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    • In these circumstances: On collaboration, performativity, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity in research-based practices is a publication about artistic research as it is practiced within the co-learning environment of a.pass. This book brings together an assemblage of curatorial, artistic and pedagogical approaches emblematic of an institution that fosters collaboration, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity in research-based practices.

       

      The book presents itself as a printed version of the educational model of a.pass. It enacts its characteristics in a conversational and experimental mode, exposing questions and doubts as much as insights and convictions. It conveys a history of the stakes, qualities and methods of artistic research in the context of both an ongoing academisation of art education, as well as an abrasion of the once unbridled scene of artist-run organisations in Northern Europe. Documented here is how a.pass has carved a space for artistic research to deploy its tentacles with joy, risk and excitement, to imbricate in fields of both art and education, and to stir the sediments of disciplinary enclosures.

       

      Editor: Philippine Hoegen

      Editorial support: Lilia Mestre

      Contributing authors: Adrijana Gvozdenović, Amy Pickles, Ana Hoffner, Anouk Llaurens, Aubrey Birch, caterina daniela mora jara, Chloë Janssens, Elke Van Campenhout, Femke Snelting, Guy Gypens, Isabel Burr Raty, Kate Rich, Kristien Van den Brande, Krõõt Juurak, Laura Pante, Leo Kay, Lilia Mestre, Livia Andrea Piazza, Loes Jacobs, Mathilde Villeneuve, Muslin Brothers - Tamar Levit & Yaen Levi, Nicolas Y. Galeazzi, Peggy Pierrot, Philippine Hoegen, Pia Louwerens, Pierre Rubio, Rui Calvo, Samah Hijawi, Sara Manente, Sina Seifee, Steven Jouwersma, Túlio Rosa, Vanja Smiljanić, Veridiana Zurita, Vladimir Miller

      Text editors: Chloe Chignell, Sarah Cale, Kristien Van den Brande

      Proofreader: Sarah Cale

      Production coordination: Joke Liberge

      Administration: Michèle Meesen, Kristof Van Hoorde

      Graphic design: Miriam Hempel, www.daretoknow.uk

       

      Fonts: SangBleu Kingdom, Swiss Typefaces, Standard, Bryce Wilner

      Paper: Munken Lynx Rough

      Printer: Snel, BE

      Images from the a.pass archive, and on their respective pages by:Leo Kay, Femke Snelting, Vanja Smiljanić, Kate Rich, Rui Calvo, Muslin Brothers, Anouk Llaurens, Vladimir Miller, Samah Hijawi, Sina Seifee, Steven Jouwersma

      Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. If inadvertent infringement has occurred please contact the publisher.

       

      ISBN: 978-94-93148-85-7

       

      Produced by a.pass Posthogeschool voor Podiumkunsten vzw.

      www.apass.be

      First edition, Brussels, 2022

       

      Onomatopee Projects

      www.onomatopee.net

       

      Made with the support of the Flemish Ministry of Education.

       

      This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

    • SPACES AS CONTRACTS Block III/2014
      19 September 2023
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • SPACES AS CONTRACTS

      SPACES AS CONTRACTS

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

       

      25 / 09 - 05 / 11 / 2014

      POLITICS OF CHANGEABILITY

      weekly meetings by Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi and Fotini Lazaridou

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

      Taking the steps to negotiate a permanent change in an architectural setup reveals the internal structures of power distribution and decision making for any given space. If you want to propose a change, who do you contact? who will you be referred to? which groups need to come together under which premises and structures of decision making to allow for that change? To follow up those challenges to changes is to slowly reveal a diagram of power, an architecture within architecture. In fact those two architectures are inseparable from each other and we should invent ways of speaking of them as a whole. Would we have privacy if we never had walls, what kind of togetherness would we have if availability of space was not limited? Our way of living and our way of building cannot be separated from each other.

       

      08 - 12 / 09 / 2014

      SPACE AND CONTRACT

      a.pass B-workshop by Vladimir Miller

      In this workshop we will look at the non physical borders of architecture: the contracts and agreements that create and maintain our built environment. If you take a quick look around you and ask yourself how the things that surround you came to be the way they are, you will notice that all of them are man-made or man-transformed. Those processes of transformation are all initiated and facilitated through negotiations and agreements. The first step to connect contracts and architecture is therefore to realize that architecture is a product of an agreement. For our purposes we can loosely define a contract as a performative agreement. During the workshop we will discuss further how architecture also embodies and ultimately maintains social agreements of that kind This workshop proposes to look at the relationship between the architectural space and the contract through a series of collective building actions. We will use a simple material to build improvised structures together in order to understand how are we negotiating collaboration, aim and space. Which rules and ideological presupposition are at work? Can we come up with contracts, scores and sets of rules which would produce other architectures? What is the relationship between our social contract and the architecture we are able to produce?

       

      15 - 19 / 09 / 2014

      ‘IF YOU LIKE IT, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE PUT A ROOF ON IT’ (and put some chairs under)

      workshop-project by Jozef Wouters & Vladimir Miller

      Roofs, in the arts, are often provided. In climates like Belgium, having a roof to work under is not a bad way to start. The roof protects the work (against more things than rain). But the roof also tends to isolate it. From time to time, artists grow tired of the roof and the walls and, hoping it doesn’t rain, decide to work on a square. The work of a scenographer is often more about walls than about roofs (light designers don’t like scenographers who propose roofs). Walls are flexible. Walls can be discussed. Comparing this, it turns out to be way harder to negotiate about a roof and to design a roofed space that is a square as well. This proposal is modifying the original “lets build a house together” idea, which was already presented at a.pass. The idea is, rather than overwhelming ourselves with the house building, to have a closer look (through working) at what we identify as two key elements of structuring community and social space by the means of architecture: roofs and chairs. In a much too simple way we can say that roofs bring a community together, while chairs can be used to structure its politics of attention and visibility. By avoiding walls we also subvert a key instrument to privatization of space. The space under the roof is accessible and public by design, we don't have to distribute power/keys.

       

      29 / 09 - 03 / 10 / 2014 

      OCCUPYING DEMOCRACY

      workshop by Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans

      Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans are working in different contexts and with different means about common decision taking procedures - or let’s say, alternative democracies. While Christophe proposes, in a lecture performance series, a new democratic system based on disqualifying people in charge, rather than electing them, Luigi is developing social choreographies as democratic models and is currently involved in a communal project of reorganizing the political, agricultural and economic system of a whole village in south Italy. Together they propose a research workshop where most components of its activities will have to be decided commonly with the workshop participants. Just the very basic conditions are pre-determined: the workshop occupies a public space with only one person at the time - 24h a day. The rest of the group develops, discusses and observes the occupation from a distance and takes the relevant decisions.

       

      13 / 10 - 17 / 10 / 2014 ‘

      FORMS OF LIFE - A TRAVELING PYJAMA PARTY

      workshop by Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga

      During a period of 6 days, each participants are invited to host the rest of the group in their apartment for a day. We will cook together, discuss a series of texts, take turns using the shower and read bedtime stories from a book picked up from the shelf. We may find out about each other’s morning habits, favorite smoothie combination, different ways of folding the sheets. For six days and five nights, this workshop will attempt to explore different ways of living and living together, focusing on the domestic sphere, our daily habits and their spatial manifestation, as well as on the ways these forms of life may or may not slip out of the window and down to the street. During each short residency we will collectively try to come up with a proposal for a small modification of or intervention in the space we are currently in, and negotiate its terms with our host. We may or may not carry out the proposal.

       

      24 - 25 / 10 / 2014

      POST-FOUNDATIONAL ARCHITECTURES

      scenography workgroup meeting by Vladimir Miller

      In 2012 a.pass merged the two sections a.s (advanced scenography) and a.pt (advanced performance training) to one singular program. This move was a consequence of understanding performance and scenography more and more as inseparable parts of one and the same discourse. But the merge of discourses finally reinforced the need for a new specification of the term “scenography”. What does it really mean beyond the classical stage practice? What else than a stage - and under which conditions - can be declared as a ‘scene’ and who or what is designing it? What distinguishes a ‘performative space’ from a ‘sceno-graphed’ space? For discussing these questions Vladimir Miller gathered in the fall 2013 some space practitioners to a first ‘Scenography Workgroup Meeting’. In October 2014 he calls for a second one. It will be a public work meeting between and with artists, architects, and scenographers who engage in the production of temporary and performative architectures. They will critically explore the definition of scenography simply as ‘post-foundational architectures’.

       

      03 - 07 / 11 / 2014

      PHARMAKON

      workshop by Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre

      This workshop explores the concept of pharmakon developed by the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler in his book ‘On pharmacology - how to live your life’. Stiegler uses the term pharmakon, which simultaneously stands for ‘poison’ and medicine’ as a symptom of an ever-spreading capitalism: an economy that does not only affect our labour, but does affect also our psychic ability and reduces our desires to simple drives. As both a medicine and a cure, Stiegler emphasizes the role of technology in our society as an ultimate pharmakon. In his ‘pharmacology’, its doubleness is investigated as a possible ‘cure’: a strategy to deal with the recovery of our desires, to go against the pressure of identification trends, brands and an ever-increasing individualization. Pharmakon stands for the technical know-how we develop the strategies we use to build a different kind of future and to create another concept of our togetherness. But this is not without risk: pharmaka are both a source of misery and abuse of power, but also a stimuli of what makes life worthwhile. The workshop is part of a ‘Thematics’ research project organized by Les Bains. Four artists are invited to explore in a three month residency set-ups of 'trans-individuation’: how do we form temporary moments of sharing, how can we come together in diversity, how can we build together an organization of work and knowledge sharing that is open-ended for producing and opening up to an outside world. A constant process of infection and transformation, through testing and adjusting the dosage of the pharmakon.

       

      27-29 / 11 / 2014

      PHARMAKON

      conference by a.pass Research Center, Les Bains and Kaaitheater.

      The Ancient Greek word ‘pharmakon’ means ‘poison’, ‘medicine’ and ‘scapegoat’. According to the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, our society urgently needs a ‘pharmacology’ to turn the tide of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment. He says that we must urgently question our culture. With which witchcraft can we turn the poison into medicine? Pharmakon: whitch culture? is a three-day ‘performative conference’ that examines artistic and theoretical strategies to counteract this pollution of our society’s culture. This congress is part of Thematics, a residency programme for artists and theorists run by Bains Connective workplace. This started in mid-October and is still on until 15 December, and is in its turn part of the transnational Pharmakon project organised by the Institut Nomade.

      Program of the conference

      Day 1: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-1-on-the-notion-of-pharmakon-in-the-thinking-of-bernard-stiegler Day 2: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-2-rethinking-economies

      Day 3: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-3-body-technologies

       

      BLOCK III/2014

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program: Damla Ekin Tokel, Danny Neyman, Gosie Vervloessem, Hans Van Wambeke, Hektor Mamet, Jeremiah Runnels, Kleoni Manousakis, Silvia Ramos Pereira, Stef Meul, Vanja Smiljanic, Verónica Cruz, Yaari Shalem

      Research End Presentations: Anna Sörenson, Camila Aschner Restrepo, Victoria Myronyuk

      Research Centre Researchers: Cecilia Molano Mala Kline Veridiana Zurita   

      Partners: Les Bains Kaaitheater

      Contributors for workshops: Christophe Meierhans, Elke van Campenhout, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Jozef Wouters, Lilia Mestre, Luigi Coppola, Nicolas Galeazzi, Vladimir Miller,

      Coordinators a.pass: Elke van Campenhout, Nicolas Galeazzi

      Mentors Femke Snelting, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Geert Opsomer, Lilia Mestre

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • Research Publications + Annex Research Center Cycle IV
      17 September 2023
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • Gosie Vervloessem, caterina daniela mora jara, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst and Tulio Rosa
    • a.pass
    • 23 September 2023
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • Research Publications + Annex

      Saturday, September 23rd 2023

      18-22h

      a.pass, Brussels

       

      The a.pass Research Center* cordially invites you to an evening of research publications by Gosie Vervloessem, caterina daniela mora jara, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst and Tulio Rosa that will conclude the year they spent together as Associate Researchers of Cycle IV. 

       

      During the timespan of Cycle IV the artists and researchers individually and collaboratively worked on hospitality as a curatorial practice, on conflicted embodiment of dance practices, on archives of colonial architecture, on the fiction of nature and on a historic opera as a foundational myth for the State of Brazil. In a series of collective practice meetings a shared discourse began to emerge that connected these works through an engagement with the responsibilities of redesign and reenactment, the tension of fiction and history in speculative practices and the embodiment of non-solutions. These intertwined processes and questions radiated into the practices of Gosie Vervloessem, caterina daniela mora jara, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst and Tulio Rosa as they hosted each other in their research and developed the idea of a research center as a prolonged group conversation with materials, practices, ideas and affects. 

       

      On Saturday, September 23rd, the researchers will present their individual publications and research trajectories as well as the Annex – a shared collection of essays and interviews. For their Publications the researchers aim to provide an account of their process and to develop public formats of research-doing and research-sharing to accompany the more established format of an essay. In a scenography that will be a result of a communal atelier process the Publications of Cycle IV will engage the audience in a dialogue with texts, objects, conversations, installations and performances that can be reflected back into the research process. As Cycle IV concludes, the research itself is far from finished: Publications and Annex contextualize its collaborative, intense phase and give some insight into where it came from and where it is heading next. 

       

      The evening will start at 18h with a reading of the Annex and proceed to the individual presentations by the Associate Researchers. Publications will conclude with a cooking hangout hosted by Paoletta Holst and later on, a party.

       

      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.

       

      a.pass Research Center 

      Cycle IV

      Research Publications + Annex

       

      Saturday, September 23rd 2023

      18-22h

      a.pass, Brussels

       

       

      PUBLICATIONS

       

       

      MAURICE MEEWISSE

      Curating Waterwerken

      Essay

      Hosting the Research Center

      Scenography

       

      To prepare his contribution for the final evening with RC Cycle IV, Maurice Meewisse will move into the a.pass space where everything is about to happen. He did this before: he lived for two weeks in the collective space of a.pass Polyset in May ‘23 to explore how a habitation practice transforms his relationship to a workspace. For the final evening with RC Cycle IV, his question will be about habitation and hosting.

      Meewisse has taken an interest in how his collaborators' imaginations, thoughts, writing and other practices influence and contribute to his own and how his practice can in turn host imaginations, thoughts, handwriting and other practices. He is exploring the limits of this position to the point where the question arises if he is still the practitioner, is it a practice at all, can hosting be part of his artistic practice? Maurice Meewisse takes his last moments with the researchers from the RC Cycle IV to explore that a bit further. At the same time he will try to be useful and help to prepare the scenography for the evening. Something will happen, just by being there the whole time. At the moment of writing this text it is just a bit too early to say what.

       

       

      CATERINA DANIELA MORA JARA

      Conflicted Embodiment. Notes from Dancing on Both Sides of the Atlantic

      Essay

      The Second Promise of Another Bastard-cheap Lecture-performance (and the last one in a.pass)

      Lecture-Performance

       

      “I am a migrant who has the possibility to be a legal migrant. My body produces conflicted embodiment as a device to expose the violent confrontation determined by territory, patriarchal art systems, colonial silenced trauma, and resistant feminist hope. Combining different dance traditions, I seek the contamination generated by mashing up ways of representing academic dance and “world dance”...”

      caterina daniela mora jara will present her essay “Conflicted Embodiment. Notes from Dancing on Both Sides of the Atlantic” in conversation with Fabián Barba. The writing of this text departs from the experiences of dancing within her processes of migration that put different "folkloric", "popular" and "academic" dance traditions from the souths and the norths into friction with each other. caterina daniela mora jara explores the potential of translation of dances into each other and what a mother tongue could be in dancing and performing. Embracing the complexity of the untranslatable, she unfolds the idea of a conflicted embodiment as a research device to address the question of how does a body navigate migration, colonialism and dancing?

       

       

      PAOLETTA HOLST

      Re-designing the Colonial House

      Installation, Projection and Open Kitchen

       

      Paoletta Holst researches colonial architectures and domestic cultures of the former Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia). In her installation “Re-designing the Colonial House” she uses the klamboe, or mosquito net, as a metaphor to visualize the cultural and spatial forms of separation that the colonizers created in order to mitigate their fears and vulnerabilities of being in a foreign environment. As both content and material form, as klamboe and house, the scenography created for this presentation functions as an intermediate space and support structure to talk about how the colonial house was imagined and how the process of its re-design can articulate today's questions and struggles.

       

       

      TÚLIO ROSA

      H(a)unting Stories

      Print

       

      In the last year, Tùlio Rosa's research has been centered around the opera Il Guarany, composed by Carlos Gomes in the 19th century, and its influence in the Brazilian representations of its history, peoples and landscape. Set in the beginning of the 16th century and depicting a love story between an indigenous man and the daughter of a Portuguese hidalgo, Il Guarany is considered to be an attempt to fabricate a foundational myth of the Brazilian nation. Within its biased narrative, Il Guarany also describes the conflict between the indigenous groups of the Aimorés and the Guaranis, and the attempts of Spanish adventurers to take hold of their lands in order to exploit their natural resources. These intertwined narratives allow for a broader reflection on fundamental aspects of the formation of Brazil. For his presentation Túlio Rosa will share some of the materials of his research in which factual history and fiction are woven together into new readings of Brazilian history that challenge and reveal their embedded colonial imaginaries.

      A second part of Tulio Rosa’s presentation will happen at Szenne Lab on the 3rd and 4th of October during two evening sessions curated in collaboration with Paoletta Holst, in which he will present “Hunting Song” – a publication that crosses historical accounts of violence with the original music scores of the opera Il Guarany.



       

      GOSIE VERVLOESSEM 

      Pleasure Garden Reading Group

      Reader and Bookmarks

       

      Over the past year, Gosie Vervloessem’s research was situated in the Middelheim Museum, a sculpture park in Antwerpen that invited her into a research residency within the ‘Reading the Landscape’- project. During this year of research, under the title ‘The Pleasure Garden’ Gosie Vervloessem explored the museum as a platform for encounters between different agents inhabiting the park, such as birds, animals, plants, visitors, the institute of the Middelheim Museum and its sculptures and infrastructure.

      The project took on different forms and spread its tentacles deep into the park. One of these tentacles were reading sessions. Gosie Vervloessem dived deep into thinking about the relation between words and the worlds they convey. She explored, very literally, the question of what it means to read a landscape with focus on the materiality and agency of words and language. The texts and books that Gosie Vervloessem compiled for the reading group were “reading the landscape” outside of binary thinking and classification. These reflections found a final outcome in the creation of bookmarks, that she presents alongside a facsimile edition of the reader. The bookmarks invite the audience to buy the corresponding book and visit the Middelheim Museum as a setting for a reading of the selected texts.

       

       

      Gosie Vervloessem, caterina daniela mora jara, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst and Tulio Rosa; Vladimir Miller (ed.)

      The Annex

      Publication

      The Annex to the research Publications of a.pass Research Cycle IV is a space where the researchers offer some context to their presentations and explore shared themes within their research processes in the form of essays, text collaborations and group interviews. 




      *About the Research Center 

      The a.pass Research Center is a collaborative space of practice, materialization, tryout, critique and feedback of artistic research. Although it is a program in an educational institution, it does not start from a curriculum or a curatorial agenda, but operates as a series of research practice meetings. At the Research Center, the artist researchers are invited to develop the individual threads of their research practice into a shared space of study while "mutually becoming each others' guest" (Beatrice von Bismark). The Research Center is a space where hosting others in one's research is a tool of research development.









       

       

    • COLLECTIVE LEARNING PROPOSALS 17 September 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • a.pass alumni
    • Zsenne Art Lab
    • 27 September 2023
    • 08 October 2023
    • COLLECTIVE LEARNING PROPOSALS
      For two weeks a.pass alumni have concocted an exciting and eclectic program of COLLECTIVE LEARNING PROPOSALS through which they challenge, inquire, explore and digest different ways of learning from and with each other.
       
      Everybody is welcome to join! Participation is free.
      Location: Zsenne Art Lab, Rue Anneessens 2, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
      For more detailed information please contact the individuals behind each proposal!
       
      With: Nada Gambier, Federico Protto, Sarah Pletcher, Tulio Rosa & Paoletta Holst, Lucia Palladino, Amy Pickles & Chloe Janssens, Sara Vilardo.
       
       

       
      Nada Gambier
      They write you out of the narrative. You leave them out of the story. We create new scripts.
      27.9 + 29.9 + 2.10 @ 10h00-17h00
      A 3-day working shift around creative writing based on gentle trespassing and structured cacophony. We will use interference as a tool for widening our individual writing styles and skills. Minimum attendance day 1 and 2. Bring your own writing to start working from (lists, essays, paragraphs, loose sentences...).
      For more info please contact nadakatinka@gmail.com
       
      Federico Protto
      Fashion Hypnosis
      28.9 @ 14h00-18h00
      Can you locate the space between the clothes you are wearing and your skin? Fashion Hypnosis is a soft guided meditation exploring what, how, when, where, and why we carry, wear, fit, attire, button up, button down, buckle, fasten, drape, dress, and undress. Based on a practice developed in a.pass in 2020, we will collectively experiment the 'soft' hypnosis further into a somatic-movement score relating to garments, textiles, and costumes provided and activated in space.
      For more info please contact federico.prottoscutti@gmail.com
       
      Sarah Pletcher
      collaboration from here and there
      28.9 @ 18h30-20h30
      A talk/open discussion about how artists can collaborate with one another when living or working in different locals. How can we carry the collective with us when we relocate?
      For more info please contact spletcher123@gmail.com
       
      Tulio Rosa & Paoletta Holst
      crossreadings
      3 + 4.10 @ 18h-21h30
      A curatorial exercise that brings together a selection of films and books that approach the legacies of colonialism across different geographies and socio-political contexts. Departing from materials that have been a reference to the artists’ research, these two evening sessions explore how the cross reading of works produced in different times and continents might be able to create a space of reflection sustained by the frictions and similarities that might emerge between them. The programme will be also accompanied by the presentation of Hunting Song, a publication produced by Túlio as conclusion of his journey at a.pass Research Center Cicle IV in which he crosses historical accounts of violence with the music scores of the opera Il Guarany.
      For more info please contact Paoletta mail@paolettaholst.info or Túlio rosa.tulio@hotmail.com
       
      Lucia Palladino
      correspondances_I discovered loving is like going harvesting wild herbs in the forest
      4.10 @ 15h30-17h30
      A participative reading, writing and listening score producing content from neurological atypical patterns that questions language, hierarchies of knowledge and modes of learning.
      For more info please contact info.luciapalladino@gmail.com
       
      Amy Pickles & Chloe Janssens
      getting into character/s
      5.10 + 6.10 +7.10 @ 18h-20h
      Three evenings of rituals and writing to work through difficulties, embarrassments and discomfort of composing words as someone else. The evenings are for individual work, but undertaken in a collective setting. For more info please contact amymaypickles@gmail.com
       
      Sara Vilardo
      map of displacement
      6.10 + 7.10 @ 13h30-17h30
      8.10 @ 10-13h
      Map of a displacement invites you for a shared practice, individually or in a group, of mapping a life journey in relation to personal and universal events that have interfered in your life line. Limited spots -
      recommended reservation and further information from saravilardo@gmail.com
       
      Day by day schedule:
      * Wednesday 27.9 : Nada Gambier - writing lab - 10h-17h00
      * Thursday 28.9 : Federico Protto -fashion hypnosis- 14h-18h00
      Sarah Pletcher - talk- 18h30-20h30
      * Friday 29.9 : Nada Gambier -writing lab- 10h-17h00
      * Monday 2.10 : Nada Gambier - writing lab- 10h-17h00
      * Tuesday 3.10 : Tulio Rosa & Paoletta Holst - reading/screening-
      18h-21h30
      * Wednesday 4.10 : Lucia Palladino - listening, reading and writing
      score- 15h30
      Tulio Rosa & Paoletta Holst -reading/screening
      - 18-21h30
      * Thursday 5.10 : Amy Pickles & Chloe Janssens -rituals and
      writing- 18h-20h00
      * Friday 6.10 : Sara Vilardo -mapping- 13h30-17h30
      Amy Pickles & Chloe Janssens -rituals and writing-
      18h-20h00
      * Saturday 7.10 : Sara Vilardo -mapping- 13h30-17h30
      Amy Pickles & Chloe Janssens -rituals and
      writing- 18h-20h00
      * Sunday 8.10 : Sara Vilardo -mapping- 10h-13h00
    • end presentation
    • postgraduate program
    • End Communications 07 September 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Andrea Brandão, Alyssa Gersony, and Marko Gutić Mižimakov
    • a.pass
    • 15 September 2023
    • 16 September 2023
    • End Communications

      In-between researcher and research, one finds:

       

      overlap, interests, themes, fiction, text, reading, body, duet, partner, “doctoring”, object, performance, bodies, relationship, questions, researchers, looking, things, going, us, traces, deposits, authors, architectures, dealing, bed, laying, bleeding, seeping, noticing, noting, narrating, unveiling, something, happening, discovery, methodologies, conditions, agent, asking, producing, responses, lethargy, collapse, training, experience, moment, future, here, now, concept, life, rhythm, goals, worth, cheese, workshop, ancestry, trajectories, senses, intimacy, strength, power, assertion, insistence, compassion, idea, artistic practice, descaling, focus, layers, dislocating, destabilizing, conditions, conditioning, negotiating, ways, humanization, humans, violent category, systems, disability, concrete, reference, ableism, contemporary, dance, thinking, practices, phenomena, embodiment, dancer, vessel, object, bodies, Marley, memory, erasure, obliteration, intangible, incomprehensible, determined, social, aesthetic, queer, sexualized, opening, gendered, human body, crossing, cultures, genders, generations, narrative, storytelling, voice, transmission, conditions, vs, context, decontextualizing, evaluation, affects, pieces, autofiction, mundane, erotically, charged, space, trip, supermarket, cup, coffee, Monday, morning, laying, down, convergence, blind/low vision, rehabilitation, ‘co-habilitation’, patient-therapist, flooring, prosthetic, patient, therapist, audiences, invitations, systems, dance, disability, together, final, transmission, trespassing, somatic, work, curation, drifting, vicinity, quantum physics, OOO, socio-ecological, hopelessness, seemingly, desperate, galactic points, gayness, history, AIDS, transgenerational, speculative fiction,  spoken word, theoretical, dramaturgical,  methodological, suggestions, Black Holes, celestial, entities, writer, producer, sexuality, vehicle, political ideology, drafts, prosaic, nature, political, administration, structure, Brazil, urban planning, Netherlands, 2019, masters, Moving Images, Belgium, 2022, interdisciplinary, Brussels, Rīga, New York City, orientation, mobility specialist, ‘the clinic’, ‘the studio’, western, lineages, contact improvisation, medical, models, disability, therapeutics, interabled, collaborations, experimental prosthetics, development, form, theatrical performances, electronic, sound, composition, 1:1, instruction, multimedia, installation, MFA, choreography, intermedia, 2021, 2022, adjunct, faculty, department, blindness, visual impairment, living, working, Zagreb, shaping, sensory materials, intimate, social processes, digital, palpable objects, animated, choreographed, sung, non-orientable, forms, different media, processes, translation, queer science fiction, speculative technology, mutual transformation, MA, animated, film, new media, rest, caves, shape, language, performativity, self, scores, ...

       

      If one makes a list of things, a list of all the things, if one were to try an embracive list of things that arise between being and doing, let’s say a dog and barking, and if one were to apply this question to artistic research, and aim at listing all the things that emerge between researcher and research, if one were to aim for the bottom of this list, what would emerge would be immeasurable distance, a very long line of things. At the end of the exercise, the question of what it intended, if not length, if not depth, if not stretch, perhaps could be: what is at stake between researcher and research?

       

      For the four artist-researchers Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Andrea Brandão, Alyssa Gersony, and Marko Gutić Mižimakov, it is the conflation of research and researcher via the subject. Letting go of notions of distance in relation to their research subject, they opt for a generative entanglement between the subject of research, researching and the researcher.

       

      Understood as a sharing practice, artistic research involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to care about other people and to suspend oneself, over and over, every day, and at times in unflattering ways. For about a year this day-in-day-out practice positioned Marian, Andrea, Alyssa, Marko, as well as their other peers, towards each other as collaborators, witnesses, peers, co-conspirators, role-players, workshop facilitators and guinea pigs. Now, at the end of a joint trajectory, it involves making public, i.e. curating an event together, setting overlaps into printed matter, and extending their research intentions and questions to others.

       

      End Communications, invites the audience to attune to the specific intensities produced by these research entanglements as they are shared and made public.

       


       

       

      Marian Rosa van Bodegraven

      The Final Exam: this research considers how an artistic practice affects and is affected by the body of the researcher through pieces of autofiction that contemplate the mundane as an erotically charged space: a trip to the supermarket, a cup of coffee, a Monday morning spent laying down. The research will be presented through a reading of three texts: Clementine, Monday Blues (written by H.de S. and researched in the context of the Am I Evil? Workshop, by Alice Ciresola and Simone Basani), and the eponymous The Final Exam.

       

      Alyssa Gersony

      co-habilitation: at the convergence of choreography and blind/low vision rehabilitation, this research proposes ‘co-habilitation’ as a way to reconfigure the patient-therapist relationship. Dance flooring (Marley) is taken as a duet partner, as a prosthetic, as a patient and a therapist, while audiences are invited into a deconstructed studio-clinic where bodies directly implicated in the systems of dance and disability perform together.

       

      Marko Gutić Mižimakov

      Less Than the Sum of Its Parts — Final Transmission is drifting in the vicinity of quantum physics, OOO, socio-ecological hopelessness and the seemingly desperate galactic points of gayness, the history of AIDS and its transgenerational affects. Trespassing performance, somatic work and curation, comes a spoken word duet speculating on the theoretical, dramaturgical, and methodological suggestions emerging from the idea of Black Holes as celestial bodies in proximity to touch and memory.

       

      Andrea Brandão

      first continue, then start (primeiro continuar, depois começar): Andrea’s research* lies within spaces of drifting, where rest, sleep, and the in-between start to carve out an embodied language that shapes the score of a performativity of the self. Through dislocating these transitory spaces into active, participatory experiences, Andrea aims to bring about the seemingly still nature of a state of consciousness that is informed by a rhythm that productively moves us through dark and liquid subterranean strata.

      ** At this moment, Andrea’s research will only be presented at a private scale, with a public moment at a later stage.

       

      End Communications is co-curated by Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Andrea Brandão, Alyssa Gersony, and Marko Gutić Mižimakov, together with artist-researcher Vijai Maia Patchineelam. 

       


       

      Programme

       

      7pm, 3rd Floor The Final Exam, a reading by Marian Rosa van Bodegraven

       

      -break- food & drinks available*, 4th Floor

       

      8:15pm, 4th Floor co-habilitation, a performance by Alyssa Gersony

       

      -break- drinks available, 4th Floor

       

      9:15pm, 4th Floor Less Than the Sum Of Its Parts — Final Transmission
      a performance by Marko Gutić Mižimakov in collaboration with Petar Sarjanović 

       

      Friday till 11:00 pm post-performance mingle, food & drinks available* 

      Saturday till 1:00 am post-performance party, drinks available 

       

      *On both days, a.pass alumni and culinary artist Aslı Hatipoğlu will prepare vegetarian bibimbap and sweet bites for sale over the course of the evening (gluten free, vegan option available).

       


       

       

      Marian Rosa van Bodegraven is a Brazilian-Dutch researcher, writer and producer. Marian’s body of research moves around sexuality as a vehicle for political ideology. Through writing and readings, she drafts on the prosaic nature of sexuality, and the seemingly en passant layers of a political administration of desire that structure it. Born and raised in Brazil, where she studied Architecture and Urban Planning at Escola da Cidade, she moved to the Netherlands in 2019, where she did her MA in Moving Images at the Sandberg Institute. 

       

      Alyssa Gersony is a Jewish-American interdisciplinary artist currently working in Brussels, Rīga and New York City. Trained as a contemporary dancer and orientation and mobility specialist, Alyssa regularly traverses ‘the clinic’ and ‘the studio.’ Across these spaces, Alyssa practices within western lineages of contact improvisation, medical models of disability therapeutics, interabled performance collaborations, and experimental prosthetics development. Her work takes the form of theatrical performances, electronic sound composition, artistic development workshops, 1:1 individual instruction, and multimedia installation. Alyssa holds an MFA in choreography and intermedia performance, is a 2021-2022 Fulbright awardee in dance research, and is currently an adjunct faculty in the City University of New York, Hunter College department of blindness and visual impairment. 

       

      Marko Gutić Mižimakov is a visual, performance and text based artist and researcher living/working between Brussels and Zagreb. He is interested in shaping sensory materials through intimate, collaborative and social processes. In his work bodies as well as digital and palpable objects, are animated, choreographed and sung into non-orientable forms via different media and processes of translation. Often borrowing from queer science fiction he sees his work as a speculative technology of mutual transformation. He has an MA in Animated Film and New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Paris College of Art in the department of Transdisciplinary New Media.

       

      Andrea Brandão is a visual and undisciplinary artist living and working between Brussels and Lisbon. Working in the expanded fields of visual arts, performance, cinema, and more, Andrea’s research explores notions of sleep, rest, and drifting in relation to participatory experiences facilitated by scores and assisted at times by audio-visual elements. She is interested in interweaving writing, camera-ing, meditating, and dreaming. She was born in Portugal and started traveling at a very young age. She holds a B.A. in Industrial Design from University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Architecture (2000) and has completed the Advanced Course in Visual Arts of Ar.Co - Centro de Arte e Comunicaçāo Visual and attended Studies of body and movement at c.e.m. - Centro em movimento, in Lisbon.

       

      Collaborators:

       

      Gabi Vanek (co-habilitation, lighting design and audio engineer) is a musician and lighting technician based in Iowa City, USA. As a technician she has worked on projects ranging from HBO to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, to touring artists including Arooj Aftab, Son Lux, and Jenny Lewis.

       

      Petar Sarjanović (Final Transmission, performer collaborator) is a dramaturg from Zagreb, now living in Brussels, also active as writer, performer and theater maker. In 2020 Petar premiered ‘Everything I don’t know, I’ve stolen’, a solo work that deals with the processes of mis- and dis-identification and the folklorization of western canon. 

       

      Co-curator:

       

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institution. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists — one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. Vijai is a former associate researcher at the Research Center, and has since come back on different occasions as a mentor for the Post-Graduate Program at a.pass.

       

    • The table is set. 

      What is here is there. What is not here is somewhere, someone is doing something. 

       

      Martin Sieweke, Martina Petrović, Aslı Hatipoğlu and Nada Gambier invite you on a guided tour of wandering, exploring time, invisible structures, in-betweens, tastes of intimacy, heritage, abrasion, fermentation and reparation that ripple through space to mark the end of their research trajectory at a.pass. 

       

      There will be food, performances, boredom and a spa. 


      DAY PROGRAM

      2nd of June

      9h30 welcome

      10h-17h working shift 1 (with Nada Gambier)

       

      3rd of June

      12h30 welcome

      13h-17h working shift 2 (with Nada Gambier)

       

      EVENING PROGRAM (2 & 3 June: same program)

      17h30  doors open

       

      18h  sign up activities: green room (Nada Gambier) 

                                          6 slots for 2 persons every 10 min

       

                                          time item - publication (Martin Sieweke)    

                                         

                                          foot massage (Aslı Hatipoğlu)

                                          1 slot for 20 persons

       

                                          where: sign up on the 4th floor                                    

       

      19h  entrée (Martina Petrović)

              where: dining table 4th floor

              

              cirrendering - performance / sound installation ( Martin Sieweke & Josephine Stamer)

              where: 4th floor

       

      20h  dinner (Martina Petrović & Aslı Hatipoğlu)

              where: dining table 4th floor

       

             yeast invasion - lecture performance/ installation (Aslı Hatipoğlu) 

             where: 4th floor

       

      21h  dessert (Martina Petrović)

             where: dining table 4th floor

       

             sign up activities: green room (Nada Gambier) 

                                          6 slots for 2 persons every 10 min

       

                                          time item publication (Martin Sieweke)    

                                         

                                          beer spa - walk-in installation (Aslı Hatipoğlu)

                                          max. 8 persons at a time

                                         

                                          foot massage (Aslı Hatipoğlu)

                                          2 slots for 20 persons every 20 min

       

                                          where: sign up on the 4th floor 

       

       


       

      Aslı Hatipoğlu (TH/TR) 

      Aslı Hatipoğlu is an interdisciplinary artist and a self-taught chef who uses food as a focal point to investigate interwoven themes of psychology, science, political ecology, ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and mental health. Her work is influenced by her background growing up with a migrant Thai mother in Turkey where her father had a tourism agency. Asli curates participatory dinners that shed light on food history as well as question how climate change, agricultural politics and current technological developments are changing our contact with food. Through lecture performances with a pinch of satire, Asli brings a critical perspective on the definition of words such as ‘locality’ as a means to re-define them in the complexity of systems. As an antidote to nationalism, she proposes fermentation practices to raise questions around cultural history, locality, tourism and the dogma of economic necessity. Asli believes in the power of psycho-somatic relation to food. She creates interactive installations that bring a layer of humor around self, perception and deception. 

      Through physical engagement with her work, Asli tries to find the boundaries of one’s self with the ‘other’ in a visually appealing setting where questions around disgust are raised. She is interested in how architecture and ecology play a role in her fermentation experiments and how (or if) the space for making/cultivating/brewing influences the way people experience consumption. In addition, her questions around community-building around shared bacterias and yeasts set the tone around social structures, like dining together. Where are the boundaries of the mouth as an organ that lets other living organisms from another person in? Is there a common language that speaks to a consumer in order to convince them into consumption? Taking inspiration from commercial advertising techniques,  Asli pushes the audience to re-question what, how and why we eat what we eat. She likes to engage the audience in food production systems to challenge a technological advancement that erases human presence in food production. 

      Asli’s research presentation consists of lecture performance yeast invasion, combined with a guided installation where her bacterial and yeast collaborators will invite people into a massage parlour that mixes receiving and giving touch, with the brewing of a collective fermented drink. A beer making demonstration takes people along the history of the special Senne valley which hosts the famous “Brettanomyces bruxellensis”, in the past 20 years also known as a wine maker’s worst nightmare. A spa invites people to relax into leftovers of the beer making and think about the outer body experience while sipping the special Belgian lambic brewed by the artist in a conversational set-up.

       

      Bio

      Aslı Hatipoğlu (TR/TH, 1990) is a textile culinary artist based in Brussels and Amsterdam. Her work often relates to topics such as ecology and sustainability and the challenges it imposes on our daily lives in complex systems of consumption. She is interested in science and what it can offer as well as the dangers it imposes (such as domination over nature and genetic modifications) that bring ethical questions towards our future as species. Through investigating ancestral knowledge with a community building approach, Asli is also interested in fusing diversity of her knowledge among her experiments in different environments. She often creates interactive installations, video work or uses performative storytelling through conceptual dinners as a way to bring topics of her interest forward.

      After working several years as a self-taught chef, Asli deepened her knowledge with fermentation during her residency at the Food Lab Jan van Eyck Academie 2020-2021, along participating in several festivals such as Food Art Film Festival JVE (NL), Foodculture Days Vevey (CH), Oerol Terschelling (NL), Japanese Knotweed Festival at Mediamatic (NL) and Zamus Theaterhaus Cologne (DE) . Her works were exhibited in places such as Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, Framer Framed in Amsterdam, Fanfare Amsterdam, Perdu Amsterdam, Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht.

       


      Special thanks to: Martina Petrović, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Martin Flugelman Olmeda, Elli Vassalou and many others for thinking, listening and advising me through this a.pass trajectory.

       


       

      Martin Sieweke (DE) 

      Martin Sieweke researches how the use of materials and objects can be prolonged, extended and reformulated in different ways. He proposes a multi-layered relationality, in which the given (the context, the conditions, already existing materials and familiar objects) influences and contributes as a dispositive.


      It’s about searching for affections, altering the use context, exchanging components: to not only consume materials away but to stay and remain close to them. It’s about acknowledging the multiple while reaching for the specific. It’s about structuring a process as a relational response. To follow Erin Manning’s thought in her book The Minor Gesture (Thought in the Act), it’s about implementing the context and its very specific configuration, which influences processes not yet condensed into a form:, “(...) it begins with the in-act and embraces the force of the what-else at the heart of all speculative pragmatisms”.

       

      In the evening, Martin presents cirrendering (working title), a sound installation in collaboration with Josephine Stamer. It consists of a former vinyl player reduced to its basic operation. Amplified structures, alterations and repetitive textures will dissolve over time, as emerging traces are finding their multidirectional and conversational negotiation in a circular and sonic form.

      TIME ITEM is a research publication by Martin Sieweke that gathers text, images and soft proposals around bag making, reuse and repairment. 

       

      Bio

      Martin Sieweke works as an accessory maker and scenographer/costume designer between Brussels, Berlin and Stockholm. He often works with found objects and materials by detaching them from their intentional use context. He is interested in engaging with materials in a way that differs from a close link between artistic production and consumption, to structure creative processes more as a relational response.

      www.martinsieweke.com

       

      performance: Martin Sieweke, Josephine Stamer

      Special thanks to: Asli Hatipoglu, Martina Petrović , Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Hannah Krebs, Mary Szydlowska, Tatsuya Inuikawa, May Abnet




       

      Martina Petrović (SER)

      Martina Petrović’s research focuses on how we, Western and Eastern European society, deal with complex socially generated emotions such as grief and love. How do we face the inevitable loss of parts of our culture and humanity, due to the crisis and disappearance of species and environments, abandonment and fast replacement of technologies and ways of living. And how do we find joy and moments in these circumstances?

      Her sense of misplacement and need to have a strong connection with her culture is amplified with her residing in Belgium for the past 5.5 years. She gravitates towards connecting her artistic interests with traditions and rituals stemming from her Balkan roots. She investigates women’s sacred rituals, handwork, symbols and creativity and their legacy in modern culture and common everyday practices.

      Martina proposes looking deep into our roots, finding strength in the past and support in our surroundings as a way to move forward, to create new rituals and new ways of being. They might enable us to transition from fearing the future and present, and move us towards reconnecting and exploring different ways of forming bonds and relating to each other.

      In the evening Martina proposes gathering around the table, there will be food for the stomach and for the thoughts, shared energy and hopefully sparks of magic. The dinner table has its own politics, how one sets it influences the conversation around it. It can generate questions, introduce different ways of composing a menu, and explore the tools we use. It can unveil the social structures that make the table possible, sometimes unexpected flavors appear on one’s plate and many other delicious subjects can surface on it.

      It will be an evening of celebration, with welcomings, conversation starters, and a format to practice openings and goodbyes. Come as a friend - excited to share our a.pass trajectory. Come as a wanderer - craving to have a taste of each of our practices. Come as a fellow researcher - curious to engage with questioning, rethinking and transforming art research. Come light, with an empty stomach, with an open heart. Come unprepared but ready to engage with different flavors that work together producing unexpected combinations. Come willing to leave some time for digesting processes. 

      We will gather 3 times around the table. Please join on time, celebration waits for no one, it has its own rhythm. The entrée will be served at 19h. The main course is prepared in collaboration with masterful food explorer Asli Hatipoglu and will be shared at 20h. At 21h we will meet for the final gathering before we disperse into our separate celebrative trajectories.

       

      Bio 

      Martina is currently the art coordinator of art space Hectolitre, Brussels. She is a part of two active collectives, School of love (Brussels) and Garden of Delights(Gent). Her recent artistic projects are: Where do we go from here? (2023), Brussels, Gent, The Last Straw (2020-2022),Gent, Antwerp, Brussels, Belgrade, Moerdijk sculpture project (2022), Belgium, EcoSuites residency (2022), Greece, Terrestrial Odditties II, Belgrade (2021), BUZZ project on Ostavinska gallery, Belgrade (2019); Terrestrial Oddities, HBKsaar, Saarbrucken, Germany (2019).

      https://cargocollective.com/TheLastStraw

       

      Special thanks to: Asli Hatipoglu, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Jana Vasiljevic, Adrijana Gvozdenovic, Irena Radmanovic, Petar Sarjanovic, Hijene, Mladen Bundalo, Lucia Palladino, Adva Zakai, Renata Turkes, Gorana Bacevac, Hectolitre community, SOL, GOD, BOSCH, Common Wallet, Emptor/Caveat, Kunsthal and many others for thinking, feeling and being with me through this a.pass trajectory.

       


       

       

      Nada Gambier (FIN / FR)

      At the heart of Nada Gambier’s current artistic research practice is the concept of gentle trespassing. For Nada this is a tool for relationality. Gentle trespassing rests on the premise that crossing separations between people, things and contexts is both a necessity and a pleasure. It stems from a belief that the walls we erect around ourselves and our work should be un-hygienically permeable, implying that trouble and mess are part of the process. Practicing gentle trespassing requires collaboration, listening, flirting with gray zones and instability, revealing confinement, enclosure and accepting disagreement and structured cacophony as grounds for progress. To frame durational proposals Nada works with the idea of working shifts. 

       

      Working shift 1

      In this shift gentle trespassing is practiced between ideas, practices and questions. To begin, questions will be questioned and answered by new questions until eventually what remains cannot be attributed any longer to an “original” or ”an other”. Instead, what remains embodies the structured cacophony that coming together in (mis)understandings, assumptions, interpretations and imaginations may result in. From there we move into hands-on work, exchanging materials and engaging in a process of estrangement and reinvention.

      This shift is for artists, of any discipline, with a work in progress or research they wish to bring into the room. You must be willing to hand your work over, momentarily, to another person. It does not matter how far into a process you are. What matters is your curiosity to see another person trespassing into your territory. At the end of this process we will do a round of performative presentations, sharing the outcome of the session.

       The shift ends with an informal drink and some light snacks.

       Please register by sending a mail to nadakatinka@gmail.com by the 26th of May latest! If you have a spot in the shift we will confirm it by email together with more details of what to bring and how to prepare.

       

      Working shift 2

      In this shift, we explore the potential of fiction in relation to gentle trespassing. Through a conversational game in which we engage as “another” version of ourselves we practice strategies of interpretation, exaggeration and collage. The aim here is to experience the simultaneous negotiation between who we are (or think we are) and who ‘we’ might be with a little interference from others.  

      The shift ends with an informal drink and some light snacks.

       Please register by sending a mail to nadakatinka@gmail.com by the 26th of May latest! 

       

      Evening shift

      In a confined space, anonymous characters live their lives in a loop. Stuck in an endless repetition of mundane events and unable to escape they busy themselves with work-like tasks and sleep, waiting for time to pass. In this work, Nada explores the confinement of spaces, identities, institutions and ideas. Surveillance camera feeds, anonymity and invisibility suits (chroma key green suits used in film when wanting to disappear the body behind an action) come together in this installation in three spaces. On the 4th floor of a.pass you can watch an ongoing video feed.

      On the 3rd floor you are invited into a waiting room area followed by the green room (sign up on site). 

        

      Bio

      Nada Gambier roams around in what she calls a crash-disciplinary world where performance, video, writing, curatorial approaches and languages and social concerns merge and collide. Her work often flirts with the borders between theatricality and abstraction and she is drawn to things that she doesn’t understand or cannot grasp. The non-spectacular and the absurd belong to her most known trademarks as an artist. Her work is experimental in nature and very often performative, with some form of live element in it. Since 2014 Nada has been focusing on long-term projects in which the separation between research, creation process and public event can be confused and/or abandoned. In 2020, she began monthly collective research sessions in Brussels, further establishing herself as an advocate for experimentation and research within the (performing) arts. Nada also regularly collaborates on other artists’ projects as a performer and artistic advisor. She has worked a.o. with Kate MacIntosh (NZ/DE/BE), Edit Kaldor (HU/NL), Forced Entertainment (UK), Simone Aughterlony (NZ/DE/CH), Jorge Léon (ES/BE), Maria Jerez (ES), Diederik Peeters (BE), Charlotte Vanden Eynde (BE) and Phil Hayes (UK/CH).

      www.nadagambier.be

       

      The evening shift is performed by Nada Gambier, Mark Etchells and Vic Grevendonck and includes writing by Nada and music by Klaus Wunderlich. The research is supported by a.pass, Nada & Co., WpZimmer, Workspacebrussels, Buda Arts Centre and the Flemish Ministry of Culture (research project subsidies). 

      Special thanks to: Martina Petrović, Martin Sieweke, Aslı Hatipoğlu and all the a.passers, Jen Rosenblit and many others for their input in my reflections and experimentations during the past year. 

       


       

       

      A big thank you to everyone who supported us during our a.pass time:

      A.pass team: Lilia Mestre, Kristien Van den Brande, Kristof Van Hoorde, Hans Van Wambeke, Steven Jouwersma, Vladimir Miller

      Block mentors: Jaime Llopis, Anna Rispoli, Samah Hijawi, Goda Palekaite, Sina Seifee, Pia Louwerens, Simone Basani, Vijai Maia Patchineelam.

      Fellow researchers: Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Alyssa Gersony, Andrea Brandão, Amy Pickles, Gary Farely, Chloe Janssens, Inga Gerner Nielsen, Vera Sofia Mota, Jimena Pérez Salerno, Sarah Pletcher, Anna Lugmeier, Aleksandra Borys, Carina Erdmann, Amari, Lore, Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Mlondi Dubazane and Merle Vorwald.

    • workshop
    • block 2023/II
    • Printer's Devils
    • Printer's devils 27 April 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Sara Manente, Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai, Kate Briggs
    • a.pass & rile*
    • 26 June 2023
    • 07 July 2023
    • Printer's devils

      One publishes to find comrades! So says André Breton. The last block of a.pass ends with a focus on publishing, and the myriad of relations implied in committing something to print. Publishing is rarely something that concludes a confined process of solitary thought. It is a social process that — abstractly and manifestly — involves collaboration along the way: sometimes with fellow interlocutors, sometimes with an editor or designer at the other end of the table, sometimes with abstract ideas of what readership might entail, sometimes in dialogue with ordinary processes of living with, sometimes as a script with future enactment in mind, and most probably a bit of all of those at once. Rather than aiming for a book or for printed matter as a finite goal, we will take publishing as a pretext to build relationships that last over time. How can a publication be set up as an ongoing social gesture, a space for the continued production of meaning and reverberance?

      With guest workshops: Sara Manente & ROT magazine (June 26-27), Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai & Pages magazine (June 29 - June 30), and Kate Briggs (July 5 - 6). More info will follow!

    • performative publishing
    • a.pass Polyset 2023W18-20 practice gathering
      17 April 2023
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • a.pass
    • 02 May 2023
    • 19 May 2023
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • a.pass Polyset 2023W18-20

      a.pass Polyset 2023W18-20
      May 2nd-19th 2023

       

      You are cordially invited to join the a.pass Polyset space between the 2nd and 19th of May '23. Within the Polyset you will find other practitioners, artists and researchers, materials, tools, technical support as well as any number of individual and communal practices and experimental proposals. Polyset starts from an empty space and an empty timetable – both are gradually established during Polyset by its participants. Artists who spend time in the Polyset space set up their own working conditions. There are materials available to create a wide range of structures: from a simple table to a performative setting. The invitation to work with communal materials in a shared space opens up questions of authorship and collaboration towards a transient idea of ownership.

      A Polyset is a recurring practice of coming together in a communal practice space that is hosted by an art/educational institution. While a Polyset can be initially proposed as simply as "a prolonged collective practice hangout", its complexity arises from negotiating ways of being together which are not predetermined by a plan or a structure, institutional or otherwise. Polyset operates through dis-organising and collectively reorganising established or habitual ways of gathering and working. Its core intent is twofold: to lower the thresholds for a practice to manifest in its material form and to initiate a set of renegotiations within the relationships between space, practice, community and institution.

      Polyset is an open space that welcomes and supports practitioners from outside the institution and does not assign fixed modes of participation like "audience" or "visitor". It is not a group project, but a fluctuating arrangement of "groupings" with different aims and commonalities. Poyset operates on the principle co-habitation as dissensus, which means that all processes and agreements are necessarily partial and cannot exclude other processes in the Polyset space. Every practice is invited to find its own mode of publicness and its own balance between solitary and communal research modalities.

      This text is not only an announcement, but also an invitation to come and spend time in the space and to use-design it on your own terms. If you would like join the Polyset, please keep in mind that participation in an evolving and self-structuring community takes time, therefor ideally you would have a couple of days to spend in the Polyset space. Please sign up via the green link at the bottom of the page so we can establish contact for further questions and guide you to the Polyset space on the first day that you decide to come.

       

      Polyset in short:

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

      Polyset is a self-curated place of study that works through an open network of invitations

      Polyset lasts three weeks and happens in one space. Participants agree to spend as much time as possible in the Polyset.

      The Polyset space will be cleared of all furniture in the beginning of the project.

      There is a communal stock of materials provided for the Polyset which are available to anyone who joins it. Materials become connected to and organised in peoples practices. To disconnect or to reorganise please be careful with the other's processes.

      We do not define what "research" and "practice" are, but Polyset is a space for research and practice.

      Polyset space is an open space. Anyone working in the space can invite anyone, and they in turn can pass on the invitation.

      Consensual planning is an exception while relational collaborative negotiations structure the space.

      Schedule of proposals is developed on a day to day basis. It is not mandatory.

       


      a.pass Polyset 2023W18-20 will bring together research practices, contributions and participation by:


      Asli Hatipoglu, Martina Petrovic, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier, Gosie Vervlossem, Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Vladimir Miller, Lilia Mestre, Steven Jouwersma, Kristof Van Hoorde, Paoletta Holst, caterina daniela mora jara, Tulio Rossa, Maurice Meewissse, Kristien Van den Brande, Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Alyssa Gersony, Andrea Brandão, Carina Erdmann, Amari, Lore, Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Mlondi Dubazane, Hans Van Wambeke, Heide Hinrichs, Tania Garduño Israde

      To be expanded by the participating researchers

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

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Participants Assembly
    • Two-Day Shift Workshop
      20 February 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Nada Gambier & Jen Rosenblit
    • a.pass
    • 15 March 2023
    • 16 March 2023
    • case of: Nada Gambier
    • Two-Day Shift

      Building on from a previous proposal (Night Shift) Nada Gambier in collaboration with Jen Rosenblit now invite you for the Two-Day Shift. 

      In this working shift, we will dive into the problematics that arise from coming together, engage in improvisational games and strategies, have fun with speculation and bathe in inconvenience as a way to look anew at our practices and get to know our researches from another angle. Once again, our attention goes to what it means to be of service to each other and the works and how by attending to parasites we come to another understanding of what we are doing. The question of desire and learning from what we don’t know will also linger as a larger drive and disorganizing method for the group and researches. 

      Through collective mentoring strategies, conversation and experimentation we will exchange ideas, desires, thoughts, materials and reflections. 

      The first day will largely be built around conversation. The second day we roll up our sleeves and get into action. At the end of the first day we will have dinner together. 

       


       

      Practical information:

      Location: apass 4th floor 

      Dates and times: 

      15.3 2023 @ 10h (check-in) - 17h30 + dinner at 18h30-20h30 

      16.3 2023 @ 10h (check-in) -17h 

      There are a few places left. In case interested please contact Nada by mail at the latest by 10th of March. 

      For non-apassers we ask a 30 € contribution for the 2 days. Please email Nada Gambier if you're interested to participate.

       


       

      Jen Rosenblit (1983. USA) is based in Berlin after many years in New York City. She makes performances inspired by architectures, bodies, text, and ideas stemming from problems that arise inside of agendas for togetherness. Rosenblit’s works lean toward the uncanny and maintenance of care, locating ways of being together amidst (un)familiar and impossible contradictions. Rosenblit’s writing practice spans from the paper to the stage, supporting an expanse of meaning as it emerges between things and toward an unwinding or the inevitably possible collapse. Desire and sexuality have offered reoccurring points of departure without demanding a singular aesthetic or representation. Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2014 NewYork Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a 2023 La Becque (Vevey, CH) artist in residence and has collaborated with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns and Philipp Gehmacher. Rosenblit’s newest work,<ElseWhereRhapsody> is a 2023 co-production of Tanzfabrik Berlin and Tanzquartier Wien, offering distraction as a guide to speak toward the illegibility of desire and forgetfulness as a way to shift toward something else, away from the damaging repetition.

      www.jenrosenblit.net

      Nada Gambier (1980. Finland) roams around in what she calls a crash-disciplinary world where theater, dance, performance, video, writing, curatorial approaches and languages and social concerns merge and collide. Her work often flirts with the borders between theatricality and abstraction and she is drawn to things that she doesn't understand or cannot grasp. The non-spectacular and the absurd belong to her most known trademarks as an artist. Since 2014 she has been focusing on long-term projects in which the separation between research, creation process and public event can be confused and/or abandoned. In 2020 she began monthly collective research sessions in Brussels, further establishing herself as an advocate for experimentation and research within the (performing) arts. Nada also regularly collaborates on other artists' projects as a performer and artistic advisor. She has worked a.o. with Kate MacIntosh, Edit Kaldor, Forced Entertainment, Simone Aughterlony, Jorge Léon, Maria Jerez, Diederik Peeters, Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Phil Hayes. Nada is currently doing the postgraduate course in a.pass. 

      www.nadagambier.be 

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • vessels End Presentations of Anna Lugmeier & Sarah Pletcher
      11 January 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • The Green Corridor
    • 27 January 2023
    • 28 January 2023
    • vessels

      What do you get when a female visual storyteller and a non-binary performance artist walk into a postgrad artistic research program?

      -vessels🥚🦪

       

      vessels brings the two practices of Anna Lugmeier and Sarah Pletcher together in live performance, process sharing, and ephemeral objects that are either a catalyst to or a product of these research practices. Two objects are being investigated specifically in this sharing of research; Anna’s oyster shells and Sarah’s slip-casted porcelain eggs. These objects serve as a vessel for their separate practices but also as objects to collectively work and question with, through, because of, despite of, and in collectivity with. 

       

      Friday, 27th & Saturday, 28th of January 2023

      GREEN CORRIDOR, Rue de Bosnie Straat 102 in Brussels, Saint-Gilles

      The researchers will be present in the space from 16 pm on, the presentations start at 19:00 pm (2 hour duration), so come earlier to have a drink with them and also because the space has limited capacities.

      There will also be a publication available in limited quantities... ✍(◔◡◔)

       

      further information

      vessels is a public presentation of Anna Lugmeier and Sarah Pletcher that marks the end of their research trajectory at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies). vessels is a container for sharing methodology, motivation, and questions proposed by these two makers over their time at a.pass’ year-long postgraduate artistic research program.

      Having related questions, processes, and concerns, the two researchers interweave their individual approaches towards the labour of “women’s work” and femme bodies picture making processes by addressing and engaging critically with individually developed methods and ways of coming together in art making.

      Both of them have researched in specific performative ways how to establish and weave different dimensions of female reality, that have outgrown the framework of patriarchal structures. In their practices, they intertwine several subjects and materialities such as porcelain eggs, oyster shells, felt, fragments of film, sound recordings, conversations, motherhood, storytelling, collaborative thinking, human and more than human knowledges, all present in the space.

      The presentations will connect these dimensions in multiple ways, each of them calling for the gathered sources and resources intra-action in the moment of the public presentations with the intention to repair what has been forgotten, dismissed, or remains unseen.

       

      Anna Lugmeier (she/her)

      Anna's research oscillates between seemingly naïve or bluntly formulated narratives and a critical feminist approach towards storytelling in film making, while seeking to examine how collaborators can grow together/with each other through moments of crisis or speechlessness. She elaborates the complexity of the non-visible/not yet visible in collaboration, through a filming and editing process.

       

      Sarah Pletcher (they/them)

      Sarah is a conceptual performance artist with a background in ceramics, fiber and material studies. Their research investigates the unpaid and unacknowledged labour of “women’s work” particularly pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing, and its role within contemporary capitalism. Their practice speaks to body and economic politics of being a femme maker both in artistic and domestic spaces. 

       

       

       

    • workshop
    • block 2023/I
    • disseminated escapes Workshop in the library
      11 January 2023
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Heide Hinrichs and Vijai Maia Patchineelam
    • 31 January 2023
    • 01 February 2023
    • disseminated escapes

       

      10am - 5pm @ a.pass, 3rd floor

      The workshop disseminated escapes focuses on the intertwining between art practice, publishing and library keeping, as means to ensure a suitable knowledge context for research-based art practices to exist. With the imminent future of the post-graduate program in doubt, we take a.pass library as a contextual framework, in order to reflect on questions regarding the responsibility of maintaining spaces and networks that foster a more diverse, queer, feminist, and non-hegemonic set of references and knowledge. We will deal with issues such as collectivity, connection, knowledge production, maintenance, responsibility, generosity, boundaries, funding cuts, continuation, letting go, and deaccession, and how they could be considered and dealt with as part of one’s practice.

       

       

      Part of the workshop will be dedicated to the slow work of accessing the current state of a.pass library, meaning the gathering, sorting, checking against the catalog and placing the collection of books back in their bookshelves. While handling the books and through the repetitive task that is maintaining a library we search for pencil marks, underlined sentences and paragraphs, notes, doodles, as well as folded page corners left by previous participants over the years. The search for traces becomes then an exercise in reflecting on the effort and work that has taken place by others and for others. But also speculation on the potential messages these traces communicate as the library faces an unknown future with its potential relocation and/or dissolution.

      Aside from the work with the collection of books, we start the two days with an introduction to the library’s history by artist and a.pass technical support Steven Jouwersma, and his experience while administering different systems for lending books, building shelves, cataloging books and maintaining the library for years. On the morning of the second day, we will be joined by the artist duo Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi for a presentation on their project Pages (https://www.pagesmagazine.net), a bilingual, Farsi and English, artist magazine initiated in 2004, concerned with rethinking the politics and practice of archiving and publishing. Pages approach publishing as a collective practice of generating an open, permeable archive.

      Heide Hinrichs and Vijai Maia Patchineelam met while working and researching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Heide was leading the two-year research project second shelf (2018-19) which explored the influence of the culture of the art world dominated by the concept of the lone genius, autonomous, white male creator on the library of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp by asking how alternative canons can be generated in the library. The core of the project was the formation of a new collection of books in the library of the Royal Academy that document the work of female, non-white and non-heterosexual artists and related theoretical texts. Back then Vijai had just started his doctoral research project The Artist Job Description, a practice led research for the employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution (2016-22), which looked at the relationship between artists and art institutions. With the overlap of interests both artists entered into an ongoing dialogue that has led to moments of research and teaching collaborations.

      Heide Hinrichs is an artist based in Brussels, who works with found and existing materials. She responds to situations and continues to draw lines. She was awarded the Villa Romana Fellowship for 2013. In 2014, she was a fellow at the MMCA Seoul International Residency Program, where she continued to work on her long-term project Silent Sisters / Stille Schwestern, an unauthorized translation in text and art works in conversation with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, DICTEE, brought to completion in 2018. For the first Kathmandu Triennial, 2017 (curated by Philippe Van Cauteren) Hinrichs developed the project On Some of the Birds of Nepal (Parting the Animal Kingdom of the East). Between 2018 and 2020 Hinrichs worked on the collaborative project second shelf ( https://second-shelf.org/shelf/) located at the library of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. The project concluded with the publication shelf documents: art library as practice, Track Report, Antwerp and b_books, Berlin, 2021, which Hinrichs co-edited with Jo-ey Tang and Elizabeth Haines. posture editions, Ghent published at the end of 2019 Morning Change, a book on movement, location and nomadism within the artist’s intuitive conceptual oeuvre. Since 2015 she has been teaching and researching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institution. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists — one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacement of roles is part of a larger trajectory of his recently concluded Ph.D. research titled, The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, the University of Antwerp and a.pass, advanced performance and scenography studies, Brussels. As a final outcome of his doctoral thesis, Vijai has published the book The Artist Job Description: for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution with Track Report (Antwerp), in collaboration with OAZA (Zagreb) and a.pass (Brussels).

    • postgraduate program
    • Participants Assembly
    • Nightshift PA-proposal
      07 October 2022
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Nada Gambier
    • 11 October 2022
    • 12 October 2022
    • case of: Nada Gambier
    • Nightshift

      A multilingual space for working together differently, in the unusual context of the night’s darkness. A shift of in-betweens where space is given to that oscillation between one thing and another, between being awake and sleeping, between doing and imagining doing, between one world and another. 

       

      10pm: co-mentoring discussion in duo’s around our respective researches. Bring 3 things from your research as a conversation starter: a book, an object, a text, an image that either reveals your research overall or a specific element within it, a question.

      2am: night walk around the block

      5.30-6.30am: breakfast and conclusion of nightshift

       

      Aside from three collective moments, the time of the nightshift can be used for whatever one needs to do, alone or together: sleeping, writing, painting, meditating, reading, cooking, setting up for HWD, talking, or anything else that sounds like fun.

       

      (c) Image: copyright simon verschelde - model sylvie declercq - night walks 2022, Nada & Co in collaboration with buda kunstencentrum kortrijk and LieveZusjeStoereBroers

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • Demolition, Damage, Deviation, Desire a.pass End Presentations of Gary Farrelly, Inga Gerner Nielsen, amy pickles and Jimena Pérez Salerno
      11 September 2022
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • MEYBOOM artists-run spaces
    • 29 September 2022
    • 30 September 2022
    • Demolition, Damage, Deviation, Desire

      The a.pass End Presentations of Gary Farrelly, Inga Gerner Nielsen, amy pickles and Jimena Pérez Salerno will take place on the 29 and 30 September 2022 at artist run space Meyboom, Boulevard Pacheco 34, downtown Brussels, from 18:00 to 22:30.


      This public presentation marks the end of their trajectory at a.pass and invites the researchers to share their modes of doing, seeing and making artist research public after following the year-long postgraduate program. amy pickles (UK) is an artist and educator working on colonial infrastructures embedded within everyday technologies. She curated and organised, with Chloë Janssens and Túlio Rosa, a gathering titled On Coloniality [https://apass.be/on-coloniality/]. Gary Farrelly (IE) is a visual artist researching on infrastructure, bureaucracy and the architectures of power. A big part of his work is in collaboration with German artist Chris Dreier with the ongoing project Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. Jimena Pérez Salerno (AR) is a choreographer and dancer researching on the concept of expanded choreography as a critical modality for political awareness reflecting on linear time and productive behavior. Inga Gerner Nielsen (DK) is a performing artist with a background in sociology, researching immersive performance as an interstice of poetry and institutional critique.


      With singular questions, processes and approaches, the four researches intersect and expand concerns in Demolition, Damage, Deviation, Desire by bridging intimacy and politics in very different ways. Their practices extend from the lecture performance to performative installation, drawing, crossing ritual making and never ending warmups, to research, share and exchange - together with the audience - questions that are embedded in our everyday lives.


      The research of these four artists addresse architecture and administration with their conditionings and protocols; the perpetuation of colonial governance through digital infrastructures and our dependency on them; immersive institutional rational authority and the amazing potential of time to inherit, transform, conduct change and resilience.


      The End-Presentations at a.pass are on themselves a study on curatorial practice, performativity and making public. By being together, these performative situations will shine attention to the context and environment they are in, their relationship with audiences, the materialities that are involved being them visible or invisible and what matters in these circumstances.


      For this occasion they worked with Frédéric Van De Velde on a collective sound publication with vinyls that will be performed and spinned by Frédéric during the event. 


      *


      Gary Farrelly / It is official policy to appear unmoved

      Gary Farrelly's research at a.pass departs from the work of deceased conservative conspiracy theorist William Milton Cooper. Coopers work, through his polemical Hour Of The Time radio show synthesised economic and political ‘research’, occult knowledge, personal grievance, and manic episodes into a paranoid tsunami deployed to undermine confidence in public institutions.


      Cooper's transmissions were characterised by a highly affective voice, at once disdainful, concealed, intimate, furious and hyperbolic, inducing a hypnotic state of susceptibility and acquiescence to the content. A precursor to the corrosive ‘post truth’ ideation that contaminates our current public discourse, Farrelly takes Coopers work as a departing point towards a generative reimagining of the paranoid researcher/ coercive performer.


      His trajectory at a.pass has explored various performative versions of himself, including: the bureaucrat, the crossdresser, the charlatan, the guide, the joker, the devils advocate, the instructor and the Cassandra. The core mission of Farrelly’s research is the affective deployment of body and voice as transmitters of anxiety, desire, disinformation and critical questioning in relation to invasive infrastructure and monumental architecture. Much of the content and material he has brought into play at a.pass was gathered in collaboration with Chris Dreier in the context of Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. O.J.A.I.'s ongoing mission proposes a reading of the built environment through lenses of coercive power, mind control, transcendence and magic.


      Bio

      Gary is an Irish artist and educator based in Brussels. His work encompasses drawing, performance, publishing, installation and experimental radio. Exhibitions and performances have been presented by Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art (London), Marres Centre for Contemporary culture (Maastricht), Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris) and Salzburger Kunstverein. He is a lecturer at La Cambre ENSAV in Brussels and his work is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. A significant part of the work takes place in collaboration with Chris Dreier, through their shared practice the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence.


      *


      Inga Gerner Nielsen / THiS INSTiTUTE

      At a.pass Inga’s artistic research came to be conjured through THiS INSTiTUTE; a structure by which to constitute the sensual mode of her thinking. The past year she has been looking intensely into ահąէ it is a spacious feeling – where an imaginary world of analysis starts appearing through the objects and textures at hand, հօա it opens as a kind of summoning and closes when she is called into presence by matters of everyday life  and  ահվ it feels so urgent for her to institutionalize her artistic research as affect, as symptom, as dream.

      Moving to Brussels from Denmark Inga lost the sociological overview of her environment. Normally, her artistic work unfolds as sitespecifc intervention in a concrete place, in the academic field or in an institutional setting, which she has carefully sensed in order to know how to highlight its features and make the invisible visible, often through an aesthetic and ideological juxtaposition. Her performance series My Protestant Origins and Catholic Fantasies combines her background in Sociology with her artistic work by making performance installations which open up a maximalist, celestial relation to space and objects in the otherwise secular rule of minimalist Danish design. Now, in the myriad of styles and institutions that make up Brussels, she didn't know what to juxtapose and how to intervene. And after quite some confusion, this lack of clarity started to feel good. It granted her permission to just gaze at her own gaze. In many of her previous works she had been exploring with performers how the gaze affects or choreographs the body, and now, with half-closed eyes she started to practice an intense mode of subjectivation. 


      Inside THiS INSTiTUTE she researches how to fall into a medieval perception of space/time; a mode of being in and knowing the world, she fantasizes to be a remaining counterweight to the renaissance's linear perspective once invented by the architect. She practices a bodily felt sense of her close surroundings as an emotional imaginary landscape, where the distinction between the inner and outer world falls away. At the End Presentation Inga will try to open up THiS INSTiTUTE to her community of artistic researchers and people interested in the question of how to build portals for other modes of thinking? And why might we need the institution to uphold and preserve them? 

       


      Bio

      Inga comes from a group of performers in Scandinavia, who work with immersive performance installations. Since 2007 she co-founded collectives and focused on developing their work as an activist strategy to give structure to sensuous modes of social interaction in different spheres of society. Today she collaborates with a nursing school in Denmark to introduce performance installations as a way to look into the mise-en-scène of care work. A relation, which the project mirrors with the interaction between performer and audience in one-to-one performance art installations. Inga's art explores how new modes of subjectivity or imaginaries come into existence or are transformed through interactions and refigured institutional settings.


      *


      amy pickles / Chantal and Timothy 

      These two works take their name from human inscription on other than human entities.


      Timothy

      made with George Chinnery and many others

      Timothy is a multi-authored scene comprised of assembled debris from amy's experiments in a.pass. These experiments reconsidered formats for collective learning. The topic in question, colonial infrastructures and how they perpetuate modes of extraction and exploitation in a progressive western narrative, inherent within our communication technologies. Phew. Timothy is carrying a lot. Serendipitously, Timothy's name is taken from a tortoise, so it can accommodate a lot within its shell. Timothy the tortoise was taken by the british navy from a portuguese merchant in 1854, who in turn took her from the shores of turkey. She was kept in different colonising ships till she was moved to an aristocratic home in england, where they etched the family motto into her belly; "Where have I fallen? What have I done"?[1] If you're wondering, a tortoises underside is very sensitive. Timothy, as scene, resonates with the scar tissue of Timothy the tortoise. The scene is a prompt for us to think about ourselves as an accumulation of colonial narratives - these processes involve us all in some way - and to reconsider the "uncontested notion of information technology as freedom"[2].


      Chantal

      made with Max Franklin, Chloë Janssens, Anna Lugmeier & Marko Gutić Mižimakov

      Chantal is a digitized Super8 film, that documents 'relational hood group call', a collective exercise made for a presentation in a.pass. The participants are bound together through a group video call on Signal - an internet based communication app - that is connected to their bodies through headphones, screens, and selfie sticks. They collaborate to form an experience for a primary vessel. This primary vessel is the participant whose head is engulfed inside a hood. 'relational hood group call' was a re-imagining and re-assembling of brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s relational objects, objetos relacionais[3]. The name of the film is from the tree in which the participants move around, Chantal being inscribed upon its trunk.


      References

      1. "Timothy (tortoise)" Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_(tortoise). Accessed 7 September 2022.
      2. Aouragh, Miriyam & Chakravartty, Paula. Infrastructures of empire: towards a critical geopolitics of media and information studies. Media, Culture & Society. 2016;38(4):559–575.
      3. Butler, Cornelia H. & Pérez-Oramas, Luis. Lygia Clark, The Abandonment of Art, 1948 - 1988. The Museum of Modern Art. 2014. p281


      Bio

      amy pickles is an artist, organiser and loosely institutionalised educator. In her work, she experiments with ways to hold onto, and consider, pervasive colonial infrastructures we are a part of. In our work, redistribution – of knowledge, tools, finances – and collaboration are ways to refuse individual ownership. She is a member of Varia, Rotterdam NL, an organisation working on everyday technology.


      *


      Jimena Pérez Salerno / Unproductive will

      How can we create a different relation to time than the one the western worldview imposes on us? How can we produce market-wise non-productive things? 


      Unproductive will is a choreographic practice installation that is part of a larger research. It suggests revisiting our relationship with the hegemonic notion of linear time and productive behavior. It proposes thinking of them as collective colonial wounds and impositions that run through our practices, affective bonds, and lives, wherever we are. I am developing exploratory collective practices such as Kung Fu tuning (a counter-normative body practice using simple martial arts warm-up), Collective readings (Payada: a popular folk music genre involving poetic recitations), and Technologies of attention (peeling vegetables following a choreographic score) to name some of them. I work with the idea of a never-ending warm-up to re- think the idea of practice and to engage with everyone who participates as a collaborator. This process does not seek an end but wants to remain in the continuity of the search. 


      I started my trajectory in a.pass exploring the normative notion of linear-productive time and how it is embodied in our behavior because I am interested in its political dimension. I observed how much thinking in a forward direction brings associations that build a certain life perspective. For example, forward-better-future-progress or backward-worst-past-degrowth. This reinforces a system of values creating a sense supported by binary thoughts. In an attempt against this logic, I followed a contradictory path. I will step forward to the past, I said, and I started to investigate, trying to detect how bringing practices from my sentimental and cultural education in Argentina to my current research, could speak of my relationship with a twisted time. I am interested in observing the transformations the project traverses in each place it is presented. To change its language and perspective, that is to say, the thickness that its affective, geographical, and political implications take both for me and those who participate in the experience. This research challenges the definitions of audience-participant, performance-practice, and encounter-training affecting the presentation dynamic that sets all of them in motion.


      Bio

      Jimena Pérez Salerno is an Argentinian artist, based in Brussels (BE). She works and researches between Brussels and Buenos Aires. She experiments in the performing arts, artistic research, and teaching fields. As a dancer and choreographer, she collaborates and engages continuously with other artists as a fundamental part of her exploration of collective work. She considers choreographic practice like an expanded relations system that enables modes of imagination, attention, and coexistence. It leans towards performative practices that contemplate the activation of an unexpected context to think together through the experience of an implicated body. + info: https://cargocollective.com/jimenaps IG: @sashimishimi


      *


      Frédéric Van de Velde

      Bio

      Frédéric Van de Velde's artistic practice oscillates between publishing, producing and organising exhibitions and concerts. He worked for WORM and DE PLAYER in Rotterdam and used to run a bedroom-sized music venue called Antenne. In 2019 he founded the record label Futura Resistenza, which operates somewhere on the edges of performance, music and the visual arts.

       

    • Performative Publications at Kunstencentrum BUDA  in Kortrijk, Belgium bring the individual and collaborative research trajectories of the researchers of the third Cycle of the a.pass Research Center into focus. This day-long performative event is conceived by Gosie Vervloessem, João Fiadeiro, Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin, Simon Asencio, Vijai Maia Patchineelam and the Research Center Curator Vladimir Miller.

       

      FROM 13:00 to 20:30 (detailed schedule below)

      Kunstencentrum BUDA
      Tower
      Budatoren, Kortrijk  
      Korte Kapucijnenstraat z/n, 8500 Kortrijk
       

      The Publications are accompanied by a collaboratively written Annex. In the Annex the researchers of Cycle 3 bring together and discuss an annotated library of shared references and recommendations which have accumulated during their research year. This publication is a collective retracing of these  connections, and as such a reweaving of a complex understructure of speculative relationships between the questions and concerns of this Cycle.

      The Performative Publications will start at 13h and end approximately around 20h. There is a opportunity in between the presentations to enjoy food and drink.

       

       

      Performative Publications

       

      Research Center Cycle 3

      Introduction to the Performative Publications and Annex Reading

      Studio 4

      13h

      duration 1h

       

       

      Simon Asencio

      Ballades Infidèles

      open recording session and conversation

      Studio 3

      14h

      approx 3h, durational, free to join at any moment

       

      Ballades Infidèles is an online and offline research group working around the Ballades en jargon – eleven poems composed by 15th century poet Françoys Villon and written in the secret tongue of the Coquillard·es, a posse of French rogues. These ballads repurpose medieval language to narrate social underworlds in code. They invite to a reflection on the possibility of otherness and estrangement within a ’same’ language. Using the ballads as a map and a method for research, the working group has gathered since February 2022 to develop different forms of study of these ballads in perspective of their re-writing. At BUDA the group will gather to activate these re-writings through the situation of an open recording session and conversation. The recording of the event will later serve for the publication of a vinyl record.

      With Francoys Villon, Diana Duta, Chloe Chignell, Cee Fülleman, Loucka Fiagan, camille gerenton, Anouchka Oler, etaïnn zwer, Christophe Albertijn Simon Asencio et al.

       

       

      João Fiadeiro

      Intra-views

      Studio 5

      at 14h, 15h, 16h

      Durational performance, resets at every full hour. 

       

      In 2021, during a workshop given by João Fiadeiro at a.pass the artist and a.pass researcher Jimena Pérez Salerno composed a list of questions and tensions as a feedback for João Fiadeiro's practice of Real Time Composition. Instead of “answering” these questions directly João Fiadeiro felt that in order to be properly addressed in their complexity they needed a different type of response and a different type of context alltogether. On the occasion of his research presentation at BUDA João Fiadeiro decided to come back to this list and invited Jimena Pérez Salerno to collaborate with him on a dispositive for a performance where both of them will engage in a real time composition intra-view around the questions she initially raised.

       

       

      Rareş Augustin Crăiuţ

      CofetARia

      cake selling point

      Third floor

      14h, ongoing

       

      Born in socialist Rumania, Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin has for the past 10 years been working with food  as a complex collaborator in his performative practice.  He has been exploring methods of mixing food studies with artistic research by setting up, creating and producing food performances and food education projects.

      One of the resulting projects is CofetARia: an durational performance at the intersection of performance art and pastry backing. CofetARia is a functioning  pastry and cakes store, that recreates and offers for consumption the pastries that were made in Romania in the last decades of the waning socialist regime.

      A live performance with alimentary matter, CofetARia is exploring the food's agency in the animation of memory while at the same time confronting post-communist nostalgia.

       

       

      Gosie Vervloessem

      Editorial Meeting - The Horror Garden

      workshop / performance

      Studio 4

      15h

      ca 1,5 h

       

      Gosie Vervloessem's research is focused on the ways plants are depicted in pop culture narratives. The scope of her work encompasses an assemblage of diverse allies and engagements: The Swamp Thing comic books, the plants that grow in the city of Brussels, activists who try to eradicate so called "invasive species" in different biological landscapes, her alter ego of the Sick Detective, and so on. Over the years this sprawling research has produced performative, written and drawn publications, which have never been assembled or shown in one place. Faced with the overwhelming output of her research Gosie Vervloessem will ask her audience to form the editorial board of a forthcoming book on her research. What should be part of this book, what should be excluded, what are the topics and strands that can come together and be published in this format?

       

       

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam

      Descriptions Change

      Book presentation for: The Artist Job Description, for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution together with artists who have contributed to the Research Seminar Descriptions Change, The Artist Job Description that is within the book.

      Studio 4

      17h

      Duration 1,5h

       

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions.

      For this book presentation artists Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens, Evi Olde Rikkert and Julia Dahee Hong, alongside RC Associate Researcher Vijai Maia Patchineelam will present their contribution to the book The Artist Job Description – a publication of Patchineelam’s doctoral research of same title. During the presentation the artists will engage in a conversation regarding the relationship between artists and art institutions by bringing their personal experiences where they have renegotiated other ways of coming into and developing their art practices within art institutions.

      The artist’s experience of being inside art institutions, starting from the effort made to be accepted in order to develop one’s art practice, then the experience of going through them, and while in them, the many ways of having to learn how to be inside. This will in several ways inform the development of an artist’s practice, for the good or for the bad. Making this publication has been an attempt at recognizing and dealing with, rather than avoiding, the tensions that exist in the relationship between artists and art institutions at a time when most art institutions themselves are under the pressure of the looming threat of austerity-politics.

      Excerpt from the book, The Artist Job Description

       

       

       

      Gosie Vervloessem & Simon Asencio

      Area X

      Participatory Performance and Audio

      Studio 5

      19h

      to join the performance, please leave your phone number on the sign up sheet on location. The audio track will be send to your number via whatsapp or telegram

      Duration 1,5h (train to Brussels can be reached)

       

      Area X refers to a mysterious zone in the Southern Reach Trilogy books – a sci-fi, eco-horror and eerie fiction written by Jeff VanderMeer. In the Southern Reach Trilogy a research unit studies a mysterious substance/agent/force/landscape that takes over and re-writes whatever and whomever engages with it. In the narrative of the trilogy the researchers sent into Area X end up blending with it and becoming the subject of their research.

      In their collaboration during the Research Center Cycle 3, Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio have been looking into methodologies for studying the agencies of text through collective reading practices, role play and infused hallucinations. They have based their performative readings of the Southern Reach Trilogy on the methodologies that the books itself proposes: "This text, however, has an agency all of its own: its message is not disseminated through interpretation and relay, but inhalation." This research stimulates a particular relation between reader and text: a point of contact where the desire to make sense coexists with the experience of being fundamentally changed by what one reads.

       

       

       

       

    •  

      "The artist’s experience of being inside art institutions, starting from the effort made to be accepted in order to develop one’s art practice, then the experience of going through them, and while in them, the many ways of having to learn how to be inside. This will in several ways inform the development of an artist’s practice, for the good or for the bad. Making this publication has been an attempt at recognizing and dealing with, rather than avoiding, the tensions that exist in the relationship between artists and art institutions at a time when most art institutions themselves are under the pressure of austerity-politics."


      The Artist Job Description, for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution constitutes the result of Vijai Maia Patchineelam's PhD research in the arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, University of Antwerp and a.pass, advance performance and scenography studies, Brussels.


      Authors for the research seminar 'Descriptions Change, The Artist Job Description: ADRIJANA GVOZDENOVIĆ, EVI OLDE RIKKERT, FELIX RAPP, JOEP VOSSEBELD, JULIA DAHEE HONG AND PIA LOUWERENS 
      Copy-editor for 'The Artist Job Description, For the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution': HEMANT SAREEN 
      Co-Editor for thickets: FABIEN SILVESTRE SUZOR
      Proof-reader: SARAH PREDDY
      Graphic design: NINA BAČUN AND ROBERTA BRATOVIĆ (OAZA, ZAGREB)
      Printer: SVEUČILIŠNA TISKARA, ZAGREB


      Edition: 400

       

      Price: 33€


      ISBN: 9789490521615


      Published in collaboration with OAZA BOOKS, Zagreb, and a.pass, Brussels

       

    • postgraduate program
    • project
    • block 2022/III
    • Where do we go from here - Block 2022 III a proposal by Martina Petrovic
      30 July 2022
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • 05 September 2022
    • 30 November 2022
    • Is a series of dinner encounters which aims to map and introduce four collectives from the Brussels scene to a.pass participants from the September block 2022. Collectives: Common Wallet, Helectolitre, BOSCH and JUBILEE/EMPTOR, are self-organized, or which have alternative approaches on commons, organization, finances and ways of living and working as artists.

      Through a format of dinner we will explore how these collectives operate, what are the politics behind the modes of being and working together, where are the difficulties and what are exciting new possibilities of working with different structures. Participants of a.pass will come to the dinners of these four collectives, after these four encounters for the final dinner a.pass will take the role of the host.

       

      Sept 20th, 7pm: Dinner with Hectolitre

      Oct 7th, 7pm: Dinner with Common Wallet

      Oct 27th, 4pm: Reading Room and dinner with Jubilee/Emptor

       

      The dinner table has its own politics, how one sets it influences the conversation around it, it can generate questions, introduce different ways of composing a menu, question the tools we use, it can unveil the social structures that make the table possible, sometimes unexpected surprising flavors appear on one’s plate and many other delicious subject can surface on it.

      These encounters would allow us to collect tools, inspiration and to learn from existing experience and structures on how to collectivize. Further to question what are the challenges, where to search for help, or what is the strength of working in these alternative ways. It would be amazing if this encounter would spark connections and give opportunity to new, unexpected ways of thinking. Maybe some of these conversations encourage propositions where to begin, which steps to take, what traps to avoid, etc. Maybe they provide inspiration to come together and merge projects or initiate art communities and support systems for each other.

       

      -----------------------------------------------------------PLANNED DINNERS

       

      DINNER with HECTOLITRE- 20th of September -  Rue de L'Hectolitre 3.

      HECTOLITRE is a space dedicated to artists who wish to delve deeper into their projects, experiment with transdisciplinarity and connect their art form/research to the neighborhood. The artists living and working at HECTOLITRE are co-joining interconnected community rings, together with involved neighbors, socio-cultural activists, local and international artists/curators. It is also a place where I have been living for 8 months now, which has opened for me a door to an amazing artist community, given me the time and space for research and implemented the seed from which the idea for dinners with collectives blossomed.

      HECTOLITRE is also an unusual building in the heart of the Marolles neighborhood undergoing a radical change of identity. Former swingers club, then storage for antiques, the space is filled with peculiar Art Brut interventions, resembling a kind of «memory forest».Thus, visually and symbolically complex, the surrounding is no obstacle, but rather is perceived as a living system to accept, associate, question, and experience, providing a shared atelier, hosting exhibitions, performances, musical encounters, film projections, debates and other initiatives. The complementarity among artists, curators, creatives and neighbors inhabit the place and catalyze exchange.

      The project’s device is based on open, curious and benevolent exchange. Innovation, perseverance, the desire to undertake guide the approach, all in an atmosphere that is joyful, lively and harmonious. The methodology of co-creation and collective intelligence governs the organization of the life of the place and the design and implementation of projects.

      http://www.hectolitre.space/project.html

      Meeting of the hectolitre community would take place through a neighborly Balkan traditional activity of roasting papers for preparation of traditional autumn dish Ajvar. Ajvar is a spread made from paprika, oil and spaces which is not only delicious but always takes more than 1 person to make. It invites people to come together, make a summary of the summer experiences, and start preparations for winter. This collective activity also has its economical side, it takes care of rationing the resources,by using one grill and stove for multiple households. Which brings us also to an unavoidable discussion in these times about the advantages of cohousing, living in the collectivity, and sharing working and living spaces. Where and how to search for them and how to start commonizing? Further questioning:  the organic organization of the community, what does it mean, and how does it function?  

       

       

      DINNER with COMMON WALLET - 7 October, 7pm @ Rue de L'Hectolitre 3

       

      Common Wallet is a shared bank account and an experiment of radical trust created by a small community of eight people mainly based in Brussels. The members are artists and cultural producers with different lifestyles, levels of wealth and family conditions. Every income generated by the participants is shared in one common bank account. Any member of the Common Wallet can take money from this account based on their needs and with responsibility towards the group and life’s projects. This means that all everyday and regular expenses such as rent / mortgage, food, clothing, energy, transport are paid for by this common pot of resources. The experiment started in January 2018 without fixed rules but with a shared set of values and the idea to practice a polyamorous relationship with money.

      https://vimeo.com/295537042

      Common Wallet's polyamorous relationship with money is a provocative experiment in trust. They invite us to have a conversation around our relation to money. How does one deal with income, resources and outgoing costs - how do we tackle the taboo around these issues? When the current capitalistic structures are not very welcoming, where and how could we reach for alternative solutions? The dinner with Common Wallet will tackle these questions through an open conversation around the table and by introducing us to a game made by three common walleters, named Commonopoly. How did the idea come about? How is a common wallet structured? What are its positive sides, opportunities and pitfalls.  

      The dinner is curated by Amy Pickles and Martina Petrovic, in collaboration with  Adva Zakai and Anna Rispoli (from Common Wallet).

       

      *

       

      DINNER with JUBILEE/EMPTOR - 27th of October, 4-9pm @ Radical House (Luikenaarsstraat 2 Rue des Liégeois, 1050 Elsene/Ixelles)

       

      Jubilee is an artist-run organisation that functions as a platform for artistic research. Jubilee is a polyphonic and transdisciplinary structure that supports the work and research of its founding artists, as well as the projects of associated artists within collective reflection trajectories. Jubilee initiates collaborations as a basis for long-term and reciprocal relationships.

      Jubilee is concerned with sustainability of artist practices and pursues viable conditions for an ecology of artistic practices. Jubilee wants to raise awareness among artists and have a positive impact on organisations and policies. It does so both by disseminating critical perspectives on the existing precarization in the arts field through individual artistic projects and collective reflections, and by participating in educational contexts, debates, lectures and working groups on an (inter)national level. Jubilee aims to propose practice-based solutions to reconceptualize solidarity systems.

      Jubilee's most comprehensive collective research trajectories are Caveat and Emptor.

       

      Caveat and Emptor

      The project title Caveat alludes to the expression caveat emptor (buyer beware) – signaling the research's ambition to raise awareness around financial transfers in the arts and around how money is constitutive for work relationships, on a socio-economic, legal and cultural-institutinial level. 

      Caveat's primal focus is on contracts as a tool for reconfiguring relationships in the field of visual arts. The research project Emptor focuses on property relationships. In the wake of collaborative, performative, internet-based, audiovisual, and immaterial turns in the arts, it is ever more delicate and complex to define what is the artwork, and how it can be exhibited, conserved and sold. Ownership of material objects remains crucial within the visual arts economy, regardless of the challenges that new art practices pose to materialisation and acquisition. How to dislodge the focus on property to ensure the ‘life’ of artworks within collaborative set-ups?

      Emptor proceeds by alternating a series of preparatory Reading Rooms with public-facing Assemblies of Practice, for in-depth presentation and study of practices of associated researchers.

       

      Reading Room #25, towards the Assembly of Practice ‘Whose institution?’

      Working towards Emptor's third assembly of practice 'Whose institution?', Jubilee invites a.pass to Reading Room #25. We gather around texts from the Handbook that accompanies Documenta 15/Lumbung, an artist-run and collectively structured edition of Documenta which has implied a significant shift in the possibilities of institutional practice. Lumbung is the name for a storage in rural areas for surplus rice that is collectively managed.

      The Reading Room will proceed with a dinner conceptualized by Martina Petrovic.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2022/III
    • EARTH - a gathering workshop - BLOCK 2022 III proposed by Isabel Burr Raty
      30 July 2022
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • 15 November 2022
    • 18 November 2022
    • For the topic Earth of this block, Isabel Burr Raty invites to collectively think - Earth - by diving into polarities surrounding the fourth most abundant element in the observable universe and the 15th most common in the Earth’s crust: Carbon. Carbon, which originates in the core of stars, has the power to form life, yet to dissolve life as we know it on this Planet. Carbon is the chemical skeleton, required to shape complex molecules like DNA, needed for the development, functioning and uniqueness of humans and almost all other organisms. However, carbon-based fuels dominate global energy use and in the context of climate change, carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas released by human societies. Challenging transnational green efforts to establish post-carbon economies and cementing trans-human Directed Evolution.

      During a 4 day encounter based encounter and a series of theory readings, we will be in touch with traditional and innovative practices around the carbon spectrum, as well as post-human critical perspectives on the concept - human - and -nature -. Fabulating with variant Sci-Fi myths be-coming-reality, to inspire alternative imaginaries for the role of the human within the Earth’s life cycle.

      On one side of the spectrum we will encounter María Quiñelén, Mapuche medicine woman and Isabel’s close collaborator. The Mapuche is the originary nation in Chile. Self-identified as – the people of the Earth -, they live in a state of resistance fighting for their autonomy. Via a series of ceremonial practices, María will share with us how her cosmovision envisions the human body as an Earth body. A body populated by carbon entities, functioning as connective tissue to establish non-biological kinship with the micro and macro cosmic. And as such, the human is an active, entangled and trans-dependent constituent in galactical systems.

      On another side of the spectrum, Isabel will open up technological and artistic perspectives about xenobiology, a scientific discipline that engineers chromosomes different from carbon based DNA, to create useful artificial sustainable biodiversity. In other words, to design new forms of life on Earth that are not hard ware, but wet ware based. Such as synthetic breathing forests that would be ready to populate post-nature landscapes. A project that began as a bio-engineering experiment financed by the European Commission and today it's supported by first world power states.

      Orbiting around these spectrums, our readings will open up chapters from Geontologies, A requiem to late liberalism by Elizabeth Povinelli, The Relative Native, Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Xenofeminism by Helen Hester. Where we collectively reflect on: What makes life be in opposition to and in difference from Nonlife? Can the human embody an integrative meta-physics by welcoming multiplicity through affinity? What makes the concept of nature subservient to essentialism?, etc.

       

      Tentative Itinerary of EARTH Tuesday 15 to Friday 18 of November 2022 

      From 10:00 to 18:00 hrs.

      Tuesday 15

      Morning: readings & fabulations

      Afternoon: sharing with invitee María Quiñelen

      Wednesday 16

      Morning: readings & fabulations

      Afternoon: sharing with invitee María Quiñelen

      Thursday 17

      Day trip visit to the Garzweiler mine in Germany with María Quiñelen.

      The  Garzweiler hole is one of the biggest surface coal mine in Europe.

      The mine currently has a size of 48 km² and got its name from the village of Garzweiler, which previously existed at this location. The community was relocated in the nearby surroundings, as well as other villages that followed after.

      Friday 18

      Morning and afternoon: About xenobiology, post carbon imaginaries & fabulations

       

      BIOS

       

      María Quiñelén is a Mapuche activist medicine woman born in Nueva Imperial, Chile. At the age of 7 her grandmother started training her in the arts of herbs by teaching her, amongst others, how to talk to them in her dreams. Since then, for over 40 years she has been working as a social educator, imparting the Mapuche Cosmovision knowledge and the arts of medicinal herbs through her mobile school. Maria is also expert in natural and humanized birth and a ceremonial facilitator. Actively involved in social media, she has been invited by numerous TV and radio programs and lectured in diverse Indigenous Nations knowledge Congresses in Latin America.

       

      Isabel Burr Raty (BE/CL) is an artist, lecturer, sporadic curator and sexual Kung Fu coach. With an activist background as a filmmaker working with the Rapa Nui and the Mapuche people in Chile, her artistic research is based in ecological, queer, post-human and de-colonial perspectives, where the sources of inspiration range from Indigenous knowledge to techno-scientific ideas of matter and bodies. For the past years her experiments have focused on creating conditions for embodied Sci-Fiction, where the role of the human is de-centered in commodification processes, opening discussions about “value understandings”, such as the Beauty Kit Farm. In 2018 Amsterdam Arts Fund partnered her to Waag and Mediamatic. She is member of the EU project Staying in Touch, curatorial practices of the Future and teaches New and Post Media Art history at ERG (BE). Her works and collaborations have been shown internationally.

      www.isabel-burr-raty.com

       

    • postgraduate program
    • Our Practices / Our Extensions - Mentoring practice - Block 2022 III a proposal by Simone Basani and Heike Langsdorf / radical_house
      30 July 2022
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Radical_House
    • 05 September 2022
    • 30 November 2022
    •  

      With Our Practices / Our Extensions we propose a self-observative and self-critical system for mentoring that acknowledges explicitly the socio-political meaning of such an activity of mentoring and being mentored – a practice in itself: attending to processes not being our own, and vice versa, being attended by eyes and minds outside ourselves.

      Inspired by several conversations with current coordinators, alumni, and participants of a.pass, the mentoring system of places at its core the following questions: What do we talk/work about when we touch upon ecological/social/urban issues? How did those issues touch us/our bodies/our hi-her-stories? From which physical/emotional/philosophical site does our research start from?

      We want to welcome a.pass participants by acknowledging that we all have different experiences and therefore some undeniable hunches, ideas, inheritances we are provided with by the way/s we live our life/ves and relate to others and other matter/s. Here we share a quote relating to this:

      “… inheritance doesn't come from the past. Inheritance is the place we are given in the present in a world structured to care for the existence of some and not of others.” ― Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Inheritance

      Concretely speaking, we consider our practices being extensions from ‘where we come from’ – how we relate to the journey of our lives through what we do/propose ‘in practice’. For working collectively with our inheritances (and detect if/how/where they found their place within our practices), we propose to work – practice, discuss and exchange – at radical_house: a typical but recently modernized Brussels family house, being developed into a project with the same name during the last few years by radical_hope: Heike, Simone and many other practitioners. This place will be an anchor point, an object for thinking, a site of exploration for us and the participants, to unfold questions connected to their interests and practices.

      radical_house, Luikenaarsstraat 2, 1050 Brussels (bus 95, tram 81: get off Germoir), will have a physical and receptive presence during this block, and be accessible for the participants to meet, be mentored (one-on-one or in constellation), research, rest, cook, present / share their practices etc.

      By reacting, reading, accepting or rejecting this place, we will try to understand it as a dynamic constellation of traces, artifacts, spaces and relationships that might trigger further reflection about the artistic/social/political practices we are currently maintaining.

       

      Practically speaking, we invite the participants of a.pass at given moments of the week (we will choose them together during the intro-week based on everybody’s availability) into radical_house and share a set of protocols/scores for using a certain space as a site of practice-exploration. Those scores we’ll script or re-script together with the participants themselves on the basis of their interests/needs/desires (heard during the introduction week) and the geography-functioning of the sites we chose.

      radical_house’ proposition resonating with the Streets and the Earth: In the context of a.pass’ block 2022 / 3, while Streets and Earth raise a series of research questions connected to ecology, sustainability of art practices and, more widely, working life in the artistic field, Our Practices / Our Extensions is proposed by Simone and Heike as: 1. a methodology for mentoring & individual + collective reflection/exploration and 2. an explorative usage of a physical place where to stay, think, shelter, rest, continue... This place, radical_house, will be a place to ‘breathe with’ (or digest) the questions coming from Streets and Earth and from the physical-relational spaces of radical_house itself.

       

       

      BIOs of Simone, Heike and radical_house

      Simone Basani

      I spent a large part of my life in Milano and its outskirts, where my biological family still is. The last five years of my stay in Italy have been in Venice though, before migrating abroad as many members of my non-biological family have done too. In Milano, I have been trained in community drama, dramaturgy work, performance making in a theatre that was in the last phase of its dying process. In Venice I have studied the lexicon of visual arts, semiotics, curating, and finally started to apply this knowledge to my own public art projects. Once I arrived in Belgium, eight years ago, I started to apply that knowledge to projects of other practitioners as well – out of necessity and out of curiosity. Now I mostly conceive curatorial and performative formats where I invite artists to react on a specific proposition of mine. This is also a way to get to know their work better. Very often, Alice Ciresola (a member of my non-biological family) helps me to produce and communicate these formats. Some of them are: NittyGritty, Galeria Gdansk itd., What Remains of a Rembrandt.. and the most recent ones: Jeanne. Or the Western Touch that she co-curates, and Unrequested Services). I like these formats to have their own life quite soon after their conception, to get out of my control. Besides this, I have been collaborating for almost four years on a stable basis as dramaturg and creative producer with Heike Langsdorf/radical_hope, and David Weber-Krebs. Heike has invited me to edit one book of the series she created with Alex Arteaga `Choreography as Conditioning`. Currently I am working on the dramaturgy of a Post Pandemics version of her performance Mount Tackle. With Heike and other artists I take care of the life in and around radical_house. Hans Bryssinck, Heike, Miriam Rohde and I have initiated a `house of practices` inside radical_house.

      Heike Langsdorf

      I grew up on the German/Austrian border in the very South-East of Bavaria, and after some years in Arnhem/Amsterdam, I ended up in Brussels as my home base. With a background in dance and performance making, I am exploring the performative qualities of choreographing and conditioning within and beyond the art-institutional field. I connect to artistic making, thinking and researching through a continuous exploration of movement and choreographic principles. Since 2010 I developed (starting at a:pass) radical_hope as a working attitude supporting (my) various distinct practices. Today radical_hope identifies as framework/s for artistic research/es and co-creation/s under un/ideal circumstances. Next to realizing various and numerous projects, performances, interventions and programmes throughout the years, I have always been and remain very invested in understanding what gives rise and makes develop practices: how do practices mature, shift, transform, change direction and so on? This made that what I choreographed and co-curated became rather ‘spaces for gathering through practices’ than ‘pieces for stage’. I mention here some: Changing Tents (2011), Sitting With The Body 24/7 (2014/15), Mount Tackle (2017/2019), Un/Settled Residency (2018), …Through Practices (2019). Since 2018, informally, and since 2020 in a more formulated way, with the curatorial and productional support of Simone Basani and Alice Ciresola and in dialogue with other practitioners, I develop the long term project radical_house. Together with Alex Arteaga I co-edited the book series Choreography as Conditioning which was launched end of 2021, together with a long-term project stemming now from the written texts (find here more info and all credits >>>) . The writings of this series are rooted in a cycle of work sessions entitled CASC at KASK, in which students worked together with invited guests and myself. They explore notions of choreography, understood as ways of organising subjects in their surroundings, and conditioning in both art-making and society-making.

      radical_house

      radical_house is a long term project that stems from radical_hope's practices: it presents a physical place, a framework and a reasoning. It is also a possibility for Heike Langsdorf to connect, together with others, her pedagogical experience (which she could gain during the last ten years) back to the artistic field: - How can 'just another' house become a relational tool? What if one frees 'the house' of its usual connotations presenting "neither a property nor territory to be separated and defended against who does not belong there"? (*) It then could be considered "a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves". (**) (*/**) Roberto Esposito, Communitas - the origin and destiny of community, 1998

      The renovation (2016-19) of a Brussels family house, together with architect Tania Gijsenberg, into a place for 'more than family' is a relatively new reality, with three work paths that are temporally and spatially entangeled. Here just a short overview: Luikenaarsstraat 2 is the address of the house -- its physical appearance -- where people can live, work and present together. 'Just another house' (in 'just another neigborhood'). After its renovations this house now has the possibility to host more than their two permanent inhabitants: by opening and reducing the staircase to half its former width, a dark cellar (previously packed with unused stuff) became an atelier and the groundfloor became a studio with guestroom. A big window gives view to the streets, vice versa big parts of the working spaces can be seen from outside. The second floor is now an open co-working space with kitchen. Dismantling some little unused inbetween chambers on the same floor made two outside spaces possible: a little courtyard and a terrasse. Under the roof are two rooms for the permanent inhabitants to withdraw into.

      Some impressions

      Bridging from School: In 2021/22 radical_house develops the framework Bridging from School: first and foremost a way of working with young people, who are still studying or have just graduated, to make their practices not yet introduced to the field: this is done not only by following their work, mentoring or coaching them, giving them feedback but very concretely by setting up projects which need the presence and knowledge acquired in their practices. Like this they are actually introducing themselves while practicing, not by presenting their ideas and philosophies via dossiers and portfolios. Currently, as part of a recently started collaboration with Demos (Arts In Society Award), Simone Basani and Heike Langsdorf are mentoring their candidates.

      House of Practices is exploring permeability: how to make space in existing places? In dialogue, through their practices and those of guests, initially, Simone Basani, Hans Bryssinck, Heike Langsdorf and Miriam Rohde aimed to come closer to what the transformative power of a physical place could be: What does a place with its specific history, former and current inhabitants/users allow for? What makes it relational and permeable and for whom? How do our practices create closeness and distance to one another? What of it contributes to the making of community, and what to avoiding or even destroying it? In 2020/21 House of Practices received a research grant by the Flemish Authorities. In 2022 Simone Basani, Heike Langsdorf and Miriam Rohde continue the quest.

