event, info, performance

projects

PHARMAKON

‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’, was a Thematics artistic research residency project, taking place in Brussels from the 15th of October until the 15th of December 2014. This residency was one of the stages in the development of the broader, transnational ‘Pharmakon’ research project undertaken by Institut Nomade. The ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’ conference (28-30/11/2014) lasted three days and explored the theoretical and artistic approaches to deal with an increasingly toxic economic, ethical and cultural environment, in search of other techniques by which to connect, share and imagine the fabric of our togetherness. As a ‘performative conference’, this meeting involved artists as well as theorists, dissolving the boundaries between ‘specialists’ and ‘public’, and between ‘performers’ and ‘theorists’, and opens up a space for desire and reflection.

Thematics was organized by Bains Connective, in collaboration with Institut Nomade, the a.pass research center and Kaaitheater.

full description of the project here.

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researchers

The associate researcher joins a.pass for one year, and in that time develops and ‘exemplary artistic research’: a research that challenges the notions of practice-based methodologies and knowledge to its limits, and questions the values of knowledge developed in artistic research contexts. The associate researcher is financially part-time supported for one year, and gets production  support for the development of the public phases of the research, as well as mentoring support.
Between 2014 and 2015 Veridiana Zurita initiated three ongoing artistic research projects; ‘Don’t Eat the Microphone’: a weekly session developed together with the residents of the psychiatric hospital Dr. Guislain in Ghent, ‘Televizinho’: a series of re-enactments of Brazilian soap-operas with no-actors of the river side community Santa Isabel in the Amazon (BR) and ‘Mommy, Daddy, Me’: a letter trialogue about love relationships between herself and her parents. www.veridianazurita.com

The independent researchers are only loosely connected to the research center, and are selected on the level of the interest of their already existing research trajectory. Current independent researchers are for example visual artist Alexis Destoop and his research into ‘landscape scenographies’ in the framework of the Anthropocene, and musician Eric Thielemans and his research on the ‘ensemble’ as instrument for the development of shared cosmologies and artistic instrumentarium. These researchers are only minimally and punctually supported at the moment of the publication (live or in writing) of their research results.

The research coordinator (Elke Van Campenhout) also develops her research within the research centre, which partly consists in analyzing, publishing, and making accessible a.pass research results and methodologies (through publications, outside workshops and lectures, conferences, etc…) and partly also consists of her own collaborative research trajectory Bureau d’Espoir, that looks into a contemporary and performative redefinition of ‘hope’ through the lenses of political philosophy, choreography and spiritual body practices.

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organization

The a.pass research centre works on different levels. On a first level the centre brings together long-time researchers in a context of collaboration and sharing. On this level currently we have in the research center three kinds of workers: the PhD researchers, the associate researcher, the research coordinator and the independent researchers.

On a second level, the research centre also documents, archives and opens up research results and methodologies on a larger scale. Through the creation of a larger context for the end communications of the participants, through the publications, conferences, workshops and lectures, experimental collaborations etcetera. A lot of these activities will be mentioned again throughout the development of this report, but a full list of activities of the research centre, and its collaborations can also be consulted in the overview pages in the Appendix.