postgraduate program, research center
2010 BLOCK III
1 September-30 November 2010
Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program
Abhilash Ningappa
Adva Zakai
Alessandra Coppola
David Zagari
Doris Stelzer
Einat Tuchman
Esther Francis
Iris Bouche
Katrin Lohmann
Manne Granqvist
Manon Avermaete
Margareth Kaserer
Michiel Reynaert
Philip Janssens
Philippe Severyns
Rodolphe Coster
Stephen Bain
Sven Goyvaerts
Timothy Segers
Research End Presentations
Agnese Cornelio
Ana Casimiro
Charlotte Bouckaert
Heike Langsdorf
Iuliana Varodi
Marcelo Mardones
Maria Lucia Correia
Partners
Theaterfestival 2010
Thematics (Les Bains, Brussels)
Master in Choreography (Amsterdam)
Campo
RITS
De Singel
Contributors for workshops
Anette Baldauf
Bart Van den Eynde
Christian Rizzo
Elke Van Campenhout
Epifania Amoo-Adare
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Janez Janša
Jeremy Wade
Laurent Liefooghe
Lilia Mestre
Sara Manente
Sven Goyvaerts
Coordinators a.pass
Bart Van den Eynde
Elke van Campenhout
Mentors
Anette Baldauf
Laurent Liefooghe
Nicolas Galeazzi
Pierre Rubio
30 / 08 – 03 / 09 / 2010
‘DISCUSSION & REFLECTION’
workshop of shared critique by a.pass in collaboration with Theaterfestival 2010
During the Theaterfestival, a.pass-participants work together with a group of outsiders on a workshop of shared critique: we go and see a series of performances at the Theaterfestival (a yearly festival that selects performances that have been of particular importance to the development of the performance arts in Flandres/Belgium in the past year).
Next to this we selected some texts to feed the discussion, that work out some of the themes/aesthetic principles/dramaturgical choices made in these specific performances to feed the discussion.
04-09 / 09 / 2010
‘LaZone BRUSSELS’
project by apass Research Center, Thematics (Bains, Brussels) and Master of Choreography (Amsterdam)
LaZone is both the second stage in the Critical Hope research by Elke van Campenhout within a.rc (a.pass research centre) and the topic for the 2 month residency Thematics at workspace Bains Connective in Brussels. For the opening week of the projects we share our space with the students of the Master of Choreography in Amsterdam to work on defining the boundaries of LaZone: this in-between place that falls out of our understanding of the different ‘regimes of the sensible/experientiable’ (Jacques Rancière) that define our daily life. In other words: we lead our lives within different zones of understanding, speaking and behaving. What I can see and experience, what I can say and express, is dependent on the particular zone I am moving in at that particular moment (the political zone, the personal, the juridical, the virtual etc…).
LaZone is trying to construct a space-in-between these zones: the place where behavior, speech and movement have not been negotiated yet, the place where misunderstanding is the leading principle of communication, the environment that drives our hospitality principles to their breaking point, showing us simultaneously the impotence and the potential of our cosmopolitan/transcultural hopes and desires.
LaZone is a workshop in which three groups (Thematics artists, a.pass participants, MA Choreography) share the same space for one week. During that week LaZone will be created on different levels: the interpersonal level of hospitality and the sharing of theory and practice, and the larger level of the society at large, critically examining the boundaries of our democratic pretentions and preconceptions. Everyone can bring a ‘gift’ to LaZone: a practice, a piece of knowledge, an insight or an invitation you want to extend to the rest of the group. The workshop will create itself out of the proposals of everyone, on the basis of equality and interest, with three or four activities running at the same time, allowing every participant to develop a personal trajectory throughout the week.
13-18 / 09 / 2010
‘WORKSHOPS WITH GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA AND JANESZ JANSA’
Two parallel workshops by a.pt in collaboration with Campo and RITS
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
In this specific physical workshop, Guillermo Gómez-Peña will attempt to create a temporary community of rebel artists, aiming to find new modes of being and discover other ways of relating to their own body. During the workshop the following questions will prove to be crucial: which borders do we wish to cross? Why? Which borders are harder to cross, both in the workshop and in our personal lives?
Janez Janša
In this workshop, intellectual challenge and debate will be actively encouraged, triggering an entire series of questions: What is real? What is mediated? How do identity and politics relate to the status of an object of art?
Each day of the Summer School will be concluded by an evening programme consisting of meetings, lectures, screenings, debates and artistic interventions. The evening guest artists have all collaborated on the research topic ‘the performance as document – the document as performance’ and include, among others, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Sarah Vanagt and Carina Molier.
19-26 / 09 / 2010
‘LaZone BERLIN’
project by apass Research Center and Thematics (Les Bains, Brussels)
A group of artistic field researchers find themselves on unknown territory: LaZone is a place where the spatial rules of behavior have stopped to make sense. It is an environment that has no function, no meaning, no recognizable orientation points. It is a transit area, a stretch of land that falls out of our rule-giving grid of common sense, of law-giving, of understanding and of commonly accepted behavior. LaZone is the space of immigrants, of avatars and aliens, of dislocated complex identities, of lost cases and derailed causes. It is a place that has to define itself through the practice, through the use, through the re-negotiation of the rules of encounter and hospitality.
During one week a group of immigrants from a.pt (advanced performance training) and Thematics (research project of the workspace Bains Connective in Brussels) will settle down at Fabrikationen, and try to make sense of their role and interaction with the locals. The results of their work will be presented on the 24th. Their Political Party might also infiltrate at the 25th’s end party.
