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    • Research "history" Pia Louwerens at a.pass, July 2017 to February 2019, approximately.

      Hello everyone,

      Where do I start? Do I start at the beginning and end at the end, or do I go in a circle? Do I write about how my research developed at a.pass, because then I write about the people I met and the energy they contributed to my project, the theories and books I met and encountered as vividly as the people who shape the program.

      a.pass is a transdisciplinary and transindividual research platform. It, they and we are open to researchers from many different disciplines and carefully curate programs that facilitate exchange, discourse, friction and feedback. The postmaster trajectory takes one year, divided into three blocks of four months. There is a possibility to extend the process by skipping one block, which I did. I followed a.pass from Sept. 2017 - Dec. 2018, with a last presentation on the 1st and 2nd of February 2019, for which I am making this portfolio.

      Taking into account the results of my research, it is clear that I cannot write about my practice as if it is something that develops in one direction only, using certain “sources” to do this. During the program I felt more like I was at sea, being carried my many things outside of myself and in many directions. However, I accepted the challenge that a portfolio poses, and tried to keep it as clear as possible. I only included things that I produced myself, and I kept a chronological order.

      As evidence for this trajectory I have scanned the archived physical remains of my research, which are scripts and presentations in various states of decay. By way of contextualisation I have superimposed information on these artefacts, concerning the state of my research at that time.

    • Time item is located around Martin Sieweke's practice of prolonging, extending and reformulating the use of materials and objects in different ways. It’s a research around a multi-layered relationality, in which the given (read: context/conditions, already existing/familiar materials/ objects) influences and contributes as a dispositive.

      In Time item Martin invites us to think about the materials one could potentially use for a bag. The front and back side could be the size of an A4. You could use the shape of this zine as a pattern. Are there any materials around which could serve you as a source? Consider this invitation to make a bag together as a proposed focus on where the components are being detached from.

       

       

      link to PDF: Martin Sieweke portfolio

       

      price: €15

    • LV Bet egy hűvös szerencsejáték létesítmény, amelynek középpontjában a kényelem és a stabilitás a játék nélkül sallang. Az LVbet erőforrás-és mobil kaszinója friss, és a játékosok kényelmesen játszanak itt. Az LVBET egy olyan erőforrás, amely problémamentesen nyílik meg mind a számítógépen, mind az iPhone 13 - on-és alkalmas azok Internet Magyarország LVBET magyarok számára, akik nehéz regisztrációs út nélkül szeretnének belépni a klubba. Itt azonnal tegyen egy fogadást, és kezdje meg a fogadást, amikor és ahol tetszik. Ebben a játékszolgáltatásban kényelmes és stabil játékot élvezhet, mivel az LVBET keresett Curacao licenccel rendelkezik. Más szavakkal, nyereményét 100% - ban fizetik ki, és minden személyes adat szigorú ellenőrzés alatt áll. LVBET web Kaszinó kedvezmények és bónuszok Mivel az LV Bet egy olyan szerencsejáték-intézmény, amely a magas hozamú és izgalmas játékgépekre összpontosít, ahol a fő hangsúly a kiváló minőségű gyártókra és a kiemelkedő élő kaszinóra összpontosít, nem meglepő, hogy itt, valamint a promóciókkal és kaszinó ajándékokkal rendelkező oldal is tele lesz különböző ajánlatokkal. Van: - üdvözlő csomag; - VIP bónusz; - VIP bónusz; LV Bet Online kaszinó szerencsejáték Portfólió A játékplatform elrendezése stílusos, kifinomult, így sokan tetszeni fognak. A menü bizonyos kategóriákon alapul, amelyek a következőket ajánlják: - híres szórakozás; - nyerőgépek; - élő szórakozás; - jackpot játékok; - ajánlott szórakozás; A portálon van egy keresési funkció is, így gyorsan felvehet érdekes játékokat. Az LVBET weboldalán elérhető gyártók között vannak mind meglehetősen népszerű, mind kevésbé népszerű operátorok. Így mindig valami izgalmasat kínálnak, ami az újonnan kifejlesztett hálózati résidők, a régi jól ismert kedvencek és még sok más formájában várható. Az alján látható néhány példa: - NetEnt. Nem titok, hogy a svéd Netentet ma a világ egyik legnépszerűbb szerencsejáték -, kártya-és élő szolgáltatója képviseli. A legnépszerűbb nyerőgépek közé tartozik a Jungle Spirit, a Starburst, a Reel Rush, a Gonzo ' s Quest és a Piggy Riches. - A NextGen egy másik jól ismert játékszerkezet, amely viszonylag hosszú ideje létezik. A népszerű nyerőgépeknek és olyan speciális funkcióknak köszönhetően, mint a SuperBet, eladóik megnyerték az online játékosok szívét. - A Quickspin egy olyan szervezet, amely rövid idő alatt olyan névvé vált, amellyel számolni kell. Annak ellenére, hogy a Playtech megvásárolta a Quickspint! Ezt szem előtt tartva a szervezet még mindig létezik Stockholmban, és a kezdetektől fogva a Quickspin olyan nagyszerű slágereket készített, mint a Big Bad Wolf, a Spinions, a Sakura Fortune és a The Wild Chase. Nem szabad megfeledkeznünk a vadon élő törpékről. - A Microgaming olyan szervezet, amely nemcsak a modern résidők fejlesztésével foglalkozik, hanem a filmeken és TV-sorozatokon alapuló szerencsejátékok fejlesztésével is. Jelenleg a játékstruktúra kiadta a "trónok játékának" két változatát, valamint a "Halloween"fényes játékot. További klassz játékok a Break Da Bank Again, A Burning Desire és a Thunderstruck II. - Big Time Gaming egy másik példa a video slot fejlesztő elérhető LVBET / LV Bet. A fejlesztő lendületet kap játékaival, amelyek rendszeresen egyre nagyobb keresletet igényelnek. A slot katalógus tartalmazza az ilyen játékokat, beleértve a fánkot, az Extra Chilli-t és másokat. Az egyszerű játékok mellett az LV Bet a jackpot entertainment-et is tanácsolja, amelyben kipróbálhat valami újat, ha hatalmas figurát szeretne játszani. Jó azt mondani, hogy megkapja a jogot, hogy belépjen mind a Mega Fortune, mind a Mega Fortune Dreams nyerőgépbe. Ezen kívül van a népszerű Hall of Gods, Mega Moolah, Divine Fortune és Arabian Nights. Nincs mit panaszkodni az LV Bet Online Kaszinóban! 2023-ban az LV Bet online kaszinó az ország egyik legjobbja. Számos játékot kínál, és rendszeresen arra törekszik, hogy új innovációs módszereket vezessen be.
    •  

      UNPRODUCTIVE WILL a choreographic practice installation 

      a.pass postgraduate program 2021-2022

       

      SEPTEMBER 2022

      research portfolios 

      PORTFOLIO block I Unproductive will click me!

      PORTFOLIO block II Unproductive will click me!

      PORTFOLIO block III Unproductive will click me!

       

      project's abstract

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

      Unproductive will is a choreographic practice installation that is part of a larger research. It suggests revisiting our relationship with the hegemonic notion of linear time and productive behavior. It proposes thinking of them as collective colonial wounds and impositions that run through our practices, affective bonds, and lives wherever we are. 

      I am developing exploratory collective practices such as Kung Fu tuning (a counter-normative body practice using simple martial arts warm-up), Collective readings (Payada: a popular folk music genre involving poetic recitations), and Technologies of attention (peeling vegetables following a choreographic score) to name some of them. I work with the idea of a never-ending warm-up to re-think the idea of practice and to engage with everyone who participates as a collaborator. This process does not seek an end but wants to remain in the continuity of the search. 

      I started my trajectory in a.pass exploring the normative notion of linear-productive time and how it is embodied in our behavior because I am interested in its political dimension. I observed how much thinking in a forward direction brings associations that build a certain life perspective. For example, forward-better-future-progress or backward-worst-past-degrowth. This reinforces a system of values creating a sense supported by binary thoughts. 

      In an attempt against this logic, I followed a contradictory path. I stepped forward to my past. During the presentation, in a playful way, I will share practices and connections to my sentimental and cultural education, aiming to create an experience of political awareness. 

      I am interested in observing the transformations the project traverses in each place it is presented. To change its language and perspective, that is to say, the thickness that its affective, geographical, and political implications take both for me and those who participate in the experience. This research challenges the definitions of audience-participant, performance-practice, and encounter-training affecting the presentation dynamic that sets all of them in motion.

      This research takes the notion of Dispersion* as a method and the use of strategies such as inversion, interruption, bifurcation, turning back, or non-direct associations as its main tools. These words-actions served as an entry point to explore time logic as well. To work with the idea of Dispersion requires postponing the need to define a use for the research materials. It implies waiting until a dialogue emerges from the situation of being with the materials that are, in part, intuitively arranged. That enables a reciprocal path to relate the experiences and elements that set up the research. 

      With the desire to articulate strategies that go in another direction than the notions of accumulation, linear time, and progression, I propose to look into the vibration between dispersion and attention strategies, enabling a mode of relation that seeks other possible ways of organization.

       

      *Note: For an accurate translation we should have used the English word Scatter. The decision to use the word, Dispersion, follows the Spanish meaning and its resonances. Dispersion must be understood both on the level of the spatial distribution of things and on how the focus fluctuates.

       

      Bio 

      Jimena Pérez Salerno is an Argentinian artist, based in Brussels (BE). She works and researches between Brussels and Buenos Aires. She experiments in the performing arts, artistic research, and teaching fields. As a dancer and choreographer, she collaborates and engages continuously with other artists as a fundamental part of her exploration of collective work. She considers choreographic practice like an expanded relations system that enables modes of imagination, attention, and coexistence. It leans towards performative practices that contemplate the activation of an unexpected context to think together through the experience of an implicated body. In her last project, she has been researching on the concept of expanded choreography as a critical modality for political awareness, reflecting on linear time and productive behavior.

      + info: https://cargocollective.com/jimenaps IG: @sashimishimi

       

       

      Special thanks 

      a.pass team: Lilia Mestre, Kristof Van Hoorde, Joke Liberge, Kristien Van den Brande, Steven Jouwersma, Sina Seifee, Hans. 

      End communication researchers: Gary Farrelly, Amy Pickles, Inga Gerner Nielsen.

      a.pass researchers during my trajectory: Carolina Mendoça, Chloe Janssens, Vera Sofía Mota, Ana Paula Camargo, Federico Protto, Nathaniel Moore, Tulio Rosa, Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Aleksandra Borys, Alyssa Gersony, Andrea Brandão, Anna Lugmeier, Asli Hatipoglu, Lore, Martin Sieweke, Martina Petrovic, Nada Gambier, Sarah Pletcher.

      Collaborator in residency at a.pass and in Buenos Aires (skipping block): María Sábato
       
      Persons who were with me during this process: María Sábato, Diego Echegoyen, Amparo González Solá.
       
      Dedicated a.pass mentors: Sara Manente, Adriana Gvozdenovic, Isabel Burr Raty, Kobe Matthys, Gosie Vervloessem, Simon Asencio, Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Goda Palekaité, Kristien van den Brande.
       
