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performative publishing, postgraduate program

THE MEDIUM SCORE / Sina Seifee

ajayeb popup book
ajayeb popup book

 

There has been a shift in humanities scholarship:

(feminist science studies, the post humanities, the ecological humanities, animal studies, queer theory,) humanities scholars have represented their matters of care with an aesthetic (and therefore political) commitment to narrating stories with an emphasis on the relationality among agencies, forces, phenomena, and entities usually kept separate, in the background, or out of the story altogether

–> redistribution of agencies

political stake ==> aesthetic tactics

(the reading of ajayeb portraits) the global [and therefore ethical] consciousness (at the end of 12th century middle-south asia, “the east”)

 

situated perspective ==> storytelling

my interest in your work is to become skillful at reading with you our situated perspectives –> Zoumana’s, Hoda’s, Sina’s, ajayeb’s, apass’, etc.

 

http://ajayeb.net/bibli

#i am learning from Kohn that the survival is complicated, from Haraway that world works by excess and therefore filled with hope, with Sennett and Delanda a better account of socio-material history, from Ahmed a different understanding of psychoanalysis, from Barad poetry and argumentation, from Scher the effort needed to become interested, from Kenney that there is no need for a “standard language” to describe your interventions or to produce a body of knowledge about your matters of concern,

 

http://ajayeb.net/?q=hypertext

 

stories that collect stories [~= archive? my hypertext? a mouth full? –this specific type of stories are dangerously worlders, usually handed to the unquestioned mechanics of universalized taxonomy and 17th century rigs: encyclopedic homogeneous tables. they are the stuff of ajayeb]

(kinda mispronounced by Ekaterina > captured by Hoda > made found object by Sina)

 

stories that collect other stories:

1- archive ~–> sortability

2- translation ~–> linearity

3- dictionary ~–>

==> universality (that both these stories claim)

(my work on hypertext apass ajayeb graph rigs, is to deal within these conditions of storing/storying. i wasn’t interested in this some time ago: a shift in my interest)

 

http://ajayeb.net/?q=excess

 

excess : there is always more that we don’t know, what yet has to come; the world is constantly doing stuff; (X–> accelerationist manifesto, apocalyptic narratives, technophobic narcissistic stories, etc.)

(i am drawn to and by excess, and i am engaged in it: in my lectures, talkings, writings, and I take it up also visually in my drawings. my ajayeb hypertext search is contingent and opportunistic, and its searches are non-systematic.)

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12j9COM_uN9zlWhs9FQiFVdAoc_jMo0AMesYGCFfUPNY/edit?usp=drive_web

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QYJHc3uoDwucLAMp4oPBe19CETNk2Pa27ZhK51bAngk/edit?usp=drive_web

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_sl0QNWI-Iedg48Ao7-aXxW9wnnife0xUTpnCzgrfQU/edit?usp=drive_web

 

(as you have already noticed, my:)

Routines:

 

Practices:

 

Trajectory:

 

Productions:

 

Findings:

 

citation apparatus

to begin writing about ajayeb with the citational ‘avardeand ke…’ (…آورده‌اند که)

 

citation, an important characteristic of fables, is about relational histories

 

absence of definitive source (in my old childhood favorite radio show, by bring an endless list of fantastic source and bodies of lures) allows monsters to flourish and me the full range of my passionate crafts. ajaybe’s compelling mystery demands (from me) an unorthodox and omnivorous approach (hame-chiz-khar همه چیز خوار).

 

اما راویان اخبار و ناقلان آثار و طوطیان شکرشکن شیرین گفتار و خوشه چینان خرمن سخن دانی و صرافان سر بازار معانی و چابک سواران میدان دانش توسن خوش خرام سخن را بدینگونه به جولان در آورده اند که …

 

 

(with Despret‘s talking parrots)

parrots (shekar-shekan) (and philosophers) really like to control the exchange, to keep control of a conversation : their refusal to let another individual choose the topic of conversation

(parrots have) a pragmatic rather than a referential conception of language

[?am i also referential (=/= pragmatic) in my conception of language?]–> to teach a being to speak presupposes not only a tolerance of but also a profound interest in misunderstanding (this ‘profound interest in misunderstanding’ is precisely both cognitive and political aspect of what I am trying to bring forth) ~-> (how language-learning with animals can help us learn) restating and inverting the question of control? (Despret asks)

