Maurice Meewisse Documentation Fourth Block

performative publishing, postgraduate program

Maurice Meewisse Documentation Fourth Block – troubled garden

1 May-31 July 2019

Curated by Nicolas Y Galeazzi

In this block we were invited to imagine our research as an ecosystem. This was actually relatively easy, because since some I imagined my practice along these lines, although I prefer to use the term oikos.

My attitude and relationship to the a.pass curatorial program has been different every block. Because the end is approaching I decided to use this block as an experimental playground and to start preparing my end-communication. It resulted in a series of small interventions and explorations in which the curatorial program was secondary. My focus was pointed at how to relate to specific perceptions of reality, and what became apparent during my period at a.pass, explore and question my own perception of reality. This block I explored the agency of smaller gestures then I used before.

The concept of making kin from Donna Harroway was the bases of the adoption project that I found most interesting in this block. We were asked to give up for adoption a part of our research. I brought in a flag that was partly deconstructed and primarily based on naval signal flags to explore the ambiguity of those things. But since I gave this up for adoption, it doesn’t play a role in the current narrative.

Laura Pante gave me a lot of material for adoption, she gave nature, fascism, Jane Fonda, the pink, and other items and concepts. The big amount of the materials that I received forced me to select and edit, sometimes follow an idea, and sometimes store it for later. I was looking for connections and meaning through working with them, I presented those as rehearsal for a small exhibition. (I was asked to do something on the doorstep of NL=US, a gallery in Rotterdam, I used my adoption findings as the exhibition that was inside)

During the halfway days we swapped adoptees, I recieved my new one from from Nicolas Y Galeazzi

Who received ‘Yggdrasil’ from from Flavio Rodrigo. He gave me the number 1425, as a reference to a date imagined by Donna Harroway. Accidentally he talked about a 1000 years. I decided to not physically bring the number with me, even though I found out later that the proffered wood for an axe handle is actually ash. My explorations resulted into a presentation in ‘Valhalla’.

During dinner I spoke about the steps from tree and wood to lumber and timber, I made a huge ‘buddha-bowl’ which was mixed up to become pig-food, I showed a timber sample box with over 50 samples of wood from all over the world, of which some are now endangered, I did an experiment with some generated sound and I gave my adoptee to Nicolas is the form of a facses, and ancient ambigoues object.

Some small gestures during

I made and served jam made from Japanese Knotweed

I weaponized the children that lived on the wasteland where part of the block was happening

And when we asked to leave a trace at the unlearing centre we visited in Switserland, I cut of some centimeter from a chair so it would wobble.

(some photo’s of my intervention at NL=US)

the cloths are adapted by the Muslin Brothers

information, postgraduate program

Workshops and Companions

The workshops of this block will be ‘gardens’ – and therefore for once of spacial nature. I propose to ask these gardens to be our teachers, to learn from them, to let them put us at work, to ask them to suggest a practice to us, to make them structure our time and our collective research attempts etc. The gardens are the ‘education’ framework and the ‘atelier.’

For this, we need interpreters and people who have tools, figures or behaviours to engage, read and work within the workshops. These interpreters – probably we will call them ‚companions’ – will build a network, a web of knowledge, together with us and amongst themselves. I would like to invite quite some of them to accompany us – sometimes alone sometimes in couples or groups.

For further details watch out for following posts.

postgraduate program, workshop

Kobe Mattihys Workshop 1 :: Zenne Garden

digging

Zenne Garden

This is an elaborate permaculture garden with many small experiments from water cleaning plants to interspecies labour. Kobe, who will also be one of the dedicated mentors – is working in this garden for 12 years together with a collective of various artists and activists. It is quite a sensitive ecosystem.

postgraduate program, workshop

Vincent P. Alexis Workshop 2 :: Westland / BUITEN/DEHORS

straying

terrain d'aventure

BXL WILD LIFE and BUITEN/DEHORS is a collective of research and experimentation which proposes to consider the urban as the natural environment of man. This year BUITEN / DEHORS decided to start on a piece of land located between Digue du Canal and rue des Goujons in Anderlecht, the establishment of what is called an adventure playground.
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performative publishing

Salad

Christina Stadlbauer

OLXE6310

Une salade, c’est pas comme une tomate

We went on an excursion to Fribourg in Switzerland. I took my little purse where I keep Swiss Francs from my last visit, but noticed that it contained only a few coins. In the train we were speculating how much we would have to pitch in for food and that we should eat rather rice and beans to keep the budget under control. Switzerland is expensive, for Europeans.

The experience at the Unlearning Centre, however, was totally unexpected. We had just arrived, when a car came, with crates of food – freegan. Martin Schick had organized a delivery for us and we found ourselves with more than we could handle. All for free and all (almost) expired.

We tried to fit everything into the two large fridges at the NeighborHub, but did not manage.

Meat, sausages, vegetables, herbs, juices, ice tea, yoghurt and loads of green salad. That first day we got 2 crates of salad – maybe 20 heads of lettuce. Great! Fresh food!