       

    • Research Portfolio Chloë Janssens

      Download here: Portfolio_mobile_CJ

       

      Keywords: soil, underground, mediation, role play, rehearsal, semi-fiction, collectivity

      I combine cravings and knowledge from climate activism and graphic design in an artistic practice that investigates the soil as a basis of place and futuremaking.

       

      To dig my hands deep into the earth and listen 

      “The sandy soils of my birthplace ‘de Kempen’, Belgium form the dry landscape of my research. I observe my ancestors preparing the earth for agriculture by obsessively moving cow-shit from the stalls to the fields. I can smell the cattle’s breath, the farmer’s spit, my grandmother's sweat and the excrements in the soil. After the famine we begin to enrich our lands with chemical fertilisers and radio-active uranium ore. When I stick my fingers in the earth here and tune in I can hear metals nagging, minerals singing, and bones twisting and turning in the underground. My imagination is haunted by this vibrating mass of elements holding stories from elsewhere. What to do with this pulsing scoop of dirt in my hand? I hold it with disgust, I peak into it, twirl my fingers around. I try stamping on it to free its story.”

      The research proposes that a collective reading of this scoopful of earth becomes a basis for an urgent reflection on our entanglements with the places that we inhabit. I invite the audience as a co-researcher in need of a tool for reading the soil. As a tool, I use literal and metaphorical sieves to better understand our positionality and implications in the soils condition. How do these polluted soils that we create and inhabit inform, shape and guide us?

       

      Toolkit of the research

      As a real Virgo and desperate prepper I’m looking for tools to assist me in my artistic practice. In this portfolio, I share with you the tools and skills I am discovering, developing or temporarily forgetting in my artistic research. I talk about my work through these tools to share with you my current methods and approach to research and art-making.

      — Sieves

      — Facilitation

      — Semi-fiction

      — Sensuous strategies

      — Graphic Design

       

      Sieves

      I understand a sieve to be a dividing tool. A tool to temporarily separate certain bits to form meaning. The meaning can be read on the surface of the sieve as well as in the remaining mass. The sieves themselves determine what will be caught, and what is able to ‘escape’. Because the materiality of the device is in the thread as well as in the holes. Julian Barnes describes a net as “A collection of holes, tied together with string”. When I replace ‘string’ with ‘material’, this could be the definition of the sieves I have been using in this research. In that sense, the material is connecting the holes, keeping together what temporarily escapes. As a designer, I’m interested how the design of the sieve holds it’s outcome, or is it possible to design open-endedly? To not define what we want to catch or capture?  

      Metaphorically, as an artist and Pisces moon, I think of what is flowing through the holes. Marilia Librandi wonders if we can spy the world through the hole, and which different perspectives this will bring for us. She is a scholar who thinks the net as a territory of activist, ecological and artistic interactions in relation to Amerindian and riverside cosmogonies. About her writing she says: “The pressure of linear story writing is very strong. More than the net, it’s the hole that I want to weave.” 

      It’s an ongoing practice of letting the different holes in the narrative of my research exist and refuse weaving the thread combining them. Weaving the holes also means letting complexity be, and not forcing direct connections. 

       

      Interpretation, meaning-making

      I got this image and urge to put my hands into the soil and filter out meaning and guidance. To let the soil guide us, as we do with the stars. To add the gesture of looking down for guidance, to the gesture of looking up. By using my own hands as sieves, it isn’t only the remnants that speak, but also the experience of touching and feeling the mass. I will elaborate on ‘touching’ in the ‘Sensuous Strategies’ item in this toolkit.

      When you’d search for options on ‘how to read the soil’, different search engines will give you a multitude on tactics. There’s pH strips or, when the soil is still in place, we can observe what grows out of the surface of the ground. Rather than the current vegetation, I’m interested in the seeds the soil holds for emerging futures. These seeds I don’t only see as literal seeds for plants, but also as a metaphor for materials in the soil holding questions and responsibilities for the future, which f.e. uranium is doing. Reading the soil for me became, among others things, both a historical as an intuitive practice.

       

      Sifting paper

      In a.pass (2021-2022) I engaged in a paper making practice. Making paper is done by using a sieve. First old paper is mixed with water until the paper completely falls apart. Then, this mixture is sifted and pressed on a cloth mostly in a rectangular shape. This process of working with old paper with texts we had been reading, or material I had been working with, helped me compost different entrypoints and interests in my research. By going through the printed texts again, I selected bits of my research that were important, and other bits that could go. The latter were mixed to pulp, and made into new paper. The images or pieces of texts that I considered important were mounted on top of the new paper. Holding it as a new material to work with into a new stage of the research.

       

      Facilitation

      I’m interested in negotiating collective conditions. During my time at extinction rebellion I grew an interest in collective conditions that are ‘doable’. No ideal situations, but pragmatic ways of being together with an openness to be ‘contaminated’ by the beliefs of others. Being on the intersection of the arts, activism and design, I feel there’s a lot to discover for me about the practicalities of collective conditions during polarisation.

      In these collective conditions, I’m interested in the figure of the facilitator, a position that is in constant negotiation. Facilitators try to keep openings for things to emerge, and at the same time manipulate conditions to actually produce something; a decision, a conversation, new ideas,… This friction I find exciting.  

       

      Chelsea Meijer

      To deepen and further explore different perspectives, I started to work with role play. For myself, I created an alter ego called Chelsea Meier, that embodies my slightly militant and sexual fantasies. Chelsea is less of a people pleaser than I am, she dares to manipulate the conversation more and isn’t afraid to share her own thoughts, beliefs and knowledge with the group. Through Chelsea I’m curious to learn and question the role of the faciliator as a ‘neutral’ position. I’m trying to discover and play with manipulation from the ‘trusted’ figure of the facilitator. Chelsea, for me, talks to authority, control, guidance, leadership amidst emergency. 

       

      Role play

      Together with me, also the audience is invited to shapeshift. I wonder if changing body, can also influence your thoughts and behaviour. During my design education at the Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, I was taught the ‘form follows function’ principle which states that the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose. I am interested in the opposite. Being a shapeshifter myself I wonder, could changing ‘form’ change your ‘function’, or transgress the borders of ‘identity’ and negotiate new thoughts and new ways of inhabiting your form or body? Can embodying another point of view in a semi-fictional reality soften our beliefs in our everyday reality, and create openings for contamination?

       

      On Coloniality

      4-day event, 10-13/11/2021, KBK, Brussels

      An actual setting where I’ve worked with collective conditions was the event ‘On Coloniailty’ that Amy Pickles, Tulio Rosa and myself organised in the frame of a.pass. ‘On Coloniality’ was a proposition for a temporary context for collective study. Through different artistic and theoretical speculations we studied coloniality and its manifold dimensions.

      Our understanding of coloniality departed from ideas developed first by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, and later expanded by many others, such as the semiotician Walter Mignolo and feminist philosopher Maria Lugones. Coloniality is an idea that points to the modes of organisation of power in so-called colonized territories, and how this extends out into supposedly postcolonial states. It differentiates colonialism, as a historical process, from its legacies. We have been thinking about ways to describe how the colonial rationale is at the very basis of our modes of social and political organisation, how those supposed histories have collapsed into, resonate with, and form our present.

      There is a shared desire between the three of us to learn how to articulate coloniality through artistic practices. Our collaboration has grown out of our individual motivations to discuss and re-narrate the colonial practices of the countries where we were born - UK, Brazil and Belgium- and challenge the dominant narratives that compose these histories. We are drawing connections between different times and locations by following closely methods of appropriation and extraction of land, resources, labour and data. Through different artistic practices we want to draw parallels, observe symmetries and find correlations across colonialism as it exists across all aspects of our lives; institutionally, economically, in corporations, governance, everyday structures of living and our bodies.

      ‘On Coloniality’ was hosted in KBK, an alternative space near Saint Cathrine, in Brussels. It was a porous programme open to the public. An exhibition hosted the programme that consisted of reading and listening sessions, screenings, a performance, workshops, public conversations and discussions.

      For On Coloniality we learnt from and with: Jeyanthy Siva, EZLN Delegation (Gira por la Vida,) WORKNOT! X Sarmad (Alireza Abbasy, Golnar Abbasi, Arvand Pourabbasi) Daniela Ortiz, Saddie Choua, Satch Hoyt, Sami Hammana, Glicéria Tupinambá, Vermeir & Heiremans, Line Algoed, Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano, Elodie Mugrefya, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Helena Vieira and the Institute of Colonial Culture (initiated by Philippe Mikobi and Maarten Vanden Eynde).

       

      Semi-fiction

      I often find reality stranger than fiction. I like to work on the verge of the almost believable. To keep a space open for a naivety that is willing not to learn. The semi-fiction interests me as a space in which many things are possible, and the actual is reconsidered. I like to look for the absurdity in every-day situations, and use that as gateways into a collective imaginary. Semi-fiction offers me a method to freely combine different times and places. Just like relativity theory in physics I try to access the complexity of everyday life by bending time and space .  

       

      Brochure Hades

      In the frame of my research on the geological disposal of nuclear waste in Belgium I worked with the HADES laboratory, an underground lab where every single test refers to a Greek mythological figure. The place itself was already loaded with such mythology, that it gave me a great entry point towards a fictional reading of this space. 

      Chelsea researched the specific site of the HADES project and discovered another very important inhabitant of the infrastructure, a young child locked up in one of the tubes, meant for radioactive disposal. The happiness of the inhabitants of the area turns out to be directly linked to the suffering of the child. This case is strangely close to another story that was reported by writer Ursula Le Guin “The ones who walk away from Omelas”. Chelsea reported the situation in the area of the HADES project to be extremely urgent both for the child and for its overhead neighbours.

      But also HADES itself understand its tricky situation. Recently they opened up a call for a ‘social project’ that wants to include ‘stakeholders’ in the decision making on how to deal with nuclear waste on the long run. Chelsea saw this as an opportunity to apply for the job to facilitate this process and has been organising councils on the geological disposal of highly radioactive waste since.

       

      Semi-fictional surroundings

      I am growing an interest in how surroundings and materials can support a semi-fictional narrative. While researching I like to’make things’. Being in touch with the materials of my research, offers me a dynamic place to interact with ‘what’s there’.

      During the trajectory in a.pass, I experimented with paper making. Starting from the paper making workshops, I went to build little sculptures from the same material. I enjoy the ‘habitation’ of the research, to inhabit the materials, texts and places of the research quite literally.

       

      Sensuous strategies

      In the risky spaces which Chelsea proposes, I try to enter a semi-fiction through sensuous strategies. I’m a great fan of touching and listening. Some of my favourite materials to work with are: fonts by womxn, handmade, recycled papers, ropes and chains, sexy and furry fabrics, audioguides and soundscapes. 

      Proximity is important in my work. Through the senses, I like to get close to things I don’t understand. 

       

      Paper making

      During my stay at a.pass I picked up a practice of paper making. I learned to make recycled paper when I was a child and had been practicing every now and then over the years. In a.pass it became a recurring practice that I revisited regularly over the span of the programme. 

      In the paper making process I re-use paper from the bin and combine them with breadbags that my family collected during Sunday breakfasts. I like to think of the pulp mixture as a colliding of places. The paper bags have longer fibers, and they are able to hold together the short-fibered recycled paper from the bin.

      Lately, I often leave the sieves for sifting the paper out of the pulp mixture aside, and use the pulp as a material for making cardboard, a table, a shelter. All kinds of substances can be added to the pulp such as soil, spinach, blue berries, coffee grind, stones, moss and ink.

       

      Intoxication

      To shapeshift, I’m experimenting with drinking a transformation poison. I’ve been thinking about this idea of intoxication or contamination as an alternative for polarisation. Could I allow myself to willingly let myself be intoxicated or contaminated by something other than myself. This openess seems so daring and naïve that it scares me. 

      As a concept it’s huge, maybe touching or swallowing ‘otherness’ can make it more concrete and ‘doable’. I try and think about contamination through swallowing or touching that which is considered dirty. Dirtyness often calls for refusal, but could we also be with the dirt and let it shape us?

       

      Audioguide Down Dwars Dela

      Down Dwars Delà, Constant vzw, 2021, EbenEzer. Together with Olivia Joret and Amy Pickles. This work is an audio tour that we shared at the end of the Constant Down/Dwars/Delà worksession, close to the Eben Ezer tower in Bassegne, BE. 

      (Text by Constant vzw) Down Dwars Delà is a trio of words from English, Dutch and French. These aren’t translations but instead position(ing) that we see as talking back to the places and postures we took, experimented with and visited during these two sessions. We look at these words as forming a vector between the beyond, the out-of-reach and the experienceable world.

      Down Dwars Delà was the name of two connected sessions that took place one after the other during the summer of 2021, in two different places. One was hosted at the Eben-Ezer tower in Bassenge, Belgium, the other at the Bidston Observatory just outside Liverpool, UK . Both settings were approached as instruments to reconsider the modes of connection, observation and story-making they foster in relation with their wider historical, geographical, social, ecological, political and economical contexts. (end citation)

      Our three voices, and narratives, are characters with different materialities. Rock is one, in its multiple, porous, breathing, extracted and exploited existences. Another is the gas nitrogen, whose role is shifting as rocks story changes. The third is a matrixial perspective, that brings our attention to borders and transferences between us. The tour began on top of the tower, then moved down to the stairs leading to it, a large pile of rocks and an old mine. The audience was added to a group chat on Signal in which audio fragments of the three characters were shared throughout the walk. The tour ended with a sound meditation by Pauline Oliveros in the mine.

      We did an iteration of this performance for the group exhibition ‘Unfolding Down Dwars Delà’ in the weekend of 16-18th of December 2021 in SeeU, Etterbeek. In this space we shared debris from the live moment of the tour, in the form of props, sound and our script. Stoney soaps presented here confused senses, and could be carried away by visitors.

       

      Graphic design 

      Graphic design and I haven’t always been friends, although I can feel we’re growing closer again. Working as a freelance designer, I can feel how these skills inform a lot how I work with performance and scenography. When thinking about alter ego’s and role play, I often fall back on making moodbards as I would do for clients when designing their branding. 

      I also think a lot through images and color. Through making images and collages I get visualisations of a cosmology or imaginary in my head. Through methods of visualisation I can see more clearly affinities between different holes in the net that symbolises my research. Through visualising I find it easier to think about stories in the research too.

       

      On Coloniality, mentoring and publication with Nontsikelelo Mutiti

      How to break loose from the grid? How to find a place to design from, a place of familiarity, something I know? How to work with what’s around and ‘make’ from this specific locality? How to relate to graphic design discourse without being burdened by it? These questions informed me during the process of making the design for our event ‘On Coloniality’ that took place from November 10-13th, 2021 in Brussels, Belgium. 

      Design comes with the responsibility of directing people’s attention. I find that devastating. It’s a source of magic, to guide someones thoughts, and I have difficulties to negotiate that power.

      In September I started teaching a Typography 1 course at Paris College of Art. An engagement that sparked my interest in typography and its political potency. Preparing classes, and meanwhile structuring my thoughts about typography, activated a renewed joy and curiosity in the subject. Seeing the mainly white, male graphic design canon made me aware of the importance to speak from a certain position. I started thinking about the position that I work and teach from. 

      That spacial position was the fundament for the design of the visuals for our event ‘On Coloniality’. I started to work with what was lying around. I used scraps from brochures and folders of venues that we visited in preparation for the event. The biscuits and corn crackers I ate continuously got their own place in the design. I felt the urge to process the materials from the preparations into the design.

      I was inspired by Nontsikelelo Mutiti, who’m I had the honor to meet for a mentoring in the a.pass programme. Nontsikelelo (among many other things) works with hair braiding as a communication technology to talk with her black community. Her way of working reminded me of the affectivity of communication design. How our communication becomes recognizable by the way it appears to our kin and communities. 

      As Nontsikelelo says in our conversation: her education was a training in reproduction. Coloniality aims to make people reproduce what the knowledge-holder already knows. Students are not always trained into formulating their own thoughts. Consciously are not, my design education made me belief I had to reproduce a standard I had no understanding of. I feel this design process was a first step to untangle and get loose from those believes. To compost the thoughts I hold on what design is supposed to be, and find a more synced place to work from.

      I published a zine that contains a 3 hour conversation I had with Nontsikelelo Mutiti covering different topics around coloniality in graphic design. We talk about books as objects of power, about design education, about reading and about who’s still doing minimal design?

    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • reading session
    • seminar
    • workshop
    • Autotheory Gathering at ZSenne ArtLab: Public Program In the context of Block II 2022: Scoring Intimacy of Discursive Others
      30 May 2022
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • ZSenne ArtLab
    • 27 June 2022
    • 09 July 2022
    • gathering, seminar, performance
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • Autotheory Gathering at ZSenne ArtLab: Public Program

      For two summer weeks (June 27 – July 10) a.pass is moving to ZSenne ArtLab in downtown Brussels, where it organizes a gathering around autotheory that brings together several approaches to the term and its relation to artistic research practices. The program includes several working sessions, a reading group, a programme of performances, and is curated by Lilia Mestre and Goda Palekaitė. To set a theoretical framework, a two-day workshop will be offered by Maria Gil Ulldemolins who will facilitate a selected library and methodological tools to be further explored during the two weeks. Associated researchers of a.pass Research Center – Gosie Vervloessem, Simon Asencio, Rareş Crăiuţ and Vijai Maia Patchineelam – will present their current processes. Finally, a.pass alumni who engage with autotheory in their practice will present their recent work in a series of performances and conversations open to the public: Chloe Chignell, Aubrey Birch, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda with Charlie Usher, Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen, Vladimir Miller, Gary Farelly and Adrijana Gvozdenović. 

      SCHEDULE

      28 and 29 June: Workshop Maria Gil Ulldemolins [10:00-17:00]

      30 June: and 1 July: How to say my name Rareş Crăiuţ [June 30 at 11:00 & July 1 at 19:00 - duration 1h]

      2 July: Performance Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen [17:00-19:00]

      6 July:  Online talk Alex Arteaga and Emma Cocker [cancelled]

      6 July: Working session  Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio [14:00-18:00]

      7 July: Working session Kin(s)Score a.pass program https://apass.be/kinship-score/ [14:00-19:00]

      8 July: Performances and book presentation Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Charlie Usher and  Vijai Maia Pachineelam [19:00-21:30]

      9 July: Performances Chloe Chignell, Aubrey Birch, Eleanor Ivory Weber [18:00-21:00]

       

      DETAILED PROGRAM

      28 and 29 June [10:00-17:00]

      Maria Gil Ulldemolins: The Autotheory Library

      For this two day workshop, MariaI puts together a library of samples of autotheoretical (or autotheory-adjacent) texts. The group will read them and discuss them collectively, without rush, meandering wherever it is of interest for the participants’ and their practices. The aim is triple: to understand the very basics of what autotheory is understood to be up to now; to tentatively look at other hybrid works that might compliment it; and, last but not least, to make time for each participant to reflect on if and how autotheory might inform or challenge their own work. Participants will be able to permanently “borrow” from the library excerpts of the works, so they can take home a collected reader for their reference. The whole experience intends to highlight how autotheoretical narrators weave an intellectual and intimate network of relations; and consequently make time to read, think, and share as a collective, too.

      *

      30 June and 1 July [June 30 at 11:00 & July 1 at 19:00 - duration 1h]

      Rareș Crăiuț and others: How to say my name?

      For this gathering, Rareș will talk about the combination of art, research, narrative and food. First through his artistic research practice but also through 'CofetARia', a  project hosted at a.pass, where he is also Associate Researcher. In his practice, Rareș works with cakes, and pastries as non-human collaborators in artistic contexts. He will address the topics of science and narrative, as well as the accessibility to research.

      Cakes are generally more performative than other types of food and make it easier for humans to understand and feel the agency of food. Working with alimentary matter and live performance, CofetARia is an eating performance, at the confluence of durational practices like performance and baking.  

      2 July [17:00-19:00]

      Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen: On Versions/ NÓS 

      Flávio and Philippine will present a performance and conversation created collaboratively for this occasion. They take this encounter as an opportunity to relate their practices to each other('s body) in the importance they give to recognising that they exist as different selves. This performance takes the shape of a working session in which the performers and researchers borrow and lend each other’s dispositives of autotheory, putting them at each other’s disposal in a negotiated time and space.

      David is a person(a) and practice of versioning, who first came into being as a version of Philippine, an exploration of who Philippine could be as a man with a beard, how they could move and be in the world and how the world would respond. David consists of different aspects and objects, one of them being a voice. In this working session David's voice seeks residence in a new body, an experience that confuses and excites him, and that recreates him in an uncertain game of determining and being determined.

      Flavio, by incorporating this other voice, finds himself inhabiting his own body from a new perspective. The cohabitation leads to a different understanding and positioning of his body, with new layers of perception and performative gestures. David becomes a zone in between, where their bodies and practices cross and inhabit the same territory for a while, leading and being led, proposing and being proposed to, acting and reacting to David's mediation. 

      The organic devices that our bodies are, and the sound and motion they create, as well as the synthetic devices such as speakers, sound processors and projectors, and the ephemeral devices such as concepts and protocols - will enable this exchange. They will allow mirroring, resonance, vibrations and echoes that constitute the necessary elements for the research process to begin. This performance proposes to see mirrors, recordings and reproductions as ideas and gestures that function in both practices as forms of interlocution with oneself, in order to actualise or confirm the perception of the self as a multitude of selves. Such interlocution produces autotheoretical reflection and becomes a methodology for artistic research.

      *

      6  July [cancelled]

      Alex Arteaga and Emma Cocker: Online talk about language practices in artistic research

      Both Emma and Alex are part of Research Groups concerned with language practices in Artistic Research.  They will speak from their perspectives and practices within several academic contexts. How do language-based artistic research practices relate to other research practices? What are the motivations, needs, desires, and aims that lead to establish these correspondences? How are the practices in mutual touch affected, modified, influenced, transformed? How do these connections, entanglements and intertwinements contribute to achieve the research goals? How do they affect the unfolding of research processes?

      *

      6th July [14:00-18:00]

      Gosie Vervlossem and Simon Asencio: Autheority

      The notion of textual agency refers to the capacity displayed by texts to do things in various circumstances. In other words, text might be doing something else then simply conveying meaning. Text is equally reading you. Text performs you. Ultimately text might suggest methodologies for its own study: a study from which you might not be able to return without losing a feather.
       
      As part of the Research Center Cycle 3, Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio, have been looking into methodologies for studying the agents of text through collective reading practice, role play and infused hallucination to examine the performances they enable. They have based their research on the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer, a sci-fi, eco-horror and eerie fiction and engaged in a process of reading the book by the means it proposes. Southern Reach Trilogy plots the story of a research unit studying a mysterious substance/agent/force/landscape that takes over and re-writes whatever and whoever engages with it: the researchers of Area X end up becoming the subject of their research. There is no objectivity whatsoever left.
       
      Authority is the title of the second book in the Area X trilogy. The book takes place in the research unit Southern Reach, exploring aspects of institutional paranoia, infrastructural and architectural labyrinths, secrecy and bureaucratic anxiety. Authority follows the main protagonist Control, the new director of Southern Reach while he leads interrogations of staff and former expeditions researchers. Conspiracy and paranoia are rampant. To access Authority they will use the method of lecture par arpentage* and the format of the interrogatory. Chapters will interrogate each other on the plots and holes of the book. The interrogatories will take place during four hours on June 6 during a public event situation. The interrogatories will be transcribed live by a transcriber.
       
      The interrogatories:
      Vijai Maia Patchineelam and Adrijana Gvozdenović as Incantations (Chapter 1)
      Simon Asencio, Gosie Vervloessem and Gary Farrelly as Rites (Chapter 2) 
      Pia Louwerens as Hauntings (Chapter 3)
      Vladimir Miller as Afterlife (Chapter 4)
       
      * Lecture par arpentage is a method in which participants read one part of a book each and gather to report and reconstruct the book together.
       

      *

      8 July [19:00-21:30]

      Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Charlie Usher and Vijai Maia Patchineelam: On Artist as Institution  

      This evening brings together artists working with the practices of instituting and within institutions. It will comprise Pia’s work as ‘embedded researcher’ in institutional frameworks; Vijai’s Ph.D. research regarding the employment of the artist, as an artist, inside the art institution; and Marialena’s and Charlie’s practice of summoning, hosting and appropriating utterances with the Ocean through establishing The Oceanographies Institute.

      The Oceanographies Institute (TOI) studies human-ocean kinships. It gives particular attention to affectual and sensual encounters between those two bodies of water. The Institute therefore explores the relations of hands to mud, ears to the breaking waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than the ocean 'in itself', as if devoid of human presence. It collects, analyzes and reenacts people's personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. TOI is interested in the relations to the ocean of the institutions that it is invited into -and of the people that are part of those institutions. In the case of a.pass and the people that make it up, they have been formative in TOI's coming to be. In their presentation, Marialena and Charlie will revisit some of those early Ocean Conversations and through them trace the parcours of the institute so far. TOI presentations often function as rituals of summoning: the ocean and fellow a.pass researchers and mentors will become characters coming to life in TOI's stories and songs.

      For this gathering, Pia will tell a story about a piece that she wrote to be published in a journal on autotheory, but never survived the editing process. She will alternate this with readings from her self-published book I'm Not Sad, The World Is Sad: an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution. The blurb reads: "Invested in queer theory and institutional critique, she sets out to perform the artist 'differently' through a process of negation and passivity, inadvertently causing her relationship with the insitution's curator to grow increasingly speculative and paranoid. Pia dresses her protagonist in the different professional guises of artistic labour. Her experiences as tour guide, security guard, artist, hostess and researcher at different institutions begin to overlap and blend under the name of 'performance'.  The result is a fragmented story of paranoid and reparative reading, script and utterance, exposure and vulnerability."

      For his presentation, Vijai will present the book, The Artist Job Description, for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institutiopublished recently by Track Report, Antwerp, in collaboration with OAZA, Zagreb, and a.pass, Brussels. During the presentation, Vijai will read passages from the book in which artist colleagues are referenced as key influences that have helped shape and direct the practice-led research, The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Artistic Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution. 

      *

      9 July [18:00-21:00]

      Aubrey Birch, Chloe Chignell and Eleanor Ivory Weber: On Writing Practices 

      The Autotheory Gathering will close with performative presentations of three writers and artists working with and on language. Reflecting upon the conventions of Western news media and the practice of reporting, Eleanor will perform a new piece of writing. Choreographically engaging with the space of ZSenne ArtLab, Chloe will present an extract of her Poems and Other Emergencies. Thinking through mineral erotics and linking our bodies with the bodies of more-than-human, Aubrey will propose a cocktail of spiritual calories.

      9 July 2022
      Eleanor will draw our attention towards reportage, which, in the same movement, bears witness to the world and consumes it. It is also a technique for making equivalences out of what is irreconcilable. In her practice, Eleanor keeps track of the dates when important things happen as a way to remember how the past shows up today. All the while she is trying to understand how repetitions, forgetting and suspended apprehension are equally part of personal and public events, places and products.
       
      Poems and Other Emergencies*

      Poems and Other Emergencies by Chloe sits at the intersection of poetry and choreography. Centered on a fictional character The Girl-with-her-tongue-out, the performance questions if it is through language that we find ourselves a body, or through the body that we find language? Embodied voices and voiced bodies weave and echo throughout the space. Where does the word end and her body begin?

      Aubrey's Material & Spiritual Calories is a practice that bridges the art of gathering around the table with the geological origins of what we consume. The body’s chemistry is altered both by the material calories of what we eat and the spiritual calories of how we eat, where pleasure and sociality nourish us as much as the proteins, sugars, and amino acids that we need to survive - that we need in order to wake up in the morning, to act, to hope, to protect. Between the immediacy of the meal and the endurance of our mineral origins, the body becomes a site where the ephemeral and the primordial meet in sensory experience.

      * performance credits:

      Performance and Choreography: Chloe Chignell
      Conversation partner: Adriano Wilfert Jensen
      Technical Support: Sven Dehens
      Thanks: Sven Dehens, Bojana Cvejic, Stefa Goovart, Sabine Cmelinski and a.pass. 

      Supported By: BUDA Kortrijk, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Workspacebrussels, La Balsamine Theatre, GC kriekelaar, Lucy Guerin Inc, Dancehouse Melbourne, Batard Festival Brussels, QL2 dance ACT, Kanuti Gildi Saal, Tallinn, RIMI IMIR (NO), Littérature Etc. and Rencontres Chorégraphique.

      *

       

      BIOS

      Aubrey Birch is a transdisciplinary artist and academic living between Australia & Europe. Working in various mediums, shecreates immersive states that link our bodies in the here-and-now to the deep time of those bodies. Thinking through a mineral erotics and social sensuality, she brings the politics of immersion into contact with the more-than-human. She lives part-time in remote Australia, where she cultivates native and medicinal plants. In Europe, she is a member of a collective taking care of Performing Arts Forum (FR), where she also co-organises the queer feminist event Elsewhere & Otherwise. Her works and collaborations have been presented by institutions like KANAL–Centre Pompidou (BE), MaerzMusik (DE), Shedhalle (CH), rotor Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst (AT), Kunsthal Ghent (BE), Theater Neumarkt (CH).

      Chloe Chignell is an artist based in Brussels working across text, choreography and publishing. Her work focuses on language within a choreographic and performative frame; she invests in writing as a body building practice, examining the ways in which language makes us up. Chloe graduated from a.pass (BE, 2020) and from the research cycle at P.A.R.T.S (BE, 2018). Since 2019 Chloe co-runs rile* a bookshop and project space for publication and performance with Sven Dehens. Her work has been presented by: Batard Festival (BE, 2019) Saal Biennale (ES 2021), Moving Words Festival (NO 2021), QL2 (AU 2022), KAAP (BE 2022), Littérature etc. (FR 2022), Dancehouse (AU 2016-8), The Kier Choreographic Award (AU 2018) Kottinspektionen (SE 2019) and Venice Biennale of Dance (IT 2017). She currently teaches at ISAC and P.A.R.T.S. 

      Eleanor Ivory Weber is a writer and artist based in Brussels. Her works expropriate the conventions and styles of Western news media to register and materialise a subjectivity that appears latent in the source. Recently her work has been shown at Kunstverein München (Munich), Maison Pelgrims (Brussels) and Kunsthal Gent (Ghent). In 2021 her essay ‘Australian Others: Penal Logic and the Pandemic’ was published in the literary journal Meanjin (Melbourne). Eleanor holds a Masters in Political Philosophy and Theory from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and graduated from the Post-Master program at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies). She teaches art theory and critical practice at Erg since 2018 and is co-director of Divided Publishing.

      Flavio Rodrigo Orzari Ferreira, 39, gay, brazilian, artist, lives in Brussels. He is a performer and psychopedagogue. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Scenic Arts from State University of Campinas – UNICAMP (2004), a Master Specialization Degree in Psychopedagogy from FHO – UNIARARAS (2012), a Master Specialization Degree from UCB (2013) and a post-master degree in Performing Arts in A.PASS (Advenced Performing and Scenography Studies – 2020). Master's degree in speculative narration and videography at the École de Recherche Graphique (ERG) - Instituts Saint Luc in Brussels. His latest works as a performer and dramaturg are the solo The Ghost Scar (2019-2022), and the short film Fantasma Pédé (2022). He has worked for over 15 years as an art educator at both public and private Elementary and Secondary Schools. He currently works as a psychopedagogue coordinating a program to help students improve their learning processes at the ERG École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels.

      Goda Palekaitė is an artist working in the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. Her practice evolves around long-term projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, agency of dreams and imagination, social conditions of creativity, and intimacy with historical characters. Some of Goda’s recent projects were titled Anthropomorphic Trouble (in collaboration with Adrijana Gvozdenović), The Strongest Muscle in the Human Body is the Tongue, Architecture of Heaven, Liminal Minds, and Legal Implications of a Dream. They were presented, respectively, at Whitechapel Gallery in London, Kunsthal Gent in Ghent, Centre Tour à Plomb in Brussels, Konstepidemin in Gothenburg and RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv. In 2020 she published her first book of fictional biographies Schismatics. Goda participated in a.pass’ postgraduate program in 2018-19 and currently is a Ph.D. candidate at Hasselt University and PXL-MAD School of Arts.

      Gosie Vervloessems artistic research focuses on the position of the researcher in times of multiple crises. Her work faces the challenges that arise within this role, and looks for new ways of producing knowledge. Her practice is an ongoing quest on finding  tools to relate to a world that is messy and chaotic. Therefore she juggles with and re-interprets the practices of cooking, digesting, co-digesting, immersion or osmosis, as tools to literally embody that relation. In scrutinizing this relationship she focuses mainly on the concept of nature and tries to unravel the ideas that underpin this concept. In doing that, she identifies herself as a Sick Detective, a character that involves the vegetal kingdom as a possible ally in her research. Her work is highly inspired by plant biology, comic books, horror movies. It is mainly presented as lecture-performance, in the form of workshops or publications.

      Lilia Mestre is a performing artist, dramaturge and researcher working mainly in collaborative formats. She has been involved in a.pass since 2008 as Associate Program Curator and Core member (2014-17) and since 2017 as artistic coordinator. Mestre works with scores: inter-subjective set-ups and other chance-induced processes as emancipatory artistic and pedagogical tools, which have been documented in various publications. She is interested in forms of organisation created by and for artistic practice as alternative study processes for social political reflection. She was co-founder and latest coordinator of Art Laboratory Bains Connective in Brussels (1997-2017). Mestre lives and works in Brussels.

      Maria Gil Ulldemolins is a postdoc artistic researcher at Hasselt University working on personal and artistic heritage, and interiority and interior architecture. Her doctoral work was a multidisciplinary autotheory on collapsing figures, sparked by the trope of the swooning Virgin in crucifixion imagery; and constructed as a writerly Warburgian atlas. Her practice is mostly hybrid writing that combines scholarly essays with more experimental approaches. She is one of the co-founders of Project Passage, a research line and academic journal that seeks to learn more and promote precisely these autotheoretical and performative writerly practices.

      Marialena Marouda works in the intersections between performance, sound art and oral poetry. She studied philosophy and visual arts at Columbia University in New York, USA and continued her studies at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen, Germany. In May 2018 she initiated The Oceanographies Institute (TOI), as part of her research at the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies Program (a.pass) in Brussels. TOI focuses essentially on the relation between two bodies of water: the human body and the world ocean(s). It gives particular attention to affectual and sensual encounters between the two bodies. The Institute therefore explores the relations of hands to mud, ears to the breaking waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than the ocean “in itself”, as if devoid of human presence. It collects, analyzes and reenacts people's personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. In 2019, composer Charlie Usher  joined TOI, letting his practice of song-making flow into the institute‘s work.

      Philippine Hoegen is a visual artist living in Brussels. In her multi-stranded, predominantly performative practice, she explores the ways in which we continuously create versions of ourselves, the apparatuses and processes we use for this and what their existence means for our understanding of 'self'. In the past 2 years she has focussed specifically on how this functions in contexts of work. Hoegen approaches performance explicitly as a research strategy: a way of thinking in which the physical is involved. Currently she is a researcher at the HKU Professorship Performative Creative Processes, and CARADT (Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology) Avans University, with a research project titled Performing Working.

      Pia Louwerens is an artistic researcher, artist and writer exploring the performance of artistic production. Through  performances and performative texts Louwerens researches how art institutions and the artistic subject — the I who writes, speaks and makes — co-constitute each other. The speculation on what an institutional script would look like, and who are co-authoring, serves as a tool to materialize the mutual reading and writing that occurs. For her performances, Louwerens appropriates performative (para-)artistic frames such as the guided tour, the artist talk, the novel and the workshop. Her practice constitutes a rich intertextual netwerk of anecdotes, events, jokes, theories and citations, which summon and frame each other. Pia has completed a post-master and fellowship programme at a.pass. Next to her artistic practice Louwerens has written texts for De Witte Raaf, Metropolis M, Tubelight and Het Parool. Pia Louwerens lives and works in Brussels.

      Since 2012 Rareş Augustin Craiut has been caring out « practice a as research » project (Performing food). The main themes of his artistic research practice are centred around the agency of food and eating and creating conditions to collaborate with Food. He is particularly interested in devices of meaning and affect (Bain-Marie Brunch food performance re-enactment cycle, various locations, ongoing; or Anximentara, Ecole de Rechrche Graphique, Brussels, 2018), and food in artistic and convivial collaborations (Comfort food continuum 2016, Baia-Mare, Romania; or The Terni – Paradisi-Neighborhood- Cookbook, Centro per le Arti Opificio Siri, Terni, 2017). Bread or baked goods are of particular interest with several performance art pieces dedicated to bread (The Transitions, Banis Connective, Brussels, 2017, or Anatomic bread bodies Matera European Capital of culture, Italy, 2019). 

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacement of roles is part of a larger trajectory that he has followed in his Ph.D. research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the University of Antwerp, “The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Artistic Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution.” Vijai is currently an associate researcher in a.pass’ Research Center.

       

       

       

       

       

       

    •  

      In these circumstances: On collaboration, performativity, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity in research-based practices is a publication about artistic research as it is practiced within the co-learning environment of a.pass. This book brings together an assemblage of curatorial, artistic and pedagogical approaches emblematic of an institution that fosters collaboration, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity in research-based practices.

       

      The book presents itself as a printed version of the educational model of a.pass. It enacts its characteristics in a conversational and experimental mode, exposing questions and doubts as much as insights and convictions. It conveys a history of the stakes, qualities and methods of artistic research in the context of both an ongoing academisation of art education, as well as an abrasion of the once unbridled scene of artist-run organisations in Northern Europe. Documented here is how a.pass has carved a space for artistic research to deploy its tentacles with joy, risk and excitement, to imbricate in fields of both art and education, and to stir the sediments of disciplinary enclosures.

       

      To buy the book please visit the publisher's website: https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/in-these-circumstances/

      The book can be purchased during the launch event hosted by a.pass on the 20.May.2022. For more info about the event visit https://apass.be/the-apass-book/

       

    • statements for a.pass 03 February 2022
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
      statements for a.pass

       

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

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

      a.pass is one of such places, of permanent learning and of promotion of such form of education. I was privileged to have been a part of this program and to have developed there much of my understanding of artistic research and art.

      I sincerely hope this institution is granted the opportunity to keep on existing and help shape the artistic scene I am a part of."

      Luanda Casella. Schrijver en theatermaker. Artist in residence NTGent

      *

      “I arrived at a.pass in the crucial moment of my life and career while searching for a way to combine various interdisciplinary artistic and academic experiences and, thus, to define my research and practice. There, I found a unique environment - rigorous intellectual discourse, dedicated peers and mentors, supportive community, and freedom to work on what I needed at that time. Even though previously engaged in international scenes of visual arts, performance and social sciences, I did not know such a place could exist. Until now I do not know another institution comparable to a.pass, neither in Belgium nor internationally. A.pass was the context where I developed the professional trajectory that I now follow. After and thanks to the post-graduate program of a.pass, I started a PhD in artistic research at Hasselt University (fully funded), published two books, and created performances, films and installations in collaboration with such institutions as Whitechapel Gallery, Delfina Foundation and Arts Catalyst in London, Venice Biennial for Architecture in Venice, Kunsthal Gent, BOZAR Brussels, Konstepidem in Gothenburg, among others. In these projects I often collaborate with artists and researchers whom I encountered through the context of a.pass. I firmly believe the relevance of this institute to be invaluable for the fields of contemporary art, performance and artistic research, as well as its model as an institutional structure to be unique and experimental.”

      Goda Palekaite. Artist researcher. Ph.D. candidate at Hasselt University and PXL-MAD School of Arts.

      *

      Een jaar op a.pass heeft me meer gegeven dan drie jaar reguliere kunstopleiding. Voordat ik naar a.pass ging dacht ik niet dat het mogelijk is: les krijgen van échte kunstenaars. In vergelijking met a.pass waren mijn jaren op theaterschool een omweg vol met vast benoemde docenten die te ver van de kunstwereld verwijderd waren. Juist doordat a.pass een uniek, steeds veranderende en hybride school is die niet onder één noemer te vatten is, slaagt de opleiding er beter in om in te spelen op de veranderende wereld. Participatie is er geen loos woord: participanten en docenten kunnen de vorm van de opleiding permanent bevragen en verscherpen. a.pass uit België halen betekent een enorme en onmiddellijke verschraling van ons kunstenveld.”

      Jozef Wouters. Scenograaf en theatermaker. Winnaar Ultima Podiumkunsten 2019 met Decoratelier

      *

      "As Brussel's only learning environment focused on artistic research and performance, a.pass serves a unique and irreplaceable function in the city. My work has been transformed by the intensive learning experience I've had there. It's more than just an institution, it's an international community coalesced around principals of rigor, collaboration and care. It gave me the confidence to emphasize knowledge production and performativity as the core strategies in my own art teaching practice."

      Gary Farrelly. Beeldend kunstenaar, performer en pedagoog bij La Cambre.

      *

      "As a past researcher at a.pass I would like to express my disdain and concern over the decision of the Ministry of Education to withdraw their support from the insitution. My time at a.pass has been a period of incredible growth as artist, researcher and in my apprach to pedagogy in the arts. The research I started there have since resulted in projects & research supported locally, nationally, internationally by funders as well as prestigious institutions in Belgium and abroad and continues to fuel my practice and thinking. I strongly believe that a.pass is a unique institution in Europe for the quality & rigour in their pedagogical approach and vocabulary of methodologies that represent an incalculable cultural value in its own right. Beyond this collective value a.pass is also a rich and diverse environement for individual artistic researches to flourish that not only allowed me access to an incredible breadth of thinking and practices, establish new collaborations but also continues and will continue to feed my research and practice multiplying manifold the investment of the ministry and adding values be they academic, cultural, financial, artistic, emotional to Belgian academia, the Belgian state and its people. As a resident of Brussels, as an artist, as independent researcher, as an alumni of a.pass and as a European citizen I call on the Ministry to reverse their decision."

      Eszter Nemethi, artist, curator
       
      *

      "I was a participant in a.pass in 2014 and it was an adrenaline injection into my practice. Vague ideas transformed into solid ground for a collaborative performative practice and it was a strong and formative influence also on my work as a teacher. Besides being an invaluable place of research and education, a.pass offers it's alumni a professional community that uniquely reinforces their work and careers. In this way it is a strong, constitutive player in the whole Belgian (performance) art field."

      Philippine Hoegen, artist, educator

      *

      “Als internationaal kunstenfestival met een sterke interesse voor artistieke pedagogie zijn we bijzonder bedroefd over het nieuws dat a.pass zijn werkingsmiddelen zal verliezen. Het ondoordacht en lichtzinnig schrappen van een artistieke onderzoeksinstelling als a.pass is een totale verarming van het kunstschoollandschap. Als we de toekomst van het Vlaamse kunstenveld willen bestendigen dan moet er blijvend geïnvesteerd worden in verschillende vormen van artistiek onderwijs. a.pass is daar voor ons een cruciaal en onvervangbaar onderdeel van.”

      Dries Douibi, artistiek directeur KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 

      *

      “Elk hedendaags artistiek ecosysteem heeft behoefte aan infrastructuur voor artistiek onderzoek. Sinds 20 jaar heeft Vlaanderen dit stapsgewijs verankerd in de grote academische onderwijskoepels. Sinds 14 jaar bestaat er een onafhankelijk, klein instituut, a.pass, wat fungeert als een internationaal laboratorium voor individueel onderzoek in een omgeving die zelforganisatie en solidariteit cultiveert. A.pass is daarenboven een unieke reflectiekamer over de methodieken en de ethiek van onderzoek. A.pass is een voorland, een stukje van dat ecosysteem dat bewezen heeft bijzonder goed in staat te zijn om het artistiek én het academisch veld te irrigeren met onvermoede voedingsstoffen. Zonder a.pass zou het programma van een huis als Kaaitheater verschralen.”

      Barbara Van Lindt, algemeen en artistiek coördinator KAAITHEATER

      *

      "This is striking and sad news: the Flemish government stops the support for a.pass artistic research school, and also for HISK/Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten/Higher Institute for Fine Arts. At the same time they decided to continue and increase the support for two other educational institutions: the International Opera Academy and the Orpheus Institute. Both institutions are focussed on western classical and contemporary forms of music.
      The political choice is clear, and is probably exemplary for the direction the Flemish arts scene is evolving to the next years: real experiment, more dissident or difficult developments of artistic practices are cancelled in favour of frictionless, bourgeois ways of relating to art. I am not calling out opera and music research, don’t misunderstand me here, my plea is to support different educational views on art and access to different ways of relating to art. This government has decided to slowly but surely cancel out a vivid and (politically) more critical part of the arts scene. Yes, we knew this already, now we see it in action."
      Michiel Vandevelde, artist, dancer
       
      *
       

      “Als commissie schreven we een inhoudelijk advies dat a.pass met een goed tot zeer goed rapport richting een toekomst loodst, waarbij een stopzetting van subsidiëring nooit ter sprake is gekomen en voor ons nooit op de agenda stond. In dit rapport beschrijven we op een constructieve en positieve manier hoe a.pass functioneert. Dit rapport kwam tot stand na het doornemen van hun benchmarking, analyse van de voorbije jaren, plannen voor de toekomst en inspirerende gesprekken met (ex-)studenten, mentoren, management, bestuur en collega’s uit het veld. We zijn dan ook verbaasd en teleurgesteld dat de minister dit gunstige advies naast zich neer heeft gelegd.”

      An Vandermeulen & Mira Sanders (evaluatiecommissie) 

      *

      “It is with shock and sadness that we receive the news that Minister Weyts of Education will not prolong the agreement with HISK and a.pass starting 2024. The reason given for this decision is the lack of added value to the ecosystem of educational art institutes in Flanders. As director of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht I can only say that this is far from the truth and this decision will be a blow to the network of post academic institutes in Europe. HISK and a.pass are part of the postacademic ecosystem and fill in just as all the other post academic institutes the gap between educational/academic and artistic practice. This is the reason why so many international artists find their way to Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. There are no such institutes available in the world. Northern Europe has played a significant and leading role in nurturing and sustaining institutes like these for over 150 years starting with the Rijksacademy in Amsterdam. Also, postacademies push the narrative and discourse of artistic and artistic research practice internationally. This will be a blow to both fellow institutes and artists alike. I hope sincerely that Minister Weyts will reconsider his decision and will allow HISK and a.pass play the important role that they have been doing for so many years.” 

      Hicham Khalidi - directeur Jan Van Eyck Academie 

      *

      "a·pass has been coming to PAF every year as part of its research curriculum. The dedication towards experimental forms of education, practices of collective organization and the politicization of artistic research, makes it an invaluable institution in the landscape of school and educational programmes.”

      Simon Asencio, performing artist and pedagog. On the behalf of PAF - Performing Arts Forum - Saint-Erme, France

      *

      "What I found in a.pass is the art school I imagined to be part of when I first thought of becoming an artist. It just took me 10 years to get there. My art education begins at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Montenegro, through exchange programs in art schools in Vienna and Metz, Master's degree in Luca School of Art Brussels, postmasters in St Lucas in Antwerp, to having a research position at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. I can say with certainty that only after a.pass I gained the tools and confidence to be the artist I want to be. This is due to the experimental structure of a.pass that makes it a special place (and that transcends the borders of Belgium) - a well thought structure that allows a nonvertical approach to teaching, an open and transparent process that encourages all the participants to devote themselves not only to develop their own work but to do so by taking part in each other's practices, while they are co-making the institution they are part of. I think that to manage this way of working and to become this kind of institution it takes years of hard work and risk-taking, where governmental support is of crucial importance.

      Also, a.pass managed to create a truly transdisciplinary environment, focussing on the performativity of artistic research and the methods of sharing knowledge. This I experienced only as an aim of artistic research programs developing today in Schools of Art. Needless to say that visual art schools are far from this achievement as they are becoming more of incubators for only specific kind of artist and art production, falling under pressure and influence of art market demands. a.pass is not just a program to go though, a step in the career, but it is an artist-run educational platform that for sure wouldn't be able to develop as such if merged within bigger structures of the School of Art. 

      a.pass is for me not only a program I took part in, but it is also a base experience for a belief that things can be done differently and that this world can become a less hostile place through artistic means."

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, artist

      *

      "It’s very sad for me to read that the subsidy for a.pass will not continue. In January of 2012 I joined a.pass as a researcher. The time I spend at a.pass was extremely beneficial; a.pass widened my understanding of artistic research, pushed me to better explain my practice, and gave me the courage to articulate and share my research. I’m very grateful for that time and the connections made there. In a complex world we need more places like a.pass not less."

      Elizabeth Ward, choreographer, performer, dancer

      *

      "I attended a.pass in 2017 and 2018, and graduated in February 2019. Without a.pass I simply don't think I would be where I am today as an artist. I learned a lot from the teachers and peers in my program. The context of a.pass (including ongoing feedback, presentation moments, space, time, research trips, budget and one-on-one mentoring support) permitted me to try new things and test out new and experimental formats, within a supportive and critical environment. a.pass provided a crucial developing ground for me to better understand my artistic practice, research methodology and needs. a.pass encourages its participants to connect with other practitioners and institutions in Belgium, and this is a strong aspect of the learning offered. The presentation of my graduation piece was held at Hectolitre, Brussels, and was organised collaboratively with two peers from my cohort. The collaboration was an important part of what made that event so meaningful. We were supported to make an audio publication together, and conceive a coherent program for our three practices, creating something none of us could have managed alone. Held on two evenings, there was a large public present to experience our event, and the three jury members subsequent feedback was invaluable. This marked a significant moment for me. Since graduating, I have continued my artistic research and consistently been invited to present performances and publish writing in Belgium and abroad. The dedicated and ongoing feedback I received during the period of my study at a.pass was instrumental to the evolution of my artistic research. The community of a.pass students and alumni is strong and ever-growing; it is a diverse group of people whose coming together makes for a unique study program, not only in Belgium but internationally. The close and unpredictable encounters with artist researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds is rare and must be valued highly. a.pass creates a veritable surplus for the artistic, cultural and educational sphere in Belgium."

      Eleanor Ivory Weber, Brussels-based artist, a.pass Post-Master graduate

      *

      "This decision is a proof of incompetence by the Ministry when it comes to understanding the information and documentation they demand and are provided with. It is evident that those in power have horrifying little to no knowledge about their own cultural fields."

      Heike Langsdorf - radical_hope - a.pass alumna, artist and pedagog in KASK

      *

      "Minister Ben Weyts should understand the importance of a.pass for the richly networked ecology of the Belgian art field, where bigger and smaller institutions constantly nourish each other. I experienced the value of the a.pass program from close by in 2016-17. The careful pedagogy helped me to start developing my own artistic practice, next to working as a dramaturge for other artists, amongst which some a.pass alumni such as Heike Langsdorf, Luanda Casella and Jozef Wouters."

      Sébastien Hendrickx, performing artist, dramaturge, art critic

      *

      "I would like to testify to the great importance of the a.pass post-master program in the development of my artistic research and its outreach in Europe since 2016. It is now supporting other artistic researches in dance, performance and documentation through publications like "Mind the dance" a digital publication of REFLEX Europe, 3 years EU-project (2018), Body in Revolt, ICK Amsterdam Online Magazine (2017) and presented in renown European dance festivals and Arts institutions a.o: Charleroi Dance, Brussels (2021); Royal Conservatory of Antwerp-master program (2020 -2021) Independent Dance, London (2019); Kaaïstudio, Brussels (2018), ImpulzTanz, Vienna (2018; 2017; 2016); KASK school of Arts, Gent (2021-2018)."

      Anouk Llaurens, dancer, artist, researcher in dance and pedagogue

      *

      "Participating in the a.pass past-master program has been hugely important for my practice. It is one of the best environments I can imagine for an artist of maker to develop and improve their critical thinking. Especially the exchange between the different fields within the arts is very special and contributes in making anyone a better and more complete artist. At least that counts for me, since my end presentation in September 2019, I've become a curator, fund raiser and a teacher and a much more complete artist. I am slowly finding my position with the international art scene and art market and turned my practice into a much more sustainable enterprise."

      Maurice Meewisse, artist, curator

      *

      "Since 2015 a.pass offers me a unique pedagogical method and an international platform that provides the guidance of highly qualified professionals in the arts, culture, theory and sciences. Based on self organization, transdisciplinary peer exchange and multicultural community care, I find the freedom and trust to experiment with my creative, intellectual and production interests in a safe space. This has allowed me to find my research methodologies, strengthen my art practice and work, develop publishing, teaching, mentoring and curating capacities. In other words, to position my profession and be someone constructive in society."

      Isabel Burr Raty, artist

      *

      "I have been an associate researcher at a.pass in 2018/19 and this period of time had such an influence on my practice and on my desires in regards to where I want my work to go, and whereto I want to develop as an artist and as a human being. I had the feeling already that there is something very unique and something very special happening at a.pass when I partly joined one of their blocks as a visitors, a block that was topic-wise very much connected to my practice. And this vague feeling proved so to be so true. It is hard to put this in words. As a visual artist and artist researcher I seem to have a difficult, challenging etc relationship with language. I experienced a.pass a a ‚fermenting‘ place, as a very fertile ground for other kinds of thinking, making, doing to emerge, to imagine other kinds of futures so desperately needed. One major trajectory in this is collaboration and community. ‚We are not all and the same but we are in this together‘. Coming from an art education that mostly teaches very individualistic approaches to art practices, it was so revealing to experience a.pass and their collaborative teaching and learning methods in the making. Last year I had the honour to curate a block as well together with my research cycle I fellows, and I again the experiences I made, the conversations we had, the things we had done together with the people at a.pass and the participants is now very much influencing how I want to approach working, thinking, doing in my practice based PhD, which is mainly collaborative. I have quite a hard journey in front of me. Learning how to truly collaborate and work together is not easily done when one went through all the individualised art and other higher educations. But a.pass gave me the hope and the energy and the passion and the joy to really trying it, to seeing not onl the benefits but the needs to do so. Loosing a.pass as a psotmaster education institution will create such a loss and leave such a hole within the educational field of artistic knowledge making etc., and I dread to think of the consequences this will entail. Within the spirit of a.pass I still hope, however, that we will be able to change the course and continue supporting this amazing, ideosyncratic and so needed institution."

      Antye Guenther, visual artist

      *

      "I participated to the a.pass post-master program between October 2018 and January 2020. My experience in the frame of this institution has been that of an extraordinary exposure to critical thought and radical imagination. Not only in the context of a.pass I found a context to get in touch with the cutting edge of artistic research within an heterogeneous, international and rich group of peers and tutors, but I found also that the ever-changing and ever-challenging environment of the program regarded also the organization of the program itself. I have never met or heard, before or after my stay in a.pass, such a radical self-critical approach within an established art education institution: the program itself was a wider research project of which the participants were part of, getting influenced by it but also shaping it with their collective and individual presence. I believe that this specific fluid and self-critical approach points at the roots of what is at stake in the practice of artistic research and should be a precious model to think of its institutionalization in the context of art education - the presence of which constitutes undoubtedly a priceless treasure for Brussels cultural scene. The a.pass post-master program led me to re-imagine education, community and artistic practice as mismatched from what is already existing, to suspend given knowledge to foster the imagination of new possible realities, which I believe to be the very core of the role of "school" as an institution within our society."

      Piero Ramella, visual artist and performer

      *

      "Small is Beautiful.

      I joined a.pass in 2014, not knowing how much it would influence my practice, and how much of a large and extended family such a small organisation would connect me to. On a personal and artistic level, and through their subtly inquisitive, and insistently open approach to pedagogy, I was able to develop the courage to explore ways of presenting my work, and this is the reason I am where I am today. What I learned from people at a.pass, I keep very close to me.  

      We don’t only need traditional art academies, or the big names to which art schools are attached. These places may not be open to risk, but at a.pass, every problem is an opportunity to evaluate and reconsider the pedagogical framework that enables learning in ways that are present; present in the community, in the garden, in the city, in the performance space, etc. There is a clear commitment to community and sharing, in negotiating the decisions of how to learn together, and in publishing this information for others to learn from it. 

      While these may not be the most sought-after terms of engagement for politicians and economists, they are the terms of everyday life in any community. a.pass gives people tools for collective working, thinking, living, and making. We need these tools to re-think our relationships to the worlds we inhabit, worlds that are under threat because of the individualistic and money-driven attitudes that dominated our lives for too long.

      a.pass is not just in Belgium, it is in Spain, in Romania, in Turkey, in Sweden, in Palestine, in Germany it is in Jordan, in Iran, in Serbia, in Canada, in Brazil, in Holland, in France, in Poland, in Italy, in Mexico, in the USA, in Portugal, in Ruwanda, and Iceland—to name just a few. a.pass is what puts Belgium on the international art map. Decisions to cut it out of the picture should be in consultation with the people who thrive from it, not for the furthest person from its realities. We want a more collective approach to political decisions."

      Samah Hijawi, artist and phd researcher 

      *

      "In my experience, the unique added value of a.pass is unquestionable. 

      Personally, a.pass has had an instrumental function in my artistic career, giving space and time to develop my artistic practice and the opportunity to make connections with colleagues and professionals in my field. The artistic developments I achieved during my time at a.pass became the pillars of my artistic practice. The works I made during a.pass allowed me to leap my practice further into unknown places. The personal connections I made in a.pass are still very important to me personally and professionally. Since being at a.pass, I started teaching at Luca School of Arts in Brussels where I am also a PhD candidate, and I participated in several exhibitions and events in the Flemish art scene.

      Finally, a.pass is a pilar in its field, gathering artists from different disciplines into a truly unique institution. The artists that are formed in this institution are fresh, original, special artists, that together generate an artistic scene which is extremely valuable to the Flemish art scene as a whole. 

      To cut funding from a.pass is to cut out the core of a vivid and diverse art community."

      Sofia Caesar, visual artist 

      *

      “As one of the invited international peers involved in the benchmarking process initiated by a.pass in 2019, I want to express my support to a.pass and protest in the situation where the Ministry of Education has decided to cut the funding of a.pass. I am shocked to hear that the Ministry of Education uses “negative advice” coming from peers as an argument. If this refers to the benchmarking process I was involved in, it is clearly a grave misinterpretation.
      In my view, the operational and pedagogical foundation of a.pass that involves dynamic intertwining of self-organisation and collaboration for both the postgraduate and the research centre programs has proven highly relevant and successful. After a long phase of institutional legitimation struggles the international field of artistic research is actively looking for new forms of organisation and ways of engaging with the professional art field beyond the university system. In this situation, a.pass appears as a significant forerunner and should be seen as one of the cutting edge institutions in the field.
      Cutting the a.pass funding appears to me very short-sighted. I hope the decisions concerning this can still be reconsidered.”

      Mika Elo, Professor of Artistic Research, Academy of Fine Arts / University of the Arts Helsinki Finland

      *

      "It would be an immense loss to the landscape of art education if a.pass would close its doors!! For me, the time I spent at a.pass was very important, it introduced me to new perspectives on art making and artistic research. a.pass gave me constructive tools to understand and articulate my practice, in a supportive and challenging manner. I most appreciate the way we have learned with and from each other on equal terms, through our own and shared desires and concerns. I have been nourished with stirring moments, insights and questions which are still unfolding. I experienced it as a place open to experimenting, failing, falling, suffering, laughing, exploding, resting, resisting, doubting, and emancipating. places with this kind of freedom are of highest value to the art world.  Don’t want to have missed my time there – especially with all the wonderful and inspiring people that I know thanks to this place – it is an essential ground to the work i’m doing now."

      Agnes Schneidewind, artist

      *

      "I was privileged to be one of a.pass's first participants, witnessing the growth and impact that a.pass has had in the artistic community over the years of its existence; an impact that has proven to have national and international reach. I have continued to be present as a mentor, curator and research associate because a.pass has become a catalyst for dedicated, open and inspiring people. For most, a year at a.pass has been a career and a personal turning point. It has given me the opportunity to carve out a personal way of doing research and producing work, a chance to bring theory and practice together that my previous master's degree, a year of research at University and a year at Fine Arts Academy did not grant me. At a.pass, I met peers with whom I continue to work and discuss, people who over the years remain intellectual and personal references, weaving a network of relationships in which Brussels functions as a focal point.

      a.pass is an institution that keeps the dialogue between old and new alumni open, that is not afraid to rethink itself, that is not blind to systemic power dynamics and oppressive habits, that is made up of people who care about each other, about diversity in knowledge production, about interdisciplinary and critical thinking. If we are in a world that needs to change, we need the ability and the courage to look into it, not shut it down."

      Sara Manente, artist

      *

      "It is known that the future is a big question mark. Apart from the many crises we know, many will come that will again shake our grounds. Some authors say that in the future there will be a new class of people - the useless class - that are those that do not find a place in the work market because Artificial Intelligence will do all for us. To cope with this, the author's advice is to redirect educations' s purpose towards emotional education rather than the acquisition of specialized knowledge, so that humans learn to cope with change and find new interests and occupations. 

      I start this statement of support in this way because a.pass has been a place where, me, a specialised professional in contemporary dance in middle career, has been invited to explore issues that little or nothing had to do with my practice as a dancer, and from that, develop new entries to my body practice. I started a.pass when I was 39 years old, and previous to that, I studied dance in many different institutions. I started studying dance at 8 years old, and since then I never stopped. I did a dance school in Mozambique for 1 years, then a full dance school for 6 years in Santiago de Chile and I ended up in P.A.R.T.S doing 3 more years. I studied a lot because I wanted to know my theme well. I worked as a freelance dancer with many independent makers of the European dance scene and also with some very well known established choreographers. But throughout that journey, I also developed my own choreographic work, even though in a much more shy manner than with my career as a dancer. In my personal biography I am also an ex -exilied of the Pinochet dictatorship, and daughter of a committed left wing activist's parents in Chile. This political heritage accompanies my life, the reason why I studied Political Science at ULB Belgium and then I did a master in Art and Politics in Goldsmiths London . All this cv like text to explain that what allowed all those studies and personal reality to make sense, was what I could accomplish in a.pass, that without the trust that mentors and colleagues in a.pass gave me in my research project, it wouldn't have been able to happen. My research looked into the ways laws and norms choreograph the social body, and with this research I have managed to move back to Chile and develop the project further. I have taught secondary students a non-traditional dance or body class, where I have invited them to explore the way their bodies are subjected to norms. The class was given in the context of civics education class, where apart from learning how the country is organized, they have managed to integrate politics to their bodies and observe themselves through the lense of the ways power operates in their life, movements and actions. The same class was given to a labour union of cleaning ladies, where apart from being able to rest their tired bodies from the repetitive movement of cleaning by making other movements, they have explored the way their workplace is filled with domestic rules that aren't necessarily the ones they agree upon. These classes were interrupted with the Covid crisis but my plan is to do them again as I believe they create spaces of micro-emancipations where the sensorial, the mental, the private and the public, dialogue.

      I started this statement of support talking about the advice an author gives to the potentially useless class that will exist in the near future. A.pass has impacted my future becomings in a way that has vitalized it by giving me tools for creativity, finding solutions and allowing me to test out possibilities. The emotional educations i have managed to learn from my experience in a.pass is based in thinking that every thought is important and useful; that any opinion is worth listening and answering; that any project is an input; that colleagues are not enemies but collaborators; that intuition and theory are equality important; that knowledge materialized in a practice still has a lot to say, and it is not necessarily bounded to an aesthetical function; that artist have a role in the creation of happiness and wellbeing of society; and that artists are here to stay!"

      Varinia Canto Vila, artist, dancer, choreographer

      *

      "Outside of the Bologna logic of BA; MA or PhD and outside of titles and diploma requirements, a.pass looks for the criticism of the doing, of the practice.

      Inside of the capital of the European Union, a.pass has a fee potentially accessible to countries which currencies are not in euros. I am referring here at the fact that the Latin-American community that I have met in a.pass is numerous and grandiloquent: I met people from Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador. 

      Inside of Brussels, a.pass is as diverse as the city which host it."

      Caterina Mora, artist, dancer

      *

      "a.pass is exemplary in forms of collective organization and through this changes the shape of artistic practices and their role in society. What I took from a.pass is that we should learn from each other and the best way to do that is to leave space for initiative, plurality, and deliberation. 'We are in this together' is a valuable lesson to learn, a.pass is a place where this is practiced and reflected upon every day, in this way artistic practices are redefined and that is what post-graduate education is about. The artists engaged in a.pass take these experiences with them, in their work and to their audiences, as a result the question 'we are in this together, now what?' becomes public and that is one of the roles art should take."

      Rob Ritzen, artist, curator of That Might Be Right,

      *

      "The artistic research program at a.pass was a turning point in my personal, political, and artistic life. The questions raised by this process are crucial to the definition of my artistic-political identity. The environment built up over all these years is one of the rare grounds for deep reflection on the practice and theory of performance. Losing a.pass means that we have entered a cultural and educational recession. It affects not only Belgium, but the entire international artistic community that finds in a.pass an asylum in these obscure times."

      Flavio Rodrigo, artist

      *

      The context of rigorous examination, practical exploration and support in the construction Of methodology for research gave the groundings for a robust practice that is now gaining interest and continues to develop in commercial and community contexts across the UK and further afield. 

      a.pass is a unique institution uniquely situated both geographically and in terms of the intersectional artistic/methodological/political and philosophical preoccupations that it holds as valued.

      I am incredibly disturbed to hear that the institutes money has been cut and that it will not be able to continue to support artist researchers in vital, pivotal moments in their careers. 

      I am without doubt that a.pass enriches the European artistic and academic community and I urge who ever has the power to intervene to reconsider this shortsighted decision. I would suggest that rather than support a stripping back, hollowing out and commercialising of artistic ventures that seems the order of the day, that the Belgium governmental decision making bodies make a stand, recognise the long term value to the health of the nation  and support a context that challenges, stretches, nurtures and give vital space for artist researchers from all areas of thought and expression to deepen and develop their practice. 

      Leo Kay, artistic director: Unfinished Business

      *

      "A.pass profoundly reshuffled my thinking about art and its relevance in society.
      It provided a fertile environment for experiment and freedom in questioning given categories."

      Kasia Tórz, writer & dramaturg

      *

      "A good way to attest of the pedagogical efficiency of a certain program is to do a « before & after » comparison. Having seen, throughout the years, many colleagues I knew enrolling in a.pass, I am confident stating that its approach has powerful effects.
      Artists having completed the program gain an in-depth understanding of their interest, craft precise tools to develop their work, and broaden their awareness of their perspective's relevancy to the larger context – artistic, social, and political. This often results in an increase of their credibility, visibility and recognition, and thus of their professionalization. But beyond that, it leads also many of the alumni to multiply the ways by which to reach a larger and more diversified audience. The utterly collective and experimental approach of a.pass gives indeed many tools to contribute with specificity and intelligence to the field–and society at large. It is not only anymore about creating « your » piece, but about sharing a process, discussing concerns, confronting point of views. Be it by organizing seminars, leading participatory practices, teaching workshops, intervening in the public space or publishing magazines...typically, a.pass alumni invent many ways to put their work into the world and let the world inform their work, implicating many diverse people along the way. Reaching out, questioning oneself, making proposition as to the place of art for this changing world of ours.
      Of all the virtues a.pass exerts on the artistic field (and beyond it), this is certainly one of the most rare and precious: to cultivate an art-making which is not about the author's narcissism nor the audience's consumerism, but about meeting, debating, searching and inventing together – crafting novel ways towards a shared relevancy, specificity and intelligence."

      Julien Bruneau, artist and researcher, mentor in a.pass, co-editor of Revue COI (TJP, CDN Strasbourg Grand Est), fellow of Third (Das Research, AHK)

      *

      Beste Minister Ben Weyts,

      Met ontzetting heb ik vernomen dat u de postgraduaatsopleiding a.pass niet langer zal subsidiëren. Dit is een enorm verlies voor het Vlaamse onderwijslandschap in de kunsten. Zoals u weet zijn onze reguliere opleidingen in de kunsten heel beperkt in vergelijking met buitenlandse onderwijsinstellingen. Waar wij drie Bachelor jaren aanbieden, volgen studenten in het buitenland vaak minstens vier jaren onderwijs alvorens een Bachelor-diploma te behalen. Nadien bieden we in Vlaanderen een Master-opleiding aan in één academiejaar; in het buitenland is dit meestal een opleiding die twee academiejaren beslaat.

      Gedurende dit ene jaar moeten MA studenten niet alleen een autonoom artistiek werk maken, maar ook hun portfolio en artistieke visie professionaliseren, een masterproef schrijven, netwerken in het kunstenveld, en vaak ook nog een stage volgen. Het spreekt voor zich dat dit niet evident is. Deze beperking van onze opleidingen werd tot voor kort in Vlaanderen gecompenseerd door de zeer sterke postgraduaatsmogelijkheden, waar geselecteerd wordt op kwaliteit en potentieel, ruimte is voor intense persoonlijke begeleiding, onderzoeksvaardigheden centraal staan, en een sterke peer-to-peer en netwerk-cultuur heerst. A-pass is in die zin een incubator voor kwaliteitsvolle kunst en duurzame, internationale netwerken. Jonge kunstenaars hebben dit nodig.

      Het is geen toeval dat deze opleiding precies in Vlaanderen de ideale bestaansvoorwaarden gevonden heeft om te ontstaan en te bloeien. Het is een initiatief van kunstenaars zelf en spreekt over hun noden en visie. Het is net uit de rijke Vlaamse artistieke ecologie dat de energie en inzichten, de autonomie en het ondernemerschap ontsproten zijn om zich in te zetten voor de jongere generatie. Om jonge kunstenaars alle kansen te geven om te groeien en aansluiting te vinden bij het internationale artistieke veld. De subsidies waren daartoe een belangrijke ondersteuning en boden de noodzakelijke input voor een duurzame groei en kwaliteitsgarantie.

      Maar niet alleen is a-pass noodzakelijk als een aanvulling op ons onderwijsveld en als incubator voor de lokale professionalisering en internationale uitwisseling. Het is ook een cruciale pijler van de internationale uitstraling van ons artistiek onderwijs. Het zet ons op de internationale kaart van onderwijsinstellingen en versterkt de reputatie van ons artistiek onderwijs wereldwijd. Door de subsidies van a-pass (en HISK) stop te zetten, maakt u Vlaanderen arm. Nederland heeft de Rijksacademie en de Jan Van Eyck Academie. Wat doet u met Vlaanderens internationale uitstraling op het vlak van postgraduaat kunstonderwijs?

      Het is niet zo dat u de waarde van a-pass niet erkent, en als oplossing suggereert u een aansluiting bij een andere artistieke instelling. U begrijpt dat u hen hier een onmogelijk scenario aanbiedt. De kunstinstellingen, organisaties en centra hebben zelf moeite om hun werking te garanderen en kunstenaars faire arbeidsvoorwaarden aan te bieden. Daar is geen financiële ruimte, meer nog: daar is ook geen expertise om onderwijs aan te bieden. Bovendien zou a-pass op die manier haar autonomie en haar internationale uitstraling als onderwijsinstelling zien verwateren.

      Inkantelen binnen een bestaande onderwijsinstelling is al even onrealistisch, gezien de besparingen en financiële uitdagingen waar het kunstonderwijs vandaag al mee te maken heeft. Ik sta zelf aan het hoofd van een kleine Advanced Master opleiding dat focust op onderzoek in de kunsten. Deze opleiding is enkel rendabel omdat we deze gedeeltelijk financieren met de aanvullende onderzoeksmiddelen. Binnen de basisfinanciering voor onderwijs is hiervoor geen ruimte, en het zou ook niet rechtvaardig zijn om extra financiële druk te leggen op het reguliere kunstonderwijs dat een democratische toegang tot de kunsten garandeert. Zoals u weet zijn de middelen in het onderwijs ontoereikend, ook in het kunstonderwijs, en we houden de boel enkel draaiende omdat het personeel vanuit liefde voor het kunstonderwijs en voor de jonge kunstenaars veel meer doet dan dat we redelijkerwijze van hen kunnen verwachten. Een postgraduaatsopleiding als a-pass incorporeren in het onderwijsaanbod van de kunstschool zou geen teken zijn van goed bestuur: het zou druk leggen op de middelen, op de ondersteunende diensten, en het zou bovendien de autonomie, de flexibiliteit en de internationale uitstraling van a-pass niet ten goede komen. Zoals de Rijksacademie en Jan Van Eyck in Nederland, kan A-pass net zijn wat het is omdat het opereert naast de kunstscholen, en op die manier met alle kunstscholen op een gelijkwaardige manier kan uitwisselen en samenwerken, in relatie tot van specifieke noden en opportuniteiten.

      Gezien de positieve evaluatie van a-pass en de kleine financiële impact maar de grote waarde voor het Vlaamse kunstonderwijs, voor de Vlaamse uitstraling en bovenal voor de jonge kunstenaars, vraag ik u de beslissing te herzien en a-pass het vertrouwen te geven om deze kwaliteitsvolle opleiding te kunnen verderzetten en uitbouwen.

      Met vriendelijke groeten,
      Petra Van Brabandt

      Petra Van Brabandt, Hoofd onderzoek en maatschappelijke dienstverlening, Sint Lucas Antwerpen, KdG

      *

       

    • postgraduate program
    • block 2022/I
    • BLOCK 2022 I 15 January 2022
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • a.pass
    • 06 January 2022
    • 30 April 2022
    • BLOCK 2022 I

       

      The first block of 2022 will focus on politics of space and on care practices. It is build around the framework of 'Poliset' facilitated by Vladimir Miller with focus on collective building processes within institutional environments to shift the relationship between practice, space and authorship towards commoning and self-organization. The framework of the Participants Assembly will bring curatorial input on CARE on the second part of the block.

      2022 I - BLOCK PLANNING + Opening week detailed program

      6 -14 January Opening Week (obligatory)

      Each Opening Week is the start of a 4 months block. It consists of the welcoming of new researchers; the presentation of the participants and their research, program, curators, dedicated mentors and a.pass team; and the re-setting of the collective working structure of a.pass for the next 4 months.

      The presentations on the Opening Week focus on [WHAT] are the research questions and their planning.

      → 6 January

      12:00- 17:00 Brunch + Welcome / a.pass introduction and round table / Spaces, codes, keys, badges  and digital tools

      → 7 January

      10:00 - 17:00 -  Block presentation (Poliset and CARE) / Speed dating around Research Community / preparation for participants presentations - explanation and planning

      → 10, 11, 12 January

      10:00 - 17:00 - participants presentations + mentors presentations

      13 January

      10:00 - 17:00 -  Lexicon + participants Assembly

      → 14 January

      10:00 - 17:00 - Code of Conduct, contracts and budgets

      24 January - 11 February a.pass Poliset 2022W4-6

      Study framework facilitated by Vladimir Miller

      27 -29 January End Presentations
       
      Ana Paula Camargo, Federico Protto, Nathaniel Moore and Túlio Rosa will finish the postgraduate program with End Presentations. 
       

      17 - 25 February Half Way Days (obligatory)

      Participants research presentations (HOW) focus on methodology.

      (Preparation days 17 and 18)

      7 - 11 March CARE practices

      Curatorial input proposed by the participants Assembly

      28 March - 3 April End Week (PAF) (obligatory)

      Participants research presentations (WHY) focus on content, context and criticality. This week we go to PAF - Performing Arts Forum in Reims, France

       

      People involved in block 2022 I

       

      Postgraduate Participants

      Aleksandra Boris, Carolina Mendonça, Amy Pickles, Chloë Janssens, Sarah Pletcher, Anna- Sophie Lugmeier, Asli Hatipoglu, Martina Petrovic, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier, Vera Sofia Mota

      Associate Researchers

      Gosie Vervlossem, Simon Asencio, Rares Craiut, João Fiadeiro, Vijai Patchineelam

      Dedicated mentors

      Every block has three dedicated mentors that support the participants research, the presentations and feedback moments. For block 2022 I the dedicated mentors are Anna Rispoli (artist, activist), Samah Hijawi (artist, researcher) and Jaime Llopis (dancer, choreographer)

      Study facilitator and guests

      The study facilitator for this block is Vladimir Miller (artist, researcher and a.pass research centre curator)>

      The Polist guest are: choreographers Christine de Smedt, Liza Baliasnaja and Theo Livesey, architect and CIVE publications responsible Tania Garduño Israde, artist Jozef Wouters and Decoratelier, activist David Vercauteren (tbc).

      Other guests will be hosted during Poliset in collaboration with all involved.
    • end presentation
    • re:source End Presentations January 27,28 and 29, 2022
      15 January 2022
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Gemeenschapscentrum De Kriekelaar
    • 27 January 2022
    • 29 January 2022
    • re:source
       
      The a.pass End Presentations of Ana Paula Camargo, Nathaniel Moore, Federico Protto and Túlio Rosa will take place the 27, 28 and 29 January 2022 at Gemeenschapscentrum De Kriekelaar in Schaarbeek from 18:00 to 22:30. This public presentation marks the end of their trajectory at a.pass and invites the researchers to share their modes of doing, seeing and making artist research public after following the year-long program.
       
      Having singular questions, processes and approaches, the four researches cross concerns in addressing critically the available sources and resources of colonial histories and ghostly societal matters and how they form our relation to the present.

       
      All of them study in specific performative ways how to translate and weave different dimensions of reality. In their practices, they intertwine several materialities such as colonial archival materials, earth materials, death rituals, diaries, interviews, sonic memories, other people writings and thoughts, human and more than human knowledges and all present in the room.
       
      The presentations will bridge these dimensions in multiple ways, each of them calling for the gathered sources and resources intra-action in the moment of the public presentations with the intention to repair what has been forgotten, dismissed or remains unseen. 
       
      Ana Paula Camargo comes from Mexico and is enrolled in a PhD in Madrid. Her research has ground on new materialism and it engages with bridging choreography with climate crisis and indigenous cultures through creating performative contexts where they inform each other. Nathanial Moore is a choreographer and dancer coming from the US, his research is on cultural ghosts, how they are embodied and the way they produce current subjectivities with specific focus on mass shooters. Federico Protto (Uruguay/ Germany) is working with expanded fashion. His background is fashion design and he engages in sonic performative situations to challenge and enlarge the implications of fashion as a discipline and as a product. As much as its potential to bring world resources and cultural heritage to the fore. Túlio Rosa’s research is centred on making perceptible colonial infrastructures through interviews, film editing and analyses of data that produces the colonised subject. Coming from Brazil his focus in on what he calls the Atlantic Archive.
       
      This event will be on itself a study on performativity and its agency. By being together, these performative situations will shine attention to ways of creating relation with the audience, the materialities at stake and what matters in very particular ways. They extend from the lecture performance into installation work or ritual practice to potentialize the possibility of change towards an equitable way to relate with each other and the world. 
       
       
      RESEARCH TEXTS AND BIOS 
       
      Ana Paula Camargo | 0.3 lecture performances series
       
      This research is about the digestion of the world—and the worlds inside the world—, and also the acknowledgement of our earthliness and our humble position within the cosmic scale.It goes around a personal process and the unexpected intimacy that arises in our relationships with both known and unknown beings, things and natural forces.
      I started this project from a hunch, a starting point that I could barely understand, half intuition, half a blind spot. The hunch was a feeling of alienation in the relationship between humans-things-environment, which led me to wonder if these entanglements could be otherwise. I could feel this as a lack of desire, Eros, deep connection, lack of mattering, lack of ‘fleshness’; a ubiquitous feeling of nonsense. All this awakened in me a deep anxiety of devouring the world, colliding with it, setting off everything, burning down and dismantling structures as a way to resist this zombie mode. 
      At those times I was being very affected by the increasing dematerialization of many relations in the world. I was sure that the alienation in our relationships was the product of this. It is indeed part of the problem, but now it is clear the root of the question started much earlier with Modernity and the big shift in the mindset that came with it, since the transition from the Middle Ages to Capitalism, and the world spread of Capitalism since the conquest and colonization of the Americas.
      With the wish of building reshaped relationships with things and beings that surrounded me, I approach the 'thing' as an ecology to comprehend. Instead of focusing on one specific phenomenon, I opted to work in a wide spectrum: not to focus on the seed but covering the whole field. As in permaculture—or earlier—as in ancient milpas[1] in Mesoamerica. I am searching in two fields mainly: both sociological and personal. What I realized is the complexity of the question: I am facing a dense weave of interrelations that could not allow me to know one thing without knowing all the cluster in which that one is involved. That’s how the sociological calls for the historical, and the historical to the political, and so on. Or the personal calls for the biological and the biological for the cultural, and the cultural to the sociological and so on. And at the end everything is interrelated again.
      I arrived at the lecture performance as I would arrive at a milpa, a place to grow things in, all together. This is a space-time where every little part is bleeding over into the other, no matter how similar or different they are. A space to make kin, to make entanglements explicit, to mattering, to be a failure, to mess up, to discern, to remember what is forgotten, to rest, and hopefully to finally find your way.
      Welcome.
       
      [1] Agricultural system from Mesoamerica, focused on the coexistence of diverse seeds and on the caring of the soil. This approach is completely opposite to Monoculture.
       
      Ana Paula Camargo (Mexico) is a performing artist, choreographer and researcher.
      Throughout the past years she has expanded her practice towards a transdisciplinary field of research. Focusing on the process and the (re)search and not on producing a predetermined outcome, she likes to navigate across the boundaries of disciplines. She is engaged in the relationship between life and art, and how art can change the way we experience the world and hopefully transform it. She usually works within contexts where care, collaboration, self-organization and communal work matter. She has shared her work in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Germany, Spain, U.S.A, France, Belgium and México. http://cargocollective.com/anapaulacamargonateras
       
      *
       
      Nathaniel Moore | Death Zine
      Nathaniel Moore, in collaboration with Julia Rubies and Stijn Smeets
       
       “The problem is that the repressed and the disavowed never go away; it is precisely the fact that they always come back that lies at the heart of haunting,” Stephen Frosh.
       
      Death Zine, is a performance ritual, death practice, created to meet that which is socially repressed; in this case, incel and white nationalist mass shooters. The desire to meet comes as a proposal to disrupt the shooter’s expressed isolation and pain, a fundamental condition which leads them to violence.
       
      Death Zine is a research practice of being with the wounds which make connection impossible.
       
      With this performance we evoke these shooters to join us, back from the dead or from their prison cells, to spend time together and learn from each other. We want to see them. We want to give them value. We believe we must in order to find balance. 
       
      And in the process of meeting them we are faced with ourselves. Through this search for connection with the shooter we attempt to come into contact with our own personal wounds, judgements, and patterns disrupting our own possibilities to connect with the world. 
       
      We attempt to move through these identifications that isolate us.
       
      Identities which fix us into positions from which we are played against each other.
       
      Meet the other, trouble isolation, conditions can shift.
       
      Nathaniel Moore is a choreographer/dancer based in Brussels.
      He enjoys dancing naked, eye contact, and telling tall tales (aka storytellin').
      Nat’s artistic practice uses movement and the symbolic to address systemic erasure and generations of alienation operating inside and through bodies. They explore relationships with ghosts to construct infrastructures of queer imaginaries inside of the fragmented, existential emptiness of post-modern consumerist identity. Through their research, Nat’s makes their body the material for a dance with ghosts in order to understand and unearth the crypts of a particular US-american 21st century ontology.
       
      Nat’s work has been presented in the US, Belgium, and Germany. He has worked as a dancer and collaborator with Keith Hennessy, Sara Shelton Mann, Hope Mohr, Dance Theater of San Francisco, Alex Ketley, Alexander Ekman, Kinetech Arts, Ainsley Tharp, Jonah Kagan, and Menlowe Ballet among many others. He’s originally from Athens, Georgia, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas.
       
       
      *
       
      Frederico Protto | Dress-Rehearsals
       
      Inter-Materiality Mode is an artistic research trajectory moving through the interstices of fashion and sound. Crafting methods to address these spaces, the work considers the phenomenon of fashion and the world of sounds in their broader contexts. 
      Fabrics, clothing, sounds, texts, voices, and the body become tools for somatic and performative practices to diffuse, and recollect knowledge. In constellation of a South American background, sonic and textile artefacts (CD’s, tapes cassettes, garments, instruments, etc.) and multiple research materials are activated in a presentation format titled Dress-Rehearsal. This proto-esoteric format evokes the researches inherent questions: What are other forms of translation and how do they relate to the world and our (re)sources within it? Collectively the notions of authorship are reimagined, and forms of relationality and knowledge common to the global-north are challenged. 
       
      Inter-Materiality Mode is a radiating broadcast from and for the senses.
       
      Federico Prottos’s artistic practice unfolds along and between performance, music, costume and fashion, and artistic research. Spanning a hybrid network of collaborators, disciplines, and materialities, his projects question conventions in order to configure new forms of shared knowledge production and kinship. After having worked as fashion and costume designer showing his collections at several international fashion weeks and festivals, Federico Protto turned toward performative practices, sonic experiments, textile investigations, publication formats, and public workshops.
      He holds degrees in fashion design from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and is currently part of the postgraduate programme in artistic research at a.pass in Brussels, Belgium.
      He was born 1991 in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is presently based in Brussels, Belgium.
       
      *
       
      Túlio Rosa | Arquivo Atlântico
       
      Túlio Rosa | Arquivo Atlântico
       
      For many years now, my work has been focused on the relationship between images, especially images of violence, and the body. My practice has been carried out in the intersection between performing arts, film and visual practices, borrowing ideas, techniques and forms that are linked to different disciplines while maintaining a strong connection with the field of choreography. I have been exploring how different practices of engagement (physical, visual and discursive) might be able to operate meaningful articulations between archive materials and their legacies in order to produce speculative narratives, counter hegemonic practices and critical discourse.
       
      For the end presentation, I’ll be sharing some materials developed within the frame of Arquivo Atlântico [Atlantic Archive], a multi-chapter research project that I’ve been developing in collaboration Beatriz Cantinho since 2020. The presentation will be composed by an small sound installation, acompanied by a publication, and a performative experiment that combines imagemaking, writing and sound exploration.
       
      Arquivo Atlântico emerged from the desire to look back at the history of the various territories bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in order to understand the forms of occupation, extraction, hierarchization, exclusion and extermination that mark, still today, the relationship between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’. For us, the archive is not only evidence of a past, but a generative matter. Working with a wide range of sources – films, official documents, literature, sonic registers, oral narratives – we have been exploring how creative and compositional practices can rescue the affective capacity of these materials and allow us to deconstruct narratives and visualities that characterize a political imaginary of colonial matrix. 
      More than about history, Arquivo Atlântico is an investigation on the notion of memory, on the possibility of re-membering differently places, peoples and knowledges. It is an attempt to weave personal stories with official history; to understand how, by positioning ourselves within larger narratives, we can draw connections, inaugurate dialogues, foster imaginaries and open space for other readings of the present.
       
       
    • conference
    • On Coloniality Chloë Janssens, Amy Pickles and Túlio Rosa
      18 October 2021
      posted by: Sina Seifee
    • KBK Brussels
    • On Coloniality
       
      Date: 10-13th of November 2021
      Location: KBK Brussels, Boulevard d'Ypres 20, Sainte Catherine, Brussels
       
      ‘On Coloniality’ is a proposition by a.pass participants Chloë Janssens, Amy Pickles and Túlio Rosa of a temporary context for collective study. Through different artistic and theoretical speculations we will study coloniality and its manifold dimensions.
      Our understanding of coloniality departs from ideas developed first by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, and later expanded by many others, such as the semiotician Walter Mignolo and feminist philosopher Maria Lugones. Coloniality is an idea that points to the modes of organisation of power in so-called colonized territories, and how this extends out into supposedly postcolonial states. It differentiates colonialism, as a historical process, from its legacies. We have been thinking about ways to describe how the colonial rationale is at the very basis of our modes of social and political organisation, how those supposed histories have collapsed into, resonate with, and form our present.

      There is a shared desire between the three of us to learn how to articulate coloniality through artistic practices. Our collaboration has grown out of our individual motivations to discuss and re-narrate the colonial practices of the countries where we were born -  Belgium, Brazil, UK - and challenge the dominant narratives that compose these histories.
       
      We are drawing connections between different times and locations by following closely methods of appropriation and extraction of land, resources, labour and data. Through different artistic practices we want to draw parallels, observe symmetries and find correlations across colonialism as it exists across all aspects of our lives; institutionally, economically, in corporations, governance, everyday structures of living and our bodies.
       
      ‘On Coloniality’ will be hosted in KBK, an alternative space near Saint Cathrine, in Brussels. It is a porous programme open to the public. An exhibition will host the programme that consists of reading and listening sessions, screenings, a performance, workshops, public conversations and discussions.
       
      The full programme can be downloaded here: https://we.tl/t-3HCh0e58Fj
       
       
      Public Programme
       
      Day 1: Wednesday November 10th, Positioning ourselves.
      11-13h: Visit to the Institute of Colonial Culture
      15h: Presentation of the programme
      16h: Presentation of the publication: Who’s still doing minimal design? A conversation between Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Chloe Janssens
      17h-18:30h: Helena Vieira [Listening Session]
      18:30h: Open conversation
       
      Day 2: Thursday November 11th, Accountability, Extraction and Ownership
      11-13h: Elodie Mugrefya [workshop]
      15h: Presentation Vermeir & Heiremans
      15:45: Presentation Line Algoed
      16:30: Open conversation with Vermeir & Heiremans and Line Algoed
      19h-21h: Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano [workshop]
       
      Day 3: Friday November 12th, Counter Narratives and Remembering Otherwise
      11h-13h: Visit Art and History Museum and reading of 'Curar o Mundo', by Glicéria Tupinambá
      14h: Presentation Sami Hammana
      14:45h: Presentation Satch Hoyt
      15:30h: Open conversation with Sami Hammana and Satch Hoyt
      20 - 22:30h: Arquivo Atlântico Film screenings at Pianofabriek: Rue du Fort 35, 1060 Saint Gilles, Brussels
       
      Day 4: Saturday November 13th, Alternative Relatings to (and through) identity, borders and knowledge redistribution
      11h-14h: WORKNOT! X Sarmad [workshop]
      15h: Presentation Daniela Ortiz
      15:45h: Presentation Saddie Choua
      16:30h: Open conversation with Daniela Ortiz and Saddie Choua
      20h: Satch Hoyt [Sound Performance]
       
       
      The programme is open to anyone who wants to learn collectively about coloniality and artistic practices, who wants to engage in a conversation around this theme. Registration is not necessary. The website of a.pass will have the latest updates on time and locations.
       
      KBK has a wide entrance directly from the main street. There are no steps to enter the building. There is one toilet at the back of the space, on the same level. The space is illuminated with strip lighting on the ceiling, and a number of screen based artworks will be in the space. Hot drinks will be available for free, and there is access to drinking water. We will host a self made seating structure on which you are welcome to sit or lie down on.
       
      If you have questions on accessibility and/or the programme, you can reach us on the following email addresses: Chloë: chloejanssens@protonmail.com, Amy: amymaypickles@gmail.com, Túlio: rosa.tulio@hotmail.com

       

       
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • Research In Absence 14 September 2021
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • 20 September 2021
    • 24 September 2021
    • yes
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • Research In Absence
      The a.pass Research Center invites you to join its public programme Research in Absence
      September 20th-24th in Brussels
       
      Together with the Research Center participant researchers from the a.pass postgraduate program and the public will form a group that will engage in research proposals of  Associate Researchers of Cycle 3. For each of the proposals, the researcher who proposes it, will be absent for the duration of the process. The rest of the group – together with the public – will engage in the research question collaboratively, contributing their knowledge and practices to the shared process.
      The program invites all interested participants for an introductory dinner on Monday, September 20th. The group will work with the proposals in the afternoons and evenings of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The program will conclude with a communal breakfast and feedback session on Friday morning, Sept. 24th.
      The five proposals can be joined separately or for the duration of the entire process. A detailed program will be published shortly, with information of how to book a slot and the location of the program.
       

      Please sign up for the program at the bottom of the page and indicate if you join for the whole program or a specific proposal, we recommend that you join the public dinner and introduction on Monday evening. 
       
      LOCATION 
      Centre Tour à Plombe
      Rue de l'Abattoir 24
      1000 Brussels
       
      TIMETABLE
       
      Monday, September 20th 
      18h Introduction and Dinner
       
      Tuesday, September 21st
      14h Proposal Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin
      18h Proposal Elke van Campenhout 
       
      Wednesday, September 22nd
      14h Proposal Vijai Maia Patchineelam
      18h Proposal Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio
       
      Thursday, September 23rd
      14h Proposal Joāo Fiadeiro
      18h Proposal Benny Nemer
       
      Friday, September 24th
      10h-13h Breakfast, Discussion and Feedback
       
       
      RESEARCH PROPOSALS
       
      Elke Van Campenhout

      Bloom Sessions

      The research 'Sex Asylum' works around notions of desire, when stripped from consumerist notions like instant gratification, the pornographic gaze, and subject/object divisions. In this research moment, together we create desire lines through voice, touch, and objects. An interspecies game of deferral and detournement.

       

      Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin

      Making each other ^

      This is an invitation into my current research titled “CofetARia”, specifically on the part relating to the agencies of food and the role we grant food, beyond the usual symbolic projections we have about it/assign to it. I will borrow some tools and findings so we can discover more on how to account for the performative ability of cakes and pastries, that can, and that do, modify current situations like individual BMI’s or emotional states, macro events related to the climate crisis, or political power struggles. How could we best work with cakes in artistic or other types of research? What strategies are there to either decenter the human actor (like Tuija Kokkonen’s “weak actions”) or to recentre the non-human actor that is cake (like Bruno Latour’s “specific tricks that make them talk”).
       
      Vijai Maia Patchineelam
      Over the course of his research "The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Artistic Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution" Vijai Maia Patchineelam was hosted by, employed and welcomed to a variety of institutions: from artist-run spaces to art academies and museums. One of them was Plano B, Lapa, a long since closed vinyl-shop-turned-informal-art-space in Rio de Janeiro. For the last four years Vijai and Plano B's founder Fernando Torres have collaborated in archiving hundreds of live performances that span a decade (2004-2013). In 2019 they published an annotated LP as the first outcome of this collaboration. For this proposal, the research group will be invited to engage in listening to and reading this document and to contribute to a discussion on temporary institutions and their survival strategies.
       
       
      Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio

      The World is full of Monsters

      The notion of textual agency refers to the capacity displayed by texts to do things in various circumstances. In other words, text might be doing something else than simply conveying meaning. Text is equally reading you. Text performs you. Ultimately text might suggest methodologies for its own study: a study from which you might not be able to return without losing a feather. The research will look into methodologies for studying the agents of text through collective practice and examination of the performances they enable.

       

      Joāo Fiadeiro

      Real Time Composition Game

      Real Time Composition "object of study" is the interval that emerges when linear time is interrupted and the sensation of continuity is suspended (by an accident, incident or “just because”). The resulted gap is where Real Time Composition research takes place. Inside this space, time has this rare quality of being simultaneously “no longer” and “not yet”. Inside this space, time is not linear (or even circular) but "twisted" (like a "Möbius strip" topological surface), governed by laws that don't respect conventional notions of before or after, inside or outside, present or absent.

       

      Benny Nemer

      Several Favorable Bodies

      My contribution to Research in Absence emerges from an error I made during my artistic research into the private library of French author and photographer Hervé Guibert's library. I misunderstood information transmitted to me by Guibert’s executor, and began a path of inquiry from this misunderstanding. The recent revelation that my artistic research is now deeply anchored by this mistake — essentially a historical detail of my own invention — has presented me with many questions, some of which I hope will be processed and transformed in my absence. 

       

       

      For more information on Associate Researcher's work please see: https://apass.be/research-center-cycle-3/

      The event is free of charge

    • Diary excerpt from Live Archive,

      by Breg Horemans

       FULL PDF

      Siting Discourse is a dialogical diary that explores the protocols, politics and accessibility of a digital architecture-as-archive (www.taat-projects.com). Horemans shares the writing process through a recorded sequence of screen captures. Siting Discourse exposes the Live Archive´s digital spatiality and the implicit gestures, attitudes and coincidences of discourse making that it aims to facilitate. The title is a reference to the Live Archive as a (web-)site for discursive documentation and it addresses the academic citing mechanism as a form of “structural misquoting.” Siting Discourse is a collaboration between Siebren Nachtergaele (Social Sciences HOGENT, Theatre Studies UGENT, BE) and Andrew Filmer (Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, WA). Their first encounter was shaped by means of a drift.

      Breg Horemans is co-founder of TAAT, a liquid collective of artists working on the verge of performance, research and installation art. Since 2011, he renegotiates his relation to the architecture discipline through transdisciplinary collaborations. The desire of his research lies in shaping the spatial conditions for ‘sites of encounter’ that invite human and non-human entities to co-constitute each other. The projects initiated by TAAT generate spaces for co-activity and instigate fluid prototyping processes as ‘becoming spaces’. In the last two years, Breg is co-developing an online environment that enhance processes of open source writing, archiving and publishing.

       

       

       

       

       
    • performative publishing
    • POP-FI POSTER Lili M. Rampre
      13 July 2021
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • 01 July 2021
    • 3 euro
    • POP-FI POSTER

      A Game,
      by Lili M. Rampre

      Pop-Fi poster is a “choose your own adventure” game developed by Lili M. Rampre in collaboration with Júlia Rúbies Subirós. The game traces pre-public discourse, a semi-private collection of thoughts that, once shared and circulated, can shift a wider agenda on what matters to artists the most. The game aims to popularize common fictions and pop the bubble of others. Collectivizing half-digested thoughts potentially means bridging between personal and structural to effectuate change.

      Pop-Fi poster is part of Pop-Fi: a multifaceted project that entails a performative workshop ventriloquizing popular movie icons, video installations and script-readings. Pop-Fi foregrounds concerns of an artistic community through a variety of formats that act as a discourse prism. Pop-Fi poster is both a visual aid for the workshop and an autonomous object. Pop-Fi’s next step is developing strategies to funnel from anecdotal to factual and think about data and its visualization techniques informed by direct experience, commitment to action and intersectionality.

      Lili M. Rampre is researching strategies to highlight “off stage”; processes, practices and actors behind, off, under or above the stage. Her focus lies on power relationships and the dynamics of disparities in cultural capital (audience-performer, fan-star, producer-artist). Her work has often a role-reversal in its core proposal, ventriloquism of a kind, or unreliable narration. Most recently Lili is looking into fandom and fandom civic practices authorising fiction to affect political action as an artistic methodology, to re-articulate essential parts of artistic production and circulation as fictional or factual aspects.

      price 3 euro

       

       

       
    • Initiated out of a desire to be a shared platform of exchange, support and publication for the a.pass Associate Researchers, this year-long initiative will continue to support and publish advanced research and investigate its trajectories within a.pass.

      The Associate Researchers follow a part of their research trajectory in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. The Research Center welcomes radical and inventive research methodologies in order to contribute them to the larger a.pass environment. The Research Center supports and facilitates individual and collective forms of performative publishing (publications, presentations, exhibitions, gatherings, etc), experimental research set ups, workshops and collaborations.

       

      For the period of May 2021 to April 2022 a.pass is happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the a.pass Research Center Cycle III:

      Joāo Fiadeiro, Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin, Gosie Vervloessem, Vijai Maia Patchineelam and Simon Asencio.

      The Associate Researchers will be hosted and supported during Cycle III by Vladimir Miller.

      Research practices of the Associated Researchers of Cycle 3:

      Crăiuţ Rareş Augustin

      CofetARia is an eating performance at the confluence of two durational practices: performance art and pastry backing, where cakes are generally more performative than other dishes, and allow better for the agencies/affordances of food to come through. Working with alimentary matter and showing/doing/behaving, CofetARia is about animating memory and confronting the problems raised by post-communist empathic nostalgia, outside of the "crimes of the past regime" approaches.

       

      Joāo Fiadeiro

      Real Time Composition is a concept-tool that studies and practices a contra-intuitive skill: the ability to look at ourselves looking at (ourselves looking at) things. This is done using the fields of improvisation and composition in contemporary dance as a privileged territory of research. “Real Time” and “Composition” are two notions that cancel each other. “Composition” suggests that one must refer to the existence of previous knowledge while actively projecting the future. “Real time” implies that whatever is happening, is happening here and now, in the present. The resulting tension (and attention) generated by the collision of those two opposing forces allows an alternative way to perceive and experience time. Real Time Composition suggests a perceptual paradigm shift: instead of reacting based on previous knowledge one should suspend knowledge. Instead of fighting the unknown (or surrendering to it) one should welcome it. As a result, the linear experience of time is interrupted, a gap in the sensation of continuity is produced and an interval “emerges”. Inside this interval, time is not linear (or even circular) but “twisted” (like the topological surface of a Mobius Strip), governed by laws that don’t follow conventional notions of before or after, inside or outside. Inside this interval, space has this rare quality of being simultaneously “no longer” and “not yet”. Transforming fixed, rigid and closed compositions into mobile, flexible and open relations is what characterises the research within and around Real Time.

       

      Gosie Vervloessem

      If a damaged heart were photosynthetIc is an ongoing in-situ project that starts from a squatted ticket booth in the Botanical Garden in Brussels, from where I, as a sick detective*, commit a slow and silent coup on the site through a two-folded strategy: by haunting the garden, identifying and unveiling the ghosts that linger on the gardens’ grounds, ghosts of various exploitations through different times. And secondly, by pushing plant science in a radical and speculative directions. Plants have long been identified with the feminine body and have been as regularly exploited and subjected to biopolitical control. But bodies of women and plants also hold a magic that might counter the ghosts of capitalism. For making the coup on the Botanical Garden really successful I need the help of women and plants.

      • An alter ego that i use to carry out my artistic research. The main trait of the sick Detective is her ongoing struggle with notions of immersion, osmosis, co-penetration, infection, etc. The character of the sick Detective is based on plant-human hybrids depicted in popular culture and draws inspiration from works of Stacy Alaimo, Nicole Seymour, Jeffrey T. Nealon, Heather Houser and others.

      Vijai Maia Patchineelam

      As an associated researcher at a.pass, I’m looking to focus on the preparation for the potential conclusion and the aftermath of my Ph.D. in the Arts titled The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Artistic Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution. With the Associated Researcher position I look to outlast a premeditated institutional conclusion of the current research project that I lead by overlapping host institutions. In doing so, further committing to the complete turnaround of my artistic practice that the current PhD position has afforded. One of the primary interest at a.pass is being for the first time, inside an institution that is not solely focused on visual art. And what that entails in how artistic practice is understood, as well as artistic research — ways of communicating the decision-making process mixed with the desire for a more engaged collective research environment. In overlapping institutions, I look at a.pass not only as a place of coaching for the defense but also as an institution that participates during the final evaluation process, by inviting a core member of a.pass to be part of the jury. Looking for a difference in perspective for the feedback from an artist organised educational and research platform.

      Simon Asencio

      The research investigates the position of invisibility and anonymity in text in order to reassess practices of authorship and readership. The notion of invisibility in this case, is a matter of illegibility, either chosen as a ruse for safety or forced upon to undermine the ‘inadequate’. The notion of anonymity points to the set of protocols by which a person or a group appears as non-identifiable, unreachable or untraceable; or whose identity is rendered incomplete or never 'one'. If anonymity is usually seen as a way to avoid responsibility (to hide the doer behind the deed), the research focuses on how the performance of the namelessness (the doings of anonymity) could instead invite us to engage a collective responsibility towards history, community, political action and art making. At the cross between literature and performance, the research looks at practices and precedents across spoken tongues, written tongues and sung tongues (in particular in vernacular forms, music and poetry) to define poetical, ethical and political tools to think a more inclusive practice of anonymity and invisibility.

    • Initiated out of a desire to be a shared platform of exchange, support and publication for the a.pass Associate Researchers, this year-long initiative will continue to support and publish advanced research and investigate its trajectories within a.pass.

      The Associate Researchers follow a part of their research trajectory in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. The Research Center welcomes radical and inventive research methodologies in order to contribute them to the larger a.pass environment. The Research Center supports and facilitates individual and collective forms of performative publishing (publications, presentations, exhibitions, gatherings, etc), experimental research set ups, workshops and collaborations.

       

      For the period of September 2022 to August 2023 a.pass is happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the a.pass Research Center Cycle IV:

      Caterina Mora, Maurice Meewisse, Paoletta Holst, Samah Higawi, Túlio Rosa, Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio.

      The Associate Researchers will be hosted and supported during Cycle IV by Vladimir Miller.

       

    •  

      Welcome in De Markten, Friday, 11th of June 2021.

      18-22h

      Subscribe for attendance. Or join us online. Details will follow.

      Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens

      will read, perform, discuss:

      a book as a prop for future performance, a poster that unfolds into a speculative discussion board game, a timed articulation in an archive that reiterates its own traces, a set of interviews that binds four generations of activism, a performative research method that paves the way for academic writing, and a collective online score that narrates how research interests were influenced by each others presence.

      *

      The researchers in Research Centre Cycle II — Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens — are ending their one year trajectory at a.pass with the launch of a series of (performative) publications.

      Publishing is rarely something that concludes a confined process of solitary thought. It is a social process that — abstractly and manifestly — involves collaboration along the way. Rather than a book or printed matter as a finite goal, the researchers took publishing as a pretext to build ongoing social gestures, a space for the continued production of meaning and reverberance.

