UNINVITED RESEARCH II

postgraduate program

1 September-30 November 2017

BLOCK III, SEPT-NOV 2017

photo by s. jouwersma

This block is concerned with the processes and questions of a mobile, displaced, untethered research practice. We will use the methodologies of moving out, taking a trip, going for a walk to reconsider the building blocks of our research and discover new ones.

As a collective practice for this block each a.pass participant will propose a trip or an excursion to a place that resonates with the topics of their research. The excursions will be maximum one day or night long and be attended by the a.pass participants (and will be in most cases be open to the general public on a sign-up basis). Some of them will be collaborative experiments, some will address a specific question from a current research of the a.pass participant. All proposals will work with a specific practice of being on the move together, of doing research on site and of documenting and publishing.

In collaboration with the Research Center we will explore the process of zine-ing (or making a zine) as a collective and nomadic publishing machine throughout the block and specifically towards it end.

On the theoretical and critical side of things we will take this opportunity to re-examine mobility of research practices in the context of de-colonial and feminist discourse on space and its social production. How do notions of power and privilege figure into this academic exploration of the presupposed „outside“ of the institution? With our colonial histories, what does it mean today to go on an excursion, to go looking „elsewhere“ for knowledge? Which gestures of power and othering are we replicating by using these methods of (ad)venture in our research? This block will be guided by an attempt to apply de-colonial thinking to the very idea of research itself, to unlearn its innocence and to insist that coloniality and its critique apply as soon as we open our doors and step outside, and as soon as we think towards „other“ places and discourses.

To work on these themes the excursion practice will be supported by several external inputs from the areas of de-colonial theory, urbanism and feminist critique. More detailed information about those events you will find on our webpage soon.

The preparation of, the excursions and the documentation will be done in three collective periods throughout the block.

Part one: Reading, Inspiration and Preparation
Sept 4th-30th

OPENING WEEK : Sept 4-8th

We will take this week to welcome the new researchers to apass and to meet the mentors. During the opening week we will present our researches to each other and get to know each others work in its current state. We will frame the presentations through a collective mis-reading of the zine of the previous excursions block and the themes and problems established there.

WORKSHOP Making Public Domain : 11th – 15th September – Middelheim Museum – Antwerp

(free of charge for apass researchers)

Summer School #2 ‘MAKING PUBLIC DOMAIN’ will examine how public domain can be made and what role art can play in this. The starting point is that public space does not actually exist, but must constantly be created and activated. Which strategies then – artistic, civil, activist, social, political, legal, etc – are able to generate public space?

Artists, experts, policy-makers and academics (art academics, jurists, urbanists, media specialists and so on) will tackle a different theme every day. By means of workshops, lectures, artistic interventions and case studies, summer school participants will be actively involved in a 5-day exchange between artists and experts unravelling the concepts and practice of ‘making public domain’.

The 5-day Summer School opens up an interdisciplinary network of professionals, knowledge and expertise, creating a shared scenario allowing for a collective and individual learning process. During the day an inspiring selection of relevant cases connected to the theme of the day will be introduced, allowing anyone to participate and contribute to the discussion from their own perspective. In the evening the Summer School offers insights on the topic to a wider public of stakeholders.

PREPARATION : Sept 18-30th

We will spend those two weeks reading, discussing and preparing our respective excursions with each other. We will read on decolonial perspectives on research, ethnography and geography. In addition to that several artists will join us for one-day inputs on research ontology, brussels lore, and spatial practice. The artist researchers Pierre Rubio (apass Research Center block 3 2017), Peggy Pierrot, David Helbig, the architect Miriam Rohde and the writer Luanda Casella have been asked to inform our preparation process. during those two weeks.

Part two: Excursions and Feedback

EXCURSIONS: 23rd Okt – Nov 4th

This will be the second big collective moment of the block. We will join each-others proposals. Each researcher will be responsible for organising one (max one day) excursion for the others. We are planning for mentors to join some of the excursions, and we will facilitate two collective moments with the apass artistic team to start the week off and to engage in a collective feedback moment towards the end.

