index

Polyset 2022W4-7 a.pass, Brussels 14 January 2022
posted by: Vladimir Miller

a.pass

24 January 2022

11 February 2022

case of: Vladimir Miller

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

SCHEDULE

[disorganisation, mutable<>mutant, re-constitution, available space, usedesign, decoherence, constituent imagination, perpetual modeling, set / unset, cohab, sticky space, gel, semiset, accumulation, interim, tentative, fragile, actual, affine space, poligraphy, gathering, a walk in the dark with the flashlight pointing backwards, fugitive instituting, politecture, study, overflow, hangout]

a poliset is:

a practice of temporary research co-habitation, where the the researchers design their spaces of practice in one shared space

an indoor research hangout with available communal materials, tools, support structures and resources

a self-curated study, that works through an open network of invitations

consensual over-all-planning is an exception, while relational collaborative negotiations structure the space

“Poliset was developed as a workshop at a.pass about 10 years ago when a.pass was still situated at DeSingel in Antwerp. When I was invited to teach there, I was looking for a practice which would allow the researchers to produce a study environment that was structured around a polycentric approach to community and practice. The main question in coming up with this workshop was for me: How to design a (self)educational environment which can be appropriated by others through re-design? I wanted to pass on the role of the workshop facilitator to the space itself, hoping that interactions and presentations would organically emerge from the engagement of the researchers with their work and with each other. But for this to happen our spatial arrangement had to dissolve the default model of “always gathering in a circle around a table” which would privilege me as a teacher no matter what I did and said. We all needed an opportunity to stay together but to orient ourselves away from the center and towards our tasks and questions as researchers. Not to simply fall apart into individual processes, but to disorganise in order to reorganise in multiple peer-to-peer occasions of sharing and presentation. I took the idea of a city as a spatial metaphor (or on a smaller scale: village, town), with its distributed centers of production, politics and self-organisation, as the main model for such a space. The initial proposal was therefore called “Settlement” to point to a mode of dwelling which is never one structure and desire, but a multitude of interacting formations. The word “settlement” was also pointing to the key practice of negotiation (a “settlement” marks its end in legal terms) between the social, individual, material and organisational formations which would be emergent in the space. As the practice continued to develop at a.pass and elsewhere over the past ten years, then Settlement and now Poliset went through different iterations, becoming a larger research project on the politics of commoning and the relationship between practice and its material/spatial conditions within institutions.”

Vladimir Miller

a.pass Poliset 2022W4-6 will bring together research practices, contributions and participation by:

apass participants, mentors, curators and team (tbc):

Aleksandra Boris, Amy Pickles, Chloë Janssens, Sarah Pletcher, Anna- Sophie Lugmeier, Asli Hatipoglu, Martina Petrovic, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier, Vera Sofia Mota, Gosie Vervlossem, Simon Asencio, Rares Craiut, João Fiadeiro, Vijai Patchineelam, Anna Rispoli, Samah Hijawi, Jaime Llopis, Vladimir Miller, Lilia Mestre, Steven Jouwersma, Joke Liberge, Kristof Van Hoorde.

with research contributions by:

artists choreographers Christine de Smedt, Liza Baliasnaja and Theo Livesey:

”L'Inconnu is a collaborative research project between Liza Baliasnaja, Theo Livesey and Christine De Smedt, around the notion of Low Intensity Violence (LIV). For this work, we consider LIV to be made up of the violences we experience and produce which are not immediately evident or visible. The violence that works in disguise. The research currently takes a specific look at LIV through the lens of language, and how language operates as a medium and vehicle for violences.”

Tania Garduño (CIVA) - contribution on Proxemics:

“In the Turkish Empire, the shade of a tree you planted determined the amount of land you owned. Tree shades defined villages' sprawls. You could also calculate how old was a city, not necessarily by its buildings but by looking at the height of the trees.

Architecture can be seen as the practice situated between the built space, human beings and actions. It can become the container of politics, history and civilizations. However, no single discipline nor research technique can help us understand how we perceive and associate with space. The science of Proxemics acknowledges this impasse; it addresses basic human situations in a subconscious area of society. It studies the many sensory inputs and emotions related to culture and its environment. Through scientific research, combined with "learning-by-doing" and the starting point that we are all experts in "being", Proxemics creates a broad field of experimentation that gives us a hidden take on our relationship to the world.”

Jozef Wouters

"I will open and share my research as part of The Unbuilt School of Architecture. Part of Decoratelier, The Unbuilt School of Architecture is a platform for research about scenography and ephemeral space. For the Poliset days, I will share my research on spaces that are made of care and words more than of space and square meters. The ways of sharing are twofold; on Mon Feb 7th from 4pm I will open for a reading group and at 6pm it will be a film or a talk."

Conversation with David Vercauteren on his book “Micropolitiques des Groupes” (tbc)

To be expanded by the participating researchers

an updated agenda of presentations, sharings, workshops and screenings will be posted here as it develops

…

This text is not only an announcement, but also an invitation to come and spend time in the space and to usedesign it on your own terms. please use the link below to sign up and coordinate so that we can welcome you in.

covid safety protocols will be followed in the collective space.

a.pass Basics workshops

block 2020/III

Debunking the Myth or The Emperor’s New Clothes Revisited
01 September 2020
posted by: Vladimir Miller

Elke van Campenhout

online

16 November 2020

20 November 2020

yes

NEW DATES!

16.-20. Nov 2020

To be a contemporary artist comes with a lot of prerequisites these days: unspoken discourse rules, critical norms, and a general salonfähig consensus about values like fluidity, horizontality, collaboration, etcetera… Often these values are taken for granted while a strong discourse is ruling the artist's world, zooming in on any hint of postcolonial insensitivity, patriarchal blindness, gender observations, and faintly non-consensual power use. This attitude stems from the bountiful history of feminist and queer studies, cultural studies insights, and a general growing awareness of her-stories and the damage done by biased educations and cultural misgivings. But at the same time there are also a lot of other untouched territories underlying these value markers: 19th century romanticism, liberalism, humanism, … Each one carrying within it a very specific view of what it means to be a human being in this world, how we are connected and what we are able to convey.

