index

1. end presentation
   postgraduate program
   Collective Channeling Exploration through research, play and art
   21 September 2023
   posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
   Amari, Carina Erdmann, Mlondiwethu Dubazane, Lore D Selys
   a.pass
   29 September 2023
   30 September 2023
   

   September 29-30
   Doors open at 5.30. Delaunoystraat 58.** There will be food and drinks.
   6pm-12pm: welcome at a.pass for music, film, conversation, spoken word and a dream dungeon.
   Closing party on the 30th!

   
   
   

   mlondiwethu, Carina, Amari and Lore conspire a presentation to conclude the end of a year spent together at a program for advanced performance and scenography studies. They decide to play a game and while they take a walk through the building that hosted them, they slip into character, speaking in the tongue of their research. Through this game they look at the implicit support structures and restrictions in place. They address and sound  the different languages and methods they need to adapt to move on an uneven playing field, comparing their different needs, skills, and energy levels, discussing how they can share time and space, the rules they would like themselves and others to play by. This also becomes a metaphor for the spoken and unspoken rules of institutions, of group-making, of ongoing or not yet inscribed forms of collectivities.

   
   

    

   Welcome. We'll begin with a character introduction. Who are you? Why are you here? What is your quest? Starting to my right.

   mlondiwethu: Hi, my name is mauve. I am a sound. I exist as a sound. I sound as a sound. As you hear me now you hear me in my essence, sound. I communicate with sound. Only sound, just sound. Sound, sound, sound, sound. But if you look into my eyes, if you look into my sound, I'm probably telling you a truth about myself. I came here to be heard. I hope you listening. I came here to be heard. I came here for love to be loved. I came here for me. I want to burn everything to the ground, but I need everything to stay up. My motto is to sound what I believe in or what other great masters believed in. I sound. I pop off. I smile frown. I'm shy loud, big small, pretentious, lover. Big eyes no see. I'm angry-soft. I am flow. I am muddy. The name is mauve.

   Carina: I am Olga Terre. It's kind of an old name. It's an anagram of Alter Ego, which is a bit lame, but somehow it got stuck, got stuck in my own webs. I often appear as a game designer, but actually I'm a spider, spinning webs to catch you, but catch you feeling carried. The threads are thin and fragile. They're spun from your own thoughts. If you get tied up, your quest is to question the rules of the game. See that your struggles are not your own. Recognize the patterns and that you will not solve them alone. My tone is playful. Sometimes a bit grave. Language is a game to me and I make games as a language to speak to these elephants that are marching through the rooms. Catch them on the web. My refrain is a slogan because I want to sell you your own body as technology, for free. 

   Amari: My name is Anti Hero. I blurred the line between good and bad. I created bridges between what should and what shouldn't. Now, my question is, how to learn from the shadows? How does light exist in darkness? Where is dark? Where is light? I know lawful skills and unlawful tools, I know plays and games for thoughts, I have ways to care or don't care. My attitude is true to myself. My tone is love. A love that doesn't bend. A love that is bold. I face the fears that make your body shake. That make your demons awake. Those that make your mom and dad regret they make you live in such a place. With deepest fear comes deepest desire. I'm full of paradoxes. Ghosts and prayers support me. I'm limitless.

   Lore: I'm superb SP(UB). I am spongy and Kuti (cutty). Sponging to others, sponging in the supposed outside. Cut T often through speech, gaze, movement, silence, anxiety, distraction and agitation. I cut the crap by maybe creating some more crap. I move the crap. I can be bratty as refrains, mucho mantra. Well, scrubbing scrubbing with two Bs I superb use pub. She he they spoke, we spoke spaces the place as with every process, I kind of follow and cut, Follow. Follow. Follow Follow matrix. I encasement and clothes meant I like to perceive beyond certain types of presence. I touch myself and the room a lot. You will be iceberg only a few things about us. I cross subjects and spaces. I know no grammar.

    

   Full script/game to be listened : https://collectivechanneling.cargo.site/ 

   On September 29 and 30, mlondiwethu, Carina, Amari and Lore open the a.pass doors one last time, channeling voices, rhythms, and refrains – collapsing worlds that have been into worlds that might come.

   Collective Channeling is co-curated with Simone Basani.