      External mentors: Sofía Caesar, Caterina Mora, Gustavo Ciriaco, Eleonora Fabião.
       
       

       

       

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

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

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

       

       

      BIOs of Simone, Heike and radical_house

      Simone Basani

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

      Heike Langsdorf

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

      radical_house

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

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

      Some impressions

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

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

       

    • Research Portfolio Chloë Janssens

      Download here: Portfolio_mobile_CJ

       

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

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

       

      To dig my hands deep into the earth and listen 

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

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

       

      Toolkit of the research

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

      — Sieves

      — Facilitation

      — Semi-fiction

      — Sensuous strategies

      — Graphic Design

       

      Sieves

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

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

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

       

      Interpretation, meaning-making

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

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

       

      Sifting paper

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

       

      Facilitation

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

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

       

      Chelsea Meijer

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

       

      Role play

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

       

      On Coloniality

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

      Semi-fiction

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

       

      Brochure Hades

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

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

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

       

      Semi-fictional surroundings

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

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

       

      Sensuous strategies

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

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

       

      Paper making

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

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

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

       

      Intoxication

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

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

       

      Audioguide Down Dwars Dela

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

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

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

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

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

       

      Graphic design 

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

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

       

      On Coloniality, mentoring and publication with Nontsikelelo Mutiti

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

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

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

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

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

      Luanda Casella. Schrijver en theatermaker. Artist in residence NTGent

      *

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

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

      *

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

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

      *

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

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

      *

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

      Eszter Nemethi, artist, curator
       
      *

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

      Philippine Hoegen, artist, educator

      *

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

      Dries Douibi, artistiek directeur KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 

      *

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

      Barbara Van Lindt, algemeen en artistiek coördinator KAAITHEATER

      *

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

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

      An Vandermeulen & Mira Sanders (evaluatiecommissie) 

      *

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

      Hicham Khalidi - directeur Jan Van Eyck Academie 

      *

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

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

      *

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

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

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

      Adrijana Gvozdenović, artist

      *

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

      Elizabeth Ward, choreographer, performer, dancer

      *

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

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

      *

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

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

      *

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

      Sébastien Hendrickx, performing artist, dramaturge, art critic

      *

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

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

      *

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

      Maurice Meewisse, artist, curator

      *

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

      Isabel Burr Raty, artist

      *

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

      Antye Guenther, visual artist

      *

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

      Piero Ramella, visual artist and performer

      *

      "Small is Beautiful.

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

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

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

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

      Samah Hijawi, artist and phd researcher 

      *

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

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

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

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

      Sofia Caesar, visual artist 

      *

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

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

      *

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

      Agnes Schneidewind, artist

      *

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

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

      Sara Manente, artist

      *

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

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

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

      Varinia Canto Vila, artist, dancer, choreographer

      *

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

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

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

      Caterina Mora, artist, dancer

      *

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

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

      *

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

      Flavio Rodrigo, artist

      *

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

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

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

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

      Leo Kay, artistic director: Unfinished Business

      *

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

      Kasia Tórz, writer & dramaturg

      *

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

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

      *

      Beste Minister Ben Weyts,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Met vriendelijke groeten,
      Petra Van Brabandt

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

      *

       

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


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

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


      *


      
Andrea Zavala Folache

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

      BIO

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


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

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

       

      Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc

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

       

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

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

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

       

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

      +

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

       

       

      ---

      Self-interview

       

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

       

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

       

      Second, I will tell you a story:

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

       

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

       

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

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

       

      What is your current research? 

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

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

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

       

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

       

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

       

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

       

      What would be the next step for this research?

       

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

       

      ---

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

      Selected references:

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects; University of Minnesota Press; 2013

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

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

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

       

      Anne Juren, Fantasmical Anatomy research

      Ligia Clark Relational objects

      Ilana Halperin, Geologic Intimacy

       

      Blocks in which I participated:

       

      2 September-1 December 2019

      BLOCK 2019/III 

      A LOOMING SCORE – WE SHARE YOUR POLITICS OF DAMAGE

      CURATORS LILIA MESTRE AND SINA SEIFEE

       

      16 January-27 March 2020 (block closed)

      BLOCK 20/I ZONE PUBLIC

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

       

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

      IN CONFINEMENT

      THE IN-BETWEEN BLOCK 2020 II

       

      14 September-3 October 2020 

      SETTLEMENT 16/ THE UNCONDITIONAL INSTITUTION

      VLADIMIR MILLER

       

      Thanks for...

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



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

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

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

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

       


       

      FIRST BLOCK: TROUBLED GARDENS

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

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

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

       

      FIRST VIDEO (june 2019)

       

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

       

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

       

       

      Shooting part II: Caterina’s face.

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

      Instructions to Caterina:

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

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

       

       

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

      Instructions to Flávio:

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

       

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

       

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

       

      SECOND VIDEO (july 2019)

       

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

       

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

      Instructions to the performers:

      Flávio

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

      . you don’t want Diego in bed

      Lilia

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

      . attentively observe Flávio and his body

      . invite Diego to bed

      . “Do you wanna go back to Brazil?”

      Diego

      . make questions about the couple Lilia and Flávio

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

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

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

       


       

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

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

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

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

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

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

       


       

      SECOND BLOCK: A LOOMING SCORE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Instructions for the visitors:

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

      Instructions for the performers:

       

       

       

       

       

      first part

       

       

       

       

       

      everyone but Lilia

      • you cannot be the first to say something.

      Lilia

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

      Caterina

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

      Flávio

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

      Lucia

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

       

       

       

       

       

      second part

       

       

       

       

       

      Lilia

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

      Caterina

      • say to Flávio “Listen to her”

      Flávio

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

       

       

       

       

       

      third part

       

       

       

       

       

      Flávio

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

      Diego

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

       

       

       

       

       

      forth part

       

       

       

       

       

      Lucia

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

      Flávio

      • describe the gestures and behavior of Lucia and imitate them

      Diego

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

       

       

       

       

       

      fifth part

       

       

       

       

       

       

      Caterina

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

      Lilia

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

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

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

       


       

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

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

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

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

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

       


       

      THE IN-BETWEEN (BLOCK) 

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

       

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

       

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

       

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


       

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

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

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

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

       


       

      FOURTH BLOCK: SETTLEMENT

      The aim of the Settlement workshop is “to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass Settlement and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at the a.pass main space will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process.” Trying to adapt my research to this proposal, I work on making a set for my filming practice. A nondescript space, a potential landscape that doesn’t represent a specific place but whose elements engender different connotations according to the acting of the performers and how I choose frame (dark spots, a red curtain, a corridor).

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

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

       

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

       

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

      RC: How would you define the agency you had? 

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

      [...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

      [...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      RC: And the role of the camera?

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

      KT: Did you enjoy it also?

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

      [Andrea is the one in the lower left]

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

      RC: But it’s less voyeur?

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


       

    •  

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

      Introduction

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

      Background

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

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

       

       

      Day 1, July 8th

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

      ► expand

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

      Artistic research

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

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

       

      Individuality and collaboration

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

       

      Selection of candidates

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

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

       

      Archiving, documenting, publishing and dissemination

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

       

      Evaluation, sustainability and sustainable management

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

      " [...] In short, the promises of working autonomously are powerful and important, especially given the core of these institutes is to create an open and adaptable context in which artistic research can be developed and expanded. However, whether this potential is realized and whether the institutions can bring their practices in line with their principles, depends on the means they are able to secure to invest on all of these levels."

       

      The shared overall outcome was that although the institutions represent a wide range of positions and practices on all of these topics, the study and the meeting showed that there exist a great commonality of sharing them as concerns.

      The subsequent discussion revolved among others around questions like:

      • what are the advantages of being part of a bigger (academic)structure? What are the possibilities of acting quasi independent within such structures? what are the needs to create frameworks beyond these structures ? How 'independent' are these frameworks beyond the structures?
      • how do "individual learning paths" that actually enable transversal processes relate to on one hand to "ideology of individual excellence" on the other hand "collectivity"?
      • how to institute transformation?
      • What will be the resilient future structures for artistic and academic development beyond the categorizations of culture, education, science and within the framework of social and environmental change?
      • Institutional challenges in the neo-liberal context: autonomy, self-organisation, "swamp-ness"
      • what can be institutional practices that can resist and reshape the complex of excellence, quality, authorship and individuality associated with academic research?

       

      The second half of the meeting was devoted to developing four topics to pass on to the next round of discussions the following day. The over-arching concern shared by all participants of Day 1 was the question of how to institute artistic research. The four topics were formulated in order to allow the table groups of Day 2 to speculate on possible and impossible futures: which contexts of artistic research will persist, which will change in the future? Which directions will current developments and status quo take? In short: which futures do we want to compare ourselves to? The four topics that were developed for Day 2 are:

      • Institutional Autonomy within Larger Systems
      • Internal Relations
      • How to be Public? Where to be public?
      • Instituting Transformation

       

      The topics themselves are reported on below, as they were included in the public introduction to the day.

       

       

       

      Day 2, July 9th

      For Day 2 of the conference we invited ca. 20 practitioners and professionals from the field of cultural production, education and artistic research to come together with us in a working session dedicated to the four topics proposed on day one. Gathered around the topics in groups, the main objective was for each group to critically develop relationships between present conditions and implications and their future scenarios. Each group was accompanied by a Reporter, an artistic research practitioner whom we asked to develop and facilitate a specific mode of conversations among the participants of their Table, and who took on the task of compiling a report on the work of the Table for the public discussion of Day 3.

      ► expand

      At the start of the day, Delphine Hesters introduced the results of the comparative study, the discussion of Day 1 and the four topics for the Tables. The Day proceeded by coming together in four groups around the table practices and topics. The following list combines the proposed topics with a brief overview of the proposed practice. The Day concluded with a collective feedback on the process and further questions.

      The reports of the Tables process and discussion were presented publicly on Day three and will be discussed in this report there.

       

      TABLE 1: Institutional Autonomy within Larger Systems

      What relations to build to 'the larger system'? How to position ourselves within the larger whole?

      Reporter: Kristien Van Den Brande

      Context:

      • categorisation and segregation of fields within arts (educational, artistic, social practices, etc) are working against the transdisciplinary conception of artistic research
      • what are the advantages of being part of a bigger (academic)structure? What are the possibilities of acting quasi independent within such structures? What are the needs to create frameworks beyond these structures ? How 'independent' are these frameworks beyond the structures?
      • what are the expectations and questions of the cultural / educational sector towards institutions and practitioners of artistic research?

      Questions raised:

      • How to create feedback-loops between the institutions and the larger system? How to be critical towards our own support structures?
      • How can we create and foster solidarity among the institutes?
      • Who are the future allies for artistic research?
      • What is the mission and task of artistic research as a publicly funded field?
      • Not only institutions position themselves, they already welcome distinct positions from participating artist researchers. What are the modalities of formulating a collective position within the institution?

      To facilitate these questions Kristien Van den Brande proposed a roleplaying game: The rise and fall of a dystopian regime for (institutional) artistic research. “Rise and Fall” is a role-play in which players create a dystopia, explore its rise to power, experience how everyday life operates during its tenure, identify how the regime is brought down and envision the reemergence of life in and beyond its ruins.

