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    • 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

    • 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
    • bleed is inevitable
    • block 2021/III
    • 7 WALKS (resolution) Vermeir & Heiremans and Luke Mason
      26 September 2021
      posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
    • 16 September 2021
    • 17 September 2021
    • 7 WALKS (resolution)

      Ronny Heiremans and Katleen Vermeir take us for two walks in SPA in the context of their research ‘7 WALKS (resolution)’. The context of SPA offers the unique opportunity for a series of itinerant reflections on water and art. Drawing inspiration from the intangible legacy of historical walkers — kings and czars, political refugees, artists and philosophers — and, strongly anchored in a local context, Heiremans and Vermeir propose to explore a balance between private property of and access to resources that we hold in common as a society. Can SPA inspire to unbundle the proprietary rights that have been stacked around authorship and (land) ownership, i.e. two paramount features of Western subjectivity?

       


       

      7 WALKS (resolution) consists of a series of public walks in the therapeutical landscape around the city of SPA. Spa became renowned for its medicinal water as early as the 16th century. Its ferruginous springs not only attracted many visitors, it was also exported internationally. Gradually the city became the so-called 'Café de l'Europe'. Visited by kings and czars, political refugees, artists and philosophers, it was a peaceful haven where a wide range of philosophies, social questions and artistic visions could interact. The 'bobelins', as the locals used to call these international visitors, walked through the surrounding forests, along landscaped paths on their way to the springs. They came to see and be seen, for diplomacy or espionage, and even for the arts. The local painter Antoine Fontaine depicted these illustrious visitors in Le Livre d'Or (1894), a 9 metres wide group portrait spanning four centuries of visitors.

      7 WALKS (resolution) draws inspiration from the intangible legacy of historical walkers and, strongly anchored in a local context, invites its participants to explore a balance between private property of and access to resources that we hold in common as a society. Spa offers the project the unique opportunity for a series of itinerant reflections on water and art.

      7 WALKS (resolution) responds to current and recently intensified debates about the necessity and position of art in today's society. Like water, art can be considered a basic necessity of life, a proposal that many international resolutions have promoted. The project questions how basic human rights enter into dialogue with individual private property- and exclusive use rights. To discuss these questions Vermeir & Heiremans and Luke Mason will be joined by participants and guest walkers David Aubin, Steyn Bergs, Marie-Sophie de Clippele, Françoise Jurion, Ulrich Kriese, Anne Pirard, Scott Raby, Christoph Rausch, Marie-Christine Schils, Julie Van Elslande, Jens Van Lathem, Tobias Van Royen,...

       


       

      CAPTURING WATER FROM THE ARTISTS’ SOURCE

      Walk#07_Promenade des Artistes, Pouhon Delcor to Promenade Cherville to Waux-Hall

      Thursday 16 September 2021, 2 to 6pm

      Dedicated to the many artists active in Spa in the 19th century the Promenade d'Artistes was inaugurated in 1849. The trail follows the valley of the Picherotte, a small stream that runs down from the wooded hills. At the beginning of the trail we come across one of the many capture points of Spa Monopole, the enterprise that has been bottling and exporting the communal mineral water sources since 1921. A discussion on common property and use rights of the waters extends to one on immaterial goods and services, like the arts.

       

      A CONSPIRACY OF EQUALS IN SPA?
      Walk#08_To Promenade Deschanel and Frahinfaz, further to Balmoral, back via Promenade Arago.

      Friday 17 September 2021, 11 to 5pm

      Mid 19th century Belgium was hospitable to many French political refugees. Among them we find Emile Deschanel, Etienne Arago, P.J.Proudhon, Victor Hugo, Jules Hetzel, Henri Rochefort, Edgar Quinet and others. They found a friend in journalist Felix Delhasse who hosted many of them in Spa. Delhasse was part of the secret society La Charbonnerie and was a disciple of its founder Filippo Buonarotti. Buonorotti’s text ‘The History of the Conspiracy of Equals’ related the failed coup of Grachus Babeuf in 1796. Babeuf rejected the notion that equality before the law itself was sufficient to define societal equality, and thus placed a strong emphasis on the abolition of private property and on equal access to food. Walking the Promenades dedicated to Arago, Deschanel and Hetzel, we end our walk in Rue Delhasse.

       

      More about the other walks.

       


       

      The videos and installations of the artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans investigate the complex relationship between art, economy and the built environment in today’s highly globalized world. The artists define their own house as an artwork. The 'house as artwork' functions as a framing device that allows the artists to zoom in on the role the arts play within the ever-growing entanglement between finance, urban development and governing. Their practice employs financial tools, historical references, technology, and cinematic language to reflect on social codes as well as on the production of value in today’s artistic and non-artistic realms.

       

    • 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.

       

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • PEACH BASKETS - THREE ANGLES ON BALANCING 05 September 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Caterina Mora / Laura Pante / Maurice Meewisse
    • a.pass
    • 27 September 2019
    • 28 September 2019
    • PEACH BASKETS - THREE ANGLES ON BALANCING

      a.pass is happy to invite you to the End-Communications of Caterina Mora, Laura Pante and Maurice Meewisse

      18:30 > Door opens

      19:00 - 21:00 > Ongoing Installation / performances
      >Double Spiral with rain makers - Maurice Meewisse
      >After Affect Clinique - Laura Pante

      21:00 > Pa-küru: 47 minutes of a bastard cheap lecture performance

      23:00 > Party with DJ Bicha Boo Collective -> 27th September ONLY!!!!

      *

       

      Peach Baskets - What the hell!

       

      “Maria Spelterini is walking across a tightrope across the Niagara Gorge, from the United States side to Canada, with her feet in peach baskets. In the background is the Niagara Suspension Bridge, which is full of spectators. In the distant background is the Niagara Falls.” (wikipedia)

      Funambulism is a "staying with the trouble" concept (in Donna Haraway´s words), that intertwines the a.pass End-Communications of Caterina Mora, Laura Pante and Maurice Meewisse, the 27 and 28 September at a.pass studio.

      It all started with the idea of balancing oppositions, no matter which: theory and practice, high and low cultures, language and body, feminism and heteronormativity, bad and  good, horizontal and vertical, north and south, truth and fake, here and there, real and virtual, peach baskets and shoes - What the hell?!

      The projects of Cate, Laura and Maurice, embody the crossings between antonymous positionalities and work with strategies that include negotiations, side effects, mistakes, shadows, confusion, plural views and overlapings as co-inhabitors of a research context attempting to think complex phenomena.

      To walk the tightrope one needs to be precisely at the moment. In the Merriam Webster dictionary, the second definition of funambulist says: “a show especially of mental agility”. Stay, stay, progress, walk…It is interesting to assess the complexity of such acts that involve several physical skills to portray exception and risk; that are then associated to freakishness, populism, entertainment, intense experience. Walking on the edge, for the good, the bad, the useless, the expectation, the market, for nothing, for life. Self-induced trouble in order to expose complex phenomena.

      The tightrope delineates the space, creates sides and indicates the demarcation of territories. It is a geometrical form, a fictional separation that enables position, that asks to be crossed as a heroic act. A symbolic gesture linking (or separating) two end points. Reinforcing nature, in this case - the Niagara Falls as like if they would need support. What kind of visibility is at stake? What was that woman doing in 1876? Why did she have peach baskets on her feet? Why did she sometimes tie her ankles? 

      The scenographies of these End-Communications are differentiated by three geometric shapes: the spiral, the triangle and the rectangle. They are reference points that reflect dwellings within real and artificial realities, they deploy perceptions. They are imperatives to read topologies: the arena, the tent and the stage. They all have a centre, they all are crossed by lines, they all follow patterns, they all create spaces, folds. 

      Imagine that all these lines and curves crossing the scenographic spaces are folds proposing potential, temporary and situated forms of critical enquiry between seemingly disconnected or distanced realities.

      At this point, the Deleuzian concept of the fold opens a range of actions, movements and transformations for what seems to be static and impenetrable perceptions of reality.  The fold changes place, re-forms elsewhere, multiplies, turns things inside out and outside in. The fold is extreme and intense and unlimited, it's baroque. It might be a form of connection that facilitates open-ended and inexhaustible unfoldings of  worlds.

      Caterina Mora uses what she named Transversal Research Training as a way to politicise the relations between ones’ own biography, western culture, global economy, institutional demand & heteronormativity. Cate works with show business as a form, to research relationalities in a non binary manner. Laura Pante creates conditions that trouble the relation between the private and the public perception of the body. Provoking awareness of the degree to which language and visual culture shape the body and our relation to it. Laura approaches technology and spirituality as culturally formative constructs that are constitutive parts of the self. Maurice Meewisse crafts situations as mimicries of institutional frameworks. Maurice's research questions the discrepancy between theoretical and ideological standpoints and the conditions that enable artistic work. The idea of the artist researcher as a self - instituted figure brings focus to both the agency of the artist and the dominance of power structures.

      "That is why the unfolded surface is never the opposite of the fold, but rather the movement that goes from some to the others. Unfolding sometimes means that I am developing—that I am undoing—infinite tiny folds that are forever agitating in the background, with the goal of drawing a great fold on the side whence forms appear. . . . At other times, on the contrary, I undo the folds of consciousness that pass through every one of my thresholds . . . in order to unveil in a single movement this unfathomable depth of tiny and moving folds that waft me along at excessive speeds in the operation of vertigo." Gilles Deleuze in 'The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque'

      Maria Spelterini disappeared shortly after the crossing of the Niagara Falls. No one knows why, how or where to. 

       

      *
      Caterina Mora, a patagonian doer (1988) from Fiske Menuco (Río Negro, Argentina) determined by the wind. She has incorrect English and she always asks for help for text revision. She had several titles and roles in Argentinian territory which become innocuous in other countries.

      Although she can give specifications on her traditional artistic roles in the Performing Arts (as a dancer, performer, ballet/contemporary dance/tango professor, director assistant, writer, modèle vivant), she is interested in transcending them. The ‘doer’ participates in academic groups and loves to create pieces with fiction and glitter.

      In a.pass she develops Transversal Research Training, a device for Artistic Research practice which is busy with the creation of political entertainment as affirmative critique. She makes, writes, embodies, questions and even refuses translations. She has become obsessed with Aprha Behn, a female spy for King Charles II in XVII century Belgium. She was a "translatress".

      Her End-Communications is a show called Pa-küru: 47 minutes of a bastard cheap lecture performance.
      It is based on translating ballet to reggaeton. a.pass provides bright paper, a 2x10 metre platform, a microphone like Madonna, cables, speakers, lights and a ballet barre. She provides 47 minutes of her embodied research, a 0,34 euro broken plastic crown that she bought in Buenos Aires (the crown ́s value then was of 1,21 euro) and music from her cell phone that she bought for 67 euros.

      She's trying to dance critically: from l'obsession après une audition to the pleasure of mostrar los dientes.


      *
      Laura Pante is a dancemaker based between Brussels and Venice. She combines the practices of drawing, architecture and graphic design with movement, dance and choreography.

      She crossed a.pass artistic research environment with a focus on body performativity, apparatus of spectatorship and the agency of images questioning in which way there is still a projection of fascist ideologies on the bi-dimensional screens which walk with us and prescribe our movement into the world. In other words how visual propaganda contributes to the production of body’s shapes. In her practice she researches how to create conditions for the possibility of a movement inquiry driven by a loss of corporal references and spatial coordinates challenging the expansion or the disappearance of body as a cultural phenomena.

      For her End-Communication, THE CLINIQUE will welcome you into the green corner, the remains of an ancient and spreading red volcano or the living room of a grandmother’s dream(s), to experience one by one a 360° video and performative installation. Within a precarious co-presence of inside and outside, private and public, personal and collective, we will practice a propaedeutic* research exploring a possible loss of corporal references and a consequential loss of memory - a flickering amnesia of the body’s shape, as if discovering something would mean to forget the dimension you came from, challenging mediated vision and image production. Laura and her assistant will guide you with the help of a dance performed by hands (a touch) informed by osteopathic practices**: the capacity to see into the abyss of flesh.

      * Propaedeutic // from the Ancient Greek προπαιδεύω (propaideúō, “I give preparatory instruction”), from πρό (pró, “before”) + παιδεύω (paideúō, “I teach”) is a historical term for an introductory course into a discipline, that is an art, or science, or movement.
      ** Ostheopatic practices of touch // OMT - osteopathic manipulative therapy // application of manual forces to improve homeostasis which have been altered by somatic dysfunction.

      *
      Maurice Meewise is a visual artist with a curiosity for the politics that construct accepted protocol of action and communication within specific institutionalized contexts. In most situations he finds an inherent conflict that acts as the impulse behind the creation of a new work in which he uses different techniques, from sculpture to performance, to create aesthetic interventions and attempt to provoke the reevaluation of our conditioned patterns of acceptance and behavior.

      The journey he embarked on at a.pass has been primarily focussed on the context provided by the institute, the program as well as the participants, curators, staff and visitors. He explored the limits of the context and the inconsistencies that he sometimes found between theories and the way they were practiced. During his period at a.pass he attempted to challenge the beliefs within the institute by making a series of symbolic interventions that addressed these boundaries and discrepancies.

      But one thing became apparent. Where is he in what he does?
      For the end communication he commissioned himself to look at what context he provides, to look at what he is constituted of, to think about his role as an artist and performer and his relationship with the audience. He uses the same strategy he applied before, but now to explore his own politics. It resulted in Double Spiral with Rainmakers - and he will prepare the dinner.

    • block 2018/II
    • NOT_index
    • 1st block - ... starting to speak in English
      10 August 2019
      posted by: Caterina Mora
    • case of: Caterina Mora
    •  

      [embed]https://gph.is/2y38zRI[/embed]

      (this gift is made with images of the block)

      Before to start: Excerpts from my application     // Investigation purpose (2017)

      Title: Derivatives around the construction of “the Latin imaginary” in Brussels context

      Abstract

      This work takes the reflection as a topic concerning “the Latin imaginary”[1] in Brussels context. As a starting point, it considers “the Latin imaginary” as a construction which is imagined by people who perceive themselves like “Latin people”, in terms of Imagined Communities. The aim is to study how this imaginary is composed of images, desires and motivations depositories that move around in the plot of signs in semio-capitalism.

      The questions that give rise to this project are: how is “the Latin imaginary” constructed? Which signs are reproduced by this construction? How are Latin bodies perceived in Brussels context? And how is it possible to make artistic operation on this imaginary?

      Description 

      (...) First block: field work and theoretical tools

      Regarding theoretical tools, it is worth mentioning that “the Latin issue” is analysed taking into account the concept of Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. As a matter of fact, his work pays attention to the concept of nation, his definition is used here to talk about the “Latin Imaginary Community”. In relation to that, Anderson propounds that “it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (1983: 7). This description is useful to think about the imaginary shared with others in terms of community.

      Considering this, the field work relative to “the Latin imaginary” is focused on sign production in the current context of semio-capitalism. In this way, a study of the concept by Franco Berardi (known as Bifo) is carried out; he defined semio-capitalism “when informational technologies make possible a full integration of linguistic labour with capital valorisation” (2009: 149). In other words, when all acts of transformation could be substituted by information and the work process is based on signs combination. Bifo says that economy incorporates factors like instability and indefiniteness when valorisation depended on language, and “in turn language incorporates economic rules of competition, shortage, and overproduction” (2009: 149). Therefore, semiotic overproduction has consequences in the economy and in the psycho-sphere, due to acceleration of perception, which generates a dis-sensitization in bodies, and becomes pathologies and psychotropic drugs dependence. One of the possible ways for facing these symptoms is to go back to the question about body perception on others. In relation to this, the author proposes that “in order to experience the other as a sensorial body, you need time, time to caress and smell. The time for empathy is lacking, because stimulation has become too intense” (2009: 85).

      Finally, as a theoretical mention, contributions that promote and accompany these questions are taken into account transversely in relation to "the Latin imaginary”. On the one hand, the perspective of "internal colonialism", which refers to the reproduction of the colonialism towards the interior of the ex-colonies and which takes as a reference the centres of power in the North-Hemisphere (Gonzalez Casanova: 2015). On the other hand, the heteronormativity existing in the perception of the sexed bodies and the stability of the gender, which depends on the alignment among sex and gender (Butler: 1990).

      [1] Due to the absence of a more appropriate terminology to translate “lo latino”, it was chosen the phrase “the Latin imaginary” owing to its relevance in relation to the imaginaries.

      ----------------------------------------

      1st Block, curated by Pierre Rubio called MILIEUS, ASSOCIATIONS, SIEVES AND OTHER MATTERS…, here the link 

       

      Openning week

      It was the first time I explained this project in English, I learned by heart most of my presentation. As you can see in my application, I started looking at the stereotype construction of Latin-imaginary through two concepts: semio-capitalism and imaginary communities. I was busy with how reggaeton videos and specially Despacito framed a stereotyped way of look at "latiness". 

       

      Half way days  --> LONGER CRI and POCKET CRI

      -- Half an hour of latiness, or... or...

       

      Pocket CRI - Zsenne GALLERY
      1 min to arrive at the location (Place Jardin des fleurs near to Szenne Gallery)

      4 min to propose / choose / set up               

      Invitation 2 people to reproduce as much as possible one of the screenshot of Despacito. They chose between 4 options.

      If people don't want to appear, there were many options to be far away of the camera. It will not be public.

      Caterina bring some stuff in order to help in the reproduction and makes them indicate consent to publish photos of the participants .

      THOSE PHOTOS are only public for documentation. 

      [gallery size="medium" columns="2" link="none" ids="9025,9026,9028,9029,9030,9032,9034,9036,9038,9040,9041,9042,9043,9044" orderby="rand"]

       

       

      Longer CRI
      Session II

      Invitation à The only proposition was bring Latin clothes.

      Morning brunch at my home in Ixelles. Invitation to do this parallel activities --> 

       

      People were at the garden of where I live.

      It was a sunny day. 

      They marked in maps different places related to latin culture. 

      Here some pics

      [gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="9052,9055,9057"]

      In my room: 

      - I showed the song that I did and the lyrics. Here you can listen here [audio mp3="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Reggaeton-I.mp3"][/audio]

      Here you can follow the lyrics

      Reggaeton 1 - My EDITION 
      Hello
      ton ton ton reggae ton ton ton This is a monologue, Mono mono monolo
      Gasoline Gasoline    We like don't like gasolineeeee

      I see dark hair   I see gold jewelry I see sun olive oil I see shiny skin   I see barbecue
      I see god

      And so far from god x3                  I am so stuck in this Latin body My hips

      Everything is dark now x2 its blank its blank You can comment
      This is the video Responder sexy body Sexy body RESPONDER

      short skirts skin shorts short skirts skin shorts large breasts shake shake

      short skirts skin shortsshort skirts skin shorts flat belly the motorcycle

      subjects objects x5

      or you just don't care

      Maradonna was fantastic but I love Messi love Messi Messi"Arriba arriba andele andele"

      Sexy ultimate sexy sexy ultimatelatino/latina
      gasoline spreads

      i find your spanish difficult to understand x2

      I like being latina I enjoy the fantasy of it.Is coolIs not coolIs Colonialists...ooooh

      Give me more gas x2
      This doesn't work, to be or to be, no sound, confused by the media acteur!Yes yes yes yeaaaaah
      I don't know about reggaeton
      I don't know about lyrics

      order insubordination submission
      I think the second video has some problemsnow I understand sorry KI can see it only in white without any images,is it the same for the others? x3

       

      - After, I asked apass people to choose a part of the lyrics and make a short video with that. They could recognize the lyrics that they wrote, or to choose one prhase. They had to create a movement for that. They shotted each other with the explanation and they could include the clothes. They gave me permission for internal use.

      From those videos I did another song. People were strefull because of the task of the camera. They name an anxious problem in my research and in the way that I was producing.

       

      --

      End presentation - PAF

      I explained the CRI. I sang both songs and exposed my problems. I said that I was doing a circular mouvement, because I was stereotyping all my view. At that moment, I was trying to understand who I am in the research. That´s why I presented the animal "Yaguateré". I presented the Reggaeton 2 with a an edited a video which has images of apass participants. I prefer to not pubic this video and the lyrics of the Reggaeton 2.

      Lyrics of Reggaeton 2 

      The body is a problem. We are busy with its problems // make sure that we have all the details // she flies // magical realism of South-America

      Fly movement

      Through imitating movement that I think they are latin but I can not really continue doing like this // I have a serious lack of knowledge of latin culture // I don't know anything that is latin-american 

      I guess.  Start // she give me this hat // C´est ca? C´est ca?

      You are completely disarm, freedom, you don't need to protect your body. // You feel good in it, you feel bbq. Leisure time. // body is so a costume, is difficult to get rid of. //  to lie down I chose and try to move without moving. 

      Latino stereotype,I think is not. // Not only because of the latino people // 

      “The hand of God” is Maradona scored against England. // I bought in Mexico, it has Jesus on it. // 

      catholicism and the imagery // To me is super latin // Shiny and synthetic. 