    

   ---

    

   ** Accessibility: a.pass is currently situated at the former industrial site ‘de Bottelarij’ in Molenbeek (Brussels). Activities take place mostly in two different spaces on the 3rd and 4th floors of the building. Due to ongoing repair works in the building the elevators are currently not accessible unless we make a special request. If accessibility presents a concern, please contact us beforehand so we can organize access to the different floors to the best of our abilities. Apologies for this inconvenience. The events in September will likely contain spoken text and performance-based activities. If there are accessibility requests or questions please contact production@apass.be.

   
   
   
   
   
   
2. end presentation
   postgraduate program
   Enter the DreamDungeon Call for participants
   18 September 2023
   posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
   Carina Erdmann
   a.pass
   20 September 2023
   

   For Carina Erdmann’s end-presentation, you will be invited to enter the DreamDungeon, a role-play game set in a subliminal architecture built from the merged dreams and associations of players and attending public. Train your mind in dream recall and submit your dream to become part of the collective memory space and soundscape. Submission will be anonymous.

   Want to dive in deeper? We are looking for a small group of core players that attend the dungeon building on September 26/27 and proceed to play the game with the public present on September 29/30. No prior knowledge needed, small compensation, places are limited. Write to Carina (before September 20) if you are interested or have questions: ca.erdmann@web.de.
3. performative publishing
   workshop
   Social dissonance workshop and book presentation
   15 March 2023
   posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
   Mattin, curated by Carina Erdmann and Lore D Selys
   Au jus
   24 March 2023
   
   social dissona...in.pdf.pdf

   Mattin’s work in the field of noise and improvisation seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental music production through live performance, recordings and writing. Social Dissonance is the discrepancy between what we do (buying and selling commodities) and what we believe about ourselves as non-commodified entities. In shifting the emphasis from the sonic to the social, we discover that social dissonance is the territory within which we already find ourselves, the condition we inhabit. In order to deal practically with this, Mattin scored social dissonance as part of documenta14 in Athens and Kassel. For 180 days, four players used members of the audience as instruments, who then hear themselves and reflect on their own conception and self-presentation. The score Social Dissonance claims that, by amplifying alienation in performance and participation, can enable us a new understanding of structural alienation.

    

   Friday 24th March 8pm: book presentation @ Au jus. (Avenue Jean Volders 24, 1060 Saint-Gilles)

   Lore D Selys & Mattin in conversation about his new book Social Dissonance, published by Urbanomic.

   The conversation will be followed by a performative interaction with the audience.

   https://www.urbanomic.com/product/social-dissonance/. PDF available here.

    

   ---

    

   Social Dissonance Workshop: Friday 24th March 3-7pm @ Au jus (Avenue Jean Volders 24, 1060 Saint-Gilles)

   RSVP via contact_aujus@proton.me

   This workshop will explore noise and improvisation in relation to subjectivity in an expanded form. In the last few years, Mattin developed the concept of social dissonance taking as a starting point the idea of cognitive dissonance. If cognitive dissonance is the contradiction between two conflicting values or cognitions, then social dissonance is a structural form of cognitive dissonance emerging from the discrepancy that exists between the idea that we are free individuals in a democratic society and the way that we reproduce a system based on inequality, exploitation, unfreedom and environmental destruction. 

   The idea of having a stable self and being an individual autonomous subject is often promoted as an ideal to strive towards in this neoliberal society, but the reality is that this is no longer be possible or even desirable. Social dissonance is increasing: the disappearance of work through AI, precarisation, digital overdose, and social media, all this lead to growing fragmentation and a sense of meaninglessness. It is not surprising that the societal expectation of success can often lead to burnout, depression, loneliness, and other mental health issues that are prevalent in our current culture.

   To address these challenges, we need to understand our fragmented character, to decenter ourselves from individualistic thinking to collective thinking. By doing so, we can make sense of an incoherent and broken society and try to find the seeds of another society that can lead us to a more inclusive future. Through listening exercises, discussions, and collective experiments such as making and performing techniques, scores, and diagrams, we will investigate this social dissonance. By bringing all possible material for improvisation, such as instruments, ideas, fears, concerns, fragility, projections, and expectations we will attempt to better understand the commodification of both our experience and our subjectivity. Through this workshop will try to practically answer these questions: How can we decenter selfhood? Is free improvisation possible in these conditions? How to engage with this mental state of noise?