      The role-players were invited to explore the question: What are the roots of (institutional) artistic research during each of these phases, concretely or metaphorically?

       

      TABLE 2: Internal Relations

      How to build the relationships between the institutes and their participants?

      Reporter: Philippine Hoegen

      Context:

      • Questions of neo-liberalism in connection to education, regulatory dependencies and access

      Questions raised:

      • How to create not only critical but transformative feedback processes within our institutes?
      • Trust or control: An inclusive access policy relies on an elaborate regulatory structure within the institution. Deregulated institutions can run the danger of perpetuating status quo

      Phillippine Hoegen proposed to work with an online mapping tool. Several mechanisms of collecting keywords and grouping them into common concerns served as a visual tool to facilitate a self critical look at the organisation of internal structures and relations between participants and all persons working within the institution.

       

      TABLE 3: How to be Public? Where to be public?

      Reporter: Sébastien Hendrickx

      Context:

      • Publicness often serves as a "proof of work" and a measure of validity of the cultural sector and specifically artistic research
      • Growing importance of the countryside vs the city. In the past cultural production was more decentralised. Decentralisation is becoming more important also in response to climate change. Should artistic research dislocate from the urban and if yes, how?
      • Growing importance of regionalism and its emphasis on parallel and other histories, on subcultures

      Questions raised:

      • Visibility and need to be visible vs. the need for invisibility: how and how long to stay invisible?
      • Visibility versus performativity: what can artistic research do besides being visible?
      • How to communicate in process?

      Séba Hendrickx’ practice aimed at speculative collaboration open to neurodiversity. The participants of this Table were invited to make a pluralistic mind-map in form of a collective wall drawing. Each participant could elaborate on the drawings, diagrams and writings of the others. Misunderstanding and being lost in translation were inherent to the practice. With drawings or remarks of his own, the Reporter of this Table tried to push the map- and discussion-in-progress in specific directions.

       

      TABLE 4: Instituting Transformation

      How to institute transformation and what resists instituting?

      Reporter: Sina Seifee

      Context:

      • decolonial politics
      • growing importance of social and civic movements (MeToo, BLM,...) as future-shaping agencies. how are they different from institutions, how can we welcome their potential?
      • Transformation in the context of sustainability
      • Conditions of perpetuating of precarity: precarious institutions "pass on" the conditions to workers

      Questions raised:

      • How long does an institution need to live? When should it dissolve?
      • How to create adaptable / plastic (in the sense of plasticity) frameworks?
      • The question of activism of and within the institution and resistance from within.

      Sina Seifee proposed a Table-session as a moderated conversation around the central question of transformation in regard to artistic institutions and their sustainability. In the process of transformations whole classes of questions, phenomena and forms of knowledge may be lost or rendered unthinkable. Institutional transformations can reorder our sense of value and structure in the world, as well as change the way we embed social norms. The aim of the conversation was to give more specificity to the different kinds of transformation. The session began by asking the participants: what new forms of organization and community are emerging in your particular institutions? What power relations do they rely on, create, or destroy?

       

       

       

      Day 3, July 10th

      For this day a.pass invited all participants of the previous days and the public into the process. The link for online participation via a video conference platform was published online, and an invitation was sent out. After an introduction by Delphine Hesters, the Reporters of the Table groups presented their reports to the public. Each presentation was followed by a discussion and was open to questions, comments.

      ► expand

       

      Introduction to Day 3

       

      [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Future-Research-Conference-introduction.mp4"][/video]

       

      The Introduction brought back some question and topics of the Groups of Day 2 to Day 3:

      • We must be aware of the different understandings of AR present in the room
      • What do we mean by collectivity and inclusion?
      • In connection to the PhD in the Arts boom: is academia a refuge for the artist?
      • How and why are theaters, museums and other art institutions committing to AR?
      • What different culture of/for AR to cultivate?

       

      Reports by the Reporters

      [video width="1440" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/future-research-conference-Tables-smalll-2-1.mp4"][/video]

       

      Table 1 Report

      Kristien Van Den Brande

      ► Practice Presentation

      INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY WITHIN LARGER SYSTEMS

      Tackled through a role playing game.

      Roles:

      teacher

      dreamer (instagram influencer with a fashion line)

      uber-socialist (young artist)

      rebel (black-block activist seen as vandal)

      archivist (big data manager)

      Context:

      • categorisation and segregation of fields within arts (educational, artistic, social practices) are working against the transdisciplinary conception of artistic research
      • The condition of partial identities: being a part of multiple systems at the same time
      • What are the expectations and questions of the cultural/educational sector towards institutions and practitioners of artistic research? eg: a theatre: why do they engage with AR?
      • What are the (dis)advantages of being part of a bigger (academic) structure?

      2 problems:

      • What are the larger systems? (funding bodies, a bigger academic structure, art/social work/science, allies of AR). Why do we call them ‘larger’?

      • Is the word ‘autonomy’ creating an interesting horizon for the discussion? (Institutions are de facto mediators between (related) individuals who belong to other or larger systems. Autonomy as the awareness of non-autonomy.)

      1. Larger systems

      Instead of making an exhaustive list of ‘larger systems’, we created a (more or less) fictitious dystopian* world in which to position the question of (institutional) autonomy. The idea was to create 3 stages (rise, establishment, fall) of a dystopia, and to see how (individual and institutional) resistance and collaborations* operate in every stage.

      *relative term (where does it touch on utopia? Rise and fall have interwoven features.)

      *in the double sense: in the positive sense, and in the sense of (un)consciously being on the side of what is criticized.

      What were the features of the world:

      • complete commodification: no more public space, no more commons, instrumentalisation of art, art as a dialogic practice no longer recognized as art, false beliefs in the politics of images (protest is fashionable), always be positive (instagram culture) and gaslighting, neutrality of data, prevalence of entertainment industry
      • Radical exclusivity (segregation, nationalism, art having to express predefined values, ‘inclusive’ and ‘participatory’ becoming a facade for its opposite
      • Dominance of the virtual (over the sensorial, surveillance capitalism, ip-ification)
      • Money making more money
      • Mass unemployment

      Over-bureaucracy and looming of legal threats (seeking legal representation for conflict in the absence of a society of trust)

      1. Wrong horizon of the word ‘autonomy’

      Philosophically we are probably aligned in thinking entanglements rather than autonomy (Rancière, Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold). The only autonomy is an awareness of our non-autonomy.

      Creates a shift in the questions we can/should ask?

      Instead of thinking the borders of an institute, focusing on connecting lines: how to generate feedback-loops between ARers - the institute - other systems?

      Strategies

      • What instituting is needed: turning bureaucratic requirements from funding bodies into occasion for conceptualizing positions (eg this conference, relation to ones own board and GA: how to put it together, how to sustain and undermine its authority)
      • Role play in reality: the question of ‘who do you work for?’. Positioning the discourse/question to make visible ones alliances.
      • Methodologies of production (that include relation) is what is being produced in AR (eg: contracts)
      • Building the archive of methodologies, strategies - who owns the archive?

      ! Time-factor: what is the life span of an artist-run organisation, a research institute, a board.

      1. ANNIHILATION

      How to deal with the double threat of annihilation of the institute (it wants to be open to change) + the institute that takes care of itself when it panics?

      Threat comes from

      • AR itself (if AR includes the production of methodologies of production)
      • Funding bodies that understand how we establish and practice interdependence
      • Movements like #metoo, blm, collaborative structures that are not recognized by the board (eg: witte de with, netwerk aalst)

      Strategies?

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > “Me too” harassment, Black Lives Matters are all examples that need quick institutional responses but we are confronted with the SLOWNESS OF THE INSTITUTION. There is the threat of annihilation but also the institute takes care of its own survival. The moment of panic is very tricky! Which strategies do institutions have to deal with those panic moments? Example of criticism: Witte de Wit had to deal with its colonial past: they spend a long period of time in attempt to change the name and then director put out a new program. But corona and black lives matter happened and things escalated because institutions were too slow and got heavily criticized. An Institute is slow to react and there is a precarity within an institute that needs to be sustained by its partners.

      > What strategies can we think of to make such transitions possible, considering the kind of forces in question? Institutional memory should trace those moments and share the archive of these transitions.

      > All institutions are hierarchical so we could talk of institutional schizoanalysis. For my experience, at X university, when there is a personal change, everything changes . It's faster if the person at the top takes decisions already because of peer pressure: sometimes it can be interesting for peers to point out the weak points. At X academy there were ongoing debates and in two days the director reacted. We have to help each other (peers to director etc...). How do you become a better director and person?

      > What kind of feedback loops do we organize in order to catch up?

      > I'm happy that institutions are slow. Change is also slow. We are looking for ways to move together. The legal paradigm in which we need to inscribe in is organized hierarchically. To balance insecurity of AR and have an institution that gives you the opportunity to do the research.

      > People are divided in the classroom and I have the responsibility as a professor. We still don't recognize structural racism etc.. there's a lot to do. How fast can we catch up without making a quick fix? “Not too know” it's not good from my position while the world is on fire!

      > It is problematic having to respond fast because you are giving yourself the authority to do it. How to create a place of discussion instead of decision?

      > A level of transparency is needed so one can see the progresses. With opacity of institutions, there is no sense of what is possible.

      > there is a double bind of slowness/fastness. Slowness is resistance but “the world is on fire” and how do you respond? Maybe a way forward is in relation to what's happening to representative democracy (in Belgium). How to make it more participatory? You don't abolish existing institutes but you establish a faster reacting extra part of it. Could there be a way to make debate platforms in a more continuous manner and not ad hoc as a way to combine qualities of fast and slow.

      > “you have to be fast and you can't be wrong!” doesn't sound very interdependent.

      > don't forget that certain regulations come from a want, they are there for a reason.

       

      Table 2 Report

      Philippine Hoegen

      ► Practice Presentation

      Internal Institutional Structures for Instituting Artistic Research

      Introduction

      The aim of the discussion about internal institutional structures for instituting artistic research was to take a (self) critical look at the organisation of internal structures and relations between participants and all persons working within the institutions. We spoke through 3 categories: 1. structures of decision making and organisation, (including formal and informal hierarchies). 2. Structures and instruments of self- and external evaluation. And 3. Relations with participants and their agencies.

      Discussion Thursday 9th

      There were representatives from 2 different institutions at the table, in some ways opposites, especially in scale. One institution, although it doesn't see itself as big, is of a much larger scale than the other, and with that, there is automatically more formal structuring. One is coming from specialisation and moving towards interdisciplinary, while the other is interdisciplinary by nature. One contains BA, MA and PHD, the other is post-MA.

      None the less there were significant overlaps. And from this first glimpse it would appear that there are a lot of elements already present in the institutions which would be continued in a desirable future institution, but in some cases those are now present as concepts but not as practices. Or they are ambitions but not yet founding concepts. Other things are simply lacking, either as founding concepts or as practices. The most acutely missed factors are those that aren’t yet present within the ambitions of the institute.