      Over commodify presentation of latino culture. // I am not sure.

      Gaze is on the back, someone enjoying it.  // knees are flexed, the pelvis is moving back and forward quite fast, // Breast, shoulders, from the left to right, fors coming movements. // Looking in the eyes // is active, seduces. // excites // excites // sexual desire

       

      I could recognize this big problem in my first Block. In Adva´s words: ‘ you stereotype me by asking me to stereotype you’. That´s mean that I was stereotying others.

      Somehow, I fell into my own trap.

      [gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="9065,9066,9067,9068,9069"]


      I recognize this potentialities of this block, that are potentialities as inputs for transformation:

                                             The "trauma" → caused by necessity to answer, give, produce → the "conditions" of the experiments

                                             Obscenity: how to show the body (connected to media)

                                             In which sense do I want to talk? → stereotype way or not?

                                             Problems of images: how can I expand more, open, and not restrict them?

                                               What is Latin for me, NOW? → SUPER excellent question to continue

                                            What is doing the "the art of super identification"?

                                            The power role of being able to see and be seen --> what is producing the objectification?

                                           Reggaeton genealogy: resistance rythm from Puerto Rico. "Reggae in SPANISH" (important) / perreo is coming from                                                  Afro-descendient dispora (persecuted, silencED, acallada). --> how this can appear in the research?

        

      ----------------------

      Important readings: the book about Reggaeton (Rivera and others, Duke Press University); BDSM approach (Freud; Barthes; Pat Califia; Foucault), decolonial theory (Silvia River Cusicanki). 

       

    • Newsletter May 2019 21 May 2019
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma

      newscaption
      NEWLETTER MAY 2019

       

       

      Troubled Gardens
      Block 2019/II
      29 April-28 July 2019

      curated by Nicolas Y Galeazzi

      After having curated two blocks at a.pass with regards to the conditions which, and in which we create – the block 2017/II about the commons, as an alternative economy, and the block 2018/I about the making of conditions and Institutional Critique –
      Nicolas Y Galeazzi sees the need to look beyond our cultural boundaries and understand the meshwork of diverse conditions we are living in together with other species, elements and time zones.

      Taking this ‚ecosystem-perspective‘ as the main tool for the participants investigations, this block shall give the possibility to reflect their researches as a relational field within a ‚terrestrial‘ landscape. On the other side, it will unavoidably put the works in relation to the ecological crisis and catastrophes surrounding us and will help us to develop tools and understanding for a post-anthropocentric, post-atopocenic, probably post-artropocentric relational practice.

      The workshops of this block will be 'gardens' - and therefore for once of spacial nature. Nicolas Y Galeazzi proposes to ask these gardens to be our teachers, to learn from them, to let them put us at work, to ask them to suggest a practice to us, to make them structure our time and our collective research attempts etc. The gardens are the 'education' framework and the ‘atelier.’

      In this framework he invited several ‘companions’ - Kobe Mathys, Martin Schik, Gosie Vervlossem, Marialena Marouda, Vicent Alexis, Filip Van Dingenen, Einat Tuchman, Philippine Hoegen- to build a network, a web of knowledge, together with us and amongst themselves.

      For more information:
      www.apass.be

      Research Centre

      Cycle 18/19 - Block III
      29 April-28 July 2019

      Co-Curated by Isabel Burr Raty / Antye Guenther / Adrijana Gvozdenović /
      Sara Manente / Rob Ritzen / Pierre Rubio / Sina Seifee

      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 one-year-cycle of the a.pass Research Center 2018/2019. After being initiated as a platform for individual research trajectories, the Research Center shifted to welcoming a group of advanced researchers for an one-year period. This last block of the first cycle 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.

      More information

       


      @ Hacktiris 31 May and June 1, 2019
      Starts at 18h

      Rue Paul Devauxstraat 5
      1000 Brussel
      6th floor

      You are invited to join:

      a.pass End-Communications of
      Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni and Goda Palekaitė.

      Virtual Body Institution is the coming together of the 3 concepts that intertwine in the End-Communications of Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni and Goda Palekaitė.
      Their practices are very distinct from each other, in form as in content though they all engage with forms of sociability that enhance, propose and reveal the relation of the individual with the societal. Tackling this position from discursive, technological or body practices they invite the visitor to engage in thinking and embody modes of construction of the self.

      All researchers work with performance and with the performativity of the event as a field of exploration that deconstructs the world as a given. The making public of these concerns in a transdisciplinary manner, mainly wants to politicise the individual as being an actant in the public sphere enacted by the event itself. The participatory is here seen as the moment of inquiry, experiencing and sharing that crosses through the individual to the communal and vice-versa in enabling the non expertise as potential for critical presence.

      More information

       
       

       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

       

       
    • newnew may2019 01 May 2019
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma

      newscaption
      NEWSLETTER MAY 2019

      Troubled Gardens
      Block 2019/II
      29 April-28 July 2019

      curated by Nicolas Y Galeazzi

      After having curated two blocks at a.pass with regards to the conditions in which we create – the block 2017/II about the commons as an alternative economy, and the block 2018/I about the making of conditions and Institutional Critique – Nicolas Y Galeazzi sees the need to look beyond our cultural boundaries and understand the meshwork of diverse conditions we are living in together with other species, elements and time zones.

      Taking this 'ecosystem-perspective‘ as the main tool for the participants investigations, this block shall give the possibility to reflect  on their researches as a relational field within the 'terrestrial‘ landscape. On the other hand, it will unavoidably put the works in relation to the ecological crisis and catastrophes surrounding us and will help to develop tools and understandings for a post-anthropocentric, post-atopocenic, probably post-artropocentric relational practice.

      The workshops of this block will be 'gardens' - and therefore for once of spacial nature. Nicolas Y Galeazzi proposes to ask these gardens to be the teachers, to learn from them, to let them put the works at work, to ask them to suggest a practice, to make them structure the time and the collective research attempts. The gardens will be the 'education' framework and the ‘atelier.’

      In this framework  several ‘companions’  were invited- Kobe Mathys, Martin Schik, Gosie Vervlossem, Marialena Marouda, Vicent Alexis, Filip Van Dingenen, Einat Tuchman, Philippine Hoegen- to build a network, a web of knowledge together with the all involved.

      For more information:
      www.apass.be

      Research CenteR

      Cycle 18/19 - Block III
      29 April-28 July 2019

      Co-Curated by Isabel Burr Raty / Antye Guenther / Adrijana Gvozdenović /
      Sara Manente / Rob Ritzen / Pierre Rubio / Sina Seifee

      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.

      More information

      @ Hacktiris 31 May and June 1, 2019
      Starts at 18h

      Rue Paul Devauxstraat 5
      1000 Brussel
      6th floor

      You are invited to join:

      a.pass End-Communications of
      Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni and Goda Palekaitė.

      Virtual Body Institution is the coming together of the 3 concepts that intertwine in the End-Communications of Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni and Goda Palekaitė.

      Their practices are very distinct from each other, in form as in content though they all engage with forms of sociability that enhance, propose and reveal the relation of the individual with the societal. Tackling this position from discursive, technological or body practices they invite the visitor to engage in thinking and embody modes of construction of the self.

      Through their current practices of research and exposure – that use the personification of historical characters in a public discussion, the entrance into virtual space as a extension of the ‘real’ and the body as a perception machine – we encounter some of the contexts and mechanisms we inhabit in current western society.

      Their proposals are not complementary but do co-habit through this event beyond agreement or disagreement by creating an area (spatial and experiential) of a temporary common.

      The work of Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni and Goda Palekaitė enacts research modes of activating and empowering the self as active part of larger technological concepts. One becomes aware through their piercing practices of the narratives that surround the institutional, the body and the virtual. They softly enable criticality in the moment of exposure by engineering transdisciplinary processes that fundamentally question what  we are made of and how do we relate to it.

      All researchers work with performance and with the performativity of the event as a field of exploration that deconstructs the world as a given. The making public of these concerns in a transdisciplinary manner, mainly want to politicise the individual as being an actant in the public sphere enacted by the event itself. The participatory is here seen as the moment of inquiry, experiencing and sharing that crosses through the individual to the communal and vice-versa in enabling the non expertise as potential for critical presence.

      Are questions related to the self, isolated from the other? Is the self alienated from the communal, the historical, the technological, from the body?  How do we practice the spilling of our personal concerns into societal concerns? Where and how do we politicise our practices? Where do we meet? Are we here yet?

      More information

       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

    • postgraduate program
    • Troubled Gardens
    • Block 2019/II Troubled Gardens ecologies of artistic research
      23 April 2019
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 29 April 2019
    • 28 July 2019
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Block 2019/II  Troubled Gardens

      The earth faces troubles of kind humanity never experienced before: climatic changes induced by humankind are dramatically destructive and - meanwhile unavoidable. Therefore we can register a shift in the environmental movement from an understanding of trying to prevent the planet from a catastrophe to mere dealing with life within the consequences of climate changes. This perspective fundamentally shifts our culturally abstracted understanding of nature - and therefore it poses big questions to the arts as a source of cultural knowledge for that great deal of life. The catastrophe might mirror the impossibility of hierarchical understandings of the relation between nature and culture, but it also forces us to the obvious insight that all vital cycles - whether social, ecological, technological, cultural, mental, emotional, economic etc.- are inseparably connected ecosystems.

      Knowing about their sensitivity and complexity, I’m asking myself, how does my artistic practice and research act within the disturbedness of these ecosystems? How can I understand myself and my research as transformative part of their troubles - knowing, that I’m a troubled and troubling ecosystem myself?

      After having curated two blocks at a.pass with regards to the conditions which, and in which we create - the block 2017/II about the commons, as an alternative economy, and the block 2018/I about the making of conditions and Institutional Critique - I see the need to look beyond our cultural boundaries and understand the meshwork of diverse conditions we are living in together with other species, elements and time zones.

      The aim of this block is to challenge our individual research aims as living creatures and companions in and as ecosystems. Hyper related, affecting, and never singular, our researches are - however - in resonance with their surrounding. We can not ignore the influence of these aspects, but we are also hardly aware of the performance of these influences on our practice.

      Taking this ‚ecosystem-perspective‘ as the main tool for our investigations, this block shall give you the possibility to reflect your research as a relational field within a ‚terrestrial‘ landscape. On the other side, it will unavoidably put our researches in relation to the ecological crisis and catastrophes surrounding us and will help us to develop tools and understanding for a post-anthropocentric, post-atopocenic, probably post-artropocentric relational practice with your research.

      Therefore, this block IN-vites you OUT. Where to investigate and experience a behaviour as ecosystem better then in the outside - an outside, that immediately takes us in, makes us being a part of it! ‚Outdoor‘ - at places with-out-doors - might be the right term. Where weather and biosphere meet industrial (side-)performance, migrant activities, walls, traffic, sun - and state power, written and unwritten laws etc. interact with each other.
      This block takes you out into the systemically ‚wild‘. What allows structure? I don’t know - at the moment, before having taken up theses c/glasses any curated structure feels violent towards the tenderness of the ecosystems. Handling the idea ‚ecosystem as research as ecosystem‘ with care is as crucial as to care with the greatest sensitivity for the ecosystems we are about to enter by stepping out of the door.

      This in mind, I throw out my tentacles to propose a path to step into our ‚worlding‘ experience and to trace the stories we will tell on that way.

       
    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • a.pass Basics workshops
    • a.pass meets School of Love
    • block 2018/III
    • STUDY DAYS A curatorial proposal by Adva ZAkai
      11 September 2018
      posted by: Joke Liberge
    • 10 September 2018
    • 30 November 2018
    • STUDY DAYS

      PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE

      This block is organized around a series of Study Days. Almost every Monday till the end of November, a.pass hosts artists, thinkers and researchers to contribute to the problematization of various issues that bring together love, art, school, improvisation and politics.


      ** The texts bellow are written from the perspective of the notions explored at a.pass, and not by the guests, who are invited to respond to them from within their own practices **


      September 10th
      Maybe one day, love will no longer be considered a private endeavor or a slogan of hippies, but rather a public and a political mode of being...

      Guests: Johan Grimonprez & Bleri Lleshi

      Imagine a society that bases its arrangements, institutions and democracy on love itself. Such a society will probably teach and exercise love as a force that contributes to the constitution of communities. Maybe then it will make less sense to say that love is a social construction than to say that love constructs society... What kind of practices can re-appropriate love by allowing it to shift from individual, consumerist and patriarchal inclinations into the political engagement of play and interaction of differences? How can love be romantic but not only? What if love would expend beyond the limits of the couple and the nuclear family and serve as the basis for our political projects in common?
      10h – 13h A session with Johan Grimonprez
      13h – 14h Lunch
      14h – 15h15 presentation of work by Johan Grimonprez
      15h15 – 15h30 Break
      15h30 – 18h A session with Bleri Leshi

       

      September 17th
      To be included your love tool kit
      Or: Tender technologies: how tools shape practice and practice shapes tools

      Guest: Femke Snelting

      Femke Snelting: Can we transform our relation to everyday communication technologies? Can we take that risk? Currently, tech giants dominate all forms of digital communication, from cloud-storage to production tools and archiving systems. Infused with modernist ideas of progress, these tools are full of capitalist values and dreams of seamless scaleability. They form intricate webs of human and non-human agencies weaving themselves into and around us, intimately linking our personal and professional practices. Also institutional practice has come to rely on the use of commercial platforms, including places that are dedicated to radical transformation, political love and commoning like a.pass. So how are we being with technology when practicing a School of Love? This study-day is dedicated to experiencing technology differently, of developing a convivial relationship that foregrounds vulnerability, mutual dependency and care-taking. With the help of old and new Free, Libre and Open Source Software tools we will practice a transition from anticipating efficiency to allowing curiosity; from expecting scarcity to demanding multiplicity; from solution to possibility.
      10h – 13h A session with Femke Snelting
      13h – 14h Lunch
      14h – 18h A session with Femke Snelting

       

      September 24th – September 29th
      Inspired by the interest in both love and school as charged with potential to generate new politics and relations in the world.

      a.pass meets SOL participates to The Swamp School at the Venice Biennale Architecture 2018

      "In exploring the imaginary of a swamp—a living organism in which borders defined by social, political and cultural factors are porous and permeable— the Swamp School will investigate an open artistic/architectural form, effective workshop and publication methodologies. The Swamp School will act as a pilot for future learning environments, informed by and informing the architecture and installations of its own space. Research questions will focus on creating public interfaces and manuals that support adaptation and learning to meet the demands of a changing environment.” Swamp Pavillion curated by Nomeda and Gedeminas Urbonas.

      Participating institutions: MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, University of Antwerp, Università Iuav di Venezia, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti - NABA Milan, The Art Institute at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW Basel, Institute of Aesthetic Practice and Theory IAeP, Academy of Art and Design FHNW Basel, University of Iceland, Vytautas Magnus University Kaunas, a.pass - advanced performance and scenography studies Brussels, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Contour Biennale 9 Mechelen, Design for the Living World Class at HFBK The University of Fine Arts Hamburg, Städelschule Architecture Class – Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Frankfurt

      http://swamp.lt/#program


      October 8th
      Blame it on monogamy

      Guests: Eva Berghman, CW/the Common Wallet project, Kathrien De Graeve

      Many of us were indoctrinated to believe that they desire only one way of moving through the course of life, where pairing is the ultimate goal and the preferable mode of being. This probably has not much to do with the belief in the mental and spiritual profoundness of the unit of two, but rather being motivated by the fear of being left out by a society that socially and economically prioritises the couple. How to re-appropriate institutions that re-appropriated love itself by bounding it to laws, contracts, economy and morals? What if being polyamorous would not only mean having many lovers, but many kinds of love? We could chose to stop considering Polyamory as merely a sexual and romantic practice, and think of it as an ethic that potentially destabilizes the normative hierarchies between human relationships. Monogamy is not just a way to love romantically, it also influences our relations to money, time, jobs, passports, artistic/scientific/academic researches etc... If Polyamory would be the dominant way of relation in the political and social sphere, how would this effect the notions of owning (property, identity, ideas) and owing, of secrets and privacy? How can love subvert and de-construct power structures that use monogamy to move us away from caring collectively?

      10h – 11h30 A session with Katrien De Graeve
      11h30 – 13h A Session with Eva Berghmans
      13h – 14h Lunch
      14h – 15h30 A session with CW / the Common Wallet project
      15h30 – 16h Break
      16h – 18h A discussion through relating the themes of the day to our own practices

       

      October 22nd
      Love makes schools make love

      Guests: Jan Masschelein, Laurence Rassel, SRG / school research group

      Maybe one day, schools will no longer be considered as merely a protective incubator that prepares one to life outside of it, but rather an engaged environment that influences the world. Think of a society that bases its schools on experiment, reflection and collectivity, independent from the market's need. Schools that produce ideologies and policies, instead of being instrumentalised by them. Schools that gather strangers and differences under the common wish to study public matters in order to challenge and improve them. If ever such a society will exist, it will probably construct its schools as flexible systems that work in acceptance of potential change and disruption, as a way to embody that which is being studied in them. Can schools embrace love as a strategy to create a place of encounter where both the institution and its part takers grow in relation to each other? How can a school base its structure on the same principals it wishes to teach?

      13h – 16h A session with Jan Masschelein
      16h– 18h A session with Laurence Rassel
      18h – 19h Dinner (provided by a.pass)
      19h – 21h Presentation of school models that were developed by a.pass participants


      October 29th
      By putting that which is between us before that which we think belongs to us.

      Guests: Caroline Godart, Elke Van Campenhout

      School is maybe more of a verb than a noun. Its a state of “attentivnes” to the world that one could chose to enter at any time and any place, in the company of others. Within this logic, wouldn't being a student similar to being an artist? Schools and students could be considered as lovers, who commit to each other, but do not wish to control what the other does with the love that they give. To school could mean to study and care for the same thing that you would also be willing to let go of. To - engage with, and - detach from, at the same time. This could be the love that dares to bound spirituality and politics together. If school becomes a verb, teachers would then teach how to school, and maybe love would not be a feeling, but a mode of studying that generates feelings.

      10h – 13h A reading session with Caroline Godart
      13h – 14h Lunch
      14h – 16h A reading session with Caroline Godart
      16h – 16h30 Break
      16h30 – 18h A reading session with Elke Van Campenhout

       

      October 31st – Nov 5th (Nov 3rd – off)
      Instead of needing to know

      A workshop by Joao Fiadeiro.
      Guests: Elke Van Campenhout, Alex Arteaga

      If in both Love and School an openness to change through encounters with others is practiced, we better develop sensitivities to deal with a change into an unknown path. Perhaps 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 tendencies for a life dedicated to an anticipated and defined future. It might seem like stating the obvious, proposing to put improvisation back in the agenda. Life itself is an improvisation, of course, we never stopped improvising. But we can dedicate a special attention to it in order to examine its relevance to nowadays realities. Not the improvisation that aims to emancipate repressed self expressions, neither the one that provides skills and masteries to manoeuvre within individual lives and careers , but an improvisation attitude that may create an actualized set of relations between us and other people, us and other things, us and anything that is not us.

      10h – 18h A workshop with Joao Fiadeiro
      19h – 21h (Nov 2nd, 4th, 5th ) Evening interventions by Joao Fiadeiro, Elke Van Campenhout, Alex Arteaga


      November 12th
      The Love workers

      Guests: An Mertens, Daniela Bershan

      Artistic processes often face the contradiction of critiquing the same protocols they have to comply with, such as deadlines, saleable products, authorship, commissions and competition. Many artists experience frustration by the fact that policy makers, programmers and curators determine the visibility of certain artists/art works instead of others. A Love Worker – could this be a synonym for an Artist? Would this emancipate some practices from having to defend their relevance through the procedures imposed by artistic scenes? Or better than that – could this expand the boundaries of what an artistic work can become?

      10h – 13h A session with An Mertens (in the forest)
      13h – 15h Lunch (+ coming back from the forest)
      15h – 18h A session with Daniela Bershan

       

      BIOGRAPHIES

      Bleri Lleshi is philosopher, writer, lecturer, youth worker and DJ. He studied political sciences and philosophy at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. At the moment he is writing a ph.d on the struggle of the excluded. Lleshi is lecturer at UCLL where he teaches various subjects on social sciences. His research focuses on topics such as inequality, neoliberalism, youth, migration, identities, and extremism. Lleshi has participated in conferences, debates and media. In 2014, he was considered as one of the most influential immigrants in Belgium

      Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of practice and theory, art and cinema, documentary and fiction, demanding a double take on the part of the viewer. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work seeks out the tension between the intimate and the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue. By suggesting new narratives through which to tell a story, his work emphasizes a multiplicity of realities. Grimonprez's curatorial projects, films and installations have been exhibited at museums worldwide. He published several books and he lectures widely.