In the current climate it seems to me a lot of these values are not questioned thoroughly on how they influence our capacity to open up to the choices in the work that want to manifest. Often the research is blocked by the embodied discourse, warning against any infractions on the presupposed shared value system. Which often seems to stop the experimentation at the point where it dips into uncertainty, risk and the danger of losing the stamp of approval of the community. In this workshop I would like to look into these presuppositions, both on a discursive and body level: to see what are the desires that are being thwarted by the powers-that-are-being-accepted, and how we can reclaim the ones that aren’t and activate them in a thinking and body practice out of a normative context, but within the expansive limits of an experimental research practice.

Deadline to sign up is Thursday, 12.11.2020

a.pass Basics workshops

block 2020/III

https:///www.apass.be/a-good-workshop/

AUTODOMESTICATION 01 September 2020
posted by: Vladimir Miller

Krõõt Juurak

a.pass

27 October 2020

31 October 2020

yes

As a performer you provide your audience with something that cannot be measured in material terms. As regards the activity that produces the cultural content of the commodity, your labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognised as work – activities involved in defining and determining cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms and, on a strategic level, public opinion. As a performer you are primarily a producer of subjectivity. Typically, an artist’s value does not lie in what they “do” but in what they “are”. Now, remember, for example, how Richard Florida described the processes of gentrification caused by the migration of artists and creative workers – the artists may or may not be aware of the value of their mere presence but on a larger scale they produce “results” simply by existing. Survival in the (performing) arts requires creativity that goes beyond the artworks one creates. In fact, a typical performing artist spends about 99 percent of their time off stage – as an audience member, a critic, an administrator, a networker, friend, mentor, student, teacher and so on. Inventing and re-inventing oneself on and offstage, adjusting to various situations, restrictions, moving from project to project, one residency to the next, brimming with creative energy, training and forever educating oneself is the way forward.

Autodomestication is a workshop about becoming what one already is. Autodomestication asks the participants to colonise themselves to the furthest edges of their souls, extend in all directions and go nowhere. This is the first level of a multi-layered performance which will extend beyond workshop hours and breaks. Infinite moods in which one is not fully aware of what type of decision will be asked to be made next, time-based ways of being, spaces of attention, autobiography as a tool of speculation, insurrection of experience and emotions, and non-causal reasoning.

You can find a conversation between Krõõt Juurak and Vladimir Miller here:

Settlement 16 The Unconditional Institution
01 September 2020
posted by: Vladimir Miller

Vladimir Miller

a.pass

14 September 2020

03 October 2020

During the days of Sept 14th - Oct 3rd 2020 a.pass will come together and host an open workspace called Settlement. In the course of these three weeks we will share our current work processes within an open collaborative workspace. We aim to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass Settlement and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at the a.pass main space will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process. The schedule for these three weeks will be developed on site by its participants and shared online on the a.pass website.

please let us know if you want to join this workshop by subscribing a week before you come. covid measures will be followed in the shared environment to ensure it safety.

some key ideas which have informed similar spaces before:

encountering processes

The potential of this setup is that it allows us to encounter each others processes instead of products of our artistic work. Processes are much more difficult to make visible and to see as they require a different mode of attention and participation. The attempt to witness a process requires a change in the temporal mode of being-together in the collective space.

no spectators

The space we are trying to facilitate is open, but it is not an exhibition. There is no „spectator mode“, and no institutionalised responsibility for hosting visitors. However any participant (including possible newcomers) is welcome to invite and host anybody according to the logic of their work process. Anybody is welcome to join the collective space for any timespan, respectful of the fact that Settlement is a predominately a workspace. The (growing/changing) group will try to provide enough information at the entrance, so that everyone feels welcome and knows how to join and share.

productive instability

We will collect most of the materials for the space from the a.pass storage and re-accommodate them towards our purposes. This strategy produces a space that is fragile, self-made, and constantly changing. Such a space influences the sociability within it towards similar qualities – towards a more fluid social contract. In asking for a hands-on construction and deconstruction of its makeshift set-ups, such a space allows for a quicker change of settings and a decentralised mode of (self)organisation. For this reason, the suggestion is to refrain from using usual furniture (tables and chairs) and improvise new set ups for „work-stations“ and collective moments out of what we can scavenge.

The Unconditional Institution

While this workshop is a place for all involved to develop their own and collaborative work, it is also a place where we can come together around a common concern or concerns. Settlement invites to think about research in a similar way: as a material contribution to the shared environment, a place to care for which can bring other researchers together in collaboration.. The time frame of three weeks allows to actually build these spaces and consider their material conditions, access and affordances.

/

Coming out of the a.pass conference Research Futures, and as the initiator of this workspace Vladimir Miller will contribute a focus on the idea of an Unconditional Institution to the shared space. This focus is not a mandatory collective topic of discussion, but a first in hopefully a number of collaborative focal points which will develop during the process. This work on the Unconditional Institution will take the form of a collective debating and writing of a manifesto in conversation with all who want to join.

/

If neo-liberalism behaves as if it was unconditional (in the sense of all-encompassing), how can public institutions hold against and within this condition? They need to be built on fundamentally different politics in order to be able to provide a real alternative.

How can we rethink institutions as care places for specific practices and topics? How can we rethink their borders and access on the basis of time and labour investment into shared concerns, and not on the basis of belonging?

/

The practice of Settlement is asking the question of access on a granular level: if our practices are mini-institutions within the artificial mini society / space of the Settlement, what are their modalities of conditional and unconditional access? Learning from our own small institutions we can look towards the bigger ones and develop desires and paradigms of how they should be working.