    

    

    

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   Bio:

   Mattin is an artist, musician and theorist working conceptually with noise and improvisation. Through his practice and writing he explores performative forms of estrangement as a way to deal with structural alienation. Mattin has exhibited and toured worldwide. He has performed in festivals such as Performa (NYC), No Fun (NYC), Club Transmediale (Berlin), Arika (Glasgow) and lectured and taught in institutions such as Dutch Art Institute, Cal Arts, Bard College, Paris VIII, Princeton University and Goldsmiths College. In 2017 he completed a PhD at the University of the Basque Country under the supervision of the philosopher Ray Brassier. Along with Anthony Iles he edited the book Noise & Capitalism (Kritika/Arteleku 2009). In 2012 CAC Brétigny and Tuamaturgia published Unconstituted Praxis, a book collecting his writing plus interviews and reviews from performances. Anthony Iles and Mattin are currently in the final stages of editing the volume Abolishing Capitalist Totality: What is To Be Done Under Real Subsumption? (Archive Books). Urbanomic has just published this year his book Social Dissonance. Mattin is part of the bands Billy Bao and Regler and has over 100 releases in different labels worldwide. Mattin is and currently co-hosting with Miguel Prado the podcast Social Discipline, and he is also part of Noise Research Union with Cecile Malaspine, Sonia de Jager, Miguel Prado and Inigo Wilkins. Mattin took part in 2017 in documenta14 in Athens and Kassel.
4. research center
   associate researchers Cycle 1
   Research Center Cycle 1 Block IIII Reviewing emergence Cared by Nicolas Y Galeazzi
   16 September 2019
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   01 September 2019
   30 November 2019
   

   How is not keen about ‚dynamics '. Mechanics describes it as a concern for the "effects of forces on the motion of a body or system of bodies, especially of forces that do not originate within the system itself". I'm wondering how mechanics define borders of a "system" - what belongs to its inside, and what does not. I imagine it as a possibly unavoidable but finally arbitrary process of deciding. However, I myself, I consider dynamics connected to vitality - or let's call it breathing.

   One year, six associates, three curators, several events and residencies, lots of contexts and thoughts, etc. - I think we can say, the research center was never as extensive as this new cycle. It was time for a.pass to come up to the promise of generating more publicly available content. The five associate researchers accompanied by three different curators have processed their contexts and brought them to a ripe state for publishing. Holding in, taking a breath, smelling the taste, enjoying the fill of the lungs, holding in again and softly pushing the are out - and so, the cycle can start again. What was here? What was nourished by the oxygen? What did come up by breathing the same air as five other researchers?

   This block we take a breath. We are looking at what emerged. We are cleaning up, select what felt useful, archive and document, think about publishing, and try to evaluate the insights for the next cycle.
   Of course, while wrapping up, the question comes, is this not what research anyway requires from us at any time? Isn't wrapping up just another word for going on? Or is wrapping up possible anyhow in a research that is at the end never ending? Sure, close looking, reflecting, evaluating and sharing are intrinsic to research. It just takes place in a different light than pondering, discovering, curiosity, surprise etc.

   Nothing against ‚Research '- but 'search' comes first!
   This summer I was standing in a forest, next to my child. We listened, imagined, looked in the search for bears and libels, mushrooms and orchids. There was no direction, just forest, we entered where it was possible, and continued where that forest opens vision. The structures are given but inscrutable. We learn, we wonder, we wish, we compare, and things fall into our memory to be linked to other memories. Search is big. Search is following the order of the woods - not the trees.
   Research feels a bit like hide-and-seek. Everything takes place within a certain convention - the rules of the game. That's what the fun is about it. I exactly know what I'm searching for and what I have to do, I just don't know how it will happen, and when. We collect, we document, we reorganise, we create an overview, we create vision. Research is messing up the order. Research is taking perspective, so we don't see the whole woods for the trees.

   ***

   The a.pass Research Center is dedicated to supporting advanced research and to collecting and making public methodologies of artistic research developed at a.pass.  After being initiated as a platform for individual research trajectories, the Research Center shifted to welcoming a group of advanced researchers for a period of one year.

   This winter block marks the closure and thinking back of the first cycle of the a.pass Research Center through publishing.

    

   Cycle I - Associated Researchers

   Adrijana Gvozdenović is an artist who notes, talks, writes, and collects. She is interested in anecdotal and peripheral art, the conventions of exhibition making, artists’ motivations, and responsibility in the general context of art and art-related politics.