 

exchange can only be achieved when there is “a continuous reprisal of translations and betrayals of meaning” ==> understanding itself is compromised

 

“we”: constituted by the assemblage of different (animal-, nonhuman-, machine-, human-)beings equipped with an apparatus aimed at making them talk well

 

***

(one thing i am learning in apass is that) modeling ontologies involves articulating knowledge in ways that sometimes appears alien to that domain community

[asking with Bowker:] for my ontology-building to appear representative, does my community itself have to learn the goals and language of my knowledge modeling?

(the question i asked Sven: to tell others ‘which language one is using.’)

 

in a way, my work and interest in ajayeb is about:

-artists are using a lot of standards (of representations or materials)

-(out of) control standards

-there is a huge amount of standards i am depending on in my hypertext http://ajayeb.net/bibli

-international diplomacy depends on manufacturing and enforcement of standard vocabulary –> how much are we really in diplomatic businesses?

 

(it is about) organizing my memory

(it is about) that which comes to (my) mind, and “things” coming to mind(s) (of the people around me, and before me)

(it is about) the things I am told

__(these are perhaps other names of cognition, affect, memory, semiotics, history, inheritance, figuration, interface, thing-relations, huntology,)

__in our shared space where we let each other in the effect of our languages, I want to practice what comes to mind when I stand in front of you and your work, ask myself ‘what else’ comes to mind? in a sense, my project on ajayeb is that kind of training

 

also in apass i want to catch you in your acts

it is my privilege to recognize you (as…)

 

asking:

1- what do I know?

2- what am I told?

 

  1. the first question has no clear answer, what i know is not placed somewhere in me, it is always an articulated matter of ‘with’ or in interaction with, it is an always compound relation between matters, changes before i can grasp, knowing is done always with a figure or a thing, it includes all sorts of optics and technologies, (affect theory, media theory, epistemology, semiotics, ajayeb theory, Sadrian imaginal ontology, etc.)
  2. the response to the second question is also not clear, i can never be sure of what i am told, i don’t remember or even hear, what i am told is infolded in what i know

 

(when i started with my islam lecture series i was testing the waters of these two questions and the possibility of staying with them without freaking out of ambiguity, panicking into a meaning i don’t actually want to mean, or plotting an answer, plotting relevances)

 

is all about loving to tell you about what i am reading

 

to become a skilled listener : listening ~= response (=/= simply answering) –> (when we speak) we give other people talismans that are not (perfectly) clear to us—-we penetrate and unpack what someone doesn’t have the words clearly and response to what they intend

-these have nothing to do with “common understanding,” “make something work,”

 

cooperation is about getting deeper into something

 

(i am more interested in) conditions that more skills are required (and not the opposite)

 

(digital reading practices of) data mining =/= reading for the reactions of an implicit reader –> what the scholar of ajayeb (in the medieval) might have felt?

 

#on hypertext note:

 

i am becoming skilled at looking at my own notes:

 

{(1) what are the skills necessary [=/= tabula rasa (of the reader, of the audience) of the communo-capitalism’s standard of “user-interface”the strange idea that the interaction and reading doesn’t need or must not need learned-efforts or skills, that it should be “easy” and “effortless” –> fallacy of the unskilled listener.] to engage, interact, and get involved with the interface, data-set, grammar, and literacy of (my) reservoir? }–> ** let’s ask that question with every apparatus that engages us into desire, movement, articulation, …

skills –> to become literate in this particular way –> situated knowledge includes this situated literacy and skills of reading particular to the object of “text” (in that case how do i address my interest in the pervert reader? the skills of the unlearning*)

–> (2) this skills of (my) reservoir, what set of questions or problems equip me to address?

 

(Sennett’s) varzidan, varz, varzide, ورزیده

 

ok, again, the ‘skill’ question:

  1. –> what are the set of skills needed for my work?
  2. –> which problematics these skills equip me to address?
  3. –> can i (or should i) not know these problematics in advance?