/

The idea of the Unconditional Institution is rethinking the fundamental ideas of access which institutions are built on. How can we turn the paradigm of conditional access to institutions around? Can we imagine institutions with unconditional access? How would that work within a society where conditional access is the very foundation of social and economic life? Can we create a utopian imperative for institutions to give unconditional access to their resources like space, time, materials as part of their structural organisation?

block 2020/III

Block 2020 III 01 September 2020
posted by: Vladimir Miller

2020 has so far been a turbulent year: of course, the global background we are all aware of, but also for a.pass and all involved, as a community, as a group of colleagues and as a place of politics and organisation. We need time to meet despite all difficulties, and we need time to think together. We think of this block primarily as a meeting of ideas and practices of the researchers and the block contributors, in order to make space for an emergent support structure shared between all involved. Our desire is to ground the support structure of a.pass in a close relationship with the necessities and practices of the researchers. Curating here refers again more to care, than to an overarching trajectory. The core of what we do, practice artistic research, is what needs input and support. Starting from the question of what we need and how to organise it we want to create transitory and sustainable modes of organising and sharing research. The block practice, starting with the Settlement gathering, is focused on organisational and structural awareness and feedback: which spatial and temporal structures do we propose, how is it working with us and our research, and is it something we should keep for the future?

performative publishing

Maurice Meewisse Documentation Third Block - Settlement 14 Curated by Vladimir Miller
11 September 2019
posted by: Maurice Meewisse

01 January 2019

31 March 2019

case of: Maurice Meewisse

Maurice Meewisse Documentation Third Block - Settlement 14

"During the days of Jan 7th-26th 2019 a.pass will come together and host an open workspace called SETTLEMENT. In the course of these three weeks we will share our current work processes within an open collaborative workspace. We aim to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass SETTLEMENT and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at the a.pass main space will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process." Curator Vladimir Miller

The Settlement was prolonged and resulted in Unettled Study, as a part of Performatik19, the Brussels performance biennial in Kanal Centre Pompidou.

In the context of the Settlement I started a proces where I would explore themes like ownership, value and territory.

Step I - Sitting

The Settlement started as an empty space, and I needed to sit, but if you make only one stool, there will always be somebody on it, so I made a lot more.

Step II - Helping

I offered my skills to the group, if somebody wanted something, I would make it for them!

Step III - Branding

On the last day of the first week I branded everything I made with green and orange, in total 27 objects, after this I left the Settlement for two weeks.

Step IV - Follow-up

I told the settlers that all my efforts were for the benefit of the collective and that they should feel free to do whatever they want with the stuff I made. But after two weeks I came back to follow up on my work, and about half 'my' things were used in people individual projects - which was perfectly fine, but where I could find traces of my branding, I rebranded and spread my motif further.

Step V - Outsourcing

Again I was away for some time, but I needed to stay involved, so what better way then hire people to make me the things I desired? The assignments varied from things I actually needed, up to stuff I was curious about how my colleagues would react. "I need a flag and I pay € 10,- for it" - "I want something pretty for € 8,- " - "Could somebody make me a 10% oversized chair for € 10,-?" - "I pay € 10,- for something to organize all these jobs" ect. In total 13 objects have been made based on those minimal guidelines, but there was always one hard demand, it needed to be branded! The resulting objects varied enormous, there were provocations, there were simple executions, useful ones and even a virtual one!

Step VI - Selling

The Settlement moved to Kanal Centre Pompiduo and transformed into 'Unsettled Study' as a part of Performatik19. In the middle of the group I erected a small shop, Meewisse Mobilier et Divers, where I engaged into negotiations to determine the value of the outsourced objects. The visitors had then the option to buy the object for that price. In that negotiation I was completely open about the procedure that led to these object and tried to sketch an as complete as possible image of the object. Factors like material, who made it, what is it for, what did I pay for it, is it art, is it something else, ect..?

With special thanks to Katinka, Diego, Adrijana, Steven, Elen, Vlavio, Antye and Pierre for making objects!

Settlement 14 schedule 08 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

07 January 2019

26 January 2019

MON 7th

14:00 meeting

17:00 cleaning, emptying the collective space

19:00 dinner

TUE 8th

10:00 Materials and Tools

WED 9th

10:30 Scheduling

11:00 Katinka van Grokum, a.pass opening week presentation: SketchUp as an Interior

12:00 Caterina Mora: Translating Ballet to Regaton

13:00 Living Together: organising cooking cleaning up

14:00 Research and Space (conversation with new a.pass researchers and LM and VM)

16:00 Ezster Nemethi TBC

THU 10th

9:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

10:30 Scheduling

11:00 Deborah Birch, a.pass opening week presentation: Caves II. Re-entry

14:00 Katinka van Grokum: Trash Talk, recycling in Belgium

16:00 Chloe Chignell, a.pass opening week presentation: Choreographic Strategies for Writing

17:00 Christina Stadlbauer, a.pass opening week presentation: Sharpening the Narrative

FRI 11th

12:00 Signe Frederiksen, a.pass opening week presentation

Cooking: Amelie van Elmst

15:30 Maurice Meewisse, a.pass opening week presentation

17:00 Meri Ekola, Light Observations

18:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton) with a guest dancer

SAT 12th

SUN 13th

MON 14th

9:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

11:30 Diego Echegoyen, a.pass opening week presentation

12:30 Goda Palekaitė, a.pass opening week presentation: Legal Implications of a Dream

"Legal Implications of a Dream" is the title of Goda's research and her solo exhibition which just opened in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Let us think of settlement as an occupied space which materializes as a consequence of a collective dream.

14:00 Scaffolding Introduction (how to and safety instructions)

16:00 Human Condition Reading Club part I

TUE 15th

10:00 Scheduling

10:30 Outside Walk (Mathilde Maillard) 1h

12:00 Alex Arteaga, Input: Architecture of Embodiment and destabilizing an architectural object

Disclosing an Architectural Object is an artistic research framework that allows an approach to a twofold object of inquiry: the architectural organization of material and the cognitive agency of aesthetic media, practices and artifacts.

14:00 Meeting with Michele Meesen and Joke Liberge: organisational, budget, etc for first block researchers (end 16:00)

16:00 Laura Pante, apass opening week presentation: On Metaphorology

18:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

WED 16th

10:00 Mathilde Maillard: a.pass opening week presentation: Work Club / Club Travail

11:00 Peggy Pierrot, Do You Belong ?

Artistic activities are shaped by continuous trips, international workshops and residencies abroad. In this context, each work session operates like a colonization of some people space, means and life by the artistic presence and vision. The artist settles in different environments, whether his work aim to relate directly or not at all to the different creation contexts. In this international scene of seesaw motion, how can one’s cultivate his sense of belonging, of beeing from, of being rooted, without a nationalist content, but without being a post modern nomad of emptiness? How do YOU, settler, react to this constraints (langage, food, bodies, papers...). What do you take or leave ? What do you gain from this artistic nomadism ? Do you belong somewhere ? We’ll question these assumptions through an insight on the work of the artist Pierre Creton.

