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What could be learning ground or ground lying fallow within the collective arts ?

“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness

a.pass has been inviting collectives, existing or newly established ones on the occasion of this call, for a 2-month paid collective research residency. In total there will be three rounds, for this second round, with deadline October 13, we have made the selection of the second group!

In total we received 116 applications, our jury went through all the applications and selected 3 collectives with whom they had a conversation. Eventually, after listening to all 3 collectives, the jury (Goda Palekaite, Hendrik De Smedt (both from a.pass board/GA), together with One Field Fallow (the 1st residency collective) and the 3 external jury members Ash Bulayev, Damla Ekin Tokel and Kopano Maroga) has decided to give the opportunity for this 2nd call to the collective Topote de Acahual, the artistic and pedagogical branch of the ngo Vivero de Tebanca based in Tebanca, Los Tuxtlas rainforest, Mexico.

-, information, lecture, performative publishing, research center

16 October-29 January 2025 / Onderrichtsstraat 60, 1000 Brussels

Open School III : Holding Space: In- and Exclusivity

OFF-Open School-II

 In the context of their Collective Research Residency, One Field Fallow introduces their OFF Open School – a series of five sessions diving into the internal questions they’ve been dealing with the past two years. For every Open School, they will dive into one topic. Each time another collectove is invited to bring material to the conversation. Every Open School will be a dialogue between OFF, the invited collective and the audience. 

20 August-13 October 2024

Open Call #2 for collective research residency

image by amy pickles

******——*****  IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 2ND CALL ******——*****

What could be LEARNING GROUND or GROUND lying fallow  WITHin the COLLECTIVE arts ?

        This is the second call for a 2 months paid artistic research residency for collectives, existing or newly established on the occasion of this call, ideally 5 persons (min.3 max. 10 – NOT for individuals nor duo’s).

CONTEXT ? 

“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness

        By the end of 2023 a.pass (‘advanced performance and scenography studies’) entered a period of (self-)reflection and reimagination, a period of lying fallow: a field when it lies fallow – seemingly ‘doing nothing’ but in fact engaging in a deep process of rejuvenation and enriching as Rajni Shah says, a space for attention and transformation. Due to the ministry’s decision to end their financial support (based on radical savings and political choices) we were forced to end both of our educational programs: the Postgraduate Program as well as the Research Center that were at the heart of our co-learning environment for research-based practices came to an end, and by this also the educational institution a.pass has been for 15 years. The organisation entered a transition process, and an integral aspect of this process involves opening it up by inviting others to participate, to think together, to be together, to re-imagine a sustainable way forward for artistic research practices and their pedagogical aspects. Therefore, we are extending invitations to three collectives for a two-month paid residency to reimagine our fallow land and its implications for collective artistic research practices, methodologies, and sustainable harvesting. The first collective, One Field Fallow, has been selected in the first round in July and they will start their residency in September 2024. This call is to invite a second collective into this process.

One Field Fallow

WHAT COULD BE LYING FALLOW IN THE ARTS?

“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness

a.pass has been inviting collectives, existing or newly established ones on the occasion of this call, for a 2-month paid collective research residency. In total there will be three rounds, for this first round, with deadline June 9, we have made the selection of the first group!

In total we received 55 applications, our jury went through all the applications and selected 4 collectives with whom they had a conversation. Eventually, after listening to all 4 collectives, the jury (Heike Langsdorf, Lilia Mestre, Hendrik De Smedt, together with the 2 external jury members Ash Bulayev and Kopano Maroga) has unanimously decided to give the opportunity for this 1st call to the collective One Field Fallow (OFF), an already existing collective housing in a former night shop in Brussels.

9 April-9 June 2024

Open Call #1 for collective research residency

image apass - Open Call

******——*****  IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 1st CALL ******——*****

What could be lying fallow in the arts?

This a call for a 2-month paid residency for collectives (existing or newly established on the occasion of this call, ideally 5 persons). The period of 2 months can be spread over a maximum of 5 months. Read more about the practical details further below. First we would like to give you more info about the context and the framework of this call.

CONTEXT? WHAT? MISSION?

“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness

For about 15 years a.pass has been hosting a co-learning environment for research-based practices, focusing on collaboration, performativity, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity. a.pass is an acronym for ‘advanced performance and scenography studies’: ‘performance’ refers to how practices act in their surroundings, ‘scenography’ is the production of space and context, ‘studies’ stands for a co-learning pedagogical approach and the prefix ‘advanced’ is a dedication to challenge the frames of existing disciplinary determinations.

In 2022 however, the Flemish Ministry of Education decided to end their financial support of a.pass by the end of 2023. a.pass managed to get a transition budget and after a period of conversations with different partners (Schools of Arts, workspaces, universities, places for artistic research), and working on a new plan in order to make a restart. Nevertheless, due to the financial inflation, the tight budgets and even budget cuts in the other institutions, the budgetary framework needed to make an adapted restart was impossible to reach without any structural support from the Ministry of Education. 