20-24 / 09 / 2010
‘STORYBOARDING’
workshop by Jeremy Wade
In many ways performance is one big performed story board, an invisible text set of directions and nothing more. At the other hand story boarding it self is an art form. So how to use a story board to construct a performance and how to make a story board performative, how to blur the boundaries between story board and piece. Starting from a a written proposal minimum of three pages of each of the participants, story boards will be made, including an application for a grant with a budget of the project.
During the course of this exploration/composition workshop we will strive to facilitate the great blur through the investigation of numerous storyboarding techniques. We will also research a wide array of taboos, techniques and theories that help us get closer to an essential concern of composition and aesthetics which is the age-old question of… “What is a thing”? We look at a vast index of queer scores that shed some light on the circularity of aesthetics. We can make monsters out of these stagnant aesthetics and gain perspective on how to compose, obliterate, blur and layer our lovely things for an audience. We will find modes to clarify our concepts for the pre production and production phases of creation. We will work towards structuring and deconstructing our ideas, both material and ethereal.
Jeremy Wade is an American choreographer living and working in Berlin.
04-10 / 10 / 2010
‘THE GAZE 2.0’
workshop by Sven Goyvaerts
Theoretical & practical workshop where the social media and our desktops create the format for communication and knowledge exchange and are being used as tools for artistic creation. Central focus in the workshop is the capture / transformation / (re)routing of the gaze through social media. Featuring crash course in and experiments with social media and other software : Ustream.tv, Snapz Pro, Flickr, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, World of Warcraft, Second Life, Everytrail and Chatroulette.
The following topics will be discussed : MEDIA MIRROR (on identity), CYBER EYE CONTACT (on the look and the gaze), WELIVEINPUBLIC.COM (on narcissism), SECOND SKIN (on the avatar), THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA (on obscenity).
11-15 / 10 / 2010
‘PERFORMATIVE SPACE’
workshop by Laurent Liefooghe
Being interested in the negative & constrictive aspects of architecture (obstruction, representation, order) and the idea of ‘active’ architecture (defined by what it does instead of what it shows), Laurent Liefooghe takes an analogy between architecture and contemporary art performance as a departure to try to liberate architecture from its obsession with emblematic objects. For this workshop he wants to investigate the idea of the ‘performative space’. Departing from case studies, he wants to develop possible concepts of a ‘performative space’.
18-22 / 10 / 2010
‘BROODTHAERS & KAUFMAN’
workshop by Sara Manente
Starting point of this workshop by Sara Manente, former a.pass participant, are the is the investigation of the possible relation between Marcel Broodthaers and Andy Kaufman, two artists that broke rules in their fields, both provocative because acting on the limits of their roles and their positions in society, playing with meaning and expectations. A speculative game to see if a hint is to be found, as if by putting two things close to each other we can find similarities, intriguing associations that we couldn’t see before. The overall question is one of sameness and otherness. The research on “similarity” from the two points of view of perception (outside) and interpretation (inside).
25-30 / 10 / 2010
‘INTERFACE FICTIONS’
workshop by Lilia Mestre & Elke Van Campenhout
In this workshop we occupy for one week the gallery/shopping window of a new alternative performance gallery in Brussels. Working together within this space we try to develop working practices that project the gallery space on the outside world: gestures that communicate with the commuters, the neighbours, the occasional passers-by. By blurring the boundaries between living and working in the space, and by not retreating to recognizable artistic strategies, we try to break the rules of expectation, of recuperation and of communication of the arts. Every participants will try, in constant negotiation with the others, to develop practices that open up the activities from within to the viewer/participant outside. This can happen imagining the space to be what it is not: a shop, a restaurant, a library, a TV studio, a social centre, an immigrant office, etc…
As important as the inside/outside dialogue, will be the negotiation inside of the space: the overlayering of practices and imaginations of the space, the monsterly spaces that grow out of inbreeding, etc… Not only negotiating space, but also behavior, time, attitude, convictions and necessities.
01-12 / 11 / 2010
“THE 5 SENSES”
workshop by Bart Van den Eynde and Elke Van Campenhout
In this workshop we develop on the basis of texts and specialist talks a mapping of the 5 senses as a starting point for artistic thinking and practices. We include artistic practices like the ones of Lygia Clarke, Enrique Vargas, Peter Verhelst, Dries Verhoeven, f0am, Charo Calvo, etcetera… Each of the senses is the topic of 2 days.
15-19 / 11 : 2010
‘SPATIAL LITERACY’
workshop by Anette Baldauf & Epifania Amoo-Adare
What is space, what is the relationship between spatial conditions and power? How can we envision the transformation of space and the making of different spaces? The premise of this workshop is that a critical pedagogy on space, on the forces involved in the production and reproduction of space, is a necessary condition for any intervention in space. We propose to challenge widespread understandings of space as a structure that is given and fixed, in other words: a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We contrast this convention with an understanding of space as both, a manifestation as well as a vehicle of the productive relations of power. Following the equation “space = (social) product” we investigate spatial relations, the making of inclusion and exclusion, centrality versus marginality, legibility, difference and conflict. Framed as an exercise in “spatial literacy”, we discuss techniques of making sense of spatial relations, of making use and appropriating them.
22 / 11 / 2010
“LECTURE BY CHRISTIAN RIZZO”
presented by a.pass & De Singel
Choreographer Christian Rizzo will be working for a year with and in the buildings of deSingel. In the next block he will also create a workshop for a.pass. This is a first meeting with the artist where he reads texts with us that have been essential in his development as an artist. This lecture is a starting point to speak about different influences and important meetings in their carrier, and to show fragments of their work.
Christian Rizzo has been fashion designer, rock musician, then dancer and choreographer. In 1996 he created his own company L’Association Fragile. From 2003 he became artist in residence of the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Toulouse. Also in 2003 he received Le Grand Prix de la Critique.
