FORGED THEORY « a.pass

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 discourse 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

“Contemporary art has two major problems. One is that it’s absolute meaningless when it comes to a larger scale. Whatever is being produced, performed, presented has no potency to leave the bubble of those who are in one way or the other involved in the respective field. The artistic practice is absolutely irrelevant and will have nothing to contribute in the forthcoming years to the challenges globalism already presents to our societies. The other huge problem even has a dramatic touch. There is not one single theoretical concept, not one philosophical idea that has been articulated or even thought within the contemporary arts that would have an impact on the ‚world out there’. Nothing that would provoke social discourses to rethink the accepted horizon of knowledge, nothing to at least create confusion in scientific environments. Instead, contemporary art theory is as stale as the beers the visual artists drink after they have opened their futile exhibitions, as silly as the babble theatre makers come up with in their meaningless funding applications, as impotent as the pieces dancers fabricate in their unattended off-off garages. Theory which has developed into the well-fed heir of contemporary artistic practice is in fact a motherless, dead-born child, and I couldn’t think of anything that would reanimate that poor and hopeless creature. What ‚theory’ is rather in dire need of is to be turned around in order to be taken from behind…”

Gianluca di Fratelli, “Standing on one leg while holding one’s breath. The Apocalypse of the Now”. Riders in the Storm. The Act of Nothing. Ed. by Meyers P. and Bozac S., Rome/Warsaw 1997. p. 233-234.

block information, project

Block 2016/II: Uninvited research – Excursions

1 May-31 July 2016

Jean-Léon_Gérôme_003

Where do we practice our research, and how does changing that affect what can be talked about and experimented with? How to give a practice a new context? What can we do, think, read and try together when being on the move? 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.
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common moment

Opening week Block II/2016

2-11 May 2016 / a.pass

Open up your practice to the others!
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block information

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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workshop

Elke van Campenhout / Vladimir Miller FEEDBACK

3-6 May 2016 / a.pass

WOAW_Resize_original

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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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.

excursion, 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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workshop

Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga ON MOVEMENT

24-24 May 2016 / a.pass

precipitations_EWH-FLH_05

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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excursion, workshop

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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excursion, 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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excursion, workshop

Séba 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’).

excursion, 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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input, 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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excursion, 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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MENTORING STRATEGIES Block II/2016

5 September-4 December 2016

The dedicated mentors for this block are Femke Snelting, Kate Rich, Geert Opsomer and Philippine Hoegen.

According to your needs, you can choose for either 2 or 3 mentors.

In order to challenge you with a specific context and language of mentoring we would like to suggest for this block, that the team of mentors proposes one of those 2 or 3 mentors to you. We would like to experiment with this possibly confronting, contrasting, or specific support to your research. With each of the 2 or 3 mentors you will have 4 hours of mentoring throughout the block.

Since the dedicated mentors will present themselves in the opening week and will attend all your presentations you will be able to decide on your mentors at the end of the first week.

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