       


       

      Programme:

       

       

      Pia Louwerens presents the artistic research novel I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad. I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad is an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution. Invested in queer theory and institutional critique, she sets out to perform the artist ‘differently’ through a process of negation and passivity, inadvertently causing her relationship with the institution’s curator to grow increasingly speculative and paranoid. Louwerens' labour as tour guide, security guard, artist, hostess and researcher at different institutions begins to overlap and blend under the name of ‘performance.’ I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad is a fragmented story of paranoid and reparative reading, script and utterance, exposure and vulnerability.

       

      Pia Louwerens is a performance artist and researcher from the Netherlands, living in Brussels. Her research revolves around the becoming of the artistic subject, the I who writes, speaks and makes, in relation to the (institutional) context. From 2019 - 2020 Louwerens was working as embedded artistic researcher at a big research project, for which she was embedded in an art institution. Through this research she attempted to perform or practice the artist, and thereby the institution, differently. Her work usually takes the shape of a performance in which she speaks, switching between registers of the actual, the possible, the professional and the anxious artist.

       


       

       

      Pop-Fi poster is a “choose your own adventure” game, developed by Lili M. Rampre in collaboration with Júlia Rúbies Subirós. The game is tracing pre-public discourse, semi-private collections of thoughts that, once shared and circulated, can shift a wider agenda on what matters to artists the most. The game aims to popularise common fictions and pop the bubble of others. Collectivising half-digested thoughts potentially means bridging between personal and structural to effectuate change. Pop-Fi poster is part of Pop-Fi; a multifaceted project, that entails a performative workshop ventriloquising popular movie icons, video installations and script-readings. Pop-Fi foregrounds concerns of an artistic community, through variety of formats that act as discourse prism. Pop-Fi poster is both a visual aid for the workshop and an autonomous object. Pop-Fi’s next step is developing strategies to funnel from anecdotal to factual and think about data and its visualisation techniques informed by direct experience, commitment to action and intersectionality.

       

      Lili M. Rampre is researching strategies to highlight “off stage”; processes, practices and actors behind, off, under or above the stage. Her focus lies on power relationships and the dynamics of disparities in cultural capital (audience-performer, fan-star, producer-artist). Her work has often a role-reversal in its core proposal, ventriloquism of a kind, or unreliable narration. Most recently Lili is looking into fandom and fandom civic practices authorising fiction to affect political action as an artistic methodology, to re-articulate essential parts of artistic production and circulation as fictional or factual aspects.

       


       

       

      Esteban Donoso presents Mand/inga. Mand/inga is a performance that entails a reading of a script, and a screening of a film at once. It’s an instantiation of a collaborative process with Thiago Antunes in which we re-visit our own family stories, tracing along our relation to such issues as gendering, religion, spirituality and race. The script and film register an ongoing conversation between friends, as well as a conversation with our own lived memory. This process is also an attempt to trace out a methodology for working with self-narrated queerstories and their interconnected resonances. Mand/inga is a term that takes many colloquial meanings in Latin America, in Brazil it usually refers to ‘black magic’ whereas in Ecuador it denotes the racial mixtures between black, indigenous and white backgrounds.

       

      Esteban Donoso is a choreographer, researcher and Performance Studies fan living and working between Brussels, Quito and Toronto. Currently towards the end of a PhD in Performance Studies, he is juggling to put together a practice-based methodology, his interest in feminist cinema and the writing of a dissertation about dance narratives and cultural memory in Quito-Ecuador. He researches the medium of film as a self-narrative device and as an interface for collective writing. In as much as it enables our appearance in a virtual space, it also allows us to create a third space in which we can look at our shared entanglements.

       


       

       

      Davide Tidoni presents Where Do You Draw the Line Between Art and Politics, a series of interviews with individuals who have been active in various capacities at the intersection of art and politics. Between historical documentation, political memory, dialogic reflection, and motivational support, the publication examines the experiences, commitments and feelings that operate and inform aesthetic priorities in social spaces outside of art institutions; it’s a repository designed to inspire and encourage the politicization of aesthetics, as opposed to the aestheticization of politics.

       

      Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher working with sound and listening. With a particular focus on direct experience, observation, and action, he creates works of different formats that include live performance, intervention, walk, video, audio recording, and text scores. He is interested in the use of sound and music in counter-culture and political struggles and has published a sound based field research on the northern italian ultras group Brescia 1911 (The Sound of Normalisation, 2018). Davide’s work can be accessed at: davidetidoni.name

       


       

       

      Breg Horemans presents Siting Discourse, a dialogical diary that explores the protocols, politics and accessibility of a digital architecture-as-archive (www.taat-projects.com). Breg shares the writing process through a recorded sequence of screen captures. Siting Discourse exposes the Live Archive´s digital spatiality and the implicit gestures, attitudes and coincidences of discourse making that it aims to facilitate. The title is a reference to the Live Archive as a (web-)site for discursive documentation and it addresses the academic citing mechanism as a form of ‘structural misquoting´. Siting Discourse is a collaboration between Siebren Nachtergaele (Social Sciences HOGENT, Theatre Studies UGENT, BE) and Andrew Filmer (Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, WA). Their first encounter was shaped by means of a drift.

       

      Breg Horemans is co-founder of TAAT, a liquid collective of artists working on the verge of performance, research and installation art. Since 2011, he renegotiates his relation to the architecture discipline through transdisciplinary collaborations. The desire of his research lies in shaping the spatial conditions for ‘sites of encounter’ that invite human and non-human entities to co-constitute each other. The projects initiated by TAAT generate spaces for co-activity and instigate fluid prototyping processes as ‘becoming spaces’. In the last two years, Breg is co-developing an online environment that enhance processes of open source writing, archiving and publishing.

       


       

      And last but not least:

      What your research did to me, a collective online publication by a.pass Research Centre Cycle II, with excerpts printed in *The Annex*. What your research did to me is an online assemblage of conversations, film clips, letters, autotheoretical writings and a storytelling/feedback game, produced in response to a self-defined score. Published on madewitholga.be
       
       

       
    • end presentation
    • postgraduate program
    • Dragon Love (?) a.pass End Presentations
      19 May 2021
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • De Markten
    • 11 June 2021
    • 12 June 2021
    • yes
    • Dragon Love (?)


      June 11th 16-18h and June 12th 19-22h at De Markten

       

      Dragon Love (?) gathers the research outcomes of Andrea Zavala Folache, performer, choreographer, visual artist and Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc, performer, choreographer and film maker. After attending to the one year postgraduate program at a.pass.

      Both artists address and investigate construction paradigms of the self. Their work studies auto-fiction in different ways, with the desire to develop tools to resist predefined categorisations of identity that bind us to expect certain formats of art production and ways of living.

      They invite the audience, the reader or the performer to welcome the alterity we have in us, in order to revisit the fundamental archetypes of love, games, work models and cultural inheritance. They create interstices that can open up to another view of the self and social configurations.

      In both cases, autobiography is used as a ground from which to start playing. As the material that one has at hand to transform, craft, dissolve, rebuild, paint, glitch, narrate personal histories and identity building.

      What happens if the line between the self and other dissolves? Or between art and love?

      Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc created Draconis Lacrimae, an instruction handbook that invites the reader to play a Role Playing Game that is set in the guts of The Dragon where the adventurers meet after being swallowed/eaten/devoured/tele-transported/etc. by their own dragons. The players find themselves in a world they want to escape from, whatever escape might mean. This game is an invitation for the readers to play themselves otherwise and encounter otherness as an accomplice without a game master.

      Lilith, Losing, Lavender: A love letter to love is a collection of texts written throughout the research trajectory of Andrea Zavala Folache. With different narrative styles as diary, love letters, score instructions, this collection imbricates ideas of love, art and life as an essay about conditions of attachment.
      In the interstice of several practices as dance, writing and drawing and different spaces as the dance studio, the atelier, the classroom, the theatre and the white cube, Andrea’s research focuses on non chronological dramaturgies for the emergence of surprise or unexpectedness.

      Both publications encompass the research trajectory of the artists. Due to Covid 19, writing become a research tool for sharing and engaging from isolated environments with the collective. They are accompanied by research portfolios that inform about their methodologies, work companions and ways of thinking art production and research. These portfolios can be consulted at the a.pass website. www.apass.com from the 2nd of June.

      For the End Presentations, a.pass invites two Visitors for a feedback conversation with the participants. The visitors of *Dragon Love* are writer, editor, and dramaturge Caroline Godart, performance curator Agnes Quackles.

      This public event is co-curated by the participants with the support of a.pass.


      *


      
Andrea Zavala Folache

      Andrea entered the program researching on choreographic methodologies, symptoms and resources emerging at the interstice between performance and personal relationships; with an urge to merge alternative modes of producing work with healing techniques.Taking a series of one-to-one appointments about love with different local communities as a starting point, Andrea explores the format of the performance portrait in which the role of performer/lover and audience/lover are ambiguous. For the a.pass End Presentation Andrea is presenting Lilith, Losing, Lavender: A love letter to love, a book publication based on stretching the subjectivities in love from the formulation I love You, as a way of seeing what is under the gaze of western romantic ideas and heteropatriarchal structures that may reveal problems in language about love.

      BIO

      Given birth in Madrid, Spain. Gave away my adult life studying bachelors. Fine Arts in Complutense University of Madrid, Film and Digital Production in AI Miami University of Art and Design, Mixed Media department at AKI School of Art and Design Enschede, Cultural Anthropology at UNED Madrid, School for New Dance Development Amsterdam, Ma Multimedia Xiamen Art School China and now a.pass (advanced performance and scenography research) in Brussels. Recently, sharpening the artistic focus in a research about Love, from the image of I Love You, in order to place community and collaboration as the practice of studying together. From the formulation of love I am looking for tools to un-pack the transferring of experiences and expressions that have to do with modes of seeing, exchanging energy and resources in the production of cultural objects. The work space of live arts, visual arts and teaching has been a great place to test this and wonder, are there tools that love and work can learn from each other and, can we listen to the process of making relationships from those tools?. Since 2016 giving workshops on Concept development, Choreography, Improvisation and Experiments with SNDO, SIS (Sandberg Institute), ISAC Brussels, MovLab Madrid students; recently working in the medium of choreography solo and in collaborations with Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Simon Asencio, Paula Almirón, Jija Sohn, Laura Ramírez, Lucy Wilke, Oneka Von Schrader, Sabine Cmelniski and Julia Reist, with the support of Dansbrabant, BUDA, Vooruit, :ARP, La Casa Encendida, Ca2m, Projection Room, Blue Project Foundation, Brakke Grond, Jacuzzi Amsterdam and a.pass.


      Thanks to: Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Kristien Van den Brande, Lilia Mestre, Julia Reist, Andrea Rodrigo, Sabine Cmelniski, Laura Ramírez, a.pass.

      Mentors: Persis Bekkering, Stefan Govaart, Kristien Van den Brande, Vladimir Miller, Sara Manente, Myriam Van Imschoot, Julien Bruneau, Mijke van den Drift, Maciej Sado, Tom Engels and Krõõt Juurak.

       

      Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc

      Federico entered the program researching on fantasy tabletop role-playing games as tools for creating collective stories and figures. Taking the detailed rules systems from these games as a starting point, he has been exploring how to saturate identity with categories and speculation. Tabletop role-playing games function as textual and pre-digital tools of identity exploration and world-building, as they invite participants to occupy a liminal role located at the boundaries of player, character and performer. For the a.pass End Presentation Federico is presenting Draconis Lacrimae: The Player's Handbook, a publication that contains the rules and instructions of a fantasy role-playing game that he developed alongside Pablo.

       

      BIO
Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc is an Argentinian/Spanish filmmaker and performance artist. He holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Arts in London. Since 2014 he works with his partner, musician and choreographer Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld. Their work uses speculative fiction within dance, performance, film and installation to interrupt normative narratives that have been naturalized by historical discourses. Federico and Pablo are currently working on the Dragon Pieces, a series of works that fluctuate between monstrosity and transindividual fantasy. Through practices as diverse as artistic swimming or role-playing games the Dragon Pieces aim to find playful representations of collectivity that question hegemonic ways of belonging and narrating ourselves. Federico has received the Gas Natural Fenosa Art Grant, the first prize at Auditorio de Galicia Young Artists Award and Creación INJUVE. His work has been shown in museums and festivals such as Cinéma du Réel (France); Santarcangelo Festival (Italy); Festival Salmon (Spain); Kasseler Dokfest (Germany); Queer Lisboa (Portugal); NAVE (Chile); MARCO Vigo (Spain), Kunstraum (London), La Casa Encendida; CA2M (Spain) or Zeimiai Manor House (Lithuania). 

      Thanks to: Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld; Camilo Mejía; Joshua Serafin; Anaël Snoek; Julia Rubies; Nathaniel Moore.

      Mentors: Vladimir Miller; Kristien Van den Brande; Krõõt Juurak; Elke Van Campenhout; Myriam Van Imschoot; Tom Engels; Sara Manente; Sabina Urraca; Olivier Stein; Pedro Pina.

       

       
    • Embracing the fact that artistic research is an emerging category of production in the cultural field, a.pass does not claim it as it’s goal or premise to be able delineate the borders of this particular methodology. a.pass affirms this apparent lack of definition as a chance. Operating without a predefined notion of what „artistic research“ is, it creates and brings together a pluralistic overview of the existing notions of this practice.

      An affirmative survey towards the question „what is artist research?“ has therefore become one of a.pass' defining methodologies: a.pass strives to host a multitude of practices in the arts which self-define themselves as research. Their definitions of what a research praxis in the arts is are at times complementing and at times contradicting each other. This dis/agreement creates a polivocal platform of definitions and is a statement towards a different conception of institutions: away from essentialist claims and towards a more politicised platform of engagement with a certain discipline.

      Some of the methods of this survey methodology are:
      -a.pass frequently invites research practitioners in the arts to work with the participants of the institute.
      -a.pass invests in creating occasions for public discussions of what artistic research is and in presenting the researches work to the general public.
      -a.pass is producing a library of research methodologies by publishing the individual research cases.
      -a.pass is presenting itself as a platform for the exchange, implementations and experimentation of research methodologies.


      Beyond its defined curriculum and methods a.pass has in general become an informal meeting point of professionals in the arts on many levels of professionalization Many contacts and collaborations that have been initiated at a.pass continue well beyond the one-year timeframe. It is a productive hub for the Brussels art scene.


      a.pass is a platform which educates and sets an agenda of learning for its participants. It is building its curriculum by inviting advanced practitioners in the arts to actively engage the participants into their research within a framework of a workshop. This work is not framed as a teaching as such, but as a process of collective
      exploration. Experimental formats of collective and collaborative research are frequently proposed and developed in such a framework. The traditional professor- student relationship is put into question here and has to be re-negotiated as a dialogue while a diverse group of practices is admitted as „teaching“.
      a.pass develops teaching practices which engage with the question of how the process of knowledge production and transfer can be framed outside the persistent hierarchies within the processes of learning and education.

       

    • postgraduate program
    • reading session
    • workshop
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • Not in the Mood
    • Not in the Mood Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Sina Seifee
      05 April 2021
      posted by: Sina Seifee
    • 03 May 2021
    • 31 July 2021
    • yes
    • case of: Sina Seifee
    • Not in the Mood

      a.pass Block 2021 II curated by Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Sina Seifee -

      participants: Inga Nielsen, Anantha Krishnan, Jimena Perez Salerno, Carolina Mendonça Ferreira, Gary Farrelly, Aleksandra Borys, Amy Pickles, Chloe Janssens, Ana Paula Camargo, and Vera Sofia Mota.

      Having completed a cycle of a.pass Research Center in 2019, the six of us proposed to co-curate the block of 2021/II as a group. We aim to collectively curate an a.pass block where we redistribute and redefine the roles of curator, mentor, guest and workshop facilitator. This implies putting our knowledges, our differences and kinships into (re)productive promiscuous interactions. Each of us thinks of a.pass as an ecology of sensitivities, sentiments, rhythms and styles of knowing, but also as apparatuses, technologies and infrastructures. We do a block curation that pays specific attention to the affective and emotional dimensions of research and knowledge production, which we call here “mood”. Not only do humans have their moods and mood swings, but more-than-human, eco-synth-tech systems, and also climates and markets have it, too. By thinking and proposing practices with and about mood, we are navigating with and within affective interactions, imperfections, subjectivities and sensations of making oneself orient in the research environment and the world.

       

      Block Scenario

      The block unfolds from the 3rd of May to the 31st of July 2021. 

      The fourth floor of a.pass will host two installations, Unrest and The Depository Cat, inhabiting the common space, before the block starts. 

      Unrest, an artwork by Sofia Caesar, is a kinetic space that can move and stretch with our interactions, triggered by the workshops and reading sessions throughout the block. The Depository Cat, by Isabel Burr Raty, is a tentacular inflatable that proposes an ongoing practice based on research-treatments sharing, oriented to harvest living testimonies of the block’s processes and moods.

      During the Opening Week, Sara Manente leads the first collective practice called the Washing Machine. It is a fast-paced associative game and a way to use the filter of mood to look into our research. 

      In the first part of the block, Antye Guenther facilitates a hybrid workshop practice, titled Oh So Serious, around moodiness for de-professionalization.

      Throughout the block, Sina Seifee takes the role of PR by interviewing the participants and publishing regularly online.

      Multiple reading sessions will be conducted on Thursdays during the block.

      In the first part of the block, we will read selected essays associated with or drawn from Affect Theory, namely Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, and Silvia Federici, under the working title Nail Art Affects Reading Sessions, facilitated by Sara Manente and Adrijana Gvozdenović.

      In the second part of the block, Thursdays are reserved for The Labour of Laziness reading sessions, proposed by Rob Ritzen.

       

      OPENING WEEK

       

      During the Opening Week, Sara Manente leads the first collective practice called the Washing Machine. It is a fast-paced associative game and a way to use the filter of mood to look into our research. Every participant is asked to prepare in advance 10 heterogeneous items from their practice under the filter of “obsessions”: bring something that you cannot stop thinking about, or that keeps coming back to you. It can be an unreasonable idea or feeling, a fragment of your own or somebody else’s work. Items can be of any format: a quote, a research question, a scrapbook, a dance move, a thought, a video extract, an object, a dream, or a short practice.

       

       

      ONGOING PRACTICES

       

      THE DEPOSITORY CAT - Isabel Burr Raty
      activated by a workshop at the beginning of the block on Wednesday 12th of May

      The Depository Cat is an ongoing practice throughout the block, which proposes the installation of an interactive space that invites participants to share their research in the form of self treatment/s or treatment/s for others. The idea is to open the possibility for the treatment’s giver/s and/or receiver/s to remain in a constant state of alteration, envisioning flux as one of the foundational resources in the processes of artistic research.

      The “treatment” implies the sharing or design of “healing” tools that give the opportunity to translate personal artistic concepts into physical or imaginary forms. These are put into motion by being with the - self - or with the - other/Cat, to trigger inner and outer mutations that can particularize, de-particularize or meta-morph affects underlying in the creative process of research. 

      The Cat takes the form of a “first aid cavity” that creates a visual space composed of i.e: non-standard animisms technologies, syncretic beliefs and statements, that can be freely inhabited. This cavity is at the same time a tentacular organism, as its limits can be stretched throughout the block, populating the common a.pass room. Participants are invited to deposit the or various “remainants” of the treatment/s offered in order to imprint the memory of the “healing” that took place. The remainants can be ornamental, devotional, cathartic - human and more than human objects and/or non-objects - that can infect, disinfect, contaminate, or not the common a.pass space. The depository process is archived with photographs and shared in the form of an album at the end of the Block.

       

      PR - Sina Seifee
      ongoing interviews, public relation

      Sina will make interviews with the participants throughout the whole block one by one on a weekly basis. The interviews are immediately edited into a short videographic piece with a collage style and animated elements from the imagination, the project, or the environment where the talk takes place. The pieces are published every week on multiple social platforms. The main host for the talks will be a subdomain of the a.pass website, which will be designed as a “collector” of the interviews for future access. The interviews in the format of video will be posted and prompted on both a.pass and non-a.pass platforms, where a wider audience has immediate exposure to it as it gets produced during the block.

      The interviews are informal and playful, with a heuristic approach to getting to know the participants' work and their personalities. The interview will be a substitute for mentoring (around), questioning (at), guessing (what), inventing (off), entangling (with) and imagining (on) what they are doing, what they are up to, and which mood they are in. The aim is less about understanding, and more about engaging and guessing fabulously what their matters of care are, with a perspectival (i.e. a reaction that is particular to me) and speculative (the “what if”) force that I embody in my own practice. The talks might take a maximum of two hours of recording and the final edited piece will not be more than 30 minutes long. The publication of the content will be based on the agreement with the participants, how and to which extent each likes to be exposed on social media. The interviews might take place in a.pass or elsewhere.

       

       

      WORKSHOPS / READING SESSIONS

       

      NAIL ART AFFECTS READING SESSIONS - Sara Manente and Adrijana Gvozdenović
      Thursdays, the first half of the block, before the HWD
      13th, 20th, 27th May

      We propose a formalized but relaxed situation, a hybrid form between mentoring and a reading group. We will do each other's nails while reading essays on affect theory. 

      “In ancient Egypt and Rome, military commanders also painted their nails to match their lips before they went off to battle.” Similarly, we will take care of each other, talk about what makes us happy and why do we feel like we feel (Sara Ahmed) to prepare for the “age of anxiety” (Lauren Berlant), to learn how we can repair (Eve Sedgwick) and to “re-enchant the world” (Silvia Federici).

      Doing manicure is a self-care or a professional service that can be considered a beautification process: removing the dead cuticles, massaging and moisturizing the skin, filing, polishing and decorating the nails. It is an intimate, private process and a ritual of preparation that serves the appearance in public. Could this be also a definition of what mentoring is? Can this situation create a space where different reading and discussing of the text can happen? 

       

      OH SO SERIOUS - Antye Guenther
      two days practice, 31st May and 1st June

      Antye is proposing a hybrid workshop practice around seriousness - approached as a state of non-moodiness - as questionable traits of professionalism in the arts. The aim is to propose and test, in conjunction with the participants, various strategies to insert moodiness,  non-seriousness and silliness (back) into artistic (research) practices as a way to de-professionalize. Where are our desires to be serious/ to be taken seriously in professional artistic contexts coming from? In what ways is this an attempt to champion objectivity and rational thinking in strong opposition to affects, moods and feelings, referring hereby as well to suspicious, idealized concepts of scientific practices in the 19th century? And what kind of strategies could help us to evoke processes of the-seriousness-ization for de-professionalization?

      This two-day practice will consist of a (performative) input lecture to shed light on the complex intertwinement of academisation and professionalization in the Arts, which seem to have been fundamentally boosted by neoliberal demands of constant self-advertising and promoting. This lecture will try to trace back specific tropes of professionalism to the 19th century ideal of the scientist as an ‘objective’ data recording device. After this lecture a short reading session will be proposed, to start and stir a conversation around (problematic) seriousness and professional attitudes. This will be followed by the invitation to the participants to share and to reflect on their own seriousness in their practices, what seriousness might mean for them as artists/practitioners in the arts. At the end of the first day, the participants will be asked to think of strategies to oppose rational-objective thinking and to practice hyper-seriousness or non-seriousness as a way to ‘de-professionalize’, which we want to share and test out together the next day.

      In preparation, Antye will collaborate with Sara and Isabel to invent and test specific ‘body practice’ to be added to the toolbox of de-professionalization on the 2nd day.

       

      THE LABOUR OF LAZINESS - Rob & Steyn Bergs
      reading sessions, Thursdays, the second half of the block, after the HWD and one moment in PAF
      24th June, 8th and 15th July

      The Labour of Laziness is dedicated to exploring the ambiguous, complex, and contradictory valences of laziness, and to examine its potentially subversive or invigorating political effects.

      In neoliberalism, tirelessly working on and investing in the self becomes an exigency. Because of their relative economic precarity, but also because of the nature of their work, artists and art workers often find themselves at the forefront (or rather, at one forefront) of exploitation and, perhaps especially, self-exploitation. We are less interested in laziness as a mode of resistance to this neoliberal regime than we are in laziness as a lateral form of political agency. In other words, we are not necessarily after laziness as a straightforward opposition to work—as passivity, as a simple refusal of work, as ‘doing nothing.’

      Instead, in discussing laziness, we want to raise questions about work and productivity in the arts. We will do so through collective reading sessions, taking place in an installation by Sofia Caesar.

      Furthermore, for the duration of the block, participants will be invited to keep a ‘lazy journal’ as a means of reflecting on their own relation to work and (self-)discipline, as well as on their understanding of productivity and how it informs their practice. These journals will be used as a common ground for a final group discussion/workshop. Importantly, the journals need not take the written form; other formats—video, drawing, or other media—can of course also be explored.

       

       

      PARTICIPANTS

      Inga Nielsen, Anantha Krishnan, Jimena Perez Salerno, Carolina Mendonça Ferreira, Gary Farrelly, Aleksandra Borys, Amy Pickles, Chloe Janssens, Ana Paula Camargo, and Vera Sofia Mota.

       

      CURATORS

      Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, and Sina Seifee

       

      Isabel Burr Raty is an artist, filmmaker, teacher and sexual Kung Fu coach exploring the interstices between the biotic and the virtual. She is currently researching on the human body as a territory for sustainable agri-culture and intertwining performance, installation and film to queer labor understandings, offer SF in real-time and play with geo-synthetic magic.
      www.isabel-burr-raty.com

      Adrijana Gvozdenović is an artist interested in artists’ motivation and ways of resisting (self)institutionalized structures. In the last three years, she has been developing methods of collecting and annotating symptomatic artistic practices that recognize their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality, which led to developing formats of publicness that push the borders between research, mediation, and production. These will be tested as needed during the block.
      www.gadi.me

      Antye Guenther is a visual artist, born and raised in East Germany. Drawing from her backgrounds in medicine, photography, and in the military, her art practices orbit around themes like ((non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, computer-brain-analogies and mind control, think tank ideologies and self-optimization, neuroimagery and fictionality of science, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and science fiction. Her work comes then in hybrid forms: performances, performative ceramic objects, fictionalized video tutorials, photo-text works, speculative scripts, artist publications, and narrative installations in various collaborations.
      www.aguenth.de

      Choreographer, dancer and researcher based in Brussels, Sara Manente, is interested in the dynamic relation between performer, work and spectator. Her projects are developed throughout hybrid research and become public in different formats. Currently, she works with aesthetics and ethics at the intersection between live arts and live cultures: namely, fermentation technology, noise, chimerization and (auto)immunity.
      www.saramanente.weebly.com

      Rob Ritzen is co-initiator of THAT MIGHT BE RIGHT, a founding member of LEVEL FIVE and coordinator of PERMANENT. My curatorial practice is focused on self-organized and collaborative formats in close association with cultural practitioners. In my research, I am concerned with social and political constellations that have a hold on everyday life. Cultural practices are a way to dislodge the hold the present has on us.
      www.robritzen.info

      Sina Seifee is an artist based in Brussels, Tehran and Cologne. Using storytelling, video, and performance, he explores and teases with the heritage of zoology in West Asia. His work picks up on how epistemologies, jokes and knowledges get shaped in the old and new intersections of techno-media and globalism.
      www.sinaseifee.com/

       

       
    • a.pass post-graduate program portfolio in the form of a self-interview

      +

      appendix: polish website/archive of the research project (the website is in Polish, but references and content materials are in English)

       

       

      ---

      Self-interview

       

      What brought you to the research that you have been engaged with at a.pass?

       

      First, I want to talk about movement practice; it is my base and the operational system. The movement practice has always been experiential and collaborative. It has grown through learning from and with others, listening to words, moving, formulating instructions, exploring their potentials, or teaching. It has always been working with the space in which it was happening and the materiality of the body and those beyond it. I have been exploring this practice as a practitioner– a mover. As such, a performer is always an agent and an observer of the performative. To perform one needs to be aware of the performativity that is already happening both within and beyond them. I’m interested in making the experience of the ‘performer’ available, for the audience; that is, to become an agent on the inside. Through the audience/performer’s relation to the textual material they are invited to activate the words through their participation. 

       

      Second, I will tell you a story:

      We sit together on a blanket. We are seven, but I say we are five. We are on the lawn in front of a 19th century gallery building that hosts the performance that you imagine you are taking part in. I say all five characters' names and indicate, with each, to a specific person sitting on the blanket (I don't know your real names). I say: we are at the beach, we are wearing bathing suits, one of us is topless. I say: there is a birthday cake in the middle of the blanket.  I describe how it looks with appetite: it has three layers, covered with whipped cream, and decorated with a few strawberries. I say: suddenly, we hear the noise. I say: we turn towards it. I say: we see a dog, a big one, hairy. I say: it is running towards us, fast. I say: it is very close. I say: it is hitting the cake, eating it, destroying it, and making a mess. I say: pieces of cake and drops of whipped cream are landing on our bodies. I say: we are looking at each other, we see our bathing suits and skin are filthy. I say: we are leaving to take a bath in the sea, to rinse the remains of the cake. I get up and leave the place. You follow. (A performative walk in summer 2018)

       

      What were the questions you entered a.pass with, and what was their trajectory? 

       

      My a.pass research proposal had three questions[*] which I was busy with throughout. But, from the very beginning, there was also an underlying inquiry that I’ve only recently named 'the undercover project’. I find it more important than the questions posed in the application. 'The undercover project’, though not proposed directly in my application, was the real motive to enter the a.pass research environment. I unfolded the project in the following questions: How can I engage in research questions not by building a construction (a product) based on elements that are accessible to me in the moment of posing the question, but by continually digging into the problems they evoke? Can I, through practice, dig into implicit relations and assumptions within my research? Can I at least for a while, or sometimes, suspend the connection of my practice to the product it might bring? Can I, instead, turn around to the field I want to explore and experiment within it? Not to repeat the representations but go into interactions with them? Exploring these possibilities is important for me for further functioning within the arts, for refreshing the sense of it, for negotiating with its demands. It was necessary to ask how I want to cultivate my base of the practice beyond, or better to say, under different the manifestations that it may take. 

      Through the research process, I realized that my initial questions were attached to a particular imagination of a product and the context in which it could circulate. I wanted to reformulate my approach to working, to look for other possible openings of my practice. At the very end of a.pass, I realized I was unconsciously repeating the logic of production; using research as a means to produce something. Whilst, I don't see it as necessarily wrong to use research outcomes for further production, in my case, the logic of production was keeping my research in a very narrow frame, thinking towards the future in terms of production was haunting me. Therefore, through a.pass I was able to build skills of resistance. The skills to make a space in which I could engage with research questions and share them in new ways. The booklet I am sharing through the end-presentations is the unperfect footprint of risking entering a different mode of questioning. It is the beginning.

       

      What is your current research? 

       

      The research materializes as written texts, which experiment with the form of the score—a choreographic tool. These scores are to be read by a reader on their own. They are written as scores (in its broadest sense), as tools that produce a specific situation, but rather than thinking of them as instructions, I propose to think of them as a literary form. A score as an instruction assumes a particular mode of attending and a set of abilities to enact it; to focus, to imagine, to act. As an instruction a score attributes value to doing. Here, I counter that attribution of value by opening possibilities of various ways of attending and propose to look at the performativity taking place in an intimate sphere activated through reading. I understand it as an interobjective[†] space created by a reader, a score, and an environment. The participant is invited to explore different ways of engaging with and interpreting the score. The reading of a text is a way of following this proposition and observing one's attendance.  I called this kind of attendance 'speculative doing'—observing, sensing, perceiving, and maybe imagining a further action, physical doing. 

       

      A score is a structure for participation. What do you propose to participate in through these scores? 

       

      The score directs its readers’ attention towards the relations within an environment of which they are part. In particular, I explore how we take part in the materiality of the environment as well as the relations we are already engaged in and have potential to engage with. Building upon observation and somatic experience, I explore environmental relations through navigating attention and developing fictions. This begins with observing our own perceptual and imaginative patterns  by turning our attention towards our embodiment and our surroundings. Exploring the relationality through one's sensual nature puts subjectivity in the network of dynamic relations where human and non-human materiality cannot be sharply separated. It engages the images, beliefs, and scores of 'being a person' and asks how, as such, do we understand our participation in the environment[MOU1]. Fiction is implemented here as a speculative tool for practicing relationality, a tool to create affects—fictional spaces can, and often do, influence patterns of perception.

       

      How do you use text to explore these modes of participation? 

       

      The way of attending I am exploring and proposing demands effort. As William James said: 'Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.'[‡] To open up towards an experience of the material environment, I am looking for ways of giving attention to the possible mergers or dependencies between the bodies of participants and different materialities. An observation is an entry point, a practice to create attention. The research plays out in the area where we observe the grounds that we stand on; to give attention, 'to excavate' relations, processes, and influences we take part in, cause, or are submitted to.

       

      If observation is a tool, what does it serve? Is observation a mindfulness meditation or an awareness exercise? Is your practice a form of human meditation within the earthy matter?

       

      Observation is a tool for exploring the fantasmic minds—real or, at times, fictional sets of relationships that we are part of. It is a method to get acquainted with the unstable nature of fantasmic relations; their changeability, or even the transformation of the worlds known to us. To live with this transformation is to enter into collaboration with a process of decay, overcoming and transforming our own perceptual and existential limits or habits. The observation here (as opposed to how it functions in mindfulness) is not to experience 'myself in the present' but to direct the attention beyond the borders of my body, towards the other, our relation, dynamic of it, and the self, understood as being part of a bigger mind. Observation assumes the unknown (what is yet to come, what is excluded from perception) as potential and invites it to influence the known. 

       

      As a presentation, you propose a booklet, an object to keep in hand, to read in your own space and timing. What kind of encounder do you propose?

       

      Bridging the idea of reading with the participation implied in a score, entangles the readers body with the text in an intimate way. Attending to a conscious observation is a very personal and intimate engagement. I propose the exploration at this level to let this 'close to yourself' experience—the intimate—be influenced. To engage with observation is to explore how you, on this intimate level, are in, and develop, relations with others (human and non-human). How do you perceive and perform your participation within structures? What do you attend to? and what do you exclude yourself from? I was interested and inspired by the precarity of the proposed format and situation. Will the reader try to engage with the imagination within the text? or read across it briefly? Will they engage with the choreographic aspect and relate the text to the body?

      On the other hand, I thought of it as the choreography of precarious times—'poor choreography' or 'poor people choreography'[§]. To create or participate in it, one doesn't need any production machine, theater, scenography, or performers. One doesn't need to buy tickets or even to go out. You can participate in it while being in lockdown, it is accessible wherever you need to be. These ‘poor’ conditions are interesting exactly because they activate a private space and a sense of public-ness within.

      Observation and further speculation are ways to explore our position in the world's material organization; in its systems and structures of power and control. A poet, Forrest Gander, talks about the 'anti-spectacular' potential of poetry which, using just words can focus attention for long hours and cause profound influence even in the context of the “resplendent visual world which often cannot focus attention on anything at all”[**]. I am looking for this kind of anti-spectacular potential of 'written choreography' operating on perceptions, senses, and imagination.

       

      Attention and observation happen in time. Is time a theme in the research?

       

      With this research, I reconsider what it means for a work to be time-based. The environment and the processes happening within it confront us with the passing of time. Different matters have different temporalities, temporal scales, and different dynamic registers of action. The ultimate reference and a tool to think with is, for me, geology, which brings us to the earth as the basic structure of our material being. Geological time teaches us about the constant movement of any and all matter, and it gives us a more-than-human perspective to time. 

       

      I become troubled by thinking of the ‘nowness’ seemingly implicit in performance. 'Being here and now' is often the main category of performative practices. This ‘nowness’ is central to the somatic and improvisation practices that were formative for me and my work. Whilst I appreciate their methodologies—the ways in which they teach us how to give attention and how to be affected—they tend to give attention to an individual experience and place importance on what a subjective 'I' goes through. I have the impression that this approach to practices builds a community whose members develop a  sensibility for their own experience isolated in time and space. It creates a bubble of nowness that celebrates itself, that is, celebrates the individual, and does not create an idea of community with what is not immediately accessible, here and now. I try to work with elements of the somatic within an open-ended environment, in order to revisit individual or collective memories, create and share fiction, and re-observe the environment close to the body. Can we, with somatics, think of a body as something which is not determined by an 'I' and not limited to our materiality, but as an expanding entity in time and space? Can the performative act activate an embodied experience to explore an entity’s sensorial community of different matter and temporalities?

       

      What would be the next step for this research?

       

      I will keep on exploring writing. I want to work on a performative space where the intimacy of silent reading can perform in a public, social and collective space. I am thinking to collaborate with a visual artist to create a performative space where fiction-speculation is co-created by text, matter, words, and participants' bodies.

       

      ---

       

      [*] The central questions of the research proposal "Immersive speculation: choreography activating potentials" are: 

      How can choreography be a form of speculation on environmental transformations?

      How can this speculation address the actual environment in which it is happening?

      How can the viewer with his/her presence be placed inside this speculation?

      [†] Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects; as explained in chapter Interobjectivity; University of Minnesota Press; 2013; s.81-95

      [‡] William James, 'Attention'; in: F.R. David, AUTUMN 2020; uh books with KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin; s.39

      [§] When I talk about precarity I'd like to refer to two artists who help me think about it. First of them is Ligia Clark and her Relational Object, second Lisa Nelson with her precarious composition scores, eg. one named 'Poor people yoga'. 

      [**] Usłyszeć ciszę, interview with Forrest Gander; in Julia Fiedorczuk, Inne Możliwości. O poezji, ekologii i polityce. Rozmowy z amerykańskimi poetami (Other possibilities. On poetry, ecology and politics. Talks with american poets); Katedra Scientific Publisher; Gdańsk 2019; s. 113.

       

      Selected references:

       

      María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care; University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis; 2017

      Julia Fiedorczuk, Inne Możliwości. O poezji, ekologii i polityce. Rozmowy z amerykańskimi poetami (Other possibilities. On poetry, ecology and politics. Talks with american poets); Katedra Scientific Publisher; Gdańsk 2019

      Forrest Gander BĄDŹ BLLISKO (BE WITH), translation Julia Fiedorczuk; LOKATOR; Kraków 2020.

      Peter Handke, The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling; Picador; USA; 2020

      Philippine Hoegen ANOTHER VERSIONThinking through performance’; Onomantopee; Brussels 20202

      Toine Horvers, moving-writing; Toine Horvers and stichting Suburban; Rotterdam 2020

      William James, 'Attention'; in: F.R. David, AUTUMN 2020; uh books with KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin

      Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects; University of Minnesota Press; 2013

      Georges Perec, PRZESTRZENIE (ESPACE), LOKATOR, Kraków 2019

      Ana Vujanović, Landscape dramaturgy: “Space after perspective”; Ana Vujanović’s website (2018)

      Kathryn Yusoff, "Epochal Aesthetics: Affectual Infrastructures of the Anthropocene, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/121847/epochal-aesthetics-affectual-infrastructures-of-the-anthropocene/

       

      Anne Juren, Fantasmical Anatomy research

      Ligia Clark Relational objects

      Ilana Halperin, Geologic Intimacy

       

      Blocks in which I participated:

       

      2 September-1 December 2019

      BLOCK 2019/III 

      A LOOMING SCORE – WE SHARE YOUR POLITICS OF DAMAGE

      CURATORS LILIA MESTRE AND SINA SEIFEE

       

      16 January-27 March 2020 (block closed)

      BLOCK 20/I ZONE PUBLIC

      CO-CURATED BY FEMKE SNELTING / PEGGY PIERROT / PIERRE RUBIO

       

      4 May-31 July 2020 / home (partial participation)

      IN CONFINEMENT

      THE IN-BETWEEN BLOCK 2020 II

       

      14 September-3 October 2020 

      SETTLEMENT 16/ THE UNCONDITIONAL INSTITUTION

      VLADIMIR MILLER

       

      Thanks for...

      The always generous support: Lilia Mestre
      Mentoring of the end project:  Myriam Van Imschoot
      Mentoring throughout the research process: Kristien Van den Brande, Elke Van Campenhout, Valentina Desideri, Nicolas Galeazzi, Philipine Hoegen, Myriam Van Imschoot, Krõõt Juurak, Anne Juren, Sara Manente, Anna Nowicka, Jeroen Peeters, and Femke Snelting
      Facilitating the a.pass program through curating blocks: Lilia Mestre, Vladimir Miller, Peggy Pierrot, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, and Female Snelting. The companionship, support, and challenges: the a.pass researchers with whom I crossed (Deborah Birch, Rui Calvo, Ana Paula Camargo, Chloe Chignell, Diego Echegoyen, Signe Frederiksen, Quinsy Gario, Stefan Govaart, Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Mathilde Maillard, Muslin Brothers, Nathaniel Moore, Vera Sofia Mota, Flavio Rodrigo Orzari, Ferreira Lucia Palladino, Federico Protto, Piero Ramella,, Túlio Rosa Christina Stadlbauer, Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc, Kasia Tórz, Katrine Turner, Amélie van Elmbt, Andrea Zavala Folache)
      English proofreading and editing of my texts: Chloe Chignell
      Making all this possible: the team of a.pass (Lilia Mestre Steven Jouwersma Joke Liberge Michèle Meesen)
      Facilitating shifts of perspectives: Jakub Szymanik



      My participation in a.pass and the realization of this research would not have been possible without the support of Grażyna Kulczyk’s Research Scholarship in the field of choreography granted by Art Stations Foundation.

    • research portfolio
    • PORTFOLIO Rui Calvo
      17 January 2021
      posted by: Rui Calvo
    • case of: Rui Calvo
    •  

      I am deeply grateful to Lilia Mestre and the a.pass researchers who worked in front of my camera, being vulnerable, violent, playful, cheating, confused, confusing and much more: Andrea Zavala Folache, Caterina Mora, Diego Echegoyen, Federico Vladimir, Flávio Rodrigo, Lucia Palladino and Nathaniel Moore. I also thank my mentor, Sara Manente, who participated as a performer in two videos. They were all engaged in doing and thinking with me, each with a different background and contributing in a unique way. The trajectory the research has taken is also due to their collaboration.

      I have a background in cinema and I came to a.pass in order to take a distance from this field. I wanted to think of the audiovisual narrative otherwise. My initial questions surrounded different ways of filming bodies while not imprisoning them in rational discourse. How to create characters that push these limits and reject the logic of belonging, of confirmation? The a.pass proposals and the reading of different texts throughout the trajectory produced new desires that led the research into an eternal conflict between theory and practice. My focus was on filming bodies, their faces, their gestures. Over the course of my research trajectory in a.pass, the constant practice of shooting people from the program who were interested in taking part in the videos, and editing the material gradually, brought new important questions to explore, but the initial one always remained there, always being transformed and gaining broader implications. I have allowed myself to make choices that may be considered naivety or failure, but they were important for discoveries and new paths. So in this portfolio I will present the proposition of each video I made in a.pass; the instructions given to the performers to work in front of the camera; the videos themselves; some notes of the discussions with curators, mentors and researchers about the practice; and quotes of books and texts I was reading – all according to my point of view in the present, while writing and most importantly, editing, as a way of thinking, filming, and rethinking the whole trajectory.

       


       

      FIRST BLOCK: TROUBLED GARDENS

      In the beginning of the block, I had in mind:

      • The body is disciplined to mean something, to the detriment of the dimension of presence. So... Reject psychology. Empty the inner meanings of the gestures and impulses. Refuse to know the mechanics of choice.
      • Acting: a process of self-exploration according to the statement above. It’s fun, playful, madcap... Lived experience as much a product of convention as dramatic experience.
      • Masks > Personalities. Masks are used to adjust oneself to the situation, to the other people involved in it and also to the camera. Deal with masks.
      • Physiognomy: an interest in guessing what meaning lies behind this person’s face; an idea of revealing. Need for a social control of the inner person.
      • Facingness: observe faces and gestures inside a narrative without converting them into signs to reveal the inner psychology – preserve the opacity of this person.
      • Audiovisual narrative where the bodies are not a translation into images of a screenplay and/or a discourse. The production of the character is unstable and influenced by the filming process itself. More interest in the process than the product, in the strength of an instant than in the logic of an action. Create forces that burst open both narrative and representation: the relationship between an image and an object that it should illustrate.
      • Not a screenplay: preserve the natural language of the performers. No learning lines.

      “Une notion comme celle d’identité, aujourd’hui entièrement policière (connotations psychologiques comprises, du ressort des redresseurs de moi en tous genres), recouvre bien un aspect de cette perte: le visage doit être identique, non au sujet, mais à sa définition. Il n’est plus la fenêtre de l’âme, mais une affiche, un slogan, une étiquette, un badge.” A notion like that of identity, today entirely policed (psychological implications included, the responsibility of all kinds of redressers of self) does contain an aspect of this loss: the face must be identical not to the subject but to its definition. It is no longer the window to the soul, but a poster, a slogan, a label, a badge. - JACQUES AUMONT

       

      FIRST VIDEO (june 2019)

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/501681981/b76441f773[/embed]

       

      Shooting part I: frame Caterina’s body in wide shot. She is moving, dancing, rehearsing. An introduction to the next shot, creating a curiosity about her.

       

       

      Shooting part II: Caterina’s face.

      • practice my role behind the camera when I don’t have a script or a goal regarding content. What am I seeing through the camera in this context?
      • practice a close relationship between the performer and the camera, or a dynamic of intersubjectivity between the cameraman and the model.

      Instructions to Caterina:

      1. Silence. Don’t talk. Stay in the chair. You can look around, you are not supposed to stand still. Sometimes I want you to look at the camera, establish a relationship with it, as if it were someone else, a character.
      2. Staying in the chair, look for a spot in the room that catches your attention. Observe it and describe what you see.

      Caterina’s feedback: “I was not super much thinking and I was just trying to be, like, calm. [...]  At first I was trying to be pretty and then I was a bit bored of myself… And… It’s not that I, I was thinking into something… I was just trying to focus on being here [...] But I was trying to be calm. To not to do, so... but I think I did a lot. [...] Or try to not have an opinion of what I was doing.”

       

       

      Shooting part III: Flávio’s face. It was filmed later, without Caterina and it was less improvised, since I was planning the filming according to what happened in the previous shoot.

      Instructions to Flávio:

      1. Silence. Don’t talk. Stay in the chair. You can look around, you are not supposed to be completely still. Sometimes I want you to look at the camera, establish a relationship with it, as if it were someone else, a character. I will not count the time, but you should stay like this for a few minutes. So, in your time, I won’t say anything, you look at the camera and say: “I’m gonna put a song” and then you get up and go left. When you return, talk to me but looking at the camera, I have questions for you. And you also must have questions for me. Do you think you are acting now?

       

      Editing: connect Caterina’s and Flávio’s close-ups as if they were shot and countershot. Since they don’t interact and don’t talk about the same subjects, observe what their faces and gestures express in that mixture.

       

      Video's presentation feedback: Philippine Hoegen, one of the mentors of the block, sees a mixed relationship with the object, a game with it, in which there were no signifiers for Caterina. Surface x psychology. She says that the fact of framing implies a choice and immediately creates a relationship. Nicolas observes that a causality was created during editing, but not only that. A way of editing that controls and loses control, falls in love with faces. Caterina thinks I should be busy with clarifying the methodology of editing, and my role as an editor. It makes me think back to my interest in the strength of the instant over the logic of an action. How to play with this strength in the editing?

       

      SECOND VIDEO (july 2019)

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/500775699/6089a324a8[/embed]

       

      Unlike the first video, this one is about interaction between performers, and most of the time the camera is far away from them. The general situation of the scene is not clear, but each of them has two or three instructions to follow, a score in which they hover between fiction and being themselves – a creation of subjectivity through filming. None knows the instructions of the others. A score to ensure that the performers are not subordinate to the causality of narrative, that they surpass the limits of a given role and don’t reduce themselves to a character or an identity.

      Instructions to the performers:

      Flávio

      . all the time you must be eating a fruit or talking

      . you don’t want Diego in bed

      Lilia

      . read a book (Strangers to Ourselves or Sexus) that you find on the bed, sometimes aloud

      . attentively observe Flávio and his body

      . invite Diego to bed

      . “Do you wanna go back to Brazil?”

      Diego

      . make questions about the couple Lilia and Flávio

      . say many times: “I’m ok. Don’t worry.” “Do you want me to leave?”

      . don’t look at them too much and when you look, disguise that you are looking

       

      The close-ups are shot after the improvisation, a sort of interview in which I ask them questions related to subjects they were discussing in the shooting.

      The improvisation is shot three times, alway restarting from the beginning, like in a rehearsal in which a scene is improved and a dramaturgy is created. But the aim is to create a score that allows people and relationships to be constantly in construction. To go further in this goal, the répétition (rehearsal and repetition in French) will be practiced in a different way in the following a.pass blocks, recording an ongoing situation that stops only when the shooting finishes (this subject will be explored later on). 

      The wide shot shows the space in its entirety, a recognizable space (a bedroom) that somehow situates the fictional situation. But it’s more a backdrop for a pursuit. Placing people together in bed is charged with meaning, and I want to see how they would deal with this without having a clear fictional framing. 

      Since the camera doesn’t get close to the performers, it doesn’t interfere much in the way they act. In some videos further on, I will hold it closer to them, making the intrusion of filming more noticeable, and opening the possibility for the performers to experience a different embodiment via the intersection of context and camera.

      In this video, I don’t see a different temporality being created, nor a puncture (something that appears in the middle, between fiction and reality) or an awkwardness. Sometimes something close to this happens, like at 17:50 in the timeline of this video: Lilia says she feels more respected now that she’s getting older, then she covers herself with a blanket and talks about disappearing, not being framed. Her words cause discomfort in Flávio and Diego. There is a moment of silence in which they don’t know how to act. It’s an important quality in the development of the research, which I will go further with in the next videos.

      During the video’s presentation in a.pass, Nicolas Galeazzi, curator of the block, observes that some instructions given to the performers have different qualities compared to others. For example, “all the time you must be eating a fruit or talking” produces something different to “you don’t want Diego in bed.” This is another practise I develop in the following block.

       


       

      "Learning to be awkward, to be graceful, to leap, and to fall is a training in attention and also in revisceralizing one's bodily intuition. It is a training that collapses getting hurt with making a life, but that includes the welcoming of exposure alongside of a dread of it. There can be no change in life without revisceralization. This involves all kinds of loss and transitional suspension."  - LAUREN BERLANT

      “Which is preferable: changing my personality and keeping my body, or changing my body and keeping my current manner of experiencing reality? A fake dilemma. Our personalities arise from this very gap between body and reality.” - PAUL PRECIADO

      “Contrary to the Lacanian theory of the mirror state, according to which the child’s subjectivity is formed when it recognizes itself for the first time in its specular image, political subjectivity emerges precisely when the subject does not recognize itself in its representation. It is fundamental not to recognize oneself. Derecognition, disidentification is a condition for the emergence of the political as the possibility of transforming reality.” - PAUL PRECIADO

      “Perhaps Lingin suggests, rather than transmitting clear meanings, the encounter rests on an acknowledgment of an elemental otherness that is related to our own. ‘We don't relate to the light, the earth, the air, and the warmth with our individual sensibility and sensuality’. We communicate to one another the light your eyes know...’” - AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG quoted by KAREN BARAD

      “Living compassionately, sharing in the suffering of the other, does not require anything like complete understanding (and might, in fact, necessitate the disruption of this very yearning).” - KAREN BARAD

      “Saying 'the truth is a creation’ implies that the production of truth goes through a series of operations consisting in working a matter, a series of falsifications in the literal sense... each one is a falsifier of the other, each one understands in his own the notion proposed by the other. It is these powers of the false that will produce the true.” - GILLES DELEUZE

       


       

      SECOND BLOCK: A LOOMING SCORE

      One of the proposals of this block is a weekly meeting where each person presents 5 minutes of a practice, work, or something regarding their research, and about which another participant asks a question, and a third one answers on behalf of the first. Each asks and answers on the basis of his/her own research. I present videos that I shoot one day per week with performers and edit right after filming. Throughout this process, my questions from the previous block remain, but with new contours, and alongside new questions. The room where I film the videos is dark and not recognizable as a place: it’s not a living room, a bar, a rehearsal room, thus troubling the space where the performers can situate themselves (in fiction or reality). This creates the conditions for sub-narratives to arise and evolve. The instructions given to the performers have one or more of the characteristics listed below:

      • that they stimulate repetition
      • that they depend on personal interpretation according to their own feelings and opinions
      • they don’t depend on personal interpretation, opinions, or feelings; the performers do it and right after have to process what was done: they are not protected by a character context
      • that they demand attention to find the cue, a right moment to do it
      • that they divert attention
      • that they interfere in the flow of the action, of the narration
      • that they activate an otherness (“Is it me who did it or not?”)
      • that they demand the knitting of stories (the self does not produce fiction, but is instead produced by fiction); personal stories are mingled with tasks that move towards fiction

      One new fundamental element of these videos is violence. There’s violence in the stories the performers are asked to tell, but none are told the instructions of the others, so there’s a tension of not knowing who has instructions that demand disrespect or aggression, nor what they might do with them (so they play a dynamic of glances). There is the violence of framing bodies, allowing the spectator to see what the performers see and also to watch the seeing, which the performers can’t. The cut in the editing becomes more prominent once the context (either real or fictional) is more unclear; every cut becomes an ellipse. The ellipse can be considered violent, but it can also be seen as a way of interfering in the moving image, freeing it from the surveilling eyes of the spectator.

      Having to admit some aggression and to move within dissatisfaction (the inconvenience of other people), I ask them to not take the agressions too personally and to look for something in between the score and the improvisation. What kind of encounter is possible in such a context of tension, vulnerability, exposure to the other and to the camera, ongoing rupture, misunderstanding and indeterminacy? What kind of encounter is possible in a situation where the body has no stable response to an intention, because neither the filmmaker nor the performers have access to one? How much are these violent thoughts already embedded in the performers? If in the beginning of the research there was still an idea of character – though already unstable and influenced by the filming process itself – now this idea is even more troubled. What can be imagined in that scenario? What kind of alchemy is produced with those elements?

      The instructions are given to the performers right before filming and, once I start shooting, I record uninterruptedly for one or two hours in the same space. So the actions, lines and stories contained in the instructions are repeated many times in an ongoing situation, creating a different temporality. The state of not knowing is prolonged. It’s a framed encounter in which improvisations are perpetually rearranged and rearticulated. The language spoken is mostly English, which none of us has as our mother tongue, and which therefore evolves as queered communication. This becomes an important element in my work within this context.

      The video below is the final edit of all the videos I made throughout the looming score.

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/496829852/95cb3f8106[/embed]

      Instructions for the visitors:

      • watch the whole video before reading further
      • then read the instructions for the performers 
      • remember that each video was originally shown without revealing the instructions to the spectators
      • and that the whole series of looming videos were shot without the performers ever knowing each other’s instructions

      Instructions for the performers:

       

       

       

       

       

      first part

       

       

       

       

       

      everyone but Lilia

      • you cannot be the first to say something.

      Lilia

      • first sentence you should say: “I realized that when you socially don’t notice the violence, it is because you do it.”
      • take notes

      Caterina

      •  what are the others hiding or showing/revealing? 
      • say “Stop that acting”
      • always non-stop looking at the one who speaks

      Flávio

      • always start speaking using “I” 
      • hit the table to get attention or interrupt someone

      Lucia

      • repeat the sentence until it is understood or you are convinced that you were understood
      • when someone says something, you stare at him/her for a while

       

       

       

       

       

      second part

       

       

       

       

       

      Lilia

      • tell again the train story you told in the first video, repeating it throughout the shooting, each time filling the story with more details

      Caterina

      • say to Flávio “Listen to her”

      Flávio

      • always start each sentence saying “I...”

       

       

       

       

       

      third part

       

       

       

       

       

      Flávio

      • tell Lilia’s story about the train as if it had happened to you
      • do not move while speaking, only when you need to show an object or make a clear gesture while telling the story

      Diego

      • ask details about the story, always mixed with comments about the perception of Flávio in the present, his behavior, his gestures (e.g. What are you looking at? You’re warm. Your eyes are tiny. Your eyes change when you say [this word]).

       

       

       

       

       

      forth part

       

       

       

       

       

      Lucia

      • tell the story about violence that you told in the first video, making only important gestures in order to explain it. Stay clear-eyed in the scene of violence, repeat the story giving more details, creating facts, trying to communicate.

      Flávio

      • describe the gestures and behavior of Lucia and imitate them

      Diego

      • ask about the other involved in Lucia’s story, imagining this role in the story
      • play with a balloon
      • ask Lucia many times: “Is it violent?”

       

       

       

       

       

      fifth part

       

       

       

       

       

       

      Caterina

      • Tell Lilia’s train story as if it had happened to you
      • Touch Lilia
      • Repeat some of Lilia’s words
      • Smile a lot 

      Lilia

      • Say to Caterina that the story didn’t happened the way she’s telling it
      • Ask Caterina to choose an insult against a woman and Lilia repeats it
      • Describe people who pass on the streets and their behavior

      The camera’s potential to interfere with the improvisation of the performers is not yet as incisive in these videos as it could be. Most of the time I am holding the camera far away and getting closer only by zooming in. In later videos, the camera, as well as my presence, will be more intrusive or at least there I will make attempts towards this. Jeroen Peeters, one of my mentors, participates in a filming practice as an observer and draws my attention to the question of whether I should be more present in the shooting. I think about my voice, my gestures (hors champ or not), the camera and my thoughts as possible agents of interference.* Jeroen also remarks on the private dramaturgy that is produced in each performer. I could also play more with my interference, allowing it to facilitate or threaten what is being produced.

      * For me, it seems that “interference” is a concept that was always part of the research, but it was Lilia who drew my attention to it in a conversation in my last block.

       


       

      “It is repetition that which ruins and degrades us, but it is repetition that which can save us and allow us to escape from the other repetition. Kierkegaard had already opposed a fettering, degrading repetition of the past to a repetition of faith, directed towards the future, which restored everything to us in a power which was not that of Good but of the absurd. To the eternal return as reproduction of something always already-accomplished, is opposed the eternal return as resurrection, a new gift of the new, of the possible.”  - GILLES DELEUZE

      “Tout l’effort du développement ‘technique’ du cinéma [...] revient à naturaliser l’image cinématographique, c'est-à-dire à la domestiquer, à la familiariser [...] Adieu à l'inquiétante étrangeté, adieu à l’altérité non récupérable, adieu au réel non encore cadrable.” The whole endeavour of ‘technical’ development in cinema [...] comes back to naturalising the cinematographique image, meaning domesticating it, familiarising it [...] Goodbye to troubling strangeness, goodbye to irretrievable otherness, goodbye to the as-yet-unframeable real. - JEAN-LOUIS COMMOLI

      “The lack of elements to glue things creates an openness, a possibility of never settling. We cannot block out the irrationality, the perversity, the madness we fear, in the hopes of a more orderly world. [...] Indeterminacy is not a lack, a loss, but an affirmation, a celebration of the plentitude of nothingness.” - KAREN BARAD

      “Relationality always includes a scenic component, a fantasmatic staging.”
      “Transforming the story of cause and effect to a spectacle of cause and side effects.” - LAUREN BELANT

      “...identity allows us to distance ourselves from any actual manifestation of queerness”
      “...accept the inauthencity at the core of something, understand it as a social institution, while still self-consciously and undeceivedly, succumbing to it.”
      - DAVID HALPERIN

       


       

      THE IN-BETWEEN (BLOCK) 

      (an extra block to keep working on our research while having a lot of questions and a myriad of uncertain responses in self-confinement)

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/502113573/783aa7dbda[/embed]

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/499227081/7b346852c7[/embed]

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/499345273/0150a29bd1[/embed]


       

      “Lies are so hard to keep track of. It's like you're constantly being reborn every time you begin a new sentence.” - DENNIS COOPER

      “L'art de vivre, c'est de tuer la psychologie, de créer avec soi-même et avec les autres des individualités, des êtres, des relations, des qualités qui soient innomés.” The art of living is to kill psychology, to create with oneself and with others unnamed individualities, beings, relations, qualities.  - MICHEL FOUCAULT

      “Ideia de identidade só funciona quando a subjetividade está reduzida ao sujeito”. The idea of identity only works when subjectivity is reduced to the subject. - SUELY ROLNIK

      "Shame is the affect that mantles the threshold between introversion and extroversion, between absorption and theatricality, between performativity and — performativity." - EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

       


       

      FOURTH BLOCK: SETTLEMENT

      The aim of the Settlement workshop is “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.” Trying to adapt my research to this proposal, I work on making a set for my filming practice. A nondescript space, a potential landscape that doesn’t represent a specific place but whose elements engender different connotations according to the acting of the performers and how I choose frame (dark spots, a red curtain, a corridor).

      The following video is shot in that space, mixing up a private and intimate sphere with a theatrical scene. Although the performers discuss the news, tell personal stories and perform violent gestures, there is no predetermined discourse. The aim is to have no project, to preserve a way of filming that is a form of thinking in real time, to create the conditions for something to emerge, to articulate new meanings or to dislocate the subject of meaning altogether. In this shoot, the performers acknowledge the camera and the viewer’s presence more, resulting in uncomfortable physical responses to the act of being filmed and encaged, or to the feeling of being “unmasked.”

      My work with the camera and the editing opens a negotiation between what I watch, what I feel about it, what I would like to produce. There are moments that flow in their whole duration (“real time”) and other ones that I cut more, creating a cumulative effect of time.

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/501671946/2d2e19e6f1[/embed]

       

      Some extracts from the interview with the performers of the video above (Andrea Zavala Folache, Caterina Mora, Lilia Mestre) about their experience and Kasia Tórz as a mediator. The transcription is faithful to the syntax of the speakers.

      RC: How would you define the agency you had? 

      LM: ...is about interfering, possibility of interfering. Dislocating as well what’s happening. And also [...] to not do, you can stop anytime. [...] it’s not sequential instruction in a way. I think interference is the best word. Which is a generator.

      [...]

      I think we are on standby and then things start to happen. There’s quite some rupture [...] It doesn’t need to be violent [...] but to cut through.

      KT: Andrea, do you also share this notion of interfering?

      AZF: Yes, in the sense of… I thought the agency I was given or I was taken was one with autonomy, like that the agency was autonomous to... to be responsible of when to interfere or change track of things or when to enable the score or disable it. It makes me think also of interdependence, so interfering as a sort of… that this fear that creates the action where the three of us are agents, is one that is interconnected. So it’s an interdependent relationship of… I have my autonomy but it doesn’t take away the responsibility to actually, anything I do can be changing how things will resolve themselves or get lost.

      CM: So for me about interference, I don’t feel it more in terms of the dramaturgy because I feel more the continuation actually, the repetition of the rule. And when I see interference is more in terms of the rhythm, so something in the rhythm of what’s happening is being cut but something that appears. But for me the agency is more related to how much can I push the rule, how much the rule resists. My agency is kind of being as obedient as possible.

      RC: How much agency you have? Is it something you can play with or... are you in a trap? Does vulnerability allow boundaries to be open or the opposite?

      LM: The instructions are my guidelines to interfere. [...] I do feel trapped but not badly. It also feels like “Ok, this is what you can do”, so it’s also relaxing to know that “ok, this is what you can do”. It’s not a trap in a negative way, like finding our way out of there. But I feel that the conditions are well established, I can’t... I’m well situated. Maybe the environment defines very much where you are and how you can move within that space.

      [...]

      In terms of vulnerability, I do feel vulnerable... There’s nothing bad. I never felt bad. Neither to feel trapped. Neither to feel vulnerable. Neither to interfere. So there’s something there supporting these actions or these qualities that you are naming. So I also feel confident that I can feel vulnerable. Sometimes I think it’s needed somehow so I’ll work for that, to try to be in that place of vulnerability. This is my own thing.

      KS: Have you ever questioned the instructions or had a desire to add something or to cheat a bit?

      AZF: For me, the cheating is totally inscribed in the rules somehow. I am given enough information to know I can’t know all the rules… So there's an impossibility for me to know everything, you know, to hold all the information of the rules. So then there’s gaps of interpretation that opens up a... Maybe that’s also for the agency, a sense of being able to interpret and cheat. But I think when I was performing... It’s kind of actually hard to cheat because the rules are not so many so there’s a lot of space to do many other things… so the rules imply that not everything that I would do it’s a rule or something the director has told me to, so then all those other things are they cheating? So to cheat I guess would be to not obey the rule so even that it’s impossible. I mean unless we have a long conversation about exactly how my interpretation can follow a rule, but so I feel like it’s a sort of puzzle that I enter. [...] And the fact that I’m giving the information to have enough knowledge that it is a puzzle, then I feel a lot of trust from both Lilia and Caterina, and from Rui. And then the vulnerability can actually be embraced in a way. I like to think that vulnerability doesn’t contradict confidence. That in order to be vulnerable, especially in performing, you need confidence to actually be vulnerable for something. So that trust for me is really key. You know, that you trust my interpretations, my cheating, my following the rules, all of this is part of the puzzle. And I don’t feel totally trapped in it but I understand that walls are needed somehow.

      RC: The instructions allow cruel actions, but these violences are not often followed by a reaction  (no punishment, no confrontation, no resolution). Do you feel surprised by some of the actions of the others and how do you deal with it?

      LM: Instructions are not much given of how to react but more how to propose. (...) In relation to the one when Andrea calls me cunt, that was hard actually. I mean it was difficult to… And then it was very interesting to see how I could somehow compensate that humiliation somehow, right?  How can I reunite myself again as a character? So it's a moment of being disarmed, you’re like “ok”, and then how do I build it up, how do I create some consistency that I don’t collapse. How to rebuild to be able to play, to be able to be there.

      AZF: I also felt that when I called Lilia a cunt, the violence was in realizing that I would not do that in my life. So what am I saying “yes” to here?. Like am I doing it for the sake of art or a friend? So the fiction of the apparatus sort of save the violence but there’s still an ethical question in me of how far do I go for art. Because if I would be an actress following a script, people would know I’m a character. So it’s sort of excused in a way. And here because part of the script is taken out or something, it’s almost like I’m playing Andrea so I am close to reality. So people don’t know how I am playing with fiction actually, so the fictions that I play for myself are not totally visible. Then that kind of unappointed fiction or undefined fiction is what is the most violent of the work. But at the same time there’s still a part of fiction so I don’t feel extreme, not actually that it is causing any deep trouble.

      CM: It often happens I’m kind of surprised in my interior. And then it’s a bit shocking because… the camera is there not far away… Depending on how this surprise is, I’m also trying to integrate it. [...] A lot of things are happening because I’m always producing in relation to how I feel, to this surprise… And how I deal with this surprise.

      LM: I was thinking about our relationship outside of the camera, the situation. So I mean the level of complicity or friendship that we have already between us and... How does this play within when we are playing? Because we are all doing indeed ourselves and we are all part of this program, so we carry something with us already in the projection of who we are towards each other, so there’s another score in there also. There’s a system of relations that it’s there. If we were foreigners to each other it would be another one. Here we have a degree of knowledge of each other that comes from a.pass. We are all very much foreigners, we all come from different parts of the world with different stories. So we carry that and then we carry some common ground within the program and then we go inside that room.

      CM: The most violent is the editing, when I see how it’s also then afterward manipulated.

      LM: Always something can turn, the things can turn around, into another direction. In this sense there’s a bit of maybe immanent violence, there’s a sense of this quietness. It can be fun… I always feel a certain tension there where things could turn. I put some violence there. (...) Like, something can come from the back, something can come from a place that you didn’t… So maybe this is because we know that the instructions are different and then we don’t know them,  so there is an alertness in a way.

      RC: Each instruction has a different quality in the repetition. What does it do? It’s a skill-development instead of character-development?

      LM: I think that’s very hard actually, to repeat. Spontaneous is maybe more “ok”, you just throw yourself, let’s try this. But then repeat that you have to think twice. And then I think in a way it’s there where the work starts. Like how do you say it, and then maybe sometimes you just say it halfway... This is one thing, there’s a lot of practice in there. I feel the most acting practice comes from that place actually, of how to repeat things. And then I also think It creates a certain intimacy. [...] maybe not intimacy but history. Like I’ve been there before. I have heard it before. I’ve heard you say that before. I’m not telling that story myself. There is something that builds like a common history. Like the story of the train that it’s there since the beginning, now Andrea also knows that story but she doesn’t know exactly where it started, how it was originally. This story became something that we all know collectively and we all have different relations to that thing. [...] You don’t know anymore if it was real not real, how and what happened actually, but somehow you have an idea of that story.

      CM: [repetition] creates a condition that escapes, it’s escaping from the succeeds and failures, another condition of doing it. It doesn’t have to succeed because it doesn’t have to fail. [...] It creates a condition to navigate in all [...] What I like from repetition is that all the time it pushes me in the same position of doing something I don’t know if I would do it in a situation.

      AZF: For me is also a concrete form of awkwardness, that I value a lot as well. It’s kind of like being “hey, how are you?”, “hey, how are you?”, “hey, how are you?”. Like if you just give yourself whatever word and then you repeat it, it becomes absurd as well. Or everytime you say, there’s no training of it, other than saying it, so the intention changes so it’s awkward to say it again without knowing what’s the difference in the intention [...] If all I have to do is say a line and I have to rehearse it, but now I can’t rehearse but I have to repeat it, so it becomes more and more awkward for myself.

      LM: For example, in the laughter, it’s an interesting one. To have to laugh. Because I feel definitely awkward because there’s no reason, right. But then at the same time I have to say it was like listen to yourself, I know what a laugh can be, a real laugh. There’s also the question of the real laugh. Can I really do it for real?

      CM: All the time it allows displacement, the repetition. 

      RC: And the role of the camera?

      AZF: It’s like a level of being hyper aware, of self-awareness, alertness maybe, surveillance. I don’t think I forgot at any point that there was a camera.

      KT: Did you enjoy it also?

      AZF: Yeah. I guess that’s the creepiness of exposure and performance. It’s pervert. (...) I think I got at some point reminded that my agency has the right to challenge you as well and the camera. And I am so hyper aware of where it is that at any point I could just do this:

      [Andrea is the one in the lower left]

      LM: I think it happens more when you [Rui] are inside, in the beginning you were not inside. It was much more disarming because you don’t know at all, you just have the camera away with everything and you don’t know if it’s coming closer or further, so you are much more disarmed. Once you are there then… cause there’s also the possibility of getting away from the camera. You can also leave. You can also go. And in a way I think it becomes a character, there’s also Rui there. It’s also intrusive in a way, like “I’m looking at this, I’m interested in that”.

      RC: But it’s less voyeur?

      LM: Yes. I think it’s less voyeur.


       

    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 2
    • block 2021/I
    • Printer's Devils
    • Printer's devils Research Center Cycle 2 Block III
      17 January 2021
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre, Pia Louwerens, Kristien Van den Brande
    • 04 January 2021
    • 04 April 2021
    • Printer's devils

      One publishes to find comrades! So says André Breton. The researchers in the current cycle of the research centre — Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens — are ending their trajectories at a.pass with a block focused on publishing, and the myriad of relations implied in committing something to print. Publishing is rarely something that concludes a confined process of solitary thought. It is a social process that — abstractly and manifestly — involves collaboration along the way: sometimes with fellow interlocutors, sometimes with an editor or designer at the other end of the table, sometimes with abstract ideas of what readership might entail. Rather than aiming for a book or for printed matter as a finite goal, we will take publishing as a pretext to build relationships that last over time. How can a publication be set up as an ongoing social gesture, a space for the continued production of meaning and reverberance?

      This block has a weekly organization, whereby Tuesdays alternate between a technical-dramaturgical help-desk, and editorial-curatorial approaches. Help-desk Tuesdays are more loosely structured around practical needs of the collective and individual publications. How did you do this? Why would you do that? During the editorial-curatorial Tuesdays we work on a collective publication, addressing a breadth of concerns in publishing (commonplace books, performative publishing, the interplay between analogue and digital publishing, orality and transcription, co-writing, the power of address, self-writing, ventriloquism, reading as writing, distribution).

      The researchers' collective publication process is hosted by madewitholga.be, a virtual residency space, designed for research and experimentation. It is the sister-space of oralsite.be, a platform for digital artist publications, initiated by Sarma. The collective publication commences as a collective commonplace book, an inventory of what was found noteworthy during the shared research time at a.pass. How did epiphanic thoughts, ideas or observations materialize in notebooks, notepads, post-its, letters, etc; what kind of publicness is enacted at the outset of noting them down; and what operations or translations can we perform to enhance readability?

      Throughout the previous blocks the researchers have been assisted, respectively by Vladimir Miller and Nicolas Galeazzi. The upcoming three months are organized by Kristien Van den Brande, in collaboration with the researchers.

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • block 2021/I
    • I feel like leaving the room End Presentations 2021 I
      16 January 2021
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • online: https://ifeellikeleavingtheroom.online
    • 28 January 2021
    • 29 January 2021
    • I feel like leaving the room

      a.pass welcomes you the:
      29th January 2021 – 19:30 – TV show -Collective presentation – 2h30 hours

      Join Zoom Meeting
      is finished.... 

      Check out :  https://ifeellikeleavingtheroom.online/

      I feel like leaving the room  is the title of the postgraduate End Presentations of researchers Rui Calvo (film maker), Quinsy Gario (poet, visual and performance artist), Adriano Wilfert Jensen (choreographer), Magdalena Ptasznik, (choreographer) and Kasia Tórz (dramaturg and writer).

      After attending to the extended one year program at a.pass, the five researchers finish their trajectory with an online presentation of a collective website. Covid 19 and the restrictions of the confinement have framed the space of these public presentations in an uncanny entanglement between the private and the public. I feel like leaving the room  is more than anything the (liminal) desire to come together. The form of this coming together takes shape around an ad-hoc TV show that will be streamed the 29th of January from the a.pass studio as an attempt to still intertwine thoughts and experiences.

      In the beginning, the space for this public moment was imagined as a living room, as a place where the borders of the informal and the formal are blurred.  Not as a real physical living-room but by using the conditions implied in such well known private (though public) environment, with the aim of engaging the audience in a different way. What happens when research becomes public as a workshop, a power point presentation, a film, a dance or a walk that steers from such a hangout surrounding?

      As a consequence of the pandemic that determines the conditions of coming together – the living room became the desired ‘leaving room’ – a place, as well, between the private and the public but enclosing the publicness in separated private spaces with only one window – a window to the virtual. The artists researchers addressed that liminal space in various ways in accordance with the medium they mainly work with. Inevitably, the translations that will take place, address the current situation of the confinement, while trying to reach out to the world.

      Rui Calvo's research on non-linear narratives in cinema, has worked  with a group of performers in closed environments, claustrophobic settings, directive instructions that constrain the performers, as much as the audience, in a enclosed space of angst. In his films, no-one knows what, where and how these characters got together and which forces bind them to the situation they find themselves in. Like in a ‘chamber piece’ a small number of characters interacting over a short period of time in a limited environment create an awkward intimacy caught by the camera, from which they (maybe) want to leave. There is always the promise of an outside world created by a window, a curtain or the staircase, a promise that is never fulfilled. Cinema (audiovisual setting) is the medium by excellence we can access during the times we live. The medium that allows us to escape from the living room. But to where?

      with Andrea Zavala Folache, Caterina Mora, Diego Echegoyen, Federico Vladimir, Flávio Rodrigo, Lilia Mestre, Lucia Palladino, Nathaniel Moore and Sara Manente.

      Quinsy Gario's research focuses on de-colonial practices by revisiting archival material, institutional protocols and historical facts questioning the politics behind who gets to speak, when and how. By re-using existing materials, his work re-calls systems of oppression and proposes strategies and tactics of epistemic disobedience and fugitivity. For his End Presentation, Quinsy thinks through the Fragile sticker, used in the transport, and the imagery of travel, migration and seeking refuge elsewhere. The proposition gives attention to the precarious status quo of mobility and the destitution of private space of diaspora and fragile groups, specially threatened in time of forced confinement.

      Adriano Wilfert Jensen ’s research followed three interrelated paths:  spectatorship as practice, dance as a labor of depersonalizing the self and politics of collaboration. Through collaborative processes Adriano, developed dances that sought to cultivate response -ability in spectatorial practice. For his End Presentation he will present a letter on practice based spectactorship along with commented dance scores on the webpage of the group.

      Magdalena Ptasznik, worked on several scores to introduce, instigate, and reflect upon the network of relations with other- than- human existences. She approaches choreography as a generative practice to speculate about future fictions for a world in environmental crisis. By using somatic practices, site-specific materials, storytelling in workshop settings, Magda seeks to empower change through activating collective imaginaries with the audience. For her End Presentation, a publication will be launched with a collection of writings that circulate around the idea of the score as a form of activating self-choreographic agencies.

      Kasia Tórz's, research on the notion of dissolving boundaries (smarginatura) engages in the liminal space between the private and the public, the textual and the image, reality and imagination, the conscious and the unconscious. Smarginatura makes reference to the writer Elena Ferrante and the main character of her Neapolitan Novels, Lila Cerullo, who experiences losing her solid outlines and melting into her surroundings. Kasia experimented with expanded forms of storytelling by engaging with image, voice, body practices and performance in her writing, by blurring the lines between reality and fiction in a daily life basis. For her End Presentation she will invite the audience to a nocturnal session.

      This introduction took the flavour of a weather report. As times change in unforeseen ways, as complex forces conduct the environment, as the temperature is warmer than normal, as violence is unrated, as the soul is disoriented, as politics are going ashtray, the weather, here in Brussels, is grey and symptomatic of great confusion.
      Stay home for now, imagine spring is coming soon and we all feel like leaving the room. 

       

      *

       

      BIOS ad extra content

      Rui Calvo is a Brazilian filmmaker who works as screenwriter, director and editor. He graduated from the University of São Paulo with a degree in Audiovisual Arts. Among his short films are “Whole Man” and “Quito”, which were screened at festivals in different countries, as Canada, England, South Africa and Argentina. “The Death of Helena”, his first feature film as a director and screenwriter, was recipient of a grant for film project development in Brazil. Now he is looking for opportunities to produce the movie in a country governed by the far-right and which has been destroying, among other things, the cultural sector.


      In most of Rui's previous short-films, the discomfort regarding one’s own body and the non-belonging feeling (or the lack of identity) are part of the content. Formerly, these concerns were built in the script in a linear narrative way and then translated into images. Coming to a.pass was a way of take a distance from the cinema field and think of audiovisual narrative otherwise. Through out the program, Rui addresses his initial question, on how to film bodies and not imprison them in rational discourse by taking “real life” as much as a product of convention as acting, by giving instructions ( that do not build a character) to the performers to play with in front of the camera and by creating filming settings that don't reassure a fictional background where the performers can situate themselves. In this way, the production of fiction is unstable and influenced by the shooting process itself, in which the performers hover between being characters and themselves, creating subjectivity through filming. The alchemy of these elements produces encounters filled with tension, vulnerability and exposure to the other and also to the camera, which is left with an undergoing process of rupture, misunderstanding and indeterminacy, creating this way conditions for under-narratives to appear.

      *

      Quinsy Gario is a performance poet and artist from Curaçao and St. Maarten, two island that share continued Dutch colonial occupation. His work centers on decolonial remembering and unsettling institutional and interpersonal normalizations of colonial practices. Gario's most well-known work is Zwarte Piet Is Racisme (2011–2012). As a member of the collective Family Connection established in 2005 by Glenda Martinus and Gala Martinus, respectively his mother and aunt, his current research is attempting to institute another way of archiving. He is a Utrecht University media studies, gender studies and postcolonial studies alumnus and a graduate of the Master Artistic Research program of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. He is a 2017 Humanity in Action Detroit Fellow, 2017/2018 BAK Fellow, 2019/2020 APASS participant and a 2020/2021 Sandberg Institute Critical Studies Fellow. Gario received the Royal Academy Master Thesis Prize 2017, the Black Excellence Award 2016, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival Silver Award 2015, The Kerwin Award 2014 and the Hollandse Nieuwe 12 Theatermakers Prize 2011. His work has been shown in among other places Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), MACBA (Barcelona), Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MHKA (Antwerp), TENT (Rotterdam) and Göteborgs Konsthall (Gothenburg). Gario is also currently running for Dutch parliament as a candidate for the political party BIJ1.

      Quinsy entered the program studying practices of refusal as found within Caribbean performance practices and his research trajectory brought him to the Baltics thinking through postsocialism and postcolonialism. For the a.pass End Presentation Quinsy is presenting #FragileRoots which is a companion piece to #FragileRoutes, a work presented at the Bâtard Festival 2021 and part of a larger series of work and research. At the center of the proposition is the suitcase bought in Hong Kong by the Estonian artist Kristina Norman and gifted to Quinsy during his research residency at the Estonian Art Academy. The residency was to further research into the depiction and usage of the depictions of St. Maurice in the Baltic region. The Sudanese Catholic saint had been adopted as the patron saint of the Blackheads Brotherhood, a merchant guild of unwed men in at the end of the 14th Century. After the end of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic region the various countries of the Baltic became nations again and started to further develop national narratives which included or excluded the remnants of this guild. Through the series of works Quinsy is reflecting on Blackness, migration, improvisation and practices of refusal. This particular piece consists of the remnants of the aforementioned suitcase, stickers bought at the lowbudget department store Daily Style and slides that were bought at a second hand store in Estonia.The stickers are used for precious cargo and contain the word 'Fragile' and the slides depict images from the Apollo 4 and Apollo 6 missions and a vacation by an unnamed group of white individuals to Cuba in the 1960's. Together with toys depicting underwater sea life, extendable mirrors and coasters with black glitter #FragileRoots pushes for epistemic disobedience and fugitive approaches to our collective presents, pasts and futures.

      *

      Magdalena Ptasznik has been exploring choreography and dance through creating performances, dancing in the work of other makers, creating choreography for drama theater, and teaching. Through the last years, she focused on contexts of practice that turn towards creating shared spaces and experiences – teaching, collaborating, and creating performances for the limited public (Microclimates I and II, Zachęta National Gallery 2018-2019, Cli-Fi at BWA Gallery Wrocław 2019). Magdalena is a member of a collective of choreographers Centrum w Ruchu (Warsaw), graduate of School for New Dance Development (SNDO), and sociology at Warsaw University. Since 2015 together with Maria Stokłosa and Renata Piotrowska she has been developing in Warsaw an educational project Choreography in Motion: Experimental Choreography Course. She lives in Amsterdam and Warsaw.

      “My research materializes as written texts, which experiment with the form of the score—a choreographic tool. I started this journey with the idea of creating scores for collective participatory performances. Throughout the process, and the period of confinement we found ourselves in, the research transformed into an exploration of writing. I’m looking into what kind of performance these texts can produce with a reader. I propose to look at the performativity taking place in an intimate sphere activated through reading. I understand it as an interobjective space created by a reader, a score, and an environment.  Scores direct its readers’ attention towards the relations within an environment of which they are part. In particular, I explore how we take part in the materiality of the environment as well as the relations we are already engaged in and have potential to engage with. Building upon observation and somatic experience, I investigate environmental relations through navigating attention and developing fictions. The ultimate reference and a tool to think with is, for me, geology, which brings us to the earth as the basic structure of our material being. Geological time teaches us about the constant movement of any and all matter, and it gives us a more-than-human perspective to time.”

      *

      Adriano Wilfert Jensen works with dance and choreography to analyse and produce conditions of relations. His practice manifests in making, performing, writing about, curating, representing and dealing choreography, dancing for other artists, as well as other occupations like a series of cocktail hang outs, publications, research projects, teaching etc.

      Together with Simon Asencio he is since 2014 running Galerie – an immaterial gallery for immaterial artworks. And with Emma Daniel he is dancing for the dinosaurs in Spending Time With Dinosaurs. Together with Linda Blomqvist, Anna Gaïotti and Emma Daniel he organized Indigo Dance Festival, Magazine and Tink Thanks at Performing Arts Forum. In 2017 he initiated the research project analysis of which his a.pass research was part. In 2019 he premiered the group piece feelings as part of the research analysis, and in the summer 2021 he will premiere a new group piece informed by his research at a.pass.

      Adriano, has been researching on what he calls practice-based spectatorship and dance as a labour dispositif for depersonalizing the self. He wrote a letter developing the notion of practice-based spectatorship as a tool to study how different dance works, which have shaped his own practice, condition spectatorship conventions. Through this letter, a contextualization of how his practice is situated by and indebted to the work of others, takes place. In addition, Adriano also developed a series of dances by analyzing and intervening in existing historical dance protocols. Working on these dances together with the research of spectatorship he questioned how to re-relate to the self beyond individualism, in dance and its spectatorship.

       

      *

      Kasia Tórz. Writer, dramaturg, researcher, is seeking for other than language-based ways of writing, i.a. working with images or body practices focused on internal movement. In that framework, she is interested in the melting points of the poetic, existential and political. Graduate from Philosophy at the University of Warsaw, participant of doctoral studies at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw. Between 2007-2011 she collaborated with Twożywo – a no longer existing Polish urban art group – at projects like: Zaciemnienie / Twilight and several wall paintings. Between 2008-2019 she has programmed a thematic section of the Malta Festival Poznań (PL) called ‘Idioms’. Since 2019 she has worked with Needcompany – a Brussels based theatre collective, as artistic & programme developer.

      Smarginatura {this is a demo}
      How are we touched by and through the live act – the act of seeing? What goes through the porous surface of our skin? What kinds of experiences expand our sensitivity? Who sets the scale of the image? The contour of the skyline? When do we break upon the pressure of impulses, when do we freeze, and when do we burn? What are the politics of seeing that we adapt to and how to alter them? Smarginatura {this is a demo} is a radio- broadcast, a live-like transmission of words, images and sounds. It invites the audience to explore the depth of the surface.

       

      *

       

    • end presentation
    • postgraduate program
    • Dismantle Space 30 October 2020
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Chloe Chignell / Muslin Brothers / Flávio Rodrigo / Christina Stadlbauer
    • online: http://dismantle.space
    • 11 November 2020
    • 14 November 2020
    • Dismantle Space

      With Chloe Chignell, Muslin Brothers – Tamar Levit and Yaen Levi , Flávio Rodrigo and Christina Stadlbauer

      NOT at ZSenne ArtLab and NOT at Rosa Library, downtown Brussels


       

      Website: dismantle.space

       


       

      Dismantle Space gathers the research outcomes of Chloe Chignell, choreographer, editor and writer; Muslin Brothers – Tamar Levit and Yaen Levi – fashion practitioners and visual/performing artists; Flávio Rodrigo, theatre maker and teacher; and Christina Stadlbauer, visual artist and scientist.

      A practice of dismantling directs the conceptual and experiential nature of all their works. More than ever it is necessary to disassemble the mechanisms that form our relationships with the worlds around us in order to rebuild perspectives on those same worlds.

      Using very different tools and methods the presented research insists on making visible the cultural constructions that knit our perceptions of history, language, science and fashion to their instituting frameworks. They dismantle the structural attachments we have to those institutional machines and re-tell other possible relations to them by opening up the capacity of bodies to their collective and personal resilience.

       

      The capability of bodies to create spaces to nurture, find out and experience muted or unseen connections, may they be social, personal, economic, environmental, racial... Through performative virtual installations, readings and conversations, these research projects unfold space to engage differently in ecosystems of relations that permit perspectives affirming something other than the status quo.

       

      For Dismantle Space, a website has been created in collaboration between the researchers and web designer and editor Sven Dehens in order to compile the works that have been developed in the frame of the artistic research environment of a.pass. This website hosts the complicities and differences of the four researches and it will address the infrastructural concerns each of them entails.

       

      For the End Presentations, a.pass invites three Visitors for a feedback conversation with the participants. The visitors of *Dismantle Space* are writer, editor, and dramaturge Caroline Godart, performance curator Guy Gypens and artistic research director Hicham Khalidi.

       

      This public event is co-curated by the participants with the support of a.pass. In response to the Covid-19 imperative of not being able to gather and to accommodate the different natures of the works, the presentations will take place online. The construction of the website was a way to keep the works connected and conversing with each other.

       

      Many thanks to ZSenne ArtLab and Rosa Library for their support, Sven Dehens for the website and Deborah Birch for text editing.

       

      *

      Dismantle

      Space


      *

       

      The research and work of Chloe Chignell is situated between choreography and literary practice. Throughout her a.pass trajectory Chloe worked with several performative dispositifs which use scores as mediators between body and language. With much precision her work performs the intra-dependencies between them in ways that facilitate and provoke in the viewer another understanding of how the body writes and reads itself.

      Dismantle
      Her work Poems and Other Emergencies dismantles the preconception that language can decipher and translate the body in an absolute and unidirectional manner. The prevailing cultural supremacy of language holds back other forms of knowledge and understanding of the body as a complex entity.

      Space
      While working at a.pass the processes Chloe created in physical space or on the space of the page triggers in the audience unforeseen attachments to cultural, social paradigms and relations between languages and mediums. For her End Presentation, the book becomes an object that expands the dimensions of the page, with the essays Language as Prosthesis and The Complete Text Would be Insufferable asking questions of the reading body, your body.

       

      *

       

      During their trajectory at a.pass, the research project of fashion practitioners Muslin Brothers - Tamar Levit and Yaen Levi -had focused on the uniform in correctional facilities. Their involvement with prisons and prisoners’ statements opened up a complex questioning of the garment-as-uniform and the process of uniformization. Using installation-performance as a research tool the artist duo created participatory situations that repositioned the role of the garment in its social, political, and economic functions. From staging the tailor’s atelier in several formats, the prayer book as a scored assembly, or audio files for confined self-appraisal they created critical environments that work to de-gender, de-class, and de-colonise clothing in contemporary society.

      Dismantle
      Their research dismantles the production chain and the economy behind the garment. Their work looks at fashion through the economy of belonging, establishing the strong relation between who-wears-what and the creation of harsh social segregation.

      Space
      Their research is manifested in performative installations that delay an easy identification with the garment by softening a space in which the participants can elaborate a collective and participatory questioning about this often ignored terrain.

       

      *

       

      Flávio Rodrigo’s research is a continual overlapping and unfolding of autobiographical writing, storytelling, and ritual. His work continues an oral tradition of recounting and holding to account that can re-tell history from the place of the minority. His research creates intersections between stories of racism and homophobia, auto-fiction, and ritual in order to claim power against normative politics in a non-normative way.

      Dismantle
      Flávio's research investigates the body by shedding light on the scars we all have. Working with scars as relational objects from which narratives unfold, he creates the possibility for an understanding of the self as relation between physiological trace and mythical, political, and personal time.

      Space
      Flávio crafts rituals and participatory performances as a collective investigation into both the trauma and the many forms of healing that scars represent. These storytellings open up a space for the personal to be continuously woven into collective, political history, and affirm that the possibility of transformation is embedded in each of us, and in all of us collectively. For his End Presentation Flávio worked on a performance series The ghost scar solo that will be streamed in three episodes.
      11th - 20:30 - Episode 1 - the ghost and the milk
      12th - 20:30 - Episode 2 - the tent and the mirror
      13th - 20:30 - Episode 3 - the body and the plate

       

      *

       

      The research of Christina Stadlbauer addresses the relationship between humans and other-than-human companions in the environment *we* share with *them*. Her approach tackles the ethical implications of the loss of habitat and the collapse of diversity. Christina engages with multiple actors in the fields of science and art, as well as with inhabitants of urban and non-urban environments, animal, vegetable, and mineral beings. She uses interviews, video footage, and performative installations to shine a light upon muted or undervalued situations of imbalance between human and other-than-human existences.

      Dismantle
      The recent focus of her work has been on the Museum as a public display of knowledge. Christina questions and deconstructs the infrastructure of the museum as a colonial institution which acquires, catalogues, and communicates knowledge in a human-centered manner, neglecting other life forms. Even though at this point in history, with an attempt to reformulate the definition of the Museum, lead by ICOM – the International Council of Museums – she maintains there is a persistent neglect of other species´ knowledge.

      Space
      Christina’s research engages in a re-imagining of the museum. A museum which explores through practice-based experiments and explorations how humans relate to other species, and dedicates itself to different forms of communication in search of a language between all parties.
      For her End Presentation, Christina set a series of conversations with Agata Siniarska, choreographer, dramaturge and author; Lesley Kadish, anthropologist and specialist of disabled people in museums; and Maria Ptqk, curator and director of Museum Cabinet Sycorax. These conversations will be presented as podcasts and transcribed in text.

       

      *


      BIOGRAPHIES

      Chloe Chignell
      Chloe Chignell (Australia) is a dancer and choreographer based in Brussels working across text, choreography and publishing. In 2019 she opened rile* a bookshop and project space for practices moving between publication and performance, with Sven Dehens. Her most recent work Poems and Other Emergencies premiered at Batard Festival Brussels 2020, and was supported by WorkspaceBrussels, BUDA Kortrijk, Lucy Geurin Inc and La Balsamine. She graduated from the research cycle at P.A.R.T.S (Brussels, 2018),  She has a Bachelor in Dance from Victorian College of the Arts, (Melbourne, 2013) and studied a writing and residency program at DOCH (Stockholm, 2017). As a choreographer Chloe has been commissioned by the Keir Choreographic Award for the creation of Deep Shine (Melbourne) touring to Japan for The Awaji Art Festival. She presented a short work forever in both directions for the Venice Biennale’s Biennale of Dance (2017). As a dancer Chloe has worked for Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Ingrid Berger Myhre, Anna Gaiotti, Gry Tingskog, Atlanta Eke, Ellen Söderhult, Phoebe Berglund and James Bachelor performing in Australia and across Europe. Chloe is co-editor of This Container magazine, currently in its 8th edition based between Stockholm, Brussels and Melbourne. Her writing has been published by This Container, Koreografi, Indigo Dance Magazine (PAF) and Realtime (Australia). She has developed choreographic writing and reading formats hosted by Kottinspektionen (Stockholm), PraxisFestivalen (Oslo), PAF (France) Scene:Bluss (Norway). She is co-initiator of PO$$E a dance and reading group .
      www.chloechignell.com / www.rile.space / www.thiscontainer.com

      *

      Muslin Brothers - Tamar Levit and Yaen Levi
      Muslin Brothers (Tamar Levit and Yaen Levi) acts as both a fashion brand and research studio speculating on the way personal, social, and political systems shape and are shaped through clothing. It is named after the muslin fabric widely used to make veils, men shirts, and clothing prototypes prior to production.
      The duo’s work overlaps between wearables, spatial, performance, image-making, and exchange of information, using the technologies of clothes-wearing and clothing production lines for a poetic investigation into the biography of non-designer design.
      They hold a B.A in fashion design, from Shenkar, college of engineering, design and art, Israel.
      Their work has been shown in platforms such as the Kanal centre Pompidou Brussels, Parsons New York, Stockholm Art university, Israeli Museum,  the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Jerusalem design week, and London and Tel Aviv fashion weeks. They were designers in residency at Arad contemporary art center (2020) Artez Academie Arnhem (2018) and London's college CFE (2016). Winners of design award from the Israeli culture ministry (2018), and the pais grant for fashion design (2016).
      www.muslinbrothers.com

      *
      Flávio Rodrigo
      Flávio Rodrigo Orzari Ferreira, 37, gay, brazilian, artist, lives in Brussels. He is a performer. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Scenic Arts from State University of Campinas – UNICAMP (2004), a Specialization Degree in Psychopedagogy from FHO – UNIARARAS (2012), a Specialization Degree from UCB (2013) and a post-master degree in Performing Arts in a.pass (Advanced Performing and Scenography Studies – 2020). He is now undergoing a Master's programme in Speculative Narration and Videography at the ERG (École de Recherche et Graphisme) de l'Université Saint Luc.

      *

      Christina Stadlbauer
      Christina is an artist and researcher. She works at the cracks of arts and sciences, and develops her research around non human agencies - collective intelligence, interspecies communication and the relation between culture and nature. Christina obtained a PhD in Natural Sciences and her practice is informed and influenced by her scientific understanding. She has launched several artistic long term initiatives: like Melliferopolis, an artistic platform to engage with honeybees and their worlds, the Institute for Relocation of Biodiversity – an artistic container to explore the ethical implications of issues related with loss of habitat and the collapse of diversity, and Kin Tsugi Transformations, a work strand with bacteria that reflects on the ethics implied with microbiological lab work and our strive for control and imperfection.

       

    •  

      Please note that all replies and comments in this report are not verbatim transcriptions but thematic summaries. For full statements made on the public Day 3 please see the video recordings.

      Introduction

      On July 8-10, 2020 a.pass has hosted the conference Research Futures. The conference took the form of a gradually expanding meeting of practitioners in the fields of art, education and artistic research. The conference was initiated by a.pass in collaboration with four other institutions of artistic research participating in a.pass' comparative benchmarking study: Dutch Art Institute, Jan Van Eyck Academy, UNIARTS Helsinki and Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. The conference brought representatives from these five institutions together with professionals working in the field of education, arts, culture, artistic research, curation and activism to expand the result of the comparative study towards a series of questions concerning the futures of artistic research in relationship to its institutions.

      Background

      As a publicly funded educational platform, a.pass is reviewed by the ministry of education in regular five-year intervals. With the next review process underway, a.pass took the opportunity to propose a collaborative process of self-evaluation to four other educational institutions in the field of artistic research. This process was motivated by a desire to establish a platform for mutual criticality where institutions of artistic research are not pushed to compete against each other, but can meet as partners sharing many of the same stakes. This critical intra-vision is also a balancing measure to the tendencies of such evaluations to produce an equalizing standard in a respective field of cultural production. Instead we aimed to understand, compare and strengthen our differences, in order to create greater specificity and add complexity to the developing field of artistic research.

      By proposing the conference we wanted to better understand what is the range of educational and institutional strategies and practices operating in the field of artistic research today. Where do we see common struggles, pitfalls and current problematics with respect to our concerns with inclusivity, sustainable support structures, institutionalization of artistic research and politics of publication? By posing these questions we wanted to compare ourselves to the future: what are possible scenarios for artistic research to continue its contribution to the field of artistic development and production, and how can these contributions respond to the changing social realities of a challenging future?

       

       

      Day 1, July 8th

      On day one the representatives of the contributing institutions met to review the process of self evaluation so far. Moderated by Delphine Hesters, the independent researcher who compiled the comparative study, we looked for commonalities and differences between our institutions and how they operate and addressed the challenges we outlined together in our shared reports.

      ► expand

      The day started with a presentation of Delphine Hesters on the main conclusions of the comparative benchmark study. Delphine summarized her findings around following main areas, here quoted with brief excerpts:

      Artistic research

      "Defending or maintaining this open approach of artistic research is not self-evident. [...] Another kind of challenge is that the institute’s open approach of artistic research does not necessarily meet an equally open definition within the funding bodies upon which artistic research projects are dependent.

      If we recognize that breaking from the predefined and segregating boundaries between disciplines, professions and fields of knowledge is an essential part of artistic research, it is clear that finding strategies for dealing with conflicting norms and for crafting autonomous spaces is important for the future of artistic research."

       

      Individuality and collaboration

      "The dominant belief within the art field remains that artists are first and foremost individual creators or authors. Similarly, academic researchers testify to an individualized learning path from the bachelor’s degree to the PhD and beyond." Delphine concludes that among the participating institutions exists range of collaborative approaches to break away from this ideology of individual excellence and stimulate the collectivity of artistic and research practices alike.

       

      Selection of candidates

      "The selection procedures of the five institutes are rather similar and based on written applications, including a research proposal, CV, portfolio and motivation letter from the candidate.

      The selection in all the institutes is primarily based on the quality of the proposals and the artistic trajectory of the candidate. This ‘quality’ has no formal measure and is judged by selection committees (in different set-ups) with expertise in the field."

       

      Archiving, documenting, publishing and dissemination

      "The public events organized by the institutes, which equally take multiple forms, are important drivers for the dissemination of research, both as inherent parts of the research process and as markers of its end. They are also important for the creation of a critical community of participants, ex-participants and external people – researchers, practitioners and engaged others."

       

      Evaluation, sustainability and sustainable management

      "For independent institutions like a.pass or the Jan van Eyck Academy, building their own archives, administrational procedures or publication tools allows them to invent tailor-made solutions to their own questions about documentation, administration and publication and the ways in which they are interwoven. However, it demands a considerable investment of time and money, as well as in the knowledge of their teams. These institutes can establish diverse partnerships with other organizations, but they need to build them up and maintain them solely by their own effort. This is also true in regard to the development of procedures for preventing and responding to possible cases of discrimination or harassment. [...] The larger institutes also have more elaborate protocols available in regard to prevention of and response to forms of discrimination or harassment (while it remains up to each research or education unit to bring them into practice)."

      " [...] In short, the promises of working autonomously are powerful and important, especially given the core of these institutes is to create an open and adaptable context in which artistic research can be developed and expanded. However, whether this potential is realized and whether the institutions can bring their practices in line with their principles, depends on the means they are able to secure to invest on all of these levels."

       

      The shared overall outcome was that although the institutions represent a wide range of positions and practices on all of these topics, the study and the meeting showed that there exist a great commonality of sharing them as concerns.

      The subsequent discussion revolved among others around questions like:

      • what are the advantages of being part of a bigger (academic)structure? What are the possibilities of acting quasi independent within such structures? what are the needs to create frameworks beyond these structures ? How 'independent' are these frameworks beyond the structures?
      • how do "individual learning paths" that actually enable transversal processes relate to on one hand to "ideology of individual excellence" on the other hand "collectivity"?
      • how to institute transformation?
      • What will be the resilient future structures for artistic and academic development beyond the categorizations of culture, education, science and within the framework of social and environmental change?
      • Institutional challenges in the neo-liberal context: autonomy, self-organisation, "swamp-ness"
      • what can be institutional practices that can resist and reshape the complex of excellence, quality, authorship and individuality associated with academic research?

       

      The second half of the meeting was devoted to developing four topics to pass on to the next round of discussions the following day. The over-arching concern shared by all participants of Day 1 was the question of how to institute artistic research. The four topics were formulated in order to allow the table groups of Day 2 to speculate on possible and impossible futures: which contexts of artistic research will persist, which will change in the future? Which directions will current developments and status quo take? In short: which futures do we want to compare ourselves to? The four topics that were developed for Day 2 are:

      • Institutional Autonomy within Larger Systems
      • Internal Relations
      • How to be Public? Where to be public?
      • Instituting Transformation

       

      The topics themselves are reported on below, as they were included in the public introduction to the day.

       

       

       

      Day 2, July 9th

      For Day 2 of the conference we invited ca. 20 practitioners and professionals from the field of cultural production, education and artistic research to come together with us in a working session dedicated to the four topics proposed on day one. Gathered around the topics in groups, the main objective was for each group to critically develop relationships between present conditions and implications and their future scenarios. Each group was accompanied by a Reporter, an artistic research practitioner whom we asked to develop and facilitate a specific mode of conversations among the participants of their Table, and who took on the task of compiling a report on the work of the Table for the public discussion of Day 3.

      ► expand

      At the start of the day, Delphine Hesters introduced the results of the comparative study, the discussion of Day 1 and the four topics for the Tables. The Day proceeded by coming together in four groups around the table practices and topics. The following list combines the proposed topics with a brief overview of the proposed practice. The Day concluded with a collective feedback on the process and further questions.

      The reports of the Tables process and discussion were presented publicly on Day three and will be discussed in this report there.

       

      TABLE 1: Institutional Autonomy within Larger Systems

      What relations to build to 'the larger system'? How to position ourselves within the larger whole?

      Reporter: Kristien Van Den Brande

      Context:

      • categorisation and segregation of fields within arts (educational, artistic, social practices, etc) are working against the transdisciplinary conception of artistic research
      • what are the advantages of being part of a bigger (academic)structure? What are the possibilities of acting quasi independent within such structures? What are the needs to create frameworks beyond these structures ? How 'independent' are these frameworks beyond the structures?
      • what are the expectations and questions of the cultural / educational sector towards institutions and practitioners of artistic research?

      Questions raised:

      • How to create feedback-loops between the institutions and the larger system? How to be critical towards our own support structures?
      • How can we create and foster solidarity among the institutes?
      • Who are the future allies for artistic research?
      • What is the mission and task of artistic research as a publicly funded field?
      • Not only institutions position themselves, they already welcome distinct positions from participating artist researchers. What are the modalities of formulating a collective position within the institution?

      To facilitate these questions Kristien Van den Brande proposed a roleplaying game: The rise and fall of a dystopian regime for (institutional) artistic research. “Rise and Fall” is a role-play in which players create a dystopia, explore its rise to power, experience how everyday life operates during its tenure, identify how the regime is brought down and envision the reemergence of life in and beyond its ruins.

      The role-players were invited to explore the question: What are the roots of (institutional) artistic research during each of these phases, concretely or metaphorically?

       

      TABLE 2: Internal Relations

      How to build the relationships between the institutes and their participants?

      Reporter: Philippine Hoegen

      Context:

      • Questions of neo-liberalism in connection to education, regulatory dependencies and access

      Questions raised:

      • How to create not only critical but transformative feedback processes within our institutes?
      • Trust or control: An inclusive access policy relies on an elaborate regulatory structure within the institution. Deregulated institutions can run the danger of perpetuating status quo

      Phillippine Hoegen proposed to work with an online mapping tool. Several mechanisms of collecting keywords and grouping them into common concerns served as a visual tool to facilitate a self critical look at the organisation of internal structures and relations between participants and all persons working within the institution.