      Femke Snelting works as artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. In various constellations she explores 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. Since 1997, Constant generates performative publishing, curatorial processes, poetic software, experimental research and educational prototypes in local and international contexts. http://constantvzw.org/

      Eva Berghmans is a journalist working for 'De Standaard'. As a journalist she has an excuse to step up to people and ask them all kind of weird and intimate questions. She never took 'because this is the way we have always done things' for an answer and tries to see through the presumptions in our everyday lives. Currently she is working on a research project on polyamory, published on http://www.standaard.be/tag/.'

      CW/the Common Wallet project is an initiative of 10 people from the art sector in Belgium who share their individual income in one collective bank account. Through this experiment they collectively explore their psychological and cultural dependencies on money and a possible alternative to the monogamous and often lonely relationship one has with the money one earns. CW part takers are : Luigi Coppola, Eliza Demarre, Anna Rispoli, Adva Zakai, Diederik Peeters, Christophe Meierhans, Luca Mattei, Agnes Quackels, Ingrid Vranken, Irena Ramanovic


      Katrien De Graeve is a postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), affiliated to the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ghent University, and member of the Centre for Research on Culture and Gender. In 2012, she completed her PhD at the Department of Comparative Sciences of Culture at Ghent University with a critical analysis of intensive parenting practices in Belgian-Ethiopian adoptive families. In her current research project (2016-2019), she has shifted focus to the study of sexuality/romantic relationships and discourses of exclusivity and plurality in light of the normative two-parent nuclear family.

      Jan Masschelein is head of the Laboratory for Education and Society, and of the research group Education, Culture and Society. He studied educational sciences and philosophy at the K.U.Leuven and at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main and is as well Fellow of the Alexander Von Humboldt-Stiftung. His research can be situated in the broad domain of the formation of educational theory, critical theory, social philosophy and governmentality studies. More concretely it concerns the public and societal role of education and schooling, the role of the university, the changing experiences of time and space in the age of the network, the educational meaning of cinema and camera, the architecture of schools and architecture of the learning environment, a pedagogy of attention, the notion of 'pedagogy', the pedagogical role of teachers and social workers. A lot of attention is directed towards experimental educational practices and towards new forms of documentary and exploratory research.

      Laurence Rassel is currently the director of art school ERG in Brussels. Educated in visual arts and pedagogy, she pursued an interdisciplinary trajectory from new media to the management of an artistic institution. From 2010 to the end of June 2015, she was director of the Fundacio Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona, a foundation created to promote contemporary art and thought, and the study of Antoni Tàpies' work. Previously, from 1998, she was, among others, responsible for Constant, a non-profit organization based in Brussels. Constant connects theoretical thinking, the critical use of new technologies, artistic behavior and political issues in the network. At the same time, she was project coordinator for the Interface3 women's technology training center in Brussels, as part of the European ADA project from 2001 to 2006. 



      SRG/School Research Group is an open group of art practitioners and pedagogues who meet regularly in order to share their interest and experience within school environments in Belgium and study together. 



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

      Elke Van Campenhout / ELLE is a tantric practioner and artistic researcher. She developed her work partly at the a.pass research institute where she worked for five years under the umbrella of Bureau d’Espoir, a practice on the import, export and redistribution of hope. For this practice she studied political theory, contemporary philosophy and spiritual body practices. Her work is a transdisciplinary practice, linking contemporary philosophy to spiritual body practice, in the development of an ethics of coming together and rethinking our relation to the world we live in. Since 2 years Elke Van Campenhout and Stijn Smeets started up the experimental living community The Monastery, dedicating all their time and resources on the creation of a spiritual life of devotion, alternative economies, and ritual composition.

      João Fiadeiro belongs to a generation of choreographers who emerged in the late 1980’s and led to the emergence of the Nova Dança Portuguesa. In 1990, he founded the workshop RE.AL Company that supported the creation and dissemination of several choreographers and their works, which were regularly performed in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and South America. Real Time Composition is a project that he has been developing for twenty years. In parallel, he has organized several workshops in various training courses, schools and universities throughout the world. João Fiadeiro is currently completing a PhD in contemporary art at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

      Alex Arteaga’s research integrates aesthetic and philosophical practices relating to aesthetics, the emergence of sense, meaning and knowledge, and the relationships between aurality, architecture and the environment through phenomenological and enactivist approaches. He studied composition, music theory, piano, electroacoustic music, and architecture in Berlin and Barcelona and received a PhD in philosophy from the Humboldt University for his dissertation Sensuous Framing: Fundamentals of a Strategy to Realize Conditions of Perception. From 2008 to 2012 he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Collegium for the Advanced Study of Picture Act and Embodiment at the Humboldt University and visiting professor at the MA Choreography at the Inter- University Centre for Dance Berlin. In 2012 he led the research team at the Berlin.

      An Mertens is artist, writer, and core-member of Constant, an artist run organisation for experimental art and media in Brussels. Next to a practise of literary creation using algorithms, she is also a nature guide in Forêt de Soignes and writing fiction with a particular interest for the non-human presences in woods.
http://constantvzw.org, http://www.algolit.net, http://www.paramoulipist.be/

      Daniela Bershan aka Baba Electronica is a love worker using visual arts, performance, music making and social organization around topics of collective study, care-making and practices of (non-sexual) intimacy. In her work she conceptualizes not just the characteristics of her materials but with and through them the skills and objects they can be read with: the DJ, the remixer, the researcher, the love-worker are dissecting choreographies and scores in order to make tangible how they operate; and enable to organize relations otherwise. They are committed to experiment and circulate with queering tools. Bershan co-founded and directed FATFORM (NL), and is co-organizing ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE at Performing Arts Forum (FR). Her works, projects and performances have been presented worldwide.

       

       
    • 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.

       
    • Newsletter June 2018 13 June 2018
      posted by: Steven Jouwersma

       

      Rue delaunay 58 - 1080 - Brussel, Molenbeek 

       

      We like to inform you about some changes in the public program

      in the coming two weeks.  see below:


      sense-lab Erin Manning

      The Way of the Anarchive

      What resists the archive? 
      How does that which resists cast itself forward?
      What kinds of traces, smudges, residues does it leave, does it create?
      How can we value that which does not register, but makes a difference?

      A processual engagement with the anarchic share of experience will allow us to develop techniques for attuning to that which resists capture. In a paradoxical move, our work will be to give it the breadth and force of an appearance. This appearance, conceived as a minor gesture, will be curious about that which sparks in the interstices of experience in the making.

      With a.pass associate researchers: Sina Seiffee,  Adrijana Gvozdenovic, Sara Manente, Lilia Mestre, Nicolas Galleazzi. a.pass (ex)participants: Marialena Marouda, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Xiri Noir and Pia Louwerens Guests: Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Adva Zakai, Alex Arteaga, Miriam Hempel, Nikolaus Gansterer, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Tamir Etin, Halbe Kuipers, Nico Dockx, Veridiana Zurita, Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann,  …

      SCHEDULE

      • WEEK 3 (18 -24 June) – The two weeks of The Way of the Anarchive are radically open: together we will work to create vacuoles of time through which the infra-perceptible will begin to resonate.

      • From 12:00-16:00 you will find us at Zsenne, in and around. But time folds, so don’t be alarmed if 16:00 becomes 19:00 – you never do know what time can do! In the evenings most days there is an open conversation. 

      • Monday 18 > The Way of the Anarchive

      • Tuesday 19 > The Way of the Anarchive 19:00 Encounter with Erin Manning 

      • Wednesday 20 > The Way of the Anarchive 

      • Thursday 21 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00 Encounter with Nico Dockx: Every Archive Hides Another Archive

      • Friday 22 > 13:30-16:30  Miriam Hempel > The Meaning Of — an exploration of alternative perspectives

      • Saturday 23 > Visit DETM (Don’t Eat The Microphone) In Psychiatrisch Ziekenhuis Dr. Guislain. GENT with Veridiana Zurita, Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann (closed session)

        WEEK 4 (25- 30 June)

      • Monday 25 > CRI’s (a.pass post-master sharing practices day+ feedback)

      • Tuesday 26 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00  Encounter SenseLab and SOL 

      • Wednesday 27 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00  Encounter with Alex Arteaga:  “de-archiving. A framed dialog”

      • Thursday 28 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00 Encounter with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi – Cryptoeconomy of affect

      • Friday 29 > The Way of the Anarchive

      • Saturday 30 > Nikolaus Gansterer (Translecture) CANCELLED (due to inoperative meniscus)

       
       

       
       
       
       
       

       a.pass
      Rue delaunay 58 - 1080 - Brussel, Molenbeek 
      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: office@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

       

       

    • Rue delaunay 58 - 1080 - Brussel, Molenbeek 


      REMINDER:

      Thursday 24th and
      Friday 25th of May 

      THIS IS 1000 LITER FUEL SO…

      a.pass end communications 
      @ Decoratelier 
      Rue de Liverpool 24. 1080 Brussels
       

      PROGRAM for both days

      17:30 Doors open
      18:00 Introduction
      19:00 Esther Rodriguez-Barbero Granado (25 people max)
      20:15 
      Marialena Marouda
      21:00 
      Marialena Marouda
      23:00 end. 

      Ongoing: 
      Luisa Fillitz, Eunkyung Jeong,Ekaterina Kaplunova, Shervin Kiarnesi Haghighi. 

      Catering on the spot by Sara ten Westenend. 

      More info 

      PS:
      Saturday 26th of May 
      book launch "Scorescapes"
      17:30 @ Brew schoolstraat 1 Rue de Pene
      with a dialogue facilitated by Philippine Hoegen and chocolate cocktails by Shervin Kiarnesi Haghighi! 

       

      PARALLEL PARASITE, a month residency at ZSenne ArtLab : On Anarchiving > On Love > On Score -ing > On the spot > On presence

       

      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 at ZSenne, 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.

      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 practices approach in the arts.

      The three main proposals for the a.pass Research Center in dislocation are:

      Week 1 > 4 till 9 June
      SOL - School of Love - Instead of Needing to know

      This working session needs inscription please follow this link https:///www.apass.be/instead-of-needing-to-know/ SOL (School of Love) proposed by Adva Zakai

      Week 2 > 11 till 15 June
      SCORESCAPES > Fragile Community Score proposed by Lilia Mestre

      This working session needs inscription please follow this link https:///www.apass.be/fragile-community-score-score-for-entering-a-place/

      Week 3 and 4 > 16 till 30 June
      THE WAY OF THE ANARCHIVE proposed by Erin Manning

      This working session is under invitation. For public discussions check schedule. https:///www.apass.be/the-way-of-the-anarchive/

      and

      More info on Parallel Parasite https:///www.apass.be/parallel-parasite-platform-for-practice-based-research-in-the-arts/

      The RC is mainly working with alumni, associated researchers and guests linked with the a.pass Research Centre.

      For Parallel Parasite we are: Alex Arteaga, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Bojana Cvejic, Nikolaus Gansterer, Nicolas Galeazzi, Adrijana Gvozdenovic, 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.

      PUBLIC EVENTS:


      WEEK 1 - PUBLIC TALKS:
      Monday 4 > 19h :00 > Introduction of the School Of Love
      Thursday 8 > 19h30 > SOL interview by Lauren Grusenmeyer for the WORKOUT publication

      WEEK 2 - PUBLIC TALKS:
      Monday 11 > 20:30 > Concert with Eric Thielemans “Bata Baba Loka: Extacy and overflow.”
      Saturday 16 > 11:00 till 16:00 > Monday readings > Femke Snelting and Martino Morandi (more information soon)

      WEEK 3 and 4 - PUBLIC TALKS:
      Tuesday 19 > 19:00 > Encounter with Erin Manning on the Anarchive
      Thursday 21 > 19:00 > Encounter with Nico Dockx: Every Archive Hides Another Archive
      Tuesday 26 > 19:00 > Encounter between SenseLab and SOL
      Wednesday 27 > 19:00 > Encounter with Alex Arteaga; Embodied Architecture/ Aesthetic Experience
      Thursday 28 > 19:00 > Encounter Erin Manning and Brian Massumi – Crypto Economy of Affect
      Saturday 30 > AFTERNOON > Nikolaus Gansterer (Translecture)

       

       


       

      MILIEUS, ASSOCIATIONS, SIEVES AND OTHER MATTERS…

      2 April - 2 September 2018

      BLOCK II 2018 - summer program

      Milieu

      An ensemble of problems as an environment. A metastable milieu in crisis, which evolves and changes by shifting to new dimensions out of confrontation to and resolution of problems.

      More...

        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
    • seminar
    • workshop
    • block 2018/II
    • Parallel Parasite
    • The Way of the Anarchive a residency with Erin Manning in the frame of parallel parasite
      11 May 2018
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Zsenne ArtLab
    • 18 June 2018
    • 29 June 2018
    • case of: Lilia Mestre
    • The Way of the Anarchive

       

      The Way of the Anarchive

      What resists the archive?
      How does that which resists cast itself forward?
      What kinds of traces, smudges, residues does it leave, does it create?
      How can we value that which does not register, but makes a difference?

      A processual engagement with the anarchic share of experience will allow us to develop techniques for attuning to that which resists capture. In a paradoxical move, our work will be to give it the breadth and force of an appearance. This appearance, conceived as a minor gesture, will be curious about that which sparks in the interstices of experience in the making.

      With a.pass associate researchers: Sina Seiffee,  Adrijana Gvozdenovic, Sara Manente, Lilia Mestre, Nicolas Galleazzi. a.pass (ex)participants: Marialena Marouda, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Xiri Noir and Pia Louwerens Guests: Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Adva Zakai, Alex Arteaga, Miriam Hempel, Nikolaus Gansterer, Silvia Pinto Coelho, Tamir Etin, Halbe Kuipers, Nico Dockx, Veridiana Zurita, Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann,  ...

      SCHEDULE

      • WEEK 3 (18 -24 June) - The two weeks of The Way of the Anarchive are radically open: together we will work to create vacuoles of time through which the infraperceptible will begin to resonate. From 12:00-16:00 you will find us at Zsenne, in and around. But time folds, so don't be alarmed if 16:00 becomes 19:00 - you never do know what time can do! In the evenings most days there is an open conversation.

      • Monday 18 > The Way of the Anarchive

      • Tuesday 19 > The Way of the Anarchive 19:00 Encounter with Erin Manning

      • Wednesday 20 > The Way of the Anarchive

      • Thursday 21 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00 Encounter with Nico Dockx: Every Archive Hides Another Archive

      • Friday 22 > 13:30-16:30  Miriam Hempel > The Meaning Of — an exploration of alternative perspectives

      • Saturday 23 > Visit DETM (Don't Eat The Microphone) In Psychiatrisch Ziekenhuis Dr. Guislain. GENT with Viridiana Zurita, Petra Van Dyck and Lea Dietschmann (closed session)

        WEEK 4 (25- 30 June)

      • Monday 25 > CRI’s (a.pass post-master sharing practices day+ feedback)

      • Tuesday 26 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00  Encounter SenseLab and SOL

      • Wednesday 27 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00  Encounter with Alex Arteaga:  “de-archiving. A framed dialog”

      • Thursday 28 > The Way of the Anarchive  19:00 Encounter with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi - Cryptoeconomy of affect

      • Friday 29 > The Way of the Anarchive

      • Saturday 30 > Nikolaus Gansterer (Translecture) CANCELLED (due to inoperative meniscus)

       

       

       

       

       

       
    • 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.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • crypting currency, etc. 09 March 2018
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Alberto Cossu
    • a.pass 4th floor / 10:00 to 17:00
    • 16 March 2018
    • 16 March 2018
    • crypting currency, etc.
      Next to the event Reclaiming Economy - it's art, Alberto Cossu provides a workshop for us during the day of the 16th March. He will give us a closer insight into his practical experience with the common coin crypto-currency he helped to developed at MACAO and his profound research into the self-governance of that place. 

       
      Macao is an independent center for art, culture and research. Avoiding the creative industry paradigm, and trying to innovate the old idea of cultural institutions, we started to consider art production as a viable process for rethinking social change, elaborating independent political critique, and as a space for innovative governance and production models. Our research concerns the labour conditions in the creative industry and cultural sector, the right to the city and new forms of organization and technological solutions for cultural production. Macao is currently based in a former slaughterhouse in the middle of a huge abandoned area not so far from the center of the city; it has a cross-sectorial program hosting performing arts, cinema, visualarts, design, photography, literature, newmedia, hacking and the meetings of citizens committees. It is coordinated by an open assembly of artists and activists.
       
      Alberto is since the beginning active in this place  and has developed as a sociologist specific research methodologies tin relation with the arts to understand and improve their economic and self-governing mechanisms.
       
    • postgraduate program
    • seminar
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • Reclaiming economy - it's art anyway an evening on the self-governing of fairness
      08 March 2018
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Alberto Cossu / Ronny Heiremans / Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass / starting at 19:00
    • 16 March 2018
    • 16 March 2018
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Reclaiming economy - it's art anyway

      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 Herremans 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.

    • 1. Entrepreneur & Creative Economy

      art and economy

      Hans Abbing (2010). Why are artists poor? The exceptional economy of the arts. Amsterdam University Press.

       

      Tatiana Bazzichelli (2013) Networked disruption. Aarhus: Digital Aesthetics Research Center, 73.

      PhD thesis

      creative economy

      Richard Florida (2002) The economic geography of talent. Annals of the Association of American geographers, 92(4), pp.743-755.

      creative economy flag-raiser

      Richard Florida (2005) Cities and the creative class. Routledge.

      Bridgstock Entrepreneurship Education in the Arts

      quadruple bottom line theory, career self-management

      Hartley et al Key Concepts in Creative Industries

      entrepreneurship and innovation

      creative economy critique

      Banks, M. and O’Connor, J. (2017) Inside the whale (and how to get out of there): Moving on from two decades of creative industries research. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), pp.637-654.

      Timely self-critique from apologetic creative economy former enthusiasts. Creative cities, cluster theory, Landry, Florida etc.

      Paul Chatterton (2000). Will the real Creative City please stand up?. City, 4(3), pp.390-397. [online]

      http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/713657028

       

      Banks, M., 2010. Craft labour and creative industries. International journal of cultural policy, 16(3), pp.305-321.

      Richard Sennett and craft.

      Anthony Davies (2007) Take me I’m yours: neoliberalising the cultural institution. In Mute Vol 2 No 5 It’s not easy being green [online]

      http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/take-me-im-yours-neoliberalising-cultural-institution

      A principle contradiction: the content of the institution’s discourse can be utterly inverted in the institutional form.

      Jones, C. and Murtola, A.M. (2012) Entrepreneurship and expropriation. Organization, 19(5), pp.635-655.

      Entrepreneurship as individual activity which rests on appropriation of production in common.

      Angela McRobbie 2016. Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. John Wiley & Sons.

      Book. Forensic examination of the UK cultural economy.

      2. Diverse Economies

      Performativity

      ..& research

      Butler, J., 1993. Critically queer. GLQ: A journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1(1), pp.17-32.

      Performativity as a research strategy.

      Queer theory.

      Law, J. and Urry, J. (2004) Enacting the social. Economy and society, 33(3), pp.390-410.

      Sedgwick, E.K., (1997) Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, You're so paranoid, you probably think this introduction is about you. [online]

      https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10224/3628/2001-1233.pdf?sequence=1

      .. & art

      Brook, Donald. Experimental Art [online]

      http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/niea-experimentalartsconference/files/2011/08/DONALD-BROOK-Experimental-Art.pdf

      Art as ‘mimetic innovation’

      Wright, S. (2013). 1:1 Scale, Toward a lexicon of usership. Van Abbemuseum. [online]

      Art on a 1:1 scale

      .. & economy

      Çalışkan, K. and Callon, M., 2009. Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3), pp.369-398.

      Performing the economy / economy as performance.

      Çalışkan, K. and Callon, M., 2009. Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3), pp.369-398.

      Callon, M., 2006. What does it mean to say that economics is performative? [online]

      https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00091596/document

      Diverse economies

      JK Gibson-Graham and Ethan Miller (2015) ‘Economy as ecological livelihood’. Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, pp.7-16.

      Rethinking economic action as a space for ethical negotiation. In economic geography, JK Gibson-Graham challenges the idea of “the economy” as a unified, capitalist domain, to instead reframe it as diverse practices and interrelationships of sustenance and livelihood. This “diverse economies” approach is grounded in methodologies from feminist theory, which emphasise the need to recognise, theorise and engage with diversity. It constructs a different vision of "economy" where a host of informal, underground, non-market, collective and co-operative behaviours and activities are considered not only prevalent, but also primary and consequential.

      JK Gibson-Graham. (2008) 'Diverse economies: performative practices for other worlds'. Progress in Human Geography, 32(5), pp.613-632.

      Gibson-Graham, J.K., 1999. Queer(y)ing Capitalism in and out of the Classroom [1]. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(1), pp.80-85.

      Zanoni, P., Contu, A., Healy, S. and Mir, R.,(2017) Post-capitalistic politics in the making: The imaginary and praxis of alternative economies. In Organization, Vol. 24(5) Sage Publications pp 575-588

      Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2014. Rethinking the economy with thick description and weak theory. Current Anthropology, 55(S9), pp.S147-S153.