14:00 Flavio Rodrigo, a.pass opening week presentation: Sensations, Paths and Rituals of Work with the Creative Imagination (establishing the initial relations of my research). Please bring you mobile phone and headphones, you will need them during the presentation.

18:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

THU 17th

9:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

11:00 Elen Braga: The World to Come

If we have a history-line, what are the most important events of the last 30 years of human life that come to our mind? Is there a connection between those events and the context of our artistic research? What are the symptoms of those events and how to prophesize the world to come? We will start the exercise using the allegory of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. And by creating symbolic images, we will try to transform those events into an allegory of apocalypse. "And in the days of these people shall we set up a world, which will never be destroyed?"

12:00 Nassia Fourtouni, a.pass opening week presentation: Neither Distance nor Empathy

FRI 18th

9:30 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

13:00 Philipp Gehmacher, mentor's presentation (skype)

14:00 Amelie van Elmbt, a.pass opening week presentation: Dreaming Walls

15:00 Scheduling next week

15:05 Space and Scenography review and preview w. Vladimir

SAT 19th

SUN 20th

MON 21st

13:00 Experimental Film Scratching Workshop

14:30 Muslin Brothers, a.pass opening week presentatio

16:00 Human Condition Reading Club part II

TUE 22nd

9:00 Caterina Mora: Training, Translation (Ballet and/or/vs Regaton)

12:00 Engaging the Spectacle: Aspects of Contemporary Ideology, a Brazilian Case Study.

Roberto Winter shares his thoughts and artistic practice - with an introduction and lunch prepared by Adrijana Gvozdenovic.

"Our time is critical, we seem to be finishing the transition to a new era (and maybe we already have), call it the "New Dark Ages", "Hypernormal", "Semiocapitalist", or "Capitalist realist", under the empire of total spectacle, we are ruled by images. [...] Art’s potential role in untangling the situation is privileged and fragile: if it can resort to fiction, it must also deal with fake news; if it can resort to a long tradition of making and understanding images, it must also deal with the emptiness of memes and social networks; if it can resort to aesthetics, it must understand the new role of images and the obligation to (self-)design. The question remains: how to engage in the production of things that could make the current state of affairs graspable, explicit, unbearable and, eventually, help lead to their overcoming?"

14:30 Mathilde Maillard and Flavio Rodrigo, Lets Talk about Brasil

WED 23rd

10:00 We meet at KANAL Centre Pompidou to have a look at the space for the upcoming Unsettled Study. Afterwards we will talk about the space and the process of the block

14:00 Bauhaus and School, Input from Moritz Frischkorn + Heike Bröckerhoff

Based on their own research for an artistic project, Heike and Moritz will give a short introduction about the Bauhaus as an art-academy. It seems as if the very idea of an art-school as a "total work of art", based on principles of performance, inter-disciplinarity and process-orientation, where one invests oneself fully, combines technology and art, and thus manufactures a new subject for a democratic society was invented at the Bauhaus. We would like to discuss how to relate to those ideas and concepts from a contemporary point of view.

THU 24th

10:00 Lilia Mestre: On Scoring, To Forge Temporary Communities

11:30 Alex Arteaga: On my Intervention in/with the Settlemen

20:00 Cine Club: Time Indefinite

FRI 25th

11:00 Settlement review and block organisation (whats next?) w. Vladimir

performative publishing

Unsettled Study

UNSETTLED STUDY AT PERFORMATIK '19 performative research environment
03 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

KANAL

22 March 2019

23 March 2019

case of: Vladimir Miller

Unsettled Study will invite the audience to witness and join the multitude of research processes currently hosted by the a.pass platform for artistic research.

For several years a.pass platform fo artistic research has periodically engaged with a research environment called Settlement proposed and facilitated by Vladimir Miller. This project continues to ask on which spatial, performative and institutional conditions is it possible to step into and share an artist's research process as it is happening.

During Performatik 2019 "Unsettled Study" will attempt to develop the idea of the Settlement into a performative installation at KANAL which will invite the audience into the multitude of research and work processes currently hosted by a.pass. Starting from the Settlement project in January at a.pass, the researchers, curators and facilitators will embark on a process of developing architectural structures to support, represent and host their research processes. Through a series of workshops and inputs from invited guest artists the researchers will develop short performance lectures in relation to their practice. As a culmination of this three months long process this emergent collective space of study will move from apass to KANAL and open its research environment in an evening of overlapping performances and installations.

Within the frame of Performatik19, the Brussels biennial of performance art

Unsettled Study Open Studio

Wednesday 20th – Saturday 23rd of March during opening hours at Kanal Centre Pompidou Brussels

tickets are available as a special 10-day pass for Kanal Centre Pompidou

Unsettled Study Performative Research Environment

Friday 22nd of March 16h

Saturday 23rd of March 18h

at Kanal Centre Pompidou Brussels

duration ca 3h

tickets are available as a special 10-day pass for Kanal Centre Pompidou

Produced and performed by a.pass researchers, curators and facilitators: Alex Arteaga, Deborah Birch, Elen Braga, Isabel Burr Raty, Chloe Chignell, Diego Echegoyen, Amélie van Elmbt, Nassia Fourtouni, Katinka van Gorkum, Antye Guenther,Steven Jouwersma, Leo Kay, Joke Liberge, Mathilde Maillard, Sara Manente, Michele Meesen, Maurice Meewisse, Lilia Mestre, Caterina Mora, Muslin Brothers (Yaen Levi & Tamar Levit), Eszter Némethi, Goda Palekaite, Laura Pante, Peggy Pierrot, Rob Ritzen, Flavio Rodrigo, RRadio Triton, Femke Snelting, Christina Stadlbauer,
Lecture performance mentoring: Philipp Gehmacher
Process curator: Vladimir Miller

a.pass Basics workshops

http://sarma.be/pages/Anthology_walk+talk

Unsettled Study

the Lecture, the Performance workshop with philipp gehmacher
03 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

04 February 2019

08 February 2019

This week’s focus lies on the idea and genre of the lecture performance in the performing and visual arts. Speaking out will be looked at as a performative act of sharing thoughts and concerns about ones own research and work. The questions often arising are: Why speak out about things at all? Why not let the work speak for itself, the research be mapped out and available? Is the speaking an extra layer of added information, at times rendering the ‚shown’ and presented more informal, even personal? Whilst in fact pointing at its surrounding, as much as the institution, is there a self-referentiality involved in speaking that we cannot escape whether we speak about ourselves, our concerns or just matters seemingly ‚worldly‘ and not personal? Speaking is however also about utterance and the speech act, performative as such, in the now, whether scripted or not. Speaking points out, maps out, accompanies actions and discursifes often all at once.