       

      TABLE 3: How to be Public? Where to be public?

      Reporter: Sébastien Hendrickx

      Context:

      • Publicness often serves as a "proof of work" and a measure of validity of the cultural sector and specifically artistic research
      • Growing importance of the countryside vs the city. In the past cultural production was more decentralised. Decentralisation is becoming more important also in response to climate change. Should artistic research dislocate from the urban and if yes, how?
      • Growing importance of regionalism and its emphasis on parallel and other histories, on subcultures

      Questions raised:

      • Visibility and need to be visible vs. the need for invisibility: how and how long to stay invisible?
      • Visibility versus performativity: what can artistic research do besides being visible?
      • How to communicate in process?

      Séba Hendrickx’ practice aimed at speculative collaboration open to neurodiversity. The participants of this Table were invited to make a pluralistic mind-map in form of a collective wall drawing. Each participant could elaborate on the drawings, diagrams and writings of the others. Misunderstanding and being lost in translation were inherent to the practice. With drawings or remarks of his own, the Reporter of this Table tried to push the map- and discussion-in-progress in specific directions.

       

      TABLE 4: Instituting Transformation

      How to institute transformation and what resists instituting?

      Reporter: Sina Seifee

      Context:

      • decolonial politics
      • growing importance of social and civic movements (MeToo, BLM,...) as future-shaping agencies. how are they different from institutions, how can we welcome their potential?
      • Transformation in the context of sustainability
      • Conditions of perpetuating of precarity: precarious institutions "pass on" the conditions to workers

      Questions raised:

      • How long does an institution need to live? When should it dissolve?
      • How to create adaptable / plastic (in the sense of plasticity) frameworks?
      • The question of activism of and within the institution and resistance from within.

      Sina Seifee proposed a Table-session as a moderated conversation around the central question of transformation in regard to artistic institutions and their sustainability. In the process of transformations whole classes of questions, phenomena and forms of knowledge may be lost or rendered unthinkable. Institutional transformations can reorder our sense of value and structure in the world, as well as change the way we embed social norms. The aim of the conversation was to give more specificity to the different kinds of transformation. The session began by asking the participants: what new forms of organization and community are emerging in your particular institutions? What power relations do they rely on, create, or destroy?

       

       

       

      Day 3, July 10th

      For this day a.pass invited all participants of the previous days and the public into the process. The link for online participation via a video conference platform was published online, and an invitation was sent out. After an introduction by Delphine Hesters, the Reporters of the Table groups presented their reports to the public. Each presentation was followed by a discussion and was open to questions, comments.

      ► expand

       

      Introduction to Day 3

       

      [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Future-Research-Conference-introduction.mp4"][/video]

       

      The Introduction brought back some question and topics of the Groups of Day 2 to Day 3:

      • We must be aware of the different understandings of AR present in the room
      • What do we mean by collectivity and inclusion?
      • In connection to the PhD in the Arts boom: is academia a refuge for the artist?
      • How and why are theaters, museums and other art institutions committing to AR?
      • What different culture of/for AR to cultivate?

       

      Reports by the Reporters

      [video width="1440" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/future-research-conference-Tables-smalll-2-1.mp4"][/video]

       

      Table 1 Report

      Kristien Van Den Brande

      ► Practice Presentation

      INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY WITHIN LARGER SYSTEMS

      Tackled through a role playing game.

      Roles:

      teacher

      dreamer (instagram influencer with a fashion line)

      uber-socialist (young artist)

      rebel (black-block activist seen as vandal)

      archivist (big data manager)

      Context:

      • categorisation and segregation of fields within arts (educational, artistic, social practices) are working against the transdisciplinary conception of artistic research
      • The condition of partial identities: being a part of multiple systems at the same time
      • What are the expectations and questions of the cultural/educational sector towards institutions and practitioners of artistic research? eg: a theatre: why do they engage with AR?
      • What are the (dis)advantages of being part of a bigger (academic) structure?

      2 problems:

      • What are the larger systems? (funding bodies, a bigger academic structure, art/social work/science, allies of AR). Why do we call them ‘larger’?

      • Is the word ‘autonomy’ creating an interesting horizon for the discussion? (Institutions are de facto mediators between (related) individuals who belong to other or larger systems. Autonomy as the awareness of non-autonomy.)

      1. Larger systems

      Instead of making an exhaustive list of ‘larger systems’, we created a (more or less) fictitious dystopian* world in which to position the question of (institutional) autonomy. The idea was to create 3 stages (rise, establishment, fall) of a dystopia, and to see how (individual and institutional) resistance and collaborations* operate in every stage.

      *relative term (where does it touch on utopia? Rise and fall have interwoven features.)

      *in the double sense: in the positive sense, and in the sense of (un)consciously being on the side of what is criticized.

      What were the features of the world:

      • complete commodification: no more public space, no more commons, instrumentalisation of art, art as a dialogic practice no longer recognized as art, false beliefs in the politics of images (protest is fashionable), always be positive (instagram culture) and gaslighting, neutrality of data, prevalence of entertainment industry
      • Radical exclusivity (segregation, nationalism, art having to express predefined values, ‘inclusive’ and ‘participatory’ becoming a facade for its opposite
      • Dominance of the virtual (over the sensorial, surveillance capitalism, ip-ification)
      • Money making more money
      • Mass unemployment

      Over-bureaucracy and looming of legal threats (seeking legal representation for conflict in the absence of a society of trust)

      1. Wrong horizon of the word ‘autonomy’

      Philosophically we are probably aligned in thinking entanglements rather than autonomy (Rancière, Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold). The only autonomy is an awareness of our non-autonomy.

      Creates a shift in the questions we can/should ask?

      Instead of thinking the borders of an institute, focusing on connecting lines: how to generate feedback-loops between ARers - the institute - other systems?

      Strategies

      • What instituting is needed: turning bureaucratic requirements from funding bodies into occasion for conceptualizing positions (eg this conference, relation to ones own board and GA: how to put it together, how to sustain and undermine its authority)
      • Role play in reality: the question of ‘who do you work for?’. Positioning the discourse/question to make visible ones alliances.
      • Methodologies of production (that include relation) is what is being produced in AR (eg: contracts)
      • Building the archive of methodologies, strategies - who owns the archive?

      ! Time-factor: what is the life span of an artist-run organisation, a research institute, a board.

      1. ANNIHILATION

      How to deal with the double threat of annihilation of the institute (it wants to be open to change) + the institute that takes care of itself when it panics?

      Threat comes from

      • AR itself (if AR includes the production of methodologies of production)
      • Funding bodies that understand how we establish and practice interdependence
      • Movements like #metoo, blm, collaborative structures that are not recognized by the board (eg: witte de with, netwerk aalst)

      Strategies?

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > “Me too” harassment, Black Lives Matters are all examples that need quick institutional responses but we are confronted with the SLOWNESS OF THE INSTITUTION. There is the threat of annihilation but also the institute takes care of its own survival. The moment of panic is very tricky! Which strategies do institutions have to deal with those panic moments? Example of criticism: Witte de Wit had to deal with its colonial past: they spend a long period of time in attempt to change the name and then director put out a new program. But corona and black lives matter happened and things escalated because institutions were too slow and got heavily criticized. An Institute is slow to react and there is a precarity within an institute that needs to be sustained by its partners.

      > What strategies can we think of to make such transitions possible, considering the kind of forces in question? Institutional memory should trace those moments and share the archive of these transitions.

      > All institutions are hierarchical so we could talk of institutional schizoanalysis. For my experience, at X university, when there is a personal change, everything changes . It's faster if the person at the top takes decisions already because of peer pressure: sometimes it can be interesting for peers to point out the weak points. At X academy there were ongoing debates and in two days the director reacted. We have to help each other (peers to director etc...). How do you become a better director and person?

      > What kind of feedback loops do we organize in order to catch up?

      > I'm happy that institutions are slow. Change is also slow. We are looking for ways to move together. The legal paradigm in which we need to inscribe in is organized hierarchically. To balance insecurity of AR and have an institution that gives you the opportunity to do the research.

      > People are divided in the classroom and I have the responsibility as a professor. We still don't recognize structural racism etc.. there's a lot to do. How fast can we catch up without making a quick fix? “Not too know” it's not good from my position while the world is on fire!

      > It is problematic having to respond fast because you are giving yourself the authority to do it. How to create a place of discussion instead of decision?

      > A level of transparency is needed so one can see the progresses. With opacity of institutions, there is no sense of what is possible.

      > there is a double bind of slowness/fastness. Slowness is resistance but “the world is on fire” and how do you respond? Maybe a way forward is in relation to what's happening to representative democracy (in Belgium). How to make it more participatory? You don't abolish existing institutes but you establish a faster reacting extra part of it. Could there be a way to make debate platforms in a more continuous manner and not ad hoc as a way to combine qualities of fast and slow.

      > “you have to be fast and you can't be wrong!” doesn't sound very interdependent.

      > don't forget that certain regulations come from a want, they are there for a reason.

       

      Table 2 Report

      Philippine Hoegen

      ► Practice Presentation

      Internal Institutional Structures for Instituting Artistic Research

      Introduction

      The aim of the discussion about internal institutional structures for instituting artistic research was to take a (self) critical look at the organisation of internal structures and relations between participants and all persons working within the institutions. We spoke through 3 categories: 1. structures of decision making and organisation, (including formal and informal hierarchies). 2. Structures and instruments of self- and external evaluation. And 3. Relations with participants and their agencies.

      Discussion Thursday 9th

      There were representatives from 2 different institutions at the table, in some ways opposites, especially in scale. One institution, although it doesn't see itself as big, is of a much larger scale than the other, and with that, there is automatically more formal structuring. One is coming from specialisation and moving towards interdisciplinary, while the other is interdisciplinary by nature. One contains BA, MA and PHD, the other is post-MA.

      None the less there were significant overlaps. And from this first glimpse it would appear that there are a lot of elements already present in the institutions which would be continued in a desirable future institution, but in some cases those are now present as concepts but not as practices. Or they are ambitions but not yet founding concepts. Other things are simply lacking, either as founding concepts or as practices. The most acutely missed factors are those that aren’t yet present within the ambitions of the institute.

       

       

      Several subjects surfaced of which three stood out:

      1. (Self)-evaluation. One situation sketched was: there are various structures for self-evaluation in place, but follow-up on the outcomes, and therefore actual change, is lacking. Another situation: there are many moments of feedbacking or evaluating the own organisation, but they are not formally structured. So, follow up is haphazard rather than structural.
      2. Continuity. In both cases, the search for time and money for the institution with which to ensure continuity – not only of the institution itself, but also of the work/knowledge flowing into and out of the institution – were not self-evidently part of the set of ambitions, let alone them being a founding concept or a practice. Continuity here is meant in various senses: contracts of staff members, long term plans / vision and follow up, longer relationships with alumni....
      3. Institutional engagement and responsibility. Informal relationships, collegiality, and frequent meetings amongst staff members, as well as personal and frequent contact with and amongst participants, are valued highly in both the larger and the smaller institutions. But this also assumes a high level of engagement and responsibility, in other words TIME, not always remunerated, or (in the case also of participants) not necessarily available or on offer. Instituting artistic research requires formal structures for informal organisation to take place. And it needs time management, something we are notoriously bad at in the art field, lavishly spending our own and each other's time.

      Discussion Friday 10th

      For the third day of the conference on Friday the 10th of July, different scenarios for each subject were projected, showing possible trajectories to engage with the different issues. The scenario for the problem of self-evaluation was: institutional (self)-evaluation / critique becomes an integral part of artistic research processes. Both staff and researchers / participants are allotted time for that, and also for proposing / effectuating follow up and change.

      For the issue of continuity, the scenario was simply: continuity is put firmly on the agenda of the institution. As simple as it sounds, it does come with the risk of further entrenchment in the neo-liberal conditions surrounding education as more money means more justification demands. The scenario that we discussed in particular was the one addressing institutional engagement and responsibility:

      Scenario: The extra time needed for engaging with the institution by all parties is taken into account in the budget, there are rotating shifts for taking different responsibilities, meetings are well structured, time is allotted and roles planned ahead.

      Questions and problems: -How to avoid becoming ensnared in tedious procedures? -How to measure what is a 'correct' spending of time? -The paradox of the formal and the informal.

      Debated Questions

      The question of measuring time led to a debate, with on one side those people who are convinced that the monetary measurement of time is a waste of time and an unholy quest.

      On the other hand, there were those who pointed out that remunerating time is simply fair practice, and a plea was made for considering administration as a form of care.

      About the roles and agencies of participants, most people felt participants should and do have an important say in how an institution is run, but also that they are sometimes blind to the struggles of the institution, and for what it can and can’t do.

      What we didn’t have time for, but might have been a necessary part two of that conversation is the other side of the coin: is potential of existing institutional blindness to some particular needs or struggles of participants.

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Paradox of inclusion: inclusion asks also for diversity in abilities, backgrounds etc, but at the same time it requires that we treat everybody equally. Difficult!

      > What is the lifespan of the engagement with an institution?

      > What is slow, what is fast?

      > Question to other institutions: do you involve the other participants in the way the organization is made?

      > on the slowness of regulations: for example legislation was made for the PhDs in the Arts to exist, but labour regulations (time, wage) are still rooted in a Fordist era. They not adjusted to the artistic reality and administration needs to deal with that.

      > There is a lot of passion at institution Y, for the good and for the worst. There are practices of living together for a week, including the after-hours. Participants are living together, a group of 7-8 people. Different visions of roles, of labour and invisible labour co-exist. Covid was a bomb making those discussions blow up. Students positions are not that different from those of workers (crew/staff and tutors/guests). Alumni become crew and tutorial staff. We have political consciousness but budgets, regulations, hierarchies are also there. There's an urgency of many discussion. For instance, students have to work outside to pay the fee for Institution Y, but now they realized that their role is not so different from the guests and contributors. The director of Y is the only person with a full time wage and they have to do all the work that the others don't want to do. There is a difference between students and participants. There is a higher demand for accountability from students while they have to pay a fee.

      How to move away from neoliberal approach of the student's demand to the institution to "serve"? But we all share other ideals so this discussion became very explosive.

      >> counterargument: calculating time can save time. Taking care that tasks allocation is fair and equal.

      >> Is emotional time considered in this calculation of time?

      >> In Institution Z the age difference spans from 29 to 67 years old. Administrative care is needed. There is pressure on the institute to change: to enhance feedback process and evaluations. What is even possible?

       

      Table 3 Report

      Sébastien Hendricks

      ► Practice Presentation

      On the first day of the conference, four main topical fields were defined as a basis for the following day. Our table - table 3 - was going to deal with the publicness of artistic research: how and where should it be made public, if at all?

      The proposed practice aimed at speculative collaboration open to neurodiversity. Minds imagine differently: some tend to cohere, others to open up, analyze, criticize, associate, visualize, textualize, daydream, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to mental slowness as well as to mental speed. We made a pluralistic mind-map: each participant could elaborate on the drawings, diagrams and writings of the others. Misunderstanding and being lost in translation were inherent to the practice. In order to prevent the whole group from falling off a cliff into a Sea of Randomness, a moderator lightly intervened from time to time. With drawings or remarks of his own, he tried to push the map- and discussion-in-progress in specific directions.

      The practice consisted of the following elements:

      • a big piece of paper hung up against a wall
      • some chalk markers to draw or write on it
      • a bench to sit on and take some distance to look at the collaborative map-in-progress
      • a laser pen to highlight specific details of the map during the group discussions which alternated with the more silent drawing and writing sessions

      We started from four distinct questions, which could be interrelated in various ways:

      (1) Can artistic research just be without being public? Why / not?

      (2) What are the advantages of secrecy for artistic research?

      (3) How could artistic research relate to traditional knowledges and practices?

      (4) Where to make artistic research public in 5 years from now?

      On the third and last day of the conference, the moderator transformed into a reporter who, with the help of the laser-pen, guided the audience along his subjective trajectory through the map. He more or less said the following:

      As our table dealt with the question of publicness, it is maybe not so surprising to see so many eyes show up on the map (which is actually, thanks to the horizon line, more of a landscape drawing - an image not drawn looking from the top down but while standing in the landscape itself). There is the many-eyed-monster who could be seen as a symbol for collective intelligence (or collective confusion, if you wish); there are the hollow non-eyes of a skull predicting the end of artistic research in the world to come; for some mysterious reason the dilettant is drawn with a pair of profoundly sad eyes; I particularly like the eye within the vague circle, which to me stands for the participant-observer, the researcher who’s more or less part of a field (with all the messiness, paradoxes and complexities such an involvement can entail); very different is the distant, so-called objective or scientific eye right next to it - maybe that one refers to the gaze of the Academicized Fartist, the proliferating mock-version of the artistic researcher - whose worst emanation could approach the God-like Gaze (also to be found on the map). Most of these eyes, however, seem to represent the eyes of artistic researchers, while our main questions were related to the issue of publicness, so to the eyes of others. One of those eyes can be found looking at a tower. The edifice itself has an eye drawn on it. The image suggests the tower can see while hiding from view what is happening inside of its walls. Artistic research could be a phase of invisibility for an artistic practice, a break in its publicness, a space for an artist to observe, try things out, transform, develop a praxis, all of this free from the pressure to be successful and productive, or to make sense immediately. As a basis for experimentation, the tower could be filled with lots of unfilled time, as is mentioned right underneath the image. Let us now move our attention to what some participants suggested could be called the Fartbox, even though the arrows clearly point out the cloudlike shape doesn’t forcefully leave but enters or envelops another entity. The box looks like a Russian doll: in the worldbox we can find the artworldbox, and in the artworldbox there is the artistic research niche or ghetto. When artistic research is made public, in which of these boxes does it appear? And how? In order to become public, does it have to adapt, does it have to become a box itself, a form that fits in? Or can it change - cloudify, melt or mould - the structures that be? The ghetto and the niche have another well known metaphor in their vicinity: the one of the church. Does artistic research only preach to the converted? Is its proud cosmopolitanism not much more than a rootless and at the same time profoundly provincial way of inhabiting the world? Considering the larger spheres of the Fartbox - the artworld and the world - one may wonder if artistic research first and foremost feeds into an artist’s career or rather into his or her life. The map also suggests that any possible answer to the question of publicness strongly depends on one’s definition of artistic research. Some proclaimed artistic research is not a phase, but more something like a form or a type of practice - maybe even a discipline? According to them, in a world in turmoil, this form or type or discipline could benefit from a more specific description. What if social innovation would be its main characteristic? Or social change (including tradition, next to innovation)? In that case, publicness wouldn’t mean becoming visible in the eyes of others, but acting (possibly in concert with others) upon the world. Could artistic research go viral? Could it be a tool for action and intervention - socially and culturally - or could it produce such tools? And which tools would be needed for this production? How would artistic research making use of rakes and spades and hammers and sickles instead of MacBook Pros, look like? What if artistic researchers would all give up on their latte frappe macchiato and massively migrate to the countryside to make their soft hands rough and dirty? The question each of them could at least ask him or herself is: if my research is a pebble, in which pond do I want it to make ripples?

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Is AR an attitude or practice? And how much do we take contemporary art as synonymous with AR? There are examples where art is deliberately instrumentalized for a research that is artistic in its methodology or genealogy and has political effects: Forensic Architecture, Chimurenga Collective and Wochenklausur in Austria. Are we then on the verge of passing into social work? Hijacking art could mean that if we cannot have political effect, can use the position of artists as joyful dilettante, can we use the naiveté of not being burdened by specialization or by bureaucratic difficulties to oppose political and social problems differently? How can artistic techniques be hijacked for that purpose? There is also an epistemic benefit, because we learn something about learning. The question remains why we still call it art and not activism? Should it be social work?

      >> I change my mind about that question every day, on the days where I am more critical I see as Risk of diverging of political potential from real politics to symbolic places. From which position is that done? From a place of privilege?

      > How far is secrecy is helping? Secrecy as a power position is different than invisibility of being powerless, of non agency. In my professional experience of many years I used working systems, loving systems, reading systems without talking about AR. Lately I have been doing AR in a big institutions with money but the care or time was not being given for discussing of what is what. “We don't want a debate about AR”. The whole discussion become a political field. Opacity/Tower of AR is a problem: AR is elitist or considered as such.

      > there are different cultures of research: it gives space/time to certain practices, to different gestures, to safe spaces.

      > teaching as artistic researcher in Institution A, in relationship to the question of secrecy as potential (from Table 3): Maybe the question of making AR public is a question of how it positions itself within a social environment not of how AR makes itself visible. If we think of AR as something that acts upon the world then AR is already public because it is in an environment. If we think about it as some kind of a pause, it carries some kind of secret knowledge. It is problematic if AR is a secret knowledge that is being produced and served as a finished dish. AR has the power to dwell in a non-articulated phase, but also share from that phase. Seen like this AR is maybe an attitude. I prefer calling is pre-articulation.

      > Focused on AR, productions and fair practices within the arts. There is not an opposition between the public and AR, but it can be a weaving together with the public. One should not stay too long in the room, but share, get feedback and develop together with the public. Being artist and researcher is not a decoration, I think it's clear that is a real necessity of life. Neoliberal times makes seem the arts and AR useless. If so, then you can ask what is the legitimacy of all human endeavours (philosophy...), in the arts not everything should be productive.

       

      Table 4 Report

      Sina Seifee

      ► Practice Presentation

      The session was proposed in the spirit of conversation around the central question of transformation in regard to artistic institutions and their sustainability. In the process of transformations whole classes of questions, phenomena and forms of knowledge may be lost or rendered unthinkable. Institutional transformations can reorder our sense of value and structure in the world, as well as change the way we embed social norms. The aim of the discussion was to give more specificity the different kinds of transformation in question. The session began by asking the participants: what new forms of organization and community are emerging in your particular institutions? What power relations do they rely on, create, or destroy?

      During the session we talked about role of educational organizations in geopolitics as international relations influenced by geographical factors. The aspect of geopolitics relevant to this context can be defined as the question of who gets to move where at what cost. These topics were raised:

      • Inequality The notion of inequality was mainly understood and raised as financial inequality. And this was exemplified regarding the national borders of the European states where these institutions are located. Some of the participants postulated the implicit location of education within Europe's foreign policies. That means, how educational organizations becomes part of the decisions of inclusion/exclusion. One of the frontiers where this inequality was clearly felt in this discussion was visa applications and visa processes. This issue was raised in a wider series of questions regarding the distribution of wealth and privileges beyond national borders. Many involved institutions are ethically transnational, but contribute to the local. We talked about how the idea of "local" is shattered.
      • Scale (of administration) From the point of view of the administration workers present at the discussion, it seemed that larger organizations have more problems with the politics of inclusion/exclusion, with getting things done bureaucratically. The logistics and concerns of institutions dealing with inclusion change with their scale. Institutions are built within institutions, in a nested structure, causing the regulations to be conceived inside regulations. As the result of scaling up processes they do not always fit or continue to fit together. For instance, frictions occurs as one has transnational inclusion ethics, while the other has more domestic politics in mind. This friction can be felt in the ambivalence of support and limitation. As an institution gets larger in size (i.e. change in quantity), this leads to sometimes to a different logic (i.e. change in the quality of how it understands its world).

      Two distinct positions were articulated in the session:

      1. Solidarity and alignment. Working with the metaphors of "radical fairytale" (a form of radicalization, small but provoking thoughts), "flipping the coin" (how easy things can change to its opposite), and the "Fortress Europe" (the oversimplified question of "how to open Europe to foreigners"). This view operates by contentious direct-action approach to geopolitics in artistic research. Suggesting that we have to formulate the future and in doing so transcend our bad internationalism. The mentality of pushing our demands against the external social/systemic forces.
      2. Actor network perspective. Sometime having a "contact person" in the other institution from a different scale can do a lot for you. This contact person has to be cultivated and is achieved through heuristic talents of networking. In this view, you invest on networking and networks of relationships. The label "bureaucrat" was suggested as an inaccurate name for people with particular views and people with different privileges. Because you have to take feeling and emotions into account. For example you might find ways to have their "view" layered, and not necessary radically transform them.

      In this session we visited two modes of thinking togetherness in Europe: (1) internationalism, as mode in which one connects "among" the other actors. This position recognizes distance and domestic borders, but works in interaction with them. And (2), transnationalism, in which one thinks "beyond" what constitutes as difference and distance. The institution is invested in foreign operation, and acts beyond or across national boundaries.

       

       

       

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Notion of the (g)Local was important for the discussion. There were several positions on how to see this.

      > Framing was discussed, bad local and good local are possible. Not traveling makes us rethink the idea of local. But it is also food for a nationalist approaches. How would we work with this idea?

      >> this conference is a good example of how to think this

      > Good and bad digital was mentioned. In the future scenarios mobility will be restricted to the 1%, and big tech will have the only means to educate. There is a danger of not coming together anymore. Mobility is already exclusive if you consider visa restrictions.

      > How to create longer phases of engagement and alternatives time zones in order to engage deeply with a place? Nationalism is not about the local, but about a specific layer of the society.

      > Institutions are nodes of international attraction. Can we think further than that? There is no culture of AR in many places (example Italy). It is important to include other localities which do not have cultures of AR.

      >> for example the rural vs the urban, to include the rural.

      > Trans means to go *(active movement) beyond, while inter is inbetween *(stuck, passive). Transnational and not International

      > Institutions have a wish for inclusivity as long as it does not change the culture of AR. Inclusion must come with the courage to change standards.

      > An open definition of AR is not open in the sense of "whatever", but in the sense of being open to actualization and transformation.

       

      Summary of Day 3

      [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Future-Research-Conferencefinal-overview-and-Q.mp4"][/video]

       

      Delphine Hesters

       

      In the last hour of this debate, Delphine Hesters presented her summary of the discussions of the day and outlined trajectories of the debate so far. She proposed a mapping (see picture) where she outlined and grouped the topics discussed during the Reporter's presentations along a future timeline for a speculative year 2035. Her main groupings were:

      Practices to give up:

      Institutions as service provider

      inequality

      hiding behind slowness

      quick fixes

      being in the position in which we have to legitimate ourselves

      constant measuring of time in order to remunerate

       

      Practices to nurture:

      set up continuous debates that don't have to be conclusive

      take advantage of the slowness of institutions - possibility of thorough-ness, resistance, dialogue. (debates need slowness)

      administration as care

      having principles of self-evaluation

      (formal) structures to make informality happen

      accommodate different „time zones“, also the different requirements of time that different practices need. (but the question of how to measure time stays, we still are in an approach to time as labour and labour as time. it is a trap for AR and arts)

      tweaking of the bureaucratic requirements, pirate versions of existing models

      ask yourself - who has to move where at what cost

      the institution should be public - share your archive, show how you change, how you work

      ask yourself - in which pond do you make ripples? which circles you want to create?

      map your entanglements, know your dependencies and autonomies

      weaving with the public

       

      Values:

      trust

      vulnerability

      transparency

      trans(nationality)

      radicality

      Think what could annihilate your institution

      Balance self care & being ready for change

      'being public' as acting upon the world

      Think in terms of currencies instead of positions and hierarchies

      approach to AR as both open and specific

       

      General Discussion

      The day concluded with reactions, feedback and proposals for next steps. Here is a transcript of that discussion, without naming the contributors. Direct reactions are marked with >, responses to comments with >>

      > Repetition of wealth - for you a visa is a right but that doesn't count for everyone

      > Transparency adding nuance - an institution is not a homogeneous space, which moves within different worlds, there is also the importance to resist having to share everything,

      >> The demand for transparency comes from a lack of trust.

      >> Maybe also the idea of visibility and transparency as a system of control

      >> Transparency has to do with control, but also it is about complexity. For a lot of administrative people this is a mountain they have to move. Trying to communicate the artistic field to the administrative field, and the other way around. Like speaking different languages. Not necessarily about ill will. Maybe something for administrative artistic research.

      > The notion of safe space was dropped a couple of time, and I wonder to what extent the need for safe space is reserved for AR, or if it is intrinsic to the field of education.

      > Maybe all these things relate to institutions in general, any of these relate to artistic research as a discipline?

      > When we talk about visibility and communication it raises a lot of question about responsibility, who holds this safe space? Art is also social, modes of representation is really a task within AR. This is also a question of practices. It sounds abstract - bringing practices together. This is a selection process, if we are in the pre-articulated space, bringing practices together, articulating to each other.

      >> As an artistic researcher at a.pass my personal motivation was the possibility of taking a break. The shelter was needed to fail, if things were visible all the time, this would have been impossible. Being visible and producing artworks that nobody needs

      > Maybe we could think beyond binaries visible-invisible, etc, more think along the lines of what visibility should be, or transparency should be, determining what according to us is visibility, instead of letting it be determined for us

      > Measure of having no family or role model to look up to, in a queer way, from someone who mainly does research through queer perspectives. In these queer times it is interesting to be more radical, think more about negative decision making, thinking what is no longer sustainable, in the last ten years these MA PhDs didn’t give us perspectives that are useful in current years. Continuing is a luxury that very few will have.

      > First of all my gratefulness, because I didn’t want to go to AR conferences anymore. I really enjoyed the optimism. We missed the word queer in the last 3 days, but it is important to keep these spaces safe and open at the same time. Heard something many times and mentioned often in other AR conferences: also academics are coming our way to do artistic research. Important not to think within categories, we really have something to offer that transcends what we consider to be artistic research.

      > One aspect that I want to bring in or back, is that the future of AR has to rethink its notion of access in a radical way. What we have, no matter how hard we try its always based on conditions. What could be modes of unconditional access for researches, which doesn’t jeopardize the safe space and secrecy. Maybe this can cross the binary of the institution

      >> ’(digital) commons' :)

      >> what makes us want to say yes to this environment, and what do we lose with this unconditional access?

      >> something about the unconditional. There is multiplicity of societies that need specific access points. If we streamline we use very broad terms that a lot of people don't feel connected to.

      > Back to the question of transparency. We should define for ourselves, what it means for us. Delphine already mentioned it: sharing our vulnerability. Sharing of vulnerability brings us closer to the ethics of artistic researchers. Often we feel a big gap between the way the institution functions and the ethics of researchers inside of it. Institution introducing itself as a research in itself. There the ethics of the institution and the researchers in it come together. In that respect some us wouldn’t need to enter an institution in order to protect ourselves, because there would be a culture of risks, we wouldn't need to withdraw.

      > I was wondering about the notion of academia. I have read papers and essays from people at universities and they really transformed my thinking. How, if academia is so bad, they produce such amazing things?

      what happens to the sleepwalker if the world is on fire?

      Delphine Hesters than asked into the round:

      What can we do together? Continue to do together? And for what purpose?

      > We need to talk about the selection process at the part of the institution. It counteracts unconditional access.

      > Getting rid of labour or reformulating labour relations - if we open up the floodgates of imagination there are some things we will lose is social production.

      > Something institutions can consider is conditions of production. People don’t pay attention to what we are producing but the way we are producing. If we remember that the Israeli army reads situationist international: What are we contributing to neo-liberalism. It needs to be politicized. We have an expanded form of democracy coming our way, and we should think about how we are going to contribute to that, as researchers.

      > We need not only researchers or institutions people in our work groups, also managers and administrators.

      > What we need from both sides is a bit of courage. Art is in underdog position vs a terminator.

      > We started from an unspoken understanding of Artistic Research is and now have arrived at the question of not only what "artisitc" is but of what it should do. Independent of our disagreement about what Artistic Research is, its definitions should keep transforming for the future similar to the way in which art also always transforms.

      > Translations always have obscure sides and transparencies. I think it is important to talk together. AR's responsibility of searching it's own limits, and it this sense it's a contribution to the world.

       

       

      Conclusion

      A much needed conversation

      The three days of the conference were a multifaceted, engaged discussion on Artistic Research Institutions, an impression which was supported by many contributors and participants in the their feedback. The perspective of the institutions, installed here as a result of the benchmark process, created a much needed productive conversation around common concerns. There was a shared feeling that institutions do not exchange enough on that level: eye to eye as organizers and facilitators. Being able to discuss, self-critique, be open and constructive about the difficulties and pitfalls of organizing institutions is important to the field of artistic research and its current economical, educational and administrative context.

      ► expand

      While this institutional perspective allowed for a discussion among institutions and was a welcome change from discussions within their singular hierarchies of art education, there was also a shared agreement that this institutional perspective can only be a start of a larger series of conversations. An area of discussion that deserves its own focus is the question of how Artistic Research enters into the larger context of art and cultural institutions and the broader social context. Representatives from the broader field have participated in this conference and there is an urgency to continue to understand the work of Artistic Research as it ventures beyond the institutions which support it. The other important topic would be the artists' and students' perspective on Artistic Research and the institutions they take part in. This perspective should become the main focus of a next conference.

       

      Community

      A common point during conference was to pay more attention to the responsibilities of institutions of artistic research as community instigators. How can we continue to care for the researchers and concerns which leave the institution? How can we support the emergent community of artistic researchers and their professional networks? How can we support them as they in their turn instigate and interact with the communities outside the educational field? To accomplish this the institutions should not only connect among themselves, but foster a larger cultural network of Artistic Research that includes cooperatives, venues, social and activist initiatives.

       

      Administration as Care

      The perspective of care was also important in the discussions around administrative concerns. In these discussions administration was often framed as care. Administration actively co-creates the space of indeterminacy which Artistic Research relies on to be able to find its own limits, definitions and processes. This space is constantly foreclosed by educational regulations which operate from more traditional assumptions and policies of art education and research. To push against those boundaries and to reshape the regulatory structures from within is the work of administration in the institutions.

       

      Access

      Accessibility needs to be continually addressed as we develop these conversations. Here the administration also plays an important role, as it is the place where not only the conditions of access to the institution are being defined but also where the work of making them more permeable happens: negotiations around insurance, visa- and administrative regulations allow for the legal persona of the artistic researcher to exist within the administrative frameworks. Other processes of institutional access have to do with an understanding of the institutions as a resource for the larger community. How can institutions continue to develop modalities of sharing this resources alongside with the already existing admission policies? Admission policies are themselves in question: we have to pay even more attention to whom does our call for proposals reach and on which basis do we prioritize certain proposals over others in a field that is as amorphous as Artistic Research. To work on access we could question the call procedure as an accepted standard and discuss other potential models.

       

      Visibility

      The processes of making visible of artistic research is at the center of the questions of its relationships to a larger context and also contributes a further point to the discussion of access. On the one hand institutions of Artistic Research are seen as precious safe spaces, away from visibility and allowing for time and a place to experiment, fail and explore. On the other side of this argument is the question of contribution to the social and political sphere. How can we not lose sight of both necessities? Can a rethinking of publication as a modality of entering the public sphere contribute to this discussion? What kind of collaborations can be formed to share processes of investigation that go beyond production of art and the academic paper?

       

      Practice, Discipline, Methodology, Field

      The conference clearly showed (again) that many paralleled conceptions of what Artistic Research is and what it should do exist in the field. There were several calls to try and agree on a preliminary common idea of what we are talking about, while already going forward with the discussion of the implications of this practice in the field. Any further meeting on this topic should address a specific conceptualization of Artistic Research as a temporary proposal in order to facilitate deeper and more contextualized discussions of its processes and politics.

      During the conference two parallel modes of reaching this temporary commonality became apparent: One perspective argued that Artistic Research is inseparable from its search for its limits and meaning. This argument stems from a similar process of continued transformation of art as a cultural practice. It could be argued from this perspective that it is more important to share how artistic research is done that what it is. This "doing otherwise" is itself a valuable contribution to artistic, social and political fields. The other perspective on commonality or diversity of definitions is oriented by the question whether Artistic Research is an emergent discipline in its own right or a methodology which can be applied within exiting (research) disciplines. This might be a foundational question for institutions of artistic research and their self conceptualization, as it works in different ways within the tensions between their conceptual and artistic autonomy and educational policies.

       

      Outcomes

      For a.pass, as the instigator of this conference, some immediate and some longterm outcomes and commitments follow from this conference. This report will become a part of our evaluation process and application for funding for the next five years. We have proposed a so-called Steering Group to become a part of the a.pass structure. Our wish is that this group will – in two annual meetings – become a satellite of the institution and create a space for shared reflection, critique and continuity for a.pass as a research in education. The Steering Group is a step towards a greater permeability and will be a critical dialogue partner for the institution. It will engage a group of potential a.pass contributors from the larger field of artistic research including representatives from partner institutions, social initiatives and alumni.

      The institutions participating in this conference have expressed a clear desire to continue this conversation. A next step would be to make proposals of how this continuity could be installed. a.pass will engage in exploring the topics of these discussion in further conferences and contribute to a continued process of collaboration with the participating institutions.

      Thank you!

      We would like to finish this report with a big "Thank You!" to all contributors and the engaged audience of this conference. We appreciated the commitment to discussion, doubt and supportive critique in the complicated circumstances of this year. We are looking forward to continue and to meet again!

       

       

      Post Conclusion

      As a small outlook, we have recently asked the a.pass researchers why they chose Artistic Research as their field of work. Here is a small list of answers. We take them as seeds for a future conference on artists' perspectives on Artistic Research.

      To have time for a process, and work in a collective setting.

      To work with the patterns that research creates in artistic practice

      To be in dialogue with other researchers and colleagues.

      To share resources: in art practices resources are often use for the purpose of a singe artist or a singe project. In artistic research institutions resources can be shared and benefit more people.

      To understand our own process better: a self-anthropology of artistic labor.

      To practice clairvoyance

      To question the performance of authorship

      Hosting and crossing of disciplines, to engage in transdisciplinary practice. To engage with disciplines as conflictual zones.

      To engage in and share failures

      To unlearn productivity, to understand productivity not as a goal but as a contingent pattern of practice, a moment of crystallization. To split productivity from practice.

      To position artistic practices within society and away from producing products for society

      To understand the agency of a cut.

       

       

       

       

       

      Comments

      Please leave your comments and feedback in this collective pad

       

       

       

    •  

      My initial question for the apass research fellowship departed from the place where humans meet their non-human environment. From there it took a few turns.

      *

      In my artistic research, I explore the relationship humankind has with its other-than human-companions and the environment we are all sharing. The research started from my long term engagement with honeybees MelliferopolisBees in Urban Environments - and the work done by the Institute for Relocation of Biodiversity – an artistic container to explore the ethical implications of issues related with loss of habitat and the collapse of diversity. Lately, I have also started working with bacteria in the frame of my project Kin Tsugi Transformations and reflecting on the ethics implied with microbiological lab work.

      Although the precise expression of a research question, keeps slipping and escaping, I got very interested with a procedure that has been unfolding around the “new” definition of museums, launched by ICOM, the international council of museums. (see more about the MuseumDefinitionProcess.)

      From my perspective, although many aspects and possible roles of museums are considered in the re-definition, a major shortcoming persists. This has to do with a form of denial of other-than-human life forms needing to be acknowledged as also having rights. Taking this serious would give them a place in our re-thinking of the order of the world, and hence their inclusion in the definition and practice of museums.

      To think this further, I propose practice based experiments and explorations of how we humans relate to other species, like plants, animals, bacteria and see what forms of communication can be installed to both create a “language” towards and with them, as well as ways to express the experiences.

      Behind all this, is a wish to create a “museum of the future” that maybe calls for more than a redefinition but rather a deconstruction of the museum as such. It is a container that operates decentralized, ephemeral, at times paradoxical, and it does so by collecting practices, thoughts, interventions and embodied experiences.

      During the almost 2 years of Apass fellowship, some experiments manifested - partly public, partly more intimate. 

      *

      March 2019, Contribution to Festival Performatiek, at Kanal:

      "Diversity is all around"- Installation and video projection. 

      Climate change poses a significant threat to the continuing existence of many species.
      The Institute for Relocation of Biodiveristy identifies fauna and flora in danger, and creates video tutorials to assist the species in relocating to safety in a new natural habitat.

      In the episode Diversity Is All Around, the Institute focuses on abundance of variety created through human intervention and care as well as surrogates to alleviate the losses.

      During the first block of Apass, from January to April 2019, Vladimir Miller was our curator. The settlement practice that he offers led us ultimately, to settle our entire group and work at Centre Pompidou Brussels - Kanal brut, the newly designated Citroen garage building in Brussels. He also introduced the writing practice. Simply writing. No matter what. During this block, we also were offered some workshops, of which 

      First thoughts about "publishing" and to make public (versus intimacy , fragility and vulnerability) were discussed, together with performativity - a term that I had to grow into, but that is today very much part of my thinking. Some of the co-curators gave important input, in these first weeks - for example Peggy Pierot, who launched us into the theme of nomadism and how and where to feel at home - a theme that touched me as it has a lot to do with my research. Also Philippe Gehmacher, Alex Artega. 

      A workshop with Moritz Frischkorn about logistics and the choreography of objects, made me think about my Institute for Relocation of Biodiversity in terms of linearity, flow diagrams and processes. 

      *

      Summer 2019, Troubled Garden:

      For the duration of a few months, apass moved headquarters to the Zenne Garden - a community garden in Anderlecht. Nicolas Galeazzi was our curator. He proposed being outdoors, getting in contact with the soil, the plants, the rain. And he proposed a practice of adopting. Everyone adopted from someone a project. One that was stuck, that I did not want to continue, that I have forgotten, no time or energy for and that I would like to pass on to someone else. 

      I gave "Vegetal Speed-dating" to Laura Pante, and adopted a score from Pierre Rubio myself. A score to make an endless poem, an exercise of being present with what is and naming it. It is called "I am made of" and resulted finally in a Letter to a Wheatgrain - I am made of and became a contribution to Migrant Ecologies at Svalbard Seedvault in June 2019. Amongst other contributions, it was added to the seedvault in Norway, in a ceremonial performative act. 

      Converstaions and mentoring with Pierre Rubio, Kobe Matthijs, Marialena Marouda, Philip van DeDingen, Sally de Kunst - all gave extra input to my research. 

      *

      Later in 2020, this place became an important refuge when the pandemic struck Belgium. Inspired by the exhibition Learning from artemisia by Uriel Orlow, I conducted some resaerch on the plant family Artemisia. They are called wormwood in English, and are used as medicinal herbs. Its antiviral properties can cure Malaria, but are also suggested for the cure of Covid 19.

      I recuperated some plantlets of Artemisia annua from Joelle Corroy, that I had found via the Artemisia house and they grew, made seeds and will be distributed and planted again next year. A distributed plantation is emerging.

      *

      Fribourg, Blue Factory - the unlearning centre - a trip to Switzerland in the heat of the summer 2019. 

      mini conferences (2 participants) on the topic of dispersing, dry toilets and 

      Collective reading moments of Bruno Latour Down to Earth and Donna Haraway Staying with the Trouble. Very helpful!!

      A reflection about Abundance at the Unlearning Centre, Fribourg. 

      *

      The Other Within

      Foundation of a collective called the Other Other, later the Other Within (with Gosie Vervloessem, Kobe Matthijs, Marialena Marouda, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia) in the winter of 2018. with a first collective attempt to encounter the other and the other within during a sweat-lodge with Rik Verschueren in July 2019.
      March 2020 – a hybrid conversation online and IRL, during the first days of the lockdown. In December, the collective is invited to Workspace Brussels for a residency to take the Others' idea further. 

      *

      March 2020 ff, S/Corona

      A part of the apass fellowship happened during the time of pandemic. The in between block was officially not curated, but Lilia Mestre proposed to keep us engaged with a score.  This became an online practice that we could do although we were confined and the school was closed. At times, we met with one or two other fellows, in the park. My brain was over-active, trying to understand what was going on and this practice was very useful to give my thinking shape, but also to stay in contact with others, and their thinking.
      The score was repeated several times. The whole series of my questions and answers (the score) can be found here: S_Corona_March2020.

      A collection of videos is part of it and was publicly screened in May and June 2020, in the shop window of nadine, Brussels: 

      Park or Room Domestication

      Infection is defined as the communication of a disease

      Terrain and Germ

      Biota

       

       

      *

      November 2020
      A series of conversations about  "new museums" is published as podcasts for the end presentation on the website http://dismantle.space

      *

      Absorbing philosophical, biological, physical, institutional texts, talks, performances, exhibitions was part of the research. This was not always supportive in advancing my quest, but at times also very helpful. Some texts I had to repeatedly read, so as to find how it could connect and nourish the questions I hold. Some other texts talked so much to me that I ended up contacting the author inviting him/her to a conversation or a collaboration.

      Quote by Vinciane Despret
      I have sometimes thought to myself - and this is surely already the basis for a science fiction novel - that our imagination is so poor, or so egocentric, that if extraterrestrials were to visit the earth, we think it is us [humans] they would want to contact.

      *

      A selection of references that have helped this trajectory to unfold:

      Agata Siniarska: In the Beginning was a Copy, 2017

      Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel: Critical Zones – exhibition at ZKM, Karlsruhe -23.05.2020 – Sun, 28.02.2021

      Bruno Latour: Down to earth, 2017

      David Abram: The Spell of the sensuous, 1996

      Deborah Bird Rose: Wild Dog Dreaming, 2012

      Descola Philippe: Beyond nature and culture, 2005

      Donna Haraway: Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, 2016

      Federico Campagna: Technic and Magic, 2018

      Jonathan Franzen: What if we stopped pretending, 2019

      Karen Barad: Diffractions: Differences, Contingencies, and Entanglements That Matter, 2007

      Karen Barad: On Touching, 2012

      Tim Ingold: What is an animal? 1988

      Ursula Leguin: The carrier bag theory of fiction, 1986

      Vinciane Despret: What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?, 2016

       

    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 2
    • block 2020/III
    • Hosting
    • Hosting Research Center Cycle 2 Block II
      22 September 2020
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre, Pia Louwerens, Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass
    • 01 September 2020
    • 12 December 2020
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Hosting


      There, we go on…

      The Associate Researchers are sitting together again physically. Sometimes masked, hands well disinfected and -as usually, hosted by the institutional care of a.pass. This care might be physical as never before. After several months under the lockdown's separating conditions and a half-suspended block, live meetings seem to be a real relief! It feels like re-starting the real. Of course, this feeling is not justified. However locked away from the real-'live' and however difficult the Corona-spring was, the productivity of the online collaborations was astonishing! A new online working-site has been filled with masses of texts, notes, and plans. It might be difficult to document live working processes with the same intensity. Last block ended with a residency in Zsenne Art Lab in July, when physical meetings were possible again. Workshops were proposed by each researcher as a way to share and exchange. This residency stayed contained within a small group of people, that for the first time came together physically. 

      Now, the autumn block has started with a new constellation of people and new conditions - the conditions of the post-lockdown-yet-infectious-city-life. The associate researchers Pia Louwerens, Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Lili Rampre, Esteban Donoso, and block curator Nicolas Galeazzi meet again regularly. More or less every second Thursday one of us is hosting the others in their research 'field'.

      When we meet, half of the meeting, we are guests in the field of the other. We think-with, take part, and relate to whatever is proposed to be practiced. The second half of the meeting is explicitly not pre-conditioned by us. We relate to what is there, to what comes up, or what is needed at the moment. The possible plays of guest and host -  amongst bodies and viruses, parasites, and hosts - are multiple, and allow us to experience our relational dependencies. 


      There, we are again...

      Again and again, it is necessary to think through the relational field we are working with. Not only the forced physical distancing, the prohibited hugs, and the masked faces, but also the role of the institutional and individual responsibilities, the new urgencies for presence and absence, and a new mix of carefulness and caring, are tinted the relational questions at a.pass with the Corona crisis. 

      What and who are we to each other in a research group? What does the research group do for us? What does it mean to be Associate Researchers - what does it mean to be a host? What is the institutional framework - what does it allow, and what does it problematize? What kind of projections are made into the institutional, and what kind of speculations could we unleash on them? 

      The virus highlights these questions in a very special way. Bodily distanced, we are still physically related. It feels like a real-time training in relational ontology. Donna Haraway manifests it as  “beings do not pre-exist their relating" and therefore relations do produce us, not the other way round. This way to see ontology is into our face any time we have to say hello to somebody and hesitate whether to show the elbow, to hug, or just to stay still at 1,5m apart. Anyway, or specifically now, it’s worth putting the focus more on shaping relations around us rather than to shape ourselves. If this is true, attitudes of hosting, being it places, practices, contexts, and perspectives is an approach we will explore.

      "We are going"..

      Derrida starts his article on Steps of Hospitality / No Hospitality with this ontological statement about being guest, always! "We are moving around: from transgression to transgression but also from digression to digression." What does that mean in the contemporary context? "This step too many." These days we are crossing lines at any moment. Unavoidably. The lines of the subject are massively shaken, enforced, penetrated, and transgressed or at least put in question by a multitude of crisis - Crisis of trust (replaced by control), a crisis of care (replaced by security), a crisis of mattering (denied by ignorance). 
      Derrida invites us to practice unconditional hospitality and sets out the conditions for it: to go on, step by step, to put oneself in a constant not-knowing the lines guest/host-hood. 

      What can that mean with respect to Haraway’s relational ontology? 
      Probably we can explore this by speaking out invitations. Let’s challenge unconditional hospitality and ask how to shape relations as a conditioning factor to deepen our understanding of the specific relational fields we find ourselves in. 


      We are going on a walk..

      As a starting ‚seminar’ in this block, we invite ourselves for a walk in the Ardennes. We will be hosted by Elke Van Campenhout at her new residence and invite her to join our 'going on'.
      Originated in the wish to give attention to all the physical and social side-processes around our research in focus, which inform our relations, trajectories, and perceptions, we want to share an experience of time besides the habitual working patterns. A hike seemed to be a simple push out of habits into a habitat where we are guests per se. Let's see how this attention infects us and our research. 

       
    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • a.pass Basics workshops
    • block 2020/III
    • Settlements
    • 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

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2020/III
    • Settlements
    • Settlement 16 The Unconditional Institution
      01 September 2020
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • Vladimir Miller
    • a.pass
    • 14 September 2020
    • 03 October 2020
    • Settlement 16

      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?

    • research center
    • workshop
    • associate researchers Cycle 2
    • Writing subtext 29 June 2020
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • Pia Louwerens
    • ZSenne Art Lab
    • 15 July 2020
    • Writing subtext

      During this workshop Pia Louwerens will test scattered yet corroborating ideas and exercises linked to her research, grouped into two sessions. The first part of the workshop will revolve around the notion of being "embedded" and ways of becoming embedded on the one hand, and on the other hand the workshop as a superstructure, an exoskeleton, which adapts itself to its participants. Would it be possible to rewrite the workshop during the event itself, and what kind of structure could serve this soft workshop? For the second part of the workshop Louwerens will introduce new elements; attempts to evoke events which occured during her research trajectory in collaboration with several institutions in the Netherlands. We will become a loosely organized speaking-reading-writing-machine to collectively document these instances and provide them with an embedded subtext.

      To participate in this workshop, please send an email to pia.louwerens1@gmail.com

      Wed, July 15th at 14h

      SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE CLOSED FOR THIS WORKSHOP

    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • archiving artistic anxieties 02 March 2020
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović
    • online: http://archivingartisticanxieties.me/
    • case of: Adrijana Gvozdenović
      case of: Sina Seifee
    • archiving artistic anxieties

       

      www.archivingartisticanxieties.me by Adrijana Gvozdenović in collaboration with Sina Seifee, Pia Louwerens, Kristina Gvozdenović and Goda Palekaitė, is a noisy visual archive and online publication that takes the form of an essay. This platform is a way to reflect and diffract from the different activities and events realized in the past year. The writing and editing processes are exposed and show the different steps of the collaboration and their constructive agencies.


      Adrijana Gvozdenovic has been for the last two years a researcher at a.pass. She proposes activities that push the borders between research, mediation and production as well as examine new formats of publicness. Naming these activities ‘Otherwise Exhibiting’, is an attempt to shift the focus from the object to relations. During the last year, her research project “Archiving Artistic Anxieties” was supported by the Royal Academy of Antwerp, which resulted in this online publication in collaboration with a.pass Research Center.

    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • ZOOLOGICAL VANDALISM Sina Seifee
      02 March 2020
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • Sina Seifee
    • 01 February 2020
    • 7 euro
    • case of: Sina Seifee
    • ZOOLOGICAL VANDALISM

      ZOOLOGICAL VANDALISM by Sina Seifee in collaboration with editor Renan Lauran and designer Foad Farahani, is immersion in the compiling and composing of Seifee’s notes on medieval bestiaries, and placing them in sequential order. It is the first chapter of a series that creates context and opens small descriptive steps towards (what Latour might call) “knowing interestingly” about bestiaries. It is a speculative adventure in bio-techno tales and old styles of knowing. As an “ecology of obligation” with Iranian sensuality and its ardent materiality, somewhere in the menagerie of found and feral animal videos on Whatsapp and Telegram, is Seifee’s undisciplined grounding in visual crafts.


      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 MA in Media Arts in KHM Cologne. In 2017 he finished an advanced research program in performance studies in a.pass.

      Price 7 Euro

       

       
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • ROT Sara Manente
      02 March 2020
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • 01 February 2020
    • 14 Euro
    • ROT

      ROT is a publication reflecting the research “Wicked technology/Wild fermentation,” by Sara Manente that focuses on forms and practice of fermentation as ways to rethink bodies and their making. This glossy magazine performs research, aiming to infect the reader, and questioning how to spread, publish, and help the work survive.

      Sara Manente is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher born in Italy and living in Brussels. She is interested in narrowing the distance between the performer, the audience, and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation, and ways of doing. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration, et al.

      Price 14 Euro

       

       
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • PUBLISHING ARTISTIC RESEARCH research center associates Cycle 1
      17 February 2020
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • Isabel Burr Raty, Antye Guenther, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Sina Seifee and a.pass
    • 01 February 2020
    • 35 euro = 4 publications + Annex
    • PUBLISHING ARTISTIC RESEARCH

      Documenting, archiving, and publishing are intrinsic to the ongoing practices of a.pass. They are seen as research tools that enable critical reflections through their exposure of artistic research processes. The program seeks to find public formats or outlets for research in the course of its ongoing development, and facilitates an understanding of the politics of such processes.

      With these concepts in mind, the a.pass Research Center (RC) began a new program in 2018 that hosts six Associate Researchers in cycles of one year as a platform for exchange in artistic research. Cycle I hosted Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen and Sina Seifee. They contributed to the platform through concerns, concepts and “ways of doing” inherent to their practices.

       

      PDF of the ANNEX you can read HERE

      a printed annex is added for free with every purchase
      of the Research Center Cycle I publications.

       


       

       

      ROT is a publication reflecting the research “Wicked technology/Wild fermentation,” by Sara Manente that focuses on forms and practice of fermentation as ways to rethink bodies and their making. This glossy magazine performs research, aiming to infect the reader, and questioning how to spread, publish, and help the work survive.

      Sara Manente is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher born in Italy and living in Brussels. She is interested in narrowing the distance between the performer, the audience, and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation, and ways of doing. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration, et al.

      Price 14 Euro

      ORDER HERE


      FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS brings artistic research into form – not merely as an aesthetic question but as a social and political one. Indeed, there are no politics without form! With Forms of Life, Rob Ritzen curated several “Moments” that assembled works, collective readings, and other references into a single installa- tion. This publication reshuffles documentation of these “Moments” as a visual reflection of the trajectory of this research.

      Rob Ritzen works as a curator with a background in philosophy. His curatorial practice is focusing on self-organized and cooperative formats. Consciously positioned at the margins of established institutions and outside of market-oriented spaces, his practice is placed in close association with communities of cultural practitioners. His initiatives are attempts to reconfigure the politics of making art and alternative forms of production and presentation.

      https://www.robritzen.info/actions/forms-of-life-of-forms/

      price 12 Euro

      ORDER HERE

       

      ZOOLOGICAL VANDALISM by Sina Seifee in collaboration with editor Renan Lauran and designer Foad Farahani, is immersion in the compiling and composing of Seifee’s notes on medieval bestiaries, and placing them in sequential order. It is the first chapter of a series that creates context and opens small descriptive steps towards (what Latour might call) “knowing interestingly” about bestiaries. It is a speculative adventure in bio-techno tales and old styles of knowing. As an “ecology of obligation” with Iranian sensuality and its ardent materiality, somewhere in the menagerie of found and feral animal videos on Whatsapp and Telegram, is Seifee’s undisciplined grounding in visual crafts.


      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 MA in Media Arts in KHM Cologne. In 2017 he finished an advanced research program in performance studies in a.pass.

      Price 5 Euro

      ORDER HERE

       


      NEOCORTEX is a textile poster publication. It can be used as a head or neck scarf, a hairband, a veil, a belt, a table cloth, an arm sling, a disguise in political demonstrations, a laboratory sieve, or a tool for receiving and transmitting alien thoughts. This scarf is the second materialization of ongoing research on neuroscientific visualization practices and questionable conceptualizations of our brains. Referring to the current trend in the scientific community to print posters on textiles rather than on paper, it combines reconstructed MRI data of the artist’s brain with various text fragments from science and science fiction.


      Antye Guenther is a visual artist and artist-researcher, born and raised in Eastern Germany. Drawing from her background in medicine, photography, and in the military, her artistic practice treats themes like (non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, scientific representations of cognitive processes and mind control, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and fictionality of science. Guenther studied at the art academies of Leipzig and Karlsruhe, and at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. In 2019 she received the first Mingler Scholarship for Art and Science.

      https://aguenth.de/

      Price: 155 Euro

      ORDER HERE

       

       

       

      www.archivingartisticanxieties.me by Adrijana Gvozdenović in collaboration with Sina Seifee, Pia Louwerens, Kristina Gvozdenović and Goda Palekaitė, is a noisy visual archive and online publication that takes the form of an essay. This platform is a way to reflect and diffract from the different activities and events realized in the past year. The writing and editing processes are exposed and show the different steps of the collaboration and their constructive agencies.


      Adrijana Gvozdenovic has been for the last two years a researcher at a.pass. She proposes activities that push the borders between research, mediation and production as well as examine new formats of publicness. Naming these activities ‘Otherwise Exhibiting’, is an attempt to shift the focus from the object to relations. During the last year, her research project “Archiving Artistic Anxieties” was supported by the Royal Academy of Antwerp, which resulted in this online publication in collaboration with a.pass Research Center.

       

       

      BEAUTY KIT – AN ECO-EROGENOUS ART PROJECT by Isabel Burr Raty with contributions by Kristin Rogghe, Elke Van Campenhout, Gosie Vervloessem, Pablo Diartinez and Tim Vets, is an experimental catalog summarizing Isabel Burr Raty’s research on conceptualizing and manufacturing eco-erogenous para-pharmaceutical products. It tells the story of the BKFF, a mobile farm where she and other females harvest their orgasmic juices to produce beauty bio-products, used for treatments in the BK Spa, critically discussed in the BK Focus Group and moving forward into becoming a village, where every-body harvests each other. The catalog comes with contributing text, “Harvesting bodies – The Farm as Paradox” by Elle/Elke Van Campenhout, and other reflections on the project.

      Isabel Burr Raty is a Belgian-Chilean artist, filmmaker, and Media Art History teacher in ERG (École de Recherche Graphique), living between Brussels and Amsterdam. She is currently developing her second feature film, about the colonial impact on Easter Island, and creating live art and new media installations that queer production understandings, such as the Beauty Kit Project. Her works have been shown internationally.

       

      Price: 10 Euro

      ORDER HERE


      4 publications + Annex = 35 euro
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 2
    • WHAT YOUR RESEARCH DID TO ME research center associates Cycle II
      17 February 2020
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens
    • 10 June 2021
    • 30 euro - annex + 2 books + 1 game
    • WHAT YOUR RESEARCH DID TO ME

      Performative publishing” opens other forms of doing that reflect the speculative attitudes of artistic research.

      a.pass Research Center hosts associate researchers in one-year cycles. Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens were part of “Cycle II 2020/21”. Their research topics range from cultural discourse analysis in the dance field, institutional critique and immaterial art production, architectural encounter dispositifs, decolonial dance history and politics of listening. Throughout the year, they contributed with concerns, concepts and “ways of doing” inherent to their practice. They share their research trajectory and their entanglements in singular performative publications, as well as a collective digital publication on madewitholga.be. Excerpts of their collaborative work are published in The Annex, which functions as a printed index to the online collective publication, as well as to the multiform performative publications of the individual researchers.

       


      THE ANNEX

      Collective publication

      What your research did to me is a collective online publication by a.pass “Research Center Cycle II,” with excerpts printed in The Annex. In response to a self-defined score, the associated researchers produced an online assemblage of conversations, film clips, letters, auto-theoretical writings and a storytelling/feedback game.

      In a collaborative research environment like a.pass, a lot of creative and critical energy is devoted to developing modes of sharing. These modes range from spontaneous and informal, to highly orchestrated, artificial, constrained and designed. Whether called hosting, adopting, participating, initiating, presenting, borrowing, testing, or what have you – they all come with a different distribution of entanglements with each other, and eventually with a wider public.

      The publication What your research did to me takes as a point of departure the fact that modes of sharing already happened, and that along the way, the initial projects lost their clear contours. They crossbred into each other and made (un)traceable lines and knots, without losing definition. When deliberating the making of a publication to impart something of the collective process, the first impulse was to find a common denominator in research subject (e.g. listening), if not in research method (e.g. note-taking). This strategy yielded a somewhat pernicious effect in that it tended to fade the singularities and intricacies of the approaches, how one inclined to another – but not necessarily to all. Sharing wasn’t the same as amalgamating into uniformity. Proximity engendered centrifuge as much as centripetal forces.

      The solution adopted was to list each for oneself, moments where one’s research was inspired by someone else’s, and to readdress that moment of implicit borrowing or appropriating back into collective work, either with the proprietor of the question or with the entire group, and in any case, witnessed by all.

      madewitholga.be or in print.

      PDF OF ANNEX II here > a.pass_annex_2021

      The Annex is 5 euro.
      You get the Annex for free if you order one of the publications.
      Price of Annex + the 3 printed publications = 30 euro


      What your research did to me, a collective online publication by a.pass Research Centre Cycle II, with excerpts printed in *The Annex*. What your research did to me is an online assemblage of conversations, film clips, letters, autotheoretical writings and a storytelling/feedback game, produced in response to a self-defined score.
       
      Published on madewitholga.be

      SITING DISCOURSE
      Diary excerpt from Live Archive,

      by Breg Horemans

      Siting Discourse is a dialogical diary that explores the protocols, politics and accessibility of a digital architecture-as-archive (www.taat-projects.com). Horemans shares the writing process through a recorded sequence of screen captures. Siting Discourse exposes the Live Archive´s digital spatiality and the implicit gestures, attitudes and coincidences of discourse making that it aims to facilitate. The title is a reference to the Live Archive as a (web-)site for discursive documentation and it addresses the academic citing mechanism as a form of “structural misquoting.” Siting Discourse is a collaboration between Siebren Nachtergaele (Social Sciences HOGENT, Theatre Studies UGENT, BE) and Andrew Filmer (Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, WA). Their first encounter was shaped by means of a drift.

      PDF FREE DOWNLOAD  > archive 10-6-2021_final

      Breg Horemans is co-founder of TAAT, a liquid collective of artists working on the verge of performance, research and installation art. Since 2011, he renegotiates his relation to the architecture discipline through transdisciplinary collaborations. The desire of his research lies in shaping the spatial conditions for ‘sites of encounter’ that invite human and non-human entities to co-constitute each other. The projects initiated by TAAT generate spaces for co-activity and instigate fluid prototyping processes as ‘becoming spaces’. In the last two years, Breg is co-developing an online environment that enhance processes of open source writing, archiving and publishing.

       


       

       

      I’M NOT SAD, THE WORLD IS SAD
      Artistic research novel,

      by Pia Louwerens

      I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad is an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution. Invested in queer theory and institutional critique, she sets out to perform the artist “differently” through a process of negation and passivity, inadvertently causing her relationship with the institution’s curator to grow increasingly speculative and paranoid. Louwerens’ labor as tour guide, security guard, artist, hostess and researcher at different institutions begins to overlap and blend under the name of “performance.” Im Not Sad, The World Is Sad is a fragmented story of paranoid and reparative reading, script and utterance, exposure and vulnerability.

      Pia Louwerens is a performance artist and researcher from the Netherlands, living in Brussels. Her research revolves around the becoming of the artistic subject, the I who writes, speaks and makes, in relation to the (institutional) context. From 2019 - 2020 Louwerens was working as embedded artistic researcher at a big research project, for which she was embedded in an art institution. Through this research she attempted to perform or practice the artist, and thereby the institution, differently. Her work usually takes the shape of a performance in which she speaks, switching between registers of the actual, the possible, the professional and the anxious artist.

      price 15 euro

      ORDER HERE + preview PDF (coming soon)

       


       

       

      POP-FI POSTER
      A game,

      by Lili M. Rampre

      Pop-Fi poster is a “choose your own adventure” game developed by Lili M. Rampre in collaboration with Júlia Rúbies Subirós. The game traces pre-public discourse, a semi-private collection of thoughts that, once shared and circulated, can shift a wider agenda on what matters to artists the most. The game aims to popularize common fictions and pop the bubble of others. Collectivizing half-digested thoughts potentially means bridging between personal and structural to effectuate change. Pop-Fi poster is part of Pop-Fi: a multifaceted project that entails a performative workshop ventriloquizing popular movie icons, video installations and script-readings. Pop-Fi foregrounds concerns of an artistic community through a variety of formats that act as a discourse prism. Pop-Fi poster is both a visual aid for the workshop and an autonomous object. Pop-Fi’s next step is developing strategies to funnel from anecdotal to factual and think about data and its visualization techniques informed by direct experience, commitment to action and intersectionality.

      Lili M. Rampre is researching strategies to highlight “off stage”; processes, practices and actors behind, off, under or above the stage. Her focus lies on power relationships and the dynamics of disparities in cultural capital (audience-performer, fan-star, producer-artist). Her work has often a role-reversal in its core proposal, ventriloquism of a kind, or unreliable narration. Most recently Lili is looking into fandom and fandom civic practices authorising fiction to affect political action as an artistic methodology, to re-articulate essential parts of artistic production and circulation as fictional or factual aspects.


      Price 3 Euro

      ORDER HERE (coming)

       


       

      WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE
      BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS
      Interviews,

      by Davide Tidoni

      Where Do You Draw the Line Between Art and Politics consists of a series of interviews with individuals who have been active in various capacities at the intersection of art and politics. Between historical documentation, political memory, dialogic reflection, and motivational support, the publication examines the experiences, commitments and feelings that operate and inform aesthetic priorities in social spaces outside of art institutions; it’s a repository designed to inspire and encourage the politicization of aesthetics, as opposed to the aestheticization of politics.

      Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher working with sound and listening. With a particular focus on direct experience, observation, and action, he creates works of different formats that include live performance, intervention, walk, video, audio recording, and text scores. He is interested in the use of sound and music in counter-culture and political struggles and has published a sound based field research on the northern italian ultras group Brescia 1911 (The Sound of Normalisation, 2018). Davide’s work can be accessed at: davidetidoni.name

      price: 15 Euro

      ORDER HERE + preview PDF (soon)


       
       
       
       
    • postgraduate program
    • block 2020/I
    • Zone Public
    • BLOCK 2020/I 20 December 2019
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • a.pass Brussels
    • 06 January 2020
    • 30 April 2020
    • BLOCK 2020/I

       

       

       

       

      a.pass post-graduate program for winter-spring 2020 follows the habitual form of three collective gatherings: at the beginning: the ‘Opening Week’, in the middle: the ‘Half Way Days’ and at the end: the ‘End Week’. These are collective workdays where, at large, all the artists and researchers both present their work and feedback on everybody’s research. The three distinct gatherings propose different protocols of presentations and modes of feedback. All protocols are discussed during the block. 

      The block includes as well Zone Public, a curated seminar-like series of working sessions dedicated specifically to this block and happening mainly on Thursdays and Fridays. This ensemble of proposals is designed by Femke Snelting, Peggy Pierrot and Pierre Rubio.


      January
      6-14 : Opening Week Days
      16-17 : Zone Public sessions #1
      23-24 : Zone Public sessions #2
      30-31 : Zone Public sessions #3

      February
      6-7 : Zone Public sessions #4
      13-14 : Zone Public sessions #5
      17-21 : Halfway Days
      27-28 :  Zone Public sessions #6

      March
      5-6 Zone Public sessions #7
      12-13 Zone Public sessions #8
      14-15 Zone Public sessions #9
      22-23 Zone Public sessions #10
      30-April 5 End Week at Perfomance Arts Forum (France)

       


      The artists and researchers participating in this block with their projects are:

      Chloe Chignell
      Signe Frederiksen
      Quinsy Gario
      Stefan Govaart
      Adriano Wilfert Jensen
      Mathilde Maillard
      Muslin Brothers
      Flavio Rodrigo Orzari Ferreira
      Magda Ptasznik
      Christina Stadlbauer
      Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc
      Kasia Tórz
      Katrine Turner
      Andrea Zavala Folache

       

       

       

       

       


      The dedicated mentors, curators, and artistic coordinator are:

       

                 Dedicated Mentoring

      Kristien Van Den Brande
      Kristien Van den Brande is a Brussels-based writer, editor, dramaturge and researcher. An ongoing interest in the (im)materiality, image and performativity of writing has characterized her work, which engages with a range of disciplines including literature, performance, expanded publishing, urbanism and sexuality. Inspired by ‘minor literatures’, she does ongoing research about 'Support de Fortune’, a notion that refers to forms of writing that take place in the margin of print or on throw-away paper. She is a living book and co-editor in Mette Edvardsen’s project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Together with Myriam Van Imschoot she set up oralsite.be, an online platform for expanded publishing. Lately, she is gaining interest in role-play as dramaturgic, artistic, therapeutic, sexual tool "to undo the creature in us”. That latter was Anne Carson speaking.

       

      Vladimir Miller
      Vladimir Miller works as an artist, researcher, scenographer and dramaturge. His practice aims at re-negotiating habitual modes of spatial production by using fragility as a building principle. He uses collective construction- and building processes to investigate ideologies of labour and territory within ad-hoc groups and institutional environments. In his latest projects he works with the materiality of fluids to challenge ideas of stability embedded within the design of spaces of cultural production. Vladimir Miller has been a frequent collaborator with the choreographers Philipp Gehmacher and Meg Stuart. As scenographer, co-author, dramaturge and performer he took part or co-created a number of performances and video installations with the two artists. In 2018-19 he is dramaturge in residence at Decoratelier/Jozef Wouters. Vladimir Miller is co-curator of the postgraduate artistic research institute a.pass, Brussels and a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 2013 Miller was Fellow at Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin and in 2015 Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Vladimir Miller has been guest lecturer at the University of Hamburg and at KASK, Gent.

       

      Femke Snelting
      Femke Snelting works as artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminisms and free software. In various constellations she has been exploring how digital tools and practices might co-construct each other. She is member of Constant, a non-profit, artist-run association for art and media based in Brussels. With Jara Rocha she currently activates Possible Bodies, a collective research project that interrogates the concrete and at the same time fictional entities of "bodies" in the context of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. She co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP) and formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring. Apart from mentoring at a.pass, Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (experimental publishing, Rotterdam).

       


                Zone Public Co-curating

      Peggy Pierrot
      Peggy Pierrot lives and works in Brussels. She works mainly with different associations and educational or research structures. Her most favourite tools are human sciences and free softwares. Since there are "profound links between gesture and speech, between expressible thought and the creative activity of the hand ", she is currently working at the Ecole of Recherche Graphique (ERG) both as a technical and logistical assistant and as a teacher in Media and Communication Theory. She is also involved in the master's program Récits et expérimentation - Narration spéculative. (Storytelling and experimentation - Speculative Fabulation) She gives lectures and workshops on Afro-Atlantic cultures and literatures, science fiction, media and technology and has an active practice in radio.

       

      Pierre Rubio
      Pierre Rubio works as artist, independent researcher and dramaturge. At large and through different forms, his work questions modes of individuation to explore contemporary production of subjectivity in/through the arts. What is real for an artist? is his main research question. Pierre was a dancer and choreographer for a long time, holds a master's degree in the arts combining theatre & communication at the campus of Aix-Marseille University (France) and dance & choreography at the campus of Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers (France). Pierre is currently a core member, co-curator and mentor in a.pass - a platform for artistic research practices.

       

      Femke Snelting
      (see above)

       


                Artistic coordination

      Lilia Mestre
      Lilia Mestre (Lisboa 1968) is a performing artist and researcher based in Brussels. She interested in art practice as a medial tool between several domains of semiotical existence. Mestre works with assemblages, scores and inter-subjective setups as an artist, curator, dramaturge and teacher. She’s currently co-curator and artistic coordinator of a.pass where she develops a research on scores - Scorescapes - as a possible radical pedagogical tool. In 2019 - 2021 she’s collaborating with Prof. Jill Halstead and Prof. Brandon LaBelle in Social Acoustic - a research project supported by the University of Bergen, Norway. And with Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga in Contingent Agencies - a research project supported by PEEK -Vienna, AU. 

       

       

      More information about Zone Public here

    • REMINDER january 2019 21 November 2019
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi

      newscaption

      line650

       

      REMINDER!!!
      This Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 

      end communications of a.pass

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens
      and Eleanor Ivory Weber

      @ Hectolitre (MAROLLEN - Brussels) 

      Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019
      from 18:00 to 22:00
      Hectolitre - Rue de Hectolitre 3 - 1000 Brussels


      Schedule: 

      18:00 food & drinks 

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction

      19:00 Subverses I: Play 

      Break

      20:00 7 anxieties and the world

      20:30 Subverses II

      Break

      21:15 Subverses III

      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed
      (doors close before the last performance starts) 

      Performances by Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens

      With contributions by
      Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      LISTEN TO THE TRAILER

      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Read more...


       a.pass
      p/a de Bottelarij
      Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       
       
    • newscaption

       

       

      REMINDER
      This Friday 1 & Saturday 2 February 

      a.pass end communications

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens
      and Eleanor Ivory Weber

      @ Hectolitre (MAROLLEN - Brussels) 

      Friday 1 & Saturday 2 February 2019
      from 18:00 to 22:00
      @Hectolitre - Rue de Hectolitre 3, 1000 Brussels
      www.hectolitre.space


      LISTEN TO THE AUDIO TRAILER

      Schedule: 

      18:00 food & drinks 

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction

      19:00 Subverses I: Play 

      Break

      20:00 7 anxieties and the world

      20:30 Subverses II : Glossolalien missive

      Break

      21:15 Subverses III

      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed

      Performances by Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens

      With contributions by
      Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Read more...

       


       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

       

    • 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
    • Research Center Cycle 1 Block IIII Reviewing emergence

      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.

       

       

       
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • Victories over the Suns
    • victories over the suns projects / events / agenda
      24 June 2019
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • a.pass Research Centre Associates in residence
    • ZSenne ART Lab / Brussels
    • 24 June 2019
    • 14 July 2019
    • victories over the suns

       

       

       

      general presentation of the project here

       

       

      ---------research projects-events-and-agenda---------

       

       

       

      WICKED TECHNOLOGIES/WILD FERMENTATION

      By linking practices of fermentation, feminism and artistic research, SARA MANENTE hosts a space for thinking, perceiving and doing togetherness in live cultures and live arts.

      Sara is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher interested in narrowing the distance between the performers, the audience and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation and (aesthetic) value. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration et al.

      For Zsenne she proposes and activates a Discursive lab on “fermentation and wickedness”. She will first lacto ferment a summer vegetable while discussing collectively the meaning of wicked, queer, wild and technologies in relation to participants personal researches. She then will leave the ferments in jars to age in the space of the gallery. On the last day of the residency the researchers in Brussels will open and taste them while discussing the same topics, this time informed by 3 weeks of collective fermentation. Meanwhile Sara will be in Fahrenheit 451 House in Catskill starting new alive cultures with the artists/curators Inju Kaboom and Steve Schmitz and their guests as a relay game of bacterial process. Among all the present participants of the residency, Antye Guenther, currently in residence in Japan, will join this online collective fermentation dinner.

      Furthermore Sara will perform later in the week, an informal try-out concert on the multilayered and mashed sound that she has been making in the last few months : “Mush” musical cocktail.

       

       

       

      FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS

      ROB RITZEN assembles elements of his research as an associate researcher at a.pass. In several collective moments he will explore the idea that form is not only aesthetical but that there is no politics without form. If so those concerned with form everyday, artists for example, can bring forms into being that can generate (un)foreseen effects on the forms that dictate our everyday life and shape our world. With Forms of Life of Forms, in short, Rob wants to work with others to better understand forms in all their expressions and workings, but above all to gain insights into how we can use forms to change the world around us.

      With every moment he will add different perspectives and new layers to the notion of form; in-formation, political forms, network forms, value forms, organisational forms. Each moment brings forward a text and visual works that will be explored and discussed together. These elements will form a growing assemblage of written and visual works by Caroline Levine, Marco Lampis, Catherine Malabou, Antye Guenther, Marjolijn Dijkman, Mathijs van de Sande, Judith Butler, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, James Bridle, PA Consulting Group, Bureau des Etudes Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, Nancy Fraser, Diego Tonus, and Zachary Formwalt. 

      Graphic design collective D.E.A.L will translate each moment and the added insights into a poster published for the following session.

      Rob 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.

       

       

       

      OTHERWISE EXHIBITING ARTISTIC ANXIETIES AND THE WORLD

      ‘My desires (or wills) are always in being produced, instead of producing. But some sort of production is expected.’

      (Stefano Faoro, from the A4 press release of his solo exhibition ‘Soft Knees’, at Wiels project room 21.02 – 10.03.2019.)

      Back in February, ADRIJANA GVOZDENOVIĆ related her thinking to Stefano Faoro’s text and how he used the standard format of A4 exhibition guide to be the work in the exhibition and a press release at the same time. How to engage with the time in ZSenne Artlab as a residency, a semi-public presentation, an open project, a traject, aiming to examine the formats of publicness of artistic research that pushes the border between research, mediation and production?

      For three weeks, Adrijana proposes two ongoing practices that are at the same time a tool for conversation, an ongoing research and documentation process focusing on the temporal aspect of this kind of exhibiting. First, a cyanotype printing process, forming in time in relation to U.V. rays from sunlight to think together about traces and blueprints of and for the event, their sharp shadows and (non)transparency. Second, a one-to-one card reading, artistic anxieties and the world. In a 7 card spread Adrijana proposes to read (for and with) the artists and researchers - individuals that are concerned, fearful and hopeful, excited about their practice.

      Adrijana is a visual artist and a researcher. In the last two years, in the collective studying environment of a.pass, she has been proposing activities and formats to explore possibilities of what she calls  Otherwise Exhibiting, shifting the focus from

      object to process to change. Since the beginning of this year, as a continuation of these lines, she started doing one year research at the Royal Academy of Antwerp with a project ‘Archiving Artistic Anxieties’, a proposal for self-archiving as an artistic practice. Adrijana introduces the concept of ‘artistic anxieties’ which stands for an artistic practice that looks for developing a mode of critique from an unstable position, exploring uncertainties and ‘follow(ing) the treads where they lead’.

      *To take part in one of these two practices and contribute to the research, please send email adrijana.gvozdenovic@gmail.com 

       

       

       

      OTHER GEOMETRIES

      Femke Snelting develops research projects at the intersection of feminisms, design and free software. In various constellations she explores how digital tools and cultural practices might co-construct each other. She is a member of Constant, a non-profit artist-run association for art and media based in Brussels. 

      She proposes for the residence a workshop : Other Geometries. It is an invitation to reflect on, re-imagine and train for togetherness with difference. It is a collaborative research-kit, a porous collection of trans*femininist renderings, eccentric imagery and recombinatory vocabularies. The kit is part of an ongoing conversation with activist collectives which rely on concepts such as 'sovereignty', 'freedom', 'independence' and 'autonomy' to ideologically motivate work on tools, networks and infrastructures we need and want. But by sticking to modes of separation rather than relation, we continue to evoke utopias elsewhere, instead of developing ways to stay with the trouble that we are already entangled in. 

      Other Geometries proposes 'complex collectivity' as a tentative framework to think with, for example, non-normative human constellations, or collectives where participants with radically different needs, backgrounds and agencies come together. ‘complex collectivity' can be self-chosen, or be the result of structural forces such as laws, racism, technology, wars, austerity, queerphobia and ecological conditions.

      Many of the items included in the kit modify existing concepts by introducing dynamic tension. In the workshop Femke will extend this method to the way we relay stories of complex collectivities or the kind of geometries we invent for them. We will try to be attentive to generative vibrations between ontologies and cosmologies and speculate with ‘infrastructures’ that could hold more than one form of togetherness together. What non-utopian models can we design to interface with multiple collectivities? How can we do that without making their intersections dependent on the rigidifying assumptions of sameness and reciprocity?

       

       

       

      MAKING PUBLIC

      After a.pass last audit in 2015, the Ministry of Education supported our institution by rating it officially “excellent”. Nevertheless the ministry encouraged us to become more visible and disseminate our knowledge practices on a more regular basis. This administrative curatorial invitation became a point of critical discussion and complex -conceptual and practical- development in a.pass under the name ‘Making Public’.

      Publishing more? But what and how? Are we not obliged to problematize what a publication of artistic research could be? And isn’t it as well coherent to question and develop other modes of publishing? Disseminating more? But in which direction, in which proportion and for who? What does quantity mean in a frame of experimental practice? And what is the public for artistic research if not one to be imagined and ‘actualised’ because it might not exist yet? Are we not supposed to speculate a public for speculative practices? 

      Since three years the different iterations and proposals under the ‘Making Public’ umbrella were numerous within a.pass at large and occupied quite some space in the newly reconfigured research centre. Going from the thorny problem of ‘contract’, to the dichotomy between ‘private versus public’, to the challenging concept of ‘performative publishing’, to discussions towards the development of experimental digital (non)humanities, to the ontological/political definition of publishing as an act, and more... our notebook and catalogue of actual practices is expanding.

      For this residence we propose a discussion day around ‘Making Public’ as a title, frame and horizon where the participants will contribute by sharing their own relational arrangement between their practices and the publication problem. They will also share their definitions and discuss together their concern starting from the question of urgency.

       

       

       

      CRITICAL BESTIARIES

      A lecture performance by SINA SEIFEE presenting the making of a mini-scale quasi-organization, called the critical bestiaries, to host/construct semi-sustainable structures for storytelling and questioning techniques of bestiaries. Namely, the questions of relational histories, technologies of memory, modes of attention, differential consciousness, and animal subjectivity. This project in the shape of a magazine will be a quadrilingual (German, Farsi, English, Arabic) online and printed form, and its topics are both thematic and epistemic. It is both an inspiration for storytelling and a reading apparatus, to give a chance to an interest for multi-species studies and to define a hybrid mode of discourse to talk about the conditions of storytelling today.

      This projects will practically address the question of: which sensory-technology for making are necessary to approach ‘description’ as speculative theory in practice of how a world works? The aim of the magazine is to entangle: design (making things that tell stories), storytelling (a materialist practice of how not to reach the end), science (an interpretative adventure), faithful and fantastic (mixture of the highly rational and the highly fabulous), boundary objects (workaround things, concepts, processes, even routines that permit coordination, sometimes collaboration, without consensus), objectivity (the possibility of unambiguous communication and of boundary articulations) and fable (relational and speculative empiricism).

      Sina Seifee researches as an artist in the fields of narrative, performance and knowledge production. He is 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.

       

       

       

      SCORESCAPES

      Lilia Mestre is a performing artist and researcher based in Brussels working mainly in collaboration with other artists. She is interested in art practice as a medial tool between several domains of semiotic existence. Lilia works with assemblages, scores and inter-subjective setups as an artist, curator, dramaturge and teacher. From 2019 till 2021 she has/will collaborate(d) with Brandon Labelle in Social Acoustic project - a research project supported by the University of Bergen, Norway and with Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga in Contingent Agencies - a research project supported by PEEK -Vienna. Since 2008 she is involved in developing the artistic research oriented young institution a.pass -she is currently a.pass artistic coordinator and co-curator- where she has been developing a research on scores as pedagogical tool titled ScoreScapes.

      ScoreScapes is a research Lilia started in the context of a.pass, starting from questions such as: How to create an inclusive dispositive that enables learning through each other’s research proposals? How to deal with an un-disciplinary context that aims for transversal relations? By “score” Lilia means a set of instructions that can be repeated for a predetermined period of time. These instructions create a system through which participants interact, as the scores can be modified and used by anyone. Since 2014, she has developed four iterations of the practice: Writing Score, Perform Back Score, Bubble Score and Medium Score. And each iteration marked by the release of a conclusive publication.

      Recently Lilia wrote ‘Scorescapes’, a text about the project that points to its transversal qualities and delineates some problems about its nature. Is ScoreScapes an archive? A documentary production? An art practice? A social practice? How does the project relate to artistic research as an unstable and unframed mode of knowledge practice? Does ScorScapes project’s ungraspable definition create conditions for something to happen in term of publishing otherwise?

      During the residency in Zsenne ArtLab, Pierre Rubio will present the different dimensions and current state of the ScoreScape project with Lilia in an afternoon of collective reading, interview, Q&A and discussion.

       

       

       

      TOWARDS AN ECO-EROGENOUS PARA-PHARMACEUTICS VILLAGE

      In catastrophic times… Can the orgasmic body be a source for sustainable electricity production? Can the cavities that make up the landscapes of the human sexual organs be a territory for agricultural development? Can sex hormones offer alternative components for psychopharmacology and recreational drugs formulas? ISABEL BURR RATY is an independent filmmaker and performance artist, interested in the ontological crack between the organic and the artificially engineered, between the unlicensed knowledge of minority groups and the official facts. In her films, Isabel embodies human cosmo-visions that are in eco-survival resistance, bringing the imaginative realisms of the camouflaged and their subversive sense of chronology into the screen. In her artwork she interweaves new media, body art, installation and performance proposing hybrid narratives and bio-autonomous practices that play with synthetic magic. In her current work, Isabel creates hybrid performances and installations that invite the public to queer fixed categories of production understandings and experience the benefits of embodying SF in real time. She is currently running a Mobile Farm that starts by harvesting human female sexual juices, to produce beauty bio-products in Portugal and Holland, and will evolve into an ‘Eco-erogenous Para-pharmaceutics Village’ in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where “every-BODY” will harvest and recycle each other. The village will be a tentacular community of synergic mutualism that goes beyond the idea of corpus/body as biological transmitter of kinship and situates the human as a non-human species that can offer solutions to the planetary crisis we live in.

      During the residence, Isabel presents three objects that revisit her project and outline a perspective towards the future of her research: Self facial abduction beauty treatment - This installation offers to the public the tester products of the unisex skin care lines manufactured in the Beauty Kit Female Farm and displayed in this Farm SPA. The visitors are invited to follow the application protocol an experience exotic transpersonal benefits - Male Farm : 1st encounter - To move the ideas of the project forward, during the residence, Isabel organises the first official Male Farm Encounter starting the conversation with a question: What’s happening with male sexuality today? A group of friends will join Isabel for an off conversation about how to address the incognitos around the male sexuality with the ambitious mission of transforming in the future male orgasmic genital and mental fluids in bio-autonomous technologies to produce electric energy. Beauty Kit Upgraded - Lecture Performance - In this lecture the artist hacks the focus group format to present the different lines of beauty bio-products that she conceptualized and manufactured using the female sexual juices that were harvested in her Mobile Farms. In this occasion the public is invited to help solving some of the riddles embedded in the alter-economic model of this project.

      Isabel is associate researcher in a.pass.be, teaches Media art history in École de Recherche Graphique Brussels and is artist in residency in Waag, Mediamatic and VU Amsterdam.

       

       

       

      POLITICS OF ENGINEERING

      ‘Politics of engineering’ is a one day of presentations and conversations about the questions of digital technologies posed by a.pass, as an institution, and addressed by its constituent knowers -Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, Open Source Publishing - in the process of making three models and adjustment to the work of documentation and digital publishing that has been recently done or currently in the making.

      ---The day will start with a public conversation and an inconclusive study on the technical and epistemological assumptions that were made in the making of Parallel Parasite : Timeline Repository, a visual and discursive apparatus made by Sina Seifee after Parallel Parasite, a month residency at ZSenne ArtLab, produced by a.pass Research Centre and curated by Lilia Mestre in the Summer of 2018. 

      ---Afterwards we continue by a presentation of OSP (Open Source Publishing) an engaged graphic design unit founded in 2006 in Brussels. OSP comprises a group of individuals from different backgrounds and practices in typography and graphic design, cartography, programming, mathematics, writing, and performance. They will present their practice, commitments, tools and projects.

      ---We will then continue by publishing the RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface, a website hosting a collective and experimental radio project aiming at producing audio documents gathered and disseminated by the ad hoc fictional radio label/station, which is the outcome of voluntary contributions after the 2017 winter seminar of a.pass, curated by Pierre Rubio. The website will be presented by the makers, the result of the initiation and curation of Pierre Rubio with the artistic and technological dramaturgy of Sina Seifee. They will discuss the making of RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface as a hybrid dispositive, as a science-fiction entity, a problematic storytelling, a speculation site and some concerns around politics of imagination.

      ---Then, OSP in conversation with Sina Seifee, will question and problematise engineering mentality and the use-relation of digital technologies in/with the arts and complex artistic research practices and institutions.

      ---Finally, everybody will have a discussion/Q&A where complex politics of digital engineering can be addressed collectively.

       

       

       

      CONTINGENT WEIRDNESS (workshop on horror)

      Adrijana Gvozdenović and Sina Seifee propose Contingent Weirdness (workshop on horror)

      A two-days training/hanging-out/sharing/practice for artists researchers focusing on the specific genre of horror to understand each other’s artistic commitments in a constraint and therefore generative way. Adrijana and Sina will explore and reshape historical elements of the genre, such as zombies, gore and torture of ghostly demons, vicious animals and cannibal witches, as well as medieval serial killer monsters, unnatural disasters and Frankenstein projects, and so on. Parallel we foreground different scales and registers of horror for reconsideration, ranging from speculative fiction, sci-fi cinema, to medieval bestiaries, inducing “bad feelings” such as fear, uncanny, awe, mania, panic, tension and anxiety.

      The workshop starts by imagining an aspect of our practices as a horror story, locating the fear, and deciding, with the help of the group, what can be turned into horror. Doing so, we are interested in exploring the parts of our practice that are fucked-up, that means to which extent what we do can become a disaster, gore, torture. Starting from where one’s practice produces demage and when thinking disintegrate and disorient, we will map what escapes our peripheral vision. We will discuss together (arche-)type of horror categories and make a cliche/scheme/model for at least one or two of them. Then we will chose an affective, atmospheric, compositional technique of horror to ask how does this story relates to which existing social, political, cultural phenomena today. We will concentrate on both, to create horrors but also working on a specific setting, which is important for the genre not only to set up the mood but to create an ambience of the expectation of horror. In the workshop we will provide basinc accessories and tools to create settings - an ambience of ‘expectation’ pregnant with horror. In relation to this, we will prepare references for the reading and/or watching selected films together. In the second day, we focus on composing singular pieces (around individual proposals or in small groups) which we will share at the end of the day in the setting of a ‘scary stories night’.

      Going through how this genre works is important, because genre is a way of gathering and staging what it cares for, in a performative and coherent way to teach a negatively affected audience how to inhabit their world. Adrijana and Sina are interested what comes out when we start from the fears and affects creating personalised monsters of our work and how will this training from another side of reasoning, while working in an atmosphere for a contingent weirdness, shape the language for not thinking clearly, yet precisely. Particular interest of the workshop is in those scales that are not necessary correct and of good intention. We propose to exaggerate consciously how great art practices are also awful, how the things we do are also often laden with damage and death, to trace our works in the matrix of rage, lure, and desire (and not necessarily in the matrix of truth, duty, and achievements).

       

       

       

       

      DEALING WITH POROSITY

      How to become porous? How to stay porous? Dealing with porosity, this quality or state of being permeable and/or capable of being penetrated, as a means to disrupt binaries, culture-nature, inclusive-exclusive, body-mind, information-matter... That is what Antye Guenther is up for.

      Antye is a visual artist and artist researcher, born and raised in Eastern Germany. Drawing from her background in medicine, in photography, and in the military, her artistic practice treats themes like (non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, posthumanism and mind control, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and science fiction. She is an associate researcher at a.pass and holds the first Mingler Scholarship for Art and Science/ NL. At the Arita Porcelain Residency in Japan, Antye is currently developing ‘brain vases’, to investigate the problematic metaphor of the brain as a container or vessel. Her brain was scanned at the Neuroscience Department of Maastricht University where the MRI data 3D (re)constructed it within a scientific visualisation programme and was used as a source material to fabricate delicate and desirable porcelain vases. But what if these vases are dysfunctionally engineered and are porous? What if a vessel as iconic as a porcelain vase leaks? The material metaphor poses some questions: How to stay porous? How to get severely entangled with and influenced by other people, new environments, other cultures etc.? How to take part in each other practice? How to engage in each others’ thought processes?

      For this residence in Brussels, and taking into account Antye’s geographical displacement in Japan, she proposes the following encounters: 1/ She will send every week an object in the form of an audio file to fill and potentially penetrate the gallery space and be discussed by the artists/researchers present in Brussels in her ‘absence’. The discussion will be recorded and sent back to her in Japan. 2/ One-on-one video conversations creating concentrated moments to discuss concerns in each others’ practices. 3/ a live video communication moment of presentation and sharing of Antye’s experiences so far at the Arita Porcelain Residency in Japan.

       

       

       

      ----------------------agenda----------------------

       

       

      *all the events are public, except noted otherwise

       

      FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS Rob Ritzen

      26.6 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF I - reading group

      1.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF II - reading group

      1.7 - 19-20:00h / FOLOF II - lecture by Mathijs van de Sande

      3.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF III - reading 

      8.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF IV - reading

      13.7 - 13-15:00h / FOLOF V  ultimate and complete form of the installation - open and public from 16h00 to 20h00

      [A series of reading sessions and installations that will add different perspectives and new layers to the notion of form; in-formation, political forms, network forms, value forms, organizational forms. read more]

       

      WICKED TECHNOLOGIES/WILD FERMENTATION Sara Manente

      25.6 - 12-14:00h / [by invitation]

      5.7 - 19-20:00h / MUSH musical cocktail concert on the multilayered and mashed sound

      13.7 - 18:00h / last poisoned supper of doom

      [A discursive lab about Sara’s notion of fermentation and wickedness, on the meaning of wicked, queer, wild and technologies in relation to the participants personal researches. read more]

       

      OTHER GEOMETRIES Femke Snelting

      30.6 - 12-18:00h [by invitation]

      30.6 - 20-22:00h / in collaboration with Sara Manente and the group : “other geometries non agonistic performative dinner” [by invitation]

      [Workshop with a collection of femininist renderings, eccentric imagery and recombinatory vocabularies, with ideologically motivate work on tools, networks and infrastructures to re-imagine togetherness. read more]

       

      CRITICAL BESTIARIES Sina Seifee

      4.7 - 19-22:00

      [Presentation of the “critical bestiaries,” a magazine in the making, a mini-scale quasi-organization to host/construct semi-sustainable structures for ‘storytelling’ and ‘questioning’ techniques of bestiaries. read more]

       

      POLITICS OF ENGINEERING Sina Seifee,OSP,Pierre Rubio,Lilia Mestre

      9.7 - 11-12:00h Parallel Parasite : Timeline Repository

      9.7 - 12-13:00h OSP presentation

      9.7 - 13-14:00h (lunch break)

      9.7 - 14-15:00h RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface

      9.7 - 15-16:00h Discussion between OSP & Sina Seifee

      9.7 - 16:30-18:00h Collective discussion and Q&A

      -from 18:00h on - open evening with the platforms available!

      [A day of presentations and conversations about the question of digital technologies posed by a.pass and addressed by its constituent knowers (Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, and OSP) in the process of making three models and adjustment to the work of documentation that has been recently done. read more]

       

      SCORESCAPE Lilia Mestre

      5.7 - 14-17:00

      [A transversal scoring practice, reading group/presentation/interview/discussion about the project ScoreScapes by Lilia Mestre. read more]

       

      TOWARDS AN ECO-EROGENOUS PARA-PHARMACEUTICS VILLAGE Isabel Burr Raty

      6.7 / installation: Self facial abduction beauty treatment

      6.7 - 11-13:00h / Male Farm : 1st encounter [by invitation]

      6.7 - 19-20:00h / Beauty Kit Upgraded - Lecture Performance

      [A collection of performances and installations that invite the public to queer fixed categories of production understandings and experience the benefits of embodying SF in real time. read more]

       

      CONTINGENT WEIRDNESS Adrijana Gvozdenović and Sina Seifee

      11.7 - 10-18:00h day 1

      12.7 - 10-24:00h day 2

      for registration email to sina.seifee@gmail.com

      [Two-days workshop, training/hanging-out/sharing/practice for artists researchers, focusing on the specific genre of horror to understand each other’s artistic commitments in a constraint and therefore generative way. read more]

       

      OTHERWISE EXHIBITING ARTISTIC ANXIETIES AND THE WORLD

      Adrijana Gvozdenović / ongoing practice

      for an appointment please contact adrijana.gvozdenovic@gmail.com

      [One-to-one sessions for artists and researchers, a card-reading and interview practice concerning individuals that are concerned, fearful and hopeful, excited about their practice. read more]

       

      CYANOTYPE PRINTING PROCESS Adrijana Gvozdenović

      ongoing / installation and practice 

      [Made of processing traces and blueprints of U.V. sun rays. read more]

       

      DEALING WITH POROSITY Antye Guenther

      ongoing exchange of audio files with the participants

      13.7 - 11-12:00h skype working session from Arite (Japan) [by invitation]

      [A series of inquiries in the form of interview between Japan and Belgian, one-one-one video calls, and recordings on individual bases. read more]

       

       

      --------------------------------------------------------------------

       

      The residence is produced by a.pass Research Centre

      and hosted by ZSenne ArtLab

      From June 24th to July 14th 2019

      9h00 - 23h00

      Anneessens 2, 1000 Brussels

      https://goo.gl/maps/nTVwbSAjK6yW76iY9

       

      The Research Center at a.pass is a platform for advanced research practices in the arts. It invites six associated researchers per one year cycle to develop their artistic research practice in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. In agreement with the individual research trajectory of the associate researchers the apass Research Center supports and facilitates forms of publications, performative publishing, presentations, experimental research setups and collaborations.  Rather than consolidating the existing discourse around the notion of artistic research, a.pass is committed to accumulating different understandings of artistic research through practicing its frameworks, archives and vocabularies. By bringing together differently practiced notions of artistic research, a.pass is reflecting on modes of study and knowledge practice within the artistic field. a.pass is interested in the actualisation of performing knowledge because it considers artistic research as a situated, contextual practice which is the consequence of ongoing negotiations between its stakeholders, contextual fields and discourses. a.pass interacts with academic, activist, or practice-based fields and methods of research, and supports the development of rigorous, inventive forms of artistic research on the intersections between those fields and in tension with academic artistic research as a developing discipline. The center itself is not a solid institutional body with its associate researchers as satellites, it is rather constructed as a support structure that brings different trajectories and fields of research to a multitude of temporary overlaps.  It’s institutional and long term structures work towards a repository of methodologies, forms of archive and ‘making public’ of artistic research practice.

    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • Victories over the Suns
    • victories over the suns dissolving totalities, usurping orders, inventing new materials
      14 June 2019
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • a.pass Research Center Associates in residence
    • ZSenne ART Lab / Brussels
    • 24 June 2019
    • 14 July 2019
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • victories over the suns

       

       

      Occidental-Hubris-Apocalypse. Under the modernist and universalist suns everything has burned. Everything looked well organized, bright and transparent, yet everything burned. Nature and culture are melting away. Democracy has shrunk to a gloomy memory of form. All sorts of objects and their categorizations are calcinated. Fragile, they quickly disappear into floating ashes scattered by the wind. From the darkness, on the black powdery toxic deposits of a temporary illusion that believed it was eternal, against all odds, a new life has begun and various species of luminescent critters are crawling around condemned to invent new materials…

      Trying to write a presentation for this artistic research residence project while watching the global game of thrones and painfully figuring out how to take part in a post-capitalist social change ecosystem based on the injunction to live on ruins…, trying to write this text is epic and the text is epic. And yes, we were kind of drunk when we said a big yes to name our residence in relation with Malevich pre-suprematist seminal performance. And yes, titeling our residence “Victories over the Suns”  seems to have everything to do with the feverish and romantic dream of a group of artists soaked in beer and wine. And yes, proclaiming victory before battle will be seen as a horizon of manic hope. Yet, it’s necessary.

       

      Is it not almost impossible to continue to believe in the possibility of creating conditions for imagining alternatives other than through a commitment that inscribes itself in ‘giving up’? Is it possible today to activate change processes other than by creating fictions and ‘alterations’ that suddenly generate more than themselves, other worlds, engaging us in an effort to invent and build another type of (non)luminous scenes of selves, presences, and knowledges? No, the order of this reality is not necessary and a deep doubt has settled that requires to fully reconsider what was presented until recently as being the only possible horizon.  Moreover the system seems to work without anybody in charge. Could it be that we have to self-assign the task, at least momentarily? Could it be a moment to assume the duty to reconsider some things and change the way we look at some things? Important for us to start with: collective geometries, non-modern perspectives, forms, arts, bodies, fortunes, eating, hacking… in addition to the classics : institution, public and politics. Paranoia is our ally and also our condition for defining a possible darkened and contaminated critical position. Our enemies -the suns- are plural and we develop decentralized strategies -our victories- producing plural resistant forms. Norms and values are transformed, constructed and proposed, they are plastic but not relativist. In the dark we see strange lights that darken and we take the risk of proposing ‘establishingly’ experimental.

       

      In our residence, each process is designed individually and in common, in order to share a fiction of sharing. We aim our experimental tools at each other, ourselves and at you. They are directed at a viewer, curious-anxious about modes of reparation who can put together the research trajects that she finds in a process of performing-publishing of difficult-makings of different objects and positions. We are hungry and angry: at our bodies, at assemblages, at more stories for other histories, for different exhibits, for fresh cultures. And, sorry, we are not ashamed, it will be a failure. It is so difficult to present/exhibit/publish our researches. It is hard to maintain the difference between momentary autonomous object-projects and fully open unstable object-trajects. Imagine the combined impossibly difficult of doing both at once, which of course we tragicomically will? It will be an experiment in organizing and presenting what appears to be fundamentally  unorganisable and unpresentable. When all is lost why not go for broke, victorious over the sun?

       

      Our residence will (not) unite Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Isabel Burr Raty, Antye Guenther, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Gijs de Heij, Ludi Loiseau, Sara Manente, Lilia Mestre, OSP, Rob Ritzen, Pierre Rubio, Mathijs van de Sande, Sina Seifee and Femke Snelting.

       

      In an Eco-Erogenous Para-Pharmaceutics Village we will be Living and Eating Together Other Geometries of Parallel Parasite Timeline Repository of Forms of Life of Forms of Politics of Engineering Bestiaries & the Chaotic Order of Existence in Slow Cyanotype Cooking Together Monster Zero of Contingent Weirdness and Wild Fermentations Wicked Technologies in Porous Porcelain Brain Vessels from Japan for a Non Agonistic Self Beauty Abduction Performative Dinner or a RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface Card Reading of 7 Anxieties and the World ScoreScape Male Farm Multi Demonic Schizoid Possessed Report as Before there was Nothing there were Monsters.

       


      The Research Center at a.pass is a platform for advanced research practices in the arts. It invites six associated researchers per one year cycle to develop their artistic research practice in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. In agreement with the individual research trajectory of the associate reserachers the a.pass Research Center supports and facilitates forms of publications, performative publishing, presentations, experimental research setups and collaborations.  Rather than consolidating the existing discourse around the notion of artistic research, a.pass is committed to accumulating different understandings of artistic research through practicing its frameworks, archives and vocabularies. By bringing together differently practiced notions of artistic research, a.pass is reflecting on modes of study and knowledge practice within the artistic field. a.pass is interested in the actualisation of performing knowledge because it considers artistic research as a situated, contextual practice which is the consequence of ongoing negotiations between its stakeholders, contextual fields and discourses. a.pass interacts with academic, activist, or practice-based fields and methods of research, and supports the development of rigorous, inventive forms of artistic research on the intersections between those fields and in tension with academic artistic research as a developing discipline. The center itself is not a solid institutional body with its associate researchers as satellites, it is rather constructed as a support structure that brings different trajectories and fields of research to a multitude of temporary overlaps.  It’s institutional and long term structures work towards a repository of methodologies, forms of archive and ‘making public’ of artistic research practice.

       


      During the three weeks of the residence, we will work and be present in the space of the gallery with our researches and arts. Some of them will be public, others not and a lot of them in between.