      3. Radmin

      Art and admin

       

      Andrea Phillips (2015) Invest in What

      howtoworktogether.org [online]

      Arts organisations' structures shape their policies. A history of artistic work proposing radical forms of cooperation

      vs potlitcally endorsed models of entrepreneurship.

      Caroline Woolard (2017) Ourgoods, BAMBAPHD [online]

      Art-based critique of art economies. Objects and contexts: together, objects

      and contexts create space for reflection, circulation, and social transformation.

      Angela McRobbie (2010) Rethinking Creative Economy as Radical Social Enterprise. Variant Magazine

      [online]

      How does teaching students critical understanding tally with also encouraging self-reliance and entrepreneurship?

      Proposes a renewal of radical social enterprise and co-operatives as self-organised collectives, to provide working structures for diverse occupations, including artists.

      Business studies

      Martin Parker Art as Work

      Critical management studies perspective on Art. Being an artist is supposed to expose the constraints of rules by bending / breaking conventions .. but art is work and involves rules, and work is creative and produces difference.

      Matthew Manos (2012) Business as a Medium in Hertz, Garnet. Critical Making. 1st ed. [United States]: Telharmonium p.27-32. [online]

      Business as a medium for critical enquiry and meaning-making, to change perceptions.

      A means of designing a future the entrepreneur would like to inhabit.

      Business as a non end-dated project; an ultra accessible medium; a platform for experiments.

      Martin Parker et al (2013) ‘Horizons of possibility’. In: Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V. and Land, C. eds., The Routledge companion to alternative organization. Routledge.

      Assimilation and recuperation (Boltanski & Chiapello) vs operating in the cracks.

      Essential laboratories for post/non/modified capitalist practices, ‘less-governed’ (Foucault).

      Critique is a limited strategy if the real goal is social transformation. (A positive critique which brings new things into the world).

      Does the scale of resistance have to match the scale of the problem?

      Calls for a radical insurgent entrepreneurship as form of social creativity. Changes in daily practice, invents futures.

      Entrepreneurship as a set of unstable, untested, potentially transformational practices of collective invention and reorientation.

      Craig Deegan (2016)

      Twenty five years of social and environmental accounting research within Critical Perspectives of Accounting: Hits, misses and ways forward. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 43, pp.65-87.

      Critical accounting.

      The transformational potential of accounting, vs producing incontravertible facts.

      Accounting as a means of identifying which action one must defend.

      Systems thinking

      Gregory Bateson (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind

      Form is the primary mode of communication, understood analogically. Significant meta-level change requires a change of context as well as content.

      Bruno Latour (2011) What’s the story? Organizing as a mode of existence. In: Passoth, JH., Peuker, B. and Schillmeier, M., Agency without Actors.

      Organisation staves off disorder. Being-in-action, organisations as scripts. Organisations as a flock of sparrows.

      Legal

      Janelle Orsi

      Bronwen Morgan

      Morgan, B. and Kush, D. (2015) 'Radical transactionalism: legal consciousness, diverse economies and the sharing economy'. Journal of Law and Society 556-587

      Bronwen Mogan and Declan Kuch Radical Transactionalism

      An expansive concept of enterprise as ‘any productive activity that might bring us sustenance’.

      The legal, financial and organisational structures of our current economy do not sit comfortable with small-scale sustainable economy initiatives.

       

    • reading session
    • research center
    • Boundaries do not sit still
    • Encoding and compression Monday Readings
      05 January 2018
      posted by: Femke Snelting
    • Monday Readings
    • a.pass, 3rd floor
    • 26 February 2018
    • Encoding and compression
      "Codecs perform encoding and decoding on a data stream or signal, usually in the interest of compressing video, speech, or music. [...] Software such as codecs poses several analytical problems. Firstly they are monstrously complicated. [...] Second, at a phenomenological level, they deeply influence the very texture, flow and materiality of sounds and images. [...] Third from the perspective of political economy, codecs structure contemporary media economies and culture in important ways. [...] Despite or perhaps because of their convoluted obscurity, codecs catalyze new relations between people, things, spaces and times in events and forms." Adrian Mckenzie, "Codecs" in: Matthew Fuller (eds), Software Studies, a lexicon (2008)
       
       
      The third Monday Reading starts with poking holes in different image and video-files. From there we will try put the vocabulary of encoding and compression (Codec, Container, Compression, Interpolation, Interlacing, Artifact, Bitstream, Sampling, Conversion, ...) together with some of the key terms in the work of the philosopher Gilbert Simondon (Allagmatics, Transduction, Analogy, Individuation, Cybernetics, ...). How do structures make operations appear, and vice versa?

      The Monday Readings are five one day sessions that bring habitual tool-situations in conversation with theoretical and political thinking. They are intimate collective situations on the articulation of technique and the performance of boundaries, reading across technical tools and theoretical devices. The Mondays attempt to develop further connections between artistic research and techno-political practices such as software-as-a-critique, active archives and techno-galactic software observation.

      Each session starts with an exploration of day-to-day tools and technologies: text processing, file compression, on-line communication, security or digital archiving. This tool-reading is followed by a discussion and collective reading of one or two related texts.

      Reading materials: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/apass.mondayreadings

      Schedule

      10:00-13:00: Reading tools
      14:00-17:00: Reading texts

      If possible, bring a laptop. Sessions take place in a.pass on the 3rd floor. Participation is free.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • Critical Administration Shaking down the entrepreneur
      30 December 2017
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Kate Rich
    • a.pass 4th floor
    • 30 January 2018
    • 03 February 2018
    • Critical Administration

      This workshop takes place in the devastated landscape of the Creative Economy. Dipping cautiously into realms of business and economics (in which artists are generally and probably wilfully unschooled), we will take a pigeon’s-eye view (scrappy, opportunistic, only occasionally vicious) of worn-out tropes such as entrepreneurialism, human capital and cultural enterprise.

      Weaving through dense territory from queer theory to open source organisation, radical shopkeeping and the role of economics in performing the economy, we will transit between theory and application to experiment on ourselves with new and wild shapes for enterprise and organisation, both at the level of the individual and at that of the collective. In the process we will also assess the case for administration as an art form; and business as a medium for artistic enquiry and meaning-making.

       

      Biography

      Kate Rich is a trade artist and feral economist, born in Australia and living in Bristol UK. She is co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an international agency producing an array of critical information products including economic and ecologic indices, event-triggered webcam networks and animal operated emergency broadcast devices. The Bureau's work has been exhibited in academic, scientific and museum contexts. Since 2003 she has run Feral Trade, a long-range economic experiment and underground freight network, utilising the spare carrying capacity of the art world for the transportation of other goods, specifically groceries. Kate is senior lecturer in DIY and activist media at the University of the West of England; volunteer finance manager at Bristol's artist-run Cube Microplex; system administrator for the Irational.org art-server collective; and a founding member of the European Sail Cargo Alliance. Her ongoing preoccupation is to move deeper into the infrastructure of trade, administration, organisation and economy in the cultural realm. To this end she is currently establishing a Feral MBA for artists, positioned somewhere between the academy and the wild.

    • 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)

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • pattern language for conditioning practices weekly meetings
      19 December 2017
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 19 January 2018
    • 23 March 2018
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • pattern language for conditioning practices

      PATTERNS
      The block MAKING/CONDITIONS is made of patterns. Here is the first pattern of an unfolding language of patterns that shall be created during the next three months.  In a weekly meeting we will look at the emergence of common patterns in or between our investigations of possible conditions for our researches.

      A pattern is a description of a specific practice, thought or approach that can help to develop a shared understanding of a certain field of knowledge. In this case the field of institutional critique and performance as an economic, sozial and artistic category. It discusses the relationship between an artistic research practice and its supporting conditional structures – the institutional in its broadest sense.

      Inspired by the Pattern Theory of Christopher Alexander we will develop a language that shall emerge from practicing our individual researches be shareable with a larger audience.

      According to Alexander, patterns are building blocks for transformation and follow an evolutionary structure: a pattern is repeatable, connective to other patterns and changes according to the needs of a situation.

      Patterns can take shape in any material or immaterial form, but should, if possible, be accompanied by a descriptive. The patterns will be gathered in a library and should be presented in a way that anyone can interpret and appropriate them in a actual situation.

       

      LANGUAGE
      Building a pattern language means to create a common context of a specific set of patterns. The singular patterns can be composed to syntax-like structures. Like in a spoken language, design patterns follow certain grammatical structures and can be combined in different orders  – but most likely not in any orders. The Language we create will evolve out of the context of our artistic research practices and will have to comply to it in its very specific way.


      LIBRARY
      The patterns shall be assembled and discussed in a library. This library shall be hosted in a shelter that shall be build in the big space of a.pass during Plenum I. It shall act as a center of the pattern language practice. The library of patterns shall be a living archive of practical thought, methods, acts, performances, approaches etc.
      Users of the library can experiment with the growing variety of patterns, can patch them together to sentences that make sense to their situation, can alter and amend patterns and add new ones. This is how the language fill find its form.

       

      CONDITIONING
      Every artistic practice is contained in a context and relates at the same time to a multitude of contexts. Yet, it is an intrinsic character of artistic practice to act beyond boundaries and in the grey-zones between contexts. For that the arts often needs to think and go beyond their conditions and rather start creating and intervening their own. This however might be difficult in situations where the overall structure is too big to leave. This might or might not be the case if we think of todays capitalist economy.

      However it seems that institutional critique enters a new phase where systems are changed not only from within, but by experimentally exploiting their structures. Authors like Gerhard Raunig talk in this context of new instituting practices. Through the construction of a pattern language we explore these practices and try to understand what they could mean in relation to our own researches.

    • postgraduate program
    • block 2018/I
    • Making / Conditions
    • Block 18/I: making / conditions curated by Nicolas Galeazzi
      19 December 2017
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 08 January 2018
    • 01 April 2018
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Block 18/I: making / conditions

       ''Can artistic practices still play a critical role in a society where the difference between art and economy have become blurred and where artists and cultural workers have become a necessary part of capitalist production.''
      Chantal Mouffe 

       

      What is the position of the arts in a completely economized society? What kind of answers do we find towards the increasing entrepreneurial demands? How to keep a discourse about values apart from finances? How to create conditions and institutions that allow us to continue asking these questions with view to a greater societal picture?

      This block combines institutional critique with a fundamental unravling of Performance in its various interpretations in economy, administration, performing art, and sociology. To put performance as a term into the centre between art and economy, is pointing at the fundamental misunderstandings and simultaneous interdependence between these two fields.

      Performance stands for productivity and efficiency as much as for doing, being present, representation, and the transformative power of speech. In between the different interpretations one question appeares very clearly: What are we doing? Beyond the Leninist version of this proverb (What is to be done?), this question not only points to a future productivity (What are we creating?) or a struggle against/for the institution (Under what conditions are we doing and making?). It points to the creation of the framework in which this question can be posed with regard to the basic values of life (How do we live?). In this way all the different understandings of performance aim at transformation or even change.

      In the last decades economy became more and more the overarching concept that incorporates all aspects of life and channels all living efforts. The Arts contributed to this development in multiple ways and acted - consciously or not - as a role model in the process of this economization in many ways.

      For a big majority of the population the economization and finanzialisation of their life means to loose access to common resources and with that the control over the self-creation of their living conditions. At the same time the neoliberal doctrine turned the full responsibility for these conditions onto the individual and diminishes solidarity and democratic processes.

      Being critical and self-critical of this development, the arts must take the performative power inherent in its role model serious and needs to devise new instruments for concrete change and new institutional formats to respond to this development in order to keep the creation of societally viable living and working conditions in their hands.

      Searching for the relationship between the artistic research practice and the creation of its own legal, economic, administrative condition, we try to detect common working patterns that enable us to create our own conditions. Using the concept of Pattern Language developed by Christopher Alexander in late 1970’s we try to come up with practical building blocks to think a radical artistic research practice within, and in response to, the contemporary economic and political constraints.

       

       
    • 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.

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • Ten New Practices of the Great Transition 18 September 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Michael Bauwens / KaaiTheater
    • a.pass / KaaiTheater
    • 14 November 2016
    • 14 November 2016
    • Ten New Practices of the Great Transition

      Kaaitheater kindly invites us to participate in a one day Workshop with of the most experienced activist, philosopher and commons advisor in Belgium. Michale Bauwens is working on many levels for practicable solutions for structuring societies as commons. He is working as much with gras root  movements as he advises e.g. Ecuador in reorganizing parts of their state structure as a commons. 

      Which new social structure are we evolving towards? Michel Bauwens tries to work this out by looking at contemporary practices that address the challenges of the future in the most direct way. He identifies an exponential growth of civil initiatives that experiment both locally and globally with new models and solutions. Behind the scenes, an entirely new set of values is being built up, with discoveries such as new types of contributory accounting to manage common property, open logistics systems for the circular economy, and so on. Michel Bauwens and the network of researchers into the emerging commons-based economy  present a summary of 10 years of research.

      For more information see KaaiTheater.


       

      Biography

      • Michel Bauwens is a Belgian cyber philosopher and founder of the P2P Foundation, which carries out research into peer-to-peer-networks and practices. In 2013, together with Jean Lievens, he published the book De Wereld Redden, met peer-to-peer naar een post-kapitalistische samenleving (‘Saving the World: towards a post-capitalist society with peer to peer’).

    • common thing - 29

      15 september 2016

      This resource is Text. This Text was inspired/produced by my love life during the summer of 2016.
      It is not all and every piece of text that originated because of love this summer, it's a first selection.
      More might be added during the course of the block, or not. I can be asked for clarification about the Text;
      But I'm not obliged to answer. The Text as they are here, can be used in any way you see fit.
      There are no digital versions available. Exit strategies for transformed (parts of) Text must be talked through with me.

       


      16 September 2016: Added set cards from the Declaration tool: 
      What kind of tradition do we need today? / What kind of ceremony do we need today? / what kind f representation of togetherness do we need today? / What kind of common intimacy do we need today?
      Re-thinking the made dominated institution / economy as a masculine practice
      Love as institutional practice?
      Emotional attachment / belonging, possessing, owning, appropriating, claiming, responding, adding, developing, ...


       

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      common thing - 9

       

      common thing - 3

       

    • postgraduate program
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • BLOCK 2016/III: COMMONS 12 September 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • 05 September 2016
    • 04 December 2016
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • BLOCK 2016/III: COMMONS

      This block investigates commons economies in the context of the arts.

      We work together, every now and then, some more than others.  Even if the neoliberal ideology continues to run political and economic structures according to the principle of competition and privatization, there exists a wider acknowledgement that cooperation promises more success than competition. But what surplus - other than the sum of the parts - is created while working together? What is the promise of cooperation actually about? What is the philosophy and politics behind it? How does it position the individual towards the social, and what is the concept of ‘success’ that we would cooperate for? Finally, how does radical cooperation affect the idea of ourselves and of the social bodies we are part of?

      The structure of the commons gives a perfect framework to experiment and reflect upon the basic notions of individuality, sustainability and forms of social organization.

      Commons are cultural or natural resources, that are held in common responsibility, not in privatized  ownership. The commons stays in contrast to the market economy.  The market distributes and privatizes goods onto different stakeholders who then come into trade with each other. The commons understands goods not as owned by someone but cares for them in shared responsibility. Commons structures can be found in all societies and are applied in many debates over forests and waters, knowledge, or outer space. In the wake of the 2008 economic crisis(es) the commons is widely discussed again as a possible economic and political alternative to the capitalist system.

      But interpretations of the commons are many, and bellow the surface of the debate, we discover the diverging ideas of what Marx described as the ‚social animal’.

      The block is an experimental setup to expand the notion of economy in general and the commons in specific, and appropriate it as an artistic practice. We will model our own specific commons economy based on a shared responsibility for our individual researches.

      Declaring artistic practices as common goods and searching for a form of organizing artistic processes, is questioning the position of the individual, of resources and of the social. We will investigate the common pool of our researches and see how this reflects back on our individual trajectories.

       
    • 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

       

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • ECONOMY, AN INTRODUCTION 23 August 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Kate Rich
    • 13 September 2016
    • 13 September 2016
    • ECONOMY, AN INTRODUCTION

      A one-day sortie into the darker macro arts of Economics, a field in which artists are regularly and perhaps wilfully unschooled. This session will draw on a wild expanse of economic theory, from mainstream to outlier, to sketch out the some of the larger context of the contemporary Economy, against which the resistent coordinates of the Commons (as collective endeavour) and the Artist (as either conscript or deserter) might be revealed. This exploration makes no pretense of discovering reality, but instead to draw out some of the fundamental truths which economists hold to be self evident.


       

       

      Biography:

      Kate Rich is a trade artist and feral economist, born in Australia and living in Bristol UK. She is co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an international agency producing an array of critical information products. Since 2003 she has run Feral Trade, a long-range economic experiment and underground freight network, utilising the spare carrying capacity of the art world for the transportation of other goods, specifically groceries. Her work has been represented in the Whitney Biennial, Tate Modern, New York MoMA, Whitechapel Gallery and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Kate is senior lecturer in DIY and activist media at the University of Western England, volunteer finance manager at Bristol's artist-run Cube Microplex, system administrator for the Irational.org art-server collective, and a founding member of the European Sail Cargo Alliance. Her ongoing preoccupation is to move deeper into the infrastructure of trade, administration, organisation and economy in the cultural realm.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • Friday Open Space 23 August 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass
    • 16 September 2016
    • 25 November 2016
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Friday Open Space

      Every Friday of this block – from 16th September till the Common Conference – we will come together for a concentrated commoning session. In order to concretely practice and practically inquire the general question of the block – what is created in common? – we try to establish an open space practice that allows pursuing the individual research interests while focussing at the same time on interrelations amongst these researches and the common interests. Training the simultaneity and interdependency of individual and common interests not only puts our commons economy at work but also let’s us investigate the personal and collective effects of structural shifts.

      We will work with the elements provided and commonized during the opening week workshop.

      What is created while working together? With this basic question in mind, we will establish our own specific common working economy. The critical practice of this economy will be our contribution to the Common Conference at the end of the block.

       
      The Fridays Open Space follow a strict protocol: preparing, diving, reflecting, adjusting.

      At 10am we gather for a preparatory hour including a body warm-up, check up of the material and the situation, and a short recap of the previous Friday’s session. Contributions for this preparation can be proposed by everyone taking part.

      At 11am we dive into the open. Everything is in common responsibility and has to be taken care of to be activated, nourished, cultivated, played with, questioned, put in context, etc.

      Throughout these sessions, the attention lies – similar to improvisation – on the contextual relationality of the individual trajectories towards the commons.

      At 1pm we eat soup and reflect upon our experience in the open session. Based on this reflection we commonly decide on adjustments as a starting point for the next Friday Open Space.

      The sessions will end around 3pm.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/III
    • Commons
    • Opening week 2016/III workshop: Gathering things 23 August 2016
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Nicolas Galeazzi
    • a.pass
    • 05 September 2016
    • 14 September 2016
    • case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Opening week 2016/III workshop: Gathering things

      This commoning workshop radicalizes the usual focus of the opening week: we share our researches! Sharing this time, is not only a means to update each other about the actual state of our projects, but literally aims to make them a common issue.

      Our individual researches are the basic material to set to work during a block. 'Working’ is a specific economy of related energies, knowledge, motivation, intend, emotions, of objects and humans, documents and processes.

      The opening workshop forms the basis of a block-specific economy that will be developed further in the Fridays Open Session.

      You are invited to carefully select parts of your individual research that will then be declared as common good for the duration of the block. The collection of these parts is the base of our commons. The collection will be under constant transformation and observation, and shall be our indicator of how our researches develop under the influence of the care by ‘everyone‘.

      We will present our individual researches synthesized through three specific filters :

      •     One element from your research that you define as a resource for yourself and others.
            Resources are things that transform when we use them!
      •     One element that you declare as a tool.
            Tools are things that we use in order to transform other things.
      •     One element that describes a ‘gap’ in your research.
            Gaps are not-things: Gaps are consciously or unconsciously ignored or desired elements within our researches.


      Beside the opening week workshop, we will take time to discuss the concept and the practicalities of a.pass in general.

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Excursions
    • Uninvited Research
    • EXCURSION TO CEN 30 June 2016
      posted by: Vladimir Miller
    • Sina Seifee
    • apass
    • 12 July 2016
    • 12 July 2016
    • EXCURSION TO CEN
      (in the direction of my research; hastily opening the ontological envelope that saves a heart full of "list of specifications"...)
      the visit will be to the 'European Committee for Standardization' (CEN, French: Comité Européen de Normalisation), one of the EU fostered nonprofit public institutions of the cutting-edge development regarding ambitious notion of 'data', 'systematic knowledge', and 'specifications'. the excursion will be oriented towards a meeting between the participants of APASS and the representatives of CEN; and encourages a run between the ontological demands of international economy and contemporary art, their disastrous split, and where their epistemological formations meet and intersect.
       
