreographic cultures that emerged over the 70´s in NY, which sought to incorporate the collective daily life through the body. From this context “C O R E O G R A F X S” studies some of the concepts that defined these cultures and, in turn, questions what they mean in the current market democracies and in relation to the triangle brand-body-work.

02 – 06 / 07 / 2012

‘FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE‘
a.pass Basics workshop by Vladimir Miller & Elke Van Campenhout

We want to address the topic of feedback. Since a.pass is a shared environment, we depend a lot on each other as sparring partners in our researches. Often the work is presented within a group and the quality of the feedback is lacking in precision, understanding or communicative strength. What is important in giving or receiving feedback is that both positions are clarified: what position do I speak out of? what kind of feedback would be useful for my research?
In this workshop we try to construct very diverse feedback techniques: spoken critique, non-negotiated critique, direct feedback, indirect feedback, written, walking, one-on-one or transformative feedback.
We refer also back to some basic texts on art critique and feedback systems.

13 – 22 / 07 / 2012

‘THE WALK’
workshop on location by dr. Anja Steglich & Elke Van Campenhout

The Walk is a ten day workshop on location, focussing on two main questions:
How to turn walking into a qualitative tool for artistic research? and How to create a shared landscape through the individual investigation of connecting territories?
During the Walk we will address these questions out of the proposals of the individual researchers, that will investigate a limited domain and devise a walk that can later be picked by others. Important in this construction is the decisions made on the level of parameters: what do I consider (out of my research) to be important ‘markers’ of the walking experience: fe. sound, shapes, roads, attitude of walking, … Throughout the ten days we try to come back to the PAF ‘headquarters’ with enough information to turn our proposals and experiences into a shared map of the environment, and add the instructions, tasks and guidelines into a useable walking guide for others.
What is important here that these guidelines are both addressing the walk as a method for artistic research and the walk as an investigative tool to discover the landscape as a ‘narrative’.
The main guest on this journey is dr. Anja Steglich, who is currently working on two linked themes: the `telling landscapes´ and the ‘landscape choreography’.