       

      Detailed informations about the projects and agenda here

       

       


      The residence is produced by a.pass Research Centre
      and hosted by ZSenne ArtLab


      From June 24th to July 14th 2019
      9h00 - 23h00
      Anneessens 2, 1000 Brussels
      https://goo.gl/maps/nTVwbSAjK6yW76iY9

    • newscaption

       

      CYCLE I: PUBLISHING ARTISTIC RESEARCH

      7 books launch

       

      Documenting, archiving, and publishing are intrinsic to the ongoing practices of a.pass. They are seen as tools for research and enable critical reflections through the exposure. This kind of "performative publishing" opens to other forms of doing and reflects the speculative attitudes of artistic research as a witnessing process of creation, contextualization, and doubt.

      With these concepts in mind, the a.pass Research Centre opened a new program that hosted in Cycles I (2018-19) six Associate Researchers as a platform for exchange. Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenter, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen and Sina Seifee contributed to that platform the perspectives and practices inherent to their research through individual publications.

       6 publications plus one Annex will be launched 

      27th February 2020 

      @ Level5  - Rue Paul Devauxstraat 5, 1000 Brussel (5th floor)

      Doors open at 18:00

      we will read, perform, discuss and open the famous bar of Level5

      The rile* bookshop will open its doors in parallel to that launch.


       

       

      Sara Manente is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher born in Italy and living in Brussels. She is interested in narrowing the distance between the performer, the audience, and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation, and ways of doing. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration, et al.

      ROT is the publication for "Wicked technology/Wild fermentation:" artistic research focusing on forms and practices of fermentation as ways to rethink bodies and their making - as much as wilderness and domestication in art. Not asking why do we ferment today, but where does it stop? The glossy magazine performs the research by wanting to infect the reader, while at the same time, it's questioning how to spread, publish, and make the work survive.


      Rob Ritzen works as a curator with a background in philosophy. His curatorial practice is focusing on self-organized and cooperative formats. Consciously positioned at the margins of established institutions and outside of market-oriented spaces, his practice is placed in close association with communities of cultural practitioners. His initiatives are attempts to reconfigure the politics of making art and alternative forms of production and presentation.

      FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS artistic research into form - not merely as an aesthetic question but as a social and political one. Indeed, there is no politics without form! Concerned with forms everyday, artists can bring the kinds of forms into being that generate (un)foreseen effects on those forms dictating our everyday life.  With Forms of Life, Rob Ritzen curated several Moments that assembled works, collective readings, and other references into one single installation. This publication reshuffles the documentations of those Moments for a visual reflection on the trajectory of this research.

      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 MA in Media Arts in KHM Cologne. In 2017 he finished an advanced research program in performance studies in a.pass.

      ZOOLOGICAL VANDALISM is the result of being immersed in the process of composing and compiling notes by Seifee on medieval bestiaries and putting them in sequential order. It is the first chapter of a series, to set up context or to open in small descriptive steps, towards (what Latour might call) knowing interestingly about bestiaries. It is a speculative adventure in bio*techno tales and older styles of knowing. Working out an ecology of obligation with Iranian sensuality and its ardent materiality, somewhere in the menagerie of found and feral animal videos on Whatsapp and Telegram, and Seifee's undisciplined grounding in visual crafts.


      ANTYE GUENTHER is a visual artist and artist-researcher, born and raised in Eastern Germany. Drawing from her background in medicine, photography, and in the military, her artistic practice treats themes like (non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, scientific representations of cognitive processes and mind control, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and fictionality of science. Guenther studied at the art academies of Leipzig and Karlsruhe, and at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. In 2019 she received the first Mingler Scholarship for Art and Science.

      NEOCORTEX is a textile poster publication. It can be used as a head or neck scarf, a hairband, a veil, a belt, a table cloth, an arm sling, a disguise in political demonstrations, a laboratory sieve, or a tool for receiving and transmitting alien thoughts. This scarf is the second materialization of an ongoing research project on neuroscientific visualization practices and questionable conceptualizations of our brains. It features a combination of MRI data of the artist's own brain and text fragments from science and science fiction. It refers to the upcoming trend in the scientific community to print posters on textiles rather than on paper and combines reconstructed MRI data of the artist’s brain with various text fragments from science and science fiction.

       

       

      ADRIJANA GVOZDENOVIĆ has been for the last two years a researcher at the a.pass, proposing activities that push the border between research, mediation, and production and examine new formats of publicness. Naming these activities 'Otherwise Exhibiting', is an attempt to shift the focus from the object to relations. During the last year, her research project "Archiving Artistic Anxieties" was supported by the Royal Academy of Antwerp, which resulted in this online publication.

      www.archivingartisticanxieties.me is a noisy archiving online publication that takes the form of an essay. This platform is a way to reflect and diffract from the different activities and events realized in the past year. The writing and editing processes are exposed and show the different steps of the collaboration and their constructive agencies. Researchers, friends, and family make up the editorial team: artists Goda Palekaitė, Pia Louwerence, and the linguist/political scientist Kristina Gvozdenović together with artist Sina Seifee, developer and designer of the website. 

       

       

      ISABEL BURR RATY is a Belgian-Chilean artist, filmmaker, and Media Art History teacher in ERG (École de Recherche Graphique), leaving between Brussels and Amsterdam. She is currently developing her second feature film, about the colonial impact on Easter Island, and creating live art and new media installations that queer production understandings, such as the Beauty Kit Project. Her works have been shown internationally.

      BEAUTY KIT - AN ECO-EROGENOUS ART PROJECT is an experimental catalog that presents a summary of the research with the same name. It’s made in collaboration with dramaturge Kristin Rogghe, performance artist Gosie Vervloessem, graphic designer Pablo Diartinez, artist Tim Vets, and advised by designer Miriam Hempel. It also bestows a text contribution “Harvesting bodies – The Farm as Paradox” by Elle/Elke Van Campenhout. The researcher and the BK Patrona conduct the catalog by bringing conceptual perspectives and representing the frictions that this project entails.

       a.pass
      p/a de Bottelarij
      Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: lilia@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       
    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • RESEARCH CENTER Cycle 1 Block III Co-Curated by Pierre Rubio
      29 April 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović, Sina Seifee, Isabel Burr Raty, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Antye Guenther
    • a.pass/ ZSenne ArtLab
    • 29 April 2019
    • 28 July 2019
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • RESEARCH CENTER Cycle 1 Block III

       

      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.

      This summer block marks the end of the first cycle of the a.pass Research Center. 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. The last block of the cycle 2018/2019  is co-curated by the group of Associated Researchers. For a three week period - June 24 / July 14 - the work will be developed at Zsenne ArtLab.

      We are happy to work with the following Associate 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.

      For this co-curated current block the Associate Researchers will be supported by Pierre Rubio as the Research Center curator.

      Pierre Rubio (France, 1962) works as an artist, dramaturge, and independent researcher. His practice at large aims at re-negotiating habitual modes of individuation by using displacement and speculation as a methodological principle. He often uses ‘as if’s’ processes -alone or in collaboration- to investigate technologies, cosmologies and ideologies of artistic and research practices in relation to the production of subjectivity. Rubio is currently co-curator of the postgraduate artistic research institute a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies_a platform for artistic research)

    • On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Gvozdenović, Louwerens and Weber all work with writing and performance. They use notions of script and publication as tools to reveal contexts as partners to the doing and thinking of artistic practice. The institutional is key to their approaches, both as a way to understand what predetermines the performativity of the artwork and in how it relates to issues of authorship. The question is often, "who is voicing?"

      Pia Louwerens works with spoken-word performances in which she performs an unreliable subject intra-acting with its institutional framework.
      Eleanor Ivory Weber uses conceptual writing techniques to arrive at multi-vocal recompositions of existing text-sources, combining formal structures with the spontaneity of the body.
      Adrijana Gvozdenović collects and annotates symptomatic artistic practices that recognise their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality. This results in publications of sorts or “exhibiting otherwise”.

      The concept of the anarchive as a way to reactivate meaning through revisiting traces is a common process to the three researches. Through either activating authored texts, institutional conditions and/or artistic practice paraphernalia, new iterations appear that re-actualise and re-situate the event. Each variation is always already allied with new subjectivities.

    • performative publishing
    • RRadio Triton
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • RRadio Triton audio publication
      18 January 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • online: https://rradiotriton.apass.be/
    • 01 July 2019
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • RRadio Triton

       

       

       

      RRadio Triton is an intentionally hybridised dispositive, operating within a grey zone between archiving, documenting, publishing, performing and broadcasting. Different modes of relating to the past events are called for, and these modes determine different definitions of the very nature of present time, future outlook, and of what an archive can be. The diverse audio objects it produces all relate to the politics of imagination and speculation, here envisaged as cultural and ecological instruments operative on the real.

       

      RRadio Triton is supported by a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies - platform for artistic research), a young institute for artistic research based in Brussels, that currently reflects on experimental modes of documenting, archiving, publishing and sharing. These modes try to mirror the institute’s criticality, its singular modes of operation, agonistic environment and ongoing reformulation of tools, practices and research. Moreover, the institute is concerned with a complex equation: how to develop a specific attitude towards archiving and dissemination that combines both a critique of the usual institutional ‘archival reason’ and the production of readable (structured) ‘forms of knowledge’? Or, in other words, how to avoid and/or assume commodification, reification and authority while documenting and publishing polymorph artistic research practices and discourses? Ultimately a.pass engages with documenting, archiving and disseminating independent and experimental artistic research practices to produce an ecology of text critique and to find inventive modes of co-operation and fair technological practices interlacing politically in ways that are non-innocent and the least toxic as possible.

      The project RRadio Triton is one of the many current expressions of this endeavor.

       

      Nourished by its participants, RRadio Triton is an after effect of the artistic research seminar named Trouble on Radio Triton ((((((( changing (the) world (s) )))))) that was held in Brussels between January and April 2017 curated and organised by Pierre Rubio within the institution a.pass. The seminar gathered artists-researchers, lecturers, cultural workers and curators around the thorny problem of the relations between imagination and political agency and was concerned with issues addressing the potential (in)capacity of art in general to produce actual social changes and the (im)possible contribution of art to collective empowerment by means of artistic imagination and fictional speculation. Among other research topics, the seminar at large focused on a few main transversal questions : Do you -as artists- through your research contribute to changes in contemporary culture? And if so, what are the cultures generated by your research? Which alternative worlds does your artistic research/practice contain? What is the operative link between your artistic research and the future?

       

      A full list of involved practices and participants in the seminar includes: +++The artists-researchers who participated in the seminar with their projects, ideas and practices as Aela Royer, Luiza Crosman, Sina Seifee, Zoumana Meite, Sana Ghobbeh, Sven Dehens, Marialena Marouda, Ekaterina Kaplunova, Juan Duque, Esta Matkovic, Sébastien Hendrickx, Pierre Rubio, Eunkyung Jeong, Lili M. Rampre and Esther Rodriguez Barbero. +++ Lectures and reading sessions with Sol Archer, Peggy Pierrot, Edward George, Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova, Sina Seifee, Sébastien Hendrickx, Michiel Vandevelde, Wouter De Raeve, Marialena Marouda and Caroline Godart. +++ Workshops and ateliers with Myriam Van Imschoot, Alice Chauchat, Helena Dietrich and Christian Hansen that intersected sound art, speculative embodiment and worlding. +++ Theoretical references on speculative fiction with Suvin’s Cognitive Estrangement, Goodman and Eshun’s Afrofuturisms, Gilroy’s Black Atlantic identity politics, Le Guin’s feminist and anarchist science fiction, Donna Haraway's notion of the tentacular, situated knowledges and reparative strategies, Accelerationism, and Benjamin’s theory of language as magic. +++ Screenings revisiting SF cinema curated and hosted by Ekaterina Kaplunova and Sven Dehens.+++ Inputs by the seminar mentors Veridiana Zurita, Kristien Van den Brande, Peggy Pierrot and Caroline Godart.

       

      Not merely archiving, rather activating a labor-intensive work of memory elaborated by the notion of radio as an instrument operative on the real, the RRadio Triton project is a compost of all these contributions and their transformation in the present time. The broadcasting agenda of the RRadio Triton to come will be structured around by three kind of shows. Three main programs. Three playlists. The first consists of multiple forms of interviews with the numerous actors of the seminar. The second of more or less fictional experimental sound pieces produced with or by the seminar’s participants. The third being a series of edits of the lectures, reading sessions and workshops that were part of the theoretical/practice based body of the seminar. The radio will be online soon on a digital interface that will assemble in an elegant and complex way all the “pieces” and will perform live in different contexts different kind of broadcasts in collaboration with different institutions/hosts. . Determining fluidly the critical nature of the fictional radio and within its intentionally heterogeneous and plastic landscape, all the RRadio Triton 'pieces' will collectively activate different types of issues engaging the problems of the operativity of speculative fiction and of, at large, political art. But not only.

       

      The audio publication RRadio Triton is the outcome of the voluntary contributions of all the actors of the 2017 seminar and their recomposition in the present time. RRadio Triton is an a.pass production initiated, curated and hosted by Pierre Rubio, and is technically, artistically and dramaturgically supported by Christian Hansen and Sina Seifee.

       

      A beta version of RRadio Triton audio publication here

      A comprehensive presentation of the 2017 seminar here .

       

       

    • performative publishing
    • RRadio Triton
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • Broadcasting RRadio Triton 18 January 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • by OFFoff, a.pass and Domes FM
    • Kunsthal, Ghent
    • 25 January 2019
    • 26 January 2019
    • broadcast
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • Broadcasting RRadio Triton

       

       

      Art Cinema OFFoff is a platform for experimental cinema and audiovisual art. OFFoff searches for films from the past and present that enter into cinematographic and narrative experiments, often navigating between cinema and the other arts. During the opening weekend of Kunsthal,Ghent, ArtCinema OFFoff puts up a broadcast on Domes FM around RRadio Triton, a collective and experimental research project produced by a.pass. The broadcast circles around relations between artistic research and speculative fictions. What kinds of futures do artistic research practices imagine? Which fictions are needed? And what voices do we need to bring those fictions up? The program for and the performance of the broadcast is a collaboration between ArtCinema OFFoff (Kunsthal Ghent), RRadio Triton (a.pass, Brussels) and Domes FM (Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre, Liverpool). With and by Deborah Birch, Edward Clive, Sven Dehens, Edward George, Christian Hansen, Pierre Rubio and Sina Seifee.

       

      [audio mp3="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/soundcloud_excerpt.mp3"][/audio]

      excerpt from the broadcast.... soon online in full...

       

       

      Interviewer :
      What is RRadio Triton?

       

       

      RRadio Triton :
      A seminar, 'Trouble on Radio Triton ((((((( changing (the) world (s) ))))))' was held in a.pass between January and April 2017 curated and organised by Pierre Rubio, gathering it forces and resources around the question of artistic imagination and political agency. Among other enquiries, some of the main questions that were raised during the seminar were: Do you--as artists--through your research contribute to changes in contemporary culture? And if so, what are the cultures generated by your research? Which alternative worlds does your artistic research/practice contain? What is the operative link between your artistic research and the future? Following that initiative, now the project RRadio Triton sets out to dream of operating like a time machine carrying its protagonists through time back to the 2017’s events and returning them as new narrators. By adopting the identity of an ad hoc fictional radio station, it records, edits, samples, remixes and releases pieces of audiowork and soundscapes that originated at the 2017 seminar. RRadio Triton is becoming a hybridised dispositive about the politics of imagination and speculation, not merely archiving, rather activating a labor-intensive work of memory elaborated by the notion of radio as an instrument operative on the real. This way of approaching archive and dissemination mirrors the current expressions of a.pass’s criticality as an institution that is committed to the ecologies of critique and the reformulation of its research-tools and practices.

      The audio publication RRadio Triton is the outcome of the voluntary contributions of all the actors of the 2017 seminar and their recomposition in the present time.

       

       

      Interviewer :
      In response to the invitation of ArtCinema OFFoff to interact within the (re)opening event of the Kunsthal Gent in January 2019, RRadio Triton collaborates with curator Sven Dehens and will structure its first broadcast with two selected pieces that both perform complex critical dispositives around ideas of memory, reparation and worlding.
      Through OFFoff webpage we can access to a lot of informations about the event, but how a radio station -even fictional like RRadio Triton became involved with a cinematic event?

       

       

      RRadio Triton :
      Some shared views on reparative fiction for sure… And a lot of the audio objects/pieces constituting RRadio Triton relating more or less directly to cinema. Thematically first with a strong relation with science-fiction cinema genres and subgenres and critical questions around utopia/dystopia -central nodes in S-F cinema. There is also a more practice based link with film and more specifically with film soundtracking as some pieces are made after sound research ateliers called “Foley your Research” that were performed around the question “how does/could your research sound like?”. As well, some pieces relate directly to existing films, whether because of the central thematic of one of the recorded live lectures, or because of a structuring cinematographic reference/quote/appropriation. And last, some pieces engage with convoking cinematographic images/bodies through sound. They channel bodies, affects, voices and presences through different use of sound and they ‘produce’ images without any actual camera.

       

       

      Interviewer:
      Could this be seen as a different form of worlding? One of RRadio Triton’s main endeavours?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      One of the justifications for worlding -imagining and situating the world otherwise- is that the stories of this world are getting toxic as they are mere instruments for social reproduction. Re-imagining the erased stories -erased by economical, colonial, patriarchal, ideological or cultural instrumental power orders and determining modes of governance- and speculating other stories can produce (and not only reproduce) other social orders and thus other worlds. The two pieces we are proposing in dialogue with Cinemas OFFoff both try to tackle the very possibility of imagining differently and thus create the necessary conditions for re-invention and speculation. They world.

       

       

      Interviewer:
      Can you present the pieces shortly?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      The first piece is a montage of a live lecture given by Sina Seiffe during Trouble on Radio Triton ((((((( changing (the) world (s) )))))) -a seminar held by a.pass in 2017, it focuses on a ‘problematic’ social media video and puts it back in motion critically, rebroadcasting it in a way. The second piece is an edit of a rare live communication -part of the same seminar- by Edward George revisiting his research work developed for the iconic film Last Angel of History.

       

      Interviewer:
      The radio will be hosted by Domes FM, an online radio station set up in the basements of the Bidston Observatoy Artistic Research Centre (BOARC).
      What is BOARC?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      Located in the outskirts of Liverpool, BOARC is a not-for-profit study centre, focused on providing artists, writers, academics, performers etc with a cheap, temporary place to dictate their own methods of work, allowing them to come together and stay, to develop projects that require time and space, in a non-pressured environment.

       

       

      Interviewer:
      On Saturday the 26th of January, between 12h and 18h, one can follow and attend the live broadcast from Kunsthal Gent. There will be space for participation in diverse conversation formats held between the recorded audio pieces. In addition, on Friday the 25th of January, between 20h and 22h, there will be a Domes FM broadcast from the basements of the Bidston Observatory by Edward Clive, one of the hosts of the space. What will Edward Clive do?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      In reaction to RRadio Triton, he will bring a mix of soundtracks and queer experimental foley from the depths of science fiction cinema.

       

       

      Interviewer:
      Is it possible to listen to the broadcast online?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      Yes! One can follow the broadcast online during the announced hours. The URL for the broadcast will be announced in time.

       

       

      Interviewer:
      Can I get the credits of RRadio Triton’s pieces?

       

       

      RRadio Triton:
      Of course, here you go...

      RRadio Triton is an a.pass production initiated, curated and hosted by Pierre Rubio, and is technically, artistically and dramaturgically supported by Christian Hansen and Sina Seifee. The pieces we will broadcast on the 26th of January from Kunsthal Ghent on Domes FM Liverpool are:

       

          ‘An Animal Escape Case’
      an audio editing of a live essay-performance, 70’, 2019
      Author and Performer/Lecturer Sina Seiffe
      Editor Pierre Rubio / Sound Christian Hansen / Production a.pass
      The lecture was performed in March 2017 in Brussels within the lectures series “Book Club/Trouble on Radio Triton” at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies - a platform for artistic research)

       

      In his essay-performance ‘An Animal Escape Case’, Sina Seifee opens one object. He unpacks the destiny of a social media video file about a feral cat, that, in anthropomorphic terms, adopted a kitten, and the reactions of Sina’s family in Tehran towards these shared social-media digital images. This object and relational event is transformed into a landscape of observations, philosophical concerns, sociological anthropological and historical analyses. The complex arrangement relates diverse notions as, greeting, encounter, understanding, friendship, technology and most importantly, a destabilizing reality for humans, that of wildness. Sina performs as the narrator of a kind of film in which he is both the witness and the main actor. The edited audio piece tries to bring back his (intense) presence and incarnated storytelling, as well as the many references and borrowings to popular and not popular culture both from Iran and the West.

      The essay/performance investigates the fragile intersections of friendship between digital avatars and trans-animals in the social media in Tehran’s landscape. Through personal animal-findings and fairy-tale associations the An Animal Escape Case interprets the epistemological openings and closings in cross-species sociality, exemplified by the everyday use of mobile phones where images of pets circulate and different species meet in mediated formats. By analyzing everything that anthropomorphism can perform and contain, and seen through the animality in the situated conditions of contemporary domestic life, the essay/performance addresses the relationships between people, animals and their surroundings in a socio-technological milieu as complex as Tehran’s urban environment. (Sina Seifee)

      Sina Seifee is an artist-researcher-storyteller working on poetics of animal description (ecological cosmologies of nonhumans-with-history). Born in Tehran (1982), he studied Applied Mathematics in Beheshti University and Visual Arts in Charsoo Institute of Art in Tehran. After moving to Germany in 2011, he graduated in Cologne with master diploma in Media Arts from Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (2014) and received his postmaster in Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies from a.pass in Brussels (2017).
      His work, realized in different forms of lecture-performances, reading group, workshops, image making, video and writing- is centered around the questions of technology, storytelling, globalism and intercultural mythologies in the heterogeneous knowledge-worlds of art and sciences, with attention to the premodern era.

       

       

          ‘Last angel of history’
      an audio editing of a live lecture, 3 episodes of 30',  2019
      Author and Performer/Lecturer Dr. Edward George
      Editor Pierre Rubio / Sound Christian Hansen / Production a.pass
      The lecture was performed in March 2017 in Brussels within the lectures series “Book Club/Trouble on Radio Triton” at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies - a platform for artistic research)

      Dr. Edward George is the writer, researcher, and narrator of the seminal fiction-documentary film The Last Angel of History. In a rare live communication he shares the research processes and thinking that supported the creation of the film. The audio piece revisits George revisiting his work of revisiting the lineage of Afrofuturism.
      The Last Angel of History is one of the most influential video-essays of the 1990s influencing filmmakers and inspiring conferences, novels and exhibitions. Black Audio Film Collective’s exploration of the chromatic possibilities of digital video is embedded within a mythology of the future that creates connections between black (un)popular culture, outer space and the limits of the human condition. The influential Black Audio Film Collective crafted this experimental blend of sci-fi parable and essay film, which also serves as an essential primer on the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary Afrofuturism. Interviews with esteemed musicians, writers, and cultural critics are interwoven with the fictional story of the “data thief,” who must travel through time and space in search of the code that holds the key to his future.

      Dr. Edward George is a founding member of Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), the multimedia duo Flow Motion (1996-present), and the electronic music group Hallucinator (1998-present). He lives in London.

    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • RESEARCH CENTER CYCLE 1 BLOCK II CURATED BY ALEX ARTEAGA
      08 January 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović, Sina Seifee, Isabel Burr Raty, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Antye Guenther
    • a.pass
    • 07 January 2019
    • 31 March 2019
    • RESEARCH CENTER CYCLE 1 BLOCK II

      The a.pass Research Center is dedicated to supporting advanced artistic research and to collecting and making public methodologies of artistic research developed at a.pass. 

      The block II in the cycle 18/19 is focused on two intertwined fields of inquiry: aesthetic research practices in the medium of written language and architecture understood as intervention in the emergence of environments through construction and related practices.

      For the period of September ‘18 to August ‘19 we are happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the a.pass Research Center:

      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.

      For the current block the Associate Researchers will be supported by Alex Arteaga as the Research Center curator and further on by Pierre Rubio for cycle 18/19 block 3.

      Alex Arteaga’s research integrates aesthetic and philosophical practices relating to aesthetics, the emergence of sense, meaning and knowledge, and the relationships between architecture and the environment through phenomenological and enactivist approaches.

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • Subtracted Seduction 07 January 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović / Pia Louwerens / Eleanor Ivory Weber
    • Hectolitre
    • 01 February 2019
    • 02 February 2019
    • Subtracted Seduction

      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Gvozdenović, Louwerens and Weber all work with writing and performance. They use notions of script and publication as tools to reveal contexts as partners to the doing and thinking of artistic practice. The institutional is key to their approaches, both as a way to understand what predetermines the performativity of the artwork and in how it relates to issues of authorship. The question is often, "who is voicing?"

      Pia Louwerens works with spoken-word performances in which she performs an unreliable subject intra-acting with its institutional framework.
      Eleanor Ivory Weber uses conceptual writing techniques to arrive at multi-vocal recompositions of existing text-sources, combining formal structures with the spontaneity of the body.
      Adrijana Gvozdenović collects and annotates symptomatic artistic practices that recognise their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality. This results in publications of sorts or “exhibiting otherwise”.

      The concept of the anarchive as a way to reactivate meaning through revisiting traces is a common process to the three researches. Through either activating authored texts, institutional conditions and/or artistic practice paraphernalia, new iterations appear that re-actualise and re-situate the event. Each variation is always already allied with new subjectivities.

      To access the Research Portfolios follow the links:

      Adrijana Gvozdenović
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=97

      Pia Louwerens
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=99

      Eleanor Ivory Weber
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=98

       

      Schedule of the event:

      18:00 food & drinks (€)

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction
      19:00 Subverses I: Play
      (break)
      20:00 7 anxieties and the world
      20:30 Subverses II: Glossolalien missive
      (break)
      21:15 Subverses III
      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed

      Performances by:
      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens, Eleanor Ivory Weber

      With contributions by:
      *Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      *Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      *7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      Thanks:
      Henry Andersen, Simon Asencio, Marcus Bergner, Deborah Birch, Elen Braga, Kate Briggs, Mladen Bundalo, Teresa Cos, Sven Dehens, Nico Dockx, Diego Echegoyen, Paolo Favero, Luisa Fillitz, Nassia Fourtouni, Anastasia Freygang, Nicolas Galeazzi, Camille Gérenton, Caroline Godart, Katinka van Gorkum, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Philippine Hoegen, Eunkyung Jeong, Steven Jouwersma, Ekaterina Kaplunova, Leo Kay, Shervin Kianersi Haghighi, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Heike Langsdorf, Joke Liberge, Bart Lescreve, Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Lydia McGlinchey, Michèle Meesen, Maurice Meewisse, Zoumana Méïté, Lilia Mestre, Wesley Meuris, Vladimir Miller, Caterina Mora, Eszter Némethi, Elizabeth Newman, Anouchka Oler, Goda Palekaitė, Lucia Palladino, Laura Pante, Vijai Patchineelam, Peggy Pierrot, Piero Ramella, Marcelo Rezende, Kate Rich, Esther Rodríguez Barbero, Pierre Rubio, Margaux Schwarz, Hoda Siahtiri, Vanja Smiljanić, Femke Snelting, Geert Vaes, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Camilla Wills, Roberto Winter, Aurore Zachayus, Adva Zakai.

       

       

       

       
    • Newsletter Setemberr 2018 13 November 2018
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma

       

        
       

       

       

      READ MORE 


      A.PASS MEETS SOL / SCHOOL OF LOVE

      From September till November 2018

      A curatorial proposition by Adva Zakai 

      School Of Love will start a flirt with each other, develop a relationship and hopefully make (produce) love.

      SOL is a collective platform that was initiated some years ago*, inspired by the interest in both love and school as charged with potential to generate new politics and relations in the world. SOL is practiced through regular meetings, but follows no curriculum. Instead, it develops a spontaneous program through the presence and interest of its participants.

      Now SOL is here, at a.pass, with a call to the participants to engage with their artistic researches through love itself. a.pass and SOL will get together, without knowing ahead what is going to happen, but with the trust that everything we live outside of SOL – artistic researches, experiences and desires – will manifest themselves inside SOL in a way we could not imagine elsewhere. And once this happens, maybe the difference between art and love will not be so obvious anymore..

      SOL will meet every Tuesday at a.pass and is open to anyone interested to take part. All welcome! A special introduction day into SOL: Tuesday 3rd september 10h – 18h.

      STUDY DAYS and WORKSHOPS – Non-a.pass participants who are interested to join – please contact a.pass lilia@apass.be or Adva advazakai@gmail.com

      READ MORE  


      a.pass Research Center

       

      This September marks the beginning of the first one-year-cycle of the apass Research Center. After being initiated as a plattform for the individual reasearch trajectories of the apass Associate Researchers, starting this year the Research Center is shifting to welcoming a group of advanced researchers for a shared one-year period.

      The apass Research Center is dedicated to supporting advanced reseach and to collecting and making public methodologies of artistic research developed at apass.

      For the period of September ‘18 to August ‘19 we are happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the apass Research Center:

      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 aestetics.

      Antye Guenther, born in former East Germany, has a theory based visual art practise dealing with epistemological questions within the realms of technology, posthumanism, 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.

      For the current block the Associate Researchers will be supported by Vladimir Miller as the Research Center curator and further on by Alex Arteaga for block I/19 and Pierre Rubio for Block II/19.

      Vladimir Miller works as an artist, researcher, scenographer and dramaturge. His practice aims at re-negotiating habitual modes of spatial production within ad-hoc groups and institutional environments by using fragility as a building principle.

       

       
       
       
       
       

       a.pass
      Rue delaunay 58 - 1080 - Brussel, Molenbeek 
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • research center
    • associate researchers Cycle 1
    • RESEARCH CENTER Cycle 1 Block I Curated by Vladimir Miller
      11 September 2018
      posted by: Joke Liberge
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović, Sina Seifee, Isabel Burr Raty, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Antye Guenther
    • 03 September 2018
    • 30 November 2018
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • RESEARCH CENTER Cycle 1 Block I

      This September marks the beginning of the first one-year-cycle of the a.pass Research Center. After being initiated as a platform for the individual research trajectories of the a.pass Associate Researchers, starting this year the Research Center is shifting to welcoming a group of advanced researchers for a shared one-year period.

      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.

      For the period of September ‘18 to August ‘19 we are happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the a.pass Research Center:

      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.


      For the current block the Associate Researchers will be supported by Vladimir Miller as the Research Center curator and further on by Alex Arteaga for block I/19 and Pierre Rubio for Block II/19.

      Vladimir Miller works as an artist, researcher, scenographer and dramaturge. His practice aims at re-negotiating habitual modes of spatial production within ad-hoc groups and institutional environments by using fragility as a building principle.

       
    • conference
    • project
    • research center
    • seminar
    • workshop
    • Parallel Parasite
    • Parallel Parasite Research center 18/II curated by Lilia Mestre
      03 September 2018
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • 04 June 2018
    • 30 September 2018
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • Parallel Parasite

      A month residency at ZSenne ArtLab : On Anarchiving > On Love > On Score -ing > On the spot > On presence
      Gatherings of parallel parasite platforms  for practice based research in the arts > If you want to know, come!


      From the 4th till the 30th of June the a.pass Research Centre (RC) will be in residency at ZSenne ArtLab and will constitute itself as people meet, as thematics emerge, as the environment conditions, as the weather manifests, as the bodies form, as toxicity persists, as we drive ourselves towards multiplying perspectives for thinking and experiencing phenomena emerging from artistic research practices. 

      The RC will function as a meeting point for the convergence of concerns, interests and the pleasures of learning together. It will research itself and its modus operandi in terms of hospitality, dissensus and criticality through the various research practices proposed.

       

      The propositions start from reading groups, activating thinking/doing practices, score -ing, speculative talks, and registration/documentation formats in order to converge multiple insights that might (and not must) infuse other formats of reflecting/experiencing framed by the quasi public environment of the gallery space. 

      The Research Center in residency invites several guests which are thinking and experiencing ‘gathering’ as a form of knowledge processing bridging theoretical and experiential approaches. These gatherings don’t depart from personal concerns but aim to mine inter-subjective frame works to question artistic research as a learning together practice.

      This point of address for the a.pass RC next block, comes from two main curatorial concerns. The first is about the publicness of a Research Centre for artistic research and its visibility, accessibility and share-ability.  What are the internal and external demands and needs of such environments? The second comes from an observation on what I’m calling parallel-parasite platforms for practice based research in the arts.

      a.pass is constantly questioning the positionality and share-ability of what we learn and interrogating the political implications of the research practices. In response to those problematics, as RC curator, my proposition is the dislocation of the RC to a semi-public environment and to locate it temporary in a gallery space, one of the per-se spaces for the exhibition. The question driving this movement (from the inside to the outside) is: can the a.pass RC  in dis-location generate a hub for the study of some of its practices? can this movement instigate other forms of share-ability and access that are informal and porous? We’ll be addressing the agency of such public-ness and how it will be giving perspective to the critical doing and the critical thinking in artistic research and what forms of sociability will be generated.

      The three main proposals are: SOL (School of Love) proposed by Adva Zakai, The way of the Anarchive proposed by Erin Manning (SenseLAb) and ScoreScapes proposed by Lilia Mestre (a.pass). These invited quasi – institutional setups affiliated in one way or another with the academic environment are experimental formats of learning processes that are critically challenging modes of knowledge production in artistic research. All these ‘parallel-parasite platforms’ or ‘ways of doing’ are engaged in thinking-doing practices that converge theoretical and artistic research practice approaches in the arts. 

      SOL / School Of Love is an initiative of students and teachers from the Autonome Vormgeving department at KASK. SOL came to existence spontaneously as a school inside a school, in March 2016, out of a workshop that explored the notions of Love and School as modes of attention. SOL has no predetermined curriculum. It avoids defining itself and its goals in order to allow activities to emerge through the presence and interest of its participants, who come from inside KASK as well from outside of the institution. Anyone can be a part of SOL, anything can become a project in it, and it can take place anywhere, as long as it’s stimulated by the will to re-think both school and love as charged with potential for change and engagement in society. It is what we make it to be. 

      AND

      The SenseLab is a laboratory for thought in motion.

      Based in Montreal, the SenseLab is an international network of artists and academics, writers and makers, from a wide diversity of fields, working together at the crossroads of philosophy, art, and activism.

      Participants are held together by affinity rather than by any structure of membership or institutional hierarchy. The SenseLab’s event-based projects are collectively self-organizing. Their aim is to experiment with creative techniques for thought in the act. The SenseLab’s product is its process, which is meant to disseminate. The measure of success is the creative momentum that spins off into individual and group practices elsewhere, to seed new processes asserting their own autonomy. The SenseLab makes no claim to ownership, operating as much as possible on the principle of a gift economy.

      This block will follow up on the thinking the archival concerns of artistic research at a.pass. The interest crawls out of the virtual into the physical public sphere wanting to add another aspect to it. The Zsenne will be taken as a sensor environment for the working upon collective processes of archive and anarchive. For this precise question we’ll be working with Erin Manning and her knowledge on the Anarchive as part of the Immediations project in SenseLab.

      Anarchive 

      1.The anarchive is best defined for the purposes of the Immediations project as a repertory of traces of collaborative research-creation events. The traces are not inert, but are carriers of potential. They are reactivatable, and their reactivation helps trigger a new event which continues the creative process from which they came, but in a new iteration.2.Thus the anarchive is not documentation of a past activity. Rather, it is a feed-forward mechanism for lines of creative process, under continuing variation.

      3.The anarchive needs documentation – the archive – from which to depart and through which to pass. It is an excess energy of the archive: a kind of supplement or surplus-value of the archive.

      In this movement between having to retreat from the world and then go back to the world as both places to make sense (study) of our relation with things,  various questions start to appear: What is the importance and articulation of doing/thinking practices? And what kind of positionality would this create in the semi-academic frame work?What kind of environments and practices can we envisage to share political/ aesthetic concerns? what kind of ‘library’ would we build to address these concerns?

      Each practice will have a specific way of opening to the public and more specific formats will be announced in detail as we go along. For now the basic structure is a daily private practice fora group of invited artistic researchers and an open door practice everyday from 17:30 till 20:00 where public conversations and doings welcome the interested and the passerby.

      The RC is mainly working with alumni and associated researchers linked with the a.pass Research Centre. For Parallel Parasite we are: Alex Arteaga, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Bojana Cvejic, Nikolaus Gansterer, Nicolas Galeazzi, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Nico Dockx, Steven Jouwersma, Halbe Kuipers, Pia Louwerens, Sara Manente, Marialena Merouda, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Lilia Mestre, Martino Morandi, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, Eric Thielemans, Femke Snelting, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adva Zakai, Veridiana Zurita with Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann .

      and the post-master researchers: Elen Braga, Nasia Fourtouni, Leo Kay, Laura Pante, Geert Vaes, Maurice Meewisse, Caterina Mora, Ezther Nemethi, Hoda Siahtiri, Goda Palekaite, Katinka Van Gorkum.

      Forms of learning together is a central approach in the post-master’s program of a.pass (platform for artistic research practices) and has a background in art run organisations as models of self-organisation and collaboration.  It views art practice and artistic research as situated, critical and autonomous processes contributing for the politisation of modes of gathering and learning together. 

      ScoreScapes is a research on how to create frameworks for bringing together diverse artistic practices to ‘speak’ to each other without having a common constraint in terms of content or form. To find systems of interaction where different aesthetic experiences cohabitate, complement, disagree and motivate thirdness together with the possibility to trace it. Like a maze of potentials hovering over us participants of the score.

      A central concern in the ScoreSacpes research is the development of modes of being together with our individual backgrounds, moods, sensibles, political concerns, theories, … Through a system of questions and answers set in time, the scores propose regular encounters as a mode of intensive exchange about individual experiences that interconnect with others. In this sense the score proposes a form of sociability. To work with scores allows to follow up and evaluate these relationships constantly. The score evolutions are guidelines for the progress of the study and facilitate a chronological trajectory of the research. To make scores is also to produce documents in order to observe the paradigms that are at stake while making art. The unexpected and unforeseen event is always a surprising call to pay attention to the performative aspect of things, to the condition of all existence as experiential events. The score becomes a life art laboratory for multidisciplinary practices and pluri-focus presences. An attempt to shift from an art-to-look-at to an art to experience.

       
    •  

      Rue delaunay 58 - 1080 - Brussel, Molenbeek 

       
       

      REMINDER
      This Friday 1 & Saturday 2 February 

      end communications of a.pass

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens
      and Eleanor Ivory Weber

      @ Hectolitre (MAROLLEN - Brussels) 

      Friday 1 & Saturday 2 February 2019
      from 18:00 to 22:00
      @Hectolitre - Rue de Hectolitre 3, 1000 Brussels


      Schedule: 

      18:00 food & drinks 

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction

      19:00 Subverses I: Play 

      Break

      20:00 7 anxieties and the world

      20:30 Subverses II : Glossolalien missive

      Break

      21:15 Subverses III

      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed

      Performances by Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens

      With contributions by
      Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      LISTEN TO THE TRAILER

      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Read more...

       
       

       a.pass
      p/a de Bottelarij
      Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       
       

       

    • research center
    • workshop
    • a.pass meets School of Love
    • Parallel Parasite
    • Instead of Needing to Know School Of Love @ Parallel-Parasite
      11 May 2018
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • School of Love
    • 04 June 2018
    • 09 May 2018
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • Instead of Needing to Know

      Out of the many definitions of love, SOL was always attracted to the one that describes love as the willingness to let go of what you thought you were before meeting the other. This kind of love can exist among strangers, not only within romantic couples. Schools should teach how to love this way. Schools should facilitate this mode of being.

      If both Love and School engaged in the practice of being open to change through encounters with others, we might develop sensitivities to deal with unknown paths better. Maybe we would be better off improvising through, with and within the unknown, instead of needing to know. Maybe improvisation today can be approached as a mode of resistance to a life dedicated to an anticipated and defined future.

      Proposing to put improvisation back in the agenda might seem like stating the obvious. Life itself is an improvisation, of course, we never stopped improvising. But as we already did with love and school, SOL would like to dedicate a special attention to improvisation in order to examine its relevance to contemporary realities. Not the improvisation that aims to emancipate repressed self-expression, nor the one that provides skills and the mastery to manouver within individual lives and careers, but an attitude of improvisation that may create an actualized set of relations between us and other people, us and other things, us and anything that is not us.



      Lets call it a pre-research. The week we'll spend in Szenne gallery is mainly a theoretical exploration, aiming at beginning to understand what these thoughts might mean. Perhaps by the end of the residency we will prefer not to use the word improvisation anymore/at all, and will name things differently. For now, we will share our first thoughts on it, read texts together, practice and reflect on the directions that this process can grow into

      www.schooloflove.info

       

      * * *
      * Members of SOL develop projects collectively, or invite SOL to join a process they initiated individually. This process was initiated by Adva Zakai and will be practiced in collaboration with SOL members and whoever is interested in joining.

      ** Participation conditions: Preferably follow the whole week, so that we share a process. If a whole week not possible, come for a full day. If planning ahead is too difficult, pop in and we'll see what this does to our and your process.


      Please inscribe here : https://bimestriel.framapad.org/p/VoV7C6HGQX

      Weekly plan

      Monday June 4th
      11h – 12h Settle in, introduction of participants and their interests.
      12h – 13h Listen to lecture On not knowing and paying attention / Tim Ingold + discussion
      13h – 14h30 Lunch break
      14h30 – 17h Read fragments from Speaking and Sensing the Self in Authentic
      Movement: The Search for Authenticity in a 21st Century / Seran E. Schug
      17h30 - 19h Socratic discussion on the term Authentic
      19h - 20h Introduction of the School Of Love

      Tuesday June 5th
      11h – 13h Read Improvisational Necessity and its After Affects / Sher Doruff
      13h – 14h30 Lunch break
      14h30 - 17h Read Improvisational Necessity and its After Affects / Sher Doruff
      17h30 – 19h Socratic discussion on the term Improvisation

      Wednesday June 6th
      SOL OFF

      Thursday June 7th
      11h – 13h Authentic movement guided by Julien Bruneau, (ONLY for those who follow other days in the process)
      13h – 14h30 Lunch break
      14h30 – 17h Authentic movement practice guided by Julien Bruneau (ONLY for those who follow other days in the process)
      17h30 -19h TTTell (Time-Term-Tell discussion)
      19h30 SOL interview by Lauren Grusenmeyer for the WORKOUT publication http://bureaugrusenmeyer.com/projects/WORKOUT

      Friday June 8th
      11h – 13h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
      13h – 14h30 Lunch break
      14h30 - 17h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
      17h30 – 19h Roumor Machine (discussion)

      Saturday June 9th
      11h – 13h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
      13h – 13h30 Break and lunch preparation
      13h30 – 15h Final discussion, plans for the future, feedback on the week and goodbye.

      Additionally:
      Tuesday June 26th
      SOL will meet with Erin Manning and the Sense Lab at ZSenne Gallery at 19h, in an open public discussion about the text of Manning that was read during SOL's residency.

    •  

       

      Milieus, Associations, Sieves and other matters

      some orientation guidelines

       

      Today, to the question ‘what is technoscience?’ the answer is: it is the medium of knowledge. Just as technology is not the instrument of science but its epistemological framework, so it is not the instrument of our communication, but our medium of meaning. Everyone seems to admit today that we are inhabited by our habitat, built by our niche, processed by our technical environment, which is neither external nor peripheral, but inherent to our being and to all meaning. Now it seems obvious that it is one and the same milieu that surrounds and separates us, and that which crosses and connects us, but this environment has become technical. The co-birth of humans and technology means that the latter is both our medium (the midpoint through which individuals maintain each other) and our environment (our space-time). The technical environment perfectly illustrates the idea that our environment or what surrounds us is actually in our midst (au milieu de nous). That technology is both our exteriority and our interiority, our cage and what takes us away from it. How, in an artistic research environment, do these ontological, ethical and political contemporary concerns resonate?

       


      Proposal


      Composing a processual environment, the block consisted in a sequential ensemble of collective dispositives that were proposed to be appropriated, interpreted, developed and problematised by the artists and researchers. A metastable milieu in ‘crisis’ which evolved by shifting to new dimensions out of a series of analyses and temporary resolutions of problematics linked with the artists and researchers’ projects considered as technologies.

      The basic structure was an arrangement of 1-self organised interactive events intersecting with 2-a series of three theoretical study days and 3-a series of advanced forms of feedback.

       

       

      Organisation / Trajectory

       

      1. Twenty two self-organised interactive events of different dimensions : the C.R.I.’s
      (from May 31st to July 19th)

      The acronym C.R.I. stands for Collective Research Interface. The researchers were invited to compose and propose participatory events that one could identify as shareable practices out of/around/through their individual researches. Instead of qualifying -and reducing- simply the object by ‘collective practice’ or ‘workshop’, the name ‘Collective Research Interface’ produced momentary shared interstitial spaces between different scales (private, public, cultural, social, personal, artistic, aesthetic, political and so on…) and enabled and supported a certain mode of attention, the one of technical mentality. Experiencing with this mentality was possible as the mode of production of the C.R.I.’s followed a principle of compositionality. The performativity and meaning of the C.R.I’s, as complex technical ensembles, were determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and the modes of relating/assembling used to combine them. A structuring loop was formulated : invent, invite, do, participate, share, document, discuss, reflect, problematisatise… and back again. The researches were not only presented but organised into shareable dispositives, that then were described, analysed, filtered driving the attention to their resonances in term of constructions and modes of assemblages. Their technological qualities.

       


      2. Three theoretical study days

              a/ The diagram and the residual (June 12th)
      The program visited the artist residency project ‘Villa Blanche’ within the Solvay Parc in Brussels with Martino Morendi (philosopher-hacker-activist) and Pietro Fortuna (philosopher-artist). The day was articulated around the tension between two conceptual outlines, two proposals that sketched complementary or opposite modes of understanding reality. The diagram, as the systematic representation of a set of relations between elements, where logics, organicism and industrial engineering converge in the effort to govern and organize these relations and the residual, as the irreducible part that remains beyond one's hunger to explain and describe, that recedes and escapes any attempt of organization and rationalization.
      United if only by their distance from the subject-object mode of disclosure, Martino Morandi and Pietro Fortuna oriented us through a series of ‘objects’ like an elegy by Rilke, passages from von Uexküll and Agamben, a bourgeois villa, a tree, a giant Olmec head made of stone, the Solvay ammonia-soda process ... and a series of readings of objects related to every researcher’s art and research.


              b/ on Participation (June 17th)
      The program visited the project ‘Precarious Pavillon #1 - Don’t eat the microphone’ -an artistic project initiated by Veridiana Zurita and Petra Van Dyck, curated by Michael Vandevelde and co-produced by Vooruit- happening in the garden of the Psychiatric Hospital Dr. Guislain in Ghent.
      The study day was dedicated to the critique of participatory art and ideas of participation. Don’t Eat the Microphone represented for us a grey zone where we could think but also be challenged in our certainties about the nature and function of participation. Currently focused on the development of the Collective Research Interfaces and exploring the value of several modes of participation, we wanted to problematise the issue(s) in a problematic environment.             
      What is participatory art? What does it mean to participate?
      What are the relations between participatory art and utopia?
      Which kind of public space and social fabric participatory practices do (and do not) produce? What are the relations between participatory art and communicative capitalism?
      What is participation-as-injunction the diagram of? Is it still possible not to participate? Is it still possible even to imagine non-participation? How to foster (non) participatory arts and (un) communicative thus militantly collective aesthetic educations of possibilities? After a phase of various reservations expressed about the optimistic rhetoric accompanying collaboration and participation, could we now be entering a new phase of a practical re-invention of participation?
      This tentative list of problems and questions guided our study day displaced in the frame of Don’t Eat the Microphone. We read some Hal Foster , Chat Rooms / some Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells / some Yves Citton, Ecology of Attention / some Derek R. Ford and Tyson E. Lewis, On the freedom to be opaque monsters, and discuss in various ways our doubts on participative art with the curators of ‘Don’t eat the microphone’ project and the patients of the psychiatric hospital.


              c/ Poieien (July 14th)
      Invited by the summer program to structure a day around concerns traversing researchers and artists when thinking about methodologies and their politics, Bojana Cvejic, then-curator of the research program at p.a.r.t.s., guided the group of researchers and artists through a critical reflection that she currently conducts on methodologies, opposing practice and action to poiesis. During the encounter with the researchers of a.pass, she proposed two points of entry: how poetry pierces through other mediums than text and poiein, as in how to make, compose, form... more than do and act... a kind of thought that arises from within, or close to, artistic practice that in turn becomes an instrument of looking past art. She accounts for it by “poetics”, using the term to emphasise the productive power of thought as opposed to the genre of interpretation that classifies specimens of kinds. Bojana Cvejic shared that poetics entails engagement with art in imaginary and speculative senses that ‘theory’, tout court – in the way that it has become the superstructural element of art production in capitalism – no longer enables.
      The participants did map out their imaginary around their matters of concern, read some texts and discussed with Bojana.

       

       

      3. Three 'Sieves' proposed by three human 'analogous algorithms'

      The aim of these three advanced modes of feedback named ‘Sieves’ -performed by three ex-a.pass researchers identified as 'analogous algorithms'- were to create conditions that could define practices of creative feedback experimentations on artistic researches envisaged as technical dispositives to investigate how each rhetoric of presentation and its digestive techniques could be expressed in terms of data model (Sina Seifee in May), in terms of recipes and cook books (Gosie Vervloessem in June) and in terms of idiotic practice (Vanja Smilianic in July)

       

              a/ Sina Seifee / Filters
      The basic question of 'Filter'  was : what happens when linking the symbolic space of data-model to the (relational, procedural, emotional) qualities of the researches of participants? The work started with working on/with the feedback material produced during the block’s opening week and processing this material in diagrams. The proposal centred on the notion (and practice) of topological analysis to investigate questions of connectivity and boundaries, in order to find out what remains invariant as a result of transformation. This did direct us to construct ‘transversal objects’ actualising what connects and joins, what delinks and disconnects in the culture of each participant researches.

      some documentation of the process here

       

              b/ Gosie Vervloessem / Vision and Digestion
      The protocol was to bring one’s research and start to think about the taste of it, the way it could move through one’s intestines and try to visualise the tools and methods one would use to transform one’s questions into a dish. How to boil down questions, how to crystallise the background dramaturgy of researches? As a way of documenting the symposium, Gosie proposed to write  the recipes of the ‘dishes’ and to edit the cookbook out of the ‘digested’ researches.

       

              c/ Vanja Smilianic / Idiotic Mandala attacked by a parasitic octopus
      The Idiotic Mandala  -indicating a weird circular configuration with a centre that radiates outward into compartmentalised areas deranged by the unvited presence of a creeping octopus-  asked to switch off one's rational thinking and opened it up to wandering and wondering. The practitioners were invited to introspectively transform the Vicious Circle ( sad passions at work disguised as set of tools and technologies that became behaviour patterns in one's research) into the Virtuous Circle (creating a universe in which idiots are able to act)

       

       

       

      Milieus, Associations, Sieves and other matters

      some justifications

       

              Thematics, Research questions, approaches, potentials, methodologies, relevance

      In response to a proposed frame given by a.pass coordinator and research center curator Lilia Mestre to structure the block in relation to the Senselab concepts and practices, postmaster program curator Pierre Rubio choose to design entry points to different set of practices and theoretical notions accessing a central theme for Senselab and him, the one of technical mentality. A few years ago SenseLab published a special issue of Inflexions ‘Simondon : Milieux, Techniques, Aesthetics’ and Brian Massumi’s lenghtly interview ‘Technical mentality revisited’ was published in Parrhesia. Rubio, since 2010, regularly revisits Simondon’s texts in relation to his practice as artist/dramaturge and observes the growing interest for the french philosopher's ideas in the academic and artistic fields. He curated an a.pass block in 2014 -'Milieu(s)'- that problematised some aspects of technical mentality within a collectively constructed ephemeral public school dispositive.  The possibility of considering artistic researches trajects and projects as technical objects and experimenting with technical mentality seemed to be relevant for this block especially in the vicinity of Senselab's residence invited by a.pass Research Centre within the 'Parallel/Parasite' project.

       

      -A poly semantic space to activate problematisations and progressive resolutions through concretisation

      -The individual CRI’s as case studies of non-autonomous technological open objects

      -Constructivism, technical mentality and artistic research

      -Simondon and artistic research : a promising diffractive equation

      .

      ... to be continued...

       

       

       

       

       

       

    • research center
    • seminar
    • Parallel Parasite
    • parallel-parasite Research center 18/II curated by Lilia Mestre
      23 April 2018
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Zsenne ArtLab
    • 04 June 2018
    • 30 June 2018
    • parallel-parasite

      A month residency at ZSenne ArtLab : On Anarchiving > On Love > On Score -ing > On the spot > On presence
      Gatherings of parallel parasite platforms  for practice based research in the arts > If you want to know, come!


      From the 4th till the 30th of June the a.pass Research Centre (RC) will be in residency at ZSenne ArtLab and will constitute itself as people meet, as thematics emerge, as the environment conditions, as the weather manifests, as the bodies form, as toxicity persists, as we drive ourselves towards multiplying perspectives for thinking and experiencing phenomena emerging from artistic research practices. 

       

      The RC will function as a meeting point for the convergence of concerns, interests and the pleasures of learning together. It will research itself and its modus operandi in terms of hospitality, dissensus and criticality through the various research practices proposed.

      The propositions start from reading groups, activating thinking/doing practices, score -ing, speculative talks, and registration/documentation formats in order to converge multiple insights that might (and not must) infuse other formats of reflecting/experiencing framed by the quasi public environment of the gallery space. 

       

      The Research Center in residency invites several guests which are thinking and experiencing ‘gathering’ as a form of knowledge processing bridging theoretical and experiential approaches. These gatherings don’t depart from personal concerns but aim to mine inter-subjective frame works to question artistic research as a learning together practice.

      This point of address for the a.pass RC next block, comes from two main curatorial concerns. The first is about the publicness of a Research Centre for artistic research and its visibility, accessibility and share-ability.  What are the internal and external demands and needs of such environments? The second comes from an observation on what I’m calling parallel-parasite platforms for practice based research in the arts.  

       

      a.pass is constantly questioning the positionality and share-ability of what we learn and interrogating the political implications of the research practices. In response to those problematics, as RC curator, my proposition is the dislocation of the RC to a semi-public environment and to locate it temporary in a gallery space, one of the per-se spaces for the exhibition. The question driving this movement (from the inside to the outside) is: can the a.pass RC  in dis-location generate a hub for the study of some of its practices? can this movement instigate other forms of share-ability and access that are informal and porous? We’ll be addressing the agency of such public-ness and how it will be giving perspective to the critical doing and the critical thinking in artistic research and what forms of sociability will be generated.

       

      The three main proposals are: SOL (School of Love) proposed by Adva Zakai, The way of the Anarchive proposed by Erin Manning (SenseLAb) and ScoreScapes proposed by Lilia Mestre (a.pass).

       

      These invited quasi - institutional set ups affiliated in one way or another with the academic environment are experimental formats of learning processes that are critically challenging modes of knowledge production in artistic research. All these 'parallel-parasite platforms' or 'ways of doing' are engaged in thinking-doing practices that converge theoretical and artistic research practice approaches in the arts. 

       

      SOL / School Of Love is an initiative of students and teachers from the Autonome Vormgeving department at KASK. SOL came to existence spontaneously as a school inside a school, in March 2016, out of a workshop that explored the notions of Love and School as modes of attention. SOL has no predetermined curriculum. It avoids defining itself and its goals in order to allow activities to emerge through the presence and interest of its participants, who come from inside KASK as well from outside of the institution. Anyone can be a part of SOL, anything can become a project in it, and it can take place anywhere, as long as it's stimulated by the will to re-think both school and love as charged with potential for change and engagement in society. It is what we make it to be. 

      AND

      The SenseLab is a laboratory for thought in motion.
      Based in Montreal, the SenseLab is an international network of artists and academics, writers and makers, from a wide diversity of fields, working together at the crossroads of philosophy, art, and activism.
      Participants are held together by affinity rather than by any structure of membership or institutional hierarchy. The SenseLab’s event-based projects are collectively self-organizing. Their aim is to experiment with creative techniques for thought in the act. The SenseLab’s product is its process, which is meant to disseminate. The measure of success is the creative momentum that spins off into individual and group practices elsewhere, to seed new processes asserting their own autonomy. The SenseLab makes no claim to ownership, operating as much as possible on the principle of a gift economy.

       

      This block will follow up on the thinking the archival concerns of artistic research at a.pass. The interest crawls out of the virtual into the physical public sphere wanting to add another aspect to it. The Zsenne will be taken as a sensor environment for the working upon collective processes of archive and anarchive. For this precise question we’ll be working with Erin Manning and her knowledge on the Anarchive as part of the Immediations project in SenseLab.

       

      Anarchive 1.The anarchive is best defined for the purposes of the Immediations project as a repertory of traces of collaborative research-creation events. The traces are not inert, but are carriers of potential. They are reactivatable, and their reactivation helps trigger a new event which continues the creative process from which they came, but in a new iteration.
      2.Thus the anarchive is not documentation of a past activity. Rather, it is a feed-forward mechanism for lines of creative process, under continuing variation.
      3.The anarchive needs documentation – the archive – from which to depart and through which to pass. It is an excess energy of the archive: a kind of supplement or surplus-value of the archive.

       

      In this movement between having to retreat from the world and then go back to the world as both places to make sense (study) of our relation with things,  various questions start to appear: What is the importance and articulation of doing/thinking practices? And what kind of positionality would this create in the semi-academic frame work?
      What kind of environments and practices can we envisage to share political/ aesthetic concerns? what kind of ‘library’ would we build to address these concerns?

       

      Each practice will have a specific way of opening to the public and more specific formats will be announced in detail as we go along. For now the basic structure is a daily private practice fora group of invited artistic researchers and an open door practice everyday from 17:30 till 20:00 where public conversations and doings welcome the interested and the passerby.

       

      The RC is mainly working with alumni and associated researchers linked with the a.pass Research Centre.

      For Parallel Parasite we are: Alex Arteaga, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Bojana Cvejic, Nikolaus Gansterer, Nicolas Galeazzi, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Nico Dockx, Steven Jouwersma, Halbe Kuipers, Pia Louwerens, Sara Manente, Marialena Merouda, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Lilia Mestre, Martino Morandi, Xiri Noir, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, Eric Thielemans, Femke Snelting, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adva Zakai, Veridiana Zurita with Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann .

      and the post-master researchers:
      Elen Braga, Nasia Fourtouni, Leo Kay, Laura Pante, Geert Vaes, Maurice Meewisse, Caterina Mora, Ezther Nemethi, Hoda Siahtiri, Goda Palekaitė, Katinka Van Gorkum.

      Forms of learning together is a central approach in the post-master’s program of a.pass (platform for artistic research practices) and has a background in art run organisations as models of self-organisation and collaboration.  It views art practice and artistic research as situated, critical and autonomous processes contributing for the politisation of modes of gathering and learning together. 

      ScoreScapes is a research on how to create frameworks for bringing together diverse artistic practices to ‘speak’ to each other without having a common constraint in terms of content or form. To find systems of interaction where different aesthetic experiences cohabitate, complement, disagree and motivate thirdness together with the possibility to trace it. Like a maze of potentials hovering over us participants of the score.


      A central concern in the ScoreSacpes research is the development of modes of being together with our individual backgrounds, moods, sensibles, political concerns, theories, … Through a system of questions and answers set in time, the scores propose regular encounters as a mode of intensive exchange about individual experiences that interconnect with others. In this sense the score proposes a form of sociability. To work with scores allows to follow up and evaluate these relationships constantly. The score evolutions are guidelines for the progress of the study and facilitate a chronological trajectory of the research. To make scores is also to produce documents in order to observe the paradigms that are at stake while making art. The unexpected and unforeseen event is always a surprising call to pay attention to the performative aspect of things, to the condition of all existence as experiential events. The score becomes a life art laboratory for multidisciplinary practices and pluri-focus presences. An attempt to shift from an art-to-look-at to an art to experience.

    • AAA
       
      The Research Center at a.pass is a platform for advanced research practices in the arts. It invites five to six associated researchers per one year cycle to develop their artistic research practice in a environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. In agreement with the individual research trajectory of the associate researchers the apass Research Center supports and facilitates forms of performative publishing (publications, presentations, exhibitions etc) experimental research set ups and collaborations.  The Center cohabits with the self-educational processes of the a.pass post-master program and functions as a resource for reflection on methodologies of collaborative research.

      Rather than consolidating the existing discourse around the notion of artistic research, a.pass is committed to accumulating different understandings of artistic research through practicing its frameworks, archives and vocabularies. By bringing together differently practiced notions of artistic research, apass is assembling an intense reflection on modes of study, knowledge production and knowledge sharing within the artistic field. a.pass is interested in the actualisation of performing knowledge because it considers artistic research as a situated, contextual practice which is the consequence of the ongoing negotiation between its stakeholders, contextual fields and discourses. a.pass interacts with academic, activist, practice-based fields and methods of research, and supports the development of rigorous, inventive forms of artistic research on the intersections between those fields and in tension with academic artistic research as a developing discipline.


      The center itself is not a solid institutional body with its associate researchers as satellites, it is rather constructed as a support structure that brings different trajectories and fields of research to a multitude of temporary overlaps.  It's institutional and long term structures work towards a  repository of methodologies, forms of archive and making public of artistic research practice.
       
      a.pass offers a collaborative environment for the development of artistic research. Five to six researchers join the Research Center for a one year cycle. They are accompanied by three Research Curators that consecutively take care of the center. The activities of the research center are organised around performative publishing, engagement with external research situations and peer reviewing/collective mentoring. Research is developed, shared and performed in public lectures, workshops, conferences, publications, performances and other experimental set-ups. The Research Center meets on a bi-weekly basis to self-organise and share processes. In addition, research curators are available for individual meetings.
       
      Associated researchers are seen as partners of a.pass. They have access to the collective activities of the post-master program. a.pass provides technical support, workspace and supports performative publishing. Associated researchers do not pay a fee. a.pass can act as an institutional partner in applications for funding or academic research. The specific terms of the association will be formulated in an individual contract between the researcher and a.pass, delineating the research steps that will be developed within the a.pass environment and their possible public outcomes.
    • research center
    • seminar
    • block 2018/I
    • What are you training for? On acting and performance techniques - Current directions for embodied research in the performing arts
      20 December 2017
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Dra. Adriana la Selva
    • 10 January 2018
    • 11 January 2018
    • What are you training for?

      Adriana La Selva is participant of the a.pass PhD research program and proposes the 2 day seminar "What are you training for?" in relation to her home university U-Ghent. The topic addresses the conditions of the body in relation to its performativity. Starting the investigations of the self-creation of conditions at the body seems to comply with the intentions of the block MAKING / CONDITIONS perfectly.  We therefore decided to join this seminar as part of Plenum I. The first round of the individual research presentations of each a.pass participant will take place within this seminar and amongst the seminar participants.

       

      outline

      This inter-university specialist course intends to investigate acting and performing techniques as a field of knowledge separated from those of the representation and spectacle.

      In which ways can performer’s technique (a range of codified skills one chooses to learn) and performer’s training processes (how you engage with techniques towards creation or, how you create a certain routine to deal/improve these techniques), dialogue with other fields of study, such as philosophy, sociology and politics? Can we look at technique as an aesthetic/poetic device on its own? What is performative about it?

      The designed programme seeks to investigate and challenge what acting and performance technique is, and how it is disseminated through artistic, social and political agency.

      We will tackle this frame in both theory and practice, with interactive workshops, work demonstrations, reading seminars and lectures, where acting and performance technique apprenticeship will dialogue with a philosophical context which unfolds the notion of epistemology: the study of the nature of knowledge itself and how it is sourced.

      The course is open to all contemporary art scholars, both in an academic and a practice-based sense, working on artistic and everyday life techniques as embodied discourses. Participants are invited to elaborate on different training methods and art practices, as much as on theoretical models, and to experiment with their individual approach to artistic work from a technical and training-like perspective.

       

      guest lectures

      Lecturers will work out the above frame in two levels:

      1. on a theoretical level, with the reading seminar sessions and the lectures of Prof. Dr. Ben Spatz (Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at Huddersfield University), Nicolas Galeazzi (a.pass) and Odin Teatret’s performer Iben Nagel Rasmussen. Still active, she is considered a living archive, carrier of a legacy that dates back from the beginning of a particular physical theatre culture started by Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba in the 60’s.

      1. a practice-based level: the participants will participate in training exercises with Ben Spatz, and will watch the work demonstrations of Esa Kirkkopelto (Senior Lecture on artistic research at UNIARTS Helsinki) and Carlos Simioni (Performer at Grupo LUME, Sao Paulo), followed by an open talk. The first from Finland, the latter from Brazil, these are two performers that found a precious way of seeing technique as a poetic object on its own, which they use to create radical interactions with the communities they belong to. Throughout the two days of this course, we will investigate the notion of embodied technique - both in artistic and everyday life practices - as an epistemic field, i.e. as a resistant and potentially radical strategy for knowledge of and/or dialoguing with a broader social/political context.

       

      tentative program

       DAY1: 10/01/2018
      10:00 to 17:00including 1 hour lunch break + evening event (total of 8 working hours).
      09:30 to 10:00Coffee and attendance list
      10:00 to 10:30Introduction by Prof. Dr. Christel Stalpaert and Dra. Adriana La Selva on the overall topic.
      10:30 to 12:00Prof. Dr. Ben Spatz, who will give an introductory lecture on embodied research and his current artistic outcomes.
      12:00 to 13:00 Nicolas Galeazzi: "Unfolding performance notions and the conditions of the making".
       13.00 to 14.00 Lunch Break
      14.00 to 17:30

      Workshop session 1. Presentation and discussion of material linked to participants‘ research projects and art works. Participants are asked to prepare small presentations approaching corporeality and technique in relation to their own researches. This work will then be further developed in the workshop sessions, led and feedbacked by Ben Spatz.

      19:00 to 21:00

      Evening event: Esa Kirkkopelto/ Other Spaces will bring a lecture/performance on embodied research and different modes of being, also other-than-human.

       

       

       Day 2: 11/01/2018
      10:00 to 18:30including 1 hour lunch break+ 30 min refreshments break (total of 8 working hours)
      10:00 to 13:00Practice-based Workshop with Prof. Ben Spatz where theory and practice aggregated in the previous day with the students will be exposed through an epistemological practice-based work on the very notion of technique.
      13:00 to 14:00Lunch break
        
      14:00 to 16:00lecture / artist talk with Iben Nagel Rasmussen in which she will reflect on her life-long commitment to training and the unfolding of physicality in political and social spheres. The lecture will unfold as an interview, led by Prof. Ben Spatz.
      16:00 to 17:00Launch of Rasmussen’s book The Blind Horse. Round table with the author and Dr. Adriana La Selva.
      17:00 to 17:30 Refreshments break
      17:30 to 19:30Carlos Simioni carries out a work demonstration on his long term collaboration with Iben.

       

       

      organising and scientific committee

      Prof. Dr. Christel Stalpaert,

      Full professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at Ghent University, Director of the research centre S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media) and PEPPER (Philosophy, Ethology, Politics and Performance)

      E-mail: Christel.Stalpaert@Ugent.be

      Prof. Dr. Jan Steen,

      Lecturer in acting and head of Drama Department, KASK-School of Arts

      E-mail: jan.steen@hogent.be

      Drs. Adriana La Selva,

      PhD Researcher at UGent (S:PAM) and KASK

      E-mail: AdrianaParente.LaSelva@Ugent.be

      Prof. Dr. Luk Van Den Dries

      Full Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Antwerp and head of the department of Literature.

      E-mail: luc.vandendries@uantwerpen.be

      Prof. Dr. Bart Philipsen

      Full Professor in the Faculty of Arts, coordinator of Literary Studies Research Unit KULeuven.

      E-mail: bart.philipsen@kuleuven.be

       

      partnership

      PEPPER - Philosophy, Ethology, Politics and PERformance, UGent

      Research Center for Visual Poetics - UAntwerpen

      Embodied Research Working Group:

      a.pass : advanced performance and scenography studies, Brussels

      NORDISK TEATER LABORATORIUM

    • information
    • postgraduate program
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • Block overview plenum & forum
      20 December 2017
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 08 January 2018
    • 01 April 2018
    • Block overview

      This post gives a short overview of the organisation and agenda of the block.


      PLENUM
      Plenums are gatherings of a.pass as a whole. All participants of the block program take part in each of the 3 plenums to share the state and development of their researches, as do the mentors, the research centre, the daily team and the core members as far as possible.
      Plenums are gatherings to exchange about individual researches and practices, and are used to discuss how we, as a group of researchers, and the structure of a.pass can best support them.

      The plenum doesn't start until everyone announced is present.

       

      FORUM
      Forums are timeframes to discuss and work on the topics of MAKING/CONDITIONS, to develop and exchange knowledge or to practice the making of research. 
      A forum can be a physical gathering from 1 hour to 5 days. Forums can be internal a.pass work gatherings, held publicly in presence of invited guests, or even take place in collaboration with other institutions.
      Forums start at the announced time, wether the participants are present or not.

       

      AGENDA

      Plenum I

      8. - 17. January: Displaying Conditions (opening week)

       

      10.-11. January: participation in U-Ghent seminar 'What are we training for?'
      by Adriana la Selva

      Forum I

      18.-19. January: 'How do we do the things that we do?'
      with Florian Feigl

      Forum II

      26. January; 2., 9., 17. February; 1., 8., 16., March: Pattern Language 
      with Nicolas Galeazzi

      Forum III

      30. January - 3. February: Critical Administration; or Shaking down the  Enterpreneur
      with Kate Rich

      Plenum II

      19. February - 23. February:  Making Conditions (HWD's) 

      Forum IV

      26. February - 2. March: 'How do we do the things that we do?' with Florian Feigl

      Forum V

      9. March: Performing Knowledge
      with Pieter Vermeulen (Antwerpen)

      Forum VI

      16. March: Alternatives to Economy (the Macao Model)
      with Alberto Cossu

      Forum VII

      19. - 23. March: Pattern Testing
      with Nicolas Galeazzi

      Plenum III

      26. March - 1. April: Reflecting Conditions (end week)

       

       

       

    •  

       

      1 research platform
       
      In its core a.pass is a platform for professionals in the fields of arts and theory who wish to engage in a self assigned research topic. It provides a place and infrastructure to meet other researchers, collaborate on some aspects of the work, get feedback on the project, develop one’s methodology and to widen one’s theoretical and practical scope through critique, mentoring and feedback. 
       
       
      2 educational platform questioning artistic research
       
      A.pass institute defines and activates artistic research by accumulative process and critique.
      Embracing the fact that artistic research is becoming a category of production in the cultural field, a.pass does not claim it as it’s goal or premise to be able delineate the borders of this particular methodology. A.pass affirms this apparent lack of definition as a chance. Operating without a predefined notion of what „artistic research“ is, it creates and brings together a pluralistic overview of the existing notions of this practice.
      An affirmative survey towards the question „what is an artistic research?“ has therefore become one of apass' defining methodologies: apass strives to host a multitude of practices in the arts which self-define themselves as research. Their definitions of what a research praxis in the arts is are at times complementing and at times contradicting each other. This dis/agreement creates a polivocal platform of definitions and is a statement towards a different conception of institutions: away from essentialist claims and towards a more politicised platform of engagement with a certain discipline.
      Some of the methods of this study methodology are:
      -a.pass frequently invites research practitioners in the arts to work with the researchers of the institute.
      -a.pass invests in creating occasions for public discussions of what artistic research is and in presenting the researches work to the general public.
      -a.pass is producing a library of research methodologies by publishing individual and collective research cases.
      -a.pass is presenting itself as a platform for the exchange, implementations and experimentation of research methodologies. 
       
       
      3. questioning teaching
       
      a.pass is a platform which educates and sets an agenda of learning for its participants. It is building its curriculum by inviting advanced practitioners in the arts to actively engage the participants into and around their research within a framework of workshops, ateliers, collective practices or scores. This work is not framed as a teaching as such, but as a process of collective exploration. Experimental formats of collective and collaborative research are frequently proposed and developed in such a framework. The traditional professor-student relationship is put into question here and has to be re-negotiated as a dialogue while a diverse group of practices is admitted as „teaching“.
      a.pass develops teaching practices which engage with the question of how the process of knowledge production and transfer can be framed otherwise outside the persistent hierarchies within the processes of learning and education. 
       
       
      4. meeting point
       
      Beyond its defined curriculum and methods a.pass has in general become an informal meeting point of professionals in the arts on many levels of professionalization. Many contacts and collaborations that have been initiated at a.pass continue well beyond the one-year time-frame of the post-master program. It is a productive hub for the Brussels art scene. 
       
       
      5. experimental institute
       
      A.pass’ work includes research into the formation and politics of educational institutions. By collecting innovative methodologies of research, facilitating educational experimentation and by maintaining an institutional openness, a.pass affirms and continues to be an experimental institute/institution, a place of engaged research of what education in the arts is today. 
    • research center
    • defining a.pass
    • Artistic Research & a.pass : a critical practice by Elke Van Campenhout (2015)
      30 November 2017
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
      Artistic Research & a.pass : a critical practice

       


               1. Questioning artistic research

       

      To clarify what kind of research a.pass sustains, a minimum of conceptual transparency is needed. When we combine the terms ‘research’ and ‘artistic’, most of the time we are dealing with a research ON the arts (art history, musicology, theatre sciences, aspects of cultural sociology, aesthetics etc...) or a research IN the arts (a research that is part of a (regular) artistic practice). What we in a.pass consider as artistic research – a term that is often understood in reference to the Anglo-Saxon models for practice-based research – often is the result of a research in the arts, but cannot be reduced to it. A.pass doesn’t want to limit its range of research to the ‘artist research’ full stop: the necessarily research-oriented attitude that accompanies any kind of serious artistic endeavour, which does not necessarily have any link to the communication and valorization of research results as it is demanded in an academic context. ‘Research’, as it is understood in the artistic practice, is an evident part of this practice which allows for a result-oriented reflection on the work, or in other words: a research oriented towards the production of the art work as a product, as a repertory and/or as an oeuvre. In the a.pass environment, and in a playful questioning of the ‘academic’ research mind-set, this individual artist is not the sole focus of attention, or at least not in the sense that we perceive our researchers as artists tout court. An artist research has an inherent logic and validity, but does not necessarily have a need to be communicative to an outside community in any other form than through the production of art works. A.pass reflects on a research in the arts that is more than a report – in the art work itself or in the accompanying dissertation – of the individual research of an artist. What we consider an artistic research project is rather: ‘a new practice in the arts, which differs from the individual artist practice, as well as from the art historical or scientific research practice. One researches not only the art through the art works, but the functioning of art and the breadth of the art practice by way of interdisciplinary interventions in the (semi-)public, societal domain. Artistic research is an interdisciplinary concentration around a ‘binding’ problem that catches the attention of a pluriform group of participants.’ (Jouke Kleerebeezem, De Witte Raaf) This means that a question in the research of a.pass is always situated in a broader context than that of the sole artist: a lot of the questions that are posed in a.pass generate collective discussions and critique, find their way (partly) into other researches or attempt temporary coalitions in the defining and/or broadening up of a certain problematics. Important in this environment is the shared reflection concerning ways of working, diverse understandings of artistic research, the development of (post-disciplinary) perspectives and the experimentation with methodologies and strategies. The work of the artistic researcher does not coincide with the work of the artist in the sense that it is self-conscious, and explicitly communicates and circulates this self-reflection within a wider group of stakeholders. In other words, the emphasis in this kind of research is not so much on the conception and production of an art work – although this undeniably and unavoidably is part of the whole of the research – but rather on a questioning that puts the individual art practice and even the recognizable mono-discipline in a wider perspective. This kind of research originates from and builds on the demands and problematics of a shared debate, and can be approached by different specialist researchers, each addressing the question out of his own domain. The length, the quality criteria, the form, the communication strategies and the required ‘relevance’ of the research – and thus also the understanding of the requirements of the PhD -project that might eventually result out from it- are thus in principle dependent on the context and have to be negotiated on a project base between the researcher and the institution(s) involved. It is in this case very important to recognize a wider ‘public’, the potential users of this research, as a partner in this trajectory, and to develop the appropriate communication channels to make this participation possible.   

             

                   2. Constructing a general intellect

       

      Other than the ‘artist’s research’, artistic research overwrites the isolation and the hermetics of art production in the classical sense, in addressing in one way or another a socially relevant problematics. This kind of artistic research opens up new ways for the creation of a ‘generous cultural memory’. But at the same time the societal relevance of this research cannot coincide with its utilitarian value, since the direct impact of the research practice and reflection necessarily develops through artistic, affective gestures of experimentation and communication that resonate with, but never answer to, the concrete questions posed within the societal fabric. This kind of research thus will only influence the daily social, political, economic or scientific reality by a detour, through the unsettling of its self-reflection and imagination(s). This independent position, free from any preconditioned political preconceptions, economic value or socially determined relevance is a necessary and undeniable characteristic of this research practice. More than a pragmatic laboratory for the production of answers on societal questions, the research platform that is a.pass offers the possibility to construct a ‘general intellect’: a way of working wherein researchers collectively give form to diverse practices to produce and articulate knowledge in an open, shared research environment.          

       

                  3. Investigating divergent forms of knowledge

       

      In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that the development of this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the art practice does take a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge. 

       

               4. contextualising a singularity

       

      The a.pass Post-master Program and Research Centre are positioned within a larger context of the arts and education, and develops its working out of a questioning of the current organization of artistic and educational (institutional) practices. In its trajectory, a.pass has on all levels of its organization critically reflected upon the economy of knowledge as it is being employed today in higher education and the media, the logics of the arts market, the recuperation of institutional critique by the institutions themselves, the capitalist drive for the new, the seductive and the quickly consumable, and the role and responsibility of the artist researcher in all of this.
      In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the artistic practice does take on a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge.
      This means that a.pass is an environment that reflects and practices knowledge and artistic strategies with the windows open to an outside reality. In that sense a.pass is not so much a preparation for the ‘professional life’, as it is a putting-into-question of what these professional sectors (both the artistic and educational organizations of institutes, values and work) are symptoms of. Throughout the years, a.pass has used its own institutional status – and the opportunities offered by being an artistic educational program embedded in a larger network of schools, art centres, research places, workspaces, etc… – to seriously reconsider its role, and the role of the artist researchers within the current ethical, political, economic and social context of knowledge production and sharing.
      On the level of ethics this means that we consider both the institute as the institute’s participants to be part of a larger network of relations, that give them their value and meaning. In a.pass the relation between the ‘I’ of the researcher and the provisional construction of the ‘We’ of the research practice within the institute, is a recurring, and politically charged, topic. The institute here is considered as an experimental field to try out strategies for the now and the future within a larger society. A.pass gives a lot of attention to the transindividual character of practice and knowledge, and how the collective environment can be both a source of frustration and feedback, as of nourishment and challenge to the individual researcher’s trajectory. Also, a.pass in that sense always takes the ‘ethical’ concreteness, the situational reality of research seriously: artistic research is always already embedded in the relations that produce it, and these relations encompass elements of discourse, social and economic factors and spatial settings, as well as institutional givens, societal demands and resources at hand. Therefore an artistic research strategy or outcome is not transparently reproducible without changing in the process. The ethical (here understood as relational and situational) character of the research, makes it resistant to commodification on a larger scale. But this doesn’t mean that the research can not be communicated or shared, using strategies that differ from the promise of serial reproduction.
      This interest in the transindividual character of learning and research, however, does not exclude a strong focus and interest in the development of the individual’s trajectories. Since the institute can not function without the invested interest and contributions to the common environment of the researchers, a.pass strives towards creating an environment in which the aesthetic and artistic idiosyncratic qualities of each practice can be challenged into being. A.pass considers the artist researcher not so much as an artist-producer of work, but as an artist-researcher, reflecting self-critically on the trajectory already accomplished, and reconsidering the notions of work, value, the market, responsiveness and responsibility through the practicing of the research. A.pass encourages the exploration of ‘risky’ practices that do not directly correspond to the current demands of the arts market or academic understandings of research, in order to create an experimental environment in which certainties can be subverted, undermined, or simply reappraised from another point of view.

       

       

    • Newsletter March 2017 13 November 2017
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande

      newscaption

       

       

       

      a.pass proudly invites you to its homebase

      for a cluster of talks, discussions, screening and performance-essay

      with special guests Edward George, Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova and Sina Seifee.

      on March 8-9-10 @ a.pass, 4th floor

       


       

      SCREENING & PRESENTATION BY Dr EDWARD GEORGE

      THE LAST ANGEL OF HISTORY

      Wednesday March 8th (7.00pm-10.00pm)

      The Last Angel of History is a groundbreaking video-essay from the 1990s that influenced filmmakers and inspired conferences, novels and exhibitions. Black Audio Film Collective’s exploration of the chromatic possibilities of digital video is embedded within a mythology of the future that creates connections between black unpopular culture, outer space and the limits of the human condition. Interviews with esteemed musicians, writers, and cultural critics are interwoven with the fictional story of the “data thief,” who must travel through time and space in search of the code that holds the key to his future. Edward George, writer, researcher, presenter of this ground breaking science fiction documentary, will present and discuss the film and its themes of music, Diaspora, science fiction, and its engagement with Afro futurism.

      Dr. Edward George is a founder of Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), the multimedia duo Flow Motion (1996-present), and the electronic music group Hallucinator (1998-present).

      More information and subscription: here

       


       

      TALK BY LAURENCE RASSEL

      STITCHED & SPLIT HOSPITALITY

      #6 in Book Club Series

      Thursday March 9th (10am-1.30pm)

      Cultural worker Laurence Rassel has long ago diagnosed the vacuity of artistic practices when its formats of knowledge-production are not 'situated’ in an ecology of art that encompasses social and psychological factors. Paradoxically she considers fiction as a paramount tool to achieve that goal. Laurence Rassel will address the notion of ‘Radical Hospitality’ by revisiting some of her past curatorial operating principles and practices developed in Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. Her science and fiction approach in Stitch and Split is an early exemplarity of hybrid curatorial practice that steers towards a politics of imagination-as-critique and alternative forms of life and work ‘invented’ in common.

      Laurence Rassel is a Brussels based cultural worker who acts as curator, teacher, organizer. She is currently the director of ERG (École de recherche Graphique). From 2008 to 2015 she was the Director of Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, an institution created in 1984 by the artist Antoni Tàpies to promote the study and knowledge of modern and contemporary art. From 1997 to 2008, Rassel was member of Constant, a Brussels based non-profit association and interdisciplinary arts-lab that advocates free software, copyright alternatives and (cyber)feminism.


      More information and subscription: here

       


       

      TALK BY FABRIZIO TERRANOVA

      POLITICS OF SPECULATIVE FABULATION

      #7 in Book Club Series

      Friday March 10th  (10.00am-1.30pm)

      In this talk/reading session, Fabrizio Terranova revisits a recent text by Donna Haraway, “Sympoiesis - Symbiogenesis and the Lively Arts of Staying with the Trouble” and presents the different projects he is involved in where activism, speculative fiction and pedagogy merge.
      "We need new types of narratives and techniques. Stories that reclaim the earth and the commons that capitalism has stolen from us. Stories that invite us to take up and create trans-species sensitivities, trans-matters vitalities and trans-cerebral unrests. And it’s not enough imagining them, these stories have to be made and experienced."

      Fabrizio Terranova is a film-maker, activist, dramaturge, and teacher at ERG (École de recherche Graphique) in Brussels, where he launched and runs the master’s programme in Récits et expérimentation/Narration spéculative (Narrations and experimentation/ Speculative narration). Terranova is the author of Josée Andrei, An Insane Portrait, an experimental documentary. He is also a founding member of DingDingDong – an institute to jointly improve knowledge about Huntington’s disease. He has recently published “Les Enfants du compost” in a publication edited by Isabelle Stengers and Didier Debaise : Gestes spéculatifs (Les Presses du réel, 2015). Terranova directed a documentary/film on/with Donna Haraway – ‘Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival’. The film will be presented at the end of March 2017 in Brussels within a series of conferences with and around Donna Haraway.


      More information and subscription: here

       


       

      PERFORMANCE-ESSAY BY SINA SEIFEE

      AN ANIMAL ESCAPE CASE

      #7 in Book Club Series “Special event”

      Friday March 10th (2.30am-3.30pm)

      The essay-performance plays with some standards​ of cross-species identification according to an Indo-Iranian mode of subjectivity and Sina Seifee own animal-findings in contemporary Tehran. We zoom in what the idea of "wilderness" withholds in technologically mediated stories and rumors that populate domestic life of this neighborhood. Through fairy-tale associations the lecture investigates operative non-understandings in old and new threads of cosmology that formulate reciprocity and being-with of the mediated non-humanity and investigates the cases of failed collaboration between species.

      Sina Seifee is an interdisciplinary artist working in the field of computer art, writing, drawing and performance. He is involved in research and work on technology, narrative, globalism, and intercultural mythologies.


      More information and subscription: here

       


       

      The Book Club Series during 'Trouble on Radio Triton'

      During the Book Club a.pass invites engaged practitioners (Sol Archer, Peggy Pierrot, Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova…) for a series of reading sessions, talks and discussions about their efforts to create conditions for imagining otherwise. The series is initiated by Pierre Rubio and realised in collaboration with some of a.pass’ artist-researchers. For the most part Book Club is scheduled on Thursday mornings and are open to the public.

      Trouble on Radio Triton (Jan-March 2017) is the name of the current a.pass block curated by Pierre Rubio. It is a ‘Sci-Fi terraforming mode of attention’, a metaphoric multipolar dispositive that challenges our abilities as artist-researchers to ‘render our world habitable again’. Far from proposing innocuous escapism in a false paradise of disembodied utopia, the dispositive seeks to invent and activate political potentialities of artistic research through an immersion in different types of (speculative) fiction.

      Check here for more about the current a.pass-block.

       


       

       Save upcoming dates:

      March 14-15: The Tea Party (workshop by Helena Dietrich)
      March 16: Book Club #8 : Accelera.pass! (with Vandevelde & De Raeve, cur. by Sébastien Hendrickx)
      March 17: Book Club #9: “On language as such” (with Caroline Godart, cur. by Marialena Marouda)

       



       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • The excursion is a first encounter with the Flemish Marine Institute and its work. It includes a tour of the Marine Station and the Research Vessel Simon Stervin in the port of Ostend. Our guide will be André Cattrijsee, who is the "research infrastructure manager" of the FMI.

      During this excursion, I propose for us to focus our attention on how the ocean is studied in a scientific context. What kind of language is used to describe it? And what kinds of instruments are used to measure it? What are the categories that result from those measurements? And what kind of ocean is produced as a result? As a score for this excursion, I therefore propose to shift slightly the way we listen and experience this tour of a marine research institution. Instead of simply following the content of what is said, could we also discern the knowledge dispositive within which this tour takes place? And how does this dispositive affect, finally, the "object" of its study?

      In the framework of my research project "Oceanographies" I am interested in finding ways to summon the ocean by means of storytelling and performance. The project in inspired by a personal fascination with this liquid space and its properties. Its materiality, the traces it leaves on the body, its infinite blue transparency, the way it reflects the light, the physical –and temporal– limits it imposes are some of the ways the ocean can “speak” to me. In my research I study this “language” of the ocean by collecting stories from different people’s encounters with it. The focus of the research is therefore not about the ocean “in itself”, devoid of the human presence. Rather it is the relation of the hands to the mud, the ears to the breaking of the waves, the feet to the feeling of sinking, that the work focuses on. The research project weaves the complexity that arises from those interactions into the tellings of stories and their demonstrations.

      I perceive the excursion to the flemish marine institute as a first step towards a longer term collaboration with this institution. I intent to also introduce the researchers of the institute to my oceanic research and hope that I can enter into conversations with them about their experiences of the ocean and the storytelling of those experiences.

    • [call] 2017/I 30 July 2017
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
      newscaption
       
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

       

      More information on the application procedure for the post-master and (pre-)PhD-programme.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • 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

    • Trouble seeing this email? Online version here.

      newscaption

       

       

       

      You are warmly Invited to 

      ____

      The
      Document

      Trans-
      formed

      ____

       Masterclasses and Seminar
      +
      Book launch 'Dirty room' Juan Dominguez
      a.pass research centre publication

      JUNE 22-23-24 @ LA BELLONE
      Rue de Flandre 46
      Brussels

       

       


      Curated by Sofia Caesar and Lilia Mestre, the public program “The Document Transformed” invites four practitioners that offer very distinct questions, methods, and proposals to problems related to documentation. Join Femke Snelting, Olga de Soto, Vincent Meessen, and Agency (Kobe Matthys), and others, for three days of presentations, screenings, performances and conversations. How does the document affect practices, bodies, histories, and experiences? The event brings together practices that not only give sight to the power relations engendered by apparatuses of documentation, but also move towards the transformation of the systems in which we produce history, law, art, and the body. Held in the context of The Problem of the Score, block curated by Lilia Mestre in the a.pass post-master research program and supported by a.pass. 

      In the frame of the seminar the book Dirty Room will be presented. It is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher.

       

      This seminar is organized in collaboration with La Bellone

      PROGRAM 

      Thursday 22 June 

      10:00 > 13:00    Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)

      14:00 >17:00     Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)

      Friday 23 June

      10:00 >13:00     Exhibition visit ( Bozar ) and discussion with Vincent Meessen

      14:00 >17:00     Masterclass Olga de Soto

      To inscribe to the master-classes please send an email to production@apass.be
      1 Masterclass: 15 Euro, 2 Masterclasses: 20 Euro, 2 days: 30 Euro.
      Free for (ex) participants of a.pass

      Saturday June 24th 12:00 > 18:00 
      FREE, reservation appreciated 

      In this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.

      12:30    Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk
      13:00    Femke Snelting
      14:00    Olga de Soto
      PAUSE
      15:30    Vincent Meessen
      16:30    Agency (Kobe Matthys)
      17:30    Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo


      Don't forget to reserve for your Masterclass by sending an email to : production@apass.be

      DETAILED PROGRAM DOWN BELOW

       

       

      Detailed program:


       

      Thursday June 22nd

      10:00 > 13:00        Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)

      What if ephemeral things become included within art practices? Intellectual property seems to be mostly reserved for “fixated” things. Although the European copyright law doesn’t exclude variability, during jurisprudences judges consider movements that are “recordable” in some way or another. Agency calls forth different controversies from recorded movements in dance and performance and sport. By paying attention to the consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property right for the protocols inherent to practices, the fragility of the mode of existence of singular art practices is made explicit.

       

      14:00 >17:00     Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)

      This edition will be dedicated to a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one of the most commonly used file-formats for transposing movement captured in physical space, to a computational environment. Around this relatively legible format, a rich ecology of software tools developed. The file-format functions as a boundary object between practices and bodies, as it is used by animators, game developers, interface researchers, medical professionals, dance-historians, sports-analysts and engineers.

      Together we will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.

      The reading of the .bvh file format is developed with Adva Zakai in the context of Possible Bodies, a collaborative research initiated by Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, and the matter-cultural conditions of possibility that render them present.

       

      Friday June 23rd

      10:00 >13:00        Exhibition visit (Bozar) and discussion with Vincent Meessen
                                       
      Starts at Main entrance of Bozar.

      In this afternoon, artist Vincent Meessen will take us through his Bozar show, that comes from his recent practice that involves research, historicization, and speculation about congolese works of art that have been commissioned and (re-)contextualized in the early 30’s. Starting from there, we can raise some issues about what a work of art is expected to be and how it can shift meaning with context and neighbouring artefacts.

      More about the show Patterns for (Re)cognition by Tshela Tendu & Vincent Meessen, Opening 16th June at BOZAR: http://www.bozar.be/nl/activities/124891-tshela-tendu-vincent-meessen

       

      14:00 >17:00       Masterclass Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto will share her research project that has Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table (1932) as a starting point. She will display the process, methods, research protocols and strategies that she has developed over time, and through which she addresses the question of reconstruction, re-enactment and revival from the perspective of the trace, both material and immaterial, in order to analyse the several charges the work contain (social, political, dramatic, emotional…).

      She will share with us how she approached Jooss’ work through the archive, the trace and the document, proposing to circumvent the traditional modalities of transmission in dance, in order to probe the archive’s “capabilities” to say the work, as well to examine the archive’s “becoming-work”.

      We will observe how the project and its process unfolded simultaneously into two levels: on a documentary research level and on a creation level. With the help of several documents, we will observe how the documentary research was developed, dedicated in part to researching and documenting the perception and transmission of The Green Table, seeking out iconographic material (through the gathering of numerous documents of different kinds), analysing the choreographic characteristics of the work and looking for witnesses – dancers and audience members from different origins and generations, in order to study the perception of the work through the prism of the viewer’s gaze (using the interview as a tool to collect memories, focusing on the importance of the testimony and oral sources).

       

      Saturday June 24th 12:30 > 19:00

      In this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.
       
      12:30   Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk

      13:00  Femke Snelting

      Femke Snelting will present a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. Together they will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.

      14:00 Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto will share some excerpts of Débords, work presented at Les Halles in 2012, as well as some excerpts of the installation she is currently working on, and that was partially presented this Spring at Museum für Neue Kunst, in Freiburg. The presentation will be punctuated with a discussion on the work.

      PAUSE

      15:30  Vincent Meessen

      Vincent Meessen will screen “One. Two. Three.”, piece presented in Wiels in 2016, followed by a talk about his strategies of re-composition and counter-narratives.

      16:30 Agency (Kobe Matthys)

      What if ephemeral things become included within art practices?” Thing 001678 (Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) concerns a conflict between on the one hand Roger Eudes, Théâtre Champs-Elysées, and on the other hand Jean Guttmann (Babilée) and Jean Cocteau about the performance Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. On June 8, 1960, the court case Eudes c. Gutmann, Cocteau et autres took place at the Cour d’appel de Paris. Judge Rousselet had to decide who owned the rights over the movements of the performance, Eudes who hired Jean Gutmann to “translate” Jean Cocteau his drama into ballet movements or Cocteau who wrote the script of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.

      17:30 Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo

      The book Dirty Room is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher. Dirty Room is a collection of outlines, notes, ideas, reflections, photographic materials, maps, manifestos, fragments from diaries, transcriptions of conversations, interviews, email exchanges, memoirs, memories and scripts, among other documents from the working and research process that led to Clean RoomClean Room was a project based on the concept of seriality with a pilot and 3 more seasons of 6 episodes each that took place from 2010 to 2016.

      Dirty Room offers the readers an immersion in the process of the project Clean Room. It is a book in which there are no critical essays, or texts speaking only from the external position of the spectator. All of the contributions are part of the ongoing research and working process of Clean Room, either continually accompanying it over long periods or as one-off contributions at a specific moments. This decision highlights the great potential of the process in its fragmentary, undefined and open nature not only for the transmission of knowledge and ideas, but above all for stimulating imaginative processes to connect with the concerns that set the series in motion.

      Dirty Room

      Edited by: Juan Domínguez and Victoria Pérez Royo

      Editorial: Continta me tienes

      Executive Production: manyone

      Madrid, May 2017

      Translations by Ana Buitrago, Simon Malone and Catherine Phelps

      This is a publication by the a.pass research centre.

       


       

      About the participants:

      Vincent Meessen

      Through the use of various media, Meessen aims to ‘experience the document and document the experience’. His investigations lead to associations and appropriative gestures that are rewritten into critical narratives, pointing to the colonial matrix of western modernity. Meessen reactivates hidden traces of the colonial in the present and opens up new speculative scenarios.

      Both in his work as an artist and in his para-curatorial activities, Meessen likes to use procedures of collaboration that undermine the authority of the author and emphasize the intelligence of collectives. With ten guests artists, Meessen represented Belgium at the 56th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include: OK/KO in the frame of Dans la pluralité des mondes / Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (F), 2016; Sire je suis de l’ôtre pays in WIELS, Brussels 2016 and Patterns for (Re)cognition at the Kunsthalle Basel, 2015. Recent group presentations include Gestures and archives of the present, genealogies of the future, Taipei Biennale, Taiwan and The Family of the Invisible at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA).
       

      Agency

      Agency is a Brussels-based initiative founded in 1992, which constitutes a growing list of ‘things’ that resist the radical split between the classifications of “nature” and “culture” and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and common, mind and body, etc.

       

      Femke Snelting (Possible Bodies)

      Artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of Constant, the Brussels-based association for arts and media, and co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP). With delegates Jara Rocha, Seda Guerses and Miriyam Aouragh she takes part in the Darmstadt Delegation, assigned to explore techno-political and socio-emotional relationships between activist practice and tools. She formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring and recently co-ordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a European partnership investigating inter-relations between free software tools and artistic practice. Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (Master Media Design and Communication).

      Possible Bodies is a collaborative research on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, asking what matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them present. This becomes especially urgent in contact with the technologies, infrastructures and techniques of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. Intersecting issues of race, gender, class, age and ability resurface through these performative as well as representational practices. The research is concerned with genealogies of how bodies and technologies have been mutually constituted. It interrogates corpo-realities and their orientation through parametric interfaces and looks at anatomies that are computationally constrained by the requirements of mesh-modelling. It invites the generation of concepts and experimental renderings, wild combinations and digital and non-digital prototypes for different embodiments. Collectors: Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting.

      Her collaborator Adva Zakai is a choreographer, performer and curator who explores how body and language are perceived through each other.
       

      Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto Olga de Soto is choreographer and dance researcher, born in Valencia, she lives in Brussels. She graduates from CNDC / Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, after having studied classical ballet, contemporary dance and music theory in Valencia and in Madrid. Her creation work begins in 1992, and includes the creation of numerous works of different formats. Since the end of the ’90, her work focuses on the study of memory, and it questions the impact of live art, its usefulness its lasting quality, deploying itself along two axes. The first centres on the study of the body’s memory through the creation of works, aiming at a pluralistic approach to dance and the body, in works creations such as anarborescences (Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris, 1999), Éclats mats (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004-2009). The second axis explores works from the history of dance as part of an approach governed by the study of perceptual memory, that of spectators and dancers. The resulting projects emphasize the importance of the processes and pay particular attention to documents, to the process of documentation, to testimony, to archives and oral sources, narrative and storytelling, particularly in works such as histoire(s) (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2004), An Introduction (Tanz Im August, Berlin, 2010) or Débords (Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2012). These projects are interested in the experience of the viewer and in the anthropology of the spectacle, while developing through an approach that studies the aesthetic experience based on the oral history of works from the past. Her last projects genuinely mix the languages of choreography with those of documentary, performance, visual arts and installation, playing with the porousness of these disciplines. The work of the choreographer also reveals the strong links between art history, social and political history, and personal paths. Olga de Soto’s work has been shown in some twenty countries, an she is regularly invited to teach and to lead workshops and classes in various universities, as well as to collaborate in conferences where she shares her research methodology and her documentation work. She was awarded the SACD Prize 2013 in the category of Performing Arts for both her trajectory and her research work on Dance History, and specially for her research and creation work on The Green Table.

       
       

      THE
      DOCUMENT

      TRANS-
      FORMED


      JUNE 22-23-24
      @ LA BELLONE
      Rue de Flandre 46
      Brussels

       
       


       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       


    • Curated by Sofia Caesar and Lilia Mestre, the public program “The Document Transformed” invites four practitioners that offer very distinct questions, methods, and proposals to problems related to documentation. Join Femke Snelting, Olga de Soto, Vincent Meessen, and Agency (Kobe Matthys), and others, for three days of presentations, screenings, performances and conversations. How does the document affect practices, bodies, histories, and experiences? The event brings together practices that not only give sight to the power relations engendered by apparatuses of documentation, but also move towards the transformation of the systems in which we produce history, law, art, and the body. Held in the context of The Problem of the Score, block curated by Lilia Mestre in the a.pass post-master research program and supported by a.pass.

      This seminar is organized in collaboration with La Bellone - Brussels

      To inscribe to the master-classes please send an email to production@apass.be


      JUNE 22-23-24 @ LA BELLONE
      Rue de Flandre 46
      Brussels

      Detailed program:

      Thursday June 22nd

      10:00 > 13:00        Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)

      What if ephemeral things become included within art practices? Intellectual property seems to be mostly reserved for “fixated” things. Although the European copyright law doesn't exclude variability, during jurisprudences judges consider movements that are “recordable” in some way or another. Agency calls forth different controversies from recorded movements in dance and performance and sport. By paying attention to the consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property right for the protocols inherent to practices, the fragility of the mode of existence of singular art practices is made explicit.

       

      14:00 >17:00     Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)

      This edition will be dedicated to a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one of the most commonly used file-formats for transposing movement captured in physical space, to a computational environment. Around this relatively legible format, a rich ecology of software tools developed. The file-format functions as a boundary object between practices and bodies, as it is used by animators, game developers, interface researchers, medical professionals, dance-historians, sports-analysts and engineers.

      Together we will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.

      The reading of the .bvh file format is developed with Adva Zakai in the context of Possible Bodies, a collaborative research initiated by Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, and the matter-cultural conditions of possibility that render them present.

       

      Friday June 23rd

      10:00 >13:00        Exhibition visit (Bozar) and discussion with Vincent Meessen
      Starts at Bozar Main entrance

      In this afternoon, artist Vincent Meessen will take us through his Bozar show, that comes from his recent practice that involves research, historicization, and speculation about congolese works of art that have been commissioned and (re-)contextualized in the early 30’s. Starting from there, we can raise some issues about what a work of art is expected to be and how it can shift meaning with context and neighbouring artefacts.

      More about the show Patterns for (Re)cognition by Tshela Tendu & Vincent Meessen, Opening 16th June at BOZAR: http://www.bozar.be/nl/activities/124891-tshela-tendu-vincent-meessen

       

      14:00 >17:00       Masterclass Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto will share her research project that has Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table (1932) as a starting point. She will display the process, methods, research protocols and strategies that she has developed over time, and through which she addresses the question of reconstruction, re-enactment and revival from the perspective of the trace, both material and immaterial, in order to analyse the several charges the work contain (social, political, dramatic, emotional...).

      She will share with us how she approached Jooss' work through the archive, the trace and the document, proposing to circumvent the traditional modalities of transmission in dance, in order to probe the archive’s "capabilities" to say the work, as well to examine the archive's "becoming-work".

      We will observe how the project and its process unfolded simultaneously into two levels: on a documentary research level and on a creation level. With the help of several documents, we will observe how the documentary research was developed, dedicated in part to researching and documenting the perception and transmission of The Green Table, seeking out iconographic material (through the gathering of numerous documents of different kinds), analysing the choreographic characteristics of the work and looking for witnesses – dancers and audience members from different origins and generations, in order to study the perception of the work through the prism of the viewer’s gaze (using the interview as a tool to collect memories, focusing on the importance of the testimony and oral sources).

       

      Saturday June 24th 12:00 > 18:00

      In this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.

       

      12:30   Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk

      13:00  Femke Snelting

      Femke Snelting will present a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. Together they will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.

      14:00 Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto will share some excerpts of Débords, work presented at Les Halles in 2012, as well as some excerpts of the installation she is currently working on, and that was partially presented this Spring at Museum für Neue Kunst, in Freiburg. The presentation will be punctuated with a discussion on the work.

       

      PAUSE

       

      15:30  Vincent Meessen

      Vincent Meessen will screen “One. Two. Three.”, piece presented in Wiels in 2016, followed by a talk about his strategies of re-composition and counter-narratives.

      16:30 Agency (Kobe Matthys)

      What if ephemeral things become included within art practices?” Thing 001678 (Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) concerns a conflict between on the one hand Roger Eudes, Théâtre Champs-Elysées, and on the other hand Jean Guttmann (Babilée) and Jean Cocteau about the performance Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. On June 8, 1960, the court case Eudes c. Gutmann, Cocteau et autres took place at the Cour d’appel de Paris. Judge Rousselet had to decide who owned the rights over the movements of the performance, Eudes who hired Jean Gutmann to “translate” Jean Cocteau his drama into ballet movements or Cocteau who wrote the script of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.

      17:30 Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo

      The book Dirty Room is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher. Dirty Room is a collection of outlines, notes, ideas, reflections, photographic materials, maps, manifestos, fragments from diaries, transcriptions of conversations, interviews, email exchanges, memoirs, memories and scripts, among other documents from the working and research process that led to Clean Room. Clean Room was a project based on the concept of seriality with a pilot and 3 more seasons of 6 episodes each that took place from 2010 to 2016.

      Dirty Room offers the readers an immersion in the process of the project Clean Room. It is a book in which there are no critical essays, or texts speaking only from the external position of the spectator. All of the contributions are part of the ongoing research and working process of Clean Room, either continually accompanying it over long periods or as one-off contributions at a specific moments. This decision highlights the great potential of the process in its fragmentary, undefined and open nature not only for the transmission of knowledge and ideas, but above all for stimulating imaginative processes to connect with the concerns that set the series in motion.

      Dirty Room

      Edited by: Juan Domínguez and Victoria Pérez Royo

      Editorial: Continta me tienes

      Executive Production: manyone

      Madrid, May 2017

      Translations by Ana Buitrago, Simon Malone and Catherine Phelps

      This is a publication by the a.pass research centre.