Part three: Documentation, Collective Zine-ing, PAF

WRITING WORKSHOP Forged Theory

with Peter Stamer and Vladimir Miller

This workshop will engage in playful methods of writing theory by using methods of dialogue, stream of consciousness and combining them with a structural/analytical approach to reading theoretical texts: how are they made? Which rhetoric figures and structures of support of an argument are used? Can we use them as playful toolkit to make up our own theories in fragile support of our practice?

COLLECTIVE ZINE-ING: 20-24th Nov

As a documentation, reflection and review process we will engage in a collective process of making a zine or several zines together. We will tackle the Zine-ing in relation with and supported by a.pass Research Center to nurture a general concern around methodologies of documentation. How will the documentation process of Zine-ing the excursions will affect our practices and experiences? And how the Zine-ing can constitute a model for experimental documentation? At large a.pass Research Center will focus on problematising the Zine-ing process as well as the Zine-ing will problematise some of the key concerns of a.pass around the nature and operativity of forms of documentation.

ENDWEEK: 26th Nov-2nd Dec

Performing Arts Forum – St Erme – France.

only for apass participants.

Mentors

Caroline Godart

Heike Langsdorf

Pierre Rubio

Peggy Pierrot

More information about the block soon!

postgraduate program, workshop

Xiri Tara Noir Visiting the (un)safe

The Excursion-workshop Visiting the (un)safe is an individual travel through some specific spaces of Brussels. The excursion will ask of its participants to question how our identity(ies) are constantly formed and transformed by our physical surroundings and environment. Safe space is a term used for an area or forum where either a marginalized group are not supposed to face standard mainstream stereotypes and marginalization, or in which a shared political or social viewpoint is required to participate in the space. For example, a feminist safe space would not allow free expression of anti-feminist viewpoints. Physical safe spaces are often reserved only for members of the oppressed group.
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postgraduate program, research center

2016 BLOCK II

1 May-31 July 2016

2016 POST-GRADUATE PROGRAM AND RESEARCH PROJECTS SUMMARY
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postgraduate program

Block 2016/II: Uninvited Research

2 May-28 August 2016 / Brussels and beyond

Jean-Léon_Gérôme_003

Where do we practice our research? How to give a practice a new context? What can we do, think, read and try together when being on the move? This block is concerned with the processes and questions of a mobile, displaced, untethered research practice. As a collective practice for this block each a.pass participant will propose a trip, or an excursion to a place that resonates with the topics of her research. We understand these trips as mini workshops. They will be attended by the a.pass participants and will also be open to the genreal public on a sign-up basis.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Elke van Campenhout / Vladimir Miller FEEDBACK

3-6 May 2016 / a.pass

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Since a.pass is a shared environment, we depend a lot on each other as sparring partners in our researches. As part of the Opening Week this workshop addresses very diverse feedback techniques: spoken critique, non-negotiated critique, direct feedback, indirect feedback, written, walking, one-on-one or transformative feedback.
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postgraduate program

Dinner with Brussels

9 May 2016 / a.pass

In order to simulate our ideas for specific and challenging trips we would like to gather some Brussels ‘cracks’ – people who know Brussels form one or the other perspective by heart, know the hidden places and weird stories of this city – and invite them for a dinner at a.pass.

postgraduate program, workshop

Epifania Amoo-Adare (Un)thinking Research Practice

9-10 May 2016 / a.pass

Decolonizing Theory, Mobilizing Methodologies, and Open-Ended Becoming(s)

The premise of this workshop is that a critical pedagogy on the space of research knowledge production, and its related forces of (re)production, is a necessary condition for any intervention in (and of) that space. Consequently, we propose to challenge widespread understandings of research space and knowledge production as a binary researcher-researched structure that is given and fixed, in other words: a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by the various actors in the research process. We contrast this convention with an understanding of research space as both, a manifestation as well as a vehicle of the productive relations of power-knowledge.

postgraduate program, workshop

Thiago Antunes Civic integration at Thermae Grimbergen

18 May 2016 / meeting at a.apass

Thiago

We are going to the Thermae Grinbergen, in Grimbergen, a municipality in the province of the Flemish Brabant. This spa is unissex and has two main parts, one naked area and another for people in swuimming suits. The participants can choose whichever area they prefer to start, but my invitation is for trying both.
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Maarten Van Den Bussche PROTEST!