All in all the lecture performance combines notions of speaking with notions of showing, doing, and demonstrating, side by side or all at once. It seems to be a format where something needs to be told, literally. All of the above however in relationship to physical actions or the presentations of any kind of materials. As much as at the lecture, the doing, mapping out, constructing and building with materials or any medial visualizations will also be looked at. What does the performance allow as a time based procedure to present and make available besides verbal utterance? The performative seems to lie as much in the words as in the objects and thoughts. We’ll find out.

Philipp Gehmacher
Choreographer, dancer and visual artist, lives and works in Vienna. Gehmacher’s artistic works implement the body and language as forms of expression, erected and institutional space, as well as object and sculpture. Philipp Gehmacher has presented these works between black box and white cube internationally at theatre festivals and in exhibition spaces. Recently, among others at Museum der Moderne Salzburg, steirischer herbst (Graz), the Biennale of Sydney, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival (Helsinki), Leopold Museum and mumok in Vienna, and Griffith University Art Museum in Brisbane and Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels. Philipp Gehmacher is a mentor and teacher at P.A.R.T.S and ISAC in Brussels, HZT in Berlin, DOCH in Stockholm, Impulstanz Vienna and the University of Salzburg.

philippgehmacher.net

more on the lecture performance series Walk+Talk:

Settlement 14 03 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

a.pass

07 January 2019

26 January 2019

During the days of Jan 7th-26th 2019 a.pass will come together and host an open workspace called SETTLEMENT. In the course of these three weeks we will share our current work processes within an open collaborative workspace. We aim to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass SETTLEMENT and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at the a.pass main space will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process. The schedule for these three weeks will be developed on site by its participants and shared online on the a.pass website.

Here are some key ideas which have informed similar spaces before:

encountering processes

The potential of this setup is that it allows us to encounter each others processes instead of products of our artistic work. Processes are much more difficult to make visible and to see as they require a different mode of attention and participation. The attempt to witness a process requires a change in the temporal mode and in the mode of being-together in the collective space.

no spectators

The space we are trying to facilitate is open, but it is not an exhibition. There is no „spectator mode“, and no institutionalised responsibility for hosting. However any participant (including possible newcomers) is welcome to invite and host anybody according to the logic of her/his work process. Anybody is welcome to joint the collective space for any timespan, respectful of the fact that Settlement is a predominately a workspace. The (growing/changing) group will try to provide enough information at the entrance, so that everyone feels welcome and knows how to join and share.

productive instability

We will collect most of the materials for the space from the apass storage and re-accommodate them towards our purposes. This strategy produces a space that is fragile, self-made, and constantly changing. We believe that such a space influences the sociability within it towards similar qualities – towards a more fluid social contract. In asking for a hands-on construction and deconstruction of its makeshift set-ups, such a space allows for a quicker change of settings and a decentralised mode of (self)organisation. For this reason, we suggest to refrain from using usual furniture (tables and chairs) and improvise new set ups for „work-stations“ and collective moments out of what we can scavenge from around the academy.

Settlement

Settlement is spatial proposal that tries to sustain its architectural fragility hoping in this way to initiate a temporary social, organizational and ideological one. Simply put it is a collective workspace, a camp and a hangout, open to all who stop by and would like to contribute to it. Like many other such meetings it is a place of informal exchange and presentation. It is a space for practices instead of products, a place where our individual ideas and processes have not yet achieved a solid state and can flow into each other.

Settlement starts with a haphazard collection of materials in an otherwise empty space. Everything one might need for one’s work has be be built and (re)invented there. There are no tables, no chairs, and the materials and objects resist easy categorization and usability. They have to be mis-used, adapted, they have a will on their own. The built environment has to be negotiated -with on the level of the object. There is potential in a thing being one thing one day, and a totally different thing the day after. There is also potential in that thing changing hands. (You will be surprised how quickly ownership is established from communal beginnings: one just has to pick up a thing and put it somewhere.)

Settlement is a space that tries very hard not to settle. Its instability works against the establishing of clear boundaries between „your space“ and „my space“, what hopefully follows from that is that it is very difficult to establish boundaries between „your work“ and "my work“. It asserts that practice is bound by space, and if space gets shaky, unstable, shareable, so does the practice.

By starting from scratch Settlement invites a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. In the course of the three weeks Settlement lets a particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the encoded behaviors of ready-made spaces such as “table”, “studio”, “meeting”, “gallery”, “venue”, “library”, etc.

The politics of practice in terms of co-habitation and co-working, of claiming one’s own space, inviting or excluding the outside, communication of ideas, inviting change and influence are all there to be questioned within this setup. As a practice is (in some ways) „re-built“ during Settlement, one can come to question its very construction.

Settlement is a collective project which was facilitated over several years on different occasions. The project takes the form of a workshop and creates and inhabits a space full of fragile and precarious structures. Since Settlement starts from a space devoid of habitual work setups, with all materials present considered a common resource, all the structures are built from the necessities of the individual and collective practices of its participants. A kind of a re-start on the physical level and an attempted re-start on the level of the habitual and institutional structures governing our spaces of production. The title is used as a provocation, as Settlement is a space which, over the course of several weeks, tries very hard not to settle.

Settlement puts a spatial perspective on practice, identifying modes of institutionalisation and habit which keep the spaces of artistic production and education from becoming spaces of commoning. These modes of ‘settling’ are embedded in many things: they are there in the ways the spaces are designed and organised towards stability (supporting habit and the given hierarchy of organisation), they are there in the institutionalised processes of access and exclusion, and they are there in our social habits (which structure the most empty and open space imaginable). Looking at how the spaces of our practice prioritise the habitual, Settlement introduces architectural fragility as a mode of destabilizing practice and the social agreements between the participants. The spaces created within Settlement are make-shift and precarious and therefore never suited to support a certain social constellation or a process indefinitely. That introduces another timing into the space, rendering all structures inherently temporary and unreliable. The habit of regarding products of work as property becomes destabilized, as all structures in the space are short-lived and can become ‘material’ again very quickly. These and other changes occur through fragility of the built environment and work effectively against the habitual ‘settling down’. The transition of a structure back to the common resource through collapse or re-appropriation is always a possibility, producing the common as a constant perspective onto the emerging territories, constellations and rules in the Settlement space.