       

       

      Several subjects surfaced of which three stood out:

      1. (Self)-evaluation. One situation sketched was: there are various structures for self-evaluation in place, but follow-up on the outcomes, and therefore actual change, is lacking. Another situation: there are many moments of feedbacking or evaluating the own organisation, but they are not formally structured. So, follow up is haphazard rather than structural.
      2. Continuity. In both cases, the search for time and money for the institution with which to ensure continuity – not only of the institution itself, but also of the work/knowledge flowing into and out of the institution – were not self-evidently part of the set of ambitions, let alone them being a founding concept or a practice. Continuity here is meant in various senses: contracts of staff members, long term plans / vision and follow up, longer relationships with alumni....
      3. Institutional engagement and responsibility. Informal relationships, collegiality, and frequent meetings amongst staff members, as well as personal and frequent contact with and amongst participants, are valued highly in both the larger and the smaller institutions. But this also assumes a high level of engagement and responsibility, in other words TIME, not always remunerated, or (in the case also of participants) not necessarily available or on offer. Instituting artistic research requires formal structures for informal organisation to take place. And it needs time management, something we are notoriously bad at in the art field, lavishly spending our own and each other's time.

      Discussion Friday 10th

      For the third day of the conference on Friday the 10th of July, different scenarios for each subject were projected, showing possible trajectories to engage with the different issues. The scenario for the problem of self-evaluation was: institutional (self)-evaluation / critique becomes an integral part of artistic research processes. Both staff and researchers / participants are allotted time for that, and also for proposing / effectuating follow up and change.

      For the issue of continuity, the scenario was simply: continuity is put firmly on the agenda of the institution. As simple as it sounds, it does come with the risk of further entrenchment in the neo-liberal conditions surrounding education as more money means more justification demands. The scenario that we discussed in particular was the one addressing institutional engagement and responsibility:

      Scenario: The extra time needed for engaging with the institution by all parties is taken into account in the budget, there are rotating shifts for taking different responsibilities, meetings are well structured, time is allotted and roles planned ahead.

      Questions and problems: -How to avoid becoming ensnared in tedious procedures? -How to measure what is a 'correct' spending of time? -The paradox of the formal and the informal.

      Debated Questions

      The question of measuring time led to a debate, with on one side those people who are convinced that the monetary measurement of time is a waste of time and an unholy quest.

      On the other hand, there were those who pointed out that remunerating time is simply fair practice, and a plea was made for considering administration as a form of care.

      About the roles and agencies of participants, most people felt participants should and do have an important say in how an institution is run, but also that they are sometimes blind to the struggles of the institution, and for what it can and can’t do.

      What we didn’t have time for, but might have been a necessary part two of that conversation is the other side of the coin: is potential of existing institutional blindness to some particular needs or struggles of participants.

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Paradox of inclusion: inclusion asks also for diversity in abilities, backgrounds etc, but at the same time it requires that we treat everybody equally. Difficult!

      > What is the lifespan of the engagement with an institution?

      > What is slow, what is fast?

      > Question to other institutions: do you involve the other participants in the way the organization is made?

      > on the slowness of regulations: for example legislation was made for the PhDs in the Arts to exist, but labour regulations (time, wage) are still rooted in a Fordist era. They not adjusted to the artistic reality and administration needs to deal with that.

      > There is a lot of passion at institution Y, for the good and for the worst. There are practices of living together for a week, including the after-hours. Participants are living together, a group of 7-8 people. Different visions of roles, of labour and invisible labour co-exist. Covid was a bomb making those discussions blow up. Students positions are not that different from those of workers (crew/staff and tutors/guests). Alumni become crew and tutorial staff. We have political consciousness but budgets, regulations, hierarchies are also there. There's an urgency of many discussion. For instance, students have to work outside to pay the fee for Institution Y, but now they realized that their role is not so different from the guests and contributors. The director of Y is the only person with a full time wage and they have to do all the work that the others don't want to do. There is a difference between students and participants. There is a higher demand for accountability from students while they have to pay a fee.

      How to move away from neoliberal approach of the student's demand to the institution to "serve"? But we all share other ideals so this discussion became very explosive.

      >> counterargument: calculating time can save time. Taking care that tasks allocation is fair and equal.

      >> Is emotional time considered in this calculation of time?

      >> In Institution Z the age difference spans from 29 to 67 years old. Administrative care is needed. There is pressure on the institute to change: to enhance feedback process and evaluations. What is even possible?

       

      Table 3 Report

      Sébastien Hendricks

      ► Practice Presentation

      On the first day of the conference, four main topical fields were defined as a basis for the following day. Our table - table 3 - was going to deal with the publicness of artistic research: how and where should it be made public, if at all?

      The proposed practice aimed at speculative collaboration open to neurodiversity. Minds imagine differently: some tend to cohere, others to open up, analyze, criticize, associate, visualize, textualize, daydream, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages to mental slowness as well as to mental speed. We made a pluralistic mind-map: each participant could elaborate on the drawings, diagrams and writings of the others. Misunderstanding and being lost in translation were inherent to the practice. In order to prevent the whole group from falling off a cliff into a Sea of Randomness, a moderator lightly intervened from time to time. With drawings or remarks of his own, he tried to push the map- and discussion-in-progress in specific directions.

      The practice consisted of the following elements:

      • a big piece of paper hung up against a wall
      • some chalk markers to draw or write on it
      • a bench to sit on and take some distance to look at the collaborative map-in-progress
      • a laser pen to highlight specific details of the map during the group discussions which alternated with the more silent drawing and writing sessions

      We started from four distinct questions, which could be interrelated in various ways:

      (1) Can artistic research just be without being public? Why / not?

      (2) What are the advantages of secrecy for artistic research?

      (3) How could artistic research relate to traditional knowledges and practices?

      (4) Where to make artistic research public in 5 years from now?

      On the third and last day of the conference, the moderator transformed into a reporter who, with the help of the laser-pen, guided the audience along his subjective trajectory through the map. He more or less said the following:

      As our table dealt with the question of publicness, it is maybe not so surprising to see so many eyes show up on the map (which is actually, thanks to the horizon line, more of a landscape drawing - an image not drawn looking from the top down but while standing in the landscape itself). There is the many-eyed-monster who could be seen as a symbol for collective intelligence (or collective confusion, if you wish); there are the hollow non-eyes of a skull predicting the end of artistic research in the world to come; for some mysterious reason the dilettant is drawn with a pair of profoundly sad eyes; I particularly like the eye within the vague circle, which to me stands for the participant-observer, the researcher who’s more or less part of a field (with all the messiness, paradoxes and complexities such an involvement can entail); very different is the distant, so-called objective or scientific eye right next to it - maybe that one refers to the gaze of the Academicized Fartist, the proliferating mock-version of the artistic researcher - whose worst emanation could approach the God-like Gaze (also to be found on the map). Most of these eyes, however, seem to represent the eyes of artistic researchers, while our main questions were related to the issue of publicness, so to the eyes of others. One of those eyes can be found looking at a tower. The edifice itself has an eye drawn on it. The image suggests the tower can see while hiding from view what is happening inside of its walls. Artistic research could be a phase of invisibility for an artistic practice, a break in its publicness, a space for an artist to observe, try things out, transform, develop a praxis, all of this free from the pressure to be successful and productive, or to make sense immediately. As a basis for experimentation, the tower could be filled with lots of unfilled time, as is mentioned right underneath the image. Let us now move our attention to what some participants suggested could be called the Fartbox, even though the arrows clearly point out the cloudlike shape doesn’t forcefully leave but enters or envelops another entity. The box looks like a Russian doll: in the worldbox we can find the artworldbox, and in the artworldbox there is the artistic research niche or ghetto. When artistic research is made public, in which of these boxes does it appear? And how? In order to become public, does it have to adapt, does it have to become a box itself, a form that fits in? Or can it change - cloudify, melt or mould - the structures that be? The ghetto and the niche have another well known metaphor in their vicinity: the one of the church. Does artistic research only preach to the converted? Is its proud cosmopolitanism not much more than a rootless and at the same time profoundly provincial way of inhabiting the world? Considering the larger spheres of the Fartbox - the artworld and the world - one may wonder if artistic research first and foremost feeds into an artist’s career or rather into his or her life. The map also suggests that any possible answer to the question of publicness strongly depends on one’s definition of artistic research. Some proclaimed artistic research is not a phase, but more something like a form or a type of practice - maybe even a discipline? According to them, in a world in turmoil, this form or type or discipline could benefit from a more specific description. What if social innovation would be its main characteristic? Or social change (including tradition, next to innovation)? In that case, publicness wouldn’t mean becoming visible in the eyes of others, but acting (possibly in concert with others) upon the world. Could artistic research go viral? Could it be a tool for action and intervention - socially and culturally - or could it produce such tools? And which tools would be needed for this production? How would artistic research making use of rakes and spades and hammers and sickles instead of MacBook Pros, look like? What if artistic researchers would all give up on their latte frappe macchiato and massively migrate to the countryside to make their soft hands rough and dirty? The question each of them could at least ask him or herself is: if my research is a pebble, in which pond do I want it to make ripples?

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Is AR an attitude or practice? And how much do we take contemporary art as synonymous with AR? There are examples where art is deliberately instrumentalized for a research that is artistic in its methodology or genealogy and has political effects: Forensic Architecture, Chimurenga Collective and Wochenklausur in Austria. Are we then on the verge of passing into social work? Hijacking art could mean that if we cannot have political effect, can use the position of artists as joyful dilettante, can we use the naiveté of not being burdened by specialization or by bureaucratic difficulties to oppose political and social problems differently? How can artistic techniques be hijacked for that purpose? There is also an epistemic benefit, because we learn something about learning. The question remains why we still call it art and not activism? Should it be social work?

      >> I change my mind about that question every day, on the days where I am more critical I see as Risk of diverging of political potential from real politics to symbolic places. From which position is that done? From a place of privilege?

      > How far is secrecy is helping? Secrecy as a power position is different than invisibility of being powerless, of non agency. In my professional experience of many years I used working systems, loving systems, reading systems without talking about AR. Lately I have been doing AR in a big institutions with money but the care or time was not being given for discussing of what is what. “We don't want a debate about AR”. The whole discussion become a political field. Opacity/Tower of AR is a problem: AR is elitist or considered as such.

      > there are different cultures of research: it gives space/time to certain practices, to different gestures, to safe spaces.

      > teaching as artistic researcher in Institution A, in relationship to the question of secrecy as potential (from Table 3): Maybe the question of making AR public is a question of how it positions itself within a social environment not of how AR makes itself visible. If we think of AR as something that acts upon the world then AR is already public because it is in an environment. If we think about it as some kind of a pause, it carries some kind of secret knowledge. It is problematic if AR is a secret knowledge that is being produced and served as a finished dish. AR has the power to dwell in a non-articulated phase, but also share from that phase. Seen like this AR is maybe an attitude. I prefer calling is pre-articulation.

      > Focused on AR, productions and fair practices within the arts. There is not an opposition between the public and AR, but it can be a weaving together with the public. One should not stay too long in the room, but share, get feedback and develop together with the public. Being artist and researcher is not a decoration, I think it's clear that is a real necessity of life. Neoliberal times makes seem the arts and AR useless. If so, then you can ask what is the legitimacy of all human endeavours (philosophy...), in the arts not everything should be productive.