   Sina Seifee researches as an artist in the fields of narrative, performance and knowledge production. He has been working on the question of technology and storytelling in the arts and sciences of the middle ages and the past-present of material reading practices in collective life. He studied Applied Mathematics in Tehran, received his master in Media Arts in KHM Cologne and in 2017 finished an advanced research program in performance studies in a.pass.

   Rob Ritzen works as a curator with a background in philosophy, museum studies, art and architectural history. His curatorial practice is focused on self-organised and co-operative formats in close association with cultural practitioners — consciously positioned on the margin of established institutions and outside of market oriented spaces, but in the middle of communities of cultural practitioners. Most recently he co-initiated That Might Be Right, an attempt to reconfigure the politics of making art and alternative forms of production and presentation.

   Isabel Burr Raty is a performance artist based in Brussels interested in the ontological crack between the organic and the artificially engineered, between the unlicensed knowledge of minority groups and the official facts. Her research interweaves new media, body art, lectures, installations and participatory performance to propose hybrid narratives and bio-autonomy practices that play with synthetic magic and compose in situ Sci-Fi.

   Sara Manente lives in Brussels and works as a choreographer and performance artist.
   Her projects start from an understanding of dance as a performative language and exist at the limit of the choreographic: texts, dance pieces, films, workshops, experimental performances, artistic researches and collaborations.
   At the a.pass Research Center she is gathering knowledge on fermentation techniques in order to consider her research from a perspective of bacterial/interspecies ethics and aesthetics.

   Antye Guenther, born in former East Germany, has a theory based visual art practice dealing with epistemological questions within the realms of technology, post-humanism, science fiction and fictionality of science. Since her fellowship at the Jan van Eyck Academy in 2015-2016, Guenther, who has a background in medicine, is investigating neuroscientific research and imaging, particularly in its entanglement with neoliberal corporate structures and ideologies.

    

    

    
5. postgraduate program
   reading session
   block 2017/II
   The Problem of the Score
   Feminist Benjamin Reading Group 01 June 2017
   posted by: Lilia Mestre
   Caroline Godart and Marialena Marouda
   

   Walter Benjamin's work could be described as an extremely precise and sensible/sensitive analysis of modernity. Or, more precisely, of the procedures through which modernity is affecting modes of life and of communication and, essentially, of relating to the world. In his "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man" for example, Benjamin describes a practice of an intense “listening”, a mode of extreme attentiveness and generosity towards every-thing that surrounded him, as the precondition for any form of language. And in "The Storyteller", he views storytelling as a way of voicing such experiences of listening to and of experiencing the world. Yet storytelling makes use of almost everything that the modern individual is not or has not, most notably time and the ability to listen. In this mode of communication, the story resonates on multiple levels of meaning without ever assuming the position of an objective truth. In other words, storytelling creates personal narratives where truth and fiction are as much intertwined as the subject of the narration with its object.
   
   Guided by a desire to take a closer look into Benjamin's work, we propose the feminist 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. This is all the more surprising that feminists tend to engage with texts by seeking to counter and denounce what phallocentrism wishes to leave unseen. These oppositional readings are crucial: without them, the insidious fallacies and the fatal acts of bad faith cannot be undone and proliferate unhampered. Yet they also run the risk of turning feminism into a mode of thinking that does nothing but to say “no,” one that destroys but rarely creates, and one that produces its own form of alienation. We want to propose another form of feminist reading: instead of the critical, distrustful distance, we suggest that closeness and intimacy may form an equally powerful approach. In this reading group, we examine what feminist thinking can become when it takes the shape of a lover’s response to a text’s seduction, and when refutation and penetration are replaced by a mode of reading that is founded in an ethics of proximity.
   
   The structure of the reading group is open. There are no experts. We choose, read and unfold the texts together and according to the interest and individual focus of the participants.
   
   Meetings from 17:00-20:00 at a.pass studio, 4th floor
   
   Next meetings & readings:  20.06 / 04.07 / 18.07 / 08.08
   
   For further information about the texts please contact: marialena.pouskouri@gmail.com
6. postgraduate program
   reading session
   Book Club
   Trouble on Radio Triton
   Book Club #9 Language as Magic and the Language of Things Book Club Series / Caroline Godart & Marialena Marouda
   03 March 2017
   posted by: Pierre Rubio
   a.pass
   17 March 2017
   

    

    

    

   Bookclub #9

   Close Reading Session with Caroline Godart and Marialena Marouda

   Language as Magic and the Language of Things

   Walter Benjamin’s “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man”

    

    

    

    

   “To whom does the lamp communicate itself? The mountain? The fox?”