The Choreography of Objects: Logistics vs. Entanglement 03 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

Moritz Frischkorn

25 February 2019

28 February 2019

The Choreography of Objects: Logistics vs. Entanglement

In recent years, theoreticians both from political sciences and cultural studies have become more and more interested in the business field of logistics. Besides finance (and new logics of extraction, some authors claim), logistics seems to be one of the key notions to understand global capitalism today.

Today logistics considers itself the totalized management and governance of all flows of capital, labour and commodities. And more than ever, logistics is administered and steered by algorithms – auto-managed and automated, implementing a computational governance that subjects labour as much as all material resources of the globe to its regime. Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, in their essay 'Fantasy in the Hold', thus write: 'The rise of logistics is rapid. Indeed, to read today in the field of logistics is to read a booming field, a conquering field. In military science and in engineering of course, but also in business studies, in management research, logistics is everywhere.

Logistics as choreography describes the faculty of being able to transport 'mountains of goods' (Maersk) just in time. The use of 'choreography' as marketing metaphor is then mirrored also in expert papers speaking about Supply Chain Choreographies as ways to interface diverse informational systems.

Reading about the confluence and interrelation of logistics and choreography together, we will try to unfold some of the historic as much as contemporary political problematics related to this totalizing choreography of power operating by extraction, abduction and containerization. At the same time, we can discuss in how far this 'other' choreography of objects, based on efficiency and seamless interfaces, reflects back on recent discourses about an 'expanded choreography' in the field of contemporary performing arts and Performance Studies. How can an understanding of the history and contemporary over-practice of logistics inform our own choices when moving stuff? What are the political dimensions that are at play here – especially if we do not concede to maximizing claims for efficiency, but to an ethics of 'following the materials' or of attending and attuning to manifold entanglements?

In a second step, we will try to play around with logistical concepts in order to re-formulate our own artistic practices. We will draw maps of the diverse material and semiotic resources that go into our work: From where do they enter, and at what point do our practices interface with these resources? Could we imagine ways of working with material or information, where 'value is added at each step'? What would be more efficient ways of thinking about our own 'supply chains', both in terms of research and artistic production? When, on the other hand, are the moments in which we are overwhelmed by materials, where we can only try to follow their itinerant logics of entanglement and proliferation? Presenting these 'total cost analysis' and 'supply chain diagram' to each other, we may find out how our own and others practices rely on a fine balance between logistical efficiency and itinerant, entangled hyper-chaos.

On another, more physical level, we can assess our own work-spaces from a logistical point of view. In Amazon distribution centers, for example, goods are shelved chaotically, according to algorithmic procedures. In the same way, we can think of workspaces as processual logistical choreographies based on the in- and out-flux of materials and information. What if we thought of our workspaces thus as a form of archive of the logistics that made it come to be in its current shape? Does that give us valuable information about our practices? On the horizon, then, we come to articulate an even bigger question: Can we formulate an ethics of how to work with materials, whatever form, coherence, shape or agility they may have?

Moritz Frischkorn is a choreographer and researcher working within contemporary performing arts. He is based in Hamburg, where, since 2015, he is part of the artistic-theoretic graduate school 'Performing Citizenship' at HafenCity University. His artistic research deals with ethical and social questions related to choreographies of objects. In his artistic work, he looks for bodily practices of attuning to non-human movement and researches ways of moving beyond self-expression and intentionality.

In the last years, he is interested, mainly, in the relation of choreography and logistics, a topic that he will deal with in detail within a new performance project entitled 'The Great Report'. His artistic work is regularly presented at Kampnagel, Hamburg. Furthermore, he often collaborates with, among others, Manon Santkin (Brussels, Stockholm), his Hamburg colleagues Heike Bröckerhoff and Jonas Woltemate, and performance collective geheimagentur. Sporadically, he writes for 'Plateau - Performing Arts in Hamburg' and works for Sarma/Oral Site web-journal.

Unsettled Study

BLOCK 2019/I UNSETTLED STUDY curated by Vladimir Miller
03 January 2019
posted by: Vladimir Miller

07 January 2019

31 March 2019

case of: Vladimir Miller

Continuing the line of inquiry from Uninvited Research, Block 19/I will again come together around the questions of mobility, logistics and gestures of moving, settling and unsettling. All who research, work and support at apass including the Research Center, the administration, the curators and production support are invited to join the process.

To initiate the building of an institution which can support study a.pass will host Settlement, a practice of being together while building the space for the individual and collective practices of research. Through a series of workshops with Philipp Gehmacher and Moritz Frischkorn and by presenting research to each other during the Half Way Days we will further develop this space into a multitude of individual research situations and scenographies. We aim to be able to move the resulting lecture performance spaces and works to KANAL Centre Pompidou Brussels and open them to the public of the Performatik Festival at the end of the block. We will perform and host this collective Unsettled Study as an intertwined complex space on two consecutive evenings.

+++

Moten and Harney once described study in an interview in "Undercommons" as the moment of unruly togetherness before the teacher enters the classroom. Etymologically the word can be used for a process of inquiry as well as for the architectural space designated to this process within a building. In Moten and Harney study happens besides, in between, despite the institutional and curricular framework of a university and is deeply related to the unseen connectedness of the undercommons. They establish study as a valuable political tool and process within educational systems, a commoning practice which universities came to actively suppress instead of supporting it. Marginalized by the institution, study becomes the excess, the unseen extra of school. How can we undo this order and bring study back to be the common center of what we do?

As partner of the Performatik Festival 2019 a.pass has been asked to contribute a larger project to the upcoming festival. The invitation of Performatik comes with/from a curatorial proposal to engage with Bauhaus and its implications, therefore the question of what is a school and how does it perform itself is equally interesting to the festival and to us. In response, we would like to continue the line of inquiry that the School of Love by the guest curator Adva Zakai has initiated and position study as unruly undercommons, an inquiry and a space in the center of a contemporary idea of school, which we claim should be an institution in support of study.