       

      Table 4 Report

      Sina Seifee

      ► Practice Presentation

      The session was proposed in the spirit of conversation around the central question of transformation in regard to artistic institutions and their sustainability. In the process of transformations whole classes of questions, phenomena and forms of knowledge may be lost or rendered unthinkable. Institutional transformations can reorder our sense of value and structure in the world, as well as change the way we embed social norms. The aim of the discussion was to give more specificity the different kinds of transformation in question. The session began by asking the participants: what new forms of organization and community are emerging in your particular institutions? What power relations do they rely on, create, or destroy?

      During the session we talked about role of educational organizations in geopolitics as international relations influenced by geographical factors. The aspect of geopolitics relevant to this context can be defined as the question of who gets to move where at what cost. These topics were raised:

      • Inequality The notion of inequality was mainly understood and raised as financial inequality. And this was exemplified regarding the national borders of the European states where these institutions are located. Some of the participants postulated the implicit location of education within Europe's foreign policies. That means, how educational organizations becomes part of the decisions of inclusion/exclusion. One of the frontiers where this inequality was clearly felt in this discussion was visa applications and visa processes. This issue was raised in a wider series of questions regarding the distribution of wealth and privileges beyond national borders. Many involved institutions are ethically transnational, but contribute to the local. We talked about how the idea of "local" is shattered.
      • Scale (of administration) From the point of view of the administration workers present at the discussion, it seemed that larger organizations have more problems with the politics of inclusion/exclusion, with getting things done bureaucratically. The logistics and concerns of institutions dealing with inclusion change with their scale. Institutions are built within institutions, in a nested structure, causing the regulations to be conceived inside regulations. As the result of scaling up processes they do not always fit or continue to fit together. For instance, frictions occurs as one has transnational inclusion ethics, while the other has more domestic politics in mind. This friction can be felt in the ambivalence of support and limitation. As an institution gets larger in size (i.e. change in quantity), this leads to sometimes to a different logic (i.e. change in the quality of how it understands its world).

      Two distinct positions were articulated in the session:

      1. Solidarity and alignment. Working with the metaphors of "radical fairytale" (a form of radicalization, small but provoking thoughts), "flipping the coin" (how easy things can change to its opposite), and the "Fortress Europe" (the oversimplified question of "how to open Europe to foreigners"). This view operates by contentious direct-action approach to geopolitics in artistic research. Suggesting that we have to formulate the future and in doing so transcend our bad internationalism. The mentality of pushing our demands against the external social/systemic forces.
      2. Actor network perspective. Sometime having a "contact person" in the other institution from a different scale can do a lot for you. This contact person has to be cultivated and is achieved through heuristic talents of networking. In this view, you invest on networking and networks of relationships. The label "bureaucrat" was suggested as an inaccurate name for people with particular views and people with different privileges. Because you have to take feeling and emotions into account. For example you might find ways to have their "view" layered, and not necessary radically transform them.

      In this session we visited two modes of thinking togetherness in Europe: (1) internationalism, as mode in which one connects "among" the other actors. This position recognizes distance and domestic borders, but works in interaction with them. And (2), transnationalism, in which one thinks "beyond" what constitutes as difference and distance. The institution is invested in foreign operation, and acts beyond or across national boundaries.

       

       

       

       

      Open discussion after the presentation:

      > Notion of the (g)Local was important for the discussion. There were several positions on how to see this.

      > Framing was discussed, bad local and good local are possible. Not traveling makes us rethink the idea of local. But it is also food for a nationalist approaches. How would we work with this idea?

      >> this conference is a good example of how to think this

      > Good and bad digital was mentioned. In the future scenarios mobility will be restricted to the 1%, and big tech will have the only means to educate. There is a danger of not coming together anymore. Mobility is already exclusive if you consider visa restrictions.

      > How to create longer phases of engagement and alternatives time zones in order to engage deeply with a place? Nationalism is not about the local, but about a specific layer of the society.

      > Institutions are nodes of international attraction. Can we think further than that? There is no culture of AR in many places (example Italy). It is important to include other localities which do not have cultures of AR.

      >> for example the rural vs the urban, to include the rural.

      > Trans means to go *(active movement) beyond, while inter is inbetween *(stuck, passive). Transnational and not International

      > Institutions have a wish for inclusivity as long as it does not change the culture of AR. Inclusion must come with the courage to change standards.

      > An open definition of AR is not open in the sense of "whatever", but in the sense of being open to actualization and transformation.

       

      Summary of Day 3

      [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https:///www.apass.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Future-Research-Conferencefinal-overview-and-Q.mp4"][/video]

       

      Delphine Hesters

       

      In the last hour of this debate, Delphine Hesters presented her summary of the discussions of the day and outlined trajectories of the debate so far. She proposed a mapping (see picture) where she outlined and grouped the topics discussed during the Reporter's presentations along a future timeline for a speculative year 2035. Her main groupings were:

      Practices to give up:

      Institutions as service provider

      inequality

      hiding behind slowness

      quick fixes

      being in the position in which we have to legitimate ourselves

      constant measuring of time in order to remunerate

       

      Practices to nurture:

      set up continuous debates that don't have to be conclusive

      take advantage of the slowness of institutions - possibility of thorough-ness, resistance, dialogue. (debates need slowness)

      administration as care

      having principles of self-evaluation

      (formal) structures to make informality happen

      accommodate different „time zones“, also the different requirements of time that different practices need. (but the question of how to measure time stays, we still are in an approach to time as labour and labour as time. it is a trap for AR and arts)

      tweaking of the bureaucratic requirements, pirate versions of existing models

      ask yourself - who has to move where at what cost

      the institution should be public - share your archive, show how you change, how you work

      ask yourself - in which pond do you make ripples? which circles you want to create?

      map your entanglements, know your dependencies and autonomies

      weaving with the public

       

      Values:

      trust

      vulnerability

      transparency

      trans(nationality)

      radicality

      Think what could annihilate your institution

      Balance self care & being ready for change

      'being public' as acting upon the world

      Think in terms of currencies instead of positions and hierarchies

      approach to AR as both open and specific

       

      General Discussion

      The day concluded with reactions, feedback and proposals for next steps. Here is a transcript of that discussion, without naming the contributors. Direct reactions are marked with >, responses to comments with >>

      > Repetition of wealth - for you a visa is a right but that doesn't count for everyone

      > Transparency adding nuance - an institution is not a homogeneous space, which moves within different worlds, there is also the importance to resist having to share everything,

      >> The demand for transparency comes from a lack of trust.

      >> Maybe also the idea of visibility and transparency as a system of control

      >> Transparency has to do with control, but also it is about complexity. For a lot of administrative people this is a mountain they have to move. Trying to communicate the artistic field to the administrative field, and the other way around. Like speaking different languages. Not necessarily about ill will. Maybe something for administrative artistic research.

      > The notion of safe space was dropped a couple of time, and I wonder to what extent the need for safe space is reserved for AR, or if it is intrinsic to the field of education.

      > Maybe all these things relate to institutions in general, any of these relate to artistic research as a discipline?

      > When we talk about visibility and communication it raises a lot of question about responsibility, who holds this safe space? Art is also social, modes of representation is really a task within AR. This is also a question of practices. It sounds abstract - bringing practices together. This is a selection process, if we are in the pre-articulated space, bringing practices together, articulating to each other.

      >> As an artistic researcher at a.pass my personal motivation was the possibility of taking a break. The shelter was needed to fail, if things were visible all the time, this would have been impossible. Being visible and producing artworks that nobody needs

      > Maybe we could think beyond binaries visible-invisible, etc, more think along the lines of what visibility should be, or transparency should be, determining what according to us is visibility, instead of letting it be determined for us

      > Measure of having no family or role model to look up to, in a queer way, from someone who mainly does research through queer perspectives. In these queer times it is interesting to be more radical, think more about negative decision making, thinking what is no longer sustainable, in the last ten years these MA PhDs didn’t give us perspectives that are useful in current years. Continuing is a luxury that very few will have.

      > First of all my gratefulness, because I didn’t want to go to AR conferences anymore. I really enjoyed the optimism. We missed the word queer in the last 3 days, but it is important to keep these spaces safe and open at the same time. Heard something many times and mentioned often in other AR conferences: also academics are coming our way to do artistic research. Important not to think within categories, we really have something to offer that transcends what we consider to be artistic research.

      > One aspect that I want to bring in or back, is that the future of AR has to rethink its notion of access in a radical way. What we have, no matter how hard we try its always based on conditions. What could be modes of unconditional access for researches, which doesn’t jeopardize the safe space and secrecy. Maybe this can cross the binary of the institution

      >> ’(digital) commons' :)

      >> what makes us want to say yes to this environment, and what do we lose with this unconditional access?

      >> something about the unconditional. There is multiplicity of societies that need specific access points. If we streamline we use very broad terms that a lot of people don't feel connected to.

      > Back to the question of transparency. We should define for ourselves, what it means for us. Delphine already mentioned it: sharing our vulnerability. Sharing of vulnerability brings us closer to the ethics of artistic researchers. Often we feel a big gap between the way the institution functions and the ethics of researchers inside of it. Institution introducing itself as a research in itself. There the ethics of the institution and the researchers in it come together. In that respect some us wouldn’t need to enter an institution in order to protect ourselves, because there would be a culture of risks, we wouldn't need to withdraw.

      > I was wondering about the notion of academia. I have read papers and essays from people at universities and they really transformed my thinking. How, if academia is so bad, they produce such amazing things?

      what happens to the sleepwalker if the world is on fire?

      Delphine Hesters than asked into the round:

      What can we do together? Continue to do together? And for what purpose?

      > We need to talk about the selection process at the part of the institution. It counteracts unconditional access.

      > Getting rid of labour or reformulating labour relations - if we open up the floodgates of imagination there are some things we will lose is social production.

      > Something institutions can consider is conditions of production. People don’t pay attention to what we are producing but the way we are producing. If we remember that the Israeli army reads situationist international: What are we contributing to neo-liberalism. It needs to be politicized. We have an expanded form of democracy coming our way, and we should think about how we are going to contribute to that, as researchers.

      > We need not only researchers or institutions people in our work groups, also managers and administrators.

      > What we need from both sides is a bit of courage. Art is in underdog position vs a terminator.

      > We started from an unspoken understanding of Artistic Research is and now have arrived at the question of not only what "artisitc" is but of what it should do. Independent of our disagreement about what Artistic Research is, its definitions should keep transforming for the future similar to the way in which art also always transforms.

      > Translations always have obscure sides and transparencies. I think it is important to talk together. AR's responsibility of searching it's own limits, and it this sense it's a contribution to the world.

       

       

      Conclusion

      A much needed conversation

      The three days of the conference were a multifaceted, engaged discussion on Artistic Research Institutions, an impression which was supported by many contributors and participants in the their feedback. The perspective of the institutions, installed here as a result of the benchmark process, created a much needed productive conversation around common concerns. There was a shared feeling that institutions do not exchange enough on that level: eye to eye as organizers and facilitators. Being able to discuss, self-critique, be open and constructive about the difficulties and pitfalls of organizing institutions is important to the field of artistic research and its current economical, educational and administrative context.