       

      About the participants

      Vincent Meessen

      "Transform documents into experiences and vice versa". This phrase by Aby Warburg could definitely be used to introduce Vincent Meessen's speculative realism, or as he calls it: 'documents d'expérience'. His archival investigations always lead to loose associations and appropriative gestures that are rewritten into critical narratives.

      In his latest modular installations he combines films with printed matter and sculptures. Meessen produces narratives that question our ability to deal with the colonial ghosts of modernity. In his recent Vita Nova, he makes use of the filmic essay to re-read Roland Barthes in various postcolonial African situations, applying Barthes's deconstruction tools to some of his famous texts. Vincent Meessen likes to use procedures of collaboration that undermine the authority of the author and emphasize the intelligence of collectives and of conceptual characters. He is a founding member of the artist collective Potential Estate and of the platform for artistic research and production Jubilee (jubilee-art.org).  

      Recent shows include KIOSK (Ghent), ARS 11, Kiasma Museum (Helsinki), Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam) and Contour Biennial for Moving Images (Mechelen). He worked together with the collective Potential Estate for the Brussels Biennial and M HKA (Antwerp). His filmworks were screened at Jeu de Paume, at Cinémathèque française (Paris), at Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), at the Swiss Institute (NY) and at international festivals such as IDFA (Amsterdam), IFFR (Rotterdam), Cinéma du Réel (Paris) and Transmediale (Berlin). His films are distributed by Argos center for art & media (Brussels) (see also section on Art Organisations). Meessen has curated several film programs and exhibitions for various institutions including Extra City (Antwerp), Argos (Brussels), C.E.A.C (Xiamen, CH), E.R.B.A (Valence, F).

       

      Agency

      Agency is a Brussels-based initiative founded in 1992, which constitutes a growing list of 'things' that resist the radical split between the classifications of "nature" and "culture" and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and common, mind and body, etc.

       

      Femke Snelting (Possible Bodies)

      Artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of Constant, the Brussels-based association for arts and media, and co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP). With delegates Jara Rocha, Seda Guerses and Miriyam Aouragh she takes part in the Darmstadt Delegation, assigned to explore techno-political and socio-emotional relationships between activist practice and tools. She formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring and recently co-ordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a European partnership investigating inter-relations between free software tools and artistic practice. Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (Master Media Design and Communication).

      Possible Bodies is a collaborative research on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, asking what matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them present. This becomes especially urgent in contact with the technologies, infrastructures and techniques of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. Intersecting issues of race, gender, class, age and ability resurface through these performative as well as representational practices. The research is concerned with genealogies of how bodies and technologies have been mutually constituted. It interrogates corpo-realities and their orientation through parametric interfaces and looks at anatomies that are computationally constrained by the requirements of mesh-modelling. It invites the generation of concepts and experimental renderings, wild combinations and digital and non-digital prototypes for different embodiments. Collectors: Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting.

      Her collaborator Adva Zakai is a choreographer, performer and curator who explores how body and language are perceived through each other.

       

      Olga de Soto

      Olga de Soto Olga de Soto is choreographer and dance researcher, born in Valencia, she lives in Brussels. She graduates from CNDC / Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, after having studied classical ballet, contemporary dance and music theory in Valencia and in Madrid. Her creation work begins in 1992, and includes the creation of numerous works of different formats. Since the end of the ’90, her work focuses on the study of memory, and it questions the impact of live art, its usefulness its lasting quality, deploying itself along two axes. The first centres on the study of the body's memory through the creation of works, aiming at a pluralistic approach to dance and the body, in works creations such as anarborescences (Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris, 1999), Éclats mats (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004-2009). The second axis explores works from the history of dance as part of an approach governed by the study of perceptual memory, that of spectators and dancers. The resulting projects emphasize the importance of the processes and pay particular attention to documents, to the process of documentation, to testimony, to archives and oral sources, narrative and storytelling, particularly in works such as histoire(s) (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2004), An Introduction (Tanz Im August, Berlin, 2010) or Débords (Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2012). These projects are interested in the experience of the viewer and in the anthropology of the spectacle, while developing through an approach that studies the aesthetic experience based on the oral history of works from the past. Her last projects genuinely mix the languages of choreography with those of documentary, performance, visual arts and installation, playing with the porousness of these disciplines. The work of the choreographer also reveals the strong links between art history, social and political history, and personal paths. Olga de Soto’s work has been shown in some twenty countries, an she is regularly invited to teach and to lead workshops and classes in various universities, as well as to collaborate in conferences where she shares her research methodology and her documentation work. She was awarded the SACD Prize 2013 in the category of Performing Arts for both her trajectory and her research work on Dance History, and specially for her research and creation work on The Green Table.

    • [call] 2017/II 30 April 2017
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
      newscaption
       
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

       

      More information on the application procedure for the post-master and (pre-)PhD-programme.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • block 2017/II
    • Medium Score
    • The Problem of the Score
    • The problem of the score Block curated by Lilia Mestre / May > July 2017
      21 April 2017
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • The problem of the score


      From May till July 2017 the a.pass post-master program questions how structures pre-determine singular outcomes, and to what extent they imply relationality. Every system is a network of connections and the way the system is set to operate defines forms of relation which reveal ideological standpoints. In other words modes of interaction are formatting forces that construct worlds. If we think that way, what kind of problems do our research structures entail?  And if we can think a polyphonic world , constituted by multiple models, how do we consider our own structure as a relational one? What kind of technologies are we putting into place? What kind of invitation are we making? And to whom?

      The notions of ‘apparatus’ and ‘tentacular thinking’ will be key to understanding and experiencing the problem of score in contextual ecologies. Apparatuses, as coined by Foucault and Agamben, are systems of governance that enable relationships between beings and structures through which the subject is constructed. During former block Donna Haraway  introduced us to tentacular thinking as a place from which one can build relations to economical, biological, philosophical, productional, institutional, etc orders. Together with the a.pass researchers, workshop givers and guests we reflect on them, challenge our practices and relate to other authors and art makers.

      Every Thursday we meet at a.pass 4th floor for movement practice with Anouk Llaurens, followed by a reading and reflexion group that tackles emergent issues and in the evening we play ‘The medium Score’. Through the score we concentrate on Medium, Method and Model in our researches as points of analysis and tools to craft relations. The MMM attempts to understand the implications of our works in our environmental context. The crazier the better!

      The Medium Score is a next iteration of Block Curator Lilia Mestre’s research on scores as collaborative tools for production, pedagogy and discourse. A variation of Writing Score https:///www.apass.be/writing-scores-the-book/ but this time each score participant will focus on his/her own medium. Scores are seen as dispositives of collaboration, of conversation and practice that tie together a plurality of concerns of a.pass researchers. More information about the previous scores at the ABCDAIRE > entry = Scores

      In what concerns workshops, Vladimir Miller and his project Settlement is in for a 2 week investigation on how spatial setups embody and facilitate certain ideologies of togetherness. Jennifer Lacey gives a week workshop on choreography and dance. Her approach consists in the development of processes specific to each project and its resources of production. Through her methods we produce aesthetic rules, body vocabulary and behaviour related to us as a group in context.

      In collaboration with former a.pass researchers Sofia Caeser we organise a seminar at La Bellone with focus on the status of document and display as structures that reveal power relations and equally structures that can be transformed and modify those same power relations. The full programme is under construction but we can already announce that artists Vincent Meessen, Olga de Soto, Kobe Matthys and Femke Snelting are invited to give public talks and masterclasses. Former a.pass associate researcher Juan Dominguez launches the book that results from his research on conspiracy.

      During The Problem of the Score the concrete models under consideration are the methodologies of researchers, the devices proposed by workshop givers, the structure of a seminar and the score as learning through practice tool.

      More information about the block soon!

    • postgraduate program
    • block 2017/III
    • Excursions
    • Uninvited Research
    • UNINVITED RESEARCH II BLOCK III, SEPT-NOV 2017
      21 April 2017
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma
    • 01 September 2017
    • 30 November 2017
    • case of: Vladimir Miller
    • UNINVITED RESEARCH II
      This block is concerned with the processes and questions of a mobile, displaced, untethered research practice. We will use the methodologies of moving out, taking a trip, going for a walk to reconsider the building blocks of our research and discover new ones.
       
      As a collective practice for this block each a.pass participant will propose a trip or an excursion to a place that resonates with the topics of their research. The excursions will be maximum one day or night long and  be attended by the a.pass participants (and will be in most cases be open to the general public on a sign-up basis). Some of them will be collaborative experiments, some will address a specific question from a current research of the a.pass participant. All proposals will work with a specific practice of being on the move together, of doing research on site and of documenting and publishing.
        
      In collaboration with the Research Center we will explore the process of zine-ing (or making a zine) as a collective and nomadic publishing machine throughout the block and specifically towards it end. 
       
      On the theoretical and critical side of things we will take this opportunity to re-examine mobility of research practices in the context of de-colonial and feminist discourse on space and its social production. How do notions of power and privilege figure into this academic exploration of the presupposed „outside“ of the institution? With our colonial histories, what does it mean today to go on an excursion, to go looking „elsewhere“ for knowledge? Which gestures of power and othering are we replicating by using these methods of (ad)venture in our research? This block will be guided by an attempt to apply de-colonial thinking to the very idea of research itself, to unlearn its innocence and to insist that coloniality and its critique apply as soon as we open our doors and step outside, and as soon as we think towards „other“ places and discourses. 
       
      To work on these themes the excursion practice will be supported by several external inputs from the areas of de-colonial theory, urbanism and feminist critique. More detailed information about those events you will find on our webpage soon.
      The preparation of, the excursions and the documentation will be done in three collective periods throughout the block. 


      Part one: Reading, Inspiration and Preparation 
      Sept 4th-30th

       
      OPENING WEEK : Sept 4-8th
      We will take this week to welcome the new researchers to apass and to meet the mentors. During the opening week we will present our researches to each other and get to know each others work in its current state. We will frame the presentations through a collective mis-reading of the zine of the previous excursions block and the themes and problems established there. 
       
      WORKSHOP Making Public Domain : 11th - 15th September  - Middelheim Museum - Antwerp 
       (free of charge for apass researchers)
       
      Summer School #2 ‘MAKING PUBLIC DOMAIN’ will examine how public domain can be made and what role art can play in this. The starting point is that public space does not actually exist, but must constantly be created and activated. Which strategies then - artistic, civil, activist, social, political, legal, etc - are able to generate public space?
       
      Artists, experts, policy-makers and academics (art academics, jurists, urbanists, media specialists and so on) will tackle a different theme every day. By means of workshops, lectures, artistic interventions and case studies, summer school participants will be actively involved in a 5-day exchange between artists and experts unravelling the concepts and practice of ‘making public domain’.
       
      The 5-day Summer School opens up an interdisciplinary network of professionals, knowledge and expertise, creating a shared scenario allowing for a collective and individual learning process. During the day an inspiring selection of relevant cases connected to the theme of the day will be introduced, allowing anyone to participate and contribute to the discussion from their own perspective. In the evening the Summer School offers insights on the topic to a wider public of stakeholders.
       
      PREPARATION : Sept 18-30th
      We will spend those two weeks reading, discussing and preparing our respective excursions with each other.  We will read on decolonial perspectives on research, ethnography and geography.  In addition to that several artists will join us for one-day inputs on research ontology, brussels lore, and spatial practice. The artist researchers Pierre Rubio (apass Research Center block 3 2017), Peggy Pierrot, David Helbig, the architect Miriam Rohde and the writer Luanda Casella have been asked to inform our preparation process. during those two weeks. 
       
      Part two: Excursions and Feedback
       
      EXCURSIONS: 23rd Okt - Nov 4th
      This will be the second big collective moment of the block. We will join each-others proposals. Each researcher will be responsible for organising one  (max one day) excursion for the others. We are planning for mentors to join some of the excursions, and we will facilitate two collective moments with the apass artistic team to start the week off and to engage in a collective feedback moment towards the end. 
       
      Part three: Documentation, Collective Zine-ing, PAF
       
      WRITING WORKSHOP Forged Theory
      with Peter Stamer and Vladimir Miller
      This workshop will engage in playful methods of writing theory by using methods of dialogue, stream of consciousness and combining them with a structural/analytical approach to reading theoretical texts: how are they made? Which rhetoric figures and structures of support of an argument are used? Can we use them as playful toolkit to make up our own theories in fragile support of our practice?
       
      COLLECTIVE ZINE-ING: 20-24th Nov
      As a documentation, reflection and review process we will engage in a collective process of making a zine or several zines together. We will tackle the Zine-ing in relation with and supported by a.pass Research Center to nurture a general concern around methodologies of documentation.  How will the documentation process of Zine-ing the excursions will affect our practices and experiences? And how the Zine-ing can constitute a model for experimental documentation? At large a.pass Research Center will focus on problematising the Zine-ing process as well as the Zine-ing will problematise some of the key concerns of a.pass around the nature and operativity of forms of documentation.
       
      ENDWEEK: 26th Nov-2nd Dec
      Performing Arts Forum - St Erme - France. 
      only for apass participants. 
       
       
      Mentors 
      Caroline Godart 
      Heike Langsdorf
      Pierre Rubio
      Peggy Pierrot



      More information about the block soon!

    • lecture
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • Book Club
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • Book club #7bis An Animal Escape Case Book club series special event / Sina Seifee
      28 February 2017
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • a.pass
    • 10 March 2017
    • case of: Sina Seifee
    • Book club #7bis  An Animal Escape Case

       

       

      Book Club #7  'Special event'  by Sina Seifee

      An animal escape case

      March 10th – 2.30am-3.30pm

       

       

      This essay/performance investigates the fragile intersections of friendship between digital avatars and trans-animals in the social media in Tehran’s landscape. Through personal animal-findings and fairy-tale associations the An Animal Escape Case interprets the epistemological openings and closings in cross-species sociality in Tehran domestic landscape exemplified in the everyday use of mobile phones where images of pets circulates and different species meet in mediated formats. The essay/performance analyzes all that anthropomorphism performs and withholds on and with animality in the situated conditions of contemporary Tehran domestic life and addresses the relationships between people, animals and place in a socio-technological milieu as complex as Tehran's urban environment with its politics, televised operations, public/private cross- boundaries, its wilderness, and technologically mediated stories and rumors that populate its landscape. By going through the politics of friendship in a political and historical milieu the essay explores different modes of friendship in the literary texts such as: the 8th century Kalile va Demne’s indo-Iranian essence of friendship, the quotidian of middle ages registered in the works of Saadi, an Iranian modality of everyday happening of greeting in Taarof, children animation films, and ‘Telegram’ social networks in my own family. The An Animal Escape Case as an artistic concern with “foreign-policy” remains committed to the finite essence of friendship while investigating the origins of reciprocity, identification, and greeting in quotidian technologized performances. By problematizing the notion of Democracy as an institutionalizations of a Graeco-Roman model of friendship, the essay/performance asks for other forms of friendship that has stakes in multi-species contingencies in a “difficult” landscapes such as Tehran, operations of disproportion and disidentification empowered by middle ages Indo-Persian cosmologies, and the possibilities of empathic non-understanding in everyday life.

       

      Sina Seifee is an interdisciplinary artist working in the field of computer art, writing, drawing and performance. He is involved in research and work on technology, narrative, globalism, and intercultural mythologies.

      http://www.sinaseifee.com

       

       

      Book Club #7  'Special event'  / Sina Seifee

      March 10th – 2.30am-3.30pm

      Entrance free

    • Newsletter Feb 2017 13 February 2017
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande

      newscaption

      line650

       

       TALK BY PEGGY PIERROT

      Sacred Drift, a journey into political consciousness of sound

      #5 in Book Club Series, curated by Pierre Rubio

      February 16 (9.30am-1.30pm) @ a.pass 4th floor (Rue Delaunoystraat 58-60 Brussels)

       

      In the next Book Club a.pass welcomes Peggy Pierrot for an animated reading and listening to echoes of submarine writing. She steers the slave/space/ship for a time travel into modern cultures and music. Is there something to hear between the 0 and the 1 of digtised compressed music? Is there something to de-cypher in our coded Nyabinghi drums? What is the message hidden between themes, rhythms, intonations, improvisations, the samples, the drum, the bass, the cuts and the pastes?

      Peggy Pierrot is a Brussels based sociologe, journalist and lecturer connected to erg (École de Recherche Graphique, Brussels) and les Ateliers des Horizons (Grenoble - France). Influenced by science-fiction and African-American and Caribbean literature and culture, she engages in projects that link information, media, activism, radio art and technology.

      More information and subscription: here

       


      The Book Club Series during 'Trouble on Radio Triton'

      During the Book Club a.pass invites engaged practitioners (Sol Archer, Peggy Pierrot, Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova…) for a series of reading sessions, talks and discussions about their efforts to create conditions for imagining otherwise. The series is initiated by Pierre Rubio and realised in collaboration with a.pass’ artist-researchers. For the most part Book Clubs are scheduled on Thursday mornings and are open to the public.

      Trouble on Radio Triton (Jan-March 2017) is the name of the current a.pass block curated by Pierre Rubio. It is a ‘Sci-Fi terraforming mode of attention’, a metaphoric multipolar dispositive that challenges our abilities as artist-researchers to ‘render our world habitable again’. Far from proposing innocuous escapism in a false paradise of disembodied utopia, the dispositive seeks to invent and activate political potentialities of artistic research through an immersion in different types of (speculative) fiction.

      Check here for more about the current a.pass-block.

       


       Save upcoming dates:

       

      February 16: You call this progress!? #2 (sci-fi films curated by Ekaterina Kaplunova & Sven Dehens)
      February 27 - March 3: Wordling from this World (workshop with Alice Chauchat)
      March 8: Edward George presents The Last Angel of History (film screening and talk)
      March 9-10: Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova, Edward George (book club #7 and #8)
      March 14-15: The Tea Party (workshop by Helena Dietrich)

      Subscribe to workshops, book clubs and screenings via our website & come!

       



       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    •  

       

      Perform Back Score
      Conditions for the emergence of poetics
      A way of life



      Perform Back Score was a proposal for the block Jan/April 2015 of the post masters a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels. The program is based on 4 months blocks throughout the year, each of them concentrating on specific curatorial proposals concerned with contemporary art practices, the present socioeconomic paradigm and the role of education.

      As associate program curator for the first four months of 2014, 2015 and 2016 my focus was and is on how systems of interaction in the arts contribute to the production (process? creation?) of knowledge, first of all in the educational context and consequently, in my belief, in other social environments. I take these systems as scores that, when followed rigorously, demand the implication of individual engagement and resources in a much needed share-ability within a system of production and observation.
      In the act of giving attention to one’s own work, to the other’s work but also to the group and its context, the ecological and social aspects of art making are reflected and expanded. The inter-subjective bound takes place beyond the art works and practices themselves but in the act of paying attention, of observing and being observed.

      In 2014 I proposed in this same context a score for dialogue through writing titled “Writing Scores” where the participants were invited to meet weekly for a Q&A format practice where writing was the tool to deepen the observation of one’s own work methodologies and interests as well as the development of writing itself. This score allowed for valuable understanding of the individual and collective practices and stressed writing as a working tool for collaboration. For this time the focus was on performance as a discursive practice.

      PBScore

      PBScore is a score based on performance as a form of dialogue. For each session each participant presented a maximum 5 minutes long performance  that were showed one after the other without interruption in our weekly meetings. While assisting in each other’s performances, participants took notes and from those notes key words were pronounced to start a discussion about our impressions. At the end of each session participants selected to whom they wanted to reply to the week after and
      in between sessions, a report was written based on the keywords and the conversation that followed. The 9 sessions took place once a week between January and March 2015.
       
      The score participant in each performance exposed his /her own semantics, by constructing a response to another participant, activating a critical standpoint that in its turn become the object of critical observation. The players, by accepting the pre-established rules agreed to play the game that excluded them from daily routine and brought them to a concrete situation limited in time and space. This specific score was dealing simultaneously with the exclusion from daily life or personal  practice and the inclusion in a situation of dialogue through singular aesthetics. The participants instead of relating to material that they select through their interests and methodology had instead to relate to material that came from the other participants, bringing them to relate in ways that were not their usual approach.  The overall format of presentation was also not a familiar one, even though it had the condition of a stage.  A small area formed by mobile walls created a room in a room, a video camera was standing outside the space in the centre, the other participants stood behind the camera unless it was assigned other wise by the performer.
      The same situation re-started the following week at point zero again. The number and the mood of the players changed each time we re-started allowing for radical exposure and deep critic. The week after, the players could have been others, the response to ones previous performance could have not been present ... By playing the score there was the acceptance of inconsistency, of moving in blurry waters, of taking care of the space in between.What kind of attention is given when one spends some time reflecting and trying to respond carefully to another's aesthetic proposal?

      There is a strong political stand point on the giving of time, of taking the other seriously, on paying attention to someone or something that might and most probably will not give you anything concrete back, apart from the sustainability of dialogue indispensable for practicing being alive, being human.


      The score as partner that speaks back /
      Performance as feedback study

      The first impulse to make such a proposal came from my desire to make  art speak through its own practice. I wanted to confront discourse to other forms of language, in this case performance and its discursive potential. Not in a linear, brick by brick, way of constructing meaning, but in an assemblage of atemporal experiences. The performances replied the previous performance creating another time space relationship with the questions that were originated. The meaning was build by bubbles that had affinities between them and these bubbles created a rhyzomatic structure of thought and experience.

      I’m very interested in the idea of emphasising method as a collaborator that makes visible and foregrounds the dialogue between several elements and layers of the art works. When we take the structure of a project as an active collaborator by making its conditions operational and visible, we engage in the observation of those conditions on the work itself, revealing their intrinsic potential for communication, sharing and learning. PBScore intention is to invite the structure to be a partner of reflection, encapsulating the work in restrictions (like time, spacial area, technical tools where all limited) but forcing it to spill over when manipulated, crafted and exposed to others. The score as a structure allowed to set up the rules of the game and generate a dynamic of encounters that were the container for the performance experiences.

      In other words, by proposing an observation standpoint, a frame to look through, the score reflects at the same time the event itself and our individual and collective relation towards it.
      In the case of PBScore, the co-habitation of the performances, the observation lens (score), the subjects and the time we shared, were all partakers in the action of learning and constituted the conditions for the emergence of meaning and its share-ability.

      For example some of the participants decided to work with a same material during the 9 sessions making the material work on its flexibility, adaptability to the other and therefor discovering situations that would not have come by themselves. In these cases the score worked as a lens, amplifying the potential of the material itself and shifting our attention as witnesses into the potential inherent to the material. Others worked more intuitively, choosing on element of the performance they had to reply to, and transforming it, giving it another meaning, deviating it from it’s first sense, discovering in this case what catches the eye. Others functioned was translators of performances and in other cases a subject as the ‘hand’ became topic for a long sequence of proposals and responses.

      Obviously not all these  responses worked as we wanted. Many questions appeared towards the sense one could make out of it. In some cases they worked critically, other times as negations, or as empathy.


      Laboratory/observatory

      As an  laboratory/observatory  this process raised some questions: What do we do when we are responding to each other? What criteria do we use to select what to respond to? Critical thought? The affect towards another? Philosophical stand points? Political correctness? Desire?

      PBScore wanted to isolate responses in time and space in order to observe and reflect on dialogical mechanisms between the object of observation and the observer, between the one who answers and the one who listens. The process of this observation was individual and private  in a first instance to then became  individual and collective in the moment of sharing with the other members of the group. The weekly meetings and the time for reflection and constructing responses had quite different qualities in the process of the score. On the one hand the in-between periods in which each participant had the other in mind, living together in a way, with the proposal s/he had to reply to, and on the other hand the exposure of each participant in the collective weekly moments. These two divergent poles of activity combined the subjective agency of the participants with the social agencies  created by the context of a.pass.

      These intimacy and ‘extimacy’ moments elaborated on the process of learning not just as an individual practice depending on each person’s singular perception, but extending it to social and collective environment. In this case the environment of the post-master participants in performance and scenography studies with a focus on self-education and collaboration. My interest at this point was to practice the construction of art (knowledge) through exposure, share-ability and critical endeavour in a context of plural aesthetics.
      What happens when one has to engage with the work of another when at first instance there is no affinity?  What happens if there is a void, an incapacity of response? Or the other way around, what happens when the work of another seems to speak a very close language?

      The interest was not in creating a common standpoint for our different perceptual conditions and reflections on the performance objects that  we were part of,  but in creating an environment where those conditions and reflections could co-exist and be exchanged, allowing for critical observation, empathy, accidental correspondences, nothing, etc.
      More than in a place for common understanding, we created an experimental surface for communication in artistic research where one could observe one’s own strategies but also the ones of others, all of them contributing in a singular engagement within a group of obviously heterogeneous beings forming a plurality.
      I mean by this that the multi focal lens of this  score / tool is an apparatus for the co-habitation of different aspects of the being together, becoming a mirror of the situation itself. A mirror for the sociability implied in art making.

      These aspect was also enhanced by some performances that asked for the participation of all people present, breaking the separation  between the performance and the audience and engaging in another form of socialisation. But big contrasts happened when the next performance was a dance solo exposing the fact of being traversed by vital forces or a video piece with historical concerns on the notion of display, having in both cases a classical relation between the performance and the audience.

      PBScore comes from my desire to use performance practice in the service of dialogical contexts such as schools, art laboratories, performative encounters or any other environment in which the study of art, perception and knowledge processes is at stake. It's a learning-by-doing tool that pays attention to attention, that wants to go beyond the production of art and wants to engage in the production of life through artistic practice. Is that possible?
      I’m interested in a ‘practice the practice’ tool that sustains the learning by experience and supports the development of our relations towards the world through our concerns about the practice itself. A way to get closer, to look deeper, and at the end a way to experience present and presence. A way to re-actualise ourselves through the politics inherent in such systems of awareness, collaboration and responsibility.

      Theatre

      I would like to make an analogy to the theatre apparatus where the performers and the audience use the physical, social and political conditions of that environment as indicators of a way of looking and that frame the aesthetic experience.
      The theatre is an observatory per excellence but maybe one that is a bit too well-known. I don't think the audience presupposes anymore that everyone that sees a performance at the same time would have the same kind of interaction with it. But I want to insist exactly in that point, and to try to not pre-suppose but to be there, regardless of a strong drive in actual politics for standardisation. I’m looking here at the physical theatre and at performance (in all its forms) as places/spaces of diversity and difference which propose a way of thinking the arts as a perceptual apparatus provoking singular relations between the individual, the collective and the political.
      And with this is mind my attention at this point goes to the question: What happens when the theatre also allows for forms of non-representation, for states of presence that enhance our sociability, our criticality, our life processing capacities? There is a lot to say about this and many works lately have been developed under this question from the academic realm to the social field. In the case of PBScore the art maker and the spectator were part of the same group, alternating positions and being knowledgeable of both sides, augmenting exactly the capacity of the feedback machine that art can be but also making from each of the participants a producer and dissolving the idea of audience.
      The PBScore is an individual learning tool in a collective environment not searching for a conclusion but for a way of working together as neighbours, as important feedbackers, as engaged partners, as critical colleagues, as potential opponents in a process of orientation towards something, towards the communication of perceptual knowledge, towards the political in art making.


      Score as ecosystem

      As an interface for communication the score allows for the emergence of different voices like ghosts haunting the sensible acknowledgement of knowledge, process and concepts of art. Each participant had the same conditions to draw intentions, design orientations, make statements, have fun, take a piss, etc…, through performance practice. The scored created a force surface for the exposure of multiple existences. But what maintained the desire to come back next week? Was it the responsibility towards the other? The curiosity for the next response? The will to belong to a group? The drive of performing?

      PBScore as a horizontal structure brought about the responsibility of the ones involved as far as they wanted to be involved. It’s a structure that sustained and renewed itself on the basis of the participants and their presence. Like in any ecosystem, the species that constitute it, are the creators and instigators of the development of the ecosystem itself, their interaction constitutes its sustainability. Interestingly enough, the positions of each participant were not stable and none of them represented a fixed part of the ecosystem, but rather all of them were mutating pieces of a puzzle that constructed itself on the go. Mutual opportunism and  generosity are two sides of the same coin, like a parasitic system without aim, living for the sake of living while deepening the understanding of that specific life.
      This experience brings to the fore a complex number of elements that are inherent to a way of feeling/thinking. It reveals a universe  of interrelations between the chosen elements, forming forces of speech and the sensible that contain political perspectives and ideological concerns. Both aesthetics and ethics are intertwined  in a concise moment of exposure and attention. Justification is out of the game and rather observation and the 'being with it' are the rules through which feeling and opinion appear. Every participant is a centre with a culture, a history, a socioeconomic reality, a philosophical attitude creating therefor a poli-centered temporary community. In my opinion PBScore enhanced being plural and different as fundamentals of an ecosystem where each of the participants has a voice, where there's no obligation, where the ecosystem can't exist beyond the presence and engagement of who is part of it but exists on the tension of the plural.

      It makes me want to write down some formats that were at stake with this group of people. From dream oracles exposed through dance,  an historical fiction figure revealed through lecture performance format, trans-gender being re-actualised through documentary and live transformation, pornography in internet as a result of internet research, self becoming though the extreme use of theatre apparatus (lights, costumes, seduction, etc),  the concept of the angel creating the availability to receive/ become and much more.

      Empathetic, disruptive, enthusiastic, doubtful or convinced forces were 'performing' each time without dominating in an absolute fashion the ecosystem. This experimental format functioned as a study about aesthetics and co-existence in the performing arts, it developed special awareness about ways of thinking,  composing, sharing and engaging with a group. It gave focus to the performer, the performance space and the context where it takes place as a micro environment where the language is performance, image, text, sound, action, painting or dance…


      Flexible community without aim

      This horizontal structure implied a flexible community. A temporary, always different group of people, formed  and unformed around the weekly meetings. This score allowed for the building of a temporary community that established relations between its members and developed the sense of the doing. Performance became the time we spent together, a language spoken within this community. The system built means for communication and created the conditions for the emergence of poetics like vessels, bones, particles, all in movement. The ‘messages’ circulated through those vessels, inciting exchange and therefor producing change as a ‘natural’ consequence.

      The temporality aspect of the event and therefor of the community are very important. The score is performed in time, when it’s happening, allowing everyone to work with the present conditions and not aim for ideal circumstances,  a idealised future, or for the definition of a stale identity. Following this thought, the system can’t be understood as a goal but as a medium taking care that the  ephemeral quality of this particular process produces a vulnerable attitude towards the experience of art. It’s enhancing the desire to exchange and share worlds through practice and is not aiming to get to conclusions. If the system becomes an aim itself , it will just reproduce what we already know incapacitating the playing as revelatory practice. It is a process and it exists in the process of just doing it. But why just do it?

      Here, I would like to make a parallel between a practice like yoga or dance or a reading group for example, happening in a collective environment, and the need for sociability that brings together the individual and the collective. These gatherings set ups are learning together tools based in attention and observation. The knowledge acquired doesn’t serve anything else the vitality of knowledge itself, allowing all participants to learn through the other. These social environments are like battery  centres that inform forms of life sustained by sociability itself.  The process of socialisation  (spending time together) is endless and is pregnant, as there is the potential for the dissolution of duality between me and the other as fixed territories, the desire to become many /one. Like in a house of mirrors, PBScore was a device to the reflection and refracting of one’s one image, opening up ways of seeing, feeling and thinking the self though the other.

      The contamination of the one by the other was one of the ‘technics’ that appeared through out the score in different fashions. I remember one day someone we didn’t know presenting himself as someone that was already part of the score group and playing her role. Or the physical transformation someone into another, becoming then 2 participants which we never knew who would come to play.


      On the presence of the body

      One of the strongest rules of the PBScore is that one can not participate remotely. The presence of the body was absolutely necessary to play and witness the process of dialogue through performance in this score. As I could observe in the Writing Score proposed in 2014 the fact of gathering weekly to read the individual writings and continue the 'game' always in the presence and gaze of the others, created a specific dynamics through the rhythm of the encounters.
      The collective agreement to meet weekly created a ritualised social time/ space where alliances were built. This way a group of people created an extra - everyday rhythm where we could question and celebrate our practices.

      One of the conditions of the performing arts relies on the presence of the performers and of the audience, on the act of exchange between both parties which dissolves once the performance is over. But also on the act of memory that is activated at the precise same moment the performance disappeared and which is followed by the action of re-telling or re-processing what has happened. The intimate experience of witnessing resonates in parallel with the distance it requires to process it afterwards, both these factors are indeed of major importance in the study of performance as a critical tool. Digesting the other is of major importance for a becoming of the social body, for the possibility of a future not yet known.

      The continuous necessity of presence and distance, of the communal and the individual spaces are the necessary conditions to unravel sense(s), the relation(s) that take place, the conditions for the emergence of directions, orientations or inclinations towards what is to come. Considering these thoughts PBScore was proposing performance as rumour, as the re-telling of what has happened in one’s own gestures and gesticulations in order to re-actualise the dialogue constantly.
      To be able to participate one needs the public and the private, the institution (the score in this case in the frame of a.pass) and the intimate. PBScore was an invitation to all participants to come back to the place of the crime. An invitation to re-read and re-write presences, to unfold the stories created by the gatherings, to reformulate what remains and transforms in memory and sets the ground for the present to be.

      Every moment is unique, this time is not like the next time, what I think and feel now in this situation will not be the same in another situation. I am here and I am processing and contributing consciously and unconsciously, together and alone, deliberately or not, to what is happening, etc. Performing arts create a ritual of  presences, create a contract of attention and response between all parties. Something is unfolding and we all are part of it, we all think it, feel it, share it, though no one owns it and no one is the same. What a beautiful state to be in!

      Documentation

      This publication contains reflections about what happened in those three months. The film documentation that was used through out the score will not be used in a public realm. All the videos were data to come back to one’s own performance or the performance of another in order to reply. The use of the video camera delimitated a space of action that also functioned as another rule of the score. I remember someone performing in darkness, or doing nothing or bringing the other participants to the camera field as ways to deal with the paradoxical situation of being filmed in this context.  I don’t think the camera was at the end of much use, even though for some people the concrete material became material to construct upon.
      Another insert in this publication are the 9 reports, 8 written by myself and 1 by Philippine Hoegen that follow up the content that came about after each session.
      What is more striking to me is the fact that there is rather an afterthought built in linear language, creating an history in contrast to an absence of poetics that were all there was to experience. Maybe there’s exactly where lays the potential of performance.
      Something to think about!


      Lilia Mestre

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • worlding from this world this is not wishful thinking, it is speculating utopia from what is already there
      27 December 2016
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • Alice Chauchat
    • a.pass
    • 27 February 2017
    • 03 March 2017
    • worlding from this world

       

       

      When inviting me to host this workshop, Pierre Rubio spoke about my piece Togethering, a group solo as a case of worlding: building a present-tense, experiential fiction from gathered (past) moments of collaboration, uprooting situated moments to turn them into speculative propositions for a common future.

       

      Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines speculate (transitive verb) as "to take to be true on the basis of insufficient evidence”. But what constitutes (in)sufficient evidence?

      (Social, political or sensational) reality jumbles together structural and punctual catastrophes, studded with gems: local endeavours, micro-events allowing glimpses of "something better”. Rather than lamenting the scarcity of agreeable situations in our present, we will wilfully engage in expanding through the force of our imagination these maybe fragile, uncertain, easily disposable snippets of communal life which are also part of the world as we know it. Taking these as sufficient evidence for the existence of a world we want to inhabit, we will turn the logic of exception into a logic of rule, and run the risk of building monstrous worlds. At least these might be differently interesting monstrosities.

       

      Our work will be one of observation, sifting and narration. Unravelling the consequences of chosen proofs, we will abstract principles from these concrete events in order to build systems; fleshing out structure, structuring affects and learning from each other - riffing off misunderstood proposals in order to speculate alternative worlds. Affirming the circumstantial as a law, generalising circumstances, pushing naivety to a point of boldness, our main responsibility rests in our choice of evidence.

       

      Language is a powerful tool, and your own practices are so many other tools which we will put to use.

       

      To start the days I will introduce some speculative dance practices in which imagination and collectivity reconfigure standard anatomical knowledge, and where paranormal or subterranean relationships between individuals and communal selves are embodied. The rest of the day is ours and we will fabricate worlds from the small stuff we find at the bottom of our pockets.

       

      Dance knowledge is always an advantage (always!) but none of what I will propose here depends on it.

       

       

      Alice Chauchat

      Alice Chauchat lives in Berlin and works as a choreographer, performer, teacher, editor and other activities related to choreography. She created performances in collaboration with a.o. Louise Trueheart, Anne Juren, Frédéric Gies, Alix Eynaudi and performed/collaborated in projects by a.o. Jennifer Lacey, Xavier le Roy, Marten Spangberg and Juan Dominguez. She has been working extensively in collaborative set-ups, developing numerous choreographic projects and platforms for knowledge production and exchange in the performing arts (everybodystoolbox.net, teachback vienna, praticable etc.). In 2010-2012 she was in the artistic direction for Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, a centre for artistic research in the Parisian suburbs. After completing a master degree in choreography in the Amsterdam Theaterschool with a “group solo” and a publication of dance scores and poems, she is currently preparing a PhD on the practice of relational subjectivities in dance.

      http://www.alicechauchat.net

       

      Dates : February Monday 27th , Tuesday 28th and March Wednesday 1st and Friday 3rd

      Schedule : 11am-6pm everyday

      Address : https://www.google.be/maps/place/Rue+Delaunoy+60,+1080+Molenbeek-Saint-Jean/@50.8530792,4.3300367,20z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47c3c3f46c54e4c7:0x4e61e376c2f6b53a

       

    • postgraduate program
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • TROUBLE ON RADIO TRITON- ((((((( changing (the) world (s) )))))) 10 December 2016
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 09 January 2017
    • 30 April 2017
    • CURATED BY PIERRE RUBIO
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • TROUBLE ON RADIO TRITON_ ((((((( changing (the) world (s) ))))))

       

       

       

      TROUBLE ON RADIO TRITON

      ((((((( changing (the) world(s) ))))))

       

       

      ‘ The struggle to survive is not really separable from the cultural life of fantasy, and the foreclosure of fantasy is one strategy for providing for the social death of persons. Fantasy is not the opposite of reality; it is what reality forecloses, and, as a result, it defines the limits of reality, constituting it as its constitutive outside. The critical promise of fantasy, when and where it exists, is to challenge the contingent limits of what will and will not be called reality. Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise; it establishes the possible excess of the real; it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home.'

      Judith Butler

      Undoing Gender, 2004

       

       

      For the coming months, a.pass will adopt a ‘Sci-Fi terraforming mode of attention’ to challenge the current assembly of artist-researchers with the task of creating some conditions to critically questioning our abilities to ‘render our world habitable again’.

      In fact, far from proposing an innocuous escapism in the false paradise of disembodied utopias, the next a.pass block is concerned with questions addressing the possible (in)capacity of art in general to produce a change and aims to understand the (im)possible contribution of art to collective empowerment by means of artistic researching.

      The hybrid dispositive of the block is designed to research, reveal, activate and share the political inventive potentialities of our artistic researches through, paradoxically,  an immersion into and practice of different types of (speculative) fiction.

      Which alternative worlds do our researches/practices contain and can immanently produce? How do we relate to the future via artistic-research? As artists, do we through our researches contribute to changes in contemporary culture? And if yes, then which cultures do our researches produce?

      Trouble on Radio Triton is a metaphoric multipolar dispositive. A discursive and practice-based ‘lure for feeling’ and thinking. An operative alibi strategically using ‘if’s’, ‘what if’s’, ‘as if’s’ to exercise critique and imagine alternatives.

      Through a permanent dialogue between practice-based research, reflection on a variety of discourses and different modes of speculation we will explore multiple but simultaneous realities induced by a proliferation of free-form  'fictionalisations' of every participants’ research in parallel with the individual development of these very researches.

      What can we discover in our research by listening to it from another space – the one of fiction? Who will talk?  What will talk? But also: how to listen? Where to listen from? What to listen for? And whom to listen with? How to get to more than one point of listening? What/Who will become deaf? What/Who will be silenced? What/Who will be heard?

       

       

      We will present our researches three times during the block, using different forms: at first a networked portrait then a master class and finally a performative artistic-research presentation.

      On Thursday mornings we will welcome several engaged practitioners in a series of reading sessions, talks and discussions curated by Pierre Rubio in collaboration with some of the artists-researchers involved in the program.  They will share with us their efforts at creating conditions for imagining otherwise.

      With e.g. : Sol Archer, Peggy Pierrot, Laurence Rassel, Fabrizio Terranova...

      We will follow three different practice-based workshops:  Alice Chauchat's Wordling from this World , Helena Dietrich's The Tea Party  and a taylor-made proposal by Myriam Van Imschoot.

      We will attend a series of conferences by Edward George, Paul Gilroy, Lizzie Borden and Donna Haraway.

      We will collectively curate the Night Sessions: a series of evenings proposing lines of flight and unexpected connections with the program.

      We will finally collaborate together at creating a true/false/real/fictional radio station: Radio Triton.

       

       

      Radio Triton is the collective experimental dispositive of the block – a pedagogical and metaphorical tool. The proposal invites the participants to imagine and produce a series of audio pieces developed out of their researches and their contributions to the block. They can be produced individually or in collaboration within the ‘machine’ Radio Triton, which nature and identity we will collectively invent.

      The Radio Triton ‘'program’ will follow two main trajectories. The first consisting of the recording of different forms of interviews between the artists researchers and the block-guests and second being the creation of fictional audio and sonic pieces through the application of various translation processes to the participants’ researches.

      These translations/speculations will be supported by a series of sound research ateliers. Starting with ”Foley your Research” with Christian Hansen -a queer interpretation of Foley art- around the question "how does/could your research sound like?" and followed by a series of  Thursday afternoon sessions curated by Pierre Rubio in collaboration with the artists-researchers. The aim of the sessions will be in finding the appropriate 'displacing questions': the futures we need to produce the audio fictions we need.

      Radio Triton will simultaneously engage in the tasks of performing, documenting, archiving and broadcasting alternative -both disturbing and reassuring- ways of becoming-with-each-other otherwise.

       

       

      The block and the radio dispositive are named in reference to Donna Haraway’s “invitation to stay with the trouble” and the anarchist and hedonistic science-fiction masterpiece novel by Samuel R. Delany ‘Trouble on Triton - an ambiguous heterotopia’ from 1976. The novel was partly written in a dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin’s anarchist and feminist science fiction novel ‘The Dispossessed’, whose subtitle is ‘an ambiguous utopia’. As the subtitles imply, the two novels offer conflicting perspectives on utopia and imagine the concrete possibilities and consequences of anarchist and queer societies.

      Both books inviting us to see through the trouble.

       

      Pierre Rubio, December 2016

       

       

      “The first cultural device was probably a recipient .... Many theorisers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier”. So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women's Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975). But no, this cannot be. Where is that wonderful, big, long, hard thing, a bone, I believe, that the Ape Man first bashed somebody with in the movie and then, grunting with ecstasy at having achieved the first proper murder, flung up into the sky, and whirling there it became a space ship thrusting its way into the cosmos to fertilise it and produce at the end of the movie a lovely foetus, a boy of course, drifting around the Milky Way without (oddly enough) any womb, any matrix at all? I don't know. I don't even care. I'm not telling that story. We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. That is news.”

      Ursula K. LeGuin in ’The Carrier bag Theory of Fiction’,

      In Dancing at the Edge of the World, 1986

       

       

       

    • Newsletter November 2016 13 November 2016
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma

      newscaption

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      INVITATION

      The Artist-Commoner.
      (Self) Education
      of New Subjectivities

      Two days of presentations, performances,
      exchanges and commoning practices @ Kaaistudio

      November 25 (10am-2am) & November 26 (3:30 pm-2am)

      Commong sa na pas de valure_apass_Colour

      A public meeting organised by a.pass.

      With: Daniel Blanga-GubbayKristien Van den Brande, Bojana Cvejić, Juan Dominguez, Nicolas Galeazzi, Guy Gypens, Miriam Hempel, Philippine Hoegen, Steven Jouwersma, Rudi Laermans, Lilia Mestre, Vladimir Miller, Cecilia Molano,  Kate Rich, Pierre Rubio, Femke SneltingSPIN, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver, and a.pass-researchers.




      Does commoning, as a means of artistic practice, require a radically different self-conception of the artist? And if we see the emergence of a different artist subjectivity, what role does (self-)education in the arts play in fostering and welcoming this subjectivity? What kind of (educational) institutions can the artist-commoner take root in? How can these institutions engage not only in educating the artist
      about the commons but in developing radical methodologies of commoning education?

      During a two day event, a.pass welcomes a gathering of researchers, artists, a.pass program participants and public to engage with the struggle of being an artist commoner today, and the role of (educational) institutions in bringing this subject about.

      November 25 (10am-2am) & November 26 (3:30 pm-2am)
      @ Kaaistudio - Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Vaakstraat 81. Brussels 1000.

      Free admission.

      read more and program

      Between what is no longer and what is not yet

      Performance by Juan Dominguez @ Kaaistudio

      November 26, 20:30

      Performance in the context of a.pass’ public meeting The Artist Commoner.
      (Self) Education of New Subjectivities

      retrato johnny

      Dominguez wants to suspend events and create an interval of time in which he can try to integrate his past into his future. He will translate his visions and his desire to encounter the unknown through language. Dominguez is working alone for the first time in 14 years. Back then, he choreographed his work with labeled cards. Now, he’ll speak himself and give rise to a self-portrait that cites himself and some of his friends.

      Concept and Performance: Juan Dominguez
      Production Management: Manyone
      A production by Juan Dominguez. Supported by Tanznacht Berlin and Tanzfabrik Berlin/ apap-advancing performing arts project – Performing Europe 2020 / EU – Creative Europe Programme
      Photo: Cuqui Jerez
      Duration: +- 2 hours. 

      Limited capacity! 8/10/12€.

      Tickets via Kaaitheater: website

       

      New Call for applications 
      for artistic research projects post-master and phd level

       

      mess_and_research

      if you are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice,

      then a.pass might have a place for you. READ MORE

       

      DEADLINE: 09/01/2017
      TO START IN MAY 2017
      SELECTION TALKS : 23&24/01/2017
      (PLEASE KEEP THESE DAYS FREE!)

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      a.pass’ curatorial team: new constellation

      From January 2017 onward!

      In 2007 Elke Van Campenhout started a.pass; almost 10 years later the time has come to pass on what she called her ‘tender institute’ to a new constellation of people. New or not so new. Mentor Kristien Van den Brande and programme coordinator Nicolas Galeazzi are asked to join the curatorial team of a.pass, which currently consists of Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio and Vladimir Miller. From 2017 on Lilia and Kristien will share the artistic coordination previously done by Elke and Nicolas. The extended curatorial team stays responsible for the post-master programme, and is preparing for a more intensive collaboration with the a.pass research centre.

      line650

       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • Having trouble seeing this email? Please see the online version here 

      apass_logo_sm

      end communications of a.pass

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens
      and Eleanor Ivory Weber

      @ Hectolitre (MAROLLEN - Brussels) 
      Rue de Hectolitre 3 - 1000 Brussels

      Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019
      from 18:00 to 22:00

      Schedule: 

      18:00 food & drinks 

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction

      19:00 Subverses I: Play 

      Break

      20:00 7 anxieties and the world

      20:30 Subverses II

      Break

      21:15 Subverses III

      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed
      (doors close before the last performance starts) 

      Performances by Eleanor Ivory Weber, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens

      With contributions by
      Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      LISTEN TO THE TRAILER


      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Read more...

       


       

      a.pass
      p/a de Bottelarij

      Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • conference
    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • The Artist Commoner : Public Meeting (self) Education of new subjectivities
      30 August 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass, KaaiTheater
    • KaaiStudios - Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Vaakstraat 81 // 1000 Brussel.
    • 25 November 2016
    • 26 November 2016
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
      case of: Vladimir Miller
      case of: Lilia Mestre
    • The Artist Commoner : Public Meeting

      When we talk about commoning in the arts, or of artistic production as a site of commoning, or the arts as a common good, we evoke economies of material and immaterial labour within the field of art. But we seldom consider the changing understanding of what an artist is, and how this historic subjectivity possibly undergoes a dramatic shift in response to the resurgence of the commons debate in the last few years. Not only do we need to ask ourselves how to be an artist and a commoner today, and how to produce art within commoning processes, but also what kind of a new artist subjectivity is summoned by the commons. Long gone is the conception of the artist as a craftswoman, long gone the conception of a solitary genius, yet the market still welcomes the individualistic producer, enamoured with the beautified reflection the neo-liberal consumer finds in the persona of the free-to-do-anything, singular novum-art-maker. At the same time the contemporary art market (at least its attention, if not its monetary economy) has embraced commoning as a method for artistic production and encourages the artist to engage with the surrounding world. But is it really the same type of artist that emerges in the (economic) contexts traversed by the artist commoner? She travels from commoning to capitalism, to gift economy, and back. How are those subjectivities negotiated with the citizen of capitalism who she inadvertently also is?

      Does commoning, as a means of artistic practice, require a radically different self-conception of the artist? And if we see the emergence of a different artist subjectivity, what role does (self-)education in the arts play in fostering and welcoming this subjectivity? What kind of (educational) institutions can the artist-commoner take root in? How can these institutions engage not only in educating the artist about the commons but in developing radical methodologies of commoning education?

      During a two day event, a.pass welcomes a gathering of researchers, artists, a.pass program participants and public to engage with the struggle of being an artist commoner today, and the role of (educational) institutions in bringing this subject about.

      Two days of presentations, exchanges and commoning practices. Two days of ateliers, books launches, performances, workshops and discussions.

      free admission -  except the performance of Juan Dominguez - tickets

       


       

       

      PROGRAM

       

      Friday November 25

      10:00-16:00: Open space / habitat, with: a.pass participants. (@dance studio)

      11:00-15:30: office-work,
      with Femke Snelting, Kate Rich, Magda Tyzlik-Carver.(@concert studio)

      15:30-17.30: Regime Change, presentation after office-work,
      with: Femke Snelting, Kate Rich, Magda Tyzlik-Carver. (@concert studio)

      18:00-23:00: Common Sweat sauna,
      with Steven Jouwersma.

      18:00-19.30: Turn, Turtle! panel,
      with: Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay. Followed by The Missing Chapter, by Guy Gypens & SPIN.

      Food: catering at Kaaistudio-bar

      20:30-21:30: SITUATMENTS,
      with: Vladimir Miller, Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Kristien Van den Brande & Cecilia Molano, Steven Jouwersma, Nicolas Galeazzi, Philippine Hoegen & Einat Tuchman (@concert studio).

      21.30-02:00: PRACTICES. Mobile Interviews + City of Commons + Reading out loud & von unten + Common Sweat Sauna + ArtsCommons rehashed

       

       

      Saturday November 26

      12:00-15:00: Open space / habitat, with: a.pass participants. (@dance studio)

      15:30-16:30: Figures of commoning,
      introduction by Rudi Laermans

      16:30-18:00: Launch Bubble Score publication,
      with: Lilia Mestre, Philippine Hoegen, Miriam Hempel 

      17:00-21:00: Common Sweat sauna,
      with Steven Jouwersma.

      18:00-19:30 : Presentation of the ThK Journal #23, Commons / Undercommons in art, education, work…’,
      with: Bojana Cvejić interviewed by Pierre Rubio.

      Food : catering by Kaaistudio-bar

      20:30-22:30: Between what is no longer and what is not yet,
      performance by Juan Dominguez - ticket requiered

      22:30-02:00: introduction Dino Sound System + DJs: party!

       



      OPEN SPACE / A COMMON HABITAT FOR ARTISTIC RESEARCH
      with Nicolas Galeazzi and a.pass-participants

      Friday 25 November: 10:00-16:00

      Saturday 26th November: 12:00 - 15:00

      Every Friday of the last three month a.pass participants met for a concentrated commoning experiment.

      With this practical inquiry into artistic research as a commons we try to establish an Open Space practice, that allows pursuing the individual researches while observing at the same time the general picture that these activities generate together. Every artistic element within that space is considered as a common good. Training the simultaneity and interdependence of individual and common interests not only puts our commons economy at work, but also lets us investigate the personal and collective effects of this structural shift.

      For the ‘The Artist Commoner‘ meeting we move the Open Space Practice to the KaaiStudios and continue our work under the new spatial conditions, inviting you as a potential Open Space commoner into these investigations. You are welcome to explore, expand, dismantle and recharge this space with whatever you consider as your current work. Please bring at least a vegetable for the common cooking.

      10:00 to 11:00 warm up; 11:00 to 13:00 practice; 13:00 common soup and discussion; 14:30 to 15:30 logging.

       

       

      REGIME CHANGE
      with Kate Rich, Femke Snelting and Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver

      Friday 25 November, office hours: 11:00-15:30

      Presentation: 15:30-17:30

      A day long session, aimed at aligning the a.pass computing infrastructure with the ambitions and aspirations summoned by the commons. Tech giants currently dominate all forms of digital communication, from cloud-storage to production tools and archiving systems. For cultural institutions like a.pass and many kindred spirit organisations, there is potential for resistance. Kate, Magda and Femke will use the common power of their intersecting practices in art, technology and theory, to break the spell of this paralysing digital regime. With the aid of Free, Libre and Open Source software, the transposition agents will begin to transform the relation of a.pass to its computing technology. Throughout the day the trio will conduct fieldwork, draw up solemn oaths & commit the institution to a rite of passage: from efficiency to curiosity; from scarcity to multiplicity and from solution to possibility. Champagne served all day.

       

       

      
TURN, TURTLE! PANEL
      with Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, Guy Gypens, SPIN.

      Friday 25 November, 18.00-19.30

      We would like to draw your attention to the publication of the book ‘Turn Turtle, Turn!’, a creative and intellectual analysis of the new turn in the perception and workings of institutes in the performing arts.

      What has become apparent in the last ten years or so is a move towards an engaged re-appropriation of of arts institutions in artistic (performance) practices, and a more in-depth collaboration between institutes and artists in rethinking the functioning, position, and decision-taking structures of these organisations. We asked several artists, programmers and thinkers to contribute to this publication from the viewpoint of their practice and experience within the institutional framework. Turn, Turtle! Re-enacting the Institute is the second part of the publication series Performing Urgency, commissioned by European theatre network House on Fire which will continue half-yearly.

      For this edition launch in Brussels, the artists Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galleazzi and Daniel Blanga-Gubbay will debate on these questions. The panel is followed by The Missing Chapter, a discussion between SPIN and Guy Gypens.

       

       

      
SITUATMENTS
      with Vladimir Miller, Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Nicolas Galeazzi, Kristien Van den Brande, Steven Jouwersma, Philippine Hoegen & Einat Tuchman.

      Friday 25 November, 20:30-21:30

      Collective scheduling and set-up. The first evening of The Artist-Commoner meeting is structured as an overlap of practices, talks and mini-workshops. We would like to provide a space and time for the audience to engage in the politics, pragmatics and poetics of collective scheduling and setting up, believing that commoning begins where stakes and engagement are developed within a framework that is open to change by its outsiders. On Friday evening we come together to introduce and situate our main concerns and give space to a self-organization of the evening. Guided by open space principles, the audience is invited to take active part in existing proposals and schedule other circles and meetings around possible emergent topics. All proposals will be organized and communicated on a central wall paper. This sprawling exploration of the conference themes will be injected into the discussions and presentation of the second day.

       

       

      PRACTICES
      with Vladimir Miller, Kristien Van den Brande & Cecilia Molano, Steven Jouwersma, Pierre Rubio, Nicolas Galeazzi, Philippine Hoegen & Einat Tuchman.

      Friday 25 November, at 21.30pm-02:00

      Mobile interviews - Pierre Rubio

      Pierre Rubio will conduct several nomadic interviews with the participants and with the audience throughout the two-day event. They will revolve around preconceptions about and definitions of the very terms of the a.pass event. What does ‘commoning’ mean? Who is the ‘subject’ producing and operating the commons? What is a ‘commoning practice’? What can ‘commoning’ do? What is the relation between the production of subjectivity and the production of a commoning theatre of operations?

      City of Commons - Vladimir Miller

      In 2015 Stefan Gruber and Vladimir Miller began working on a series of speculative vignettes imagining and discussing a city (or rather a multitude of cities) where certain key institutions are based on practices of commoning. These fragmented utopian visions do not necessarily function or come together as one proposal, but are tools to explore critical positions towards the commons. The texts approach commoning not from the present state of things but speculate from within an imaginary state of commoning as a status quo, thus shifting critique towards a position of inner logics. Rather than discussing commoning practices by comparing or contrasting them with present day structures we jump to a discussion of commoning from within its own possibilities and contradictions, on its own terms. Vladimir Miller will facilitate a work session where together we will develop and discuss visions of institutions as radical spaces of commoning.

      Reading out loud & von unten - Cecilia Molano & Kristien Van den Brande

      Out of the clear, critical light of day, where black night is falling, let's do something as simple as reading a novel to each other. From beginning to end, von unten and out loud, with no particular perspective in mind. Vocalizing writing in order to actualize it, like visualizing it, is not without danger, says Lyotard. Let’s see. If on your bookshelf you have a copy of anti-bildungsroman Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser please bring it. Books-with-scribbles-in very much appreciated. Starting at 9.30 pm, until the last page is turned.

      Common sweat sauna - Steven Jouwersma
      extra session on saturday 17:00-21:00

      The Common Sweat Sauna is a real working sauna made only from recuperated materials. It was built in the public space of Brussels and immediately opened up to the public. The project intends to create a free nomadic urban sauna space that diverts from the logic of commercial and individualized wellness and that de-colonizes the public space. The sauna moves from place to place in Brussels and gathers a growing crowd that takes care of the sauna.

      please bring your sauna gear.

      ArtsCommons - rehashed & common zapping (Philippine Hoegen & Einat Tuchman & Nicolas Galeazzi)

      Based on their experience with an attempt to create a commons for the arts, Einat Tuchman, Philippine Hoegen, Nicolas Galeazzi will discuss the difficulties in practicing the commons as an artistic form. Their discussion is ongoing, temporarily settled at a table next to the bar, open for everyone and will be supported by a common zapping through YouTube clips.

       

       

      Figures of Commoning 

      with Rudi Laermans

      Saturday 26 November, 15:30-16:30

      Commoning, or the collective production of a common (a commonality, a common good), is the essential practice through which the social instantiates the political, be it on the macro or the micro level. Evidently, there exist various modes of commoning - of being with and for, social giving and taking, sharing and co-creating. The presentation focusses on some of these practices, ranging from discussing to complicit action to doing nothing.

       


      LAUNCH: BUBBLE SCORE 

      with Lilia Mestre, Philippine Hoegen, Miriam Hempel, and a.pass-participants

      Saturday 26 November, 16:30-18:00

      As a program curator of a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies), Lilia Mestre has since 2014 developed ScoreScapes, a research on scores as pedagogical tools. Her theoretical interest focuses on performativity as a discursive practice leading to a method based on dialogical and intersubjective formats that function as enablers of exchange within artistic research. Working with this method led to various ways of reflecting on the participants’ work, such as the question of authorship within a scored situation and the bearing of individual creativity within a collective. Bubble Score is the third score created for this context; on the occasion of ‘The Artist Commoner’ a publication will be launched to share and open up the discussion ‘of’ methodologies of commoning education.

       

       

      ‘COMMONS / UNDERCOMMONS IN ART, EDUCATION, WORK...’

      with Bojana Cvejić (ThK - Walking Theory), Pierre Rubio (a.pass)

      Saturday 26th , 18.00-19.30

      a.pass welcomes Bojana Cvejić to discuss the last issue of the journal TkH/Walking Theory : ‘Commons / Undercommons in art, education, work…’ (2016).

      In an interview by Pierre Rubio, co-curator of the apass program, Bojana Cvejić, co-editor of the journal, will address a few problems and questions following from 'The Public Commons and the Undercommons of Art, Education, and Labour’ conference (Frankfurtlab 2014).

      Taking a cue from Jason Read’s contribution to the conference and journal: ‘Individuating the Commons’, Cvejić will account for the approaches and arguments around the Common, its practices and plea for new subjectivation. Her own stance recasts collectivity through the questions of the preindividual and transindividual (in Gilbert Simondon, Paolo Virno, and Jason Read). Cvejić recently gave a lecture using these very concepts ( ‘Radicalising a condition into a practice : Transindividuality’ London, Sept. 2016) to critically problematise art as “a site of intensive expression of individualism”.

      Why do concepts like ‘individuation’ or ‘transindividuality’ seem operative today for Bojana Cvejić to expand the narrow individual interest to a broader horizon of collective transindividual solidarity?

       

      BETWEEN WHAT IS NO LONGER AND WHAT IS NOT YET
      
with Juan Dominguez

      Saturday 26 November; 20:30-22:30

      Juan Dominguez suspends events and creates an interval of time in which he tries to integrate his past into his future. He translates his visions and his desire to encounter the unknown through language. For the first time in 14 years Dominguez is working alone, giving rise to a self-portrait that cites himself and some of his friends.

      tickets on Kaaitheatre website

       

       

      Dance with the DINO SOUND SYSTEM
      
with Christophe Meierhans and Ant Hampton

      Saturday 26 November, 22:30-02:00

      To round up this public meeting, we will party. The sound will be produced by a sound system that is considered a common good – the ominously famous "Dino Sound System". Driven by the need to dance - a group of artists, djs and friends around Christophe Meierhans and Ant Hampton joined forces to construct an extraordinary loudspeaker system that can be used by any of the contributing ‘Dinos' for whatever event they’re planning. For our party, the system will experience its second test phase and official inauguration, with music played by a many-armed, collective DJ. Bring your ears for a listening event at 22.30 and you’ll not be able to hold your legs back!

       

       

      ONGOING

      A.pass books on display / for sale

      The stock of books, artist-publications, posters, leaflets produced by a.pass-curators, researchers and participants will be on display and for sale during the Artist Commoner public meeting.

      publications of a.pass

       

       

       

    • [call] 2016/III 30 July 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      newscaption
       
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

      Please find information on the application procedure here.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    •  

      Dear A.pass (ex)participants,

      News might be spreading faster than we can control. Some words to the A.passies and ex-A.passies before it goes out further into the world. In 2007 Elke Van Campenhout started A.pass; almost 10 years later the time has come to pass on what she called her ‘tender institute’ to a new constellation of people. New or not so new.
      A.pass wouldn’t be A.pass if it didn’t mean self-questioning its fundaments and organisation as it has done regularly since its existence. Because Elke is irreplaceable in the current structure of A.pass we rather think in terms of a redistribution of responsibilities to create a new dynamics with what we’ve been developing together throughout the years. We will continue working along the same lines, especially for the block-programme of the post-master which was so carefully put together.

      Mentor Kristien Van den Brande and programme coordinator Nicolas Galeazzi were asked to join the curatorial team of A.pass, which currently consists of Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio and Vladimir Miller. From 2017 on Lilia and Kristien will share the artistic coordination previously done by Elke and Nicolas. The extended curatorial team stays responsible for the block programming, and we are preparing for more intense collaboration between the research centre, the post-master programme and other organisations.

      These are the big lines of what is being discussed and prepared right now. Officially this redistribution will start from January on. We hope you are as excited about the future as we are. And that next block we can create a warm goodbye to Elke and her MNSTRY-plans that were partly developed within A.pass.

      Best wishes,
      the whole A.pass team

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/II
    • Uninvited Research
    • Modifying the universal 20 April 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Peggy Pierrot / Femke Snelting
    • a.pass
    • 30 June 2016
    • 30 June 2016
    • case of: Femke Snelting
    • Modifying the universal

      In 2015, after a public outcry against the perceived lack of diversity in emoji characters available on smartphones, the Unicode Consortium added five “Skin tone modifiers” to the set and considered the issue resolved.

      As an input to MOVING RESEARCH Femke will host a one day workshop, starting from the emoji modifiers case. We will discuss how and why mainstream communication infrastructures promote universalist values and at the same time provide means for separating users along fault lines of race, gender and age. While the “modifiers” function within the universalist belief-system of Unicode, they start to function as encoded means for segregation instead of a response to the increasing complexity of cross-device and cross-cultural computing, a situation that demands a re-imagination of compatibility in terms of difference.

      The workshop will be an occasion to discuss more generally what infrastructures of participation we can imagine that not only represent multiplicity but allow us to materialise it, beyond the Modern regime of universality. What universal(izing) assumptions creep into our own research and how could they be challenged? What tactics can we imagine for developing systems that are politically, aesthetically and ethically truly generative?

      Modifying the Universal is developed in the context of Possible Bodies, an ongoing collaboration between artists, programmers, performers and activists that are concerned with the specific entanglements of technology, representation and normativity that (re)-appear through renderings of the virtual.

       



      Biographies

      Peggy Pierrot works on projects linking information, media, activism, radio art and technology. She runs a publishing house, Venus Negra, publishing on popular cultures, Black Atlantic, music and science fiction. A sociologist by training, she holds a postgraduate degree in multimedia engineering. Peggy worked as a journalist (Transfert.net, Le Monde diplomatique, Minorités.org) and as editorial/technical webmaster in media and non-profit projects. She lectures on African-American and Caribbean literature and culture, science-fiction or related topics.

      Femke Snelting investigates interrelations between digital tools and creative practice, and develops projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of Constant, an association for arts and media active in Brussels since 1997. The collective work of Constant is inspired by the way that technological infrastructures, data-exchange and software determine daily life. Femke co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP) and coordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit.

    • [call] 2016/II 08 April 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      newscaption
       
       

      call

      FOR ARTISTIC RESEARCH PROJECTS
      POST-MASTER AND PHD LEVEL


      DEADLINE: 09/05/2016
      TO START IN SEPTEMBER 201
      6

      SELECTION TALKS : 30&31/05/2016
      (PLEASE KEEP THESE DAYS FREE!)

       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year 
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

      Please find information on the application procedure here.

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

    • [call] 2016/I 09 December 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      newscaption
       
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

      Please find information on the application procedure here.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • information
    • postgraduate program
    • block 2016/II
    • NOT_index
    • Opening week Block II/2016 04 December 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass
    • 02 May 2016
    • 11 May 2016
    • The basic idea of this week is to share and ‘update’ each other about our researches in order to allow the collaborations in the block. This means that you will be asked to share the concept, some material and thoughts of your personal research with all of us. We will send you a more detailed plan about this very soon.
      This is it for now, if you have more specific questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

      Looking forward to seeing you all!

    • Newsletter November 2017 12 October 2015
      posted by: Elke van Campenhout

      newscaption

      line650

       

      INVITATION

      The Artist-Commoner.
      (Self) Education
      of New Subjectivities

      Two days of presentations, performances,
      exchanges and commoning practices.

      November 25 (10am-2am) & November 26 (4pm-2am)

      line650

      Commong sa na pas de valure_apass_Colour

      A public meeting organised by a.pass.

      With: Bojana Cvejić, Rudi Laermans, Juan Dominguez, Kate Rich, Femke Snelting, Magdalena Tyzlik-Carver, Nicolas Galeazzi, Steven Jouwersma, Pierre Rubio, Lilia Mestre, Vladimir Miller, Kristien Van den Brande, Cecilia Molano, Guy Gypens, SPIN, Philippine Hoegen, Miriam Hempel, and a.pass-researchers.




      Does commoning, as a means of artistic practice, require a radically different self-conception of the artist? And if we see the emergence of a different artist subjectivity, what role does (self-)education in the arts play in fostering and welcoming this subjectivity? What kind of (educational) institutions can the artist-commoner take root in? How can these institutions engage not only in educating the artist
      about the commons but in developing radical methodologies of commoning education?

      During a two day event, a.pass welcomes a gathering of researchers, artists, a.pass program participants and public to engage with the struggle of being an artist commoner today, and the role of (educational) institutions in bringing this subject about.

      Read more -https:///www.apass.be/common-conference/

      With every day from 18h on a real sauna on the terrace. bring your slippers. 

      25 November (10am - 2am) 26 November (4pm - 2am) @  Kaaistudio

      Free admission.

       
       

      Between what is no longer

      and what is not yet

      Performance by Juan Dominguez @ Kaaistudio

      November 26, 20:30

      Performance in the context of a.pass’ public meeting The Artist Commoner.
      (Self) Education of New Subjectivities

      retrato johnny

      Dominguez wants to suspend events and create an interval of time in which he can try to integrate his past into his future. He will translate his visions and his desire to encounter the unknown through language. Dominguez is working alone for the first time in 14 years. Back then, he choreographed his work with labeled cards. Now, he’ll speak himself and give rise to a self-portrait that cites himself and some of his friends.

      Concept and Performance: Juan Dominguez

      Production Management: manyone

      A production by Juan Dominguez. Supported by Tanznacht Berlin and Tanzfabrik Berlin/ apap-advancing performing arts project – Performing Europe 2020 / EU – Creative Europe Programme

      Photo: Cuqui Jerez

      Duration: +- 2 hours. 

      Limited capacity! 8/10/12€. Tickets via Kaaitheater:

      https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/between-what-is-no-longer-and-what-is-not-yet

       

       

      New Call for applications 
      for artistic research projects post-master and phd level

       

      mess_and_research

      if you are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice,

      then a.pass might have a place for you.  Read more --> OPEN CALL INFO

       

      DEADLINE: 09/01/2017
      TO START IN MAY 2017
      SELECTION TALKS : 23&24/01/2017
      (PLEASE KEEP THESE DAYS FREE!)

      line650

      a.pass’ curatorial team:

      new constellation

      From January 2017 onward!

      In 2007 Elke Van Campenhout started a.pass; almost 10 years later the time has come to pass on what she called her ‘tender institute’ to a new constellation of people. New or not so new. Mentor Kristien Van den Brande and programme coordinator Nicolas Galeazzi are asked to join the curatorial team of a.pass, which currently consists of Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio and Vladimir Miller. From 2017 on Lilia and Kristien will share the artistic coordination previously done by Elke and Nicolas. The extended curatorial team stays responsible for the post-master programme, and is preparing for a more intensive collaboration with the a.pass research centre.

      Read more in who is who https:///www.apass.be/who-is-a-pass/

      line650

       a.pass

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       
    • [call] 2015/III 01 August 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      newscaption
       
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

      Please find information on the application procedure here.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to join one of our public workshops which are regularly announced on our website.

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    •  

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Audrey Cottin
      Esteban Donoso
      Isabel Burr Raty
      Jeremiah Runnels
      Kleoni Manousakis
      Mavi Veloso
      Thiago Antunes
      Tinna Ottesen
      Vanja Smiljanic
      Verónica Cruz
      Yaari Shalem


      Research End Presentations

      Gosie Vervlosem
      Philippine Hoegen
      Samah Hijawi
      Sara Santos


      Research Centre Researchers

      Adriana La Selva
      Cecilia Molano
      Juan Dominguez
      Mala Kline
      Ricardo Santana
      Ruth S. Noyes

       


      Partner

      PAF Performance Arts Forum


      Contributors for workshops

      Abu Ali * Toni Serra
      Adriana La Selva
      Adva Zakai
      Elke van Campenhout
      Esteban Donoso
      Geert Opsomer
      Isabel Burr Raty
      Kleoni Manousakis
      Luanda Casella
      Marcos Simoes
      Medicine Man Oscar Parada
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Peter Stamer
      Pierre Joachim
      Pierre Rubio
      Sara Manente
      Thiago Antunes
      Veridiana Zurita

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout

      Nicolas Galeazzi

      Pierre Rubio

       

      Mentors

      Adva Zakai
      Femke Snelting

       

       

       


      'UNTOUCHABLE / UNACCEPTABLE / INTANGIBLE'
      about the imaginative aesthetics of change

      Curated by Elke Van Campenhout (Research Coordinator), Nicolas Galeazzi (Program Coordinator), and Pierre Rubio (Associate Program Curator)


      In defence of the power of aesthetics this block tries to pry open the difficult paradox between criticality and imagination, between the power of the subject and the passive resistance of the object, between political critique and artistic re-imagineering strategies.

      The unacceptable reveals the limitations of the acceptable.
      The untouchable foreshadows the adventurous discovery of difference.
      The intangible offers a speculative sense towards the radically other.

       


      01/05 - 31/07 / 2015

      Ongoing workshops

       

      House of Spirits
      Throughout the whole period, the House of Spirits is a common space for the (re)collection, digestion and transformation of the traces of the individual researches and workshops. The House opens up a space for the ‘shamans/conservators’ of the Research Centre, as well as some of the participants. Every week another ‘shaman’ practices in the House of Spirits, working with the case objects of the participants or with left-overs of the workshop, developing a shared ritual for the a.pass group. The strategies of the ‘shaman’ include reordering, cataloguing, magical transformations, ritual alchemy, displacement and fictionalisation.
      Every shaman puts the individual case traces in another context, allowing them to resonate and breed new meanings and connections. The shamans together develop the Book, which documents the changing protocols regulating the workings of the House.
      At the end, the House of Spirits opens its doors to the public. In the form of a weeklong celebration, a curated exhibition, a mini-festival, a performative conference, or whatever at that point seems to be the most relevant to the group, the House functions in that week as a kind of temporal 3D publications that offers guests an insight in the works developed throughout the block.

       

      Reading Circle
      As a red thread throughout the block the participants engage in a weekly communal reading practice of the book ‘Realist Magic - Object, Ontology, Causality’ by Timothy Morton.
      Reading and discussing in-depth this one central text allows for the development of a common ground of reference and connection that functions as a backdrop to the workshops and practices that shape the block.

       

      Self-interviews
      Throughout the block each participant can develop a self-interviewing practice, which is supported by one or more mentors. The self-interview develops through the case practices, and is embedded in the mentoring process. During opening week we will introduce possible strategies for self-interviewing and start up the process.

       

      04 / 05 - 06 / 05 / 2015

      ‘BRICOLAGE’
      workshop by Nicolas Galeazzi


      Diving into the concept of bricolage, described in Claude Levi-Strauss' 'The Savage Mind', we develop a practice to present, discuss and discover the momentary objectives of our researches. With the help of found and constructed objects - objects of personal importance and desire, objects of daily or precious use, objects of thought and discourse - we will try to get a hold on the actual qualities of each one's research model and methodology. The bricolage technique may be very close to many of our practices. The artist researchers are commonly acknowledged as the bricoleur-scientists. They craft the object of knowledge.
      In the course of this week we will present the current state of our research case from various perspectives. ‘Bricolaging’ the 'objects' of your research, turning them upside down, looking at them through the other's eyes and assembling the elements in play, we want to understand the complex horizon of your research target.

       

       


      25 / 05 - 29 / 05 / 2015


      ‘ECOLOGY OF AFFECTS’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Pierre Joachim, Geert Opsomer and Pierre Rubio

      Can we associate sadness with the outcomes of our capitalist world? Are we affected so much by capitalism that we can only sadly survive in what seems to have become its ‘nature’? Can we still affect the world? What could a joyful passion mean today? Is a joyful passion subversive? How can we create the conditions for joy to be possible? Is it by re-allocating desire that new joys can emerge? Can artistic researches produce a change Can agency be generated with aesthetic means? Could we critically re-combine ethics and aesthetics to reclaim the transformative power of our researches? What could be the nature of an ecology of affects with the potential to produce a change?
      Every block, a.pass organizes ‘a.pass Basics workshops’ that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a collaborative artistic research environment.
      This B-workshop ‘Ecology of Affects’ will put into discussion Spinoza’s concepts of Desire, Joy, Sadness and Affect in the ‘Ethics’ and Guattari’s concepts of Mental Ecology and Collective Assemblages of Enunciation by reading closely a series of texts from the 17th up to the 21st century. With the help of two guests, Pierre Joachim and Geert Opsomer, we will study these philosophical key notions but also discover how Pierre and Geert put them into practice and consequently how we can do so as well.

       

       

      01 / 06 - 05 / 06 / 2015


      ‘PLACE THIS’
      Workshop by Sara Manente and Marcos Simoes


      The workshop unfolds a series of extra-sensorial practices as tools for collaboration in groups, couples or with objects. The tools, for example the telepathic approach, offer the possibility to create a third existence which is ‘a self’, an entity other than us, with its own qualities and ability to perform in an attempt to include chance and other contingencies in the work, to destabilize power relations based on linear logics and to questions the effect of belief and make-belief in a performative environment. Can we create magic by creating the rules for magic to happen? Like an ‘experimental magic’ without magicians? Is it possible to empower an object, a person, a situation through speculation and prediction?
      The workshop will start with a daily practice of writing questions for a tarot reader. Then, we will offer three different performative tools to be explored and then appropriated into your own project. The workshop “Place this” wants to discover the transformational powers of this knowledge in different constellations: individually, with objects, in couples, trios, groups. With the stubbornness of ‘the idiot’, we will practice and question again and again opening up the creative process to the material and the immaterial.

       

       

      08 / 06 - 12 / 06 / 2015


      ‘UNSEEN WORKSHOP’
      Workshop by Abu Ali * Toni Serra


      Abu Ali * Toni Serra is a researcher through video. He hosts and programs the Observatori de Video No Identificat based in Barcelona - an observatory archive, that is structured around particular themes, which does encourage a critique of contemporary culture and society,
      His videos explore different visions between the essay and the poetry, with an evocation of trance and the realities of dream. His videos immerse into the relationship with the visionary, into the inner experience, the no man’s land between real and unreal, dream and awakeness, poetry and prophecy... as ways to deepen the criticism of reality.
      Normally we associate image with vision. But in a society of the spectacle images have become a form of blindness - an increasing veil, that prevents us from viewing. Our vision remains a prisoner of the images constructed by the entertainment, media and network apparatus, which not only tries to shape our vision but to colonize our dreams.
      For the workshop, he offers a selection of footage, which directly deals with the ‘Unseen’. Based on these projections he will experiment with us on practicing the not-seen. Challenging the relation between the gaze and action, vision and perception, the imaginary and the experienced, we will cruise through a network of text, video, and physical practices that open the vision for the unseen and the un-seeing.

       

       


      22 / 06 - 26 / 06 / 2015


      ‘TOWARDS A COLLECTIVE RITUAL’
      Workshop by Medicine Man Oscar Parada


      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, and what can it do?
      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.
      This workshop has as objective to engage and reproduce the sacred in connection with a performative ritual space. Which is: to operate a transformation. And that is what we can call medicine. Medicine is everything that transforms us.
      Firstly, the workshop proposes techniques and practices to open the body not only as an artistic tool but also as a medicinal tool. 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.

       

       


      29 / 06 - 03 / 07 / 2015


      ‘SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION’
      Workshop by Peter Stamer and Luanda Casella


      We are dealing with what is known as „The Small World Problem“, a popular research method, especially in times of immaterial communication or social networks like Facebook, trying to merge mathematical parameters of statistics with marketing tools to improve accessibility to one’s consumer behaviour. And yet, the thought is fascinating: that everyone of us is connected with anyone on this planet of now 7.5 billion inhabitants, regardless of race, cultural background, continent, religion, age. Next to the political implication of such a thought this idea provides us with a resourceful generator for stories, narratives, fictions about human beings and their lives.
      Six Degrees of Separation is based upon the desire to create contemporary storytelling formats in which we explore fiction in shared narrative practices - narratives without a centre plot, but composed of biographical fragments, travel experiences, random encounters, figments of imagination - and maybe very little resolution. We believe that the world is full of stories, told ones and concealed ones, voiced ones and mute ones. Stories that we fantasize are not less true; digging them out and rendering them audible creates a multiplicity of narratives which form a large tapestry of events, a patchwork of textures, interwoven in such a fashion that they somehow may exist on the verge of being. Using a mixed media apparatus (Google Earth; Skype; Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter, etc), we will go through different storytelling exercises focusing on the construction of evasive, critical, imaginative narratives in order to create a common imaginary in the end. So what is it that holds the world(s) together?

    • newscaption

       

      Dear Subscribers to our Newsletter

      We would like to inform you about the program of workshops and common research practices of the upcoming four month. For signing up to the workshops, please find the link 'Sign up to this event' in every event description.  

      Hope seeing you in one of the next workshops or events!

      All the best! 

      your a.pass team


      block information

      4 May-2 August 2015

      PIERRE RUBIO
      BLOCK FOCUS SUMMER 2015: UNTOUCHABLE / UNACCEPTABLE / INTANGIBLE

      optical illusion

      ABOUT THE IMAGINATIVE AESTHETICS OF CHANGE

      What is the possible relationship between art and social change? When forced into the corner of economic demands on the one hand and the need for aesthetic subversion on the other, a lot of artist workers feel the need to defend their ‘right to be’ through critical strategies and political transparency. In defence of the power of aesthetics this block tries to pry open the difficult paradox between criticality and imagination, between the power of the subject and the passive resistance of the object, between political critique and artistic re-imagineering strategies.Read more..


      workshop

      4-8 May 2015

      Location a.pass

      NICOLAS GALEAZZI
      BRICOLAGE

      Bildschirmfoto 2015-04-03 um 21.49.02

      A TOOL FOR OPENING THE BLOCK

      Diving into this concept, described in Claude Levi-Strauss' 'The Savage Mind', we develop a practice to present, discuss and discover the momentary objectives of our researches. With the help of found and constructed objects, objects of personal importance and desire, daily objects and precious ones, or objects of thought and discourse, we will try to define the actual quality of each one's research model and methodology.Read more


      workshop

      10 May-24 July 2015

      A.PASS RESEARCH CENTRE
      THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS

      dome

      The House of Spirits is a common space for the (re)collection, digestion and transformation of the traces of the individual researches and workshops. The House opens up a space for the shamans/conservators of the Research Centre, as well as some of the participants. Every week another shaman practices in the House of Spirits, working with the case objects of the participants or with left-overs of the workshop, developing a shared ritual for the a.pass group. The strategies of the shaman include reordering, cataloguing, magical transformations, ritual alchemy, displacement and fictionalisation.Read more.

      workshop

      11 May-30 July 2015

      Location a.pass

      READING CIRCLE

      Cover Illustration by Tammy Lu
      As a red thread throughout the block the participants engage in a weekly communal reading practice of the book ‘Realist Magic – Object, Ontology, Causality’ by Timothy Morton.Reading and discussing in-depth this one central text allows for the development of a common ground of reference and connection that functions as a backdrop to the workshops and practices that shape the block. The Reading Circle happens on Monday evenings.Read more.

      workshop

      25-29 May 2015

      PIERRE JOACHIM / GEERT OPSOMER / PIERRE RUBIO
      ECOLOGY OF AFFECTS

      Studio 54, Halloween 1978, Hasse Persson
      Every block, a.pass organizes ‘b-workshops’ that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a collaborative artistic research environment. This b-workshop ‘Ecology of Affects’ will put into discussion Spinoza’s theory of affects and Guattari’s concept of mental ecology by reading closely a series of texts from 17th to 21st century.Read more

      workshop

      1-5 June 2015

      Location a.pass

      SARA MANENTE / MARCOS SIMOES
      THIS PLACE

      this place, Sara Manente & Marcos Simoes - photograph Marcello Mardones
      The workshop unfold a series of extra sensorial practices as tools for collaboration in groups, couples or with objects. The dispositives used, for example the telepathic approach, offer the possibility to create a third existence which is “a self”, “an entity” other than us, with own quality and ability to perform. Like an “experimental magic”: there will be magic without magicians. Can we create the magic by creating the situation for the magic to happen? We create the rules therefore we create the magic. Is it possible to empower an object, a person, a situation through speculation? With the stubbornness of “the idiot”, we will practice and question again and again opening up the creative process to the immaterial and the immaterial.Read more

      workshop

      8-12 June 2015

      ABU ALI * TONI SERRA
      THE UNSEEN WORKSHOP

      Filmstill, Exodus OVNI 2008
      For this workshop Abu Ali offers a selection of footage from the video archive O.V.N.I (observatori de video no idenitficat) based in Barcelona, which deals with the ‘Unseen’. Based on these projections Abu Ali will experiment with us on practices of not seeing. Challenging the relation between the gaze and action, vision and perception, the imaginary and the experienced, we will cruise through a network of text, video, and physical practices that open the vision for the unseen and the un-seeing.Read more

      workshop

      22-26 June 2015

      Location a.pass

      OSCAR PARADA
      TOWARDS A COLLECTIVE RITUAL

      Studio 54, Halloween 1978, Hasse Persson
      The objective of re-knowing and re-producing the sacred in connection with a performative ritual space is to operate a transformation and that is what we can call medicine. Medicine is everything that transforms us. The workshop proposes techniques and practices to open the body not only as an artistic tool but also as a medicinal tool. We will question and challenge the limits of what ‘self’, ‘presence’ and ‘relation’ mean. Hence, the workshop will also a research into creating individual and collective rituals in different ways.Read more

      workshop

      29 June-3 July 2015

      PETER STAMER / LUANDA CASELLA
      SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

      Bildschirmfoto 2015-03-28 um 13.59.09
      In 1969, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a study to explore if two randomly selected individuals, strangers to each other coming from different American states, are nevertheless connected by acquaintances in between. Starting the test in Kansas/Nebraska, linking people to one individual in Massachusetts, the experiment suggested that an individual knows of any target person only by six degrees of connecting steps: Mr X from Kansas knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Mrs Z, living in Massachusetts.Read more.

       a.pass 

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • Program Block 2015/II 09 April 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi

      newscaption

       

      Dear ex-a.pass-participants and current-a.pass-interested

      With this new type of newsletter we would like to introduce you at the same time to the upcoming program of workshops and events, and to our new website!!

      For signing up to the workshops, please find the link 'Sign up to this event' in every event description.  

      Hope seeing you in one of the next workshops or events!

      All the best! 

      the a.pass team


      block information

      4 May-2 August 2015

      PIERRE RUBIO
      BLOCK FOCUS SUMMER 2015: UNTOUCHABLE / UNACCEPTABLE / INTANGIBLE

      optical illusion

      ABOUT THE IMAGINATIVE AESTHETICS OF CHANGE

      What is the possible relationship between art and social change? When forced into the corner of economic demands on the one hand and the need for aesthetic subversion on the other, a lot of artist workers feel the need to defend their ‘right to be’ through critical strategies and political transparency. In defence of the power of aesthetics this block tries to pry open the difficult paradox between criticality and imagination, between the power of the subject and the passive resistance of the object, between political critique and artistic re-imagineering strategies.Read more..


      workshop

      4-8 May 2015

      Location a.pass

      NICOLAS GALEAZZI
      BRICOLAGE

      Bildschirmfoto 2015-04-03 um 21.49.02

      A TOOL FOR OPENING THE BLOCK

      Diving into this concept, described in Claude Levi-Strauss' 'The Savage Mind', we develop a practice to present, discuss and discover the momentary objectives of our researches. With the help of found and constructed objects, objects of personal importance and desire, daily objects and precious ones, or objects of thought and discourse, we will try to define the actual quality of each one's research model and methodology.Read more


      workshop

      10 May-24 July 2015

      A.PASS RESEARCH CENTRE
      THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS

      dome

      The House of Spirits is a common space for the (re)collection, digestion and transformation of the traces of the individual researches and workshops. The House opens up a space for the shamans/conservators of the Research Centre, as well as some of the participants. Every week another shaman practices in the House of Spirits, working with the case objects of the participants or with left-overs of the workshop, developing a shared ritual for the a.pass group. The strategies of the shaman include reordering, cataloguing, magical transformations, ritual alchemy, displacement and fictionalisation.Read more.

      workshop

      11 May-30 July 2015

      Location a.pass

      READING CIRCLE

      Cover Illustration by Tammy Lu
      As a red thread throughout the block the participants engage in a weekly communal reading practice of the book ‘Realist Magic – Object, Ontology, Causality’ by Timothy Morton.Reading and discussing in-depth this one central text allows for the development of a common ground of reference and connection that functions as a backdrop to the workshops and practices that shape the block. The Reading Circle happens on Monday evenings.Read more.

      workshop

      25-29 May 2015

      PIERRE JOACHIM / GEERT OPSOMER / PIERRE RUBIO
      ECOLOGY OF AFFECTS

      Studio 54, Halloween 1978, Hasse Persson
      Every block, a.pass organizes ‘b-workshops’ that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a collaborative artistic research environment. This b-workshop ‘Ecology of Affects’ will put into discussion Spinoza’s theory of affects and Guattari’s concept of mental ecology by reading closely a series of texts from 17th to 21st century.Read more

      workshop

      1-5 June 2015

      Location a.pass

      SARA MANENTE / MARCOS SIMOES
      THIS PLACE

      this place, Sara Manente & Marcos Simoes - photograph Marcello Mardones
      The workshop unfold a series of extra sensorial practices as tools for collaboration in groups, couples or with objects. The dispositives used, for example the telepathic approach, offer the possibility to create a third existence which is “a self”, “an entity” other than us, with own quality and ability to perform. Like an “experimental magic”: there will be magic without magicians. Can we create the magic by creating the situation for the magic to happen? We create the rules therefore we create the magic. Is it possible to empower an object, a person, a situation through speculation? With the stubbornness of “the idiot”, we will practice and question again and again opening up the creative process to the immaterial and the immaterial.Read more

      workshop

      8-12 June 2015

      ABU ALI * TONI SERRA
      THE UNSEEN WORKSHOP

      Filmstill, Exodus OVNI 2008
      For this workshop Abu Ali offers a selection of footage from the video archive O.V.N.I (observatori de video no idenitficat) based in Barcelona, which deals with the ‘Unseen’. Based on these projections Abu Ali will experiment with us on practices of not seeing. Challenging the relation between the gaze and action, vision and perception, the imaginary and the experienced, we will cruise through a network of text, video, and physical practices that open the vision for the unseen and the un-seeing.Read more

      workshop

      22-26 June 2015

      Location a.pass

      OSCAR PARADA
      TOWARDS A COLLECTIVE RITUAL

      Studio 54, Halloween 1978, Hasse Persson
      The objective of re-knowing and re-producing the sacred in connection with a performative ritual space is to operate a transformation and that is what we can call medicine. Medicine is everything that transforms us. The workshop proposes techniques and practices to open the body not only as an artistic tool but also as a medicinal tool. We will question and challenge the limits of what ‘self’, ‘presence’ and ‘relation’ mean. Hence, the workshop will also a research into creating individual and collective rituals in different ways.Read more

      workshop

      29 June-3 July 2015

      PETER STAMER / LUANDA CASELLA
      SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION

      Bildschirmfoto 2015-03-28 um 13.59.09
      In 1969, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram designed a study to explore if two randomly selected individuals, strangers to each other coming from different American states, are nevertheless connected by acquaintances in between. Starting the test in Kansas/Nebraska, linking people to one individual in Massachusetts, the experiment suggested that an individual knows of any target person only by six degrees of connecting steps: Mr X from Kansas knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Mrs Z, living in Massachusetts.Read more.

       a.pass 

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • [call] 2015/II 09 April 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      newscaption
       
      emailer_call_header
       
       
       

      if you
      are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if
      the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then
      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year
      post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

      beside
      the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: 

      The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

      Please find information on the application procedure here.

       

       

      take a look!
      If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to come to the next public presentations our currently ending a.pass participants on 29th and 30th May 2014. More information will be available on our website from beginning of May.

       

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • call

      for artistic research PROPOSALS

      Due to the Ministry's decision we have to put the Intakes on hold until further notice. 

      Thanks for your interest in a.pass!


      post Graduate PROGRAM


      DEADLINE: 00/00/0000
      TO START IN ....

      SELECTION TALKS :   00 and 00/ 00/0000
      (PLEASE KEEP THESE DAYS FREE!)

       

      call for Associate Researchers

      DEADLINE: 00/00/0000
      TO START IN ....

      SELECTION TALKS :   00 and 00/ 00/0000
      (PLEASE KEEP THESE DAYS FREE!)

       

       


       

       

       

      a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) is an artistic and educational research environment that welcomes research practitioners, from all professional backgrounds in an international self-organized, collaborative and trans-disciplinary program. a.pass includes two complementary structures that operate in parallel and in dialogue: the Postgraduate Program and the Research Center.

      This call for applications is inviting researchers who would like to start or continue a research trajectory within an experimental and professional artistic research environment. a.pass offers a one-year post-graduate program or a one-year Associate Researcher affiliation where researchers can develop research proposals in a collective, supportive environment independent from production constraints.

      a.pass welcomes proposals which are directly situated and working within existing communities. We strive to develop a greater network between existing communities and become a hub for research methodologies that are grounded and productive in existing contemporary struggles.

       

      Post-graduate program

      The a.pass Postgraduate Program organizes a one-year artistic research curriculum for artists / researchers from all professional backgrounds. a.pass researchers develop an independent artistic research trajectory in a shared and collectively created research environment. They engage in presentations and feedback, collective workshops, individual and group mentoring and modular interactions with the curators and other researchers.

      As an educational environment, a.pass opens a space for speculative and experimental modes of practice and critical thinking. The content and the practical apparatus of the program are shaped by the proposals of the a.pass curators, the artistic coordinator and the a.pass researchers.

       

      or

       

      Associate Researcher in the Research Center

      The a.pass Research Center as a platform for advanced research practices in the arts, invites five to six Associate Researchers for a one-year cycle. They follow a part of their research trajectory in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. The Research Center welcomes radical and inventive research methodologies in order to contribute them to the larger a.pass environment and beyond. The Research Center interacts with the a.pass Post-Graduate Program and functions as a resource for methodologies of collaborative research. The Research Center supports and facilitates forms of performative publishing (publications, presentations, exhibitions, etc), experimental research set ups, workshops and collaborations.

      a.pass welcomes researchers with non-academic and academic research affiliations and support structures. Researchers with an existing academic research trajectory (for example PhD in the Arts) have the opportunity to develop the practice-based part of their research within the educational environment of a.pass.

       

      MORE INFORMATION AND LINKS TO THE APPLICATION:

      post-graduate selection criteria

      associate researcher affiliation

       

       


      a.pass
      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: program@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       
    •  apass_logo_sm


      Reclaiming economy

      - it's art

      on self-governing of fairness

      in collaboration with the State of the Arts

      16/03/2018 start 19:00 

      a.pass / Rue Delaunoyestraat 58-60 / 1080 Brussel

       
       
      [caption id="attachment_7469" align="aligncenter" width="620"] live drawing at a forum on critical administration with Kate Rich, 2018[/caption]


      Alberto Cossu / Ronny Heiremans /
      invited by a.pass, Sota and Nicolas Galeazzi

      In the last couple of months a.pass was investigating the impact of economic and institutional conditions onto artistic research practices and the possibilities to impact those conditions through the very same artistic practices. Institutional critique and alternative economic concepts are strongly related when it comes to the creation of differing conditions.

      SOTA, state of the arts, is engaging since several years in influencing cultural policy in Belgium. Now SOTA proposes a yearly summer camp as a gathering of all workers in the cultural sector to discuss the notion of fair practice and the creation of an Almanac as an evolving political instrument. 

      For the evening of March 16 a.pass has invited together with SOTA Alberto Cossu to meet with Ronny Heiremans, who both engage with their practices in different ways of discussing and changing the conditions for artistic practices.

      In the Project CAVEAT Ronny Heiremans and Katleen Vermeir take contracts used in the Belgium art context as a starting point for a reconfiguration of the position of the artist in society. In their investigation they look into the legal, social and artistic consequences of the structuring framework a contract provides and use it as a lens to look at questions of authorship, labour situation, price politics or political solidarity.

      As sociologist and activist, Alberto Cossu in contrast, is situated in the conditions of an occupied space in Italy – the MACAO in Milano that he joined since its inception in 2012. MACAO is an independent center for art, culture and research. Rejecting the creative industry paradigm, and innovating the idea of cultural institutions, MACAO considers art production as a viable process for changing social, political and economic conditions. MACAO developed its own crypto-currency, provides a context for the research on innovative governance and discusses the labour conditions in the cultural sector.

      Ronny Heiremans and Alberto Cossu are meeting each other this evening the first time to discuss principles of self-organisation and the creation of condition under which artistic practice can unfold a reclaimed economy that serves the common livelihood.


        

       sthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.

      a.pass

      Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • conference
    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • NOT_index
    • Volver
    • Back to the order 29 March 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Samah Hijawi, Philippine Hoegen, Gosie Vervloessem, Sarah Santos, Silvia Pereira, and Cecilia Molano
    • Aleppo
    • 29 May 2015
    • 30 May 2015
    • Samah Hijawi, Philippine Hoegen, Gosie Vervloessem, Sarah Santos, Silvia Pereira, and Cecilia Molano will share their practices and perspectives of their research in form or a symposium and bring them in relation to those of guests and collaborators. A symposium that consists of performances, lectures, film screenings and workshops.

      This event is a collaboration with, and will take place at Aleppo.

      Relating to Aleppos current thematic program which is termed ‘Back to the Order’, we understand order and revolution as integral parts of each other, the interdependent counterweights of the device that drives, and is driven by, contemporary society.

      Departing from the different preoccupations of our separate researches we will make inroads towards shared perceptions. We will approach concepts such as the domestic, identity, display and artistic production as complex territories through which the nature of order and its potential counterparts can be analysed and activated.

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • a.pass Basics workshops
    • Untouchable/Unacceptable/Intangible
    • ECOLOGY OF AFFECTS 28 March 2015
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • Pierre Rubio / Geert Opsomer / Pierre Joachim
    • 25 May 2015
    • 29 May 2015
    • case of: Pierre Rubio
    • ECOLOGY OF AFFECTS

       

       

      “The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.”
      Spinoza, ‘Tractatus Theologicopoliticus’, 1670

       

      “There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds”
      Gregory Bateson, ‘Steps to an ecology of mind’, 1972

       

      “There is only desire and the social, and nothing else.”
      Gilles Deleuze-Felix Guattari, ‘Anti-Oedipus’, 1972

       

      “The question of subjectivity is now returning as a leitmotiv. It’s not a natural given any more than air or water. How do we produce it, capture it, enrich it, and permanently reinvent it in a way that renders it compatible with universes of mutant value? How do we work for its liberation that is for its resingularization?
      Felix Guattari, ‘Chaosmosis’, 1992

       

      “A revolution is as much a reorientation of our affective relations as it is of social relations and cannot be one without the other.“
      Jason Read, ‘Economies of Affect / Affective Economies’, 2013

       

       

      Every block, a.pass organizes ‘b-workshops’ that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a collaborative artistic research environment.

      This B-workshop ‘Ecology of Affects’ wants to address critically the production of subjectivity. We will put into discussion Spinoza’s theory of Affect in the ‘Ethics’ and Guattari’s critique of Capitalism's exploitation of Desire by reading closely a series of texts from the 17th up to the 21st century. With the help of two guests, Pierre Joachim and Geert Opsomer, we will study these philosophical and critical key notions but also discover how Pierre and Geert put them into practice and consequently how we can do so as well.

      Can we associate sadness with the outcomes of our capitalist world?
      Are we affected so much by capitalism that we can only sadly survive in what seems to have become its ‘nature’?
      Can we still affect the world?
      What could a joyful passion mean today?
      Is a joyful passion subversive?
      How can we create the conditions for joy to be possible?
      Is it by re-allocating desire that new joys can emerge?
      Can artistic researches produce a change?
      How can agency be created with aesthetic means?
      Could we critically re-combine ethics and aesthetics to reclaim the transformative power of our researches?
      What could be the nature of an ecology of affects that has the potential to produce a change?

      The workshop will make use of an elaborate reader that will be shared with the participants well in time for the workshop.

       

      The workshop is curated by Pierre Rubio

       

       

      Biographies

      Geert Opsomer

      Geert Opsomer is a German philologist, theatre scientist and dramaturg, teacher at the director’s department of the RITS and artistic collaborator of the arts centre CAMPO. Between 2001 and 2007 he was the artistic director of Nieuwpoorttheater in Ghent, which in 2008 fused with the theatre company Victoria to become CAMPO. Within CAMPO Geert Opsomer organizes the Plateau/Platform for Artistic Nomads, which is the artistic research department of CAMPO.

      An extension of this research platform turned into the celebrated CAMPO production ‘A l’attente du Livre d’Or’, selected for the Dutch Theaterfestival in 2010. Together with Johan Dehollander and a strong Belgian-Congolese cast, Opsomer made a joyful-anarchistic assemblage piece about Congolese comedy and Western tragedy. The jury praised the piece as a pioneer in the construction of connections between local and international practices, allowing them to strengthen one another.

       

      Pierre Joachim

      Pierre Joachim studied architecture (la Cambre, Belgium) and philosophy (ULB, Belgium). He has been exploring interactions between ‘theory’ and various practices, from architecture to pedagogy, social work, or dramaturgy. Rather driven by collaborations born from joyful encounters than any specific field of expertise, his main recent activities are writing and research collaborations with psychoanalyst Kathleen Rochlenko, performance and installation creation with Alexandre Le Petit (Verso Natura) and architectural conception. He is actually working on a blog and inquiry project. Spinoza’s Ethics have often offered him a precious tool for thought and collaboration.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Untouchable/Unacceptable/Intangible
    • THIS PLACE 23 March 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Sara Manente / Marcos Simoes
    • a.pass
    • 01 June 2015
    • 05 June 2015
    • THIS PLACE

       The workshop unfolds a series of extra-sensorial practices as tools for collaboration in groups, couples or with objects. The dispositives, for example the telepathic approach, offer the possibility to create a third existence which is ‘a self’, an entity other than us, with its own qualities and ability to perform in an attempt to include chance and other contingencies in the work, to destabilize power relations based on linear logics and to questions the effect of belief and make-belief in a performative environment. Can we create magic by creating the rules for magic to happen? Like an ‘experimental magic’ without magicians? Is it possible to empower an object, a person, a situation through speculation and prediction?

      The workshop will start with a daily practice of writing questions for a tarot reader. What would you like to ask the cards? What do you need to know? How will the formulation of doubts affect you? We will offer three different performative tools to be explored and then appropriated into your own project. These practices were the starting point for the one year project called “This place”, during which we collaborated with 8 artistic couples to make and present 8 performances inspired by ‘paranormal’ experiences between people who know each other in an extra-ordinary way.

      For the workshop “Place this”, we want to discover the transformational powers of this knowledge in different constellations: individually, with objects, in couples, trios, groups. With the stubbornness of ‘the idiot’, we will practice and question again and again opening up the creative process to the material and the immaterial.

       

      this place, Sara Manente, Marcos Simoes : photograph Marcello Mardones


       

       

      Biographies

      Sara Manente

      °1978, lives and works in Brussels.

      Born close to Venice in 1978, she began practising ballet at an early age. In 2003, she completed a degree in Communication Sciences at the University of Bologna with a graduate thesis on Semiotics and Dance before moving to Belgium with a research scholarship at the Univer- sity of Antwerp. In 2007 she attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp (In Situ department) for a year. In 2008 she completed the post-master’s programme of a.pass at deSingel (advanced performance and scenography studies, previously A.P.T).

      Sara Manente works as a choreographer and performer.

      Since 2004 she has made performances, videos and research projects of her own and in collaboration, namely with Marcos Simoes, Ondine Cloez, Michiel Reynaert, Alessandra Bergamaschi, Constanze Schellow, Hwang Kim and the members of Cabra. Some of her works: Democratic forest (research project and workshops, 2008-2009), To park (per- formance installation, 2008-2010), Some performances (video, 2008), Lawaai means Hawaai (trio after two previous projects on noise and dance, 2009), Grand Tourists (experimental in-situ project, 2010), Not not a lecture (lecture performance and publication, 2011), Faire un four (quartet on the making of 4 similar and 4 different, 2011), x: I liked B better/ y: I am 29 too (telepathic experiment between North and South Korea, 2013), This place (a series of performances based on ESP and tarot reading made in two weeks with seven differ- ent artistic couples, 2012-2014) and Rita (video and performance of a joint Cabra project, 2014). As a performer, since 2009 she has been working for Juan Dominguez, Kate McIntosh, Aitana Cordero Vico, Marcos Simoes, Jaime Llopis, Nada Gambier and Gaëtan Bulourde.

      Sara is one of the founding members of the association CABRA vzw facilitating the work of seven artists: Sara Manente, Marcos Simoes, Norberto Llopis, Jaime Llopis, Santiago Ribelles Zorita, Kyung Ae Ro and Varinia Canto Vila

      www.cabra.weebly.com

       

      Marcos Simoes

      °1975, Portugal, lives and works in Brussels.

      Marcos studied civil engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. He attended the intensive course of SNDO and the contemporary dance programme at the University Miguel Hernandez in Altea (Spain) where he started to create his own work. He created and performed

      three pieces in collaboration with Sara Manente: Palyndrome, Eye in the Sky and Instructions. He completed the post-master a.p.t/A. pass in Performing Arts in Antwerp where he presented several works around his concept: The LaughingBody. In 2010 he presents ‘Eskimo’ a piece for 6 performers in Monty and Working Title Platform. In 2011/2012 together with Hwang Kim and Sara Manente they presented ‘‘x: I liked B better / y: I’m 29 too ” at the Festival Bom in Seoul (Korea), and together with the Portuguese choreographic art- ist Lilia Mestre they present ‘Ai! a choreographic project’.

      In 2013/14 he works in different collaboration projects, ‘Proces- sionism’ with the visual artist Marcelo Mardones; ‘This Place’ with Sara Manente and invited guests; and a 2 weeks collaboration Project between CABRA VZW and ETT in Seoul (South Korea).