 

as you can see almost all my crafts and tropes are related to social order, communities of concern and research, practices of response, interactions in collective life, etc. the meanings of community and knowledge

 

because of working on ajayeb, i am becoming sort of a “definitionist,” or “definitionologist” (not in the classical sense of concept theory)

a definition i give is a local abstraction, even when it is making boundaries for a dispersed or global concept, it is still a situated knowledge. that means it might be categorical but not applicable outside this particular niche of space and time, even when accessed in my hypertext (–> wht Sven’s music sounds different when he plays it in the group?)

 

(committed to the imperative of the Rig,) things not to do in the pop-up book:

 

*a non-ironic non-symbolic non-anamorphic non-palindromic work

 

 

my Rigs diagrams are swarms? -a multitude of different creative agents

ajayeb.net (how can it be:) not a website but a “para-site”

 

topos/topic of hypertext, spatial character of electronic writing

topic [from Greek ‘topos’: a place, in ancient rhetoric used to refer to commonplaces, conventional units, or methods of thought] exist in a writing space that is not only a visual surface but also a data structure in the computer –> Hypertext: “is not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places, spatially realized topics.” (Bolter < Hubert)

-in my hypertext, which writing materials, cognitive mappings, itineraries of reading, textual stability, loops and reductions are addressed?

 

 

the English (since World War II) –> (1) international lingua franca of high technology, (2) the language of computers

-in ajayeb.net the enforcement of standard spelling and grammar is weak or nonexistent

-the amount of linguistic replicators that circulate through my ajayeb hypertext are bound to a colloquial English, they are nevertheless “English”. but this English is being changed and adapted by my foreign use in multiple ways. Is this language really “English”?

-(towards) a flourishing of a neo-English + Farsi miniaturization of Eng

 

 

ajayeb‘s craft and undisciplined tradition can be called empirical, it is an example of an archival research (done by historian.) i want to highlight the aesthetic quality of this activity.

aesthetics: how elements are arranged together, how they are composed, how they are brought into relation in the space of a text (Kenney > Latour,Stengers, Bellacasa) (–> La Guin‘s bag, bundle) }–> rigs

**aesthetics are political because they do consequential relational work**

 

novels, poetry, feminist theory, speculative fiction, bestiary list categories –> these genres of composition gather together and stage their “matters of care” in ways that perform relations between things and teach their readers to inhabit sometimes unfamiliar, agential world. they are practices of sf worlding.

 

 

bottom-up writing

 

my ajayeb hypertext, what is there the specific law of putting together letters ([and atoms?] to produce a text)? That means the question of Greekness and syntax technology, and my reworking articulated

–> (the law enunciates [تلفظ کردن ,مژده دادن] the federated,) the law repeats the fact =/= the things of ajayeb are (still) in the process of being formed (–> the morality of reading that i am working on)

(in the facts of the law there is no space between things and language, is reduced to zero)

-language and things are born together with the very same process (Serres – Hermes.) –> stable gathering of elements

 

my interest in the devil is in the details of my makings (and others)

 

*please take in mind that these names are my guess at my own rabbit chasings, (they are not “wants” or purposefully organized tracings or mobilized intentions)

 

(do we need?) to get at (and maintain?) the deep structure of the one’s situation

–> transformational grammar

–> bring intuitive decision-making to a conscious level

–>

in my hypertext writing, am i trying to enable myself to talk about my work in a language (that computers could understand)?

 

common language ~= standard language

(we can’t talk about the commons without sorting out our understanding of our standard-saturated world)

 

(my hypertext is not data-driven [= a system with focus on the acquisition, management, processing, and presentation of atomic-level data] nor a process-driven (or process-sensitive system, for example delivering a care), what is it then?) (also not systematically storing [my] “knowledge” for later access, storage of information in such long-term memory, no no no)

 

 

 

#in a way i am building an adequate mode of encounter with an idea of “Iranian scientist” (?)

 

authors of ajayeb approached nature not in a way to sketch the boundaries of a discrete animal event, therefore, a unit of analysis, (which is very “natural” at 21st century;) rather an infrastructure itself in flux, providing an unnatural hierarchy

 

questions for my ajayeb‘s Rigs and pop-up book:

my rigs and pop-up book are descriptive concepts, that means: they obtain their meaning by reference to a particular physical apparatus ==>? a constructed cut between the object and the agencies of observation

–> ajayeb‘s variables require an instrument with moveable parts for their definition (?)

exclusions (= physical & conceptual constraints) are co-constitutive

objectivity (= possibility of unambiguous communication, boundary articulations) –> reference must be made to bodies in order for concepts to have meaning (?)