      ► expand

      While this institutional perspective allowed for a discussion among institutions and was a welcome change from discussions within their singular hierarchies of art education, there was also a shared agreement that this institutional perspective can only be a start of a larger series of conversations. An area of discussion that deserves its own focus is the question of how Artistic Research enters into the larger context of art and cultural institutions and the broader social context. Representatives from the broader field have participated in this conference and there is an urgency to continue to understand the work of Artistic Research as it ventures beyond the institutions which support it. The other important topic would be the artists' and students' perspective on Artistic Research and the institutions they take part in. This perspective should become the main focus of a next conference.

       

      Community

      A common point during conference was to pay more attention to the responsibilities of institutions of artistic research as community instigators. How can we continue to care for the researchers and concerns which leave the institution? How can we support the emergent community of artistic researchers and their professional networks? How can we support them as they in their turn instigate and interact with the communities outside the educational field? To accomplish this the institutions should not only connect among themselves, but foster a larger cultural network of Artistic Research that includes cooperatives, venues, social and activist initiatives.

       

      Administration as Care

      The perspective of care was also important in the discussions around administrative concerns. In these discussions administration was often framed as care. Administration actively co-creates the space of indeterminacy which Artistic Research relies on to be able to find its own limits, definitions and processes. This space is constantly foreclosed by educational regulations which operate from more traditional assumptions and policies of art education and research. To push against those boundaries and to reshape the regulatory structures from within is the work of administration in the institutions.

       

      Access

      Accessibility needs to be continually addressed as we develop these conversations. Here the administration also plays an important role, as it is the place where not only the conditions of access to the institution are being defined but also where the work of making them more permeable happens: negotiations around insurance, visa- and administrative regulations allow for the legal persona of the artistic researcher to exist within the administrative frameworks. Other processes of institutional access have to do with an understanding of the institutions as a resource for the larger community. How can institutions continue to develop modalities of sharing this resources alongside with the already existing admission policies? Admission policies are themselves in question: we have to pay even more attention to whom does our call for proposals reach and on which basis do we prioritize certain proposals over others in a field that is as amorphous as Artistic Research. To work on access we could question the call procedure as an accepted standard and discuss other potential models.

       

      Visibility

      The processes of making visible of artistic research is at the center of the questions of its relationships to a larger context and also contributes a further point to the discussion of access. On the one hand institutions of Artistic Research are seen as precious safe spaces, away from visibility and allowing for time and a place to experiment, fail and explore. On the other side of this argument is the question of contribution to the social and political sphere. How can we not lose sight of both necessities? Can a rethinking of publication as a modality of entering the public sphere contribute to this discussion? What kind of collaborations can be formed to share processes of investigation that go beyond production of art and the academic paper?

       

      Practice, Discipline, Methodology, Field

      The conference clearly showed (again) that many paralleled conceptions of what Artistic Research is and what it should do exist in the field. There were several calls to try and agree on a preliminary common idea of what we are talking about, while already going forward with the discussion of the implications of this practice in the field. Any further meeting on this topic should address a specific conceptualization of Artistic Research as a temporary proposal in order to facilitate deeper and more contextualized discussions of its processes and politics.

      During the conference two parallel modes of reaching this temporary commonality became apparent: One perspective argued that Artistic Research is inseparable from its search for its limits and meaning. This argument stems from a similar process of continued transformation of art as a cultural practice. It could be argued from this perspective that it is more important to share how artistic research is done that what it is. This "doing otherwise" is itself a valuable contribution to artistic, social and political fields. The other perspective on commonality or diversity of definitions is oriented by the question whether Artistic Research is an emergent discipline in its own right or a methodology which can be applied within exiting (research) disciplines. This might be a foundational question for institutions of artistic research and their self conceptualization, as it works in different ways within the tensions between their conceptual and artistic autonomy and educational policies.

       

      Outcomes

      For a.pass, as the instigator of this conference, some immediate and some longterm outcomes and commitments follow from this conference. This report will become a part of our evaluation process and application for funding for the next five years. We have proposed a so-called Steering Group to become a part of the a.pass structure. Our wish is that this group will – in two annual meetings – become a satellite of the institution and create a space for shared reflection, critique and continuity for a.pass as a research in education. The Steering Group is a step towards a greater permeability and will be a critical dialogue partner for the institution. It will engage a group of potential a.pass contributors from the larger field of artistic research including representatives from partner institutions, social initiatives and alumni.

      The institutions participating in this conference have expressed a clear desire to continue this conversation. A next step would be to make proposals of how this continuity could be installed. a.pass will engage in exploring the topics of these discussion in further conferences and contribute to a continued process of collaboration with the participating institutions.

      Thank you!

      We would like to finish this report with a big "Thank You!" to all contributors and the engaged audience of this conference. We appreciated the commitment to discussion, doubt and supportive critique in the complicated circumstances of this year. We are looking forward to continue and to meet again!

       

       

      Post Conclusion

      As a small outlook, we have recently asked the a.pass researchers why they chose Artistic Research as their field of work. Here is a small list of answers. We take them as seeds for a future conference on artists' perspectives on Artistic Research.

      To have time for a process, and work in a collective setting.

      To work with the patterns that research creates in artistic practice

      To be in dialogue with other researchers and colleagues.

      To share resources: in art practices resources are often use for the purpose of a singe artist or a singe project. In artistic research institutions resources can be shared and benefit more people.

      To understand our own process better: a self-anthropology of artistic labor.

      To practice clairvoyance

      To question the performance of authorship

      Hosting and crossing of disciplines, to engage in transdisciplinary practice. To engage with disciplines as conflictual zones.

      To engage in and share failures

      To unlearn productivity, to understand productivity not as a goal but as a contingent pattern of practice, a moment of crystallization. To split productivity from practice.

      To position artistic practices within society and away from producing products for society

      To understand the agency of a cut.

       

       

       

       

       

      Comments

      Please leave your comments and feedback in this collective pad

       

       

       

    •  

       

       

      DIALOGUE

       

       

      I have a proposal to deal with this portfolio: both of us will sit at our tables and we will write to each other on a common document. The conversation will be slowed down by the timing of the writing while we will look back together to this year and a half in A.PASS, from September 2018 until January 2020. In this period we have been leading a continuous conversation between us, which is maybe the smallest brick of the whole process. And I love small talk.

      Let’s try. In time we have been asked many times to show the process of our reciprocal editing. We were sort of reluctant to be explicit about it in the beginning. Or we just thought that the two voices were already very clearly different, that they didn’t need to be further explicated. Or maybe we thought that it was just impossible to say who did what. 

      We’ll see if we’ll manage to enter some small talk in here!

       

       

       

      I Block//School of Love

      curated by Adva Zakai

      (September-December 2018)

       



      What do you remember about the beginning?

       

      I think that we started from the end. At the beginning we stopped. Maybe we were supposed to start but we didn’t. 

       

      We first tried to see where were we. What and in which shape, through which language we could relate to the context. We observed our practices, questions, our doing in relation to the new context of A.PASS and of the researchers that were there in that moment.

      We used the first four months to suspend our doing. We looked back at our artistic practice and research, we renamed it, we rephrased it.  

      Do you remember what was the question when we started?

       

      We had many questions, actually. At the beginning our work consisted mainly in formulating questions. Most of them would concern time, attention, peripheries, noise and translations.

       

       

      What is there?

      Is it possible to transform the perception of the instant in the construction of a duration?

      What is such a translation?

      What is noise?

      Why should the periphery of the perception become the center of the research?

      How can the center remain open?

      What is sacred?

       

       

      Are some of these words still with us? Did some of them change?

       

      Now that you brought back these questions I can see again that we started from the end. From this last question. 

      What is sacred?

      If I look back to it, I think that we tried to stay close to what was sacred to us. 

      I would say that what was sacred was the distance between us. We didn’t know how to name this alterity which is the unknown space between me and you.

       

      The distance is what allows being together.

      The distance is the space/time in between things.

      The distance is the space and the time between me and the other. If we can look at the distance, if we can perceive it, we can look at what we share. All that we share is this “in between” which is the distance.

      It is not only possible being together despite distances, but it is possible being together only thanks to these distances.

      The distance is what determines the relationship.

      Walking is a measure maybe.

      When I walk without knowing where I am going, without knowing the path, with no project, I accept the existence of an other, something I don't know.

      Not knowing is an obstacle between me and the other.

      It is the obstacle that allows me to see the other as different from me.

      Not knowing is a distance between me and the other, that I can run across.

      I can run across this distance thanks to its opacity.

      If it were transparent I would not see it, I could not run across it. I could only pass through it, without noticing it and without reflection, with no clash.

      Not knowing is a distance.

      A distance is opaque.

      Opacity allows me to meet the other.

       

      “Space was holy to

      the pilgrims of old, till plane

      stopped all that nonsense”

      (W. H. Auden)

      “Distance” and “opacity” are two specific concepts that influence very much our work. They were related to the problematic relationship between “center” and “ periphery”, which caused us many discussions. Actually for us these terms were time-related concepts. I can consider the peripheries only if I take the time to distance the usual path. The operation we were interested in was the dilation of time which allows previously unconsidered possibilities to emerge. Between our artistic practices, indeed, artistic research is for us a tool for self-critique. We got then interested in framing self-critical institutions, which would be institutions that are conscious about their situatedness and complexity, that allow space for self-sabotage and reframing. 

      A is not equal to A.

       

      We wrote the following two texts for a writing score Adva proposed at the beginning of the block: “How would the future be, if your artistic research would have taken over the world?”

       

       

      The world will exist in the interrogative form.

      The end will be close to us

      and we might be friends.

       

      We will learn from flowers:

      the truth about every man is that 

      he/she is about to die.

       

      Nothing will be equal to nothing.

      Everything will be 

      incommensurable

      irreplaceable

      incontrovertible

      irrecoverable

      irreparable

      irredeemable.

      -Money will be the principle of irreality-

       

      The dance of the dead will shape the light of the fire of the living ones.

       

      There will be no evolution, no revolution. We will keep on turning.

       

      We will wander in those utopian regions, placed somewhere and nowhere, between an infinite tenderness and an infinite solitude.

       

      Every road will be a cemetery

      and, in the crackles of the asphalt,

      there will be our little fallen flowers

      our masters

      our dead.

       

      There will be a desire hidden in every thing.

       

      We will become small

       - small, in order not to lose each other.

      ---

      Revolution is going on.

      It will walk in the forest. 

      It will breath, smell, look.

      It will be as an idiot. It will not know, like now, as a pioneer. It will say: I will not know but I will believe.

      It will be an animal. It will look around modifying the shape of its body to enter the forest.

      Attentively it will touch and get touched by the other. With no name, it will mutate and multiply, and it will continuously reverse the point of observation during its dance of attention.

      It will be multidimensional, it will be inhabited by a multitude of spectres corporeal and impalpable at the same time.

      It will not do a lot. It will not have anything to add.

      It will move with caution through words, bodies and light. It will be mostly silent.

      It will be stumbling, transforming judgement into motion.

       

       

       

      II Block//Troubled Gardens

      curated by Nicolas Galeazzi

      (May-August 2019)

      I would say that with the video “And the woods all around” we framed our use of the words center and periphery and, thanks to this restriction, something else broke in the scenario. 