To make a virtue of necessity we chose for a more radical, more riskful path towards a possible future. Both programs, the Postgraduate Program as well as the Research Center, came to an end in 2023. We chose to embrace the fallow land that lays before us and a.pass entered a period of reflection, reimagination, and ultimately reorganisation: a field when it lies fallow – seemingly ‘doing nothing’ but in fact engaging in a deep process of rejuvenation and enriching as Rajni Shah says, a space for attention and transformation. An integral aspect of this process involves opening it up by inviting others to participate, to think together, to be together, to imagine a sustainable way forward for artistic research practices and for a.pass as a re-generated soil for collectivity and research. Therefore, we are extending invitations to 3 collectives (existing or newly established on the occasion of this call) for a 2-month paid residency to reimagine our fallow land and its implications for collective artistic research practices, methodologies, and sustainable harvesting.

-, information

31 December 2023

IMG_0750

With us an end
by caterina daniela mora jara
(excerpt from The Annex, Research Center Cycle IV)

“It is of the nature of the rule to desire the death of exception.” Jean-Luc Godard

From May 20 to July 26, 2023
Rotterdam, PAF, Brussels and Stockholm

Dear you:

These words are written with the knowledge the a.pass program will no longer exist. The end for the research program that a.pass was running for 15 years has come, and in your hands, you hold part of this end. It is the last annex of the Research Center, even though The Annex is not the end. It may seem dramatic, but do not forget that I grew up watching telenovelas in Fiske Menuco and Villarica, in the Argentinian and Chilean Patagonia, where I come from.

This letter is a sort of farewell to the Research Center Cycle IV and to a.pass, to which I’m part of, to where I belong. Therefore, the need for a farewell. But what is a farewell? Is it a space where we say, “Oh, goodbye, you have been so critical and helpful; we will miss you”? No, that’s silly on my part. I prefer to say: “With us an end.” A farewell in this case means that some people will lose their jobs, some books will no longer have a shelf, the rooms and offices that a.pass occupied will be empty. It’s crumbling around me right now, it is collapsing around us right now. Yet, we have to give an end to the format. It is not only sad, it is very exhausting and stressful. It is not only a pity, it is hard, it is a fuck you gesture with my finger on this paper, it is a wound because we are losing a space of discussion, a place that stores things of artists, personal stuff and professional stuff, an institution where credits are not determined by how much you read and how much you have demonstrated what you have learned. We lose an educational context in which there is no validation through grades, nor pass/fail course approval.

Block III/2014

SPACES AS CONTRACTS

curated by Vladimir Miller (Associate Program Curator) and Nicolas Galeazzi (Program Coordinator)

25 / 09 – 05 / 11 / 2014

POLITICS OF CHANGEABILITY

weekly meetings by Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi and Fotini Lazaridou

For this project we ask the researchers participants to engage individually for the duration of this block with a private or institutional space outside of a.pass. The task is: to negotiate a permanent, irreversible change in the architecture of that space and to document the negotiation process. Changing our spatial circumstances, for adapting them to our needs, is so foreign to us in daily life, that we associate those changes with violence and social upheaval, with revolutions and public resistance. And maybe this holds true and points us to how powerful architecture actually is in upholding existing social order. Architecture and the political connect and hinge on access to change. Hegemonies manifest themselves and are upheld by architectural structures. So every attempt to change invariably become a political attempt. We are framing the attempt of change as a research methodology.

27 September-8 October 2023 / Zsenne Art Lab

Image credit: Amy Pickles

-, performative publishing, postgraduate program

booklet

27 January 2022

Túlio Rosa

Arquivo Atlantico

Arquivo Atlântico is a multi-chpater research project by Beatriz Cantinho and Túlio Rosa, in collaboration with Jose Capela and Nuno Torres. Arquivo Atlântico is an investigation on the notion of memory, on the possibility of re-membering differently places, peoples and knowledges.

listen to Arquivo Atlântico podcast

support the possible

“We are all very familiar with oppressive education; with its systems of reward and punishment, the stimulus of competition, the naming of the strong and the weak, the encouragement of reproduction by repetition, the reinforcement of norms and normativity, the unquestionability of the accommodating attitude towards the status quo, and its decision-making-educators—who by refusing dialogue—do not organise the people. The very goal of oppressive education isn’t to liberate nor to be liberated but to manipulate, control and generate conformism.

However, there is another sort of education that is precisely based on dialogue; a form of education that doesn’t function as a tool to facilitate anyone’s integration into the logic of the present system. It is the practice of freedom in its most germinating terms; the facilitation of critical thinking, creativity and citizenry.

Christian

Friday 21st of January 2022, a.pass received news from the Ministry of Education that their subsidy will come to an end by the end of 2023 the latest. From one day to the other a.pass is left with two years to find other means of survival or close the institution.

This Schedule will be updated on a daily basis as Poliset 2022W4-7 and the proposals within it develop. 

POLISET HAS BEEN PROLONGED BY A WEEK, TO END ON FRI FEB 18TH

-, postgraduate program, workshop

8-8 October 2021

by Agency

During Bleed is inevitable, Agency invokes Thing 000923 (Bleed is Inevitable)), a copyright controversy related to a pedagogical program in prison and the oscar nominated documentary Scared Straight!. During the court case, the judge had to decide if the pedagogical program was a dramatization of prison life and whether it could qualify for the protection of copyright as a work of performance art. At a.pass we will revisit the moment of hesitation during the court case and dwell on the problem discussed in the case as a way to fabulate different outcomes. What happens if ‘facts’ become included in a reciprocal way within artistic practices? 

7pm @ a.pass!