24-24 May 2016 / apass

Next Tuesday, the 24th of may, the three biggest labour unions of Belgium are calling for a collective demonstration through Brussels. They march against austerity measurements that weigh heavy on the general public but refuse to demand a similar effort of the top percent. They march against a deregulation of the working hours that would push burn-out and stress statistics to all time highs.
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Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga ON MOVEMENT

24-24 May 2016 / a.pass

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A proposition to think through the multiple understandings of the word 'movement' both as a change of physical location over time and in the sense of social or political 'movements'
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postgraduate program, workshop

Sana Ghobbeh / Juan Duque Excursion

10 June 2016 / meeting at a.pass

We propose as an activity to gather at Gare du Midi market on Sunday and each of us, after finding a place, remain still in the same spot for about 45 minutes (or as much as the high activities of the context allow) before the finishing activity and dismantling of the market. A main question we want to explore: For how long can we remain? In which ways can our bodies be affected when we decide to take a position that is opposite to the majority of people surrounding us in such a busy place?
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Sébastien Hendrickx A silent group visit to my father’s house

16 June 2016

Google

+/- 15 a.pass-participants and others travel to the place where the initiator of the trip spent most of his youth. The visit forms the basis of a collective writing score, inspired by the architecture of collaboration of a ‘writers room’ (a group of scriptwriters working on a TV series, a.k.a. ‘a bigger brain’).

postgraduate program, workshop

Esteban Donoso Mr. Ecuador

29 June 2016 / meeting at a.pass

Esteban

While swimming in the public pool at Jeu de Bal we will record sounds from the site, our conversations, and sounds sprout from talking practices I have been working on. When we are back in the apass studio, we will perform our swiming pool sound documentary.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Einat Tuchman A visit to the social cultural centers of Molenbeek

29-29 June 2016 / a.pass

Wondering around the community of Molenbeek we will enter four different social cultural centres. In each one we will get to know their activities , their aims and their relation to the political economical conditions of a community like Molenbeek.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Peggy Pierrot / Femke Snelting Modifying the universal

30-30 June 2016 / a.pass

Snelting-emoji-default-modifer

As an input to MOVING RESEARCH Femke will host a one day workshop, starting from the emoji modifiers case. We will discuss how and why mainstream communication infrastructures promote universalist values and at the same time provide means for separating users along fault lines of race, gender and age.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Vladimir Miller / Peter Stamer FORGED THEORY

5-7 July 2016 / a.pass

artwork by Miler Lagos

„I remember this workshop where we were asked to write theory in support of our research. Not to go and read and quote existing work but to make it up, to quote from a fictional pile of books. What would be such a fictional body of writing to situate our work in? What kind of fanstasy discouse does our work exist in? To be honest: Is our work not already producing a potential yet unwritten discourse? We keep looking until we find that ghost in someone else’s writing, calling it research, no? Its divination, ghost hunting, séances. Can we go one step further and conjure up those voices we are looking for? In that workshop we looked at the many fragmented ways those voices appear in a piece of writing: blurbs on the back page, quotes from form other literary works, footnotes, citations, bibliography lists and lists for further reading. All the ways a supporting structure of precedents is woven into and around an academic text. Mere fragments in themselves, they point to whole architectures of thought. Their distinct style, their no-nonsense-brevity speak volumes. How does an archeologist distinguish between a shard and a piece of pottery made to look like one? He cant help but imagine the vase.“ Richard Crane „Territorial Discourses“, Michigan University Press, 1998
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postgraduate program, workshop

Gerald Kurdian Hot bodies of the future <3

8-9 July 2016 / Barlok, 9pm

Hot bodies of the future <3 is a scored investigation of body states in parties and clubs contexts. Experienced one night through and under coloured lights, it consists in a very sensuous and playful exploration, with scores, of some or our physiologic, erotic and imaginative relationships to sounds, body movements and space while club dancing.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Esta Matkovic Place yourself to receive

11-11 July 2016 / apass

My suggestion for excursion is to try perceive particular space, as still-non-defined-space. We will go to this kind of space, which has potential to stimulate different directions in conversation. We will stand in a waiting line with other participants and “receive” what this space gives to us. How do we perceive and measure this? What we are perceiving and how does this influence our behavior. Body position, relation, potential to become statement.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Sina Seifee EXCURSION TO CEN