      How did this framing transform these words? Would you say that, looking at it now, it made us move to the structure of the frame itself?

       

      We wanted to get rid of a problem we didn’t know how to solve. The dichotomy center/periphery seemed inadequate but still we wanted to use those words out of that geometrical/hierarchical relationship. According to the curatorial proposal of the block, we had to embody a question we were struggling with, give it in “adoption” to someone else and then eventually receive it transformed somehow by the “adopting researcher”. We created this video in order to hand our question to someone else and, in the moment we made it, the supposed content disappeared. What emerged instead was the problematic relationship between the artistic research and its documentation, which brought us back to the practice of framing self-critical institutions.

       

      This is how we started to look at the frame and observed where and how it would raise questions. We looked at the framed document as a "material", in Tim Ingold's terms: not as a fixed object that would encapsulate and preserve a point of view from the past, but as a malleable flux of possibilities. We tried to understand what kind of relationship it could open for the future. What did it do, for example, to call this video a "document"? What did it do to us, to observe it through its institutions (e.g. the video format, the website on which its accessible...etc)? What did it do to look at it from the situated context we were working in during the block - the "troubled" Zsenne Garden?

       

      Talking about self critical institutions, in this case the video attempts to show the complex cluster of media involved and the situatedness of their performativity. There is not a single possible mapping of this material, it aims to be open to critique and it does not pretend to have a “form” different from its “content”. For sure there has been a strong relationship between this operation and the fact that we were working in a permaculture garden.

       

      Twelve Permaculture design principles articulated by David Holmgren in his Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability:

       

      1. Observe and interact

      2. Catch and store energy

      3. Obtain a yield

      4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

      5. Use and value renewable resources and services

      6. Produce no waste

      7. Design from patterns to details

      8. Integrate rather than segregate

      9. Use small and slow solutions

      10. Use and value diversity

      11. Use edges and value the marginal

      12. Creatively use and respond to change

      We realized that there is no map from the outside and as soon as we try to create a document, a map, we are changing the landscape we are in.In the book "What would the animals say if we would ask to them the right questions?” Vinciane Despret observes how observers observe the animals. The way the observer position him/herself in the landscape changes the reality itself.

      I remember you wrote a story when you were at highschool. Can you write it down here?

      I love your stories.

       

      Which story? 

       

      The one about distance.

       

      It would have worked well before, actually, when we were writing about distance!

       

      Now we are far enough to read it.

       

      You are right.

       

      One day, the teleportation was invented. At first it was possible to transport datas anywhere, instantaneously and with no mistake. Then it became possible to teleport objects and eventually human beings too. That day humanity faced extinction.

      You are particularly concerned by the future...

       

      My affect towards the future is related to the fact that at a certain moment I started to realize that this word, “future”, wasn’t used anymore.I remember the future as science-fiction: it is amazing to think of unpredictable possibilities to come, to imagine them. For a long period, in Italy at least, we didn’t use that word anymore. Many generations of children without the word future in their bodies. In that moment I started to use it again, to say it, to see if it was possible to feed it and open for it new directions/horizons.

      What I love about your story is that it shows how errors are those that allow us to relate to something, to engage with it - until death. The story also suggests that when the space-time is reduced to zero, there is no more other to relate to. This reminds me of what Byung Chul-Han calls "the society of transparency", where the "dictatorship of the self" doesn't allow any otherness to exist. If there is no otherness, there is nothing I can imagine anymore...This is the way I perceive things now, at least.

       

      It seems that without accident there is no event. Without error there is no possible development. We are stuck playing the same scene again and again, if nothing goes wrong. The point is that we don’t have any direct access to the future, of course. In the present we have only access to the past and this means that in order to introduce some difference, we have to mess it up, lose something and highlight something else. We have to edit it. We actually do this anyway, since we are not omnipotent and omniscient. It’s about recognizing that any “closed” view of/from the past is not only impossible, but also undesirable.

       

      We can design maps for the future. These are not meant to be "true", neither as objective points of view from the past, nor as consistent pre-views of the future. Once we have them, though, they will start to influence us.

       

      Maybe they are not “true” now, but by drawing them they might become true in the future!

      A chair is not so much designed by the way my body “spontaneously” sits, but rather it tells me how to sit.

      This is exciting. And it works the same for the way we look at things, the way we formulate questions, the way we perceive things...etc. These activities are also designed by what surrounds us,

       

      And it seems logical that documents are especially involved in designing future practices. This turns a little upside down the cause-effect logic and the linear perspective of time. Sometimes I feel that something “comes from the future”, that it is not related so much to a “now” that has already been, but rather to a “now” that is yet to come. Like in Aristotle's “final cause” theory - which appears quite bizarre to our actual common sense. Talking about things from the past that seem to come from the future...

       

      There comes my fascination for the figure of the augur. For the ancient italic populations the augur was a priest that  would read the will of the gods in the flight of the birds. He would go to the “templum” to do so. The “templum” was a portion of time and space from which he could read the birds flights.The “templum” was actually each one of the lines traced by the augur to frame the sacred space, a "cut" into space and time, a temporary suspension that allowed a reflection, a reading - the word "temple" comes from "templum", which derives from the ancient greek "temno=to cut". Also "tempo" (“time” in Italian) has the same origin. The augury embodies the action of taking a position from which, by observing what is there, it is possible to relate with different kinds of time simultaneously. You have to go in that position though, you have to move towards that place. An effort is needed. This is the frame where a suspension can happen. It is a time inside the time itself. It is what Agamben calls “Messianic time”. The time of contemplation. Contemplating is then holding this position. It is about staying with what is there, with what comes, through a specific frame. If the way I position myself can transform what is there - and therefore the future itself -, then the contemplation is a active and political state of being. I like to talk of “contemplative activism”.

       

      I can see a strong relationship between artistic research and faith. You have to believe that something good will come out of it even if you can’t say exactly what and how. Nicolas’ proposal for the block, the “Adoption”, was very precise in this sense. To give away a piece of your work and to believe that it will be fruitful for it to be put in someone else's hands, you need faith. You can only take care, give all your attention to what you receive, and hope that the others will do the same. 

       

       

      A: Adopting is a big challenge.

      B: To receive back the material we left.

      A: To give up expectation of realization.

      B: Can the documentation be originated by a script?

      A: We wanted to avoid narration.

      B: Why?

      A: The narration tends to identification, often.

      B: “This” is “this”.

      A: To put things in one line.

      B: How to avoid to do what we would have done anyway?

      A: I don't know what this book is.

      B: We don't know what it will be.

      A: We didn't finish it, yet.

      B: It's about avoiding linearity as the only option.

      A: What I wanted to do was not only to write a book, but also to create an experience...

      B: The problem is to translate these experiences we worked with.

      A: When we entered this space we really felt “home”.

      B: We are translating one's experience to the other.

      A: We are translating each other's experience to the other.

      B: We didn't see each other's presentation.

      A: But I slept in your bed...That's very intimate.

      B: How to translate something that's so close to me?

      A: To work with someone else's project and not mine-still working on what I am interested in.

      B: I have a strong tendency in reacting.

      A: To embrace something that doesn't belong to me even when it starts hurting.

      B: “Maybe it's still possible, maybe it's still possible...”

      A: To work with the resistance, not against it.

      B: To move out of the landscape, to see how can I relate to it and then to move back in.

      A: It's not only to zoom in and out, but also to blur the lines.

      B: You don't know what belongs to whom.

      A: I like this a lot.

      B: To show the responsibility in the adoption.




       

      III Block//A looming score_sharing politics of damage;

      curated by Lilia Mestre and Sina Seifee

      (September-December 2019)

       

       

      Our third and last block has also been centered on an “adoption” process. This time, though, we would share some materials and we would adopt the other’s questions. The first thing we shared was a video which put together some shooting we did at Zsenne Garden during the summer and a text that we developed later on. 

       

      This video is a translation of a map we realised to observe the garden. This map would put in relation the landscape with the words we wrote about what our research would do in the future. My affect, when I arrived in Zsenne garden, was a portion of sky in between the trees. Being inside, immersed in the industrial area of Brussels, I could still have access to a vertical horizon. Then we imagined a conversation of the Augur with the birds.

       

      I liked the question Rui wrote for us after seeing the video:

       

      In the video, there are treetops framing the sky with clouds and the birds’ flight (frame inside the frame). There are dialogues between 2 non-visible characters (A and B) written on the surface of the image (these characters are around, in a place out of the frame but close to the borders, or not)? There are sounds of things out of the frame, but these things belong to that environment (a sound of something out of the frame could be from what is around or not). Is this set of things made for us to see the birds and the sky in a proper way or to see something else? The strength of your frame is centripetal (to the documented objects, even if it is multicenter) or centrifugal (there is an idea of whole, “from here_to_there”)? Is the documentation about something in the frame… or something around… or something else?

       

      I wouldn't be able to give him a singular answer. I liked though the idea of a centrifugal force, which preserves the possibility to have a central object of attention, but at the same time it indicates the presence of vectors - within the same system - that tear it apart, that spread it all over the place. Being the frame of the camera an institution, that looks like the description of a self-critical institution to me. 

      What got less clear, then, was if this had to be considered a “document” or not...but at this point investigating the definition of “documentation” was not the main issue for us...

       

      We wanted to re-open these documents, to see if and where there was space for us to enter. We slowly throughout the block tried to create space between the materials, between the documents, among the way they were translating each other in order to observe what kind of movement, what kind of dance they would bring.

       

      If the “form” and the “content” of the document cannot be separated, the documentation corresponds to its staging. We moved from “documentation” to “memory”, not as the ability to preserve in one’s brain the image of past objects and events, but as a highly performative operation that makes the past and the future converge in the present experience.  

       

      I have all the ages at the same time in my body. Memory is an agent on the present. Memory enlarges the space of what is here and now transforming a linear perception of going forward, of flowing, of proceeding, in a multidimensional and multitemporal landscape.

       

      Memory embodies distance and opacity.

      Before A.PASS we had been working a lot with games. How did they come back in?

       

      I always used games. It is a way to be with others. A game is a way to be fully involved and light at the same time. Whoever knows the rules can have access. And accessibility was an important point of our discourse as well.

       

      And rules also have very often the form of a “map”

      a game is a map

      a frame

      a self-critical institution

       

      you can put the game there, in the middle

      it’s clear that even if it is your game once you play it is not about you, it is about this middle space which is in between you and the others

      and I need the others to be different

      and see the difference

      which is the distance that allows us being together

       

      We were very happy to work with scores during this block: I would say that scores are a specific kind of games. To design scores was a great way to work on the staging of a map. The score draws a specific landscape, but - if it’s well designed - something unexpected will often emerge. The rules of the score are the “templum”, the suspension in space and time that dilate time and nourish our faculty of attention, just like the frame of the camera and the limits of the stage.



      NAME IT/Writing Score

       

      [There is a table. Two laptops on it. Two silent writers facing the public. One projector shows a blank page with the text on the wall behind the table. The public is witnessing]

       

      - You look, you sense, you feel everything which is happening in the room. Everything means 

      everything that catches your attention. Everything that emerges through you in relation with what is around you. Your writing is not traveling too far nor too close from where you are.