      As a performer he has worked for Sara Manente, Kyung Ae Ro, Nada Gambier and others. Currently he is working as a performer for Nada Gambier and in a collaboration Project with Artur Castro Freire.

      He’s one of the founding members of the association CABRA vzw fa- cilitating the work of seven artists: Sara Manente, MarcosSimoes, Norberto Llopis, Jaime Llopis, Santiago Ribelles Zorita, Kyung Ae Ro and Varinia Canto Vila.

       

    • [Call] Block 15/I 23 March 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
      apass_logo_sm

      emailer_call_header

       

       call

      FOR ARTISTIC RESEARCH PROJECTS
      POST-MASTER AND PHD LEVEL

       


       

      Deadline: 04/05/2015

      to start in September 2015

      Selection talks : 18&19/05/2015

      (please keep these days free!)

       
       

      if you are working in the performing arts and want to start an artistic research in a professional research environment, free from production constraints,

      or if the concepts of performativity or/and scenography are (relatively) new to you and you want to explore them in-depth, in relation to your own practice

      then a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) can offer you a one year post master program in which you develop your research project. In a context of self-organization and collaboration you create a personal trajectory through workshops, individual mentorings and interactions with the other participants. At the end of this period, you present and communicate your research.

       

       

       

      or if the post master programs a.pass invites artists and theoreticians engaged in a PhD in the Arts to develop independent artistic and transdisciplinary projects producing knowledge and tools relating to the key issues of the a.pass program.

      The a.pass context is designed to give the possibility to develop your skills as an independent and critical researcher and provides you with the context and instruments that answer to your specific questions and needs. Participants of a.pass manage their own research in continuous interaction with the other participants and, by doing so, engage in the organization of the shared curriculum.

       

       

      practical: The a.pass program is a 12-month program consisting of three blocks of four months. The first three months of each block take place within the organized collective research environment. Participants develop their personal trajectory in a constant communication with the other participants and co-ordinators, through participation in workshops, with feed-back from dedicated mentors and through the choice of personal mentors. The last month of each block is open for the further individual development of the research project.

       

       
      take a look! If you would like to take a closer look into our practices, we kindly invite you to come to the next public presentations our currently ending a.pass participants on 29th and 30th May 2014. More information will be available on our website from beginning of May.

       

       

      a.pass

      a.pass - Posthogeschool voor podiumkunsten vzw.
      p/a de Bottelarij / Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: info@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

       

    • conference
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • block 2014/III
    • PHARMAKON Pharmakon: whitch culture?
      13 January 2015
      posted by: Elke van Campenhout
    • 01 October 2014
    • 30 November 2014
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • PHARMAKON

      This Thematics project builds on the notion of ‘pharmakon’ as coined by the contemporary philosopher Bernard Stiegler. In ancient Greece, ‘pharmakon’ was understood both as ‘poison’ and ‘medicine’, and in some cases also as ‘scapegoat’.

       

      The word might mean either the one or the other depending on the context, which implies a certain knowledge, or ‘knowledge-ability’. A skill of dosage and use, witchcraft involving insight and imaginative contextualization.

      At the ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’ conference, a group of artists and theorists will investigate the notion of ‘pharmakon’ in our society. As Stiegler suggests in his analysis of the need for a ‘pharmacology’ to counter the poisonous fumes of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment, it is clear that the fabrication of our culture(s) has urgently to be (re)questioned. What are the categories we use to produce and develop the culture in which we ‘individuate’ ourselves? What is the change in ‘technics’ that is needed to re-imagine our desires, stepping out of ourselves, as ex-isting in the public sphere? What sort of witchcraft is demanded from us, as artists, citizens and thinkers, to come up with the right spells and potions, and to dose our practices to transform poison into medicine.

      The ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture’ conference is part of the Thematics two-month research residency project, organized by Bains Connective, which brings together artists and theorists to work on, share and perform their concerns on this matter. They experiment on developing artistic remedies and toxic fumes, in search of a reformulation of the agency of the artist in contemporary society. In this way the Pharmakon project inserts itself into a growing movement of artistic initiatives that engage more directly in the political sphere, that want to make the public, the other, the citizen, part of their researches, that question how the artistic relates to the world we live in. These artistic interests speak of the willingness to restate desire in its fullness as a societal driving force. A desire that is not reduced to economic drives, but that is structured and transformed in accordance with the practices and thoughts of its members. Or more simply: we speak about set-ups that could inform and produce knowledge, and which could question the drives and urgencies that produce our social agencies.

      Participants in the Thematics residency: Alexandre Le Petit, Flora Pilet, Sophie Quénon, Lilia Mestre, Elke Van Campenhout, Joséphine de Weck, Michiel Vandevelde, Michiel Reynaert, Veridiana Zurita, et al.

      Guests invited to the conference: Bernard Stiegler, Pieter de Buysser, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Maika Lond , ... 

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

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

       

      Partners of the project :

       

      (1) Bains Connective

      Thematics is a two-month residency program for artists and theoreticians, curated by Lilia Mestre within the framework of Bains Connective. Every time the residency addressed another topic, deemed to be urgent or relevant for the current state of (artistic) affairs. During this period, different artists and thinkers share their works, strategies and ideas. The work space Bains Connective creates the initial context and set-up, and offers work spaces and a communal starting point by inviting artists, theoreticians, academics, politicians and activists to add and contribute to the research. As a basis for the exchange, we organize weekly meetings as well as two public encounters, where the participating artists can share their work in a format of their choice. Starting from these basic principles, we work closely together on developing ways to share interests and processes of work.

      Thematics develops for each residency project a strategy of questioning and interviews that follow up and register the artistic processes so as to create a written publication that reflects every Thematics residency. These publications are also a working tool that expresses to necessity to communicate, to speak out, to share the practices, methodologies and artistic trajectories with each other and a larger public.

       

      (2) Institut Nomade

      The activities of the Institut Nomade are fundamentally trans-disciplinary in nature. Concerned with how the notion of "performativity" resonates in both artistic practices and cultural constructions, the Institut conducts research into the ontology of performative language, the relationship between the performer/author and the stage, and the stage itself as a scene of collective individuation and thus a form of micro-politics. The global project of the Institut could be described as an inquiry into "modern culture", that mobilizes the conceptual tools provided by the performative arts, the heritage of J.L Austin's concept of performativity, and Bernard Stiegler's contemporary elaboration of the idea of the "pharmakon". The Institut is concerned with all forms of writing that compose our public voice– forms that we create by and for ourselves. This research takes on a variety of formats including interviews, performances, texts, images, videos, installations, soundscapes, etc. The interaction between these media is organized by rhizomatic systems of writing and by experimental loops of representation that participants are invited to appropriate and reconstruct.

       

      (3) a.pass research center

      a.pass  is an artistic research environment that develops research on performativity and scenography, in an international artistic and educational context. a.pass offers a one-year artistic research training program at post-master level for artists and theoreticians, based on the principles of self-organization, collaboration and transdisciplinarity. a.pass participants develop an independent artistic research project, with a personalized curriculum in a shared and collectively created research environment.

      The a.pass research center develops, documents and archives tools for qualitative and relevant artistic research practices. The research center uses this growing archive to communicate and interact with the artistic and educational field and functions as a forum for the development of a critical approach on
      artistic research. a.pass emphasizes the relation between the research practices and a broader societal field, and encourages engaged transdisciplinary practices.

      In the context of its artistic research center, a.pass offers a tailor-made PhD trajectory for doctoral students that gives the possibility to develop the practice-based part of their PhD research in collective research environment.

       

      (4) Kaaitheater

      The Kaaitheater is a Brussels and international arts centre which has been a leader in theatre, dance, music and performance for over thirty five years.

      A number of artists and companies have been closely associated with the Kaaitheater for many years: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Rosas, Jan Decorte, Jan Lauwers & Needcompany, Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods, Ictus, tg STAN and Tristero, and from abroad Jérôme Bel, Raimund Hoghe, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Jonathan Burrows, The Wooster Group and others. From 2013 to 2016 Eleanor Bauer, Kris Verdonck, Mette Ingvartsen and Ivo Dimchev are our artists in residence.

      Social and ecological topics are a prominent element in Kaaitheater’s work. The Kaaitheater is part of two European networks: Imagine 2020, that focuses on art and climate change, and House on Fire, supporting productions that are intended to contribute to a critical debate on political and social issues.

      The Kaaitheater presents about 75 productions each season and welcomes its visitors to two locations in the canal zone in Brussels: the Kaaitheater itself (the large theatre, on Sainctelettesquare) and the Kaaistudio’s (small theatre and rehearsal studios, near Dansaertstraat).

    • This text was written for the magazine of the Steirischer Herbst Festival (Austria). Although the text addresses the specific spatial situation of PAF (Performing Arts Forum) in Reims (a place where a.pass goes at least once per block for a week during End Week), the thinking and writing process around this text was largely constructed around the notions of space as developed in the series of Settlement workshops that were created by current APC Vladimir Miller, and that greatly influenced the notions of ‘performative space’ and scenography as they are developed in a.pass.

      SPACES AS TOOLS
      One lonely dancer lies meditating on the grass, a challenging philosophical treatise opened on page 213 next to him. From the open windows of the nearby room the sound of a theatre rehearsal, eerily repetitive, its harshness clashing with the idyllic surroundings. The peacocks look through the window of the corner studio at a yoga session. A group of American runaway brides (with fitting gowns) returns from a work session in the nearby woods, their conversations incomprehensible to the uninitiated onlooker. And in every corridor, every time you enter the kitchen, two or more people are discussing politics, the arts, food, practicalities, planning parties, the evening film program, or inviting the others to their showings or work. Not the most typical PAF-day maybe, but surely a possible one.

      PAF stands for Performing Arts Forum: a former convent reoriented towards artists, actionists and thinkers in the French Champagne. The 6400 sq feet building was bought by the Dutch theatre maker Jan Ritsema in 2007 (2008?), and has since then functioned as an open space for artists and theoreticians from over the whole world. On its website, the place introduces itself as:
      - a forum for producing knowledge in critical exchange and ongoing discursive practice
      - a place for temporary autonomy and full concentration on work
      - a tool-machine where one can work on developing methods, tools and procedures, not necessarily driven toward a product
      - a place for experimenting with other than known modes of production and organization of work, e.g. open source production.

      1. The malaise of a generation

      In a way this description echoes the concerns of artists in the performing and other scenes of the last ten years and more. The artistic scene has little by little found itself squeezed between governmental compartmentation (through often ill-fitting and politically motivated subsidy systems) and the seductive call of the enterprise-funded 'creative industries', paving the way for an understanding of the artist as either a well-prepared and policy-aware dossier-writer, or a self-proclaimed entrepreneur totally in line with the neo-liberal ethics of self-realization, mobility and economic common sense.

      Trying to go against the grain of the times, countless artists have expressed the need and the urgency to escape these corsets of survival by pointing out their toxic by-products: the subsidy system in the well-founded European scene has started to create a way of working and an aesthetics that is not primarily based on artistic choice and necessity, but on the possibilities of touring (and reaching your minimum quota of presentations), networking (getting as much prominent arts centres to back up your project), and formatting (ideally a performance should fit as many venues as possible, not be too costly, and be adaptable to the regular programming strategies of the field). The kind of work that escapes these constraints is often overlooked or doesn't find its way into the regular programmation.

      In that sense the self-organized artist model, which depends largely on grants , sponsoring or cooperation with commercial institutions and enterprises might seem a less hypocritical choice for some. And it is true that some company grant systems (Cartier, Siemens, …) have in the last decades built themselves a reputation on supporting often experimental and challenging artists, without posing banal economic constraints on their output. But even in these 'ideal' circumstances, for a lot of artists this kind of recuperation of the artist's position, equalling it to the position of any middle-of-the-road creative worker for any progressive neo-liberal company, does seem to deprive him of any credible critical bite.

      Now, it is not the case that in the time span of the last twenty years nothing has been done to accommodate this malaise in the arts. The (European) subsidiary system for example, has invested a lot of resources in the creation of residency spaces, laboratory situations, exchange programs and learning environments that should fill the gap between the artist's needs and the governmental policies. On a large scale, networking and exchange between artists from different countries has been promoted, festivals have echoed the concerns of the neo-liberalisation of the arts, economy and ecology have entered the arts debates, etc… But in the end, the last word was and is still given to the subsidizer: the one who pays decides. And however close the bureaucratized commissions, jury's, cabinets and programmers might come to an understanding of the arts, their strategies and ideologies will always be primarily oriented towards the survival and sustainability of the institution, on the uni-formization of the field (to make it more efficient and manageable), and on the transparent and seductive promo-talk demanded by the communication departments.

      And, even more importantly, the artistic sector these last years has been cringing under the hot breath of the increasingly right-oriented politics. Recently, in the Netherlands, the funding for the experimental performance sector got all but eliminated. Portugal since one year no longer has a Minister of Culture. France is giving reign to a neo-conservative arts ideology and so forth. Not even speaking about the countless countries in the East that have no budget for the experimental arts scene whatsoever.

      2. Artistic self-organization as a way out of the impasse

      In answer to the above-mentioned reserves, artists everywhere in the world have been working on creating alternative models and frames for the development of their own work. An endeavor that has been tinged by the pull from both the comfort of the subsidized scene, and the self-promoting grandeur of the self-made artist.
      On the one hand for a lot of artists it is hard to survive out of the subsidiary system. Moreover, their dependent statute is often even structurally enhanced by the dole regulation, favoring the artist's special needs by equalling his practice to a gilded form of unemployment. Artists in the well-to-do-countries of today have grown up with the promise of employment, however badly paid. In Belgium, whole weeks are organized under the title First Aid for artist, in which the statute of the beginning artist on the market is discussed. The concern is how to get all these aspiring young creatives working in a field that seems to be overproducing already. Much like the Swiss cows whose milk production largely surpasses the European needs, artists seem to be kept (barely) alive for the wrong reasons. Where the cows are necessary props in the creation of the 'typical' Swiss mountain landscape, the artists kind of function as a band aid for the total lack of political resistance and discussion that rules the current political era.

      So artists have been residency-hopping and networking and realizing themselves like the projects they are, no longer only to sell their goods, but to attain the necessary visibility that will get them invited in think tanks, experimental set-ups and laboratories all over, the one even more critical than the other. However productive these environments might have proved to be, most of these projects come with a price: the working spaces are institutionally tagged, have a limit of validation, have to answer to certain expectations and norms. Just like any other sector in society, the arts have to prove their in- and outcomes, their future visions, their unique selling position, and the originality of their discourse. Not unreasonably, if you follow the logic of the subsidizer. From an artist's point of view, however, these discussion groups and projects often don't reach their goal: for economic reasons the time of working is often too short, or not completely answering the needs of those present. Nor do they feel the need to comply to the desire for the clear profile marketing of the institution inviting them.

      Also, as makers, artists have expressed the need to think of other production systems than the 'typical' career model proposed to the artists in the 1980's. The model of the sole author-artist, inventing his or her own esthetics, has been replaced by a much more critical and historically anchored view on how these artists themselves very quickly become commodities in a system that is in constant search for the 'new'. Artists have started to look for other ways of being together, of producing 'symbolic capital', of developing discourse, that can not so easily be recuperated and branded by the artistic economy. Mixing up recognizable solo identities, artists have been working under collective names, often changing the belonging to the 'group' underway, or working on ongoing researches involving very different participants at every stage. What they put into question is not so much the value of the artistic gesture, but the ownership over the material, the ideas, the producing and creation of the artistic material. Whereas in the practice of the Artist (I represent the model of the sole self-created artist from here on simply by adding the capital A) was largely concerned with the unicity of his production, creating his value on the artist market on the basis of scarcity, newness and shock-value, the artists we talk about in this text are rather concerned with the practices of sharing, of questioning themselves as the centre of gravity, of relating to other (historical, political, economic, discourse) realities. In these contexts, the practice becomes as important as the outcome, the way of organizing the work as important as the work itself, the way of dealing with collaborators a significant part of the trajectory leading up (or not) to a public moment.
      But for this to become a viable artistic practice, another kind of spaces has to be created: spaces that are no longer governed by subsidy policies or economic (un)common sense, but by artists themselves. Places that are not under the reign of profiling and networking, not dubbed as subsidiary placeholders for artistic merit, but simply places to work, that take into account the simple but pressing needs of the artists and thinkers concerned.

      3. Spaces as tools

      It is important at this point to focus a bit more closely on this need for sharing, for flexible collaboration, that seems to encompass a lot of artist's projects in the last decades. In a lot of the PAF discussions over the years, these notions have been put into question: what is the common ground explored here? What is to be shared and in what form? What is the underlying logic of the space? etc…
      Since I just spent three weeks in a space called 'The Settlement', created by artist Vladimir Miller, let us just elaborate a little bit on these notions. As mentioned in the website description of PAF describing itself as a tool, The Settlement as well functioned not so much as a metaphoric space mirroring society, nor as an artistic project to be realized through collaboration, but simply as a 'protospace': an open space filled with non-functional materials, used as a workspace by an unlimited group of people during three weeks time. The participants of this group could rearrange the materials to their own content, and adapt the space every day to the needs of their personal projects. What resulted out of this way of working was a space in constant transition. Momentary moments of clarity, of crystallization of function or meaning (a heap of wooden crates and metal rectangles becoming a recognizable 'desk', three isolation sheets used repeatedly as 'cinema') dissolved into new constructions over the days, charging the space with ever-changing points of focus of attention and activity. What was shared in this settlement was thus not an idea of a theme or a goal, nor a drive for the creation of spaces for 'sociality', but simply the need to work and be of everyone of the participants. In other words, instead of a group of people gathering around a project and a shared belief about what this project could be or lead to, their only stronghod was an idea of 'commonality': a 'mentality of being together', always on the verge of crystallizing into a temporary self-understood community, but always as well dissolving before this point of a shared understanding and identity was achieved.
      If we try to distinguish the community from the communality, I would propose for this text to talk about 'community' as a group that is bounded to a shared value system on the grounds of a recognizable ideology or idea system on which the members of the community agree (or choose to disagree). A community in that sense is based on an initial agreement, however flimsy, and with that agreement comes the appropriation of the individual's contributions, placing them under the banner of a shared territory. In that sense the community is settled, no longer in motion, but as any closed system, in constant dialogue with the outside world.

      (Now, we are talking about an abstract understanding of 'community', since on an individual level, we know we nowadays live under the banner of (often a lot) of very different communities, often in flagrant contradiction to each other on the level of ethics, esthetics and politics. This is exactly what makes agency and decision-making, in and out of the artistic sector, such a difficult endeavor today. But this is another discussion).

      In contrast and in accordance to this understanding of 'community' I would like to place the sense of 'commonality'. Not based on territory (1), commonality has to be understood as a process, as the forming-of-temporary-localities, as a movement on the way to another one. In this context value is not created on the basis of a common belief, but can only be relative to the situation and what is happening in it. Value in this sense can not be recuperated in this temporary zone, it can only be negotiated through the handling of the objects, through the creation of fleeting situations, through the (unspoken) communal debate. Value is, in other words, not dependent on ideological agreement, but can only be understood as 'practice value': whatever enhances the practice and makes it move is valuable for the commonality. Therefore the politics of The Settlement is a politics of circulation, of knowledge and ideas moving from locality to locality, often separated from their original creators, picked up by someone else and left behind again for someone else to find, interpret and restart with.

      In relating this experience to PAF, I think the rephrasing of a space as a tool, as a temporary locality for people to move through, work with and reinterpret, is a valid one. Although radically different in scale and scope, The Settlement and PAF have this in common that they undo the strings attached to artist workspaces as they are mostly understood. The building is both an instrument and a project in itself: whatever you get out of it, you somehow give back to the space, charging it with renewed perspectives and ideas. PAF only has three rules that have to be followed by all residents:
      1. Don't leave traces
      2. Make it possible for others
      3. The do-er decides

      In other words: all residents somehow share a common understanding of the building as an instrument for the development of their personal practice, but every one of them can develop another perspective on what that means. But at the same time, the building is not a silent partner: it is a resistant object, that carries a lot of traces of former use, not always literally materialized, but certainly abundant in the atmosphere, the kind of discussions that prevail, the working attitude, the library, the books sold etcetera… As a privately owned initiative, PAF does carry the stamp of its owner, the critical attitude induced by his presence and legacy. But its sheer size (50 rooms, 15 working spaces) makes any kind of controlled discourse or practice impossible. The uniqueness of PAF probably lies exactly there: that the size and the potential of it gets picked up simultaneously by very different groups of people, which makes it at the same time ungovernable and inspiring. The diverse uses of time (long-time residents mixing with hazardous weekend hoppers), space (the same studio used for performing, midnight dinners, exorcisms and political discussions), and exchange (everything from the lone wolf to the societal preacher), keep the space from closing up, from becoming a territory with a recognizable and forbidding identity. Although three times a year PAF organizes communal activities (the SummerUniversity, WinterUpdateMeeting and SpringMeeting) for more or less restricted participants, even those gatherings are proposed rather as a space for re-thinking and re-arranging than as moments of 'passing on the candle' to the next generation. Also at these moments, the different temporalities become clear within the unlimited body of potential residents: some struggling with questions that were circulating since years already, others looking for a way forward, thus stretching up the current moment towards past and future. Digging up the remains of former discussions for redigestion while planting new seeds at the dinner table.

      (1) The thoughts on territory and locality and the rest of this paragraph are largely based on a conversation with Vladimir Miller in The Settlement

    • Curating as environ-mentalism 'to find a frame, a timing or a situation within which suggestions of others can be realized' tom plischke (1) 1. In this text I would like to focus on a particular form of curatorship: a practice that grew out of (and in opposition to) the 'new' style of programming of the 1980's institutions. An attitude in thinking about curating in which the role of the programmer and the role of the artist start to intertwine. I'd like to talk about a curatorship that tries to redefine the boundaries put up by the institutions that were built for the production modes and logic of a generation of autonomous artists, a rethinking of the role of the institution by introducing the notions of vulnerability, risk and imperfection into the programming idiom, and a translation of the 'relational esthetics' of the visual arts towards a more ecological phrasing of the time and space shared by the performers, 'spectactors', public members and the resisting (art)objects they encounter. An important experience for me in my role of spectator, and a starting point for this ramble through the focus points of my memory, was the 10 day performance event BDC/Tom Plischke and Friends organized in 2001 in the temporary site of the Beursschouwburg in Brussels (which was at that point being renovated): the BSBbis. Talking to then dance programmer Carine Meulders, it became clear to me that this project already introduced a lot of elements that in the next 10 years would become important tools in rethinking the performance arts notions of curatorship and the role of the artist/curator, but also the re-creation of the institution by introducing derogatory practices within its territory (another use of space, time, and the distinction between performers and audience members), and another way of thinking the social body of participants of the environment created by (but not limited to) the programmed events. Practically BDC/Tom Plischke & Friends started as the idea to show two of the BDC performances (Affects and (Re)SORT), while at the same time creating a completely new environment of parallel performances, workshops, discourse sessions, concerts , films and informal encounters. Collaborators to this projects were artists like Marten Spangberg, Hygiene Heute, Alice Chauchat, Davis Freeman, Lilia Mestre. There was a theoretical programme with workshops organized by Jeroen Peeters and Steven De Belder with contributions from Gerald Siegmund, Jan Ritsema, Stefanie Wenner, Kattrin Deufert etc... The project ran for 10 days, 24 hours a day, and invited both artists and audience members to share the space not only for the performances and workshops, but also to spend the time in-between together, even spending the night at the venue, maximalizing the potential of the unexpected, of the informal encounter, of experiencing the changing atmosphere of the space-at-work/at-leisure. An important factor in this project was the fact that it was set up initially without a definite space in mind: the regular Beursschouwburg was at that time in reconstruction, and the working of the theatre had not yet found another location, nor was it clear if another theatre space was exactly what the artistic team needed at that point. In that sense the project that was being developed in an important degree also changed the thinking about the institution-in-transition, and the project location BSBbis (in a relatively un heimlich part of Brussels)also became the temporary location for the adventurous working of the Beursschouwburg in the years before their move back to the renovated theatre in the centre. Two timings in this sense were developing simultaneously: the creation of the project, and the search for a location, and both logics became intertwined on the crossroads of the need for mobility and flexibility of the programme and its realization. What was important in the realization of this project was the coming together of different social bodies: the first 24h group of 60 artists, opening up to a wider group of participants for the workshops and discourse sessions and folding open to the 'regular' public around performance time. Interesting in the thinking about the role of the curator in this case was the fact that Tom Plischke himself spent a lot of the most 'public' moments together with Kattrin Deufert in a reenactment of Andy Warhol's Sleep in bed in the café, preferring the nightly hours for experiencing the 'other' space of the BSB bis, another kind of performativity only visible to the night watcher or another sleepless soul. The traditional 'visibility' of the curator (as we know it from the classical view on curatorship in the visual arts, where the curation, in itself an artistic gesture, is signed and recognized) was broken up in the working of the project, by the curator giving up his central function, only shaping the timing and the situation of the event, but not the content frame that had to be filled. In other words: the curation was not so much about creating an agenda for discussion but in negotiating the format of the agenda in the first place. What these 10 days also produced were the blurry boundaries between 'performance' and 'daily life', between social rituals and performative work, between production time and performance time, reevaluating the value of the moment, of the difference between 'full' and 'empty' time. As Tom Plische said himself: 'I think that every collaboration has its time and that you learn throughout the collaboration to discover its mechanics.'(1) He was talking about BDC in this quote and not specifically about the BDC-event, but as a reference point in understanding the mechanics of the kind of curatorship that would be developed more intensely in the years to come it is an important one. The curatorship not only being about bringing together works of art, creating different resonances and echoes, rethinking one work through the other, thinking about differences and repetitions, but also about creating openings and weaknesses in the curating, allowing vulnerability and 'empty moments' to be fully part of the experience. The importance of this stance on curatorship is that it takes a clear distance from the power and control strategies of the regular performing arts field, allowing risk to enter into the project set-up, and putting into question not only the authorship of the artist/curator, but also the market value of the artistic product. Again Tom Plischke: 'The utopia probably doesn't consist of creating a temporary community or communitas. Rather it shows that if we gather for a performance, every momentary created element is part of the social or communicative system that we set up together. If you look at it from the point of view of Luhmann's system theory you know that there are only these momentary elements and not also something like an overall system. The possibility of failure, vulnerability, is there when you no longer know when you will lose your ground. That is what is important to me: to introduce the conviction that the system for which the public pays and that in fact is created by the performers and the public together, at the same time is not there at all.'(1) The BSB bis event had a follow-up in the arts centre Vooruit in Ghent in 2002: b-visible, a 72 hours event, curated by Tom Plischke, Kattrin Deufert and Jeroen Peeters. This time the project had the theoretical content-focus of queerness and visibility, and also in this case the project inspired a different kind of working and curating within the institution: the 'intensification' of performance events, transdisciplinary programming and parcours work, folding open the building and showing it in different states of living and working, became one of the driving forces of the artistic programming team of Vooruit in the years to come. 2. Curating as institutional prosthesis and critique To understand this kind of curating and even the 'institutionalization' of these forms of curatorship, we have to take a look at the scene as it was at that point. As you could read in the interviews with Hilde Teuchies and Hannah Hurtzig elsewhere in this issue, the 1980's had produced arts centres and later on as well subsidized work spaces for artistic production and research, but with a new gulf of artists entering the scene, with the need of rethinking the disciplinary boundaries, and the cry for a more 'holistic' thinking about arts practice and discourse development, these institutions proved not always to be the ideal spaces for rethinking production parameters and disciplinary boundaries. A lot of these spaces by the beginning of the new millennium had found their specific ways of cyclic programmation, working with yearly program books and subscriptions. For the new generations of artists that no longer (wanted to ) fit the institutional agenda's, it was important to find new formats of working. On the other hand, also another generation of programmers wanted to find a way of breaking open the institutional formatting to once again free the space for the artists. It is in that middle field, in this open space, that the programmer and the artist/curator found each other: in the want of the programmer to challenge the ways of the system, and in the need of the artist to escape the programming logic of the subsidiary system (first you get a residency in a workspace, then you get (not) picked up by one of the bigger arts centers, etc...). The need to break out of this production logic produced a kind of solidarity movement within the artist community to translated itself into different artist initiatives, that all in their own ways, tried to break open the logic of the arts scene market. An example of this is 'Praticable', an initiative created in 2005 by Alice Chauchat, Frédéric de Carlo, Frédéric Gies, Isabelle Schad and Odile Seitz, as an answer to programmer's demands. The 'open collective' share no more than body practices, out of which each member can create his/her own work, in collaboration or not with other Praticable (2) members. But the interesting part is that whenever one of them is programmed, they program one of their colleagues as a 20 minute opening programme to their own show. The curatorial aspect here has nothing to do with content, nor with a specific kind of esthetics, but everything with reclaiming the fundaments of the production mechanisms of the performance scene. In Belgium, these curatorial initiatives rarely thrive outside of the institutional framework. More often than not we could speak about a curatorial redistribution of the institutional: the artist/curator claims his/her position within an (or more) arts house(s), and than re-distributes the means his position produces with a larger number of networked artists and thinkers. It is a way of working that is sustained by for example a workspace like nadine(3) in Brussels, who 'lends' its house and (part of its)budget for six months to an artist/curator that will in these months open up his working to other artists, opening up for public moments every now and then and to varying groups of interested, participating or involved 'spectactors'. Talking to artists these last years, the remark that always comes back is that they want to 'escape' the institutional logic that renders them passive, that makes them wait in the row to be 'picked up', be 'chosen', to go through all the predescribed steps to become a recognized artist. Not only do a lot of them no longer aspire to this notion of 'the artist', since they are involved in rewriting the rules for artistic authorship in complex ways of collaborative and/or communal practice that defy the programming system, but they also want to get rid of the frustrating passivity they find themselves in when confronted with the ways of the subsidiary system. Not in the least since this system seems to be crumbling down a bit more every year. In that sense the curatorial position regains its good old etymology of hospitality, of 'taking care' of the networked community. But on the other hand it also creates a new paradigm for the re-distributer, the artist/curator who is at the same time claiming his vulnerability by offering an empty frame for working by sending out an (open) invitation to the scene, and defending his position as the creator of this frame as an art work in itself. It would bring us too far to analyze all the different possible models of re-distribution here, or to define the criteria for 'good' or 'bad' positioning between the institution and the independent field. But it is certain that in every one of these projects the boundaries are put into question again, in the best cases producing a sense of renewal within the institution, as well as in the artistic and curatorial practices of all the participants. 3. What we see happening in the performance scene is thus a transition from curating the artists, over curating the art works (as it happened in the two Klapstuk festivals for contemporary dance, curated by Jerôme Bel in 2003 and 2005, and claimed by him as his 'art work' in a newspaper interview)to the curation of a space, of a social body, shared by artists, audience members, and 'art objects'. A space in negotiation and transition, under constant threat of on the one hand folding into itself or on the other opening up to the spectacular, the easy-to-consume festivalitis of the arts. It is a space that demands time and attention for a sense of belonging (beit critical or engaged, active or passive) to grow, that bridges the all-too-easily claimed positions of the artist, programmer, spectator or critic. An extraordinary example of this kind of curating was achieved by André Lepecki in his two In-Transit festivals in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Although in this case his curatorship had a clear discourse stamp - colored by (neo)post-colonial performance themes, and in that sense certainly was more than an empty box for gathering and exchange - his creation within the quite heavily institutional frame of the peculiar architecture of the Haus of an open house for discussion ( opening up out of the Lab sessions (the first year assisted by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, the second year self-organized), interacting through the public discussions, entering into the fabric of the bar discussions) was a beautiful example of how even within the institution the rules can be bent in such a way as to produce a subtly different common ground to work on. Artists and theoreticians, lab students and critics sharing the same space for a prolonged period of time, for discussions, concerts, parties, eating in the garden, and working, broke the frame of the 'festival' as consumerist high-point of the cultural year, and produced a quite different, vulnerable working space that didn't fall into the trap of easily created critical oppositions. Instead what appeared was a generous atmosphere for engaged thinking and working, always bumping into the prickly theme of the festival's programmation: the resistance of the object. Understood out of the postcolonial context the festival referred to and the distinctly non-Western attendance of the artist and theoreticians, this thinking frame was in itself challenging enough not to have to refrain to the well-known strategies of 'interesting' discussion, which are mainly quoting and opposition. In-Transit was an example of an 'environmentalist' approach to curation, a careful ecological balancing exercise between given elements, the creation of a frame for the formation of a social body in constant transformation, and the channels for the inspiration and flow of knowledge to find its way to the different sub-groups of interests participating in the festival. What made that this festival didn't get trapped in the festivalitis context, (unlike for example the Trance festival organized by HAU a couple of years ago), was its attitude, its openness instituted by the curatorial organization of space and time, by the distribution of proximity and accessibility of the different participants groups, by the care for the food, the library, the focusses of attention. In that way the difference between working and watching, between practicing theory and performance, between participants and audience members was minimalized, without giving up on the challenge, the invitation for positioning yourself within the given parameters. Here, as in the BDC example, the space for the arts was stretched out into the surrounding park, the cafetaria, the hall ways and the metro back to the hotel. 4.In short, if I speak in this text about an understanding of curatorship in the performing arts, I speak about a very specific understanding of curatorship: a shared curatorship, putting into question the authorial roles and introducing new potentials for exchange and sharing of (artistic) material, a curatorship that extends the invitation to rethink the ecology of the arts system from within, without introducing definite new ideological standpoints or stubborn critical certainties. A curatorship not so much as a statement but as a redistribution of power that makes us rethink the fabric of our social bodies and belonging. A curating of the now, in the moment of its unfolding. I like the definition Nigel Thrift gives of a rethinking of a political attitude in his 'Non-Representational Theory': 'a potentiality that is brought into being only as it acts or exists in the interstices of interaction'. If this is so, the whole idea of curating is no longer based on fixed points in space, performances in venues. The real curating is the non-curated part of the interstices, of the places in-between, of the potential of the situation for changing one's attitude, one's mind or one's sense of belonging. The curatorial practice in that sense opens up cracks in the system in the space, where things can happen that were not programmed nor foreseeable. Encounters between people, between people and objects, architecture, history, thoughts and ideas roaming the space that can be picked up by anyone, rephrased and relaunched in another conversation, left as a trace for someone else to pick up, etcetera. The environmentalism is about allowing for that to happen. In a space like that, the role of the curator and the artist become interchangeable, as does the role of the spectator. Since the curatorial attitude is one of creating a space in which anyone could feel empowered to start creating or changing it by their input, the spectator is confronted with a serious challenge here, albeit possibly in the guise of a somewhat obscure invitation. It is an invitation to allows them to get affected by the circumstances, to actively open up to this potential change, not necessarily by actively getting out there, but by opening up their perspectives on what might happen. It is this oscillating promise that creates the space and the social body within it. This kind of unspoken promise that something is going on, connecting all elements within the given parameters, rendering palpable the intuition that any kind of change happening within it also creates a change in the whole of the constellation. The radical change in the position of the spectator, is one of attitude, is precisely that he leaves behind his position and starts looking for a connection, that he inscribes himself in the bigger story that is being written, not so much for him, but with him. Although this might sound as a bit of an ideal situation, with the right set-up of time and space, allowing for gaps and interstices, and (very importantly) including the whole organizational team in adapting and communicating this attitude, it has proven itself to be possible. At that point the curatorial politics are no longer superficially provoking an (un)wanted interactive dynamic between spectators and performers, but about allowing them to rethink their role in the whole. Whatever is being said or done in that space is no longer an abstract message sent out to an abstract receiver, but becomes a piece of constantly changing information, that passes through every individual present in a personal, although non-autobiographical, way. It is for him to pick it up or leave it stranding, to make a choice or give over to the flow, to be critical, enthusiastic, a glitch in the circulation, or a conductor or the environmental energy. But he will know that whatever position he chooses to take on will in some way change the outlook of the constellation. (1) Translation of fragment out of 'De belofte van 'het'' (The promise of 'it'): Tom Plischke in interview with Rudi Laermans , Carine Meulders and Kattrin Deufert, in relation to the performance BDC/Tom Plischke and Friends in BSB bis, 2001. Complete text can be found in the anthology of Rudi Laermans on www.sarma.be (2) www.praticable.info (3) www.nadine.be Elke Van Campenhout

    • "Other than the ‘artist’s research’, artistic research overwrites the isolation and the hermetics of art production in the classical sense, in addressing in one way or another a socially relevant problematics. This kind of artistic research opens up new ways for the creation of a ‘generous cultural memory’."

       

      1. 'artistic research’ 

      To clarify what kind of research a.pass sustains, a minimum of conceptual transparency is needed. When we combine the terms ‘research’ and ‘artistic’, most of the time we are dealing with a research ON the arts (art history, musicology, theatre sciences, aspects of cultural sociology, esthetics etc...) or a research IN the arts (a research that is part of a (regular) artistic practice). What we in a.pass consider as artistic research - a term that is often understood in reference to the Anglo-saxon models for practice-based research - often is the result of a research In the arts, but cannot be reduced to it. a.pass doesn’t want to limit its range of research to the ‘artist research’ full stop: the necessarily research-oriented attitude that accompanies any kind of serious artistic endeavour, which does not necessarily have any link to the communication and valorization of research results as it is demanded in an academic context. ‘Research’, as it is understood in the artistic practice, is an evident part of this practice which allows for a result-oriented reflection on the work, or in other words: a research oriented towards the production of the art work as a product, as a repertory and/or as an oeuvre.

      In the a.pass environment, and in a playful questioning of the ‘academic’ research mind-set, this individual artist is not the sole focus of attention, or at least not in the sense that we perceive our researchers as artists tout court. An artist research has an inherent logic and validity, but does not necessarily have a need to be communicative to an outside community in any other form than through the production of art works. a.pass reflects on a research in the arts that is more than a report - in the art work itself or in the accompanying dissertation - of the individual research of an artist. What we consider an artistic research project is rather:

      ‘a new practice in the arts, which differs from the individual artist practice, as well as from the art historical or scientific research practice. One researches not only the art through the art works, but the functioning of art and the breadth of the art practice by way of interdisciplinary interventions in the (semi-)public, societal domain. Artistic research is an interdisciplinary concentration around a ‘binding’ problem that catches the attention of a pluriform group of participants.’ (Jouke Kleerebeezem, De Witte Raaf)

      This means that a question in the research of a.pass is always situated in a broader context than that of the sole artist: a lot of the questions that are posed in a.pass generate collective discussions and critique, find their way (partly) into other researches or attempt temporary coalitions in the defining and/or broadening up of a certain problematics. Important in this environment is the shared reflection concerning ways of working, diverse understandings of artistic research, the development of (post-disciplinary) perspectives and the experimentation with methodologies and strategies. The work of the artistic researcher does not coincide with the work of the artist in the sense that it is self-conscious, and explicitly communicates and circulates this self-reflection within a wider group of stakeholders.

      In other words, the emphasis in this kind of research is not so much on the conception and production of an art work - although this undeniably and unavoidably is part of the whole of the research - but rather on a questioning that puts the individual art practice and even the recognizable mono-discipline in a wider perspective. This kind of research originates from and builds on the demands and problematics of a shared debate, and can be approached by different specialist researchers, each addressing the question out of his own domain. The length, the quality criteria, the form, the communication strategies and the required ‘relevance’ of the research - and thus also the understanding of the requirements of the PhD-project that might eventually result out from it - are thus in principle dependent on the context and have to be negotiated on a project base between the researcher and the institution(s) involved. It is in this case very important to recognize a wider ‘public’, the potential users of this research, as a partner in this trajectory, and to develop the appropriate communication channels to make this participation possible.

       

      2. “A new art terrain escapes in the best case scenario the doom of splendid isolation, WITHOUT losing the special and meaningful privilege of unusefulness that characterizes the symbolic practice.” (Jouke Kleerebeezem) 

      Other than the ‘artist’s research’, artistic research overwrites the isolation and the hermetics of art production in the classical sense, in addressing in one way or another a socially relevant problematics. This kind of artistic research opens up new ways for the creation of a ‘generous cultural memory’. But at the same time the societal relevance of this research cannot coincide with its utilitarian value, since the direct impact of the research practice and reflection necessarily develops through artistic, affective gestures of experimentation and communication that resonate with, but never answer to, the concrete questions posed within the societal fabric. This kind of research thus will only influence the daily social, political, economic or scientific reality by a detour, through the unsettling of its self-reflection and imagination(s). This independent position, free from any preconditioned political preconceptions, economic value or socially determined relevance is a necessary and undeniable characteristic of this research practice.

      More than a pragmatic laboratory for the production of answers on societal questions, the research lab that is a.pass offers the possibility to construct an ‘general intellect’: a way of working wherein researchers collectively give form to diverse practices to produce and articulate knowledge in an open, shared research environment.

       

      3. ‘Old cultural dichotomies have come to collapse: those of knowledge and imagination, thinking and doing, language and image, truth and illusion, theory and practice, object and process.” (Camiel Van Winkel)

      In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that the development of this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the art practice does take a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge.

    •  

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Audrey Cottin
      Danny Neyman
      Hektor Mamet
      JeremiahRunnels
      Kleoni Manousakis
      Mavi Veloso
      Philippine Hoegen
      Samah Hijawi
      Sara Santos
      Tinna Ottesen
      Yaari Shalem

       


      Research End Presentations

      Damla Ekin Tokel
      Hans Van Wambeke
      Rareş Crăiuţ
      Stef Meul 

       

       

      Research Centre Researchers

      Adriana La Selva
      Cecilia Molano
      Mala Kline
      Ruth S. Noyes,
      Veridiana Zurita

       


      Partners

      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Ana Hoffner
      Antonia Baehr
      Daniel Blanga-Gubbay
      Elke van Campenhout
      Emma Cocker
      Eric Thielemans
      Lilia Mestre
      Mariella Greil
      Nikolaus Gansterer
      Pierre Rubio

       


      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout
      Nicolas Galeazzi

       

      Mentors

      Geert Opsomer
      Kristien Van den Brande
      Peter Stamer
      Pierre Rubio

       

       

       

       

      ‘CONDITIONS FOR THE EMERGENCE OF POETICS’
      curated by Lilia Mestre (Associate Program Curator) and Nicolas Galeazzi (Program Coordinator)

      The proposal is to plunge into the conditions for the emergence of poetics. Poetics used here as acts that transform our ways of perceiving, situations that invite another understanding of ‘things’.

       

       

      14 / 01 -19 / 03 / 2015


      ‘PERFORM BACK SCORE’
      Weekly Practice by Lilia Mestre


      This score is a proposal to communicate through performance throughout the block. It focuses on performance as a tool for the transformation of thought, intuition, desire, referentiality, practice into a communication medium. How to introduce exposure, playfulness, risk, generosity, exchange, fuck fear, contamination and precision in our way of communicating? How does this communication produce desire? To whom, where and how is this desire directed? What is the intensity/quality of it? What is the political agency of it?
      The aim is to develop systems to practice the staging of philosophy, critical exposure and the rhetorics inherent to any body, object, word, situation. It is a working score. Taking as a principle that the artwork raises questions and doesn’t give answers I would like to propose a Q&A in 9 sessions where we can just perform. The series of performances will function as replies that raise (an)other(s) question(s) or problematic (s). This score will also be a documentation practice that questions performance as a document.

       

       

      05 / 01 - 09 / 01 / 2015


      ‘REPERTOIRE’
      Workshop by Eric Thielemans


      For the last couple of years my artistic practice became more research based and reflective, and my work was touched by that evolution. The workshop deals with the notion(s) of repertoire. Of what stuff are they made? How did they come about? It will be a first time for me to adapt the questions and reflections to a wider and multidisciplinary field of expertise and practices.
      Repertoire(s) is a research and reflective workshop in which I see us all, like a bunch of passionate amateur entomologists , observe, index, taxonomize, and share the constitutive phenomenons of our life with our craft and the repertory of skills, tools, techniques, practices that we use to build that life. Furthermore we will investigate various strategies and ways to weave the sensibilities, disciplines and practices of each participant together into meaningful wholes or collective spaces and cosmologies.
      First the focus will lie on each of us individually. After that we will dive into group related observations. How do we behave as a group? What’s the repertoire of the group? Off course this separation individual-group is artificial and not always easy to keep but I think it will give us a strategy, plan, focus and ground during the work.
      At the end of the workweek, we will propose a showing of the work in which there will be place for each individual to share and propose some of his/her findings and reflections in whatever way suitable as well as there will be group propositions.

       

       

      19 / 01 - 23 / 01 / 2015


      ‘PERFORMANCE / PERFORMATIVITY / SUBJECTS / OBJECTS’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Pierre Rubio and Elke van Campenhout


      ‘Performance / Performativity / Subject / Object’ is a b-workshop: it covers some of the basic knowledges we share on an (almost) daily basis in a.pass, and that need some in-depth attention. In this block we will read texts and discuss the problematics from the point of view of objects and subjects: how does an object perform its objectness and how does it perform us. In other words: how does the object perform our subject-ness? And how does the subject perform the object? Or: how can we replace our subjectness by objectness and what does that entail?
      In other words, although the basic performativity texts like the ones of Judith Butler and the speech act theory of Austin will certainly play a role in the backseat, in these reading sessions we will concentrate more specifically on object oriented philosophies like the ones of Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, the ‘queer phenomenology’ of Sara Ahmed, go deeper into the concept of ‘compositionism’ as coined by Bruno Latour, and study the continuity between materiality and immateriality by reading some from ‘Action and Agency in Dialogue’ by François Cooren.

       

       


      02 / 02 - 06 / 02 / 2015


      ‘TOOLS FOR ARTISTIC RESEARCH - BECKETT’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Ana Hoffner


      The workshop starts from the assumption that the work of Samuel Beckett can offer a variety of tools for contemporary forms of artistic research. In the workshop we will focus on absurdity, melancholy, exhaustion, sense/nonsense and emptiness as main signifiers of Beckett’s work for stage, TV and film. We will watch and analyse selected scripts, dialogues, spatial set-ups and performances in order to transform them into our own experiments, exercises and techniques using body, space, camera and text. The challenge of the workshop will be to make those categories mentioned above appear as twofold: as artistic concepts from the past but also as embodied experiences and potential tools for our own artistic research. Each day we will focus on a different category from Beckett’s work in order to transform it, translate it and develop a better understanding of the way we as artist, performers and choreographers can use them in the present.

       

       

       

      23 / 02 - 27 / 02 / 2015


      ‘CHOREO-GRAPHIC FIGURES - DEVIATIONS FROM THE LINE’
      workshop by Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Emma Cocker


      How might one devise a system of notation alert to the real-time circumstances of the practicing within practice, foregrounding process, and emphasizing the durational ‘taking place’ of something happening (live)? What forms of notation could be developed for articulating that which resists articulation, for that which is pre-articulation, or a form of representation for the non-representational? How can a form of notation communicate the instability and mutability of the flows and forces within practice, without rendering them still or static, without fixing that which is contingent as a clearly readable or literal sign?
      To explore the performative character of notation, we practice kinetic as well as graphic modes of inscription, expanded tactics beyond apparent physical limitations (of the mind, the hand, pencil, and paper), attending to the integration of time, sound, movement, and narration. We propose the concept of the choreo-graphic figure, for investigating how the embodied practice of choreographic performance (in an expanded sense) might become a tool of inscription and notation in itself. The choreo-graphic figure is conceived as a notational event, incorporating the potential of both movement and materiality, a sense of both temporality and spatiality. Our shared quest is both for a system of notation for honoring the process of figuring (as a live investigative event) and for “choreo-graphic” figures for making tangible and communicating these significant moments within the unfolding journey of collaborative practice. We seek modes of notation between the lines, interested in the interval or gap between the choreo + graphic, sign + non-sign, visual + textual, extensive + intensive, embodiment + disembodiment, movement + materiality, being + becoming.

       


      02 / 03 - 06 / 03 / 2015


      ‘CONDITIONS FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN (LATENT PERFORMANCES)’
      workshop by Daniel Blanga-Gubbay

      Instead of thinking of the possible as an empty space, we should maybe see it as a space designed with conditions. Latency names the state of something ready to happen, ready to emerge. Within this space, something will happen: can we still be responsible for creating this space, without taking care of its result?
      This workshop puts first into question what does mean an act of transformation. Well beyond the notion of performing arts, performance can perhaps simply be thought of as any act that can modify the coordinates of the given. If we imagine reality to be a surface made of endless inclinations that determine movements and trajectories within it, then the proper task of performance is perhaps that of constructing the gesture that can refigure the surface for a while, releasing unimagined lines, opening up gaps between the permitted and the possible.
      How is it possible to go beyond the idea of creating something to suddenly create a space ready for the emergence of something unspecific to happen? By merging theory and practice, working both through interventions in given and constructed space – and through the categories of space of accident, risk, love – these days investigate not only the question "what is the condition for the emergence of an action", but eventually "what does it mean to create (and abandon) a space filled with unforeseen possible actions?"

       

       

      09 / 03 - 14 / 03 / 2015


      ‘WHEN THIS YOU SEE REMEMBER ME’
      workshop by Antonia Baehr


      In this workshop, we will investigate how scores can function as a constitutive factor for kinship relations. We will write scores as gifts to each other, and I will share some of the “make-up productions” working methods with you.
      We will make ourselves familiar on a practical level with the use of scores for performance. We will read and execute a number of found scores: historical ones (from John Cage’s Songbooks for ex.) and contemporary ones (from the projects Laugh, and Abecedarium Bestiarium, among others), some infamous and others entirely unheard of. We will write, interpret and perform scores for each other, pass them on, turn them literally upside down while swapping roles and places.
      Between the hierarchical pyramidal structure to the collective, there is an endless plurality of forms of collaboration possible. This workshop examines the boundaries between score/interpretation, rehearsal/performance, director/performer, and audience/presentation. This workshop’s focus is an investigation through praxis.

    • In this workshop, we will investigate how scores can function as a constitutive factor for kinship relations. We will write scores as gifts to each other, and I will share some of ‚ “make up productions‚” working methods with you.

      We will make ourselves familiar on a practical level with the use of scores for performance. We will read and execute a number of found scores: historical ones (from John Cage’s Songbooks for ex.) and contemporary ones (from the projects Laugh, and Abecedarium Bestiarium, among others), some infamous and others entirely unheard of. We will write, interpret and perform scores for each other, pass them on, turn them literally upside down, while swapping roles and places.

      Performing, directing, writing and interpreting scores ‚ - how to collaborate? How can we work together? Between the hierarchical pyramidal structure to the collective, there is an endless plurality of forms of collaboration possible. This workshop  examines the boundaries between score/interpretation, rehearsal/performance, director/performer, and audience/presentation. This workshop’s focus is an investigation through praxis.

      * Gertrude Stein 

       

      Biography:

      Antonia Baehr is a choreographer. What characterizes her is a non-disciplinary work and a method of collaboration with different people, using a game-structure with switching roles: each person is alternately director / author / host and performer / guest for the other one.

      1994 she co-founded the Berlin-based performance group "ex machinis". She graduated in Film- and Media Arts at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin with Valie Export (1996) and obtained a DAAD-grant and a Merit Scholarship for the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. There she completed her Master in Performance with Lin Hixson of the performance group Goat Island and began collaborating with William Wheeler. Since 2000 she is based in Berlin. She was co-organizing "Labor Sonor", experimental music and performance series, at KuLe from 2001 to 2003, and co-hosted the festival "Radioriff" that took place in December 2003 at Ausland, Berlin. From 2006 until 2008 she was associated artist in residence at "Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers" in France. In 2008 she published her book and her vinyl "Rire / Laugh / Lachen". From March to May 2013, the Beursschouwburg in Brussels curated a three-month program that included performances, films and an exhibition: "make up - at Antonia Baehr and Werner Hirsch's table". This focus program featured works by artists who have been collaborating with Hirsch and Baehr in various and switching roles for many years, as well as a wide selection of works by Baehr and Hirsch themselves. Her book "Abecedarium Bestiarium - Portraits of affinities in animal metaphors" came out in January 2014.

      Antonia Baehr's productions include: "Holding Hands" (2001), "Un après-midi" (2003), "Cat Calendar" together with Antonija Livingstone (2004), "Larry Peacock" co-produced by Sabine Ercklentz and Andrea Neumann (2005), "Merci" (2006), "Rire / Laugh / Lachen" (2008), "For Faces" (2010), "My Dog is My Piano" (2012), "Abecedarium Bestiarium" (2013), "The Wildes" together with Ida Wilde (Keren Ida Nathan) (2014).

      Antonia Baehr is the producer of the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, and the composer Henry Wilt.

    • performative publishing
    • project
    • research center
    • seminar
    • block 2015/III
    • PHARMAKON 11 December 2014
      posted by: Elke van Campenhout
    • 15 October 2015
    • 15 December 2015
    • PHARMAKON

      Pharmakon : whitch culture ?

       

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

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

       

      Pharmakon: whitch culture?

      This Thematics project builds on the notion of ‘pharmakon’ as coined by the contemporary philosopher Bernard Stiegler. In ancient Greece, ‘pharmakon’ was understood both as ‘poison’ and ‘medicine’, and in some cases also as ‘scapegoat’. The word might mean either the one or the other depending on the context, which implies a certain knowledge, or ‘knowledge-ability’. A skill of dosage and use, witchcraft involving insight and imaginative contextualization.

      At the ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’ conference, a group of artists and theorists will investigate the notion of ‘pharmakon’ in our society. As Stiegler suggests in his analysis of the need for a ‘pharmacology’ to counter the poisonous fumes of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment, it is clear that the fabrication of our culture(s) has urgently to be (re)questioned. What are the categories we use to produce and develop the culture in which we ‘individuate’ ourselves? What is the change in ‘technics’ that is needed to re-imagine our desires, stepping out of ourselves, as ex-isting in the public sphere? What sort of witchcraft is demanded from us, as artists, citizens and thinkers, to come up with the right spells and potions, and to dose our practices to transform poison into medicine.

       

      The ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture’ conference is part of the Thematics two-month research residency project, organized by Bains Connective, which brings together artists and theorists to work on, share and perform their concerns on this matter. They experiment on developing artistic remedies and toxic fumes, in search of a reformulation of the agency of the artist in contemporary society. In this way the Pharmakon project inserts itself into a growing movement of artistic initiatives that engage more directly in the political sphere, that want to make the public, the other, the citizen, part of their researches, that question how the artistic relates to the world we live in. These artistic interests speak of the willingness to restate desire in its fullness as a societal driving force. A desire that is not reduced to economic drives, but that is structured and transformed in accordance with the practices and thoughts of its members. Or more simply: we speak about set-ups that could inform and produce knowledge, and which could question the drives and urgencies that produce our social agencies.

       

      Participants in the Thematics residency:

      Alexandre Le Petit, Flora Pilet, Sophie Quénon, Lilia Mestre, Elke Van Campenhout, Joséphine de Weck, Michiel Vandevelde, Michiel Reynaert, Veridiana Zurita, et al.

       

      Guests invited to the conference:

      Bernard Stiegler, Pieter de Buysser, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Maika Lond , ...

       

      Partners of the project :

       

      (1) Bains Connective

      Thematics is a two-month residency program for artists and theoreticians, curated by Lilia Mestre within the framework of Bains Connective. Every time the residency addressed another topic, deemed to be urgent or relevant for the current state of (artistic) affairs. During this period, different artists and thinkers share their works, strategies and ideas. The work space Bains Connective creates the initial context and set-up, and offers work spaces and a communal starting point by inviting artists, theoreticians, academics, politicians and activists to add and contribute to the research. As a basis for the exchange, we organize weekly meetings as well as two public encounters, where the participating artists can share their work in a format of their choice. Starting from these basic principles, we work closely together on developing ways to share interests and processes of work.

      Thematics develops for each residency project a strategy of questioning and interviews that follow up and register the artistic processes so as to create a written publication that reflects every Thematics residency. These publications are also a working tool that expresses to necessity to communicate, to speak out, to share the practices, methodologies and artistic trajectories with each other and a larger public.

       

      (2) Institut Nomade

      The activities of the Institut Nomade are fundamentally trans-disciplinary in nature. Concerned with how the notion of "performativity" resonates in both artistic practices and cultural constructions, the Institut conducts research into the ontology of performative language, the relationship between the performer/author and the stage, and the stage itself as a scene of collective individuation and thus a form of micro-politics. The global project of the Institut could be described as an inquiry into "modern culture", that mobilizes the conceptual tools provided by the performative arts, the heritage of J.L Austin's concept of performativity, and Bernard Stiegler's contemporary elaboration of the idea of the "pharmakon". The Institut is concerned with all forms of writing that compose our public voice– forms that we create by and for ourselves. This research takes on a variety of formats including interviews, performances, texts, images, videos, installations, soundscapes, etc. The interaction between these media is organized by rhizomatic systems of writing and by experimental loops of representation that participants are invited to appropriate and reconstruct.

       

       

      (3) a.pass research center

      a.pass  is an artistic research environment that develops research on performativity and scenography, in an international artistic and educational context. a.pass offers a one-year artistic research training program at post-master level for artists and theoreticians, based on the principles of self-organization, collaboration and transdisciplinarity. a.pass participants develop an independent artistic research project, with a personalized curriculum in a shared and collectively created research environment.

       

      The a.pass research center develops, documents and archives tools for qualitative and relevant artistic research practices. The research center uses this growing archive to communicate and interact with the artistic and educational field and functions as a forum for the development of a critical approach on
      artistic research. a.pass emphasizes the relation between the research practices and a broader societal field, and encourages engaged transdisciplinary practices.

       

      In the context of its artistic research center, a.pass offers a tailor-made PhD trajectory for doctoral students that gives the possibility to develop the practice-based part of their PhD research in collective research environment.

       

      (4) Kaaitheater

      The Kaaitheater is a Brussels and international arts centre which has been a leader in theatre, dance, music and performance for over thirty five years.

      A number of artists and companies have been closely associated with the Kaaitheater for many years: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Rosas, Jan Decorte, Jan Lauwers & Needcompany, Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods, Ictus, tg STAN and Tristero, and from abroad Jérôme Bel, Raimund Hoghe, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Jonathan Burrows, The Wooster Group and others. From 2013 to 2016 Eleanor Bauer, Kris Verdonck, Mette Ingvartsen and Ivo Dimchev are our artists in residence.

      Social and ecological topics are a prominent element in Kaaitheater’s work. The Kaaitheater is part of two European networks: Imagine 2020, that focuses on art and climate change, and House on Fire, supporting productions that are intended to contribute to a critical debate on political and social issues.

      The Kaaitheater presents about 75 productions each season and welcomes its visitors to two locations in the canal zone in Brussels: the Kaaitheater itself (the large theatre, on Sainctelettesquare) and the Kaaistudio’s (small theatre and rehearsal studios, near Dansaertstraat).

       

    • old information
    • NOT_index
    • old info
    • a.pass in context Position of a.pass in the educational and artistic field
      10 December 2014
      posted by: Elke van Campenhout
      a.pass in context

       

      The a.pass program and research centre are positioned within a larger context of the arts and education, and develops its working out of a questioning of the current organization of artistic and educational (institutional) practices. In its trajectory, a.pass has on all levels of its organization critically reflected upon the economy of knowledge as it is being employed today in higher education and the media, the logics of the arts market, the recuperation of institutional critique by the institutions themselves, the capitalist drive for the new, the seductive and the quickly consumable, and the role and responsibility of the artist researcher in all of this.

      In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the artistic practice does take on a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge.

      This means that a.pass is an environment that reflects and practices knowledge and artistic strategies with the windows open to an outside reality. In that sense a.pass is not so much a preparation for the ‘professional life’, as it is a putting-into-question of what these professional sectors (both the artistic and educational organizations of institutes, values and work) are symptoms of. Throughout the years, a.pass has used its own institutional status - and the opportunities offered by being an artistic educational program embedded in a larger network of schools, art centres, research places, workspaces, etc… - to seriously reconsider its role, and the role of the artist researchers within the current ethical, political, economic and social context of knowledge production and sharing.

      On the level of ethics this means that we consider both the institute as the institute’s participants to be part of a larger network of relations, that give them their value and meaning. In a.pass the relation between the ‘I’ of the researcher and the provisional construction of the ‘We’ of the research practice within the institute, is a recurring, and politically charged, topic. The institute here is considered as an experimental playground to try out strategies for the now and the future within a larger society. a.pass gives a lot of attention to the transindividual character of practice and knowledge, and how the collective environment can be both a source of frustration and feedback, as of nourishment and challenge to the individual researcher’s trajectory. Also, a.pass in that sense always takes the ‘ethical’ concreteness, the situational reality of research seriously: artistic research is always already embedded in the relations that produce it, and these relations encompass elements of discourse, social and economic factors and spatial settings, as well as institutional givens, societal demands and resources at hand. Therefore an artistic research strategy or outcome is not transparently reproducible without changing in the process. The ethical (here understood as relational and situational) character of the research, makes it resistant to commodification on a larger scale. But this doesn’t mean that the research can not be communicated or shared, using strategies that differ from the promise of serial reproduction.

      This interest in the transindividual character of learning and research, however, does not exclude a strong focus and interest in the development of the individual’s trajectories. Since the institute can not function without the invested interest and contributions to the common environment of the researchers, a.pass strives towards creating an environment in which the aesthetic and artistic idiosyncratic qualities of each practice can be challenged into being. a.pass considers the artist researcher in the year of participation not so much as an artist-producer of work, but as an artist-researcher, reflecting self-critically on the trajectory already accomplished, and reconsidering the notions of work, value, the market, responsiveness and responsibility through the practicing of the research. a.pass encourages the exploration of ‘risky’ practices that do not directly correspond to the current demands of the arts market or academic understandings of research, in order to create an experimental environment in which certainties can be subverted, undermined, or simply reappraised from another point of view.

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

       

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

    • a.pass is an artistic and educational research environment that welcomes research practitioners in an international collaborative and trans-disciplinary program. a.pass includes two complementary structures that operate in parallel and in dialogue: the Postgraduate Program and the Research Center.

      Artistic Research platform

      a.pass is a platform for professionals in the fields of art and theory who wish to engage in a self assigned research trajectory. It provides a place and infrastructure to meet other researchers, to collaborate, to get feedback, to develop one’s methodology and to widen one’s theoretical and practical scope through input, critique, mentoring and feedback.

      a.pass activates the practice of artistic research by accumulating its processes and critique. Embracing the fact that artistic research is becoming a category of production in the cultural field, a.pass does not claim to delineate its borders but affirms this apparent lack of definition as a opportunity for its development. Operating without a predefined notion of what „artistic research“ is, a.pass brings together a pluralistic encounter of the existing notions of this practice.

      An affirmative inquiry of „what is artistic research?“ has therefore become one of a.pass’ defining methodologies: a.pass strives to host a multitude of practices in the arts which self-define themselves as research. Their definitions (or refusals thereof) of what a research praxis in the arts context could be are at times complementing and at times contradicting each other. This dis/agreement creates a poli-vocal platform of definitions and is a statement towards a different conception of institutions: away from essentialist claims and towards a more politicised platform of engagement with a certain discipline.

      The Postgraduate Program

      The a.pass Postgraduate Program offers a one-year artistic research program for artists / researchers from all professional backgrounds based on the principles of self-organization, collaboration and transdisciplinarity.

      As an educational environment, a.pass opens a space for speculative and experimental modes of practice and critical thinking. The content and the practical apparatus of the program are shaped by the proposals of the a.pass curators, the artistic coordinator and the a.pass researchers.

      a.pass researchers develop an independent artistic research trajectory in a shared and collectively created research environment. They engage in presentations and feedback, collective workshops, individual and group mentoring and modular interactions with the curators and other researchers.

      The Research Center

      The a.pass Research Center is a platform for advanced research practices in the arts. It invites five to six Associate Researchers for a one-year cycle. They follow a part of their research trajectory in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. The Research Center welcomes radical and inventive research methodologies in order to contribute them to the larger a.pass environment. The Research Center interacts with the a.pass Post-Graduate Program and functions as a resource for methodologies of collaborative research. The Research Center supports and facilitates forms of performative publishing (publications, presentations, exhibitions, etc), experimental research set ups, workshops and collaborations.

      The Research Center welcomes researchers with non-academic and academic research affiliations and support structures. Associate Researchers with an existing academic research trajectory (for example PhD in the Arts) have the opportunity to develop the practice-based part of their research within the educational environment of a.pass.

      Artistic Research at a.pass

      a.pass has been conceived as a meta-research on community, self-education and institutional permeability. An important part of this conceptual framework is a commitment to an open definition of artistic research and to exploring the paradoxical task of shaping an open space. a.pass sees itself as a accumulative platform where different and sometimes conflicting self-conceptions of artistic research can meet and engage in a productive exchange with each other. By embracing these negotiations as its core practice, a.pass welcomes diverse trajectories of research. The accumulating positions of artistic research unfold a complex and changing discourse on the practices of knowledge production within the arts.

      An open view on Artistic Research urges a.pass to continue a rigorous questioning of what makes Artistic Research distinct from other practices and disciplines. The discursive attempt to establish a fragile understanding of Artistic Research is the shared methodology of the institution. Although the ultimate definition cannot and should not be found(ed), the critical process of negotiating this question is ingrained within a.pass' politics and drives the discourse within the institution. For a.pass "open" means "open-ended".

      Artistic research is not oriented towards the production of single solution or an artwork, but towards generating a setting for engagement with a particular topic or challenge. The artistic research process aims at adding complexity to instead of simplifying a question, and brings conflicting viewpoints, theories and ontologies in proximity to one another. Expanding the project nature of artistic work towards a production of generative sets incorporates process and knowledge across multiple disciplines. Artistic research is nourished by speculation and suspension of disbelief and its results are often transitory rather than conclusive.

      For a.pass the temporality and aims of an artistic research trajectory differs from the temporality of an art project. The development of a sustainable research trajectory is the primary focus of work. Artistic projects and other modes of experimental practice are seen as performative publishing of transitory results. Their validity is not determined by the question if they are in themselves "successful" art works, but primarily by asking what they contribute to the expanding research process.

      Collaborative research at a.pass is centered around a variety of practices of methodology transfer. A practice enters a multitude of critical relationships with other practices, transforming them, and being transformed through this exposure. The aim is not necessarily collaborative co-authorship, but development of artistic and research practices through proximity and exposure to different methodologies and contexts.

      Pedagogy Research

      a.pass is building its curriculum by bringing together practitioners in the arts within a curated framework of workshops, ateliers, collective practices and scores. This collective exploration is the space where experimental research formats are proposed and developed. The process of learning, development and critique engages all parts of the institute.

      a.pass sees itself as an ongoing research into the formation and politics of educational institutions. By collecting innovative methodologies of research, facilitating educational experimentation and by maintaining an institutional openness, a.pass affirms and continues to be an experimental institution, a place of engaged research of what education in the arts can be today.

      Performative Publishing

      a.pass continuously develops and supports different and specific modes of presentation which are emerging from the research practiced at the institution. A large part of the program is based on modes of making-public of research within the program and towards the larger public. These moments are organized systematically within the program and reach a larger audience with the End-Presentations, Research Center publications, seminars, website publications and the archive. The aim of this work is to allow for performative publishing to present research as a work in the making and to develop modes of presentation that shift from the product paradigm towards a modality of witnessing a process in its unfinished and searching vulnerability.

      a.pass develops publications which don't treat knowledge, art making, aesthetics, context and politics as separate channels of communication. a.pass works on research publications under the hybrid term of „performative publishing“: a concept coined to contain the multiplicity of transdisciplinary publishing practices. It sharpens the question of the publications' purpose: what does the publication do? What are its aims within a specific context? Performative publishing is a witnessed process of simultaneous artistic creation, contextualization and doubt. It is a turn away from book- and article based formats of publishing artistic research towards cross-disciplinary formats. "Performative" shifts the attention to the necessity of a certain publicness of process in a collaborative environment: a contribution to a collective discourse. It also frames publishing as part of a research methodology: what experimental presentation does for the research trajectory, how can the moment of publishing perform a change on the research itself?

    • Choreo-graphic Figures - Deviations from the Line is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving artist Nikolaus Gansterer, choreographer Mariella Greil and writer-artist Emma Cocker. The project unfolds through two interconnected aims: we are interested in the nature of ‘thinking-feeling-knowing’ operative within artistic practice, and seek to develop systems of notation for sharing and reflecting on this often hidden or undisclosed aspect of the creative process. Herein, lies the challenge

      • How might one devise a system of notation alert to the real-time circumstances of the practicing within practice, foregrounding process and emphasizing the durational ‘taking place’ of something happening (live)?
      • What forms of notation could be developed for articulating that which resists articulation, for that which is pre-articulation, or a form of representation for the non-representational?
      • How can a form of notation communicate the instability and mutability of the flows and forces within practice, without rendering them still or static, without fixing that which is contingent as a clearly readable or literal sign.

      To explore the performative character of notation, we practice kinetic as well as graphic modes of inscription, expanded tactics beyond apparent physical limitations (of the mind, the hand, pencil and paper), attending to the integration of time, sound, movement and narration. We propose the concept of the choreo-graphic figure, for investigating how the embodied practice of choreographic performance (in an expanded sense) might become a tool of inscription and notation in itself. The choreo-graphic figure is conceived as a notational event, incorporating the potential of both movement and materiality, a sense of both temporality and spatiality. Our shared quest is both for a system of notation for honouring the process of figuring (as a live investigative event) and for “choreo-graphic” figures for making tangible and communicating these significant moments within the unfolding journey of collaborative practice. We seek modes of notation between the lines, interested in the interval or gap between the choreo + graphic, sign + non-sign, visual + textual, extensive + intensive, embodiment + disembodiment, movement + materiality, being + becoming.

       

      Proposal for a.pass

       

      For a.pass, our intent is to share and put pressure on our recent explorations around both the ‘notion of notation’ and the ‘notation of notion’, through live investigations, presentation and discussion with students and wider publics. Specifically, we wish to investigate notation (and its related technologies) through two concepts: figure and figuring.

      • The Notion/Notation of Figuring: We use the term ‘figuring’ to describe a state of emergence or experiential shift, the barely perceptible movements and transitions at the cusp of awareness within the process of “sense-making”. What different systems of notation can be developed for cultivating awareness of and for marking and identifying the moments of “figuring” within live investigative action?
      • The Notion/Notation of Figure: We use the term ‘figure’ to describe the point at which figuring coalesces into a recognizable + repeatable form. How then might the performed ‘figure’ be a system of notation in and of itself?
    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Conditions for the Emergence of Poetics
    • Repertoire
    • REPERTOIRE 24 November 2014
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Eric Thielemans
    • 05 January 2015
    • 09 January 2015
    • REPERTOIRE

      (this workshop is part of the opening week and compulsory for everyone!!)

       

      Hi all,

      I'm Eric Thielemans, trained and drowned in a musical practice. I'm a drummer, composer and sound artist with a broad range of interests and experience with cross, multi en interdisciplinary artistic collaborations. For the last couple of years my artistic practice became more research based and reflective, and my work was touched by that evolution. I'm proposing a workshop in apass at the beginning of the january block. The workshop deals with the notion(s) of repertoire. Of what stuff are they made? How did they come about? I did this work once before with my musical ensemble EARR. It will be a first time for me to adapt the questions and reflections to a wider and multidisciplinary field of expertise and practices. In order to use our time well during this week, I propose an introduction text and some questions that are meant to open up the reflective juices. I would kindly like to ask you to prepare the sessions based on the questions and preparative tasks you will find underneath. It will make the workshop and sharing surely richer and denser. So, here we go. Looking forward to meet you in january.

      If you have questions regarding this document and how to deal with the questions, you can reach out to me by mail: ethiel23@hotmail.com.

       

      repertoire - the entire range of skills or aptitudes or devices used in a particular field or occupation; "the repertory of the supposed feats of mesmerism"; "has a large repertory of dialects and characters" - The range or number of skills, aptitudes, or special accomplishments of a particular person or group.

      For this workshop I’m looking for the entire range of skills, patterns, aptitudes in which we come home to. I really like to connect “repertoire” with “home”. “Practice” with “life”. As in: “Something to come home to.”

       

      Repertoire(s) is a research and reflective workshop in which I see us all, like a bunch of passionate amateur entomologues (insectologues...), observe,repertorise , taxonomise, and share the constitutive phenomenons of our life with our craft and the repertory of skills, tools, techniques, practices that we use to build that life. Furthermore we will investigate various strategies and ways to weave the sensibilities, disciplines and practices of each participant together into meaningful wholes or collective spaces and cosmologies.

      First the focus will lie on each of us individually. For this I have formulated some questions and notions (see under) for you to get started and prepare the first 2 days of our week. After that we will dive into group related observations. How do we behave as a group? What’s the repertoire of the group? How do we deal with the multidisciplinary aspect of it all? Off coarse this separation individual-group is artificial and not always easy to keep but I think it will give us a strategy, plan, focus and ground during the work.

      I also want us to look for appropriate ways to propose this work in a performative situation.

      At the end of the workweek, on friday, we will propose a showing of the work in which there will be place for each individual to share and propose some of his/her findings and reflections in whatever way suitable as well as there will be group propositions.

      www.ericthielemans.com

      List of questions and notions to get you started:

      1. Memory-personal history-(personal) mythology childhood memories of practices and tendencies related to your practices and tools of today: a mental, virtual, imaginative, psycho-emotional landscape. First memories. teenage memories…
        Relation to the choice of practice? Why that practice? Why that mode of expression? One can see a technique, practice or tool as a prism that reflects the light in a specific way so it also constitutes your perception of things. A technique/practice/tool is a teacher. How do you relate to your chosen mode(s) of expression in those terms? Why did you choose it? Was that always easy?
        Is there a sort of archetypal persona that you like to use specifically or to play off when performing/working? How do you see yourself? Are you a troubadour, a researcher, a botanist, a scientist, philosopher,...
      2. postures-spatial relationship-environment-pulse-tempo-stasis-mobility-voyage immobile- dynamics.
        Which postures and dynamics do you relate to most. Is there a repertoire of postures and dynamics for you? Do you like to sit or stand in a certain way? Do you prefer to move? Along which lines related to the room do you move? Do you relate to directions (up, down, left, right), center stage or front, back stage...Posture-Mobility...Dynamics: are you loud and clear in your expression or do you prefer soft and moderate. When intimate, non-performing, which mode of expression do you use? Is there an internal clock, rhythm, frequency to which you tick or more than one? What inner tempo do you relate to when creativity flows? Is it one tempo or more than one at the same time? Mobility versus stasis: How do you relate to movement, mobility? How do you deal with stasis, a fixed position in a space or stage? Voyage Immobile....
      3. repetition Repertoire = Repetition: without repetition there is no notion of repertoire. Hence Patterns. A repertoire develops through time. We write it like a story using tools like mirroring and feedback from peers, society... Which patterns do we rely on, did we create for, through our craft? Maybe you have a repertoire of techniques that are either posture based or are related to an obscure imaginary place, nourished by life experiences? Patterns maybe in how you like to go from one part to another in your writing? How do you relate to continuity and discontinuity?
      4. Love list: Think of a list of specific techniques, things you really like doing or touching, having when dealing with your practice.
      5. “I could do this for hours”: What is it in your practice that you like so much that you litteraily can do it for hours?

      Homework/Preparative tasks:

      1. As a start of the january block with the workshop; knowing that we will be part of a quite large and pretty heterogenous group of writers, researchers, artists with a practise etc... I would like you to introduce yourself and your practices, techniques and tools.
      2. Out of your answers or reactions to these questions and notions posted above, I want you to distill a number (minimum 3) of objects of your repertoire. Those objects you will also propose individually to the group as an alternative way of introducing ourselves to each other with what we do or are here to do.
      3. Make an organigram/cosmology/score of those objects on a paper. Express the relationship between those objects and how you are positioned or travel between them. Use if possible some notions like mobility, frequency, time, tempo, up, down, left, right, imagination,...
        Make this any way you feel like. A drawing, a collage, a catalogue, a text,... Use any format you wish.

      http://www.ericthielemans.com/www.ericthielemans.com/home_news/home_news.html

    • The associate researcher joins a.pass for one year, and in that time develops and ‘exemplary artistic research’: a research that challenges the notions of practice-based methodologies and knowledge to its limits, and questions the values of knowledge developed in artistic research contexts. Since this function has only recently been developed we are still in the middle of the first year, working with ex-apass participant Veridiana Zurita, who develops her research project TVTV, in the context of the Guislain psychiatric institute, as well as in collaboration with an Amazon river tribe in Brazil (full project description in Annexe). The associate researcher is financially supported by a 0,4 FTE employment for one year, and the production support for the development of the public phases of the research, as well as through mentoring support.

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

      The research coordinator (0,7 FTE) also develops her research within the research centre, which partly consists in analyzing, publishing, and making accessible a.pass research results and methodologies (through publications, outside workshops and lectures, conferences, etc…) and partly also consists of her own collaborative research trajectory Bureau d’Espoir, that looks into a contemporary and performative redefinition of ‘hope’ through the lenses of political philosophy, choreography and spiritual body practices. (see full overview of Bureau d’Espoir in Appendix).

    • information
    • Curriculum 07 November 2014
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
       
      During its one-year course the program is sequenced into three blocks of four months, each block organised by a different curator towards a specific mode of research and collaboration. In general the blocks  assemble in different proportions the following elements:
      Development of artistic research practices, theoretical studies, workshops with guest practicioners, dispositives of feedback and exchange, modes of research presentation, attendance to public events related with current concerns (conferences, seminars, performances, festivals, etc), series of individual and collective mentoring sessions with invited mentors. 
      Within this curated framework the researchers are encouraged to contribute to the conceptualisation, organisation and performance of self-organized activities and practices.
       
       
      Timing & Organisation of the PROGRAM
       
      The one-year program is organised in three 'blocks' of four months, each of them divided in three months of curated curiculum in group and one month focused on self-organised individual work. 
      After the twelve months program an extra month is fully dedicated  to the preparation and performance of a form of communication of the individual research.projects within a collective public event.
      Exceptionally - when participants want to interrupt their studies for professional activities or to intensifie their personal studies - it is possible to skip one block and to extend the duration of the program to a maximum of 17 months.
       
       
      Timing & Organisation of the BLOCKS
       
      A block is structured by three collective moments: Opening Week (first week of the block), Half-Way-Days (middle of the block) and End Week (last week of the block). 
      These three mandatory collective moments are dedicated to the individual research presentations. Each of them has a particular objective and question towards the research: Opening week focuses on information (what?), Half-Way-Days on method (how?) and End-Week on contextualisation (why?)
      In addition to these three weeks the researchers  (in dialogue with the curator and coordinator) design their trajectory with a minimum of three weeks of presence and engagement in the block program.
       
      Laureate
       
      After concluding the postgraduate program with a public End Presentation, the participant will receive the title of Laureate of the higher institute for fine arts Posthogeschool voor Podiumkunsten (the program equals 60 credits).

       

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • Spaces as Contracts
    • 2014 BLOCK III 01 September 2014
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2014
    • 30 November 2014
    • 2014 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Damla Ekin Tokel
      Danny Neyman
      Gosie Vervloessem
      Hans Van Wambeke
      Hektor Mamet
      Jeremiah Runnels
      Kleoni Manousakis
      Silvia Ramos Pereira
      Stef Meul
      Vanja Smiljanic
      Verónica Cruz
      Yaari Shalem


      Research End Presentations

      Anna Sörenson
      Camila Aschner Restrepo
      Victoria Myronyuk


      Research Centre Researchers

      Cecilia Molano
      Mala Kline
      Veridiana Zurita   

       

      Partners

      Les Bains
      Kaaitheater


      Contributors for workshops

      Christophe Meierhans
      Elke van Campenhout
      Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga
      Jozef Wouters
      Lilia Mestre
      Luigi Coppola
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Vladimir Miller

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout
      Nicolas Galeazzi

       

      Mentors

      Femke Snelting
      Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga
      Geert Opsomer
      Lilia Mestre

       

       

       

       

       

      ‘SPACES AS CONTRACTS’
      curated by Vladimir Miller (Associate Program Curator and Nicolas Galeazzi ( Program Coordinator)

       

       


      25 / 09 - 05 / 11 / 2014


      ‘POLITICS OF CHANGEABILITY’
      weekly meetings by Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi and Fotini Lazaridou


      For this project we ask the researchers participants to engage individually for the duration of this block with a private or institutional space outside of a.pass. The task is: to negotiate a permanent, irreversible change in the architecture of that space and to document the negotiation process.
      Changing our spatial circumstances, for adapting them to our needs, is so foreign to us in daily life, that we associate those changes with violence and social upheaval, with revolutions and public resistance. And maybe this holds true and points us to how powerful architecture actually is in upholding existing social order. Architecture and the political connect and hinge on access to change. Hegemonies manifest themselves and are upheld by architectural structures. So every attempt to change invariably become a political attempt.
      We are framing the attempt of change as a research methodology
      Taking the steps to negotiate a permanent change in an architectural setup reveals the internal structures of power distribution and decision making for any given space. If you want to propose a change, who do you contact? who will you be referred to? which groups need to come together under which premises and structures of decision making to allow for that change? To follow up those challenges to changes is to slowly reveal a diagram of power, an architecture within architecture. In fact those two architectures are inseparable from each other and we should invent ways of speaking of them as a whole. Would we have privacy if we never had walls, what kind of togetherness would we have if availability of space was not limited? Our way of living and our way of building cannot be separated from each other.

       

       

      08 - 12 / 09 / 2014


      ‘SPACE AND CONTRACT’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Vladimir Miller


      In this workshop we will look at the non physical borders of architecture: the contracts and agreements that create and maintain our built environment.
      If you take a quick look around you and ask yourself how the things that surround you came to be the way they are, you will notice that all of them are man-made or man-transformed. Those processes of transformation are all initiated and facilitated through negotiations and agreements. The first step to connect contracts and architecture is therefore to realize that architecture is a product of an agreement. For our purposes we can loosely define a contract as a performative agreement.
      During the workshop we will discuss further how architecture also embodies and ultimately maintains social agreements of that kind
      This workshop proposes to look at the relationship between the architectural space and the contract through a series of collective building actions. We will use a simple material to build improvised structures together in order to understand how are we negotiating collaboration, aim and space. Which rules and ideological presupposition are at work? Can we come up with contracts, scores and sets of rules which would produce other architectures? What is the relationship between our social contract and the architecture we are able to produce?

       

       

      15 - 19 / 09 / 2014


      ‘IF YOU LIKE IT, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE PUT A ROOF ON IT’
      (and put some chairs under)
      workshop-project by Jozef Wouters & Vladimir Miller


      Roofs, in the arts, are often provided. In climates like Belgium, having a roof to work under is not a bad way to start. The roof protects the work (against more things than rain). But the roof also tends to isolate it. From time to time, artists grow tired of the roof and the walls and, hoping it doesn’t rain, decide to work on a square.
      The work of a scenographer is often more about walls than about roofs (light designers don’t like scenographers who propose roofs). Walls are flexible. Walls can be discussed. Comparing this, it turns out to be way harder to negotiate about a roof and to design a roofed space that is a square as well.
      This proposal is modifying the original “lets build a house together” idea, which was already presented at a.pass. The idea is, rather than overwhelming ourselves with the house building, to have a closer look (through working) at what we identify as two key elements of structuring community and social space by the means of architecture: roofs and chairs. In a much too simple way we can say that roofs bring a community together, while chairs can be used to structure its politics of attention and visibility. By avoiding walls we also subvert a key instrument to privatization of space. The space under the roof is accessible and public by design, we don't have to distribute power/keys.

       


      29 / 09 - 03 / 10 / 2014


      ‘OCCUPYING DEMOCRACY’
      workshop by Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans


      Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans are working in different contexts and with different means about common decision taking procedures - or let’s say, alternative democracies. While Christophe proposes, in a lecture performance series, a new democratic system based on disqualifying people in charge, rather than electing them, Luigi is developing social choreographies as democratic models and is currently involved in a communal project of reorganizing the political, agricultural and economic system of a whole village in south Italy.
      Together they propose a research workshop where most components of its activities will have to be decided commonly with the workshop participants. Just the very basic conditions are pre-determined: the workshop occupies a public space with only one person at the time - 24h a day. The rest of the group develops, discusses and observes the occupation from a distance and takes the relevant decisions.

       

       

      13 / 10 - 17 / 10 / 2014


      ‘FORMS OF LIFE - A TRAVELING PYJAMA PARTY’
      workshop by Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga


      During a period of 6 days, each participants are invited to host the rest of the group in their apartment for a day. We will cook together, discuss a series of texts, take turns using the shower and read bedtime stories from a book picked up from the shelf. We may find out about each other’s morning habits, favorite smoothie combination, different ways of folding the sheets.
      For six days and five nights, this workshop will attempt to explore different ways of living and living together, focusing on the domestic sphere, our daily habits and their spatial manifestation, as well as on the ways these forms of life may or may not slip out of the window and down to the street. During each short residency we will collectively try to come up with a proposal for a small modification of or intervention in the space we are currently in, and negotiate its terms with our host. We may or may not carry out the proposal.

       

       

      24 - 25 / 10 / 2014


      ‘POST-FOUNDATIONAL ARCHITECTURES’
      scenography workgroup meeting by Vladimir Miller


      In 2012 a.pass merged the two sections a.s (advanced scenography) and a.pt (advanced performance training) to one singular program. This move was a consequence of understanding performance and scenography more and more as inseparable parts of one and the same discourse. But the merge of discourses finally reinforced the need for a new specification of the term “scenography”. What does it really mean beyond the classical stage practice? What else than a stage - and under which conditions - can be declared as a ‘scene’ and who or what is designing it? What distinguishes a ‘performative space’ from a ‘sceno-graphed’ space?
      For discussing these questions Vladimir Miller gathered in the fall 2013 some space practitioners to a first ‘Scenography Workgroup Meeting’. In October 2014 he calls for a second one. It will be a public work meeting between and with artists, architects, and scenographers who engage in the production of temporary and performative architectures. They will critically explore the definition of scenography simply as ‘post-foundational architectures’.

       

       

      03 - 07 / 11 / 2014


      ‘PHARMAKON’
      workshop by Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre


      This workshop explores the concept of pharmakon developed by the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler in his book ‘On pharmacology - how to live your life’. Stiegler uses the term pharmakon, which simultaneously stands for ‘poison’ and medicine’ as a symptom of an ever-spreading capitalism: an economy that does not only affect our labour, but does affect also our psychic ability and reduces our desires to simple drives. As both a medicine and a cure, Stiegler emphasizes the role of technology in our society as an ultimate pharmakon.
      In his ‘pharmacology’, its doubleness is investigated as a possible ‘cure’: a strategy to deal with the recovery of our desires, to go against the pressure of identification trends, brands and an ever-increasing individualization. Pharmakon stands for the technical know-how we develop the strategies we use to build a different kind of future and to create another concept of our togetherness. But this is not without risk: pharmaka are both a source of misery and abuse of power, but also a stimuli of what makes life worthwhile.
      The workshop is part of a ‘Thematics’ research project organized by Les Bains. Four artists are invited to explore in a three month residency set-ups of 'trans-individuation’: how do we form temporary moments of sharing, how can we come together in diversity, how can we build together an organization of work and knowledge sharing that is open-ended for producing and opening up to an outside world. A constant process of infection and transformation, through testing and adjusting the dosage of the pharmakon.

       


      27-29 / 11 / 2014


      ‘PHARMAKON’
      conference by a.pass Research Center, Les Bains and Kaaitheater.


      The Ancient Greek word ‘pharmakon’ means ‘poison’, ‘medicine’ and ‘scapegoat’. According to the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, our society urgently needs a ‘pharmacology’ to turn the tide of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment. He says that we must urgently question our culture. With which witchcraft can we turn the poison into medicine?
      Pharmakon: whitch culture? is a three-day ‘performative conference’ that examines artistic and theoretical strategies to counteract this pollution of our society’s culture. This congress is part of Thematics, a residency programme for artists and theorists run by Bains Connective workplace. This started in mid-October and is still on until 15 December, and is in its turn part of the transnational Pharmakon project organised by the Institut Nomade.

      Program of the conference

      Day 1: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-1-on-the-notion-of-pharmakon-in-the-thinking-of-bernard-stiegler

      Day 2: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-2-rethinking-economies

      Day 3: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-3-body-technologies

    •  

       

      Researchers following the a.pass program  develop a practice-based research, take an investigative look at their artistic trajectories and engage in a particular discursive approach.
      Focusing on individual work, researchers are working in a largely self-organized and collaborative environment where they take up an active role in the development of the a.pass research environment and act as responsive agents in (re)thinking artistic research methodologies, collective feedback strategies and practical organization.
       
      In order to create this context of self-organization, collaboration and participation a.pass is established as a full time program  requiring following minimum presence and participation.
       
      For each block of 4 months researchers:
      • attend three collective moments (Opening Week, Half-Way-Days Week, and End Week)
      • and follow at least  three weeks of curated program per block
      • attend four mentoring sessions with two dedicated mentors
      • attend one meetings with the artistic coordinator per block

       

      To successfully conclude the a.pass program researchers are required to communicate their research in the frame of a public event.
       
       
    • COLLABORATION

      Participants develop the project they submitted, not only by working on their own projects but also by actively investing in the group, in the sharing of research results with other participants and at times with a broader audience. Another part of the research culture that a.pass wants to bring about, is the sharing of 'tools' in the artistic practice - in all possible forms, including  ...read more

    • a.pass offers a one-year program for the development of artistic research projects on a post-graduate level in a critical and collaborative environment.
      The program invites artists, performers, researchers, writers, curators, theoreticians to challenge the limits of their practice through developing and applying research methodologies which bring to the forefront its performative, spatial and collaborative aspects.  
      The program opens a space for speculative and experimental modes of practice and critical thinking. Researchers are invited to follow their research as a trajectory within an environment of self-organisation, collaboration and transdiciplinarity. They engage in presentation and feedback, collective workshops, individual and group mentoring, and modular interactions with the curators and the other researchers. The content and the practical apparatus of the program are shaped by the a.pass curators and the collaborative and public aspects of the participant's research.

       

       

       
    • research center 01 July 2014
      posted by: Guido Lucassen

      The a.pass research center works on different levels. On a first level the centre brings together long-time researchers in a context of collaboration and sharing. On this level currently we have in the research center three kinds of workers: the PhD researchers, the associate researcher, the research coordinator and the independent researchers.   The associate researcher joins a.pass for one year, and in that time develops and ‘exemplary artistic research’: a research that challenges the notions of practice-based methodologies and knowledge to its limits, and questions the values of knowledge developed in artistic research contexts. Since this function has only recently been developed we are still in the middle of the first year, working with ex-apass participant Veridiana Zurita, who develops her research project TVTV, in the context of the Guislain psychiatric institute, as well as in collaboration with an Amazon river tribe in Brazil (full project description in Annexe). The associate researcher is financially supported by a 0,4 FTE employment for one year, and the production support for the development of the public phases of the research, as well as through mentoring support. The independent researchers are only loosely connected to the research center, and are selected on the level of the interest of their already existing research trajectory. Current independent researchers are for example visual artist Alexis Destoop and his research into ‘landscape scenographies’ in the framework of the Anthropocene, and musician Eric Thielemans and his research on the ‘ensemble’ as instrument for the development of shared cosmologies and artistic instrumentarium. These researchers are only minimally and punctually supported at the moment of the publication (live or in writing) of their research results. The research coordinator (0,7 FTE) also develops her research within the research centre, which partly consists in analyzing, publishing, and making accessible a.pass research results and methodologies (through publications, outside workshops and lectures, conferences, etc…) and partly also consists of her own collaborative research trajectory Bureau d’Espoir, that looks into a contemporary and performative redefinition of ‘hope’ through the lenses of political philosophy, choreography and spiritual body practices. (see full overview of Bureau d’Espoir in Appendix). On a second level, the research centre also documents, archives and opens up research results and methodologies on a larger scale. Through the creation of a larger context for the end communications of the participants, through the publications, conferences, workshops and lectures, experimental collaborations etcetera. A lot of these activities will be mentioned again throughout the development of this report, but a full list of activities of the research centre, and its collaborations can also be consulted in the overview pages in the Appendix. Goals of the a.pass research center The main goals of the research center are to develop a ‘sustainable ground’ to analyze, document and share the knowledge that is being developed in the a.pass environment, opening it up to public sharing, discussion and debate. The research centre also aims at feeding the a.pass programs through the development of experimental, challenging, nomadic research set-ups that question, disseminate and test the a.pass principles within a larger context. The research center also tries to relate the individual interests of the researchers to a larger commonal context of knowledge processing and dissemination, and make the movements of knowledge processed in the a.pass research projects visible on a larger, shared and transindividual level. The researches developed at the research center experiment the notions of research and artistic methodologies of research to their limits, so as to come to a clear understanding of the potential subversive qualities for change that are specific to the artistic research field. On the level of documentation and communication the a.pass research centre aims at: -developing tools for the development of artistic research on an advanced level (PhD and others) by -developing methodologies, strategies and critical criteria for knowledge development within artistic research contexts -archiving and making accessible interesting research results and methodologies through publication of these results in a written or live form -developing tools for the international communication of the results of the advanced researches

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • Scores
    • 2014 BLOCK I 01 January 2014
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 January 2014
    • 31 March 2014
    • 2014 BLOCK I

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Anna Sörenson
      Camila Aschner Restrepo
      Carolina Goradesky
      Damla Ekin Tokel
      Daniel Kok
      Gabriela Karolczak
      Gosie Vervloessem
      Hans Van Wambeke
      Julia Clever
      Philippine Charlotte Hoegen
      Rareş Crăiuţ
      Samah Hijawi
      Sara Santos
      Silvia Ramos Pereira

       


      Research End Presentations

      Chris Dupuis
      Karl Philips

       


      Research Centre Researchers

      Cecilia Molano
      Lucia Rainer
      Mala Kline
      Veridiana Zurita

       


      Partners

      Les Bains
      PAF Performance Arts Forum

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Elke van Campenhout
      Lilia Mestre
      Lisa Nelson
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Nikolaus Gansterer
      Pierre Rubio
      Veridiana Zurita

       


      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout
      Nicolas Galeazzi

       

      Mentors

      Ana Hoffner
      Kristien Van den Brande
      Peter Stamer
      Pierre Rubio

       

       

       

      ‘SCORES’
      curated by Lilia Mestre (Associate Program Curator) and Nicolas Galeazzi (Program Coordinator)

       

       


      13-17 / 01 / 2014


      ‘SCORES GENERATOR’
      workshop by Lilia Mestre


      In this workshop, I’ll introduce a writing score, which was tested already in the research residency Thematics: Author/Authority that I curated in Les Bains last year. This score is based on question&answer dialogues between the participants and will be continued in a regular basis, after this one week workshop, in open weekly meetings during the block. With this writing score, we’ll produce a documentation booklet at the end of the block. As an example, you can find here the booklet that was made for Author / Authority.
      The aim is to discuss and write as a regular practice and to use encounter, dialogue, each others knowledge in the elaboration of the discourse about one’s own researches.
      I will introduce two performance scores I worked with: one on sounding objects /affective spaces from performance ‘ Moving You’; and another: from gesture to utterance to language that comes from my latest performance with Marcos Simões: ‘Ai! a choreographic project’.

       

       


      27 / 01 - 07 / 02 / 2014


      ‘LABORATORY: TUNING SCORES’
      (composition, communication, and the sense of imagination)
      workshop by Lisa Nelson


      The Tuning Score -a performance research format- asks what do we see when we're looking at dance. How does composition arise in the body and its environment? The research focuses on the physical base of the imagination. By altering the way we use our senses while moving and watching movement, we can begin to tease apart the genetic and acquired patterns our senses use to construct our experience. We will look at ways these patterns influence how and why we move, shape our interaction with our inner and outer environments, and inform both our desire for action and what we "see" when we are attending to anything.
      Two aspects of practice are described by the name Tuning Scores: a solo warm up, and interpersonal composition games. The solo practices are a kind of pre-technique––a physical-attentional warm up to one's inner composition, and provide an inner score for the ensemble games. Focusing on vision, touch, and hearing, the scores provoke spontaneous compositions that make evident our opinions about who/where we are, how each of us senses and makes sense of movement, initiating a dialogue between inner and outer organization, about space, time, movement, and the desire to compose (a satisfying) experience.
      The Tuning Score is an improvisational composition practice that is a performance in itself. It offers tools and a framework for communication and model of collaboration that is constructed by the players in the act of doing. As a practice of real-time editing and instant replay, Tuning is an aesthetic game and a self-balancing system that uncovers its intention each time anew.

       

       

       

      17 - 21 / 02 / 2014


      ‘ARTISTIC RESEARCH’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Nicolas Galeazzi, Lilia Mestre, Veridiana Zurita, Elke van Campenhout


      It comes in waves, sometimes it’s a fever, sometimes a dispute and sometimes energy boost: the discussion around artistic research is a core issue at a.pass. Its notions go in various directions, follow diverse protocols and curl around manifold practices. In order to keep this controversy discussion alive we would like to design a workshop with four different approaches and definitions of artistic research provided by four people in the a.pass surrounding : Elke Van Campenhout, Veridiana Zurita, Lilia Mestre and Nicolas Galeazzi. Following a score, all four try to communicate their thought lines of artistic research practices. The score not only asks for their proper view, but also for supportive foreign material and for its antonyms.

       

       


      3 - 7 / 03 / 2014


      ‘GENERAL INTELLECT ?’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Pierre Rubio and Elke van Campenhout


      ‘General Intellect?’ will explore and question a basic parameter of the a.pass environment : the relation between the individual and the collective. What is this relation, how does it function? Is it the individual that creates the collective? Or is the collective the base structure on which individuals can work and organize themselves? Specifically within an artistic research environment where the institution is constantly reformulating itself out of a multitude of individual inputs and where the individuals, in a state of ‘crisis’, are constantly self-constructing, confronted and challenged by a collective project.
      Can there be a mutual constitutive relation? A relational machine we can call ‘General Intellect’ or ‘Transindividual Space’ operating between and through the individuals, creating an 'ensemble' through their practice?
      From reading sessions to diverse practice formats, we will come up with refreshed perspectives on what collective working and thinking can do.

       

       


      10 - 14 / 03 / 2014


      ‘NOTATIONS BETWEEN THOUGHT AND MATTER”
      workshop by Nikolaus Gansterer


      Scores are translations. They transform one thought into another. They are also invitations to understand and interpret one reality through another. In a five day workshop led by the artist Nikolaus Gansterer, we will collaboratively explore the complex relationship between drawing, writing and movement.
      What is exactly happening when a thought and/or movement becomes a score? What
      kind of translation process is taking place between thought and matter? And again what is happening when a notation is being read, interpreted and performed by others? What kind of movements, transcriptions and acts of inscribing take place when we project a cartography of the body? What kind of tool set can we develop to map this intertextual language? What else can become a score?
      Within the workshop, drawing scores is to be extended along the categories of time, space and movement. So to speak a line of thought becomes a line on the paper, can turn into a line in space, a line verbalized, a line drawn with the whole body.
      The workshop will interrogate these interstitial processes, practices and knowledges produced by scores, from page to performance, from word to mark, from line to action, from modes of flat image making towards transformational embodied encounters.

    • project
    • Commons
    • NOT_index
    • KunstAllmend Art as commons
      18 December 2013
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 18 December 2013
    • 21 September 2014
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • KunstAllmend

      Berich von der Allmend_web-Seite002The KunstAllmend / ArtsCommons is a collective project experimenting with alternative artistic economies to redefine conditions for artistic production. Reflective of the commons active in the Swiss Alps for centuries, the KunstAllmend transposes this traditional model upon contemporary discussions concerning the management of common resources, authorship and copyright – strategies of ‘sharing’ in opposite to market ‘exchange’. The KA is a proposing an scenographic infrastructure for art production under the conditions of a radical commons economies. These conditions provide a context to discuss the commons rather as a promising problematic than a solution. 

      The first experiments with this economy took place 2014 at the Dampfzentrale in Bern/Switzerland in relation with the BernBiennale. 

      To know more abou this project, please download the pdf in the link bellow:

      PDF: Berich von der Allmend

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • Settlements
    • 2013 BLOCK III 01 September 2013
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2013
    • 30 November 2013
    • 2013 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Anna Sörenson,
      Camila Aschner Restrepo
      Carolina Goradeszky
      Chris Dupuis
      Damla Ekin Tokel
      Gabriela Karolczak
      Julia Clever
      Karl Philips
      Maité Liébana Vena
      Maja Hammaren
      Rareş Crăiuţ
      Stef Meul
      Victoria Myronyuk


      Research End Presentations

      Helena Dietrich
      Luanda Casella
      Nibia Pastrana Santiago
      Raquel Santana de Morais

       

      Research Centre Researchers

      Lucia Rainer
      Mala Kline

       

      Partners

      Uferstudios (Berlin)
      PAF Performance Arts Forum
      Bâtard festival
      RITS
      P.A.R.T.S.


      Contributors for workshops

      Claudia Bosse
      Elke van Campenhout
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Vladimir Miller

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout
      Nicolas Galeazzi

       

      Mentors

      Ana Hoffner
      Geert Opsomer
      Lilia Mestre
      Pierre Rubio

       

       

       

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

       

       

      09 - 13 / 09 / 2013


      ‘(PRE)CONDITIONS OF ACTS’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Claudia Bosse in the form of a city space action laboratory

      The main focus is to analyse and understand the contextual and spatial dependency of space and of each artistic practice, to invent translations, spatialisations and sharable constellations for each one’s specific research. What is given in a space, and how this information is manifested. What is inscribed in a space as its function, economy of transfer, context of its users, politics of its realisations and time?
      Scenarios of the personal research will be developed, used, transferred, implanted and tested in different spatial conditions of urban zones and zones of social contracts. This means, that we will try to put the consistency of our different research approaches in dialogue with urban and social spheres. How will they be infected, destabilised or clarified?
      The communication and observation will have to focus on following two aspects of scenography: the organization of space as a basic condition of artistic production and the (re)presentation of space in dialogue with the different understandings of the surrounding contexts. No space is inculpable, but at the same time the concrete condition for each artistic formulation and appearance .
      By interacting and criticising via concrete propositions, we try to create a practice that reacts on the proposed practice of the other workshop participants and the city and its users and inscribed different contexts. Everyone is writing a journal of documentation which will be publish on a blog with reflections about the space, the propositions and the influence towards your own research.

       

       

      16 - 20 / 09 / 2013


      ‘FEEDBACK’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Elke van Campenhout


      In this second feedback workshop, we take the end presentations of the previous week as a starting point. On the basis of what the participants that finished their trajectory showed to the public, and on the basis of what they choose to share on the level of their research methodologies to the group, we confront the relation between research and its relation to an ‘outside’ (the public, the research fellows, the internet, …). Since in a.pass we use feedback as a basic tool for the construction of a common ground, and of a collaborative working environment, we try to develop different methodologies to construct a critical culture of mutual support. But: since a good feedback needs a precise point of entry, a clear presentation, or a generous invitation, the feedback workshop works at the same time also on the requirements of a research presentation, and the different attitudes of feedbacking this makes possible.

       


      30 / 09 - 20 / 10 / 2013


      “SETTLEMENT’
      workspace proposed by Vladimir Miller


      In the last years a.pass already organized seven Settlements in the program. Some were organized in our studio, some on location. Vladimir Miller proposed the Settlement as an open and collaborative research space that takes on different forms in different locations. This time he invites us for a slightly transformed Settlement at the Uferstudios in Berlin.
      A Settlement is a workspace that explores the relations between space, (artistic) practice, and the politics of the commons.
      The basic practice of this collective set-up is to occupy together one large space and build everything required in that space from a common stock of materials to enable the individual practices. Next to providing the practitioner with the possibility to re-negotiate the spatial manifestations of his or her individual practice over the three weeks, the Settlement explores the potential of unstable architectures, the emergence and disappearance of property and territory in collective practice, and the agency of objects in establishing communal structure.
      Following the idea that the material choices determine the set of possibilities of any given practice, for this episode we would like to work with materials that are not chosen by us or Vladimir but are randomly gathered from already existing workspaces in Berlin. This choice is also informed by a raised awareness towards questions of sustainability within research environments. The material will thus be largely provided by artist and architects studio’s that will contribute objects and left-overs of previous practices, which will be used as a starting point of a material collection for this project.

       


      11 - 23 / 11 / 2013 & 02 - 07 / 12 / 2013


      ‘CONCERNS IN MOTION’
      laboratory, workshop and performative conference
      in collaboration with Bâtard festival, RITS, and P.A.R.T.S.