12-12 July 2016 / apass

(in the direction of my research; hastily opening the ontological envelope that saves a heart full of "list of specifications"...) the visit will be to the 'European Committee for Standardization' (CEN, French: Comité Européen de Normalisation), one of the EU fostered nonprofit public institutions of the cutting-edge development regarding ambitious notion of 'data', 'systematic knowledge', and 'specifications'. the excursion will be oriented towards a meeting between the participants of APASS and the representatives of CEN; and encourages a run between the ontological demands of international economy and contemporary art, their disastrous split, and where their epistemological formations meet and intersect.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Luiza Crosman UNRAVELING INSTITUTIONAL DYNAMICS

13-13 July 2016 / apass

A one day practice-based and experimental excursion-workshop that will focus on reflecting on Art Institutions - how they present themselves and how we, as artists,art workers or general public, would act upon them, given the power to make decisions. During the excursion-workshop we will visit an Art Institution and, through a staff’s guided tour, we will learn about the “non visible” work that maintains and moves it’s dynamics, making it possible for its structure to be ready to receive art shows, projects, presentations, etc.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Christian Hansen Hoarding and Hiding

16-17 July 2016 / Station Haren Zuid

Together we will walk from Station Haren Zuid towards Brussels along the railways.
Underway we will exaggerate and share our urge to pick up and play with any things that trigger our curiosity and find temporary homes possible new belongings. After the walk we will set up a studio camp in a field between Gare de Schaerbeek and Gare du Nord where we can work with our findings and get some sleep.

postgraduate program, research center

2017 BLOCK III

1 September-30 November 2017

2017 POST-GRADUATE PROGRAM AND RESEARCH PROJECTS SUMMARY
Read more..

postgraduate program, workshop

Uninvited Research II Excursions

22 October-17 November 2017

IMG_7032 Kopie

In the course of the upcoming two weeks the a.pass researchers of this block will each propose an excursion coming out of their current research focus. You are cordially invited to join. Please sign up on the a.pass main page on the detail page for each of the proposals.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Eleanor Ivory Weber The World Today All In The Mind

23 October 2017

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“…a 100% probability of nothing happening, and that’s often when it’s more interesting…”
– Peter Ryan, ABC Senior Business Correspondent, 2 October 2017

On Monday 23 October 2017, several todays, today. An instruction-based, public yet solo, listening & reading exercise, derived from radiowaves. Thinking about the public mind and testing what is produced from chance and structure. How language functions on different registers, at once, in time, and beyond us.

postgraduate program, workshop

Pia Louwerens From I to we

24 October 2017

Excavating reality together, at home

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“From I to we” serves as an introduction into my practice inside its subjective core: my own home. After a performance the audience is invited to rewrite the script, rewarded with a warm meal cooked by the artist herself.

postgraduate program, workshop

Hoda Siahtiri If the past is really passed?!

25 October 2017

An introduction to co-experincing the others’ trauma

The city of Brussels is holding a part of my past. I will take you to one of the most historical places of Brussels. Please bring headphones if you have. It would be nice to have a piece of paper and pen. thanks.

postgraduate program, workshop

Geert Vaes La Flandre Profonde / Into The Heart Of Flanders

26 October 2017

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‘Het Gezin Van Paemel’ (The Family Van Paemel) by Cyriel Buysse is a 114-year old theatre piece that’s still showing the flemish what it means to be flemish. The excursion will bring us to an amateur theatre company rehearsing the piece. Why are they, and with them lots of other amateur companies, still so interested in this piece? Why am I? My questioning will be mainly about one scene in particular: the son who goes to tell his father he’s leaving for America. An America he only knows through stories, an America that personifies a better life. How is this flemish identity created (the I) by the staying and the leaving? And how is America (the other) created? And isn’t all emigrating originating in ‘The America of the Soul’? How is this construction of I a mask/conditioning? How is history as a re-construction keeping all these notions in place? How will I go from here to using masks again? And how will I finally get out of Flanders?