      KEYWORDS: cosmology, experimentation, existence, specification, future, knowledge, irrationality, permanence and substance; technological acts (of naming); suspicious partnership of "advanced democracies" and "high technology" (what allows their mutuality?); standard-testing (which sectors of existence it traverses?); the very little difference between specification and "the real thing"; the origin of the demand for rigorous specification; migration of questions in or out of the areas of instrumental fitnessa path of becoming (on the grid of technological dominion); 
    • INTRO:

      Elle sings:

      i am free to give

      what anyway isn’t mine

      the energy i suck from the earth

      and breathe back into the other,

      i am free to embody the powers of this city

      oscillating with ideas

      that enter my bloodstream and exit my body

      amplified, ordered, and displaced,

      i am free to vibrate with the desire of the other

      that lets me discover my soul, my knowledge and my being

      i am free to let go of fear of losing

      what anyway wasn’t mine:

      the identities i share with so many others

      the security blankets of opinion, belief and good taste.

      i am free not to be bound

      by my dependence on respect, affirmation and flattery

      i am free to be what i anyway always was:

      a wave, a thought, a vessel or a tree.

       

      Elke (a.pass researcher):

      Elle, with the new project ‘Mobile MNSTRY’ you again tackle some of the issues you have been dealing with in your extended project Bureau d’Espoir already for some years: the recuperation and embrace of practices and terms that have been categorized, marginalized and recuperated by capital strategies.

      For example: you worked on the mobilization of the concept of ‘anorexia’ in the Hunger and Anorexic practices as tools for rethinking our relation to the consumption of food, and our own place in the ‘food chain’ of capitalism. You worked in ‘Battery’ on the embrace of circumstances that are considered detrimental to the ‘healthy’ development of the individual: 21 days of imprisonment, hunger and lack of private space as a spiritual-aesthetic machine for the production of hope and change.

      Now you propose the Mobile Monastery: a practice that is based on rethinking the monastic rule, the disciplining and deep experience of the everyday, introducing ‘poverty’ and social service (karma yoga) into the practice. Your proposals all seem to verge on the extreme, uncomfortable, and frankly, possibly moralistic. How do you plan to make this collective practice seem inviting to collaborators.

       

      Elle:

      Although it is often perceived as such, my practice is not one of asceticism. It is rather a practice of finding pleasure, or even liberation, in reducing the overall demand for entertainment and ‘keeping busy’ that order our daily realities. If I introduce the ‘poverty’ demand to the temporary monks in the MNSTRY, this is not so much an act of moralistic self-deprivation, as it is an invitation for an active and vitalizing rethinking of our relationship and dependence on money: on subsidies, a steady income, a minimum requirement of comforts and ‘good circumstances’ to work and produce in.

      A lot of our thinking as artists and citizens is based on a conscious or unconscious fear to fall out of the grid of organized society, to become invisible to the powers that matter. What the Mobile MNSTRY proposes is to do exactly that. To live without everything we think we need to be able to ‘live’, work, enjoy life, stay connected. By giving up on these things, we are able to install other connections to the city, the environment, our practice and other people. By taking away the markers of our social position (identity card, money, private space), we enter into another reality. A reality marked by a collective discipline, a shared purpose, an outward orientation. Together we rethink what it means to be alive: what kind of practices can keep us not only alive, but also charged, and aware of each other and the outside world.

      The Mobile MNSTRY (which you can read as Monastery, but also as Ministry, or Monster-y), is an exercise in pragmatic ritualism: it opens up a space and time to reorganize our attachments and preconceptions to capital values. To make space for other ways to mobilize time, space and artistic practice, away from the confinement of the studio, the artistic workspace. To test our knowledges on another playground of society: to see what it is we can do with what we think we believe in.

      Elke:

      You could say that you try to rethink the economies of desire that rule our everyday lives. Making use of very diverse practices borrowed from spiritual body work, inventive object design, philosophical reconceptualization and artistic practice experience. But at the same time this ‘economic liberation’ is presented as quite a disciplining practice: proposing collective day rhythms, the denial of private space, limited resources to work with. In that sense, your practices might also seem old-fashioned, frugal, and out of tune with the individual freedom of the artist/collaborator/citizen to fill in their lives in a flexible, creative and singular way.

      Your collective practice environments seem to stand in stark contrast to the contemporary ideology of flexibility, choice, individual creativity. In the arts field, in particular, any sense of pre-set rules or limitations to the practice are often labeled as ‘power games’ or even as ‘fascist’, a word that seems to fit any kind of disciplined practice these days.

      Elle:

      Yes, but this term has also been hollowed out by its frequent, uncritical use. Funnily enough, it lost its meaning exactly through the banalization of the term in so-called critical discursive environments that, by seeing fascism everywhere, actually disempowered the term completely. If fascism is everywhere, then actually it becomes life itself. If fascism is but a strategic stab in an intellectual debate to disarm the opposition, there is no serious consideration for the all-too-real context in which fascism took form as a societal transformational power. Such a ‘metaphorization’ of the term, which makes is applicable to all circumstances in which a play of hierarchical oppositions of power are at stake, is nearsighted, and cynical.

      Elke:

      Let’s say that by ‘fascism’ I mean a specific coming together of Beauty, Order and the practice of what I would call the Physical Sublime, that is often created by suffering, or disciplined bodies. Or maybe rather, the dual mechanical and massively reproduced political aesthetic organization that bases itself on Beauty and Order, and produces the violence of exclusion and exhaustion in its wake. Off course this term can not be interpreted separate from its historical contexts, and the often violent mass effects it produced. But whole generations of leftist critical thinkers have grown up in the shadow of the stormy historical heritage of the 20th Century, and their historical awareness of the traps of combined ideology, idealism and organization have made them hyper-sensitive to the telltale signs of power abuse or disbalance, but also of the uncritical embrace of Beauty as a bourgeois pacifier of unrest, revolt or social struggle.

      In the wake of the 20th century, modernisms, fascist and communist critical strategies, a lot of aesthetic strategies have become suspect. Loaded with historical weight: be it romantic escapism, political incorrectness, social exclusion, uncritical acceptance of the bourgeois order, the crash and recuperation of the ideals of the 1960’s, and what more. What has been constructed however, out of the rubble of broken ideals, is a discourse police that has made a significant part of the aesthetic vocabulary off-limits, and brandished as naïve at best, hypocritical or ‘f...t’ in the worst cases.

      My question is now if maybe it is not a time to dive back into that long-forgotten dictionary of terms and see if it is not high time to rescue some of them, reactivate their power, and make them speak out another reality, another world view, than the ones they have been associated with. It is my impression that we have gone through an every-expanding exclusion of possible terms to think our realities, a progressive retreat into the trenches of a politically correct aesthetic-political discourse that is now keeping us hostage to ideas that are no longer capable of creating worlds that we actually would wholeheartedly consider to live in. What critical discourse, or at least, the particular critical discourse I’m addressing now has come to establish (which, to be clear, was not always the case) is a state of feeling constantly under siege, beleaguered and in mortal danger of recuperation of any of our bright ideas by the corporations that be.

      Instead of this kind of Repressive Criticality, or the Discourse Police, I would like to see a new wave of criticism come to be that is mainly creative: a creativity produced through a clarity of practiced conceptualization and experienced practice, that would create realities in its wake. A criticality that would not be afraid of being labeled as naïve, old-fashioned or uncritical. Since, frankly, the Discourse Police has produced a toxic reactionary environment for practicing art and politics, that is blind for the potential of other ways of doing, speaking and creating the worlds we live in.

      Elle:

      Aho. (smiles)

      It is time to reconceptualize our concepts. Not by fleeing from them in horror, but by accepting them in all their confusing associations, radical unsuitedness, and therefore irritating potential. Beauty for me is not about Order, but about Orgasm. Beauty appears at the confluence of the experience of the interior and exterior, the experience of the self expanding into that what seems separate to it. Unlike the fearful trepidation in front of the Sublime, this beauty is nothing if not powerful, energizing, and emancipatory. To know you are connected, you are part of the whole, dissolves the fear of exclusion. Orgasmic Beauty, in that sense, is a tool to overcome alienation THROUGH alienation, a kind of homeopathic medicine. It is overcoming the doctrine of individuality that has captured and narrowed our desires to the handkerchief-size of a self-realization wellness project. I think we can do more with the energy of our desires than this empty craving for self-fulfillment.

      I was just reading this rather interesting paragraph about sexuality, which might clarify what I mean with this orgasmic quality:

      ‘Sex, for its part, likes nothing so much as mixtures. Mixtures of skins, salivas, humors, organs, words to the point of delirium, images, as well; sex makes do with anything, can put everything to use. (...) Sex is not the body. It is even the forgetting of the body. It is what makes us, in jouissance, feel desire, or sadness, excitement, fear, longing - everything about the body that is not ‘the body’, that is, flesh. When the body becomes world, landscape, moor, sand, language, collage, collapse, memory, the entire body is convoked as other than flesh. Other indeed, for it is a matter of otherness, for philosophy as well as for sex. Their history is the same, like two sides of a single coin stamped with the seal of that recognition.’

      Just like Criticality, indeed can be rethought as Creative Clarity, a courageous step into the unknown potential of concepts that are constantly redefined and tested through practice. And this goes for all terms that have been derided, labeled as unfashionable, and banned out of our life practices. ...

      There is a big confusion in my practices indeed, especially around notions of self-organization, freedom and discipline. Off course this is due to the superposition of two different practice ‘myths’: the one of artistic research and creation, and the one of transformational ‘spiritual’ body practices which i started to use as ammunition, as weapons in my struggle to overcome the inertia that was keeping a lot of artists hostage in regard to the workings of contemporary capitalism: they felt their tools, their creativity, their imaginative powers had been largely recuperated by marketing, advertising, and the overall economy of affects that produces desires through the production of ever-more empty containers for the construction of ever-more ‘individualized’ selves. The artist-individual therefore has become wary of his/her ‘individual’ power, since individuality in itself has become suspect as a commercial construction of Capital. And rightfully so.

      What I try to do in my practices is to liberate, to unveil, to come to a nude understanding again of what is the non-produced power of the self. And this can, paradoxically, only be done through the stripping away of the presumed ‘personal’, or ‘hyper-individual’ layers of comportment, habits, and convictions. Temporarily! To make other potentials visible. And as such, to rephrase freedom not as a freedom from, but a freedom FOR. FOR a collective project, for a shared dream, for a collectively supported change.

      BUT, and this is very important to understand: this change is not a collective ideology as the ones that supported the communes and collective of the 1960’s and 1970’s. We do NOT have to agree on the world-supporting myths of political affiliation, religious normativization or economic regularization. At least not in Bureau d’Espoir. We only temporarily agree on a scored practice of time and action. And on linking this practice to an outside world. In this sense the Mobile MNSTRY is not built on stable grounds of conviction. While starting out with a proposed score, throughout the project, this score is bit-by-bit transformed by the collaborators, based on their individual myths and dreams, which we then begin to share through our bodies, and ending up with a monastic score that is probably far detached from the original proposal.

      Elke:

      Do you consider Bureau d’Espoir to be an activist cell? Do you see yourselves as producing instruments, weapons to fight affect capitalization. Are you a Warrior of Desire?

      Elle:

      Why do you ask me things you already know the answer to? Why do you need me as an excuse to say what you can not accept yourself saying? Why is Elle so much alluring, sexy and attractive as figure of flight for you? Why do you distrust your own desire so much you can not allow it to carry your name?

      Elke:

      Last night I spoke my name and there was no one there. The sound echoed in the long corridors but I could feel the house was uninhabited.

      Elle:

      Don’t get mystical on me. Don’t pose fake questions. Don’t play the ignorant. Practice what you know.

      Elke:

      (silent)

      Elle

      (drunk):

      to the gathering of all people that can toast to the liberty that appears out of nowhere.

      to the liberation that doesn’t need anything

      that doesn’t need to be acquired

      but that just appears in the middle of a conversation

      a touch

      a cup of coffee.

      to the enchantment of getting lost in the situation and finding

      there is no place like this place.

      to the flight of folly that connects you to my projections

      to the me i can only be through you

      to the you that is here without expectations

      to the we that will never be formed

      to the air that keeps us from being glued together

      as one big blob sharing everyone’s smells, headaches and anxieties

      to the air that allows me to keep my distance

      to the floor that supports my position

      to the gravity that keeps me down to earth

      to the sky that still hasn’t fallen on my head

      and keeps on not doing so day after day

      to the microbes that keep on digesting my food

      to the hairs on my arms that allow me to feel the wind moving on my skin

      to the hairs everywhere on my body for reminding me i’m an animal

      a rabbit, a deer or a worm. well, maybe not a worm.

      to your unhappiness that reminds me of my own good luck

      to your ravings that tell me i should slow down

      to your madness that tells me i haven’t seen nothing yet

      to the streets that keep cars from crashing into houses, or people, or trees

      to houses that keep people from crushing into each other

      to walls for protecting our privacy

      to carpets for muffling our sounds

      to tables for keeping things from falling on the ground and messing other things up

      and creating chaos

      to clothes for giving me something to imagine

      to no clothes for giving me something to imagine

      to touch for allowing me to live in my imagination … … ...

       

      24 HOURS LATER

      Elke:

      The Mobile MNSTRY is part of a bigger social-artistic neighborhood project, called Re-Commerce, in the commune of Forest. In what way do you consider the MNSTRY to fulfill a social engagement?

       

      Elle:

      The Mobile MNSTRY (Monastery, Ministery, Monster-y) is a collective location project, organised in and around the previous Abbeye of Forest. The MNSTRY will install a temporary (monastic) community that lives and works within a limited area, following a shared time score and accepting the rule of poverty for the duration of the workshop.

      During this time all activities of the MNSTRY will be organised within the public contexts of Forest, and developed as an open invitation to the neighbourhood and passers-by. During the workshop the time score of the MNSTRY will bit by bit start to change: the original ‘monastic’ score will be taken over by the members of the community, who will start to decide on what there is to be done, what we will spend our shared time on, and what is it that is needed today, here, and for whom.

      The workshop is part of the larger project Cité d’Espoir (part of the REcommerce social-artistic initiative, organised by Bains Connective) which develops a constant practice for about six weeks (starting half October) with intense public moments during the weekends. The Mobile MNSTRY starts out with one member and through a call on the internet, the development of the workshop but also through local advertising the community starts to grow.

      The ‘cité’ of the Abbaye will be renamed ‘Cité d’Espoir’ and will house the artists and their guests, supporting their ‘monastic’ practices. Cité d’Espoir will develop into a social meeting place, with a silent space to hang out, daily soup dinners, a library and regular ritual and other activities. The temporary monks start to develop their practices on the basis of poverty, social service and artistic transformation. Neighbours and interested people can pass by to have a personal ritual made for them, but we also want to involve groups and youngsters to develop group public rituals with us, based on their needs and visions. For example, we develop mourning rituals for pets or family members, light rituals for those who can not stand the cold anymore, love rituals for the lonely, political change rituals for the disengaged, etcetera.

      We also give short-term ritual training workshops: how to develop your own rituals, how to gather material for your rituals, based on the Psychomagic methodology of Jodorowsky, or the artistic methodologies of the temporary monks. The silent café in the Cité d’Espoir offers free tea and something, and would become the starting point for all projects. The monks would sleep on the premises and be available most of the time for a talk or a ritual ‘guidance’. On Sundays there is also a kind of ‘service’, which is not religious but only aims at developing an alternative ‘common’ event for the neighbourhood in the margins of the market.

    • I would like to start with a recapitulation of the substantive points made last Tuesday. The purpose of these lectures is to follow the implications of Amerindian "perspectivism": the conception according to which the universe is inhabited by different sorts of persons, human and non-human, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view. This conception was shown to be associated to some others, namely:

      (1) The original common condition of both humans and animals is not animality, but rather humanity;

      (2) Many animals species, as well as other types of "non-human" beings, have a spiritual component which qualifies them as "people"; furthermore, these beings see themselves as humans in appearance and in culture, while seeing humans as animals or as spirits;

      (3) The visible body of animals is an appearance that hides this anthropomorphic invisible "essence," and that can be put on and taken off as a dress or garment;

      (4) Interspecific metamorphosis is a fact of "nature" - not only it was the standard etiological process in myth, but it is still very much possible in present-day life (being either desirable or undesirable, inevitable or evitable, according to the circumstances);

      (5) Lastly, the notion of animality as a unified domain, globally opposed to that of humanity, seems to be absent from Amerindian cosmologies.

      Let us go back to the conception that animals and other ostensibly non-human beings are people.

       

      Animism, or the projection thesis

      You will have probably noticed that my "perspectivism" is reminiscent of the notion of "animism" recently recuperated by Philippe Descola (1992, 1996) to designate a way of articulating the natural and the social worlds that would be a symmetrical inversion of totemism.[37] Stating that all conceptualisations of non-humans are always "predicated by reference to the human domain" (a somewhat vague phrasing, it should be said), Descola distinguishes three modes of "objectifying nature":

      (1) Totemism, where the differences between natural species are used as a model for social distinctions, that is, where the relationship between nature and culture is metaphorical in character and marked by discontinuity (both within and between series);

      (2) Animism, where the "elementary categories structuring social life" organize the relations between humans and natural species, thus defining a social continuity between nature and culture, founded on the attribution of human dispositions and social characteristics to "natural beings";

      (3) Naturalism, typical of Western cosmologies, which supposes an ontological duality between nature, the domain of necessity, and culture, the domain of spontaneity, areas separated by metonymic discontinuity.

      The "animic mode" is characteristic of societies in which animals are the "strategic focus of the objectification of nature and of its socialisation," as is the case amongst indigenous peoples of America. It would reign supreme over those social morphologies lacking in elaborate internal segmentations; but it can also be found coexisting or combined with totemism, wherein such segmentations exist, the Bororo and their aroe/bope duality being such a case.

      Descola's theory of animism is yet another manifestation of a widespread dissatisfaction with the unilateral emphasis on metaphor, totemism, and classificatory logic which characterises the Levi-Straussian concept of the savage mind. This dissatisfaction has launched many efforts to explore the dark side of the structuralist moon, rescuing the radical theoretical meaning of concepts such as participation and animism, which have been repressed by Levi-Straussian intellectualism.[38] Nonetheless, it is clear that many of Descola's points are already present in Levi-Strauss. Thus, what he means by "elementary categories structuring social life" - those which organise the relations between humans and natural species in "animic" cosmologies - is basically (in the Amazonian cases he discusses) kinship categories, and more specifically the categories of consanguinity and affinity. In La pensee sauvage one finds a remark most germane to this idea:

      Marriage exchanges can furnish a model directly applicable to the mediation between nature and culture among peoples where totemic classifications and functional specializations, if present at all, have only a limited yield. (Levi-Strauss 1962b: 170)

      This is a pithy prefiguration of what many ethnographers (Descola and myself included) came to say about the role of affinity as a cosmological operator in Amazonia . Besides, in suggesting the complementary distribution of this model of exchange between nature and culture and totemic structures, Levi-Strauss seems to be aiming at something quite similar to Descola's animic model and its contrast with totemism. To take another example: Descola mentioned the Bororo as an example of coexistence of animic and totemic modes. He might also have cited the case of the Ojibwa, where the coexistence of the systems of totem and manido (evoked in Le totemisme aujourd'hui) served as a matrix for the general opposition between totemism and sacrifice (developed in La pensee sauvage) and can be directly interpreted within the framework of a distinction between totemism and animism.

      I would like to concentrate the discussion on the contrast between animism and naturalism, for I think it is a good starting point for understanding the distinctive stance of Amerindian perspectivism. I will approach this contrast, however, from a different angle than the original one. Descola's definition of "totemism" also deserves some comments, which I shall present for your consideration after contrasting animism and naturalism.

      Animism could be defined as an ontology which postulates the social character of relations between humans and non-humans: the space between nature and society is itself social. Naturalism is founded on the inverted axiom: relations between society and nature are themselves natural. Indeed, if in the animic mode the distinction "nature/culture" is internal to the social world, humans and animals being immersed in the same socio-cosmic medium (and in this sense, "nature" is a part of an encompassing sociality), then in naturalist ontology, the distinction "nature/culture" is internal to nature (and in this sense, human society is one natural phenomenon amongst others). Animism has "society" as the unmarked pole, naturalism has "nature": these poles function, respectively and contrastingly, as the universal dimension of each mode. Thus animism and naturalism are hierarchical and metonymical structures.

      Let me observe that this phrasing of the contrast between animism and naturalism is not only reminiscent of, or analogous to, the famous gift/commodity one: I take it to be the same contrast, expressed in more general, non-economic terms.[39] This relates to my earlier distinction between production-creation (naturalism) and exchange-transformation (animism).