 

reading: “text” is the interface between the materialization of “reality” and subjectivation of “reader” –> inseparability of language and reality in ajayeb

(“We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down, The word ‘reality’ is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.” Petersen < Barad)

 

ajayeb‘s iterative processes of materialization

 

عجایب نامه =/= imagined and idealized human-independent reality

 

ajayeb‘s stories of historically nonhuman people

 

in ajayeb‘s descriptive intra-actions with reality, humans and language are part of the configuration or ongoing reconfiguring of the world (= phenomena)

(with Barad)

 

we cannot so easily answer where the apparatus ends, and this poses serious questions about the ontology of our practices

 

 




postgraduate program

The problem of the score

Block curated by Lilia Mestre / May > July 2017

IMG_2964


From May till July 2017 the a.pass post-master program questions how structures pre-determine singular outcomes, and to what extent they imply relationality. Every system is a network of connections and the way the system is set to operate defines forms of relation which reveal ideological standpoints. In other words modes of interaction are formatting forces that construct worlds. If we think that way, what kind of problems do our research structures entail?  And if we can think a polyphonic world , constituted by multiple models, how do we consider our own structure as a relational one? What kind of technologies are we putting into place? What kind of invitation are we making? And to whom?

The notions of ‘apparatus’ and ‘tentacular thinking’ will be key to understanding and experiencing the problem of score in contextual ecologies. Apparatuses, as coined by Foucault and Agamben, are systems of governance that enable relationships between beings and structures through which the subject is constructed. During former block Donna Haraway  introduced us to tentacular thinking as a place from which one can build relations to economical, biological, philosophical, productional, institutional, etc orders. Together with the a.pass researchers, workshop givers and guests we reflect on them, challenge our practices and relate to other authors and art makers.

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postgraduate program, workshop

Vladimir Miller SETTLEMENT (11)

artistic research environment

III-4.Vladimir Miller settlement 7 BW


During the days of May 22nd – June 4th 2017 a.pass will come together and host an open workspace called SETTLEMENT. In the course of these 14 days we will share our current work processes within an open collaborative workspace. We aim to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass SETTLEMENT and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at a.pass will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process. The schedule for these two week will be developed on site by its participants and shared online here:

Settlement 11 Collective Schedule

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postgraduate program, workshop

Lilia Mestre The Medium Score

Thinking making together apart

IMG_2968

The proposal for this block follows on previous iterations of scores as tools to practice dialogue or intersubjective formats for exchange in artistic research. ScoreScapes is an investigation of how scores can facilitate the relation between artistic research, documentation and knowledge processing.

If artistic research is an active and methodological search for ways to keep the viability of our relation with the world, then how can this search be mediated by scores? If artistic research engages in processes of awaking unseen phenomenological relations with what surrounds us, then how do we compose materials and thoughts? What is the performativity at stake on the sharing of those? What’s the relation between subjectivity and collectivity? What does that do to our individual practices and to the collective itself?

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postgraduate program, reading session

Caroline Godart and Marialena Marouda Feminist Benjamin Reading Group

"Arcades Project" copyright Judith Wechsler
"What does it mean to read as a feminist? The question may seem odd, or even trivial, but it engages the very ground of our work as artists and thinkers. Indeed, how is our reflection oriented, if not by the very way in which we turn to the text? And yet, when we think about methodologies and epistemologies, we rarely interrogate the practice of reading itself. We want to propose another form of feminist reading: instead of the critical, distrustful distance, we suggest that closeness and intimacy may form an equally powerful approach. In this reading group, we examine what feminist thinking can become when it takes the shape of a lover’s response to a text’s seduction, and when refutation and penetration are replaced by a mode of reading that is founded in an ethics of proximity."
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performative publishing, research center

lilia mestre ScoreScapes

31 December 2016

As associate program curator for the first four months of 2014, 2015 and 2016 my focus was and is on how systems of interaction in the arts contribute to the production (process? creation?) of knowledge, first of all in the educational context and consequently, in my belief, in other social environments. I take these systems as scores that, when followed rigorously, demand the implication of individual engagement and resources in a much needed share-ability within a system of production and observation. In the act of giving attention to one’s own work, to the other’s work but also to the group and its context, the ecological and social aspects of art making are reflected and expanded. The inter-subjective bound takes place beyond the art works and practices themselves but in the act of paying attention, of observing and being observed.
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postgraduate program, research center