      This year the Bâtard festival was calling for projects reacting to the evidently generic question “What are your concerns?”. All addressed concerns - of selected and non selected propositions - were mapped out and shall be the starting point for setting up a performative congress related to the festival concerning the activation of concerns. The question of “what to do?” - if you are clear about your concerns - not only triggers the classical grassroot-questions concerning our capacity of inducing change, but is also confronting us with a lot of political, ethical and aesthetic paradoxes of political and artistic activism.
      The strategies we have at hand or in mind are often very controversial, just because of the always inherent potential of being recuperated by the opposed issues and powers. We see it as an artistic duty to constantly re-discuss and re-negotiate the relations of politics, art and activism, the relation of the artistic sphere and the surrounding society, and we have to search for consequent and radical solutions for approaching our concerns.
      The Bâtard festival invited the three educational institutions: a.pass, P.A.R.T.S., and RITS to be engaged in the setup of this congress and we react to this invitation by inviting our students and/or participants to collectively develop material in a two week long workshop and to perform the congress together.
      The whole congress should be built on our reactions to the Map of Concerns and the proposed strategies of activism of the guests invited to the workshop.

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • Tender Institute
    • 2012 BLOCK III 01 September 2012
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2012
    • 30 November 2012
    • 2012 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Chris Dupuis
      Helena Dietrich
      Karl Philips
      Lisa Charlotte Baudouin
      Luanda Casella
      Nibia Pastrana Santiago
      Raquel Santana de Morais
      Robin Amanda Creswell Faure

       


      Research End Presentations

      Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
      Carlotta Scioldo
      Catherine (Clé) Lé
      Elise Goldstein
      Oshin Albrecht
      Simon Loeffler
      Veridiana Zurita
      Vicente Arlandis

       

       

      Partners

      RITS
      Campo
      Les Bains / Thematics
      Playground Festival
      M-Museum

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Brandon LaBelle
      Carlotta Scioldo
      Einat Tuchman
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Geert Opsomer
      Heike Langsdorf
      Johan Dehollander
      Jovial Mbenga
      Jozef Wouters
      Lynda Gaudreau

      Lilia Mestre

      Peter Pal Pelbart
      Robert Steijn
      Stefanie Claes
      Toto Kisaku
      Vera Mantero

       

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout

       

      Mentors

      Ana Hoffner
      Lynda Gaudreau
      Pierre Rubio
      Robert Steijn

       

       

       

      07 - 08 / 09 / 2012


      ‘TENDER INSTITUTE’
      international conference by a.pass


      After finishing the artistic research post-graduate program at a.pass, 8 participants open up their researches in a performative and multi-layered setting.
      Sharing their insights into questions that are on the table for contemporary artists every day: what is the notion of work? How to deal with intuition today? What is the performative power of the object? How can the city be the witness of time?
      8 cases open up as many different strategies, diverse invitations to engage and experience artistic research from 8 wholly different perspectives.
      During a residency period of 3 weeks, a space is constructed that invites you into all these different cases, constructing crossing points and welcoming the visitors into the research trajectories.
      At the same time, a.pass organizes the conference 'The Tender Institute': an active meeting around the notion of the 'institute' in artistic practices today.
      In the last ten years, more and more artist initiatives have been re-thinking the institute once again as a point of address: a place where people share their concerns and interests, where you can find topical information and engage with it, where knowledge is archived and opened up to public interest and scrutiny. Compared to the more established Institutes these initiatives seem less concerned with classical knowledge conservation than with a dynamic reformulation of knowledge processed in situ. Opening up the monolithic space of recognition and representation into a heterotopic space of engaged interest.
      In these two days, a.pass invites speakers, artists, and administrators to construct new imaginations of what the institute today might look like: how to think of an institute with flexible walls, how to administer an organic institute that grows out of the interests of the people working in it? What is the place of this kind of institute in today's society? In other words: how can an institute still stay an institute when it is embracing its 'tenderness': when it recognizes its dependency on the interest of its users? The risk to become obsolete in the whirlwind of heterotopic interests? The challenge to re-invent its administration to shift from a politics of categorization to one of attention and engagement?

       

       

      Fall 2012

      ‘SCHIZOPHRENIC BODIES’
      series of workshops organised by a.pass in collaboration with Bains Connective (Thematics ‘Come Together (Lilia Mestre) /Schizophrenic Bodies’), RITS, and Campo / Summer School


      Schizophrenic Bodies test the limits of the economy of our belonging and coming together. Interpreting a Schizophrenic Body as a body that simultaneously belongs to different time and space zones, different fields of experience or history, or a body in a synaesthetic space, we'll explore during two months very different schizophrenic models. Our desire is to be working with the input of the BwO of Deleuze, with Peter Pal Pelbart the 'ghostly' bodies as put into perspective in the practice of Robert Steijn, the postcolonial monsters of Vera Mantero, the ways to rethink the hybridity of our history with the Society for the Advancement of People of Elegance and the 'orally disoriented body' of Brandon LaBelle. In each of the stadia we try to come to an overlapping and exchange between practice and theory, placing both participants and mentors into an unknown field of references that produce unexpected exchange and reasoning.

       

      17-21 / 09 / 2012


      ‘SCHIZOPHRENIC BODIES / 1’
      Peter Pal Pelbart & Robert Steijn


      This first workshop around the theme of Schizophrenic Bodies, will explore the notion of the ‘Body without Organs’, both from a theoretical and a physical perspective. In the morning the sessions with Peter Pal Pelbart are organized around texts from his book ‘The Cartography of Exhaustion’ and in the afternoons/evenings Robert Stijn works on creating these bodies through various physical practices that question, stretch or undermine an immediate i-dentification with our body and mind. The practices induce a certain kind of alienation, working out of unmediated desires, splitting up the I into different entities, in dialogue with totem animals, ghosts, out-of-body experiences. All on an experimental scale of rediscovery.

       

       

      01 - 05 / 10 / 2012


      ‘SCHIZOPHRENIC BODIES / 2’

      VERA MANTERO / The thinking body
      Vera Mantero is one of the leading Portuguese dancers and choreographers. She started in the Ballet Gulbenkian, studied contemporary dance technique and started creating her own choreographies in 1987. Since then, her work has been shown in theatres and festivals in Europe, Brazil, USA, Canada and Singapore.
      One of her shorter pieces was based on the hybrid post-colonial body of Josephine Baker, a ‘not-too-black’ American dancer making a career in colonialist France by manipulating the French stereotypes about blackness: blacks as wild animals coming straight from the jungle.
      Relaxation, the use of voice, writing, breathing and free association are some means to be used in her workshop entitled ‘The thinking body’. In this way, we will explore the movements and actions going on inside us, some of them separately first in order to incorporate them later in longer and more complex improvisational processes. The idea of getting inside a particular state of consciousness will be very important. Awareness and use of space, and the exploration of objects and materials will not be forgotten. Irony and empty hands will take us further. The workshop is not only open for trained dancers.

      PAN / The Belgo-Congolese Third Space
      (Toto Kisaku / Johan Dehollander / Jovial Mbenga / Stefanie Claes / Geert Opsomer)
      The workshop develops a research context around a contemporary Congolese performance subculture calling itself SAPE (La Société des Ambianceurs et Personnes Élégantes or, in English: the Society for the Advancement of People of Elegance). They consider themselves members of a sort of science and religion which “escalates into real fashion contests and potlatches in which youngsters would display their European fashion designer clothes, in an attempt to outdo each other”.
      The workshop aims at creating a temporary community of artistic nomads focusing on new ways to relate to the hybridity of our history, our imagination, our collective consciousness, our multiple media, our fashion and above all our of potential of resistance.

       


      08 - 12 / 10 / 2012


      ‘PERMEABLE CITY / 1’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Carlotta Scioldo & Bart Van den Eynde with Heike Langsdorf, Einat Tuchman and Jozef Wouters.


      The urban context has become the working field for many artists over the last decades. This movement outside the established art spaces can be seen as means to make a direct connection with and to have a direct impact on a larger (urban) audience and/or to (re)connect with the social, economical and political realities of the city.
      What are the economies involved in this ‘fieldwork’ and what are the possibilities and difficulties of the artist’s position in this relation? How do these artistic interventions relate to the very different temporalities of the urbanist and architectural timelines involved in the continuous making of the city?
      The concrete case of Brussels and the very different practices in the city of three ex a.pass participants, Heike Langsdorf, Einat Tuchman and Jozef Wouters, are the starting point of a first workshop where their work will be presented and contextualized. Together with the artists we will explore the neighbourhood and places they work in and the theoretical framework they have built.

       

       

      15-19 / 10 / 2012


      ‘OUT OF FRAME’
      workshop by Lynda Gaudreau


      For the next Playground Festival Lynda Gaudreau has been invited to adapt her choreographical exhibition ‘Out of Grace’ for the permanent collection of the M-Museum in Leuven. Elementary devices such as sound, lighting and the presence of the body will draw the visitor in and activate modes of display and perception, addressed here according to a performative and compositional logic. What is entailed by these modes when a collection coexist with the body, the light and the sound? André Malraux’ essay, ‘The Imaginary Museum’, (1947) will serve as a starting point to reflect on history, contemporaneity and the idea of reproduction with copies, photocopies, photos and drawings. This hybrid and experimental project, at the borders of choreography and exhibition questions the nature and relationship of these practices.

       


      25 - 29 / 10 / 2012


      ‘SCHIZOPHRENIC BODIES / 3’
      Brandon LaBelle


      The workshop will explore notions of masquerade, impersonation, clowning and multiple personalities. Through a series of exercises and experiments with voice, masks, and puppets, participants will construct their own double. The double will function as a second body, or an echo of oneself. By using various static materials, the workshop will support a "distribution of agency" away from the human subject and toward an interaction with static materials, audio recordings, and space. How might objects and things come to life, as animate forms? And what consequences might this have for methods of performance and choreography?

       

       

      12-16 / 11 / 2012


      “PERFORMANCE / PERFORMATIVITY’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Elke Van Campenhout


      In this workshop we attack texts and practices that deal with the notion of performance and performativity. We dive into the historical context of the birth of performance as an emancipatory and authenticating gesture, put critical questions towards its aura of ‘authenticity’ and ‘unrepeatability’ (Peggy Phelan), its documentary status, etc... We also go into the philosophical meaning of ‘performativity’ as developed by Austin and Butler. And take in some of the technological and economic uses of the word ‘performance’ to see if this can enlighten a contemporary notion of ‘performance’ today: how this could reflect a changed reality, and societal organization. Is there anything to be emancipated from? And are performative strategies the tools we need to wriggle ourselves out of the restrictions and limitations of an artistic, economic, and institutional field?

       


      19 - 24 / 11 / 2012


      ‘PERMEABLE CITY / 2’
      workshop and conference by Carlotta Scioldo & Bart Van den Eynde with Heike Langsdorf, Einat Tuchman, Jozef Wouters & guests


      Second practical part of the workshop ‘Permeable City’ on artistic interventions in the urban context where the participants of the workshop are invited to explore their own artistic practice in relation to the city and the working spaces created by Heike Langsdorf, Einat Tuchman & Jozef Wouters.
      This second workshop week will be rounded up in a conference, a public presentation and discussion forum, with participants and guests where the two weeks experience of ‘The Permeable City’ will be shared with a larger audience.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2012 BLOCK II 01 May 2012
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 May 2012
    • 31 July 2012
    • 2012 BLOCK II

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
      Carlotta Scioldo
      Catherine (Clé) Lé
      Elise Goldstein
      Elizabeth Ward
      Fleur Ordoukhani
      Helena Dietrich
      Ive Leemans
      Jaime Llopis
      Luanda Casella
      Lucie Eidenbenz
      Oshin Albrecht
      Simon Loeffler
      Veridiana Zurita

       

      Partners

      PAF Performance Art Forum
      Nadine
      De Singel

       

      Contributors for workshops

      Anja Steglich
      Ant Hampton
      Caroline Daish
      Elizabeth Ward
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Julie Pfleiderer
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Paz Rojo
      Vladimir Miller

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout

       

      Mentors

      Ana Hoffner
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Peter Stamer
      Pierre Rubio

       

       

       

       

       

      07 - 11 / 05 & 14 - 18 / 05 / 2012


      ‘HIGHER PERFORMANCE’
      workshop by Nicolas Galeazzi & Elizabeth Ward


      The current economic crisis is not only a result of some major failures in speculating practices, it is the outbreak of the constant crisis inherent to the system. Since many years a precarious and dangerous economic climate has been created through the exploitation of the society and the environment in the believe in constant growth and a policy relying on the infinite creation of money for some through the creation of infinite debt for the majority.
      The current cuts of public funding and the absence of interesting jobs are just some visible signs of the consequences of governmental reaction towards the 2008 crisis. Arts all over Europe are now more concretely targeted for cuts then ever in the last 40 years.
      In this climate, artists are forced to rethink their relationship to economics. We have to leave our triple position as critiques, prototypes and profiteers of the system, and rethink our relation to the protection through governmental funding. This can not be done by making art in a more 'economic' way.
      This workshop rather launches a discussion about the repositioning of the economic field towards the arts by “occupying” and appropriating the "economics" and its terminology and fill it with new practices and new meaning. We will occupy the vocabularies, the practices and the appearance of the economy and to open it to a wider spectrum of life than just a financial success. For that we have to ask, what do we expect from future life? What is it what we really are 'dealing', 'trading' with? What is our currency? What kind of an economy could we establish out of an artistic (researching) practice which will make a real difference?
      In order to compare and relate the differing understandings of 'performance' in a practical and discursive way, we will setup a lab where artistic performances and economic performances should coexist, contradict and corrupt each other.

       


      21-25 / 05 / 2012


      ‘SEEING SOUND’
      two workshops by Julie Pfleiderer and Ant Hampton


      ‘Soundwalk’
      German director Julie Pfleiderer and performance artist Caroline Daish have invited guest artists, including David Helbich, Joanna Baillie & Paul Craenen for the May Soundlab "Seeing Sound". The idea is to create 10 days around Sound and Performance in the context of Soundwalks and inviting an expansive interpretation of the form 'Soundwalk'.
      ‘Fantasy Intervention’
      "Fantasy Intervention" is a workshop by Ant Hampton on imagination and writing for site-specific theatre and live urban interventions. With a focus on observation imagination and writing and involving walks in the city, discussion, film and photography the workshop culminates with a series of presentations.

       


      28 / 05 - 01 / 06 / 2012


      ‘COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH’
      a.pass Basics workshop by Elke Van Campenhout


      Every block, a.pass organizes some ‘B-workshops’: workshops that focus on the basic principles of a.pass as a working environment. Every B-workshop is accompanied by a reader of texts and information that will be the starting point for discussion and a platform for (re)-thinking the a.pass working environment. In the upcoming blocks we will gather around topics like ‘collaboration’, ‘self-organization’, ‘tools, cases and other methodologies for artistic research’, ‘feedback and critique’, ‘collaborative work spaces’, ‘transdisciplinary research practices’, ‘What is political about research?’, ‘Who’s afraid of the Institute?’, etc...
      This first B-workshop on ‘collaboration and collaborative learning’ opens up the field of collaborative practices as ‘open collectives’, as it grew in the artistic practices of the last 10-15 years. We try to get a grip on the social, political, economic and aesthetic context that has produced this proclivity for communal working, and look at some interesting examples of collaborative research projects.

       

       

      25 - 29 / 06 / 2012


      “WHATEVER MOVING LIKE THIS”
      workshop by Paz Rojo


      How could we experience the question "what, why, who, where, what for, how we live the tension between individuation and the necessity of collectivity?” What are the conditions that make WE a problem to sustain rather than a problem to solve? How can we address such a question assuming that the sites where the sensible, the corporeal and unspeakable are the battlefield where to challenge our existence? How could we do so without addressing pre-existent models and protocols? Could we experience (the) body as the very battlefield where the "somatic" prime on the "cognitive" where "creation" prime on the "creative" where “tacit experience” primes over “negotiation and responsibility” and where softness, empathy and dispersion prime over self-representation, self-management and self-control? What does being “democratically in contact means today" as a performative and experienciable gesture?
      This workshop takes place within the framework "C O R E O G R A F X S", an investigation that departs from a series of choreographic cultures that emerged over the 70´s in NY, which sought to incorporate the collective daily life through the body. From this context "C O R E O G R A F X S” studies some of the concepts that defined these cultures and, in turn, questions what they mean in the current market democracies and in relation to the triangle brand-body-work.

       


      02 - 06 / 07 / 2012


      ‘FEEDBACK AND CRITIQUE‘
      a.pass Basics workshop by Vladimir Miller & Elke Van Campenhout


      We want to address the topic of feedback. Since a.pass is a shared environment, we depend a lot on each other as sparring partners in our researches. Often the work is presented within a group and the quality of the feedback is lacking in precision, understanding or communicative strength. What is important in giving or receiving feedback is that both positions are clarified: what position do I speak out of? what kind of feedback would be useful for my research?
      In this workshop we try to construct very diverse feedback techniques: spoken critique, non-negotiated critique, direct feedback, indirect feedback, written, walking, one-on-one or transformative feedback.
      We refer also back to some basic texts on art critique and feedback systems.

       

       

      13 - 22 / 07 / 2012


      ‘THE WALK’
      workshop on location by dr. Anja Steglich & Elke Van Campenhout


      The Walk is a ten day workshop on location, focussing on two main questions:
      How to turn walking into a qualitative tool for artistic research? and How to create a shared landscape through the individual investigation of connecting territories?
      During the Walk we will address these questions out of the proposals of the individual researchers, that will investigate a limited domain and devise a walk that can later be picked by others. Important in this construction is the decisions made on the level of parameters: what do I consider (out of my research) to be important ‘markers’ of the walking experience: fe. sound, shapes, roads, attitude of walking, … Throughout the ten days we try to come back to the PAF ‘headquarters’ with enough information to turn our proposals and experiences into a shared map of the environment, and add the instructions, tasks and guidelines into a useable walking guide for others.
      What is important here that these guidelines are both addressing the walk as a method for artistic research and the walk as an investigative tool to discover the landscape as a ‘narrative’.
      The main guest on this journey is dr. Anja Steglich, who is currently working on two linked themes: the `telling landscapes´ and the ‘landscape choreography’.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2011 BLOCK III 01 September 2011
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2011
    • 30 November 2011
    • 2011 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
      Carlotta Scioldo
      Caroline Daish
      Catherine (Clé) Lé
      Doris Stelzer
      Elise Goldstein
      Leonie Kuipers
      Margareth Kaserer
      Marilyne Grimmer
      Oshin Albrecht
      Robin Amanda Creswell Faure
      Simon Loeffler
      Veridiana Zurita
      Vicente Arlandis

       


      Research End Presentations

      Abhilash Ningappa
      Philippe Severyns
      Timothy Segers

       


      Partners

      RITS
      Zsenne artlab
      NU Performance Festival IV (Tallinn)

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Angelo Vermeulen
      Antonio Araújo
      Bart Verschaffel
      Bojana Cvejic
      David Bade
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Geert Opsomer
      Guillermo Gómez-Peña
      Jacob Wren
      Juan Dominguez
      Koen Van Singhel
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Ong Keng Sen
      Pierre Rubio
      Robert Steijn
      Silke Bake-Peter Stamer
      Stef Stessels
      Terenja Van Dijk
      Wesley Meuris

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout
      Bart Van den Eynde


      Mentors

      Anette Baldauf
      Pierre Rubio
      Vincent Dunoyer
      Vladimir Miller

       

       

       

      15 - 17 / 09 / 2011


      ‘DON’T KNOW!’
      Conference on Artistic Research

      Don’t Know! is not a gathering with the sole aim of exchanging knowledge on artistic research practices. In the course of three days we rather aim to create a frame in which research is put into practice and shared with the audience. In other words: we propose a conference which provides different working situations, allowing an in-depth experience of research formats, relations and situations, and the specific ‘knowledges’ these produce. Following the suggested attitude in our conference-title - Don’t Know! - we would like to frame these formats through four fields of questions:

      Don’t Know! the politics of knowledge production
      In which way the artistic understanding of knowledge differs from the one in other fields? What are the political implications of such a difference (if any at all)? How could we redistribute the power of knowledge production throughout the arts? And finally: is this at all a valid question? Should the arts avoid the political recuperation of its terrain and abstain from the tight link to knowledge production practices? Or: is it possible to maintain an alternative position for the arts in their way of dealing with knowledge (production)? Or if not, can the arts still claim their (political) capacity for change?

      Don’t Know! knowing today
      Within a society that has turned the commodification of knowledge into one of its main economic drives, the critical discourse on these production formats the arts create has been the basis for a lot of (historical) research practices. Therefore we would like to ask ourselves how artistic practices today can be a viable motor for thinking about our economic, technical and political realities. How can the arts reflect upon, but maybe even more, how can they influence future developments?

      Don’t Know! from knowledge production to knowledge processing
      We might argue that art (and artistic research) does not in the first instance produce knowledge, but that the arts keep on opening up the cracks in our systems of understanding: mislaying the knowledge, escaping the gridlocked pre-defined contexts that can be understood only according to the conventions of the discourses (be they political, aesthetical, psychological, …) that define knowledge. Would it then not seem more appropriate to talk about ‘knowledge processing’ than about the production of knowledge? Art as a game of misplacing information rather than one that tries to reinforce meaning on the world? And does this in a lot of ways not echo a contemporary understanding of research in general?

      Don’t Know! the environment
      Artistic research - and specific modes of dealing with knowledge (production) - is nowadays placed before the challenge that it has to operate within certain disciplinary frameworks and protocols. The actual combat in the arts now is to see where the disciplining and institutionalisation of its intrinsic researching gesture can be turned productive again.The question is: what kind of environments and institutions does art need today in order to react on the changing ontologies of knowledge and to develop different approaches of working and thinking?

       


      19 - 23 / 09 / 2011


      SUMMERSCHOOL
      series of two workshops in collaboration with RITS

       

      How to Stage Discussions about Arts and Politics?
      workshop by Jacob Wren


      Jacob’s workshop is based on the technique of the relay-interview, a simple game for having unexpected conversations. It involves asking and answering spontaneous questions that are loosely based around several themes chosen before the game starts. It is an attempt to have genuine, surprising exchanges within a performance situation. And to find out what we think about it and what we most want to know.

       

      How to Artistically Intervene in the Urban Space of the City of Ghent?
      workshop by Antonio Araújo


      The idea of Antonio’s workshop is to experience different points of departure in working with site and urban interventions. While working in a collaborative way in the city of Ghent, we will experiment the power of mobilization that theatre provides. Through intervening in the urban space, theatre recovers its public art dimension - which has always been there, but was sometimes blurry or forgotten.

       


      26 - 30 / 09 / 2011


      ‘DON’T KNOW’
      Workshop / Congress on Artistic Research by Nicolas y Galeazzi


      Nicolas Y Galeazzi focuses on developing and questioning social discourses through artistic research, which is materialised in concepts, installations, performances as well as printed matter. Galeazzi sets up performative research frameworks for experiments with political and social conditions and is working thereby on a concept of 'Mise-en-Discourses'.
      Nicolas will work further on the principles that have been developed during the conference more thoroughly with the researchers/participants of the post-graduate program. Central are the 4 questions that have been guiding the preparation of the conference.

       


      03 - 07 / 10 / 2011


      ‘DIRECTING THE GAZE’
      Reading sessions on Architecture with Koen Van Singhel, Terenja Van Dijk, Wesley Meuris and Bart Verschaffel.


      The development in the 16th century of the controlled space of the theatre isolated within the urban context made it possible to manipulate the gaze in an absolute way. The development of the theatre building reflects societal organization in a crystallized form where watching and being watched is organized following strict rules. In the second half of 20th century the theatre is brought back as a reference in the critical reflection on and discussion of the visual organization of the public space.
      In these reading sessions we invite architects, theorists and artists who work and reflect on the gaze in architecture. Texts (or other influences) that have been essential in their development as an artist or theoretician are the starting point of a discussion on the organization of the gaze in an architectural context.

       


      10 - 12 / 10 / 2011 & 17 -23 /10 / 2011


      ‘ARTIFICIAL REALITIES’
      (episode 2 - Magical Materialism)
      workshop by Pierre Rubio


      This workshop is the last iteration of a series of two. They both seek to detach our research projects from an essentialist and naturalistic approach. Their common aim is at (re)problematising for (re)capturing the strategies of construction and thus the theories of knowledge which our singular researches investigate and produce. If the Spring workshop’s keyword was ‘attachments’, the second step will be entirely contaminated by the notion of ‘magic’. We will take a trip into the wonderland of in-differentiation between human and natural, object and subject, figure and background, and more important, theory and practice.
      At first, during three days, we will re-consider our research projects under the influence of two singular analysis of magic : respectively Gilbert Simondon’s and Isabelle Stengers’.
      During a second period of an entire week, we will turn a former shop (turned recently into an art gallery) into an alchemy laboratory to transmute our projects into something other. The basic idea is that if one takes distance from one’s own project by moving it into unexpected contexts, this allows the discovery of ‘attachments’ and “othernesses” to enrich the ‘original’ project. Taking seriously what practice means and is capable of, let’s engage in a risky path from familiar individuals to unfamiliar singularities, from experiments to experiences, from “matter of facts to matter of concerns”.

       

       

      24 - 28 / 10 / 2011


      ‘PHOTOGRAPHY * LIGHT * SCENOGRAPHY’
      workshop by Stef Stessels


      Stef Stessels always has used the camera as a tool to create his personal database and archive. Recently he has begun to integrate his interest of photography directly into his scenographic work and light design. First of all he started to document the performances of de Roovers- and his sets - and the company uses his photos for its communication. More fundamentally his camera became an instrument in his research for light & set design where he integrated the photos from this research process in the actual performances. In this artistic workshop he will investigate with the participants the possible relations between photography, scenography and lightdesign integrating more technical aspects in concrete artistic exercises.

       


      31 / 10 - 02 / 11 / 2011


      ‘OBJECTNESS & THINGLINESS’
      reading sessions workshop by Elke Van Campenhout


      Picking up on the many forms in which objects have appeared in the participant’s projects in the last months, we take a quick tour down memory lane, presenting different theories on the object in a 3-day crash course for beginners: Kant, Michael Fried, Paul Gillroy, Jane Bennett etc. We work around the ‘resisting object’ and ‘thingliness’ as political qualities of the object, around the object/subject dichotomy as driving force in (late)modernism, about objects charged by desire that turn violent, etc. This workshop mainly circles around close reading of texts.

       


      03 - 13 / 11 / 2011


      ‘ON HOSPITALITY AND ESTRANGEMENT’
      ( The Tallin Project / The Viru Hotel )
      workshop by Ong Keng Sen and Elke Van Campenhout


      This workshop is part of a festival organized in a gigantic old Russian hotel in Tallinn. During ten days we will be working on two levels:
      Together with curator and theatre maker Ong Keng Sen we work around ‘the stranger’: the one that doesn’t belong, the one that disturbs the ‘common space’, the one that by his presence changes the perception of the space etc. Both on a theoretical and a practical level, we will interfere in the hotel life, working around hospitality (Derrida), extimacy / intimacy (Zizek), invisible theatre, etc.
      On a second level, you are invited to come with a project of your own, placed in one of the hotel rooms, and work further on these themes out of your personal interest. There is also the possibility to work in the corridors (as a scenographic concept), elevators, … Ong Keng Sen will also mentor these projects.
      The festival will open its doors at certain times for visitors.

       


      14 - 18 / 11 / 2011


      ‘GHOSTS AND HOSTS’
      workshop by Robert Steijn


      In this workshop Robert Steijn will work with the participants on principles like presence and absence, ghosts, energetic transformations, schizophrenic bodies belonging to different times and spaces at the same time.
      Robert Steijn worked as a dance critic for seven years, and then also as a curator for dance and experimental theatre in Amsterdam for seven years. Now he tries to bring the magic back in life and in the theatre. In that sense he considers himself more and more a magician. His helper is a deer, who appears in a lot of his texts and dances. His belief is that everyone can become a homemade contemporary shaman. His path towards becoming such a magician has been described in his three solo’s: the first solo was his call in guiding the death of his father, the second one, his ego death in the loss of everything by the breaking of the heart and now in his third solo: the birth of a person who can cross the thin line between reality and imagination, between life and death.

       


      21 - 25 / 11 / 2011


      ‘WINTERSCHOOL’
      (Baroque bodies)
      series of three workshops in collaboration with RITS


      Can we understand our times of postmodern confusion as a genuinely baroque period? How does this idea of baroque challenge pre-conceived notions such as corporality, performance and (post-)colonial hybridization? How would a baroque body look like and what is its performative potential? Are we approaching a true baroque era of crisis as the distinctions between man and machine, between human and non-human life are slowly dissolving and man is entering a new phase in the history of colonization, conquering space?
      The RITS Winter School consists of two periods. In November 2011 the Brussels-based arts centre Beursschouwburg will host three workshops for artists, activists, art students and academics. During a second period, in January 2012, you will get the opportunity to develop your own artistic response to your experience in one of the three workshops in Brussels. This individual research phase will be hosted by De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. You will collaborate with other artists and with students from different art schools and you will be coached by different teachers from the participating art schools. The results of this workshop will be included in the program on a festival on baroque theatricality (February 1-3, De Brakke Grond)

      Workshop 1: Guillermo Gómez-Peña (USA/Mexico)
      This workshop aims at creating a temporary community of rebel artists from different disciplines, ages, ethnic backgrounds, gender persuasions, and nationalities, in which difference and experimentation are not only accepted but encouraged. Participants are given the opportunity to develop new modes of relationships between artists and communities, mentor and apprentice, which are neither colonial nor condescending and to discover new ways of relating to their own bodies. By decolonizing and then re-politicizing bodies, they can become sites for activism and embodied theory, for memory and reinvention, for pleasure and penance. Why do we do what we do? Which borders do we wish to cross and why? What is the relationship between performance, activism, pedagogy and our everyday lives? What about the relationship between the physical body and the social body?

      Workshop 2: Angelo Vermeulen (Belgium)
      In Vermeulen's workshop, entitled 'BODYREACTOR - Human monstrification in outer space', the participants will explore the notion of potential monstrification of the human body in outer space. This workshop reroutes the theme of the ‘space alien’ to man himself. How to work with an ongoing mutating and modifying body? How to physically deal with an unknown and ultimately body-transforming environment? How to relate to a space where biological evolution never took us in the first place? ‘REACTOR’ refers to the experimental, open format of the workshop, to the condition of man in outer space (living in a craft or vessel), and to the fact that the group is locked up in one single space for one week. It also refers to the concept of monstrification in a more 'Gothic' sense.

      Workshop David Bade (Curaçao)
      During this workshop, Bade and the participants will create a site-specific environment taking the shifting world of early modern baroque as a starting point. Instability, excess, changeability will function is key concepts. The workshop will also investigate different modes of collaboration. “More is more” seems to be the motto of David Bade.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2011 BLOCK II 01 April 2011
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 April 2011
    • 31 July 2011
    • 2011 BLOCK II

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Abhilash Ningappa
      Carlotta Scioldo
      Caroline Daish
      Iris Bouche
      Leonie Kuipers
      Marilyne Grimmer
      Philippe Severyns
      Rodolphe Coster
      Timothy Segers
      Veridiana Zurita
      Vicente Arlandis

       

      Research End Presentations

      Alessandra Coppola
      David Zagari
      Michiel Reynaert

       

      Partners

      Sarma
      Nadine
      De Singel


      Contributors for workshops

      Adva Zakai
      Dries Verhoeven
      Elke van Campenhout
      Koen Tachelet
      Lilia Mestre & Els Viaene
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Pierre Rubio
      Vladimir Miller


      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout

       

       

      01 - 30 / 04 / 2011


      ‘CURATING AS ENVIRONMENTALISM’

      salon about curating in the performing arts curated by Adva Zakai and Elke Van Campenhout


      How is the notion of curating transformed from its visual arts context into a more collaborative and performative gesture? Are there projects in the contemporary performance scene that are exemplary for a re-thinking of curating as environmentalism? From this starting point, the one month salon on curating in the performing arts was developed. On the basis of the online article “Curating as Environmentalism”, people were invited to gloss the text, highlight fragments, and add other texts, images, links and thoughts. The original text faded out day by day, until what was left were the parts readers chose to highlight and the references they attached to them. The added material then was the inspiration for the live salon in the workspace Nadine in Brussels.
      Contributors to the event were Deufert & Plischke, Nicolas Galeazzi, Elke van Campenhout, Adva Zakai, Raimundas Malasaukas and Jeroen Peeters.
      The event was produced by Sarma, Nadine and a.pass Research Centre.
      “Curating as Environmentalism” as a paper publication is available.

       

       

      09 - 13 / 05 / 2011


      ‘SPECULATIVE WORKSHOP’
      workshop by Nicolas Y Galeazzi


      Research always is performative; not many performances, though, are researchive. More so, seeing performance as means of research is inverting the common notion of a performance: as a tool for research it is not interested in sending, but in receiving and processing information. The Speculative Workshop is aiming to develop concrete tools and practices based on the above thought. We will look critically at the current debate about artistic research and try to develop personalised theories and practices around the performative aspect of research. The workshop provides the possibility to elaborate your performative research-attitude based on your own research practice. By that we will try to understand what kind of politics of knowledge production these attitudes stand for. The double bind between the affirmed openness of research and the underlying 'politics' of its approach is the most important twist to be taken in an artistic research project. Therefore I tend to see this workshop as an experiment in knowledge production. Its structure will have to emerge through the practices you are bringing in. But I will provide (and experiment myself with) some frameworks of reading, discussing and practicing as well as some expeditions in the 'field'. To start with I would like to experiment on two general approaches, which deal with the constant unknown territory our researches are stumbling into: Speculation as the risky investment into the unknown, and Serendipity as the finding of the un-searched. By copying and abusing scientific research methodologies and confronting them with performative and artistic means, it is my aim to throw another light on the spectrum of what happens if research and performance are thought the same. This workshop is a preparation for the a.pass research conference in September.

       

       

      16 - 20 / 05 / 2011


      ‘DUNKELKAMMER’
      workshop by Dries Verhoeven & Koen Tachelet


      We live in a visual consumption society where our eyes are brutally manipulated. Producers of images force us to attach a economic value to everything visible. They want us to classify the images that haunt us according to that economic parameters. Our self-image is assigned a place in this economy of visual valuation. As we look into the mirror of the other, we judge and adjust ourselves to the image of ourselves produced by the other. The more we make ourselves dependent upon this visual-economic labeling, the more our desires and needs are subjected to the logic of marketing and pornography: both try to penetrate as deep as possible our self-image, in order to order and re-order it, along the mechanism of ‘narcissistic differentiation’: the necessity to differentiate oneself from the others, to be more, better and more competitive. And here is a paradox. People have a deep-rooted need of intimacy, which can only be realised within a non-judging mutual space. A situation of intimacy implies that my gaze is directed towards the other, that the other is not seen as the mirror of myself, as an opportunity to market myself. From the moment that being desirable becomes a goal in itself, intimacy is impossible. Dries Verhoeven & Koen tachelet are preparing the installation Dunkelkammer for the Münchner Kammerspiele. Dunkelkammer questions the world of seeing. What does it mean to see? How does seeing and being seen influence our self-observation and our connection to the other? What happens when this sense is turned off? Those questions will be dealt with in a two-month rehearsal process with 7 blind performers. Dunkelkammer is meant to be an experience for the spectators; the thoughts, feelings, questions and (bodily) sensations of the spectator will be activated and steered by the performers’ actions and words. Crucial element is the space, the varying parameters of distance and intimacy, presence and absence. In the workshop texts by Susan Sontag, Jean Baudrillard, Houellebecq, Beckett, Oliver Sacks and others will be read and discussed. A more practical part of the workshop will deal with exploration of the corporeality of vision and blindness.

       


      30 / 05 - 03 / 06 / 2011


      ‘ARTIFICIAL REALITIES’
      (episode 1 – Displacements and Attachments)
      workshop by Pierre Rubio


      Often artists and researchers still hold on to the illusory idea of their material having a ‘natural’ ‘essence’. Let us for a moment take some distance from this essentialist and naturalistic approach, let us consider our research projects as artificial constructions, which thus can be problematized and turned into stimulating and productive networks. Artificial Realities aims at a rediscovery of our projects by an (momentary) over-artificialization: first by re-mapping our projects and by doing so understand/capture the strategies of ‘assemblage’ and thus the theories of knowledge which they formulate; and secondly by opening up horizons of possibilities for further developments and speculations. The basic idea is that if one takes distance from one’s own project by ‘moving’ it in unexpected contexts or by ‘translating’ it in non familiar languages, this allows the discovery of new components and new ‘attachments’ that will enrich and stimulate the ‘original’ project. Or in other words: developing an otherness by experiencing and exploring “as if's” to get out of the over-territorial and locked perception of “our” projects. Let's re-construct, re-imagine, re-invent “our” substrata. Let's science-fictionalize “our” “problems” and speculate ... cartoons... models for societies... newspapers... fictions... messages for eventual extraterrestrial forms of life... social practices... TV programs... religions... and more. Artificial Realities will develop through different steps: from identification of central issues in the practice, problematization, to several experiences of transfers, translations, displacements, parallax shifts, etc. The workshop includes reading sessions (Bruno Latour's On the modern cult of the factish gods and Factures/Fractures), individual work, group presentations and discussions.

       


      06 - 17 / 06 / 2011


      ‘SOUND AS SPACE’
      workshop by Lilia Mestre & Els Viaene


      Sound as Space proposes to investigate sound as a vehicle to create spaces in spaces. Sound depending on the way it is recorded and diffused, can enable the auditor to immerse in parallel realities. Audio pieces can invite the listeners to combine the view (of the physical space they find themselves in) and sound (constructed audio space) to re-create - depending on their own personal history - a new place or a series of places. Brian Massumi calls the constant becoming or transformation of space by the projections of its users the ‘virtual space’, a place of endless potential. Performing artist Lilia Mestre sound artist Els Viaene propose to think and create alternative spaces by the use of sound compositions. In this workshop we will practice recording, editing and diffusion of audio pieces produced by the participants in collaboration with us. For Mestre and Viaene this workshop is part of their ongoing research on audio spaces that create direct relations between their different users and between these users and the environment they find themselves in.

       


      01 - 23 / 07 / 2011


      ‘SETTLEMENT’
      workspace by Vladimir Miller


      The settlement as a proposal is asking its participants to come and practice their work in a shared environment. The method is to build everything from scratch on location that is required to work and communicate a practice to other participants. This can be anything from an improvised table to hold a laptop to an elaborate, secluded structure; from temporal impromptu arrangements to specific spaces that last for the whole work period. Settlement allows for a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. As it manifests itself in the workspace, a loop of condition and production is created in that shared space: in the course of the two weeks the settlement lets a particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the sets of rules and behaviours usually provided by ready-made spaces such as ‘table’, ‘studio’, ‘meeting’, ‘gallery’, ‘venue’, ‘library’, etc. By finding a spatial manifestation and localization for their work the settlers enter a growing and evolving network of objects, spaces, ideas, events and encounters in the shared space. As the emphasis of the work-process and the activity of the individual and of the group change from day to day, the settlement stays a dynamic structure, ready to be reformed according to the present requirements for production and presentation. The political questions inherent in claiming one's own space, inviting or excluding the outside, the formation of groups and production of locality and culture, constantly question the structures inherent in the concept of settlement itself. Between anarchy and the rule of majority the settlement practice actively searches for a spatialized production of a contributive dis-agreement and gives space to a literal heterotopia of work processes.

       

       

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2011 BLOCK I 01 January 2011
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 January 2011
    • 31 March 2011
    • 2011 BLOCK I

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Abhilash Ningappa
      Alessandra Coppola
      Caroline Daish
      David Zagari
      Doris Stelzer
      Esther Francis
      Iris Bouche
      Margareth Kaserer
      Marilyne Grimmer
      Michiel Reynaert
      Philippe Severyns
      Rodolphe Coster
      Stephen Bain
      Timothy Segers

       


      Research End Presentations

      Einat Tuchman
      Katrin Lohmann
      Sven Goyvaerts

       


      Partners

      Kaaitheater
      Damaged Goods
      RITS
      Burning Ice festival.
      Pact Zollverein
      De Singel
      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Adva Zakai
      Anette Baldauf
      Aras Ozgun
      Christian Rizzo
      International Errorist
      Laurent Liefooghe
      Leo De Nijs
      Meg Stuart
      Various Artists
      Vladimir Miller

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout

       

      Mentors

      Laurent Liefooghe
      Lilia Mestre
      Pierre Rubio
      Vincent Dunoyer

       

       

      03-13 / 01 / 2011


      ‘A SETTLEMENT ON ALCHEMY, ALLIANCE , ANARCHY’
      workspace by Vladimir Miller


      The settlement is a model to engender and structure work, knowledge, events and encounters. In a shared space, the participants function as an open group where questions of territory, negotiation and hospitality in art production surface. Settlers build a station suitable for their own artistic research and, by doing so, enter in a growing and evolving network of objects, spaces, ideas and events. The settlement allows negotiating many gradations of participation and influence; it also provides different modes of engagement between inside and outside. A settler can leave, a visitor becomes a tourist, a frequent visitor can eventually settle in the space. The political questions inherent in claiming one's own space, inviting or excluding the outside, the formation of groups and production of locality and culture, constantly question the concept of settlement itself. Between anarchy and the rule of majority the settlement praxis actively searches for a spatialized production of dis-agreement.
      In the context of her two-week ‘Atelier’ in the Kaaistudios, Meg Stuart invited Vladimir Miller to localize his settlement in the dance studio. During these two weeks a.pass settlers and Atelier members will try to find moments of common ground, confronting the ideas and topics emerging in their respective territories.

       


      17-21 / 01 / 2011


      ‘ERRORISTA’S’
      workshop by a.pass in collaboration with Kaaitheater and RITS in the context of Burning Ice festival.


      The International Errorist is an artistic and cultural movement whose nucleus is the Buenos Aires-based artist collective Etcétera… The Errorist is also the most recent iteration of Etcétera’s unique fusion of aggressive street theater, political critique, and direct-action protest, which is equally marked by the group’s formative militancy within Argentina’s human rights movement as it is the artists’ ardent fealty to surrealism. Since the group’s formation in 1997, Etcétera has produced a myriad of photo- and video-based works, poetic manifestoes, theatrical works, and interventionist performances. Few have been created specifically as artworks to be exhibited in traditional fine arts contexts or destined for the publics proper to such contexts. Rather, Etcétera…’s works most often begin as performances in the midst of political demonstrations, unannounced street actions that target unwitting passersby, or as images and texts crafted to circulate within the mass media and/or amidst publics associated with left social movements.
      The International Errorist constitutes a critique of the contemporary discourse of terrorism, where this discourse is understood to be an instrument of statecraft. Etcétera…’s work explores terrorism as an ideological mediation whose function is not only political -- as it bears upon interpretations of political violence, for example-- but specifically biopolitical, as it concerns the calculus of the differential value of human lives and the state’s exercise of biopower over groups delineated according to this logic.

       


      24-28 / 01 / 2011


      ‘EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY’
      workshop by Anette Baldauf & Aras Ozgun


      This workshop aims at discussing some of the basic notions and problematics of visual ethnography, contemporary experimental practices in this field, and the practical potentials of digital media technologies for ethnographic research purposes. Starting with a critical historical overview of visual ethnography, the workshop examines various aspects of the problem of representation in visual ethnography. Representation of non-western “others” in the colonialist representation regimes, the “realism” and the “truth-value” of visual representation in general will be a part of this discussion. Following this discussion we will focus on non-mainstream ethnographic approaches and experimental documentary film practices, including so-called fake documentaries, which reflect upon and cultivate this problem of representation itself, and seek to create alternative modes, regimes and techniques of visual representation. Finally, we aim to familiarize ourselves with some of the basic techniques of ethnographic fieldwork.

       

       

      28-30 / 01 / 2011


      ’CURATING IN PERFORMING ARTS’
      workshop by a.pass in collaboration with Pact Zollverein, Essen.


      This workshop is organized over two weekends: one participating in the colloquium on curating organized by Pact Zollverein (Explorationen 11: Beyond Curating), and one discussing and proposing a new thinking about curating in the performing arts in deSingel.
      The currently vibrantly beginning discussion about curating in dance and performance comes at a moment when, on the one hand, ever new courses of study in curating are being launched for visual art and, on the other hand, the shape of the curatorial profession, in its authorial intervention and its omnipresence in the art market, has everywhere become the focus of massive criticism – as it was in the 1970s.
      At the same time, the entanglement of theory and practice has become ubiquitous, not least because of the transformation and revaluation of art colleges and art academies into universities. In what is currently happening in art, the art museum is testing the performative and processual exhibition, while the dance and performance house oriented toward performative arts is developing the live course or the "Musée de la danse". In the field of dance, since the end of the 1990s, artists' initiatives have been developing that introduce new artistic practices and criticize the existing organizational models (for example, from choreographs and performance artists like Xavier Le Roy, deufert + plischke, and Boris Charmatz). Substantively and structurally, organizers took up important impetuses from artists, whether in the form of a thorough interlocking of theory and practice or of the establishment of artist and co-curator teams, artistic laboratories, or residence programs.

       

      31 / 01 - 04 / 02 / 2011


      ‘NEW-YORK’
      workshop by Elke Van Campenhout & Bart Van den Eynde


      In the context of the ‘New York festival’ organised by deSingel, a.pass organizes an intensive discussion workshop. We take a close look at the recent New York performance scene and analyze how pop esthetics, cinematographic editing principles en trans-medial dispositives influenced a specific language of theatre, dance and performance. Video material, texts and talks with the artists present in the festival will be the starting point of the conversations. possibly Natural Theatre of Oklohama will also add a more practical section to the workshop.

       

      07 - 11 / 02 / 2011


      ‘BUREAU OF UNTITLED’ / EXERCISE IN COMMERCIAL ART’
      workshop by Various Artists


      Being a Various Artist is a series of interactive installations by Various Artists in which artists are invited to identify with one of Various Artists. The format is not so much about learning but it also produces new work of which the author is the Various Artist, at the same time remaining the property of the participating artists. The event that Nadine organizes in February is dealing with Various Artist Liam Drib.
      Liam Drib, born in Liverpool 1961, well known for Mes Amis Belges, Cobalt Thoughts and his Evil Olive pub realisation, will be the centre artist of a new Being a Various Artist Workshop with an emphasis on commercial art and dazzling ideas.
      To support this theme, Liam will organise a Bureau of Untitled (BoU) with the participants of the workshop.
      The mission of BoU is to propose new ideas to artists that have a financial value on the art market, meaning their works can be traded. BoU is about making money with art paid by art money. The context of BoU at PAF is the arts lab Being Liam Drib.
      The structure of BoU approaches the structure of a sports game, including 2 teams (one black on white and one white on black) and a referee (black and white). Initially an artist is proposed, voted and processed Ideas, fitted to the work of the chosen artist, are being generated at a continuous pace which will be stored in ascending price categories. The sealed ideas will be offered for sale to the artists on an international art fair in the near future.

       

      07 - 12 / 02 / 2011


      ‘SENSITIVITY, SPACE, STAGE’
      workshop by Laurent Liefooghe


      Through texts and references this workshop wants to introduce some concepts and concrete examples of spaces and how these function as a ‘stage’. Simultaneously it will explore the idea of the ‘stage’ (the place of the performance) as an ideological space.
      The workshop will use the work Theater-Cinema by Dan Graham as reference, a crystallization point around which we will try to examine concepts of performance spaces and the power mechanisms involved.
      The ambition is not to give an exhaustive and historical overview, but rather through the reading of specific texts and trough concrete practices to explore a personal spatial sensitivity.
      The Texts will touch upon diverse themes as: the ‘theatro del mondo’ (the ideas of the stage as a metaphor for the world / the world as a stage), the baroque urbanistic interventions of Pius X (the city as a theater), the black box as a monadic space,. etc.
      The introduction of specific examples of spatial practices leads to concrete questions on the production of space. What does it mean to first conceive a space – to first ‘represent’ it -and then realize it? Through examples of existing practices different means and methods of representation in function of production are investigated.



      14 - 19 / 02 / 2011


      ‘SPACE OVERLOAD’
      workshop by Christian Rizzo


      Christian Rizzo wants to use the projects of the a.pass participants as a basis for a research on the collective production of space. How to spatialize one’s own practice and by doing so create an environment for other practices. How to be present in silence. How can the group’s activity be the scenography for an individual practice and the other way around. How to deal with an overflow or with a lack of spatial information.

       


      28 / 02 - 04 / 03 / 2011


      “LOCATION”
      workshop by Leo De Nijs


      Location is a practical workshop in an enormous building with empty class rooms, a theatre space and offices that was once the location of a theatre training. As a start there will be an investigation into different ways of exploring the building and expressing the specificity of this/a location through different media. The question how to use a found space as a location will then be translated in the concrete realisation of an installation starting from the personal researches of the participants.

       

      14 - 18 / 03 / 2011


      ‘THE ARCHIVE AS GENERATOR’
      workshop by Adva Zakai


      Which archive could generate the future rather than preserve the past?
      Coming out of the experience of ‘d o m i n o k i n g d o m’ where each work lives on in the next because works are made as a reaction on previous ones, I am interested in delving more into the possibility of generating present and future out of a direct confrontation with past experiences: formats that make the past, present and future influence each other, can trigger a constant re-evaluation and challenge of our knowledge and perception.
      Archiving, be it in the artistic, educational or any other field, is considered important because it ‘proves’ the (past) existence of a past events and thus enables them to continue to exist and to be (re)visited. But imagine an archive that is not trying to capture fixed ‘images’, that is not referential. An archive that is a living process that keeps modifying itself constantly, triggering new processes instead of being a mere documentation, always lost in the past.
      How does an archive functions that is looking forwards instead of looking back?
      This question will be explored through reading, discussion and guest lectures.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2010 BLOCK III 01 September 2010
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2010
    • 30 November 2010
    • 2010 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Abhilash Ningappa
      Adva Zakai
      Alessandra Coppola
      David Zagari
      Doris Stelzer
      Einat Tuchman
      Esther Francis
      Iris Bouche
      Katrin Lohmann
      Manne Granqvist
      Manon Avermaete
      Margareth Kaserer
      Michiel Reynaert
      Philip Janssens
      Philippe Severyns
      Rodolphe Coster
      Stephen Bain
      Sven Goyvaerts
      Timothy Segers

       


      Research End Presentations

      Agnese Cornelio
      Ana Casimiro
      Charlotte Bouckaert
      Heike Langsdorf
      Iuliana Varodi
      Marcelo Mardones
      Maria Lucia Correia

       

       

      Partners

      Theaterfestival 2010
      Thematics (Les Bains, Brussels)
      Master in Choreography (Amsterdam)
      Campo
      RITS
      De Singel

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Anette Baldauf
      Bart Van den Eynde
      Christian Rizzo
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Epifania Amoo-Adare
      Guillermo Gómez-Peña
      Janez Janša
      Jeremy Wade
      Laurent Liefooghe
      Lilia Mestre
      Sara Manente
      Sven Goyvaerts

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout


      Mentors

      Anette Baldauf
      Laurent Liefooghe
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Pierre Rubio

       

       

       

      30 / 08 - 03 / 09 / 2010


      ‘DISCUSSION & REFLECTION’
      workshop of shared critique by a.pass in collaboration with Theaterfestival 2010


      During the Theaterfestival, a.pass-participants work together with a group of outsiders on a workshop of shared critique: we go and see a series of performances at the Theaterfestival (a yearly festival that selects performances that have been of particular importance to the development of the performance arts in Flandres/Belgium in the past year).
      Next to this we selected some texts to feed the discussion, that work out some of the themes/aesthetic principles/dramaturgical choices made in these specific performances to feed the discussion.

       


      04-09 / 09 / 2010


      ‘LaZone BRUSSELS’
      project by apass Research Center, Thematics (Bains, Brussels) and Master of Choreography (Amsterdam)


      LaZone is both the second stage in the Critical Hope research by Elke van Campenhout within a.rc (a.pass research centre) and the topic for the 2 month residency Thematics at workspace Bains Connective in Brussels. For the opening week of the projects we share our space with the students of the Master of Choreography in Amsterdam to work on defining the boundaries of LaZone: this in-between place that falls out of our understanding of the different ‘regimes of the sensible/experientiable’ (Jacques Rancière) that define our daily life. In other words: we lead our lives within different zones of understanding, speaking and behaving. What I can see and experience, what I can say and express, is dependent on the particular zone I am moving in at that particular moment (the political zone, the personal, the juridical, the virtual etc...).
      LaZone is trying to construct a space-in-between these zones: the place where behavior, speech and movement have not been negotiated yet, the place where misunderstanding is the leading principle of communication, the environment that drives our hospitality principles to their breaking point, showing us simultaneously the impotence and the potential of our cosmopolitan/transcultural hopes and desires.
      LaZone is a workshop in which three groups (Thematics artists, a.pass participants, MA Choreography) share the same space for one week. During that week LaZone will be created on different levels: the interpersonal level of hospitality and the sharing of theory and practice, and the larger level of the society at large, critically examining the boundaries of our democratic pretentions and preconceptions. Everyone can bring a ‘gift’ to LaZone: a practice, a piece of knowledge, an insight or an invitation you want to extend to the rest of the group. The workshop will create itself out of the proposals of everyone, on the basis of equality and interest, with three or four activities running at the same time, allowing every participant to develop a personal trajectory throughout the week.

       

       

      13-18 / 09 / 2010


      ‘WORKSHOPS WITH GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA AND JANESZ JANSA’
      Two parallel workshops by a.pt in collaboration with Campo and RITS


      Guillermo Gómez-Peña
      In this specific physical workshop, Guillermo Gómez-Peña will attempt to create a temporary community of rebel artists, aiming to find new modes of being and discover other ways of relating to their own body. During the workshop the following questions will prove to be crucial: which borders do we wish to cross? Why? Which borders are harder to cross, both in the workshop and in our personal lives?


      Janez Janša
      In this workshop, intellectual challenge and debate will be actively encouraged, triggering an entire series of questions: What is real? What is mediated? How do identity and politics relate to the status of an object of art?
      Each day of the Summer School will be concluded by an evening programme consisting of meetings, lectures, screenings, debates and artistic interventions. The evening guest artists have all collaborated on the research topic 'the performance as document - the document as performance' and include, among others, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Sarah Vanagt and Carina Molier.

       


      19-26 / 09 / 2010


      ‘LaZone BERLIN’
      project by apass Research Center and Thematics (Les Bains, Brussels)


      A group of artistic field researchers find themselves on unknown territory: LaZone is a place where the spatial rules of behavior have stopped to make sense. It is an environment that has no function, no meaning, no recognizable orientation points. It is a transit area, a stretch of land that falls out of our rule-giving grid of common sense, of law-giving, of understanding and of commonly accepted behavior. LaZone is the space of immigrants, of avatars and aliens, of dislocated complex identities, of lost cases and derailed causes. It is a place that has to define itself through the practice, through the use, through the re-negotiation of the rules of encounter and hospitality.
      During one week a group of immigrants from a.pt (advanced performance training) and Thematics (research project of the workspace Bains Connective in Brussels) will settle down at Fabrikationen, and try to make sense of their role and interaction with the locals. The results of their work will be presented on the 24th. Their Political Party might also infiltrate at the 25th's end party.

       


      20-24 / 09 / 2010


      ‘STORYBOARDING’
      workshop by Jeremy Wade


      In many ways performance is one big performed story board, an invisible text set of directions and nothing more. At the other hand story boarding it self is an art form. So how to use a story board to construct a performance and how to make a story board performative, how to blur the boundaries between story board and piece. Starting from a a written proposal minimum of three pages of each of the participants, story boards will be made, including an application for a grant with a budget of the project.
      During the course of this exploration/composition workshop we will strive to facilitate the great blur through the investigation of numerous storyboarding techniques. We will also research a wide array of taboos, techniques and theories that help us get closer to an essential concern of composition and aesthetics which is the age-old question of… “What is a thing”? We look at a vast index of queer scores that shed some light on the circularity of aesthetics. We can make monsters out of these stagnant aesthetics and gain perspective on how to compose, obliterate, blur and layer our lovely things for an audience. We will find modes to clarify our concepts for the pre production and production phases of creation. We will work towards structuring and deconstructing our ideas, both material and ethereal.
      Jeremy Wade is an American choreographer living and working in Berlin.

       

       


      04-10 / 10 / 2010


      ‘THE GAZE 2.0’
      workshop by Sven Goyvaerts


      Theoretical & practical workshop where the social media and our desktops create the format for communication and knowledge exchange and are being used as tools for artistic creation. Central focus in the workshop is the capture / transformation / (re)routing of the gaze through social media. Featuring crash course in and experiments with social media and other software : Ustream.tv, Snapz Pro, Flickr, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, World of Warcraft, Second Life, Everytrail and Chatroulette.
      The following topics will be discussed : MEDIA MIRROR (on identity), CYBER EYE CONTACT (on the look and the gaze), WELIVEINPUBLIC.COM (on narcissism), SECOND SKIN (on the avatar), THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA (on obscenity).

       


      11-15 / 10 / 2010


      ‘PERFORMATIVE SPACE’
      workshop by Laurent Liefooghe


      Being interested in the negative & constrictive aspects of architecture (obstruction, representation, order) and the idea of ‘active’ architecture (defined by what it does instead of what it shows), Laurent Liefooghe takes an analogy between architecture and contemporary art performance as a departure to try to liberate architecture from its obsession with emblematic objects. For this workshop he wants to investigate the idea of the ‘performative space’. Departing from case studies, he wants to develop possible concepts of a ‘performative space’.

       


      18-22 / 10 / 2010


      ‘BROODTHAERS & KAUFMAN’
      workshop by Sara Manente


      Starting point of this workshop by Sara Manente, former a.pass participant, are the is the investigation of the possible relation between Marcel Broodthaers and Andy Kaufman, two artists that broke rules in their fields, both provocative because acting on the limits of their roles and their positions in society, playing with meaning and expectations. A speculative game to see if a hint is to be found, as if by putting two things close to each other we can find similarities, intriguing associations that we couldn't see before. The overall question is one of sameness and otherness. The research on "similarity" from the two points of view of perception (outside) and interpretation (inside).

       

       

      25-30 / 10 / 2010


      ‘INTERFACE FICTIONS’
      workshop by Lilia Mestre & Elke Van Campenhout


      In this workshop we occupy for one week the gallery/shopping window of a new alternative performance gallery in Brussels. Working together within this space we try to develop working practices that project the gallery space on the outside world: gestures that communicate with the commuters, the neighbours, the occasional passers-by. By blurring the boundaries between living and working in the space, and by not retreating to recognizable artistic strategies, we try to break the rules of expectation, of recuperation and of communication of the arts. Every participants will try, in constant negotiation with the others, to develop practices that open up the activities from within to the viewer/participant outside. This can happen imagining the space to be what it is not: a shop, a restaurant, a library, a TV studio, a social centre, an immigrant office, etc...
      As important as the inside/outside dialogue, will be the negotiation inside of the space: the overlayering of practices and imaginations of the space, the monsterly spaces that grow out of inbreeding, etc... Not only negotiating space, but also behavior, time, attitude, convictions and necessities.

       


      01-12 / 11 / 2010


      “THE 5 SENSES”
      workshop by Bart Van den Eynde and Elke Van Campenhout


      In this workshop we develop on the basis of texts and specialist talks a mapping of the 5 senses as a starting point for artistic thinking and practices. We include artistic practices like the ones of Lygia Clarke, Enrique Vargas, Peter Verhelst, Dries Verhoeven, f0am, Charo Calvo, etcetera... Each of the senses is the topic of 2 days.

       

      15-19 / 11 : 2010


      ‘SPATIAL LITERACY’
      workshop by Anette Baldauf & Epifania Amoo-Adare


      What is space, what is the relationship between spatial conditions and power? How can we envision the transformation of space and the making of different spaces? The premise of this workshop is that a critical pedagogy on space, on the forces involved in the production and reproduction of space, is a necessary condition for any intervention in space. We propose to challenge widespread understandings of space as a structure that is given and fixed, in other words: a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We contrast this convention with an understanding of space as both, a manifestation as well as a vehicle of the productive relations of power. Following the equation “space = (social) product” we investigate spatial relations, the making of inclusion and exclusion, centrality versus marginality, legibility, difference and conflict. Framed as an exercise in “spatial literacy”, we discuss techniques of making sense of spatial relations, of making use and appropriating them.



      22 / 11 / 2010


      “LECTURE BY CHRISTIAN RIZZO”
      presented by a.pass & De Singel


      Choreographer Christian Rizzo will be working for a year with and in the buildings of deSingel. In the next block he will also create a workshop for a.pass. This is a first meeting with the artist where he reads texts with us that have been essential in his development as an artist. This lecture is a starting point to speak about different influences and important meetings in their carrier, and to show fragments of their work.
      Christian Rizzo has been fashion designer, rock musician, then dancer and choreographer. In 1996 he created his own company L'Association Fragile. From 2003 he became artist in residence of the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Toulouse. Also in 2003 he received Le Grand Prix de la Critique.

       

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2010 BLOCK II 01 May 2010
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 May 2010
    • 31 July 2010
    • 2010 BLOCK II

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Adva Zakai
      Agnese Cornelio
      Alessandra Coppola
      Ana Casimiro
      Charlotte Bouckaert
      David Zagari
      Einat Tuchman
      Heike Langsdorf
      Iuliana Varodi
      Katrin Lohmann
      Manne Granqvist
      Manon Avermaete
      Marcelo Mardones
      Maria Lucia Correia
      Michiel Reynaert
      Philip Janssens
      Stephen Bain
      Sven Goyvaerts

       


      Research End Presentations

      Alejandro Petrasso
      Dianne Weller
      Fanny Zaman
      Kurt Van Overbeke
      Sara Vilardo

       

       

      Partners

      Les Bains
      MicroMarché
      Sarma
      Workspace Brussels
      Nadine
      SoundImageCulture

       


      Contributors for workshops

      Adva Zakai
      Agnese Cornelio
      Anette Baldauf
      Charlotte Brouckaert
      Dries Verhoeven
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Erik Devries
      Jeremy Wade
      Joao Fiadeiro
      Joël Verwimp
      Katrin Lohmann
      Laurent Liefooghe
      Laurent van Lancker
      Luk Lambrecht
      Manne Granqvist
      Marcelo Mardones
      Maria Lucia Correia
      Nicolas Galeazzi
      Sven Goyvaerts

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout

       

      Mentors

      Anette Baldauf
      Nicolas Y Galeazzi

       

       

       

       

       

      10-14 / 05 / 2010


      ‘HP OFFICEJET 9130 ± ERRORS’
      workshop by Nicolas Y Galeazzi & Joël Verwimp


      Developments in technology and changes in society regularly render things obsolete; think of professions like blacksmithing, technology like oil lamps, and rules about handling horses. Copyright law might well become such an obsolete instrument. In fact, it never really worked outside the US/European borders and open source software already moves beyond copyright restrictions worldwide. This shows that making and meaning in the current cultural environment requires a response to existing institutional and organisation structures, identifying differences and engaging art as an open ongoing process. With COYOTL, we produce or try to produce a vivid impression of knowledge products: of these, software is unique, as it is said to have behaviour. More specifically, it instills behavior in computers when it is executed by them, causing tangible effects in the real world. Just like software, we believe that performative publishing is such a situation allowing a reflexive way of working by engaging with relationships.
      In the framework of the Bains Connective DIY residency lab at MicroMarché, we edited previous COYOTL material into the printed workbook The leakers which will build the basic discourse for the workshop. Together with your project material (on paper, in form of quotations, or as live or memorised events) we will create a pool of content, which will be copied, scratched, hacked, nod rearranged as a resource for each other’s project. Departing from these thoughts and the mutating discussion around copyright/copyleft/open source COYOTL will play as usual, with the copy-machine (HP Officejet 9130 is currently our main tool) in order to
      - develop models of cooperation for any kind of art and knowledge production
      - facilitate an environment for independent and NOT-NEGOTIATED exchange and development of other artist's practice
      - perform on paper, nurtured by and leading to performance in OTHER spaces/logic
      - question not only new work models, but also what kind of space and organisational structure art production needs today

       

      17-21 / 05 / 2010


      ‘REVOLUTION’
      no-workshop workshop by Katrin Lohmann & Manne Granqvist,
      with guests: Nicolas Y Galeazzi, Bavo, Dieter Lesage


      The no-workshop organizers believe that the concept of revolution is a relevant and urgent one for our times. What does a revolution imply for society, and for the individual? Is the total collapse near, is it necessary, is it desirable? What are the possible positions in relation to revolution for the artist and for the activist?
      The organizers of the REVOLUTION no-workshop do not pretend to be experts on the subject. Rather they regard the workshop as an opportunity to research a cluster of topics that they regard alarmingly pertinent, for themselves and for the present times, with others who share the same sentiment. It is the experience of the no-work-no-shop organizers that the matters at hand are of a kind that strike a natural chord with not so few people in the present times.

       

       


      19-21 / 05 / 2010

      ‘DOCUMENTARY’
      workshop by Laurent van Lancker in collaboration with SIC


      SoundImageCulture is a group of artist-anthropologists committed to artful storytelling through real human encounters that challenge documentary conventions, and opens up to sound and image installations. Informed by developments in cultural theory, social sciences, and the visual art. SIC questions the relation between artist, subject and viewer. How can you represent somebody in sound and image when you don’t know his or her background? The answer is not to eschew representation; rather, SIC proposes an ethical reflection on how ‘the other’ is presented in contemporary media, believing this to be an urgency of the multicultural society we live in.

       


      24-28 / 05 / 2010


      ‘QUEER IN THE CITY’
      workshop by Anette Baldauf


      I am not a Queer Studies expert, but I have worked, and taught, on questions of gender, sexuality and the city. I would love to connect that knowledge with theories on performativity, maybe starting off from Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam, both of which we addressed during the City of Illusion workshop. I have been teaching a lot on the so-called Girl Movement - Riot Girls, Dyke Bands... - which tried to challenge concepts of femininity through pop music and performance in the mid 90s, and the following backlash of Britney Spears etc.- which was a performance of femininity as special effect. We could e.g. read, and then analyze artistic as well as popular culture strategies of the gender confusion.

       

       

      31/05 - 11/06 2010

      ‘STORYBOARDING’
      workshop by Jeremy Wade


      In many ways performance is one big performed storyboard, an invisible text set of directions and nothing more. At the other hand storyboarding itself is an art form. So how to use a storyboard to construct a performance and how to make a storyboard performative, how to blur the boundaries between storyboard and piece. Starting from a written proposal minimum of three pages of each of the participants, storyboards will be made, including an application for a grant with a budget of the project.
      As Contemporary Performers, Choreographers, Directors, and Scenographers we work toward events that have the potential to rewrite and dislocate an audience from stratified senses of meaning. During the course of this exploration/composition workshop we will strive to facilitate the great blur through the investigation of numerous storyboarding techniques. We will also research a wide array of taboos, techniques and theories that help us get closer to an essential concern of composition and aesthetics which is the age-old question of… “What is a thing”? We look at a vast index of queer scores that shed some light on the circularity of aesthetics. We can make monsters out of these stagnant aesthetics and gain perspective on how to compose, obliterate, blur and layer our lovely things for an audience. We will find modes to clarify our concepts for the pre production and production phases of creation. We will work towards structuring and deconstructing our ideas, both material and ethereal.

       

      07-11 / 06 / 2010


      ‘EXHAUSTING DANCE’
      reading sessions


      After having wrestled ourselves through the introduction of this book on contemporary dance (edited by André Lepecki), we decided to take a second look at the book in a full reading-session week.
      The only scholarly book in English dedicated to recent European contemporary dance, ‘Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement’ examines the work of key contemporary choreographers who have transformed the dance scene since the early 1990s in Europe and the US.
      Through their vivid and explicit dialogue with performance art, visual arts and critical theory from the past thirty years, this new generation of choreographers challenge our understanding of dance by exhausting the concept of movement. Their work demands to be read as performed extensions of the radical politics implied in performance art, in post-structuralist and critical theory, in post-colonial theory, and in critical race studies.
      This book offers a significant and radical revision of the way we think about dance, arguing for the necessity of a renewed engagement between dance studies and experimental artistic and philosophical practices.
      We will combine the reading sessions with fragments out of the work of contemporary choreographers and bring the practice to the theory.

       


      14-18 / 06 / 2010


      ‘PERSPECTIVES ON SPACE’
      reading sessions


      In this reading sessions we invite several scenographers and artists in whose work the use & organization of space is essential, to read with us texts that have been essential in their development as artists. A starting point to speak about other influences and important meetings in their carrier, and to show fragments of their work. Erki Devries, Luk Lambrecht, Dries Verhoeven & Laurent Liefooghe are our guests.

       

      21 - 24 / 06 / 2010


      ‘PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR BEGINNERS’
      workshop by Elke Van Campenhout under mentoring of Mladen Dolar in collaboration with Sarma and Workspace Brussels


      The workshop on psychoanalysis will open up the field of thinking of Lacan and related thinkers to a group of beginners in the theory. In the arts psychoanalysis has taken up a central position in the interpretation and thinking about the arts. Although a lot of the time implicit, the frame of thinking about the Real, objet petit a, etc... is part of our cultural and esthetic heritage. In this workshop we look the first two days at Slavoj Zizek’s film 'The Pervert's Guide to Cinema' in which he explores the psycho-analytical subconscious of Hollywood film-making. Afterwards we read Zizek's book 'Welcome to the desert of the Real' for a contemporary and highly political performativization of what the psycho-analytical framework can still teach us today.

       


      25 / 06 / 2010


      ‘SOCIAL MEDIA & THE AVATAR’
      workshop by researcher/participant Sven Goyvaerts


      One day around the basics of the social media and the role of the avatar in our thinking about (alternative or virtual) identities.



      28 / 06 - 2 / 07 / 2010


      ‘THE GAZE’
      workshop by  researchers/participants Agnese Cornelio, Marcelo Mardones, Charlotte Brouckaert & Sven Goyvaerts


      How do we construct our identity through the look of others? How do we look at others an read them? How are we judged by others or do we feel judged by them? And how does the gaze function in the social media, how do we control the gaze of the others and how do we read others by their virtual presentation?
      Partly reading session, partly practical research using social media and the camera as a tool to catch the gaze.

       


      5-11 / 07 / 2010


      ‘FIND YOUR INNER IDIOT’
      camping group practice by a.pass


      Loosely based on the Dogma movie 'The Idiots' by Lars Von Trier, we work for one week on the principles of idiocy as a potential artistic, political or actionist strategy. During the workshop we try to define different methodologies to discover our 'inner idiots', both on a physical practice level as on a theoretical level. We combine reading and viewing sessions of material relating to 'idiocy' (out of philosophy and art history) with physical sessions, aiming at the development of a personal and a communal idiot body. Each of the participants can devise his/her own perspective on the mindset and context out of which to work, trying to discover within a small group of dedicated participants their personal 'inner idiots', and constructing a group practice out of this confrontation. We might bring the practice to public space when we feel ready for that. Only for true idiots!

       


      12 - 16 / 07 / 2010


      ‘TERROR’
      film analysis workshop by a.pass


      An exercise in concrete and detailed analysis, argumentative construction and critical discussion. In this workshop we analyze horror movies. How does the mechanism of terror functions in these movies and which are its disguises? How do we deal with our instant emotional (moral) reaction in our discussion? Where does art starts and exploitation ends? What is the place of horror in our lives? One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of film, photography, the net) horrors taking place in the real or in fantasized worlds. Images of atrocities have become, via the screens of the television and the computer, a commonplace. What is this fascination with the depiction of cruelty? Is ours perception of reality eroded by the barrage of such images or do they just make us happy that we are alive?
      This workshop is in the first place aimed at analyzing the formal principles of movie making: the creation of 'horror' through camera perspectives, montage, use of (off-)voice, etcetera. But next to that we also try to come to a deeper understanding of the parameters of horror, by reading texts (Sontag, Zizek, Cronenberg,...) to feed the discussion.

       

      17-23 / 07 / 2010


      ‘HARD WORKING IDLES’
      workshop by researcher/participant Adva Zakai with Joao Fiadeiro and guests


      Each day will be divided into two sessions: Mornings to the practice of Real Time Composition*, a method developed by Joao Fiadeiro, and afternoons to a talk with an invited guest.
      Why ‘hard working idlers’? Because I find myself confronted by this contradiction: On the one hand, being critical towards the ethics of artistic practice that are increasingly product-oriented - generating practices which are exclusive rather than inclusive, imposing a position on the artist’s plan rather than enabling an ‘emergence’ of a situation. On the other hand, appreciating a personal examination of ideas or
      forms, and intrigued by a detailed, skillful and directed proposition from the artist to the public.
      Can these two approaches complement rather than oppose each other: Where does the artist’s control over a performance stop and the event generate itself through the contributions of all its participants? How much (or rather what kind of) ‘work’ is needed in order to trigger a situation?
      The same inquiries are perhaps relevant with regards to the way one relates to one’s surroundings. Can changes in society emerge through individual or self-organized mechanisms rather than be dictated by overarching norms, ideologies and preconceptions? If we consider an experience as complete even though its in a constant state of becoming itself – would it allow more dynamic and liberation from dogmas in our day, work, life, art?

       

       

      19-23 / 07 / 2010


      ‘THE REALITY, THE GIANT SCENARIO III’
      workshop by researcher/participant Maria Lucia Correia


      The City appears as a breathing entity that contains the concept of future reflections and artistic interventions. The reality, the Giant Scenario is a workshop that approaches the city space as a living body that seeks for our attention. As working methodology we will address the city space, with a critical vision on sensorial and visual awareness. In order to map our environment we will draw and recompose the elements of the urban space, collecting lost details and objects on our city walks (derives). Moments where we will get lost into a world of colors, shapes, ornaments, sounds, rhythms… and relate to places that are damaged, abandoned, dead or ill... The workshop will then resource the urbanist and emotional mapping of the space and its graphical potentialities within a new scenario, a new life, a new narrative of forgotten details. The city will not be the set of public interventions but a living body that incorporates us, an extended form of connections, reconstructions, treatment, placement and intersections.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2010 BLOCK I 01 January 2010
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 January 2010
    • 31 March 2010
    • 2010 BLOCK I

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Adva Zakai
      Agnese Cornelio
      Alejandro Petrasso
      Ana Casimiro
      Charlotte Bouckaert
      Dianne Weller
      Einat Tuchman
      Fanny Zaman
      Heike Langsdorf
      Iuliana Varodi
      Katrin Lohmann
      Kurt Van Overbeke
      Manne Granqvist
      Manon Avermaete
      Marcelo Mardones
      Maria Lucia Correia
      Philip Janssens
      Sara Vilardo
      Sven Goyvaerts

       

       

      Research End Presentations

      Fien Wauters
      Jozef Wouters
      Julie Pfleiderer

       

       


      Partners

      De Singel
      University of Antwerp
      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)

       

       

      Contributors for workshops

      Alexander Baervoets
      Annette Baldauf
      Charo Calvo
      David Moss
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Heike Langsdorf
      Jan Maertens
      Lynda Gaudreau
      Marc Vanrunxt
      Maria Lucia Correia
      Meg Stuart
      Nicolas Y Galeazzi
      Stéphane Boudin-Lestienne
      Timmy Delaet
      Tom Plischke-Kattrin Deufert
      Vincent Dunoyer
      Vladimir Miller

       

      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde
      Elke van Campenhout
      Vladimir Miller


      Mentors

      Nicolas Y Galeazzi
      Vladimir Miller

       

       

       

       

      11-24 / 01 / 2010

      ‘REENACTMENT / RECONSTRUCTION’

      reading and viewing sessions on re-enactment/reconstruction with Timmy Delaet

      Reading and viewing sessions on re-enactment/reconstruction with Timmy Delaet, PhD student at the University of Antwerp, viewing sessions of performance art work at Argos (centre for video preservation in Brussels). From 21 to 24 we join the conference on re-enactment / reconstruction organised by the Marina Abramovic Research Centre in Plymouth (England), combined with a series of performances.

       

      25-29 / 01 / 2010

      ‘SPHERES AND ECONOMIES OF COLLABORATION / NON-PRODUCTIVE SPHERES’

      workshop by Nicolas Y Galeazzi

      Nicolas Y Galeazzi organizes a practical workshop on artistic collaboration discussing different models, methods and the effects and side effects of collaborative interaction. The workshop puts forward different metaphors on collaboration (economy, utopia, non-production, laziness, etc...) and works through their consequences. 

       

       

      01-05 / 02 / 2010

      ‘RADICAL VOICE FOR PERFORMERS AND MAKERS’

      workshop by David Moss

      Performer, theatre maker and singer David Moss, artistic director of the institute for the Living Voice, organizes a workshop on the use of radical voice for performers and makers. Both positions are possible in this workshop, as long as you have an interest in a different use of the voice in performance (both language and non-language based).

      How do you make a voice performance? How do time, timing, intensity, attack, intimacy, eccentricity, personal history, ego, musical history, rhythm, physicality, gestures, sounds, memory, songs and senses connect you to the moment of making a voice improvisation?

       

       

       

       

      07 / 02 / 2010

      ‘PAUL TISSIER: ARCHITECT OF ILLUSIONS’

      lecture by Stéphane Boudin-Lestienne

      The french architect Paul Tissier realises in 1924 the main hall of the Hôtel Ruhl in Paris now destroyed, the « fêtes d’art », a concept that mixes the originality of an artist’s party with the luxury of a society ball. Tissier creates all by himself a complete artwork. Covering the original architecture with his setting, he imagines different types of creative scenographies. From the extraordinary legacy of his fund – including more than 400 elements of decor– the workshop proposes to discover the architect’s system and problems facing that type of event. The many different aspects of the scenography (general choices for the transformation of the place, iconography and technique of the setting, lighting, costumes, show, etc…) will be discussed.

       

       

      01-05 / 02 / 2010

      ‘AFFECT AND EMOTION’

      reading sessions by Elke Van Campenhout

      In the past year Elke Van Campenhout worked on the research project Sense Radio, initiated by choreographer and artist Lilia Mestre. A very important part of this research was concerned with the understanding of the emotional body as a social body, as a body in constant negotiation with other bodies and objects. In this week of Reading Sessions, we go through some of the ideas of Spinoza, Brian Massumi, Nigel Thrift, Sara Ahmed, Gilles Deleuze and others on affect/emotion as a mode of social circulation and  exchange. At the same time watching performance material (Meg Stuart, Lilia Mestre, ...) that corresponds to this kind of conception of the performance and the body of the performer. 

       

       

      08-19 / 02 / 2010

      ‘CITY OF ILLUSIONS’

      workshop by Vladimir Miller

      Vladimir Miller conceives the City of Illusions as a space of research and knowledge built around the concept of illusion. In the course of two weeks a city is being built in the Zwarte Zaal of DeSingel. each participant is invited to build his own research site (houses and/or public spaces like speakers corners, gardens, etc...) within the city and assume the performative agency of their settlement with the other participants.

      Light designer Jan Maertens, sound designer, Charo Calvo are guests and create their special illusion for the city. As well, urbanist Annette Baldauf and choreographer Meg Stuart will visit the city.

       

       

      22-26 / 02 / 2010

      ‘HOPE 2’

      workshop by Heike Langsdorf and Elke van Campenhout 

      Participant Heike Langsdorf and coordinator Elke van Campenhout organize a second working week on “(radical) hope”, the subject of their research project. This time, set in an urban context, we work on the spreading of the rumour of hope.

       

       

      22-26 / 02 / 2010

      ‘THE CITY : THE GIANT SCENARIO’

      workshop by Maria Lucia Correia

      The City appears as a breathing engine that shells the concept of future reflections and artistic interventions. “The Giant Scenario” is a workshop that will  suspend a conceptual approach of the city space as a  body who seeks for attention. Gradually we will propose a metaphorical diagnosis, a scan of the functionality of its organs. It will suspend  an aesthetic, emotional, sociological and physical approach of the  cityspace as a human body. As working methodology we will address the city space, with a critical vision on sensorial and visual awareness. 

      In order to fulfill the resistance of our environment we will draw and recompose the elements of the urban space, collecting lost details and objects, on city walks/derives.  Moments where we will get lost into a world of colors, shapes, ornaments, sounds, rhythms… and as well an engagement of places that are damaged, abandoned, dead and ill... The workshop is a  resource of urbanist and emotional mapping of the space and its graphical potentialities within a reborn of a new scenario, a new life, a new narrative of  details that are forgotten in the labyrinth space.The city will not  be the setting of public interventions but a living body. An extended form of connections, reconstructions, treatment, placement and intersections.

       

       

      01-10 / 03 / 2010

      ‘CONSEQUENCES II’

      workshop by Tom Plischke & Kattrin Deufert

      Participation starts with a conspiracy of partaking, and not by the self-positioning of the speaker. With (re)formulating we describe a process that can enable a discourse in silence, in the writing with each other. of formal strictness to take the responsibility of one‘s decisions and to constantly confront the other with claims in order to develop a communication, a circulation and production in the community of strangers. (re)formulating should enable everybody to partake in the process. just as in knitting from a single thread (the shared theme) and a knitting pattern (the permanent passing on), a complex texture evolves that formulates a possible work.

       

       

      15-21 / 03 / 2010

      ‘ECOLOGY & ARTISTIC PRACTICE’

      reading sessions by a.pass

      Introduced by the participants as an urgent research topic, the relation between ecological disaster and artistic practice is the theme of these reading sessions.The week will end with a artistic conference on ecology open to the public. 

       

       

      22-26 / 03 / 2010

      ‘DANCE THEORY’

      reading Sessions

      In this reading sessions we invite several choreographers to read with us texts that have been essential in their development as an artist. These reading sessions are a starting point to speak about influences and important meetings in their carrier, and to show fragments of their work.

      Lynda Gaudreau, Marc Vanrunxt, Vincent Dunoyer & Alexander Baervoets are our guests.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2009 BLOCK III 01 September 2009
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2009
    • 30 November 2009
    • 2009 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Agnese Cornelio
      Alejandro Petrasso
      Ana Casimiro
      Charlotte Bouckaert
      Dianne Weller
      Fanny Zaman
      Fien Wauters
      Heike Langsdorf
      Iuliana Varodi
      Jozef Wouters
      Julie Pfleiderer
      Kurt Van Overbeke
      Marcelo Mardones
      Maria Lucia Correia
      Sara Vilardo
       

       


      Research End Presentations

      Ariane Loze
      Constanze Schellow

       


      Partners

      Theaterfestival
      De Singel
      CIFAS
      Bourla Theater
      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)

       

       

      Contributors for workshops

      Arco Renz
      Benjamin Verdonck
      Hans Op de Beeck
      Laurent Liefooghe
      Lotte van den Berg
      Meg Stuart
      Moritz Kuhn
      Nicolas Y Galeazzi
      Rabih Mrouéh
      Renée Copraij
      Stefan Heinric
      Stijn Bussels
      Timothy De Paepe

       


      Coordinators a.pass

      Bart Van den Eynde   

      Elke van Campenhout

       

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘THEATERFESTIVAL’

      ‘Performance in public Space’ : reading sessions & artist talks by de Singel and a.pass

      The Theaterfestival offers a perfect occasion to make the a.pass training more visible. Three participants show their researches in the context of the festival ( Ariane Loze, Michel Yang and Jozef Wauters) and the reading sessions are open to outsiders. Several artists will be invited to discuss the theme of ‘performance in public space’ with the participants (Benjamin Verdonck, Moritz Kuhn and Lotte van den Berg), combined with a close reading of theoretical texts.  

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘CONCEPT & DESIGN III’

      workshop by Arco Renz  and Stefan Heinrich

      A scenography workshop with a choreographer seems a necessity for a.s. Working on a new project, Arco Renz works with the participants on the development of a - hypothetical - stage design for his choreography. Without the help of a 'performance text' the participants will enter his world and find connections with their own interests, measure up the artistic and practical limitations of the project and find a scenographic vision which inscribes itself in Arco Renz' universe.  

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘THE ART OF MISUNDERSTANDING’

      workshop by Nicholas Y Galeazzi

      Nicolas Y Galeazzi’s workshop 'The art of misunderstanding' explores the different ways in which artistic research is or can be organized. In a very practical setting, the participants will develop one (room-sized) 'paper' on artistic research, using their own attitudes and methodologies for a more thorough mapping out of the field. The workshop both challenges the imagination of the field of knowledge production, as offering a lot of theoretical texts explorations, introducing artistic examples and opening up a lot of discussions.

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘VENICE BIENNALE’

      journey to art biennale by a.pass 

      The visit of the Venice Biennale is a possibility for a focussed confrontation with the referential current visual arts context. Hybridity and the confrontation of cultures, identities and art languages are at the heart of the festival and the context of a cultural event of that proportion, exposure and 'fame' is in itself an important issue of discussion. Parallel with the Biennale there will be also other major exhibitions in Venice: the opening of  Punta della Dogana Art Museum and In-Finitum in the Palazzo Fortuny. There will be no organized workshop and there will be no fixed itinerary, participants will be free to completely self organize through the four days in Venice.

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘ART AS DOCUMENT / DOCUMENT AS ART - RABIH MROUÉ’

      Two weeks workshop with artist Rabih Mrouéh, in the framework of the RITS research project Art as a document/The document as art. Participants will join in first instance in day-long discussions on central topics within the working field of Mrouéh: what is history, what is fiction? can you create your own history? what is latency? when does your personal history become shared? how to create documents? how do documents function? how can you be your own actor?

      In a second phase, the participants will work with the material in a performative way.

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘ARTIST TALK / MEG STUART’

      Choreographer Meg Stuart discusses her development as an artist, the evolution of her work and how she relates to other art forms than dance. Being very aware of the artistic research context of a.pass, she will elaborated on working processes and tools for collaboration as well as the dramaturgy of her performances. 

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘RADICAL HOPE’

      An hybrid program of reading sessions, discussions with guests and practical interpretation of the concept of Hope, ending by the preparation of a 'hope dinner' in a.pass kitchen.

      'Radical Hope, Ethics in the face of Cultural Devastation', Jonathan Lear

      'Hope, New Philosophies for Change', Mary Zournazi: interview with Brian Massumi and Isabelle Stengers

      Guests : Renée Copraij: choreographer, dancer and curator of Huis aan de Werf, Utrecht and Laurent Liefooghe: architect, performance maker

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘ARTIST TALK / HANS OP DE BEECK’

      Visual artist Hans Op de Beeck discusses his development as an artist, the evolution in his work and how he relates to other arts. Using a lot of visual material from his installations and models and fragments of his videoworks, he will sketch an artistic process and an evolution through trial and error. Also elaborating on the practical circumstances of his life as an artist: economics, reception, education, the relation with critics and galleries and museums, etc..

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘CONTAMINATE THE CITY’

      artistic practices in public space

      For this workshop we will join the workshop program of CIFAS in Brussels. ‘Contaminate the city’ is a workshop on artistic practices in public space, trying out different practices and actions, and gradually developing individual projects within the city.

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘AN HISTORY OF DANCE’

      reading sessions by Katie Verstockt

      Starting with a minimal historical introduction from dance as a ritual to the dance history in Europe (focusing on the act of seeing and the scenographic performativity), dance theoretician Katie Verstockt will discuss mainly the important 20th century movements (Modern Dance, Ausdruckstanz, Ballet Russes, Ballets Suédois, Post Modern Dance, Butoh, Contemporary dance, ...) in their more general cultural context. 

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘BAROKTHEATERS’

      lecture by Timothy De Paepe at Bourla Theater

      Scenography researcher Timothy De Paepe will give a lecture on theatre architecture, stage machinery & scenography in the baroque era 1600-1750 based on his research and reconstruction of theatre buildings and stages out of the area of Antwerp. With an historical introduction on the evolution and social context of theatre and illustrated with an impressive visual documentation, this presentation will a perfect introduction to a visit of the Bourla Theater.

       

      Fall 2009

      ‘THEATRICALITY’

      lecture-workshop by art historian Stijn Bussels around the term ‘theatricality'. 

      Following Collins Dictionary it means ‘of or related to the theatre or dramatic performance’, but also ‘exaggerated and affected in manner or behaviour’. How the theatre is related to society? How the theatre is used as a concept that explains conduct outside the norm? However, this negative connotation is historically determined. In the Renaissance, the metaphor of theatrum mundi became a dominant model to show that society is fashioned by role play and scenario’s. This view, however, was not primarily put in a negative context. There is a clear shift in eighteenth-century thought. In this period, our contemporary use of the term ‘theatrical’ comes into being.

      The lecture will focus on the early modern era. By doing so, it will try to make clear how the theatre is divergently appraised in its representational aspect. The theatre is evaluated as reprehensible deception, but also as revealing deeper truth. This evaluation can be linked with views on historical societies where artificiality is not always predominantly coupled with dishonesty, but with skill and learning. 

       

      Fall 2009

      (IN) VISIBLE 

      workshop-research by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia and Bart Van den Eynde

      "The reality: “The Giant Scenario”? Are we participants in a scenario created by humans? Is our reality a scenario built in real scale? Does the space feel that we are there? Does our existence depend on the space, or is it the space that depends on us?" Starting from the distinction between what is "visible" and what is not the participants are invited to join a research of the city in the city. Together with coordinator Bart Van den Eynde a syllabus is proposed (Simmel on ‘Metropolis’, Debord on ‘Derive’ and Marc Augé on ‘non-places’) and the creation of a context for city walks and consequent mapping and reporting. 

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2009 BLOCK I 01 January 2009
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 January 2009
    • 31 March 2009
    • 2009 BLOCK I

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program
                       
      Ariane Loze
      Constanze Schellow
      Fien Wauters
      Jozef Wouters
      Julie Pfleiderer
      Marcos Simoes
      Michel Yang
      Sungmin Hong


      Partners

      Buda Kortrijk
      University of Ghent
      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)


                        
      Contributors for workshops

      Dora Garcia
      Elke Van Campenhout
      Jan Maertens
      Kris Verdonck
      Marianne Van Kerckhove
      Miguel Clara Vasconcelos
      Peter Stamer
      Stefan Heinrich
      Tine Van Aerschot
      Tom Plischke-Kattrin Deufert
      Yosi Wanunu

       


      Coordinator a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout

       

       

       

      The block is curated by Elke van Campenhout (a.pass coordinator)

      26 / 01 – 06 / 02  / 2009

      ‘VIDEO STORYTELLING AND EDITING’

      workshop by Miguel Clara Vasconcelos

      The workshop aims at setting up a film shooting and editing process out of the personal stories of the participants. Every participant constructs a personal story (out of objects, memories and scars) and throughout the first week re-constructs this story into a workable film script. During this first week Miguel Clara Vasconcelos will also provide film excerpts and examples and will go deeper into the theoretical approach of script writing and editing.

      In the second week, the participants will work on a collaborative shooting and editing of one collective script, assembled out of the different stories. 

       

       

      02  / 2009

      ‘LIGHT & DESIGN’

      workshop by Jan Maertens

      In his workshop on light design Jan Maertens will sketch out the light designer’s tools, reviewing the technical light equipment of a theatre. He tackles the ‘functionality’ of light design as part of the scenic environment and then focuses on light design as an independent co-actor in the artistic process. The workshop consists of three sections : a general introduction, from the principles of visual perception and light as a medium to the toolbox the theatre provides for the light designer, and a reflection on the position of the light designer as an artistic player in the multimedia performance field. Secondly, the participants have a close view on the development of a light design with all possible practicalities and artistic discussions in the concrete context of the working process for Meg Stuart’s creation 2009. Third, there will be a photo shoot of the light design for ‘Maybe Forever’ with photographer David Berger : a try-out on the documentation and archiving of light design.

       

       

      02  / 2009

      ‘CONCEPT & DESIGN 01’

      coaching by Stefan Heinrich

      Scenographer Stefan Heinrich coaches the program participants in the development of a scenography based on a personal fascination, for Fien Wauters ‘Hercules 2 or the Hydra’ (a text by Heiner Muller) and for Jozef Wouters ‘Encounters at the End of the World’ (a documentary by Werner Herzog). The idea is to take this personal relation as a motor for a scenography without interference of a director's concept, dramaturgy, historical context,... For Heinrich the translation of a first fascination into a coherent story and concept and the technical development of the stage design (for a concrete theatre space) are the axes of the workshop. 

       

       

       

      16-20 / 02 / 2009  

      ‘LOW TECH PERFORMANCE / COLLABORATION AT A DISTANCE’

      workshop by Dora Garcia

      The workshop proposes to research strategies and contents that need nothing but a performer to create the work. Specific attention is given to keywords such as audience, duration, visibility, infiltration, subversion and commitment.

      The workshop starts out of mutual interest, discussion, and information. In the first days, Dora Garcia gives a short presentation of her work and adds some "affinities" with other artists that she feels close to. Then the group discusses the concept of the workshop, "LOW TECH performances". The title, ‘LOW TECH’ refers to a type of performance stressing the content over the appearance, disliking complicated scenographies and props, rethinking conventions such as audience, stage, backstage, duration, character-playing, and using the technology that is available to everybody. 

       

       

      02-06 / 03 / 2009

      ‘CONSEQUENCES’

      workshop by Tom Plischke & Kattrin Deufert

      The most important element of our working process is writing and transference. It allows all participants to work in silence and not to be bothered by producibility. The constant passing on of written material and the permanent reformulating, contextualizing, expanding, and reflecting of the written material serve as a basis for the creation and composition of movements, texts, sounds, or images. But within this procedure all realizations are based on  temporary decisions depending from the material that is handed over from the other and not because the medium of realization is chosen beforehand. Our working procedure could best fit into the motto: ‘Give me your material and I show you what you're not doing with it’.

      Sourcing the creation-act out and rendering oneself into the pendency of writing instead permits a disciplined work in silence, in which each participant and partner can raise her/his voice on the paper independently from its volume or the amount and position of knowledge. Participation starts with a conspiracy of partaking, and not by the self-positioning of the speaker. With (Re)formulating we describe a process that can enable a discourse in silence, in the writing with each other. The place of the individual argument, the singular voice is taken by an instance of polyphony, similar to the Cadavre Exquis, which is a game that was invented by Surrealists in 1925. It is quite similar to an old english parlor game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for a further contribution. Unlike the surrealists, we don't hide what has been written previously. For us it is a downright challenge to deal with the input of the others and to come into thinking with it, to expand ideas and suggestions, to combine sketches, to suggest a possible proceeding. It is only very late in the working procedure that we ask about the medium in which this material is to be realized. In this sense, the medium becomes a part in the decision-making, in the claim of form (or format). It is not set a priori and thus has to be in reference, translation, transference to the material: it has to be a decision and not a choice.
 Because of this it is fundamental in this principle of formal strictness to take the responsibility of one's decisions and to constantly confront the other with claims in order to develop a communication, a circulation and production in the community of strangers. (Re)formulating should enable everybody to partake in the process. Just as in knitting from a single thread (the shared theme) and a knitting pattern (the permanent passing on), a complex texture evolves that formulates a possible work.

       

       

      01-30 / 04 / 2009

      ‘TOOLS FOR TRANSDISCIPLINARITY : DRAMATURGY IN REAL-TIME’

      workshop by a.pass

      This workshop is open for three different groups of participants:

      -aspiring dramaturges from the Theatre Sciences department of the university of Ghent and Antwerp


      -scenographers/sound designers/light designers

      
-'professional' dramaturges with the artists they regularly work with.

       

      The mentors of the project are:

      theatre maker Kris Verdonck

      dramaturg Marianne Van Kerckhove

      theatre maker Tine Van Aerschot

      dramaturg Elke Van Campenhout

      theatre maker: Yosi Wanunu (Toxic Dreams)

      dramaturg: Peter Stamer

       

      In de Buda Tacktoren, we form sub-groups of one artist/dramaturg, one scenographer/../.., and one aspiring dramaturge, each one occupying one studio of the Tacktoren.

      In preparation every one of the participants will receive the initial idea, or starting point (a text, a choreographic phrase, a political issue, a question), from the prof. team. Starting from this basic material they will already come to the workshop weaponed with some initial ideas, images, related texts etcetera,... (which we can call 'mood boards), to start the discussion. During the first week, the participants will discuss and work out ideas with the artist in question, and get feedback from the prof. dramaturge in the evening. Scenographers work on scenographic proposals, but work also closely together with the aspirant dramaturges, and the other way around.
 Every day they share their results with the rest of the group. At the end of the week, we will decide where every project is going to lead to: a short performance, an exhibition of drawings, ideas, concepts, a discussion...
In the second week, the results will be shared with the public. a.pass will provide the necessary contextualization of the project to communicate its status to the public.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2008 BLOCK III 01 September 2008
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 September 2008
    • 31 December 2008
    • 2008 BLOCK III

       

       

       

      Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Ariane Loze
      Bruno Stappaerts
      Christophe Engels
      Constanze Schellow
      Gable Roelofsen
      Hanne Jacobs
      Karolien De Schepper
      Kim Lien Desault
      Klaas Devos
      Lieselot Jansen
      Lore Rabaut
      Luk Sips
      Marcos Simoes
      Michel Yang
      Sara Manente
      Sungmin Hong
      Vick Verachtert

       

      Partners

      LOPITAL, Antwerpen
      PAF (Performance Art Forum, Reims, France)

       

      Collaborators for workshops

      Alessandra Bergmaschi (Brazil)

      Sandra Noeth (Germany)

      Tristan Honsinger (Germany)

       

      Coordinator a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout

       

       

       

      The block is curated by Elke van Campenhout and the researchers participants

       

      24-25 / 09/ 2008

      ‘(RE)CHANNELLING THE SINGULAR’

      (The solo in contemporary dance and performance)

      self-organised seminar by Kim Lien Desault and Sandra Noeth, University of Hamburg, Research Department, Performance Studies

      Two days of theory following the doctoral research of Sandra Noeth about the philosophical and historical significance of the solo in dance.

      Sandra Noeth and Kim Lien Desault invite the participants to ‘think’ the dance solo as an object of knowledge production.

       

       

      01-08 / 10 / 2008

      ‘PEACE PROJECT’

      self-organised project by Gable Roelofsen.

      The participants take part in the Peace Conference "Utopia or Distopia', organized by the philosophy department of the “Technische Universiteit” in Berlin. While they develop their own artistic researches to open  perspectives on the ‘question of peace' and ‘what peace can mean in a contemporary society today’, the projects are archived and exhibited at the gallery Arttransponder.

      The PEACE Project stands for the development of personal projects and of multiple collaborations between participants.

      'Mount Berlin', the 'Peace Walk’ through Berlin and the 'Sleep Inn' (a sleep-in initiative for the exchange of narrative) constitute the core of the research.

       

       

       

      09-10 / 10 / 2008

      ‘AROUND ALESSANDRA BERGMASCHI’

      meeting and working with Alessandra Bergmaschi

      self-organised and curated by Sara Manente

      Alessandra Bergmaschi, a Brazilian photographer, and artist-researcher Sara Manente develop the project "Democratic Forest”.

      who uses the camera?

      who do you want to bring into the picture?

      in what way?

      what do you communicate?

      Sessions alternate between presentation of Alessandra Bergmaschi’s work, documentary films screenings and texts readings.

       

       

       

      03-07 / 11 / 2008

      ‘TRANSDISCIPLINARY IMPROVISATION’

      self-organised workshop by Tristan Honsinger

      curated by Kim Lien Desault

      A group including dancers, actors, musicians and visual artists will work together on free jazz improvisation techniques to come to a common understanding of impro-building and group balance in transdisciplinary improvisation situations.

    • postgraduate program
    • research center
    • a.p.t.-a.s.-a.r.c.
    • 2008 BLOCK I 01 January 2008
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • 01 January 2008
    • 31 March 2008
    • 2008 BLOCK I

       

      -Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program

      Bruno Stappaerts
      Christophe Engels
      Gable Roelofsen
      Hanne Jacobs
      Karolien De Schepper
      Kim Lien Desault
      Klaas Devos
      Lieselot Jansen
      Lore Rabaut
      Luk Sips
      Sara Manente
      Vick Verachtert

       

       

      -Partners

      Beursschouwburg / Bettina Knaup - festival ‘Performing Proximities’
      UA University of Antwerpen
      Troubleyn
      PAF (Performing Arts Forum, Reims)
      TkH (Walking Theory, Belgrade)
      TQW (TanzQuartier Wien)

       


      -Contributors for workshops

      Constant vzw ( Rogerio Liro / Simon Yuill / Kirstie Stansfield / Laurence Rassel / Peter Westenberg / Wendy Van Wynsberghe)

      Heather Kravas / Antonija Livingstone

      Peter Stamer / Philippe Riera

       


      -Coordinator a.pass

      Elke van Campenhout

       

       

      The block is curated by Elke van Campengout (Coordinator a.pass)

       

       

      Program #1 in collaboration with Constant vzw

       

      http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/mutual/?article377

      http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/mutual/spip.php?mot150

       

      21-15 / 01 / 2008

      ‘PERFORMATIVE RECORDINGS, BROWSING THE CITY’

      workshop by Constant vzw (Brussels)

      Day 1: We will walk the city of Antwerp. Attached to our feet will be low tech recording devices. Through them, we observe us making contact with the surfaces of the city. The regions of impact beneath the soles of our shoes, touching the sleeves of our coat, entering our field of vision produce an image of our physical presence. In a group we will explore different surroundings (busy street, shopping mall, open space... ) and make collective audio-visual collages. The devices we carry will function as our ears and eyes, they act as audio-visual mediators. At the end of the day we will use this material to make a festive audio-visual mix.

      Day 2: We will publish the video and audio we will have collected online. This involves selecting fragments, make a simple montage, install and dress up a weblog, upload the audio and video, describe the material. We will use free software and operating systems and think about alternatives for copyright by applying permissive licenses.

       

       

      28-31 / 01 / 2008

      ‘MODULATING SENSORY INPUT: OBJECTS AND SPACES STRATEGIES’

      workshop by Rogerio Liro

      In today's society we face in increasing degree of technological tools for communication: phone, email, text messaging, internet data generated oriented person. These instruments gain influence and determine already greatly our personal lives. The growth of these media seems endless. But our reserves of energy and attention is finite although we tend to test its limits. These technological opportunities for interaction show as well their own borders.

      How these instruments affect our perception of space and of our social needs? How do they redefine the boundary between ourselves and the world that surrounds us? What is the nature of this limit and how liquid is that? Do we always know when the saturation point is reached?

      In practice, particular attention will be paid to the work of Lygia Clark as therapeutic art practice, and the workshop will result in the construction of a new model for the use of a.pass workspaces.

      http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/mutual/spip.php?article353

       

       

      29-31 / 01 / 2008

      ‘PERFORMING PROXIMITIES : SWEETNESS AND FEAR AMONG FRIENDS AND STRANGERS’

      (SWAP MEAT AND MALE BREAST FEEDING)

      workshop by Heather Kravas (U.S.) and Antonija Livingstone (SE / CA)

      Choreographers Antonija Livingstone and Heather Kravas already worked a long time together, and will try to share their choreographic practices. In particular, they will work with the participants on two motion systems that simultaneously construct and deconstruct an image. The workshop revolves around the development of intimacy in a performance situation.

      The workshop takes place during the ‘Performing Proximities' festival, curated by Bettina Knaup at the Beursschouwburg in Brussels. This festival focuses on notions of hospitality, intimacy and confrontation, both in terms of programming formats and in relation to artistic work and research.

      http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/mutual/spip.php?article368

       

       

      11-17 / 02 / 2008

      ‘OBJECT SCORE NOTATION’

      workshop by Simon Yuill (software developer) and Kirstie Stansfield (artist)

      This workshop looks for the potentiality of softwares as tools to create notation of performance.

      The starting point is the development of a notation system for everyday objects, movements, and gestures capture. For this, the physical space (the dance floor) is used as notation canvas shared by/in a collective authorship.

      http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/mutual/spip.php?article369

       

       

       

      Program #2 by a.pass in collaboration with the Antwerpen Master in Theater Studies

       

      18  / 02 - 20 / 03 / 2008

      ‘DRAMA QUEENS’

      workshop by Peter Stamer and Philippe Riera

      This long-term project will develop in several phases, including the development of a performance with the master students Theatre Studies of the University of Antwerp.

      Peter Stamer initially will work with the participants around the basic principles of the therapeutic practice 'family constellations', where participants act as representatives of characters involved in the therapeutic needs of the client. The theatrical aspect of family constellations (volunteers take the 'role' of the father, mother, daughter or lover of the client, and are placed in the room to promote in this way the relationship between these key players), is the starting point for testing out this methodology as a tool in performance creation. The participants will work around these principles in the creation of improvisational moments of singing, wordless, dramatic or choreographic constellations.

      Secondarily Peter Stamer will work with about 20 students of the master Theatre Studies at UA and apass participants will become their coaches.

      One of the working week will focus on the contribution of choreographer Philippe Riera. He will work, inspired by his experience with the collective Superamas, with students around notions of fake / real and film editing esthetics principles in performance.

       

       

      Research laboratory

       

      28-29 / 03 / 2008

      ‘PRINCIPLES AND METHODOLOGIES OF AUTO-EDUCATION’

      research laboratory curated by a.pass, PAF (Performing Arts Forum, Reims), TkH (Walking Theory, Belgrade) and TQW (Tanz Quartier Wien).

       





APPLY TO THE A.PASS PROGRAMMES

Unfortunately we no longer have applications. Both programs: the Postgraduate as well as Research Center have come to an end due to the decision of the ministry of education to stop financing a.pass. At the moment we look into new plans for the future. More news soon on our website.

Alternativly you can upload your Research proposal, Portfolio, CV and other documents here.

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