      In our naturalist ontology, the nature/society interface is natural: humans are organisms like the rest, body-objects in "ecological" interaction with other bodies and forces, all of them ruled by the necessary laws of biology and physics; "productive forces" harness, and thereby express, natural forces. Social relations, that is, contractual or instituted relations between subjects, can only exist internal to human society (there is no such thing as "relations of production" linking humans to animals or plants, let alone political relations). But how alien to nature - this would be the problem of naturalism - are these social relations? Given the universality of nature, the status of the human and social world is unstable, and as the history of Western thought shows, it perpetually oscillates between a naturalistic monism ("sociobiology" and "evolutionary psychology" being some of its current avatars) and an ontological dualism of nature/culture ("culturalism" and "symbolic anthropology" being some of its recent expressions).

      The assertion of this latter dualism, for all that, only reinforces the final referential character of the notion of nature, by revealing itself to be the direct descendant of the theological opposition between nature and super-nature. Culture is the modern name of spirit - let us recall the distinction between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften - or at the least it is the name of the compromise between nature and grace. Of animism, we would be tempted to say that the instability is located in the opposite pole: there the problem is how to deal with the mixture of humanity and animality constituting animals, and not, as is the case amongst ourselves, the combination of culture and nature which characterise humans; the problem is to differentiate a "nature" out of the universal sociality.

      Let us return to Descola's tripartite typology.[40] Given the nature/culture polarity, Descola distinguishes three "modes of identification" (these being our familiar triad of totemism, animism and naturalism), then three "modes of relation" (predation, reciprocity, protection), then an indefinite number of "modes of categorization" (left nameless and undetermined); the combinatorial possibilities within and across the three modes are not totally free. Now, I believe that the absence of any specification of the "modes of categorization" is more than a temporary vacancy (but I can always be surprised, of course); it points to a conceptual problem related to the definition of "totemism" used by Descola.

      The typology seems to suggest, correctly I think, that the pre-eminence of the nature/culture opposition in our anthropological tradition derives from the joint privilege of the totemic and naturalist modes, both characterized by dichotomy and discontinuity (the first supposedly typical of "savage thought," the second of "domesticated thought"). Descola's emphasis on the logical distinctiveness of the animic mode - a mode he considers to be far more widespread than totemism - is intended to correct this distortion; it also destabilizes the totemism/naturalism divide and the nature/culture dualism common to both modes.

      Descola appears to adopt an institutional reading of totemism, whilst Levi-Strauss had taken it as a mere example of the global style of the savage mind; the cognitive form exemplified by totemism is considered by Levi-Strauss as much more important than the contingent conceptual and institutional contents to which it is applied. We are accordingly led to infer that animism is also conceived by Descola in an institutionalist key, and that it would be then possible to reabsorb it in the sacrificial pole of the famous Levi-Straussian contrast between totemism and sacrifice, if we interpret it as a general cognitive distinction and not in terms of its somewhat ill-chosen institutional labels.

      If I am right in drawing these conclusions, where does totemism stand? Totemism seems to me a phenomenon of a different order from animism and naturalism. It is not a system of relations between nature and culture as is the case in the other two modes, but rather of correlations. Totemism is not an ontology, but a form of classification - it would not belong, therefore, to the category of "modes of identification," but rather to that, left vacant by Descola, of "modes of categorization." The totemic connection between the natural and the social series is neither social nor natural - it is purely logical and differential. By the same token, this connection is not metonymic and hierarchical as is the case with animic and naturalist modes of relating and defining nature and culture - it is a metaphoric and equipollent relation. This would explain why totemism, as a form of classification, can only be found in combination with animic systems: even the classical totemisms suppose more than a set of symbolic correlations between nature and culture; they imply a relationship of descent or participation between the terms of the two series (Levi-Strauss called this latter relationship the "imaginary side" of totemism - but this does not make it any less real, ethnographically speaking).[41]

      In sum, I believe that the really productive contrast is the one between naturalism and animism as two inverse hierarchical ontologies. Totemism, as defined by Descola, seems to be a different phenomenon. However, let us suspend our judgement till we explore more fully the notion of animism, for it may be the case that totemism and animism reveal themselves to be related by more significant similarities and differences.

      Problems with projection

      The major problem with Descola's inspiring theory, in my opinion, is this: can animism be defined as a projection of differences and qualities internal to the human world onto non-human worlds, as a "socio-centric" model in which categories and social relations are used to map the universe? This interpretation by analogy is explicit in some glosses on the theory, such as that provided by Kaj Arhem: "if totemic systems model society after nature, then animic systems model nature after society" (1996: 185). The problem here is the obvious proximity with the traditional sense of animism, or with the reduction of "primitive classifications" to emanations of social morphology; but equally the problem is to go beyond other classic characterisations of the relation between society and nature.

      I am thinking here of Radcliffe-Brown's 1929 article on totemism, where he presents the following ideas (1952: 130-31):

      (1) For "primitive man" the universe as a whole is a moral and social order governed not by what we call natural law but rather by what we must call moral or ritual law.

      (2) Although our own explicit conception of a natural order and of natural law does not exist among the more primitive peoples, "the germs out of which it develops do exist in the empirical control of causal processes in technical activities" - we find here the "germs" of Leach's distinction between technical and expressive aspects of action, and perhaps also of Bloch's distinction between cognition and ideology.

      (3) Primitive peoples (in Australia, for example) have built between themselves and the phenomena of nature a system of relations which are essentially similar to the relations that they have built up in their social structure between one human being and another.

      (4) It is possible to distinguish processes of personification of natural phenomena and natural species (which "permits nature to be thought of as if it were a society of persons, and so makes of it a social or moral order"), like those found amongst the Eskimos and Andaman Islanders, from systems of classification of natural species, like those found in Australia and which compose a "system of social solidarities" between man and nature - this obviously calls to mind Descola's distinction of animism/totemism as well as the contrast of manido/totem explored by Levi-Strauss.

      Some ethnographers of hunter-and-gatherer economies have appealed to the ideas of an extension of human attributes to non-humans and a metaphorical projection of social relations onto human/non-human interactions. Such arguments have been put forth as weapons in the battle against the interpretation of these economies in ethological-ecological terms (optimal foraging theory, etc.). As Ingold (1996) most convincingly argued, however, all schemes of analogical projection or social modelling of nature escape naturalist reductionism only to fall into a nature/culture dualism which, by distinguishing "really natural" nature from "culturally constructed" nature, reveals itself to be a typical cosmological antinomy (in the original Kantian sense) faced with infinite regression. The notion of model or metaphor supposes a previous distinction between a domain wherein social relations are constitutive and literal and another where they are representational and metaphorical. Animism, interpreted as human sociality projected onto the non-human world, would be nothing but the metaphor of a metonymy. [42]

      The idea of an animist projection of society onto nature is not in itself a problem, if one abides by the doctrine of "particular universalism" (the term comes from Latour [1991]), which supposes the privileged access of one culture - our culture - to the only true, real Nature. This particular universalism would be, says Latour, the actual cosmology of anthropology, being in force even among those who have "cultural relativism" as their official creed. It would also be the only possibility of arresting the infinite regression that Ingold rightly sees in the relativist cliche "Nature is culturally constructed." Particular universalism brings such regression to a halt because it subordinates the Nature/Culture dualism to an encompassing naturalism, according to which our culture is the mirror of nature and other cultures are simply wrong. But all forms of constructionism and projectionism are unacceptable if we are decided not to let "animism" be interpreted in terms of our naturalist ontology.

      Allow me a further comment on Latour's idea that particular universalism is the practical ideology of anthropologists - their official or theoretical one being cultural relativism. While agreeing with Latour, I would just remark that the really characteristic relativism of anthropologists seems to consist less in a clandestine appeal to particular universalism than in a kind of distributive inversion of it, which carefully distinguishes culture (as human nature) from (cosmological) nature. Since every culture studied by anthropology is typically presented as expressing (and recognizing) some deep hidden truth of the human condition - a truth forgotten or denied by Western culture, like, for instance, the very inseparability of nature and culture - the sum total of these truths leads to the dismaying conclusion that all cultures, except precisely the (modern) Western, have a kind of privileged access to human nature, what amounts to granting Western culture an underprivileged access to the universe of culture. Maybe this is the price we feel we have to pay for our supposedly privileged access to non-human nature.

      Now, what is Ingold's solution to these difficulties he found in the projection argument? Against the notion of a social construction of nature and its implied metaphorical projectionism, he proposes an ontology founded on the immediate "interagentive" engagement between humans and animals prevailing in hunter-gatherer societies. He opposes our cognitivist and transcendental cosmology of "constructed nature" to a practical, immanent phenomenology of "dwelling" (sensu Heidegger) in an environment. There would be no projection of relations internal to the human world onto the non-social, i.e., natural domain, but rather an immediate inter-specific sociality, at the same time objective and subjective, which would be the primary reality out of which the secondary, reflective differences between humans and animals would emerge.

      Ingold's inspirational (and influential) ideas deserve a discussion I cannot develop here. In my opinion, his perspicacious diagnosis of metaphorical projectionism is better than the cure he propounds. For all their insightfulness, these ideas illustrate the inversion of "particular universalism" I alluded to above. Ingold never makes it quite clear whether he takes Western constructionism to be absolutely false (that is, both unreal and malignant) - I feel he does think so - or just inadequate to describe other "lived worlds," remaining true as the expression of a particular historico-cultural experience. But the real problem lies not with this. My structuralist reflexes make me wince at the primacy accorded to immediate practical-experiential identification at the expense of difference, taken to be a conditioned, mediate and purely "intellectual" (that is, theoretical and abstract) moment. There is here the debatable assumption that commonalities prevail upon distinctions, being superior and anterior to the latter; there is the still more debatable assumption that the fundamental or prototypical mode of relation is identity or sameness. At the risk of having deeply misunderstood him, I would suggest that Ingold is voicing here the recent widespread sentiment against "difference" - a sentiment "metaphorically projected" onto what hunter-gatherers or any available "others" are supposed to experience - which unwarrantably sees it as inimical to immanence, as if all difference were a stigma of transcendence (and a harbinger of oppression). All difference is read as an opposition, and all opposition as the absence of a relation: "to oppose" is taken as synonymous with "to exclude" - a strange idea. I am not of this mind. As far as Amerindian ontologies are concerned, at least, I do not believe that similarities and differences among humans and animals (for example) can be ranked in terms of experiential immediacy, or that distinctions are more abstract or "intellectual" than commonalities: both are equally concrete and abstract, practical and theoretical, emotional and intellectual, etc. True to my structuralist habitus, however, I persist in thinking that similarity is a type of difference; above all, I regard identity or sameness as the very negation of relatedness.

      The idea that humans and animals share personhood is a very complicated one: it would be entirely inadequate to interpret it as if meaning that humans and animals are "essentially the same" (and only "apparently" different). It rather means that humans and animals are, each on their own account, not the same - they are internally divided or entangled. Their common personhood or humanity is precisely what permits that their difference to be an inclusive, internal relation. The primordial immanence of myth (never lost, ever threatening) is not absence of difference, but rather its pervasive operation in a "molecular" mode (Deleuze & Guattari 1980), as difference not yet "molarized," i.e., speciated. Immanence is not sameness, it is infinite difference: it is (molar) difference preempted by (molecular) difference.

      Among the questions remaining to resolve, therefore, is the one of knowing whether animism can be described as a figurative use of categories pertaining to the human-social domain to conceptualise the domain of non-humans and their relations with the former, and if not, then how should we interpret it. The other question is: if animism depends on the attribution (or recognition) of human-like cognitive and sensory faculties to animals, and the same form of subjectivity, that is if animals are "essentially" human, then what in the end is the difference between humans and animals? If animals are people, then why do they not see us as people? Why, to be precise, the perspectivism? We might also ask if the notion of contingent corporeal forms (clothing) is properly described in terms of an opposition between appearance and essence. Finally, if animism is a way of objectifying nature in which the dualism of nature/culture does not hold, then what is to be done with the abundant indications regarding the centrality of this opposition to South American cosmologies? Are we dealing with just another "totemic illusion," if not with a naive projection of our Western dualism? Is it possible to make a more than synoptic use of the concepts of nature and culture, or are they merely "blanket labels" (Descola 1996) to which Levi-Strauss appealed in order to organise the multiple semantic contrasts in American mythologies, these contrasts being irreducible to a single massive dichotomy?

      Ethnocentrism, or the rejection thesis

      In a well-known essay, Levi-Strauss observed that for savages, humanity ceases at the boundary of the group, a notion which is exemplified by the widespread auto-ethnonym meaning "real humans," which in turn implies a definition of strangers as somehow pertaining to the domain of the extra-human. Therefore, ethnocentrism would not be the privilege of the West, but a natural ideological attitude, inherent to human collective life. The author illustrates the universal reciprocity of this attitude with an anecdote:

      In the Greater Antilles, some years after the discovery of America, whilst the Spanish were dispatching inquisitional commissions to investigate whether the natives had a soul or not, these very natives were busy drowning the white people they had captured in order to find out, after lengthy observation, whether or not the corpses were subject to putrefaction. (1973 [1952]: 384)

      From this parable, Levi-Strauss derives the famous paradoxical moral: "The barbarian is first and foremost the man who believes in barbarism," which, as Aron (1973) noted, may be taken to imply that the anthropologist is the only non-barbarian on the face of the earth. Some years later, in Tristes Tropiques, Levi-Strauss (1955: 82-83) was to retell the case of the Antilles, but this time he underlined the asymmetry of the perspectives: in their investigations of the humanity of the Other, whites appealed to the social sciences, whereas the Indians founded their observations in the natural sciences; and if the former concluded that Indians were animals, the latter were content to suspect that the whites were divinities. "In equal ignorance," says our author, the latter attitude was more worthy of human beings.

      The anecdote reveals something else, as we shall see; something which Levi-Strauss came close to formulating in the Tristes Tropiques version. But its general point is quite obvious: the Indians, like the European invaders, consider that only the group to which they belong incarnates humanity; strangers are on the other side of the border which separates humans from animals and spirits, culture from nature and supernature. As matrix and condition for the existence of ethnocentrism, the nature/culture opposition appears to be a universal of social apperception.

      At the time when Levi-Strauss was writing these lines, the strategy for vindicating the full humanity of savages was to demonstrate that they made the same distinctions as we do: the proof that they were true humans is that they considered that they alone were the true humans. Like us, they distinguished culture from nature and they too believed that Naturvolker are always the others. The universality of the cultural distinction between Nature and Culture bore witness to the universality of culture as human nature. In sum, the Levi-Straussian answer to the question of the Spanish investigators was positive: savages do have souls. (Note that this question can be read as a sixteenth-century theological version of the "problem of other minds," which continues to this day to feed many a philosophical mouth.)

      But now, in these post-structuralist, ecologically-minded, animal-rights-concerned times, everything has changed. Savages are no longer ethnocentric or anthropomorphic, but rather cosmocentric or cosmomorphic. Instead of having to prove that they are humans because they distinguish themselves from animals, we now have to recognize how in-human we are for opposing humans to animals in a way they never did: for them nature and culture are part of the same sociocosmic field. Not only would Amerindians put a wide berth between themselves and the great Cartesian divide, which separated humanity from animality, but their views anticipate the fundamental lessons of ecology which we are only now in a position to assimilate (as argued by Reichel-Dolmatoff [1976], among many others). Before, the Indians' refusal to concede predicates of humanity to other men was of note; now we stress that they extend such predicates way beyond the frontiers of their own species in a demonstration of "ecosophic" knowledge (the expression is Arhem's [1993]) which we should emulate in as far as the limits of our objectivism permit. Formerly, it had been necessary to combat the assimilation of the savage mind to narcissistic animism, the infantile stage of naturalism, showing that totemism affirmed the cognitive distinction between culture and nature; now, as we have seen, animism is attributed once more to savages, but this time it is proclaimed - though not by Descola, I hasten to note - as the correct (or at least "valid") recognition of the universal admixture of subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, to which we modern Westerners have been blind, because of our foolish, nay, sinful habit of thinking in dichotomies. Against the hubris of modernity, the primitive and post-modern "hybrids," to borrow a term from Latour (1991).[43]

      It looks like we have here an antinomy, or rather two paired antinomies. For either Amerindians are ethnocentrically stingy in the extension of their concept of humanity, and they "totemically" oppose nature and culture; or they are cosmocentric and "animic" and do not profess to such a distinction, being (or so has been argued) models of relativist tolerance, postulating a multiplicity of points of view on the world.[44]

      I believe that the solution to these antinomies lies not in favouring one branch over the other, sustaining, for example, the argument that the most recent characterization of Amerindian attitudes is the correct one and relegating the other to the outer darkness of pre-afterological anthropology. Rather, the point is to show that the thesis as well as the antithesis of both antinomies are true (both correspond to solid ethnographic intuitions), but that they apprehend the same phenomena from different angles; and also it is to show that both are "false" in that they refer to a substantivist conceptualization of the categories of nature and culture (whether it be to affirm or negate them) which is not applicable to Amerindian cosmologies.

      The subject as such: from substantive to perspective

      Let us return to the observation by Levi-Strauss about the widespread character of those ethnic self-designations which would mean "real humans" or some suchlike myopic conceit. The first thing to be considered is that the Amerindian words which are usually translated as "human being" and which figure in those self-designations do not denote humanity as a natural species, that is, Homo sapiens. They refer rather to the social condition of personhood, and - especially when they are modified by intensifiers such as "true," "real," "genuine" - they function less as nouns then as pronouns. They indicate the position of the subject; they are enunciative markers, not names. Far from manifesting a semantic shrinking of a common name to a proper name (taking "people" to be the name of the tribe), these words move in the opposite direction, going from substantive to perspective (using "people" as a collective pronoun "we people/us"; the modifiers we translate by adjectives like "real" or "genuine" seem to function much like self-referential emphases of the type "we ourselves"). For this very reason, indigenous categories of identity have that enormous variability of scope that characterizes pronouns, marking contrastively Ego's immediate kin, his/her local group, all humans, humans and some animal species, or even all beings conceived as potential subjects: their coagulation as "ethnonyms" seems largely to be an artefact of interactions with ethnographers and other identity experts such as colonial administrators. Nor is it by chance that the majority of Amerindian ethnonyms which entered the literature are not self-designations, but rather names (frequently pejorative) conferred by other groups: ethnonymic objectivation is primordially applied to others, not to the ones in the position of subject. Ethnonyms are names of third parties, they belong to the category of "they," not to the category of "we."[45] This, by the way, is consistent with a widespread avoidance of self-reference on the level of onomastics: personal names are not spoken by their bearers nor in their presence; to name is to externalise, to separate (from) the subject.[46]

      Thus self-references such as "people" mean "person," not "member of the human species"; and they are personal pronouns registering the point of view of the subject talking, not proper names. To say, then, that animals and spirits are people, is to say that they are persons, and to personify them is to attribute to non-humans the capacities of conscious intentionality and agency which define the position of the subject. Such capacities are objectified as the soul or spirit with which these non-humans are endowed. Whatever possesses a soul is a subject, and whatever has a soul is capable of having a point of view. Amerindian souls, be they human or animal, are thus indexical categories, cosmological deictics whose analysis calls not so much for an animist psychology or substantialist ontology as for a theory of the sign or a perspectival pragmatics. (In a previous version of this argument, I used the expression "epistemological pragmatics" where now I prefer to talk of perspectival pragmatics. This is because in the meantime I developed a deep mistrust of "epistemological" interpretations of Amerindian ontological tenets.)

      So, every being to whom a point of view is attributed would be a subject; or better, wherever there is a point of view there is a subject position. Whilst our constructionist epistemology can be summed up in the Saussurean formula: the point of view creates the object - the subject being the original, fixed condition whence the point of view emanates - Amerindian perspectival ontology proceeds along the lines that the point of view creates the subject; whatever is activated or "agented" by the point of view will be a subject.[47]

      This is why terms such as wari' (a Txapakuran word), masa (a Tukanoan word) or dene (an Athapaskan word) mean "people," but they can be used for - and therefore used by - very different classes of beings: used by humans they denote human beings; but used by peccaries, howler monkeys or beavers, they self-refer to peccaries, howler monkeys or beavers (Vilaca 1992; Arhem 1993; McDonnell 1984).

      As it happens, however, these non-humans placed in the subject perspective do not merely "call" themselves "people"; they see themselves anatomically and culturally as humans. The symbolic spiritualisation of animals would imply its imaginary hominisation and culturalisation; thus the anthropomorphic-anthropocentric character of indigenous thought would seem to be unquestionable. However, I believe that something quite different is at issue. Any being which vicariously occupies the point of view of reference, being in the position of subject, sees itself as a member of the human species. The human bodily form and human culture - the schemata of perception and action "embodied" in specific dispositions - are deictics, pronominal markers of the same type as the self-designations discussed above. They are reflexive or apperceptive schematisms ("reifications" sensu Strathern) by which all subjects apprehend themselves, and not literal and constitutive human predicates projected metaphorically (i.e., improperly) onto non-humans. Such deictic "attributes" are immanent in the viewpoint, and move with it. Human beings - naturally - enjoy the same prerogative and therefore see themselves as such: "Human beings see themselves as such; the Moon, the snakes, the jaguars and the Mother of Smallpox, however, see them as tapirs or peccaries, which they kill" (Baer 1994: 224).