    

   In the essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” Benjamin proposes a language metaphysics that extends to every thing. Every thing has a language: objects, animals, human beings but also immaterial things, like the Arts or Technology. For Benjamin language is therefore a medium going very much beyond human language and the communication through words. One could say language is the way in which some thing – indeed every thing – communicates itself to the world.

   During this morning session we will read Benjamin’s text on the metaphysics of language by using the method of the feminist close reading. By encountering the text in such a way we will try to unfold concepts such as the magic in language and the language of things.

    

    

    

   Caroline Godart holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with a concentration in Cinema Studies from Rutgers University (USA), where she studied under the direction of Elizabeth Grosz. She is now an Assistant Professor of Communication, Germanic Languages and Cultural Studies at IHECS (Institut des Hautes Études des Communications Sociales, Brussels) and a Scientific Collaborator at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her first book, The Dimensions of Difference, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. It explores the question of difference, and in particular of sexual difference, through three axes (space, time, and embodiment), which are approached both as aesthetic devices and as philosophical concepts in the works of Luce Irigaray, Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson.

   http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/the-dimensions-of-difference

    

   Marialena Marouda works in the fields of performance art and choreography. She studied philosophy and visual arts at Columbia University in New York, USA (B.A., 2004) and continued her studies at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at the University of Giessen, Germany (M.A., 2011).  Marialena Marouda’s work is focused primarily on the development of performance exercises, self-invented practices for relating to and for inhabiting spaces. The experimentation with walking, listening and storytelling as relational spatial practices forms the basis of her work.

    

    

   Friday 17th from 10am to 2pm

   @ a.pass 4th floor

   participation to the costs : 5 euros

   Map
7. postgraduate program
   workshop
   Untouchable/Unacceptable/Intangible
   TOWARDS A COLLECTIVE RITUAL 29 March 2015
   posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
   Oscar Parada
   a.pass
   22 June 2015
   26 June 2015
   

   In this workshop Medicine Man Oscar Parada proposes hologenic breathing techniques, re-birthing, sound evocation, Zen Buddhism and ritualistic elements from the Amerindian cosmogony as ways to explore the sacred. The workshop has as objective to engage and reproduce the sacred in connection to the performative ritual space. Which means: to perform a transformation. It is this transformation we can call 'medicine'.  Medicine is understood here as everything that transforms us.  

   In the first place this workshop proposes techniques and practices to open the body not only as an artistic tool but also as a medicinal one. Secondly, the workshop is also a research into creating individual and collective rituals in different ways. We will question and challenge the limits of what ‘self’, ‘presence’ and ‘relation’ mean. We will open different space dimensions to find in ourselves ways to discover, recreate and relearn our personal ritualistic spaces connected to our memory. The different sessions will produce a possible catharsis for the participants to create a collective healing ceremony.

   The last day of the workshop will be directed at questioning and clarifying the individual and collective experiences. We will take time to hear Oscar Parada talking about his concerns, the way his practices make sense to him and how he perceives their possible consequences.

   Some questions that will be addressed throughout the workshop:

   What is a ritual and how can we use our bodies as tools to access a ritualistic space? Could rituals be keys to enter the invisible world and render it perceptible to us? Are ritualistic practices ways to open a specific space inside us but connecting us as well with the outside? How to navigate the body for it to become an instrument that can reveal those spaces?

   What is the epistemology supporting the ritualistic practices? What are the tools and symbols at work to create a healing ceremony? How to realise that a mere procedure can escape the mechanical, become a ritual and perform power?

   What is a sacred space? What could be a pre-religious sacred space? Why would we need rituals, ceremonies and sacred spaces? What can they do?

    

   Subscription for this workshop is unfortunately no longer possible. All available places are taken. 

    

    

   
   Biography
   

   Medicine Man Oscar Parada

   Master in Traditional Chinese Medicine

   Healer master in Reiki, Acupressure, Jin Shin Do, Shiatsu and Do In


   Taoist Yoga instructor: Chi Kung, Dao jin and Ba Dua Jing

   Received his ordination as a Bodhisattva Monk in Zen Buddhism more than 20 years ago, receiving the name of Do Sei.