postgraduate program, workshop

Sven Dehens Untitled Excursion

27 October 2017

Critical voicing, reading, enactment of Alien (1979). Process of audio-visual documentation. Generation of a subtext to the script.

postgraduate program, workshop

Shervin Kianersi For to Know Nothing Is Nothing

30 October 2017

Imagine natural daylight, the best kind of light to see things clearly. Then imagine the light getting brighter and brighter, until it becomes so blindingly white that you are filled with anxiety. The information overload that we experience in our everyday lives is similar to that blinding light. Its origins date to the early 90s, when computer networks attained critical speeds and scales. Today, each of us yearns to be informed 24/7. The dictatorship of information creates in us a desire for round-the-clock information. We have become the organic components of an integrated global data and information system. Yet this yearning we feel is about our search for the Real, which a never-ending stream of information, that informs us only of the reality of facts, can neither satisfy nor fulfil. Because information is always directed at you. Information informs but is no guarantee of getting any closer to the truth. In fact, information sometimes operates as an obstacle to the truth. Instead, what if we started to filter out what we could of the information, in order to better understand the truth? What if we ignored information about the given facts and instead tried learn about something or someone for ourselves?

postgraduate program, workshop

Elen Braga The masters meeting: A Journey to the unpromised land and the magic balls

31 October 2017

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“- You shine through my atmosphere. And when you show up, my mountains move like bushes in the wind, and the rocks are scattered on all sides. I hear you. I hear an amazing bang like a storm to come. I hear the noise of thunder, the voice of demons, the winds, the monsters. The whole earth rises, dilating like the waves of the sea and my surface breaks down. My own ground seems to subside and… we need to find another ground to walk by: the unpromised land and the magics balls… “

postgraduate program, workshop

Leo Kay The time it takes to think

1 November 2017

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How can we think together? How can we make Space for deep reflection on complex issues? How can we come close enough without intruding? How can we engage in group dialogue and take the time that is needed to think before producing more, contributing more to the system we are locked within?
A day of observing, listening, walking, kneading, thinking, talking and baking, as we navigate a critical socio/political issue that effects us all and will continue to affect us in the forceable future.

postgraduate program, workshop

Luisa Fillitz A collection of Impressions

2 November 2017

Coming together in a place. Where and how do our perceptions, according to the surrounding/the place and the situation where we are, manifest themselves? Where and how can we locate them in our body? How is our intuitive reaction? Linked together in groups, we would then — following a score-proposal — try out how everybody`s own intuitional desire of where and how he/she wants to move is affecting the movement of the others in the group as well as their movement is affecting each one. Afterwards everybody is invited to create a zine in any form – according to ones wish – trying to remember the different impressions and the thoughts, feelings, that they provoked.

postgraduate program, workshop

Eszter Némethi War-/-Lace and Vertigo

3 November 2017

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An excursion is a military term to describe a short entry to enemy territory without formal announcement of war. This excursion is an invitation to explore the ways in which spaces and materials can become instructions and how this relates to participation in complex systems. What is the the agency of things, participants and also the host. Can we listen to things in order to decipher their fictions? And can we remain complicated to each other? You will visit the Kantcentrum in Brugge and the NATO Headquarters in Evere . I will do my best to host you. You will be largely following instructions, reading, making, observing, walking and looking for gaps. You will then return to a playground for discussion at a.pass. I will make you dinner.

postgraduate program, workshop

Marialena Marouda Flemish Marine Institute: Marine Station Ostend (MSO)

17 November 2017

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The excursion is a first encounter with the Flemish Marine Institute and its work. It includes a tour of the Marine Station and the Research Vessel Simon Stervin in the port of Ostend. Our guide will be André Cattrijsee, who is the “research infrastructure manager” of the FMI.

During this excursion, I propose for us to focus our attention on how the ocean is studied in a scientific context. What kind of language is used to describe it? And what kinds of instruments are used to measure it? What are the categories that result from those measurements? And what kind of ocean is produced as a result? As a score for this excursion, I therefore propose to shift slightly the way we listen and experience this tour of a marine research institution. Instead of simply following the content of what is said, could we also discern the knowledge dispositive within which this tour takes place? And how does this dispositive affect, finally, the “object” of its study?

Open Call