      We need to have it quite clear: it is not that animals are subjects because they are humans (humans in disguise), but rather that they are human because they are subjects (potential subjects). This is to say culture is the subject's nature; it is the form in which every subject experiences its own nature. Animism is not a projection of substantive human qualities cast onto animals, but rather expresses the logical equivalence of the reflexive relations that humans and animals each have to themselves: salmon are to (see) salmon as humans are to (see) humans, namely, (as) human. If, as we have observed, the common condition of humans and animals is humanity not animality, this is because "humanity" is the name for the general form taken by the subject.

      Let me make two remarks by way of conclusion. The attribution of human-like consciousness and intentionality (to say nothing of human bodily form and cultural habits) to non-human beings has been indifferently denominated "anthropocentrism" or "anthropomorphism." However, these two labels can be taken to denote radically opposed cosmological outlooks. Western popular evolutionism, for instance, is thoroughly anthropocentric, but not particularly anthropomorphic. On the other hand, animism may be characterized as anthropomorphic, but it is definitely not anthropocentric: if sundry other beings besides humans are "human," then we humans are not a special lot. So much for primitive "narcissism."

      Marx wrote of man, meaning Homo sapiens:

      In creating an objective world by his practical activity, in working-up inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species being. . . . Admittedly animals also produce. . . . But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, while man produces universally. . . . An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. . . . An animal forms things in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance to the standards of other species. (Marx 1961: 75-76 apud Sahlins 1996: 400 n. 17)

      Talk about "primitive" narcissism. Whatever Marx meant by this idea that man "produces universally," I would like to think he is saying something to the effect that man is the universal animal - an intriguing idea. (If man is the universal animal, then perhaps each animal species would be a kind of particular humanity?). While apparently converging with the Amerindian notion that humanity is the universal form of the subject, Marx's is in fact an absolute inversion of it: he is saying that humans can "be" any animal - that we have more being than any other species - whilst Amerindians say that "any" animal can be human - that there is more being to an animal than meets the eye. "Man" is the universal animal in two entirely different senses, then: the universality is anthropocentric in the case of Marx, and anthropomorphic in the Amerindian case.[48]

      The second remark takes us back to the relationship between animism and totemism. I have just said that animism should be taken as expressing the logical equivalence of the reflexive relations that humans and animals each have to themselves. I then proposed, as an example, that salmon are to salmon as humans to humans, namely, human. This was inspired by Guedon's paragraph on Tsimshiam cosmology:

      If one is to follow the main myths, for the human being, the world looks like a human community surrounded by a spiritual realm, including an animal kingdom with all beings coming and going according to their kinds and interfering with each others' lives; however, if one were to go and become an animal, a salmon for instance, one would discover that salmon people are to themselves as human beings are to us, and that to them, we human beings would look like naxnoq [supernatural beings], or perhaps bears feeding on their salmon. Such translation goes through several levels. For instance, the leaves of the cotton tree falling in the Skeena River are the salmon of the salmon people. I do not know what the salmon would be for the leaf, but I guess they appear what we look like to the salmon - unless they looked like bears. (1984a: 141)

      Therefore, if salmon look to salmon as humans to humans - and this is "animism" - salmon do not look human to humans and neither do humans to salmon - and this is "perspectivism."

      If such is the case, then animism and perspectivism may have a deeper relationship to totemism than Descola's model allows for. Why do animals (I recall that by "animals" I always mean: each animals species) see themselves as humans? Precisely because humans see them as animals, and see themselves as humans. Peccaries cannot see themselves as peccaries (and then speculate that humans and other beings are really peccaries behind their species-specific clothing) because this is the guise in which peccaries are seen by humans.[49] If humans see themselves as humans and are seen as non-human (as animals or spirits) by animals, then animals must necessarily see themselves as humans. Such asymmetrical torsion of animism contrasts in an interesting way with the symmetry exhibited by totemism. In the case of animism, a correlation of reflexive identities (human : human :: animal : animal) serves as the substrate for the relation between the human and animal series; in the case of totemism, a correlation of differences (human ≠ human :: animal ≠ animal) articulates the two series. It is curious to see how a correlation of differences (the differences are identical) can produce a reversible and symmetric structure, while a correlation of similarities (similarities differ, for animals are similar to humans because they are not humans) produces the asymmetric and pseudo-projective structure of animism.

      37 Descola's inspirational articles on Ameridian "animism" were one of the proximate causes of my interest in perspectivism.

      38 To remain on an Americanist ground, I might mention: the rejection of a privileged position for metaphor by Overing (1985), in favour of a relativist literalism which seems to be supported by the notion of belief; the theory of dialectical synecdoche as being anterior and superior to metaphoric analogy, proposed by Turner (1991), an author who like other specialists (Seeger 1981, Crocker 1985) has attempted to contest the interpretations of the nature/culture dualism of the Ge-Bororo as being a static opposition, privative and discrete; or the reconsideration by Viveiros de Castro (1992a) of the contrast between totemism and sacrifice in the light of the Deleuzian concept of becoming, which seeks to account for the centrality of the processes of ontological predation in Tupian cosmologies, as well as for the directly social (and not specularly classificatory) character of interactions between the human and extra-human orders.

      39 "If in a commodity economy things and persons assume the social form of things, then in a gift economy they assume the social form of persons" (Strathern 1988: 134 [from Gregory 1982: 41]). The parallels are obvious.

      40 Let me say I have nothing against typologies as such, which I deem an important step in anthropological reasoning: typologies are like rules - we need them in order to break them. And butterfly collecting is a most honourable and rewarding occupation - if carried with ecological circumspection - unjustly reviled by one of our eminent forebears.

      41 Totemic orderings can also be found in combination with naturalist schemes, as shown by modern genetics and its correlations between genotypical and phenotypical differences (the "more natural" series of the genome and the "more cultural" series of its expressions), or by linguistics - the formal model of Levi-Straussian totemism - with its vast repertoire of differential correlations between signifier and signified, physico-acoustical and mental-conceptual series, etc.

      42 In the article referred to above, Radcliffe-Brown also proposed, in contrast to the Durkheimian idea of a “projection of society into external nature,” that “the process is one by which, in the fashioning of culture, external nature, so called, comes to be incorporated in the social order as an essential part of it” (1952: 130–31). This is an interesting anti-metaphorical remark, which Lévi-Strauss (1962a: 84–89) interpreted quite unfairly as a kind of utilitarian argument. Radcliffe-Brown’s point reappears almost verbatim in Goldman (who does not mention Radcliffe-Brown’s article): “To Durkheim . . . it was easy to imagine that ‘primitive’ people projected their own natures onto the rest of nature. It is far more likely that Homo sapiens sought to understand himself and all other realms of nature through a dialectic of interchange, of understanding the outer world in terms of his own nature and his own nature in terms of the outer. If Kwakiutl attribute human qualities to the grizzly bear, they have also learned to define and to regulate their own qualities of physical strength and fearlessness in terms of their knowledge of the bear. . . . Kwakiutl do not merely project themselves on the outer world. They seek to incorporate it.” (1975: 208; emphasis added).

      43 Latour has provided here only the term, not the target: I do not intend his work to be identified with anything I say in this paragraph. By the way, there is another familiar variant of this change in the way "we" think "they" think. At the time La pensee sauvage was written, it was deemed necessary to assert, and to provide abundant illustration thereto, that primitive peoples were endowed with a theoretical cast of mind, showing an authentic speculative interest in reality - they were not moved by their bellies and other such purely practical considerations. But this was when "theory" was not a word of abuse. Now, of course, everything has changed. These peoples have returned to practice; not, it goes without saying, to practice because of an incapacity for theory (well, the "oral vs. written" or the "cosmological disorder" schools would disagree here), but to practice as anti-theory. Be that as it may, not all contemporary primitive peoples seem to agree with our current interest in practice; perhaps because they are no longer primitive (but have they ever been?). So, in Fienup-Riordan's latest book (1994: xiii), we can read the following introductory remark from a Yup'ik man: "You white people always want to know about the things we do, but it is the rules that are important."

      44 The uncomfortable tension inherent in such antinomies can be gauged in Howell's recent article (1996) on the Chewong of Malaysia. Chewong cosmology is paradoxically - but the paradox is not noticed - described as "relativist" (p.133) and as "after all . . . anthropocentric" (p.135). A double mislabelling, at least if carried to the Amerindian universe.

      45 An interesting transformation of the refusal to onomastic self-objectification can be found in those cases in which, since the collective-subject is taking itself to be part of a plurality of collectives analogous to itself, the self-referential term signifies "the others." This situation occurs primarily when the term is used to identify collectives from which the subject excludes itself: the alternative to pronominal subjectification is an equally relational auto-objectification, where "I" can only mean "the other of the other": see the achuar of the Achuar, or the nawa of the Panoans (Taylor 1985: 168; Erikson 1990: 80-84). The logic of Amerindian auto-ethnonymy calls for its own specific study. For other revealing cases, see: Vilaca (1992: 449-51), Price (1987), and Viveiros de Castro (1992a: 64-65). For an enlightening analysis of a North American case similar to the Amazonian ones, see McDonnell (1984: 41-43).

      46 It has become quite fashionable to drop traditional Amerindian ethnonyms, usually names given by other tribes or by whites, in favour of more politically correct ethnic self-designations. The problem, however, is that self-designations are exactly this, self-designations, which when used by foreigners produce the most ludicrous referential problems. Take the case of the Campa, who call themselves "ashaninka," and who accordingly are now called "Ashaninka" by well-meaning NGO people (I thank P. Gow for this example). The root shaninca means "kinsperson"; ashaninca means "our kinspeople." This is what Campa people call themselves as a collectivity when contrasting themselves to others, like viracocha, "Whites," simirintsi, "Piro," etc. It is easy to imagine how strange it may sound to the Campa to be called "our kinspeople" by a viracocha, a white person, who is anything but a relative. It is more or less like if I were to call my friend Stephen "I," because that's what he calls himself, while "Stephen" is a name which someone else gave to him, and which other people, rather more frequently than he himself, use to refer to him.

      47 This idea comes from Deleuze's book on Leibniz (1988: 27): "Such is the foundation of perspectivism. It does not express a dependency on a predefined subject; on the contrary, whatever accedes to the point of view will be subject." The Saussurean formula appears on the beginning of the Cours de linguistique generale.

      48 Be that as it may, Marx's notion of an universal animal - capable of "producing in accordance with the standards of other species" (whatever this means) - is an accurate anticipation of another universal metaphorical being. I am referring of course to the universal machine, the machine capable of simulating (i.e., re-producing) any other machine: the Turing-Von Neumann computer.

      49 This would be our version of "perspectivism," namely, the critical stance regarding anthropomorphism (here crucially and mistakenly conflated with anthropocentrism) as a form of projection. It was advanced two and half millenia ago by Xenophanes, who memorably said (though what he meant is very much open to debate) that if horses or oxen or lions had hands, they would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, oxen or lions - a point which reappears under many guises in Western tradition, from Aristotle to Spinoza, from Hume to Feuerbach, Marx, Durkheim, etc. Characteristically, our problem with "anthropomorphism" relates to the projection of humanity into divinity, not animality.

    •  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

       

       

       

    • A group of artist becoming organic bakers or bee-keepers, curators turning into urbanist developers, managers following mindfulness courses, right-wing politicians using left-wing argumentations. In a deeply-felt anti-disciplinary movement, ‘workers’ today not only seem to question their ‘spaces of belonging’, but they actively start to reinvent them. For now, we call these acts displacements.

      'Displacement' was the title of the end presentations of Luanda Casella, Raquel de Morais, Helena Dietrich and Nibia Santiago Pastrani. Click 'more' to read the interview with Nibia.

      Nibia Pastrana Santiago

      A critique of not-doing

       

      It seems to me that ‘displacement’ already was an inherent part of your work before you entered a.pass. Can you relate your previous work to your research here?

      I guess in my choreographic work I developed before, displacement played a role as a theme: I was looking how I could speak of the displaced body, mostly the body of the ‘immigrant’ through dance. This work was always closely related to my identity, my history as a Puerto Rican woman, artist, living in the States. I was working a lot in the context of post-colonial concepts. For example in the piece I did with six women tackling their intimate experience of living in Puerto Rico and Panama under US military presence. I was thinking how the female body carries that displacement of land and space within it. How it occupies this in-between zones between militarized and civilian life. Through the choreography it became a labor of intimacy. Or, I tried to exaggerate this displacement to understand it better. Like, I would wear an apron with the American flag, and for seven days I wouldn’t speak English at all, just Spanish. I did this in my daily life: in my contacts with other students, at home, on the streets, ... So it was me pushing myself in an exaggerated position of the immigrant. In a.pass you chose to go for a more conceptual research.

      Could you explain why you took this turn and why you decided to change the focus of your work?

      Yes, displacement was in the beginning not at all a term I wanted to bring into this research. Only in retrospect it slipped back in. When I came to a.pass I wanted to strip away any type of investigation that wasn’t coming out of the work process itself. What I proposed was to limit myself to the role of the performer. And to be a kind of archive from all the people that added to the accumulation process. I made a drastic change not to pursue this series of more politically or ideologically driven work, and to see what were the conventions that drove my work. Because even if I did field-work interviews, I used the dance studio to make sense of them. And so I wanted to pause and see what choreography was doing to my research, who I was in my work. Maybe this now sounds simple, but I really needed to experience the limits of me being a performer, or a choreographer.

      Is there then not a third role entering into the research, the one of the researcher itself?

      The researcher attempts to take a distance, she looks, collects and questions. But the research started with dance making, and what it is to me. The basic structure was to enter to the practice of the performer and ask other people to work with me, to propose material to me in the studio. For the second part I envisioned becoming the choreographer that deals with, or destroys this accumulation of material and its history. But the rich part for me was that every person came with a different agenda. Some people proposed material in the strict sense of the choreographer making me repeat and rehearse material, others proposed more of a dialogue, or feedback session, became facilitators.... And I saw myself activating certain aspects of both roles during the whole process. Even if I tried to keep them separated, they always worked together. For me it was opening up the non-fixed nature of all of any role in the choreographic process. And out of this blurring of roles, the work all of a sudden became seriously displaced. After the accumulation work in the first block, the dance floor already became unhinged. It was displaced from its function or origin, although it was still part of the studio space. So in the second block I had the intention to stick to my research proposal and start a process of destruction. But since this had actually already happened, I wanted to take the research to the city. There was an intimate relationship between the floor and my body, which is not uncommon in dancers. So I cut the floor the size of my body, and took this ‘body’ out in the city.

      I see the use of displacement popping up in artistic discourse a lot, when there is a need to make things relevant again, when you want a question to pop out once more, to be readdressed.

      Yes exactly, and in this case the change of context brought a special attention to this material (of the floor), that it didn’t have before. I used the particular propositions of the people that took part in the accumulation in the first block, and I took these as guidelines to deal with the dance floor in the city. What the dance floor makes clear in these surroundings is how other objects in the city are domesticated or have a particular functionality that the dance floor does not have. And also, if you don’t recognize the material as a dance floor, it could be seen as a kind of trash bag, or a left-over, a residue. I think with this material the displacement is ambiguous unless you know its origin. So it really depends on the effect this displacement has to somebody who does recognize the floor for what it is, and knows its history, or not. But also, the material was no longer just a material, it also became a subject by its placing in the city. It became an anthropomorphic presence somehow. It wasn’t only about the displaced object, but also the surroundings it is in. For example you start looking at the city landscape and textures differently. The spots for blind people, the street grills, the left-over trash, the Oriental carpets... I started to see the surroundings around the displaced object more than the object itself. Also I started getting interested in turning myself into the floor, becoming an abandoned sleeping person in the city, an unemployed dancer, all these images were there.

      How did this displacement change your research?

      Well the studio practice is very intimate, one-on-one, just you and the person that comes. In the city you enter into a certain vulnerability, towards an outside. The material, the body, these artifacts in the city, how do I want them to be seen by an outside world. That was a big change. The city is not the answer to these questions of the art worker, of this arts economy, but it helps to make sense of the value of what you do. Like the horizontality of the body, that in a city is completely unproductive, but still performs in some way a critical position. Towards the economy of mobility in the city, but also toward the arts practice. I think the fact that someone can identify with the material also desacralizes the dance floor. Which you normally never walk on wearing shoes. And now i’m treating it as whatever kind of material. On the one hand it became part of the city. And from the point of view of performance, it produced a critique by not doing, just being there. How do you see the relation between the emancipation that was triggered by the practice in public space, and the vulnerability it produced? I think what I went through in my research in a.pass was a process of emancipation of conventions. The body is institutionalized by your schooling, the conventions of your discipline, and the sector etcetera. And when you take the dance floor out into the city, not to dance on it, something appears. You become hyper-vulnerable, because you no longer know how to relate to your material in the same way. For me the vulnerability comes when I can no longer name what I do: ‘dance’.

       

      interview by Elke Van Campenhout

    • 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

    • THE TENDER INSTITUTE

      In the whirlwind of changing subsidy policies, and political crisis, the Institute has become a partner to be mistrusted. What has become clear from all the waves of institutional critique that have fueled the visual arts production in the last decennia, is the Institute's extreme flexibility to reinvent itself, to recuperate and produce the ruling discourses, in a constant craving for the new. The Institute in this understanding has become synonymous with capital power struggles, with normative regulation of the arts scene, and with an unsavory attachment to a global economy that creates and sustains inequality, poor labor conditions and a sanctimonious elitist attitude towards knowledge and its distribution."

       

      Who's afraid of the Institute?

      In the whirlwind of changing subsidy policies, and political crisis, the Institute has become a partner to be mistrusted. Paraphrasing Dorothy Parker you could say that the Institute in most contemporary engaged art practices is 'not one to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.' What has become clear from all the waves of institutional critique that have fueled the visual arts production in the last decennia, is the Institute's extreme flexibility to reinvent itself, to recuperate and produce the ruling discourses, in a constant craving for the new. The Institute in this understanding has become synonymous with capital power struggles, with normative regulation of the arts scene, and with an unsavory attachment to a global economy that creates and sustains inequality, poor labor conditions and a sanctimonious elitist attitude towards knowledge and its distribution.

      In the last ten years however, more and more artist initiatives have been re-thinking the Institute's mandate. Taking the term up on its potential, rather than its historical accomplishments, the Institute once again has become a point of address: a specific 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. Although it is a bit of a stretch to compare all these particular initiatives, I will venture to formulate some comments on these practices that place them within a larger field of enquiry in today's art field.

      Compared with the more established Institute's the arts' initiatives seem less embedded in a universal idea of knowledge conservation than in a dynamic reformulation of knowledge processed in situ. In that sense we could use the term 'environmental' for these newly constructed spaces for encounter. The environment here is constructed by the relations and the interests of the people participating in the particular context (of the Bureau, the performance, the work table, etc..). In other words: the institute (without capital I) has lost its clear horizon of social valorization and functionality. It is not transparently embedded in a supra-structure of similar houses of power. Instead it has a nomadic feature that is permeable, a qualitative openness that connects it directly to a context of particular participants, diverse spaces and a larger politico-social context.

      Another important feature of this institute is that it allows for a differential approach of interests. Although the institute clearly functions as a point of address of a certain problematics, as an environmental space, the processing of this information can be shared by anyone participating. Turning the monolithic space of recognition and representation into a heterotopic openness to different interests. What we see here is a constantly shifting maze of connections and reconnections, allowing for a constant and simultaneous shrinking and aggrandizing of the issues addressed. Connecting now only with a group of 4 participants, and at the same time addressing a global or political question that overrides by far the mandate of the artistic initiative at hand.

      The institute's boundaries in that sense are highly flexible, but not in the way they’d adapt to whatever kind of interpretation. Like in any other institute - and especially in the Tender Institute - the practices and the encounters are prescribed. There is an etiquette ruling the space that makes it possible to engage. There is an invitation that opens up the potential of the encounter. But at the same time the level and focus of engagement stays open for interpretation. For the mutual recognition of a common interest. Based on the smallest of details, or on the largest of analytical frameworks. The institute in that way questions our 'sense of belonging', of being part of the event unfolding: do I engage in the practice as an artist, a citizen, a woman, an agnostic or a believer? What does this engagement then produce in the event? How do I relate to the information that is swirling around? How do I add (or not) to the particular context unfolding?