   Zen- Za-Zen meditation instructor

   Martial artist: Aikido, Wing Chun, Tai sword and Katana

   Music therapist

   Professional Rebirther and healer in the art of the breath



   Coordinates a self-healing school in Bogota, Colombia: El Centro de la Respiración Conciente


   Director of the Tierra Humana Foundation.



    

   He has been training actors for more than 15 years, from a perspective that defines the actor as a social healer and the origins of theater as collective cathartic rituals.

   Medical anthropologist and researcher of different healing systems from different cultures, he has specialized in the Tibetan Buddhist system, the Greek catharsis techniques and the Sotai from Japan.


   In order to integrate his knowledge as a Medicine Man he has embraced the ways of the Native American Wisdom and works and learns with other medicine men of North and South America.
 He has been walking and learning with traditional indian medicine for more than 15 years.
 At the moment he prays and prepares the medicine with the master Don Segundo Navia Mutbajoy of the Inga tribe of the Putumayo jungle. He also works and learns with Hilario Chiriap, Shaman of the Shuar tribe of the Ecuador Amazon, participating in the cutting, preparation and praying for the ancestral ceremony of the initiation of the NateMamo. In the year 2000 he began his formation as a Spiritual Leader and Medicine Man in the Native American Tradition of the Sacred Fire of Itzachilatlan. He received the blessing as Fire Man, the water blessing of the Temascal and the Sun Dance Drum blessing, 13 days Vision Searcher, Carrier of the Channupa (sacred pipe), Carrier of the Moon Prayer. He has guided for the last 4 years vision quest processes in Colombia and since last year in Greece.


   Walker of the Medicine Circle of the Hicuri grandfather, he is initiated in this way with Emerson Jackson, medicine man and spiritual leader of the Navajo People. For several years he accompanies Uncle Fred Vasquez, Medicine Man of the Teocalli Tlanezi branch of Mexico, of whom he receives the instruction of the ceremony of the the 4 tobaccos. He presently collaborates and learns with Tomas Adriano Perez, carrier of the Medicine of the Huichol tradition of North Mexico, with whom he opened the ceremony of the 4 Inipis to support the Sun Dance prayer in Colombia.
8. end presentation
   performative publishing
   postgraduate program
   it's not me, is it? 23 May 2014
   posted by: Elke van Campenhout
   Maite Liébana Vena, Julia Clever, Daniel Kok, Gaja Karolczak, Carolina Goradesky
   23 May 2014
   case of: Miriam Hempel
   
   

   What is the relation between the researcher and his research, between the artist and the world, between the body and the body of work? Today’s ideology of contemporary arts condemns the narcissism of the artist-genius as as an old-fashioned marketing strategy that affirms rather than critiques the status quo.

   price: 2 euro

   But nobody probably doubts that the quality of an artistic research is largely dependent on the individual desire of the researcher, on the spark of necessity that turn mere research data into a work of genuine reflection. In an invitation that has the power to instigate interest and a dialogue that extends beyond the safe limits of the research environment.

   In this booklet we look into the work of five artist researchers: Daniel Kok, Gaja Karolczak, Julia Clever, Carolina Goradesky and Maité Liébana Vena. In their (very diverse) cases, each of them explores a possible strategy to deal with the ‘I’ of the researcher: as a ‘problem’ to address the needs of the European community and rethink the public as a simultaneous singular and plural body (Daniel Kok). As a constantly shape-shifting ground for the experience of the phantom body (Gaja Karolczak). As a foreigner in search for spatial re-cognition (Carolina Goradesky). As a performer healing the self through dialoguing with a plant, inviting the spectator to share in the experience (Maité Liébana Vena). Or as a discrete witness to the playing out of History in WWII reenactments (Julia Clever).

   All of them put their bodies and self-constructions at risk, expose themselves as historically, geographically, racially or otherwise bent relational territories on which the larger narratives of aesthetics and politics cross and intertwine. Their stories in all their small-scale intensity are mirroring fragments of larger forces that can not so easily be grasped or experienced: the violent manipulations of commerce, migration, politics and global economics. But especially also the artificial - because always mediated, manipulated and accidental - coming-into-being of the self. 

   This booklet contains artistic statements of all of the artists, as well as individual interviews on their relation to the topic