Moten and Harney envision study as a being-together framed by the classroom, even if the classroom is fugitive or imaginary. At a.pass this classroom is a gathering which is based in the mutual and the mutant, and in an engaged not-knowing that is decidedly non-academic, one that includes all the hear-say, weird intuitions and obsessing over a question that we sum up with the „artistic" in „artistic research“. We are taking this block to look again at the spatial manifestation of research in its architectural, material and components and their movement. We look at logistics of thought and material coming together to formulate a particular study, we look at the logistics of settling and unsettling again, of making and taking apart and re-making again with the hope of making a non-academic space to support our non-academic study.

The Problem of the Score

Settlement 11 Collective Schedule 24 May 2017
posted by: Vladimir Miller

a.pass

22 May 2017

03 June 2017

The Schedule will be updated daily

for more information visit https:///www.apass.be/settlement-11/

MON 22.05

14:00 Introduction and Clearing out the Space

18:00 Improvised Dinner

TUE 23.05

10:00 Warm Up Practice

Esther Rodriguez-Barbero

14:00 Peer Critique Leo

Leo Kay

15:00 Spaces of Commoning

Zeljko Blace, Time Lab (Ghent), Vladimir Miiller

17:00 1 Minute Festival

WED 24.05

10:00 Warm Up Practice

Esther Rodriguez-Barbero

14:00 Peer Critique Eszer

Leo Kay

13:30 Collaboration Interview

Eszter and Esther

14:00 Marie Van Leeuwen (ArtEZ)

Conversation with Lilia Mestre

15:00 Session #1 Planning nothing

Where we collectively work out the rules surrounding session #2

Leo Kay

THU 25.05

09:30 Sensation as Score (Movement Practice)

Anouk Llaurens

11:00 Reading Group

Lilia Mestre and Score participants

13:00 2 Minute Festival

17:00 Medium Score 2

| Lilia Mestre

21:00

FR 26.05

10:00 Warm Up Practice

Esther Rodriguez-Barbero

10:30 Cleaning

11:30 Peer Critique slot

Leo Kay

13:00 Making Space For

Collective practice of framing and naming spaces

Esther Rodriguez-Barbero and Leo Kay

14:30 Session #2 Doing Nothing

We gather, head out to a chosen spot and using the ground rules from session #1, do nothing.

Leo Kay

15:30 Session #3 Planning Something

We spend half an hour as a group planning what we will do the following week.

We aim to be prescriptive and impose structures that allow us to fulfil our aims.

Leo Kay

SAT 27.05

MO 29.05

11:00 Architecture and Movement

Creating and experimenting with space by moving simple forms /structures.
Duration 45min

Luisa Fillitz

15:00 Playground

Eszter Némethi

TUE 30.05

11:00 Play-ground

During a short and playful workshop, we will explore the materials and existing geographies of the Settlement to create instructions and scores; while also exploring how dynamics, forms and narratives are conjured through this process.

Eszter Nemethi

13:00 Planning a.pass block III/2017

Vladimir Miller

15:00 Dialogue with Alex Arteaga

What does it mean to think? What does research mean? What can be the cognitive function of aesthetic practices? How should be these practices organized and performed in order to “do research”? And on this basis, what can be the contribution of artistic research to the epistemic field? These, an other related, are the questions that will be addressed in an open dialogue framed by Alex Arteaga.

17:00 Feminist Benjamin Reading Group

What does it mean to read as a feminist? The question may seem odd, or even trivial, but it engages the very ground of our work as artists and thinkers. Indeed, how is our reflection oriented, if not by the very way in which we turn to the text? And yet, when we think about methodologies and epistemologies, we rarely interrogate the practice of reading itself.

Caroline Godart and Marialena Marouda

WED 31.05

11:30 Session #4 Doing Something

We gather to do whatever we, as a group, decided that we wanted to do in the previous session.

We will have decided all the parameters of the experience (or lack of them) in the 3rd session. In this last session we just do them.

Leo Kay

THU 01.06

9:30 Sensation as Score (Movement Practice)

Anouk Llaurens

11:00 Reading Group

Lilia Mestre and Score participants

17:00 Medium Score 2

| Lilia Mestre

21:00

FR 02.06

SAT 03.06

12:00 Settlement Review

14:00 Build Down

2015 BLOCK III 01 September 2015
posted by: Pierre Rubio

01 September 2015

30 November 2015

Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

Agnes Schneidewind
Anouk Llaurens
Arianna Marcolini
Brendan Heshka
Christian Hansen
Esteban Donoso
Hektor Mamet
Isabel Burr Raty
Mavi Veloso
Sofia Gerheim Caesar
Thiago Antunes
Varinia Canto Vila

Research End Presentations

Audrey Cottin
Danny Neyman
Jeremiah Runnels
Silvia Ramos Pereira
Vanja Smiljanic
Verónica Cruz

Research Centre Researchers

Adriana La Selva
Juan Doninguez
Ricardo Santana

Partners

Les Bains / REcommerce
PAF Performance Art Forum

Contributors for workshops

Elke Van Campenhout
Juan Dominguez
Vladimir Miller

Coordinators a.pass

Bart Van den Eynde
Elke van Campenhout

Mentors

Abu Ali * Antonio Serra
Bart Van den Eynde
Lilia Mestre

The block is curated by Elke Van Campenhout (a.pass Research Coordinator)