       

      Infolding the Institute

      The institute (I make the distinction between the Institute as the power house and the institute as the environmental settlement) is a particular space, situated not outside of the logics of classification and order, but standing at its limits, 'at the edge of the void that lies beyond every order of recognition or normalization' (professor Peter Hallward on Foucault's use of the specific). It is this de-normalization process that is of interest to the artist community rethinking its own complicities. All too often the engagement with 'what lies outside' of the arts is taken up on the level of the reinstallment of an oppositional logic of understanding. In the embrace of a politics of trying to understand the other (the precarious worker, the poor, the immigrant, …) the artistic practices process and produce again and again this dichotomic sense of 'normalcy' in contrast to the 'exotic' feature of the have-nots, not taking into account the complicity in the construction of exactly these knowledge divisions, these 'states of exceptions' that sustain an unequal access to the declaration of 'what is important', today as well as in history or in the near future.

      What the institute can do is exactly to redefine the grid that limits our entitlements of knowing and taking action. Turning the strictness of the dividing horizontals and verticals in an interesting plane of 'wholes and holes', for every individual to navigate through. What the institute archives in these circumstances, is then not a universal, nor even a particular kind of knowledge. Rather it archives the processes that keep these different knowledge field connecting and communicating. The institute expresses a desire to address, to weave a grounding but fragmentary mythology for the becoming of the social fabric. No longer a clear road map to navigate our relations in past, present and future, the institute infolds the very diverse ways to deal with the 'situation', with what we think is at stake in this slice of time and space.

       

      Methods and tools

      If we said earlier on that it is a precarious endeavor to put all recent artistic institute's projects on the same line of interpretation, that is largely because all these initiatives claim a particular and concrete point of departure and an other methodological logic. In all their quirky singularity they break the demand for seamless reproduction that governs still a big part of the arts scene. The development of work here is drawn out of its mold of quantifiable recognition (through number of performances, partners, spectators and critiques) and into a much murkier field of the development of 'qualities' of working and sharing a space for exchange. As we know every method of work is somehow reproductive of a certain world view, of a particular way of relating to your collaborators, of a certain way to understand what 'work' today can still mean. Aesthetics are in that sense always prescriptive, or even – in some cases – normative, in the explicit demand that the situation should be recognized, and the division of roles that this implies. The art work here could be seen as an interface of social relations to unfold in the encounter. A relationality that can reach far beyond the limits of the arts factory.

      If we understand the institute as a possible tool to deal with these relations, this is not a tool that is to be judged by its efficiency, by the results that it provides. Rather, the tools used by the institute are at the same time highly specialized and highly dysfunctional. You might say that a good tool in this context is not a tool that hides itself behind its own surefire functionality, but rather one that talks back. A tool as an obstacle, as something that has to be reckoned with. Undermining as much as opening up the process of relating and dealing with the situation. As Isabelle Stengers mentions in her 'Ecology of Practices': “This is how I produced what I would call my first step towards an ecology of practice, the demand that no practice would be defined "like any other", just as no living species is like any other. Approaching a practice then means approaching it as it diverges, that is feeling its borders, experimenting the questions which practitioners may accept as relevant, even if they are not their own questions, not insulting ones leading them to mobilize and transform the border into a defence against their outside.”

      In that context the tool functions rather as a 'symptom' of the way we perceive our being together. Of the ways we consider an object, a situation, a relation, as a piece of knowledge to be dealt with. Every environment constructs its own value system. Not on the basis of a mutual agreement, but on the practical basis of 'what works' or 'what doesn't work'. In other words: what creates a situation is a change in the status quo, a performance. Opening up the method to the participants (both the 'users' of the institute as the creators) makes it possible for anyone to rethink its metabolism, its inner working, its outer organizing affect. Instead of the ideological reinforcement of the hierarchic status quo proposed by the Institute, the institute reappraises the circulating mythologies that cross the space, the specificity of the current proposal, the value of what is to be kept alive for the future (performances). The institute is what turns a 'state of exception' into a 'state of attention' for everyone to appraise.

    • lecture
    • performative publishing
    • research center
    • Tender Institute
    • the tender institute 12 January 2015
      posted by: Elke van Campenhout
    • Elke van campenhout
    • 12 January 2013
    • the tender institute

      "In the whirlwind of changing subsidy policies, and political crisis, the Institute has become a partner to be mistrusted. What has become clear from all the waves of institutional critique that have fueled the visual arts production in the last decennia, is the Institute's extreme flexibility to reinvent itself, to recuperate and produce the ruling discourses, in a constant craving for the new. The Institute in this understanding has become synonymous with capital power struggles, with normative regulation of the arts scene, and with an unsavory attachment to a global economy that creates and sustains inequality, poor labor conditions and a sanctimonious elitist attitude towards knowledge and its distribution."

      Who's afraid of the Institute?

      In the whirlwind of changing subsidy policies, and political crisis, the Institute has become a partner to be mistrusted. Paraphrasing Dorothy Parker you could say that the Institute in most contemporary engaged art practices is 'not one to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.' What has become clear from all the waves of institutional critique that have fueled the visual arts production in the last decennia, is the Institute's extreme flexibility to reinvent itself, to recuperate and produce the ruling discourses, in a constant craving for the new. The Institute in this understanding has become synonymous with capital power struggles, with normative regulation of the arts scene, and with an unsavory attachment to a global economy that creates and sustains inequality, poor labor conditions and a sanctimonious elitist attitude towards knowledge and its distribution.

      In the last ten years however, more and more artist initiatives have been re-thinking the Institute's mandate. Taking the term up on its potential, rather than its historical accomplishments, the Institute once again has become a point of address: a specific 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. Although it is a bit of a stretch to compare all these particular initiatives, I will venture to formulate some comments on these practices that place them within a larger field of enquiry in today's art field.

      Compared with the more established Institute's the arts' initiatives seem less embedded in a universal idea of knowledge conservation than in a dynamic reformulation of knowledge processed in situ. In that sense we could use the term 'environmental' for these newly constructed spaces for encounter. The environment here is constructed by the relations and the interests of the people participating in the particular context (of the Bureau, the performance, the work table, etc..). In other words: the institute (without capital I) has lost its clear horizon of social valorization and functionality. It is not transparently embedded in a supra-structure of similar houses of power. Instead it has a nomadic feature that is permeable, a qualitative openness that connects it directly to a context of particular participants, diverse spaces and a larger politico-social context.

      Another important feature of this institute is that it allows for a differential approach of interests. Although the institute clearly functions as a point of address of a certain problematics, as an environmental space, the processing of this information can be shared by anyone participating. Turning the monolithic space of recognition and representation into a heterotopic openness to different interests. What we see here is a constantly shifting maze of connections and reconnections, allowing for a constant and simultaneous shrinking and aggrandizing of the issues addressed. Connecting now only with a group of 4 participants, and at the same time addressing a global or political question that overrides by far the mandate of the artistic initiative at hand.

      The institute's boundaries in that sense are highly flexible, but not in the way they’d adapt to whatever kind of interpretation. Like in any other institute - and especially in the Tender Institute - the practices and the encounters are prescribed. There is an etiquette ruling the space that makes it possible to engage. There is an invitation that opens up the potential of the encounter. But at the same time the level and focus of engagement stays open for interpretation. For the mutual recognition of a common interest. Based on the smallest of details, or on the largest of analytical frameworks. The institute in that way questions our 'sense of belonging', of being part of the event unfolding: do I engage in the practice as an artist, a citizen, a woman, an agnostic or a believer? What does this engagement then produce in the event? How do I relate to the information that is swirling around? How do I add (or not) to the particular context unfolding?

      Infolding the Institute

      The institute (I make the distinction between the Institute as the power house and the institute as the environmental settlement) is a particular space, situated not outside of the logics of classification and order, but standing at its limits, 'at the edge of the void that lies beyond every order of recognition or normalization' (professor Peter Hallward on Foucault's use of the specific). It is this de-normalization process that is of interest to the artist community rethinking its own complicities. All too often the engagement with 'what lies outside' of the arts is taken up on the level of the reinstallment of an oppositional logic of understanding. In the embrace of a politics of trying to understand the other (the precarious worker, the poor, the immigrant, …) the artistic practices process and produce again and again this dichotomic sense of 'normalcy' in contrast to the 'exotic' feature of the have-nots, not taking into account the complicity in the construction of exactly these knowledge divisions, these 'states of exceptions' that sustain an unequal access to the declaration of 'what is important', today as well as in history or in the near future.

      What the institute can do is exactly to redefine the grid that limits our entitlements of knowing and taking action. Turning the strictness of the dividing horizontals and verticals in an interesting plane of 'wholes and holes', for every individual to navigate through. What the institute archives in these circumstances, is then not a universal, nor even a particular kind of knowledge. Rather it archives the processes that keep these different knowledge field connecting and communicating. The institute expresses a desire to address, to weave a grounding but fragmentary mythology for the becoming of the social fabric. No longer a clear road map to navigate our relations in past, present and future, the institute infolds the very diverse ways to deal with the 'situation', with what we think is at stake in this slice of time and space.

      Methods and tools

      If we said earlier on that it is a precarious endeavor to put all recent artistic institute's projects on the same line of interpretation, that is largely because all these initiatives claim a particular and concrete point of departure and an other methodological logic. In all their quirky singularity they break the demand for seamless reproduction that governs still a big part of the arts scene. The development of work here is drawn out of its mold of quantifiable recognition (through number of performances, partners, spectators and critiques) and into a much murkier field of the development of 'qualities' of working and sharing a space for exchange. As we know every method of work is somehow reproductive of a certain world view, of a particular way of relating to your collaborators, of a certain way to understand what 'work' today can still mean. Aesthetics are in that sense always prescriptive, or even – in some cases – normative, in the explicit demand that the situation should be recognized, and the division of roles that this implies. The art work here could be seen as an interface of social relations to unfold in the encounter. A relationality that can reach far beyond the limits of the arts factory.

      If we understand the institute as a possible tool to deal with these relations, this is not a tool that is to be judged by its efficiency, by the results that it provides. Rather, the tools used by the institute are at the same time highly specialized and highly dysfunctional. You might say that a good tool in this context is not a tool that hides itself behind its own surefire functionality, but rather one that talks back. A tool as an obstacle, as something that has to be reckoned with. Undermining as much as opening up the process of relating and dealing with the situation. As Isabelle Stengers mentions in her 'Ecology of Practices': “This is how I produced what I would call my first step towards an ecology of practice, the demand that no practice would be defined "like any other", just as no living species is like any other. Approaching a practice then means approaching it as it diverges, that is feeling its borders, experimenting the questions which practitioners may accept as relevant, even if they are not their own questions, not insulting ones leading them to mobilize and transform the border into a defence against their outside.”

      In that context the tool functions rather as a 'symptom' of the way we perceive our being together. Of the ways we consider an object, a situation, a relation, as a piece of knowledge to be dealt with. Every environment constructs its own value system. Not on the basis of a mutual agreement, but on the practical basis of 'what works' or 'what doesn't work'. In other words: what creates a situation is a change in the status quo, a performance. Opening up the method to the participants (both the 'users' of the institute as the creators) makes it possible for anyone to rethink its metabolism, its inner working, its outer organizing affect. Instead of the ideological reinforcement of the hierarchic status quo proposed by the Institute, the institute reappraises the circulating mythologies that cross the space, the specificity of the current proposal, the value of what is to be kept alive for the future (performances). The institute is what turns a 'state of exception' into a 'state of attention' for everyone to appraise.

    • 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.

    • As a consequence of the the act to translate 650€ at the National Bank in to 1€-Cent pieces by one participant of the Occupy Democracy workshop, a financial justification of a receipt had to be handed out to the revisor of the a.pass accounting and finally to the ministry of education of the Flaamse Gemeenschapt Commissie:

      nationale bank exchange-receipt

      This is a receipt that doesn't document the purchase of a commodity or a service, but the transformation of one form of money, in to an other - one form of money, which generally enables purchase into an other form, where exactly this basic function of money is impeded.

      This receipt deserves a special explanation.

      In the course of a workshop called Occupying Democracy / Occupation Précaire one participant translated 650€ reserved for material expenses of the Workshop into 1 €Cent coins - an amount of copper which weights about 350kg. The monetary value is kept - just its applicable value is abrogated!

      While this act points to the overarching problematic in the relation between the performance of art and the performance of money, it was of high educational and research value in the course this workshop, and in consequence it caused a social intervention in public sphere. The combination of this clearly lifts this act into the state of an a

      rt work in itself with conceptual and genuine artistic value.

      Through the simple act of translating the materiality of money in to an other consistency without chaining its monetary value but to discard with this it’s functional usability, the sum of 650€ becomes an artifact - a sculpture in it self. The provided receipt is in so far the proof not only of an act of ‘buying’ the essential artifact of this act, but is part of it’s social plastic. Money is used here to create art in the most possible direct way.

      History

      In the frame of the a.pass trimestrial Block 2014/III reflecting on the relation between ‘Space and Contract’ Co-curated by the Associate Program Curator Vladimir Miller and the Program Coordinator Nicolas Galeazzi, we asked Christoph Meierhans and Luigi Coppola to come up with a workshop proposal based on their individual artistic practice on democratic forms.

      This is what they proposed:

      Original Workshop proposal

      OCCUPYING DEMOCRACY / Occupation Precaire
      WORKSHOP; 29th September - 3rd October
      (10am - 5pm group work; 24/7 singular occupation of the space with hourly rotations)
      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 determined: The workshop occupies a public space with only one person at the time - 24h a day. Starting with one square meter of occupation, the territory of artistic occupations should be expanded for minimum one square meter with every occupant. The rest of the group develops, discusses and observes the occupation from a distance and takes the relevant decisions.
      The discussions and decision taking procedures already started last block and created some new questions and tendencies. But an entrance into the process is possible at anytime.

       

      Process of the Workshop

      Eight a.pass participants engaged in the workshop and managed the

      1m2-24h/7-occupation-1-at-the-time

      concept together in shifts of 2h per person. The occupation was held on Place Saint-Jeans in Brussels.

      A Budget of 800€ was on spot and available to the current occupant in order to increase the tension between the decisions of the individual towards the decisions of the Workshop collective.

      Beside the occupation, the group held daily plenum gatherings at an other place in town, discussing the development of the occupation and its ethical, artistic and political implications.

      The fact that one person is in charge for the budget of a group for only 2h at the time reviles obvious conflicts of interests between the ‘society’ of this workshop and the individual occupant and was therefore the most concrete challenge of the idea of rethinking democratic systems through this workshop.

      At the beginning this challenge wasn’t faced much. The occupants only moderately bought things for their own use and bigger sums were only spent on objects that had a value for the whole group.

      The group fully accepted, that someone buys a beer for his midnight shift, or a morning juice, some chips, or batteries for his/her camera etc. Someone bought a Kalimba as the lullaby music instrument of the whole group. Someone else Gloomy Sticks - a scenographic element, which structured the space the whole week after.
      Occupants contributed even more private material and made this way the available money partially obsolete. This surely very interesting attitude suspended therefore, we might say paradoxically, the challenging discourse of the workshop. The tension embedded in the experimental concept of the workshop wasn’t fully embraced and experienced.

      The sum of those small expenses didn’t exceed 125€ and didn’t contribute much to the curtail discussions. The receipts for this sum are available and can be justified.

       

      Turning the coin

      One occupant interpreted the responsibility of the budget available in the explained transformative way. He went with the at the point remaining 650€ to the National Bank and was allowed to translate the bills into coins without any concern. The restriction related to these cases is, that one can change an infinite sum into smaller coins, but one is only allowed to bring 1€-cent coins back to the bank in portions of 5kg a week! In our case, this would take us almost one and a have year of weekly engagement to walk coins back to the bank.

      This conceptual act changed the situation in the workshop drastically. The collective was confronted with a radical individual move, which challenged everyones responsibility.

      The unpracticality of the available money in this form occurred when other occupants wanted to buy just a little chewing gum at a night shop in their shift - none was willing to take these coins. No night shop, no café, even giving them away for free was impossible.

      The only ones who saw the value of this conns being transferred in something real, practical and useful were a bunch of homeless people. Their time and economy allows to spend hours for picking up the coins, carrying them to around, negotiating with potential takers only to get the sum for example of a weekend ticket to the Ardennes together. A holiday dream some of them were waiting for since ages!

      With this aspect, the precariousness of this occupation entered other dimensions.
      It sets our abstract discussion on a slippery yet concrete and practical experience.
      The Workshop givers and the program coordinator who are finally responsible the workshop were suddenly under totally different the pressure of justification.
      The reviled presence and unavoidable openness of the money - we hardly could hide the 350kg coins in the public space - was constantly under thread of being stolen.
      It opened a communication to the most precarious living participants of this society.

      The group had to find new and concrete solutions for the technical and ethnical handling of the money and was confronted with an urgent decision finding process and it’s mechanisms.

       

      Continuation

      At the end of the week long occupation we left the space with about the half of the transferred 1 €-cent coins - ca. 170kg - in a suitcase together with a protocol for further operations.

      An Open Call shall be launched for competitive proposals to perform the coins.

      The selection procedure will follow principles that were discussed and tested in the workshop.

      The proposals will all be read on one evening to the public. 

      Only after the reading one member of the audience will randomly be chosen to act as a one-man-jury select a winning proposal.

      Another person has to be chosen randomly for as a performer of the proposal.

      The social plastic has to go on!

      Responsible for this report:

       

      Nicolas Galeazzi
      a.pass Program Coordinator

      Brussels 10/02/2015

    • 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

    • 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.

    • The current economic crisis is not only a result of some major failures in speculating practices, but the outbreak of a constant crisis inherent to the system. Exploitation of the society and the environment through a reliance on constant growth, the possibility of infinite creation of money for some through the creation of debt for the majority, and the binding of most life-procedures to procedures of money are creating a precarious and dangerous economic climate.

      Starting a glossary on Economics

      Working on THE SQUARE : a delimited area in the workshop space, where we can experiment and model thoughts around interactions related with art and economy.
      It is supervised by a camera which films the situation from above. It looks like a surveillance system ;) but it is not only that.

      Jorgos Papadopoulos, Greek Economist, is intervening to clarify notions and concepts.
      We spent time defining what means UTILITY and the notion of enjoyment linked to it.
      The notion of Apparatus was introduced through a text by Lepecki.

      We also mentioned different existing types of economies :
      general economy
      gift economy
      economy of the body
      blood economy
      etc.
      and how they work respectively.

      In the arts field, can we talk about a gift economy?

    • Some workshopping in economics for artists is due!
      At latest since 2008 it became clear, that the economic system we are living in and with is wacky, unjust and not sustainable. Many of its instruments are either exaggerated or exhausted. The bubbles it produces in different markets are getting out of control and deregulated fiscal constructions are dramatically failing.

      Yet, business is going as usual - but besides that many crucial social pillars are being washed away. The current economic crisis is not only a result of some major failures in speculating practices, but it is also 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 belief 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 than ever in the last 40 years.

      In this climate artist are forced to rethink our relationship to the economics - a situation to be cached!
      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.
      We have to occupy and appropriate the "economics" and its terminology and fill it with new practices and new meaning. We have to occupy the vocabularies, the practices and the appearance of the economy and to open it to a wider spectrum of life than just financial success.  

      For that we have to ask, what do we expect from future live? What is it what we really are 'dealing', 'trading' with? What is our currency? What is/was our real contribution to the crisis and how do we fictionalise the changes to come? What kind of traps are we constantly taping as artists? What kind of an economy could we establish out of an artistic (researching) practice which will make a real difference?

      Thinking over economy! Rethinking economy, or thinking economy is over!

      These questions can be attacked by analysing the different notions of 'performance' in the economy and in the arts. 
      The understanding of "performance" differs in general in their aims, aesthetics and actions in both fields. Performance on stage has to do with appearance, or transformation, performance on 'stock' with accomplishment, growth and power (thrust).  
      A mixup of this different understandings happens in a very complex way when it comes to the commodification and dissemination of knowledge - and even more when this happens through artistic practices. 

      We would like to propose a two-week workshop in two parts. The first week should concentrate on performing the reality of the economic crisis and the crisis of art-making in relation to financial policies. By inviting theorist and artist Georgios Papadopoulos, ("Notes towards a Critique of Money") we would undertake an extended analyse of the relation between art and currency. What is our currency? What is the premise behind this currency? But also what are we actually dealing with by dealing with currencies? 

      While in the second week we would like to go more into alternative economic systems. For that, we will collaborate with the behavioural economist Marieke Huysentruyt and will appropriate and translate economic ideas such as the 'Gemeinwohlökonomie' and Parecon. How are alternatives possible? How can art-making develop economic alternatives? How can the economy of art-making be reclaimed and recoined with other meanings and values?

      The workshops are based on a similar lab structure. In order to compare and relate the differing understandings of 'performance' in a practical a discursive way, we will set up a lab where artistic performances and economic performances should coexist, contradict and corrupt each other.

      The lab is a simple square furnished with some material and positions for artistic and economic activities. It will be constantly filmed form the sealing above. This should allow to understand the procedures on the square as scores or choreographies - the choreographies of relinking and rethinking art and economy. In other words - the workshop is a lab for the performance of the reality of art-making. 

       
    • 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 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.
    • 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.





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.

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