We ate a lot of salad. We ate salad at lunch and for dinner, snacked on it in between. But the salad did not end. Some days later, the car delivered another load to us. There was again salad, new salad. This time, some heads of lettuce, but also some that was already washed and torn into pieces, wrapped in plastic. And some salad hearts, wrapped in plastic film. We were still trying to deal with the 2 crates from the first day. Nicolas made salad soup. We had it warm and iced, with salad on the side. At every meal, there was a salad bowl that could never be finished. One evening, we were high on salad. We could not talk about anything else anymore, could not stop laughing. Mathilde composed a song about salad. “Une salade, c’est pas comme une tomate”.

There was also more meat than we could eat, there were bags and bags of herbs that slowly started to rot in the fridge, there were litres of bottled liquid whole egg and many packkages of rice pudding, different flavours. There was an opening of a new atelier – a big space with machinery – and it was rented for free There was a dinner perfomance at the Belluard festival and the wine bottles kept on being opened and poured into glasses at no extra cost. Generosity came upon us from all sides. It was amazing.

All our lives, we have been hearing about scarcity. At home, we learned how to shut the doors to keep the heat in, we used second hand clothes and we were instructed how to not waste food. At school, we learned the scarcity of natural resources. We all know about the scarcity of money on our bank accounts. But what happened there in Switzerland in June 2019, was abundance. Suddenly, we were confronted with abundance and we had to deal with it. We had to unlearn how we are used to handle scarcity. And this allowed me to observe many interesting things.

I became obsessed. It went automatically. I could not allow myself to throw food away and invented dishes that consumed lots of parsley. I also ate more than I needed, just because I could not see the food being trashed. My attempt was not successful. Lots of stuff that had gotten a second life – saved from the trash of the supermarket could not be saved by us and went on the compost pile.

The Fribourg trip and unlearning for me meant to look into abundance as a concept and the salad became my fulcrum.

postgraduate program, workshop

Marialena Marouda Exercises in Becoming Water

Score for a boat trip

no-boat

This is a score for a multiple day boat trip for two or more people. It should last a minimum of two days. It can take place on any body of water large enough to sail on for a number of days: a lake, a canal, a river, a sea or an ocean. The boat you use, its size and form, can differ accordingly. This score invites you to spend time on this body of water and to see how it affects/ can affect your body, your thoughts and your work. It proposes some tasks that you can try while sailing. It also suggests different texts that you can read during the trip. Each task can take as long as you need it to take, from a few minutes to several days. Take your time.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Marialena Marouda, Christina Stadlbauer and Nicolas Geleazzi Writing into becoming water

an instant conversation

IMG_20190615_145950

M.M.: A brief introduction into my practice: I see performance as a practice of inhabiting a specific ecosystem. Currently, I am focusing on the oceanic ecosystem, one that can only in part be inhabited by human beings. ...
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performative publishing, postgraduate program

Mathilde Maillard / I gave a hamac and it came back to me

20190614_100129

I like to think that objects decide the place where they want to be or with who they want to be.
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postgraduate program

Nicolas Galeazzi Block 2019/II Troubled Gardens

29 April-28 July 2019

ecologies of artistic research

battlefish

The earth faces troubles of kind humanity never experienced before: climatic changes induced by humankind are dramatically destructive and - meanwhile unavoidable. This perspective fundamentally shifts our understanding of nature - and therefore it poses big questions to the arts as a source of cultural knowledge. The aim of this block is to challenge our individual research aims as living creatures and companions in and as ecosystems. Hyper related, affecting, and never singular, our researches are - however - made by their surrounding as much as their make it.
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information, postgraduate program

Three Days a Week

29 April-28 July 2019

ö.

One day of relating to the environmental ecology by 'gardening'; one day of engaging giving seeds to the social ecology; and one day of diving into the mental ecology by composting the urgent knowledge.
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postgraduate program, workshop

Nicolas Galeazzi Making Kin

6 May-28 July 2019 / Zenne Garden et al.

the adoption project

regenwuermer

Experiencing us as and in ecosystems lays the basic ground for our investigations in the a.pass block 2019/II. To follow this incentive, Donna Haraway proposes to make kin with multiple things, species and ideas. We try it by adopting each other's dearest - or expelled - aspects of research and make it part of our sphere of respons-ability.
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postgraduate program

Gosie Vervloessem Horror Garden

20-20 May 2019 / Zenne Garden

kudzu

One way to connect to other then humans is the horror genre. By thinking the unthinkable, we explore the limits of our ability to understand the world. But does the world lends itself to a meaningful relationship? Does increased access lead to decreased strangeness? In thinking about our relationship to the “other than humans”, what is the status of the notion of obscurity and darkness? What lingers at the edges of our experience? The Horror Garden is a tool that explores the idea of our profound dark relation to the World through our relationship with plants.

Open Call