14 / 09 - 02 / 10 / 2015

‘SETTLEMENT VIII - TOWARDS FRAGILITY’
workspace by Vladimir Miller

What can be a truly feminist architecture? One that does not create territory, does not claim, does not exclude. How much of the utopia of Occupy is due to the haphazard conditions of camping and DIY? Should we be sad that it’s gone? Or is its ability to disappear its most precious, most pioneering trait? Every social movement must find, claim and hold a space or perish, yes? – become an institution or die.
But how to keep on dying?
Processes of institutionalization are also processes of architectural shifts away from the fragile: from sticks and fabrics to metal and concrete, from sit-ins on the floor to tables and chairs, from open spaces to chambers with doors, from expanding circles to sitting arrangements. All of these we justify with productivity concerns. So maybe the question is: how to be productive and fragile at the same time?
Settlement is a spatial proposal that tries to sustain its architectural fragility hoping in this way to initiate a temporary social, organisational and ideological one. Simply put, it is a collective workspace, a camp and a hangout, open to all who step by and would like to contribute to it. It is a space for practices instead of products, a place where our individual ideas and processes have not yet achieved a solid state and can flow into each other.
Settlement starts with a haphazard collection of materials in an otherwise empty space. Settlement is a space that tries very hard not to settle. Its instability naturally works against the establishing of clear boundaries between „your space“ and „my space“, what hopefully follows from that is that it is very difficult to establish boundaries between „your work“ and “my work”. I believe that practice is bound by space, and if space gets shaky, unstable, shareable, so does the practice.
By starting from scratch Settlement invites a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. In the course of the three weeks Settlement lets your particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the encoded behaviors of ready-made spaces such as “table”, “studio”, “meeting”, “gallery”, “venue”, “library”, etc. The politics of practice in terms of co-habitation and co-working, of claiming one’s own space, inviting or excluding the outside, communication of ideas, inviting change and influence are all there to be questioned within this setup. As a practice is (in some ways) „re-built“ during Settlement, one can come to question its very construction.

12 - 22 / 10 / 2015

‘DIRTY ROOM’
workshop by Juan Dominguez

In these 10 days we will work together. That would be the most important. The togetherness. Working together, spending time together.
I will ask you a lot of questions, over and over. I will question you, you will question everybody, we will experience suspiciousness I guess.
In which conspiracy are you involved at the moment?
We will trip for sure, all kinds of trips or maybe not all kinds but different trips.
We will share expectations.
We will build new fictions and devices.
We will not go out, we will be trapped like el angel exterminador from Buñuel and we will not go, the negative of el angel exterminador. We will watch this movie again.
We will cook for each other.
We will sleep together.
We will gather people, as many as we can.
We will spend time, we will understand time and the time we want and what we want from time.
What are we going to do together that we cannot do alone?

09 - 22 / 11 / 2015

‘MOBILE MNSTRY’
workshop by BUREAU D'ESPOIR / ELLE

The Mobile MNSTRY (Monastery, Ministery, Monster-y) is a collective location project, organised in and around the previous Abbey of Forest. The MNSTRY will install a temporary (monastic) community that lives and works within a limited area, following a shared time score and accepting the rule of poverty for the duration of the workshop.
During this time all activities of the MNSTRY will be organised within the public contexts of Forest, and developed as an open invitation to the neighbourhood and passers-by. During the workshop the time score of the MNSTRY will bit by bit start to change: the original ‘monastic’ score will be taken over by the members of the community, who will start to decide on what there is to be done, what we will spend our shared time on, and what is it that is needed today, here, and for whom.
The workshop is part of the larger project Cité d’Espoir (part of the REcommerce social-artistic initiative, organised by Les Bains) which develops a constant practice for about six weeks (starting half October) with intense public moments during the weekends. The Mobile MNSTRY starts out with one member and through a call on the internet, the development of the workshop but also through local advertising the community will start to grow.
The ‘cité’ of the Abbaye will be renamed ‘Cité d’Espoir’ and will house the artists and their guests, supporting their ‘monastic’ practices. Cité d’Espoir will develop into a social meeting place, with a silent space to hang out, daily soup dinners, a library and regular ritual and other activities. The temporary monks start to develop their practices on the basis of poverty, social service and artistic transformation. Neighbours and interested people can pass by to have a personal ritual made for them, but we also want to involve groups and youngsters to develop group public rituals with us, based on their needs and visions. For example, we develop mourning rituals for pets or family members, light rituals for those who can not stand the cold anymore, love rituals for the lonely, political change rituals for the disengaged…

Settlement VIII TOWARDS FRAGILITY
01 August 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout

Vladimir Miller

a.pass studio

14 September 2015

02 October 2015

(fragile: unstable, disintegrating, malleable, temporary, sketchy, self-sabotage, needs care, gone when not needed, anti-territorial, only there as long as invested in, can’t hold)

I have some questions:

What can be a truly feminist architecture? One that does not create territory, does not claim, does not exclude. (Will society be different if it builds in another way, or is it the other way around, or are they actually inseparable form one another?). How much of the utopia of Occupy is due to the haphazard conditions of camping and DIY? Should we be sad that it’s gone? Or is its ability to disappear its most precious, most pioneering trait? Every social movement must find, claim and hold a space or perish, yes? – become an institution or die.

But how to keep on dying?

Processes of institutionalization are also processes of architectural shifts away from the fragile: from sticks and fabrics to metal and concrete, from sit-ins on the floor to tables and chairs, from open spaces to chambers with doors, from expanding circles to sitting arrangements. All of these we justify with productivity concerns. So maybe the question is: how to be productive and fragile at the same time?

Settlement is a spatial proposal that tries to sustain its architectural fragility hoping in this way to initiate a temporary social, organisational and ideological one. Simply put, it is a collective workspace, a camp and a hangout, open to all who step by and would like to contribute to it. Like many other such meetings it is a place of informal exchange and presentation. It is a space for practices instead of products, a place where our individual ideas and processes have not yet achieved a solid state and can flow into each other.

Settlement starts with a haphazard collection of materials in an otherwise empty space Everything one might need for one’s work has to be built and (re)invented there. There are no tables, no chairs, and the materials and objects resist easy categorization and usability. They have to be mis-used, adapted, they have a will of their own. The built environment has to be negotiated (with) on the level of the object. There is a potential in a thing being one thing one day, and a totally different thing the day after. There is also a potential in a thing changing hands. (You will be surprised how quickly ownership is established from communal beginnings: you just have to take pick up something and move it somewhere else.)

Settlement is a space that tries very hard not to settle. Its instability naturally works against the establishing of clear boundaries between „your space“ and „my space“, what hopefully follows from that is that it is very difficult to establish boundaries between „your work“ and "my work". I believe that practice is bound by space, and if space gets shaky, unstable, shareable, so does the practice.

By starting from scratch Settlement invites a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. In the course of the three weeks Settlement lets your particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the encoded behaviors of ready-made spaces such as “table”, “studio”, “meeting”, “gallery”, “venue”, “library”, etc. The politics of practice in terms of co-habitation and co-working, of claiming one’s own space, inviting or excluding the outside, communication of ideas, inviting change and influence are all there to be questioned within this setup. As a practice is (in some ways) „re-built“ during Settlement, one can come to question its very construction.

research center