2017 BLOCK II

1 May-31 July 2017

2017 POST-GRADUATE PROGRAM AND RESEARCH PROJECTS SUMMARY
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postgraduate program, workshop

Anouk Llaurens Sensation as score

9 May-31 July 2017

Movement Practice

1709947u

Every Thursday we’ll meet for movement practice and reflection practice will follow.

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project

THE MEDIUM SCORE

15 May 2017

IMG_2968
MEDIUM SCORE follows on previous iterations of scores as tools to practice dialogue or intersubjective formats for exchange in artistic research. ScoreScapes is an investigation of how scores can facilitate the relation between artistic research, documentation and knowledge processing.
Read more..

postgraduate program, workshop

Settlement 11 Collective Schedule

22 May-3 June 2017 / a.pass

Day 4
11:00 Play-ground Eszter Nemethi 13:00 Planning a.pass block III/2017 Vladimir Miller 15:00 Dialoge with Alex Arteaga 17:00 Feminist Benjamin Reading Group Caroline Godart and Marialena Marouda
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conference, seminar, workshop

The Document Transformed + Book Launch Dirty Room /Juan Dominguez

22-24 June 2017 / La Bellone, Brussels

a.pass seminar and master classes

Agency : thing 001678


Curated by Sofia Caesar and Lilia Mestre, the public program “The Document Transformed” invites four practitioners that offer very distinct questions, methods, and proposals to problems related to documentation. Join Femke Snelting, Olga de Soto, Vincent Meessen, and Agency (Kobe Matthys), and others, for three days of presentations, screenings, performances and conversations. How does the document affect practices, bodies, histories, and experiences? The event brings together practices that not only give sight to the power relations engendered by apparatuses of documentation, but also move towards the transformation of the systems in which we produce history, law, art, and the body. Held in the context of The Problem of the Score, block curated by Lilia Mestre in the a.pass post-master research program and supported by a.pass.

This seminar is organized in collaboration with La Bellone – Brussels

To inscribe to the master-classes please send an email to production@apass.be


JUNE 22-23-24 @ LA BELLONE
Rue de Flandre 46
Brussels

Detailed program:

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postgraduate program, workshop

Jennifer Lacey Dance Workshop

10 July-14 June 2017

jennifer lacey " american realness"
The base line of dance is perhaps understood as the body but mostly it is bodies ( minds implied) together someplace, deciding to work in a certain way . The how of the work, the process, is something that is always to be reinvented and renegotiated. Each dispositif of dance making already contains a nascent content, one that will inevitably be more influential than any idea or concept in the production of the form. So, in imagining how to design the making of a dance, the translation of the concept or content into a thing-which-can-be-done is a crucial, poetic and political task. The base line of dance is perhaps understood as the body but mostly it is bodies ( minds implied) together someplace, deciding to work in a certain way . The how of the work, the process, is something that is always to be reinvented and renegotiated. Each dispositif of dance making already contains a nascent content, one that will inevitably be more influential than any idea or concept in the production of the form. So, in imagining how to design the making of a dance, the translation of the concept or content into a thing-which-can-be-done is a crucial, poetic and political task.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Sina Seifee Little Fables of Practice Workshop

24-25 July 2017 / a.pass 4th floor

Sina Seifee - Moon index in Sa'di world refraction poetics
In this two days workshop I like to propose the notion of keyword seen as a site where one formulates concepts and narratives that reorient one within one's own research practices. We will (re)animate our keywords as fables, which are operational metaphors that shape subjects and objects of knowledge. How can we participate in (re)shaping our objects of knowledge in terms of little fables?
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APPLY TO THE A.PASS PROGRAMMES

Unfortunately we no longer have applications. Both programs: the Postgraduate as well as Research Center have come to an end due to the decision of the ministry of education to stop financing a.pass. At the moment we look into new plans for the future. More news soon on our website.

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