      - You can take your time, trust and write it down. 

      - You have to write 1st person, singular or plural - for example, if you see someone entering the space and saying hello to a friend you could write: "I entered the space, I said hello to my friend".

      - If by looking, smelling, sensing, perceiving the way you want what is around you a memory or a thought emerge, then take it as part of the space and write it down. Through this digression, you can distance yourself from what is around you and then come back.

      - The other writer is at your side writing with you on the same page. Try to consider it.

       

      I AM HERE. 

      ARE THOSE VOICES, THAT I AM HEARING?

      I AM READING. 

      I ENTERED BY THE ENTRANCE DOOR, AND NOW I'M IN. SITTING. 

      I REMEMBER STANDING FOR SOMETHING. 

      CAN I STAND FOR SOMETHING NOW? NOW SITTING? 

      I CAN FEEL YOU AT MY SIDE I CAN SEE YOU. 

      HOW MANY METERS OF AIR OVER MY HEAD? 

      I'M FLOATING, THE HEAD IN THE AIR. 

      I'M MOVING MY HANDS.

      I BREATH. THE HEART IS BEATING. 

      ONCE I SAW MY HEART IN THE ECOGRAPHY SCREEN. 

      BEATING. OPENING AND CLOSING. 

      LIFE IS STRANGE THROUGH A SCREEN.

      I'M WRITING. 

      MY GAZE WANDERS ACROSS THE DETAILS

      IS IT GOING TO END SOON?

       

       

      A fellow researcher in A.PASS, Adriano, asked us:

       

      A promise of observation. Observation from you - of what concerns most of us.

      You were sitting next to each other. Soft, patient, listening. An analogue complicity situated between one big and two smaller screens.

      Descriptions turn "poetic" "I'M FLOATING, THE HEAD IN THE AIR." "I REMEMBER STANDING FOR SOMETHING.

      CAN I STAND FOR SOMETHING NOW? NOW SITTING?" "HOW MANY METERS OF AIR OVER MY HEAD?".

      Not much is written, is this writing an excuse for sharing time/presence? For sitting next to each other and in front of us, while the laptops offer a small protection from full exposure and/or transparency.

      If that is so, what is the minimum of text and screen needed to give a cover for presence?

       

      We are interested in situations that are at the same time an exposure and a concealment. We wanted to show something that was clear and incomprehensible, intimate and universal. We imagined that “what is there” from my unique and ephemeral point of view, could be at the same time a paradoxical Manifesto.

       

      We tried to write a text that would manifest the operation we were doing through the score. That’s why it is a manifesto. It manifests a reality from a specific point of view, which is a map, or a game. In the score the sabotage is included. 

       

      To explore further the idea of “sabotage” we wrote an actual manifesto informed by our documentation criteria and created an “editing score” to make other people enter into it, moving it away from us and making it opaque again.

       

      WE ARE IDIOTS - MANIFESTO FOR NOW/Editing Score

       

      [There is a table. Two laptops on top of it. There are two people: the “writer” is facing the public; the “reader” is sitting with his laptop facing the writer. Two projectors overlap their projections on the wall behind the writer. One of the two is projecting a very slow motion video of an almost invisible, overexposed, white goat. The other one projects the white page on which the writer is writing a text - which occupies exactly that one page:

       

      I AM HERE NOW

      I TAKE A POSITION

      I REVEAL MY POSITION

      I AM AT THE ENTRANCE THE DOOR IS OPEN I ENTER

      I CAN RUN FROM HERE TO THERE FOLLOWING  STRAIGHT LINE

      I AM CLEAR NOW

      I AM THE SHADOW I MAKE

      I AM HERE

      I LOOK THROUGH THIS FRAME

      I AM IN THE FRAME

      I AM THE FRAME

      I MAKE THE FRAME

      I FRAME INSTITUTIONS

      I MOVE BORDERS AGAIN AND AGAIN

      I AM ONE

      I AM MANIFOLD

      I AM MULTIPLE

      I AM FOCUSED

      I AM PERIPHERAL

      I TAKE TIME IF NECESSARY

      I TAKE TIME

      LA VACHE EST UN HERBIVORE QUI A DU TEMPS POUR FAIRE LE CHOSE

      I TAKE THE TIME IT TAKES

      I AM AN IDIOT

      I AM A PIONEER

      I  DO WITH WHAT IS THERE

      I UNDO WITH WHAT IS THERE

      I MANIFEST WHAT IS THERE

      I ACCEPT WHAT IS THERE

      I ACCEPT NOISE

      I NEED NOISE

      I TRUST OPACITY

      I TRUST YOU

      I TRUST

      I BELIEVE IN THE PRESENT AS A PROMISE

      I BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE AS A LEGACY

      I BELIEVE IN COMPLEXITY

      I BELIEVE IN MAGIC

      FORSE L'AMORE E' CONTINUARE IL DISCORSO DI UN ALTRO



      After the writer finishes to write the text, the score starts.]

      - When the writer stops writing the “manifesto”, the public can start editing it

      - One by one, the people in the public can whisper in the writer’s ear up to 5 elements to cancel choosing between words, letters and empty spaces. The writer cannot discuss if the indication is not clear: he/she has to find a solution alone.

      - The reader keeps on reading out loud the “manifesto” while it is being edited, following its transformations until the end of the score. When he/she reaches the end, he/she starts back from the beginning.

      - When the public stops editing, a new text is done and the score ends.


      [21st November 2019, Bruxelles]

       

      I AM NOW 

      POSITIVE THE DOOR THERE FOLLOWING A STRAIGHT LINE

      I AM CLEAR NOW, I AM THE SHADOW I MAKE

      HERE

      THROUGH THIS FRAME

      ME

      I AM THE FRAME

      I MAKE THE FRAME

      I BODER AGAIN AND AGAIN

      I AM ONE OLD PERIPHERY

      I TAKE TIME

      DU TEMPS POUR FAIRE LES CHOSES

      IT TAKES AN IDIOT

      I AM WITH WHAT IS THERE

      I UNDO WITH WHAT IS THERE

      I MANIFEST WHAT

      I ACCEPT NOISE

      NOISOPACITY

      US

      THE PRESENT AS THE FUTURE MAGIC

      FORSE L'AMORE E' CONTINUARE    

       

      “Maybe love is continuing the discourse of another” wrote the Italian poet Milo De Angelis.

      I think that our experience in A.PASS had a lot to do with this. Giving attention to the other, adopting the other’s work, letting the other’s work enter yours, in a dialogue. 

      It is so precious to nourish our critical sense by continuing a discourse, without burning it.

      In the end it is really not about me and you, nor the others. It is about the discourse. 

      And, as always, it is a matter of love to make it last a little longer.

       

      Thanks to A.PASS. Participating has been a big privilege.

      Thanks to: Lilia Mestre, Nicolas Galeazzi, Pierre Rubio, Vladimir Miller, Joke Liberge, Steven Jouwerma, Michele Meesen. Thanks to all the mentors and participants and fellow researchers present, past and future.

      This is not the end.

       

       

    • Research portfolio for finishing a.pass:
      Download here: Sina Seifee dossier for a.pass end-communication.pdf

      In this dossier I am working towards an outline of my interrelated research practices in a preliminary character, the intersection of trajectories which I am just at the beginning of any kind of understanding. It contains grains of analysis, different styles of noting, but mainly, it is a try to create hybrid objects of study. As my work is “about” ajayeb (short for Ajayeb al-Makhlughat, medieval bestiary), also precisely, it can never be only about that. My research’s curiosity must also be inclusive of, more than a few but not too many, distributed agencies in layers of locals and globals, tongues and timescales. in my work, figuring, constructing an “angle of arrival” for ajayeb, I am trying to carefully approach the notions of emergence, process, historicity, difference, specificity, and by that, teach myself an artful practice rich with cohabitation, coconstitution, and contingency. 

       

      [embed]https://vimeo.com/239993483[/embed]

       

       

       

       

    • research portfolio
    • Caterina Mora / The thing called "Portfolio" "why" this is "what" it is?
      04 September 2019
      posted by: Caterina Mora
    • case of: Caterina Mora
    •   p o r t a f o l i o     --> qui porte les folios, que pliega la research, that pretends question the vertical format  

      September 2019

       


      El "pensamiento" que pliega la research

      The thing [THINK] called "Portfolio"

      An essay, 

      Portfolios are mandatory published from January 2019 (there are just six others Portfolios in a.pass web before us). 

      I am in the "thanks" of others´s Portfolios, that´s why I start with the "thanks". 

      I am Caterina Mora and  I am listening this argentinian cumbia ( come closer please, click here).

      I invite you to listen it. 

      Welcome

      This Portfolio refuses to be in a PDF format because it refuses to being seen as something vertical and fixed.

      This Portfolio has a lot of HIPERLINKS.

      It might have grammar mistakes. I am not sorry, but I don´t have budget to ask for Proof reading. 

      This Portfolio doesn´t have pre-fixed order. You can look at it as you want (it is up to you). It is conceived as a transtructure determined by how apass has been transforming/changing/modifying me.

      That´s why there are evident thing and evidence. 

      You can enter through three options:

      chronological order block by block-CLICK HERE

      or the filter body practice-CLICK HERE

      or the filter "TRT" - CLICK HERE

      Gracias. 

      C

       

       

      ------

      THANKS

      apass team: Lilia, Nicolas, Pierre, Vladimir, Michele, Joke.

      Special thanks to our technical support, incredible artist of time and resolution: Steven.

      The participants: Leo Kay, Elen Braga, Eszter Némethi, Geert Vaes, Hoda Siahtiri, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens, Eleanor Ivory Weber,  Katinka Van Gorkum, Nassia Fourtouni, Goda Palekaitė, Christina Stadlbauer, Deborah Birch, Diego Echegoyen, Flavio Rodrigo, Amelie van Elmbt, Lucia Palladino, Mathilde Maillard, Muslin Brothers, Piero Ramella, Rui Calvo, Signe Frederiksen, Ana Paula Camargo.

      The companions of the End-Communications adventure: Laura Pante, Maurice Meewisse. 

      The helpers: Stefanía Assandri, Alexandre Ismail, Lucas Trouillard, Marina Pessino.

      People around me: Susana Paponi, Bernardo, Juan Carlos, Aphra Behn, Elvira Lopez, my family, Ana G., Angeli, María Martha, Ferchu, Josefina. Adela. Y Norbert.  

      Thanks to this specific places: apass 4th floor, apass 3rd floor, PAF (Saint-Erme, FR) rooms 167, 105, 117 and the garden, the Swamp School (Venice, IT), Unlearning Center (Fribourg, CH). 

      The mentors: Femke Snelting, Adva Zakai, Kristien Van den Brande, Vladimir Miller, Esteban Donoso, Juan Carlos Toth, Susana Tambutti, Kobe Matthys, Philipp Gehmacher, Philippine Hoegen, Timmy De Laet, Petra Van Brabandt, Sébastien Hendricks, Marie Bardet. 

       


       

      (you can start diretcly from here or coming back to the previous page)

      gracias

    • Developing tools and methodologies for a dramaturgical practice informed by somatics.

      I came to a.pass with a research upon dramaturgical practice with a focus on the initial phase of a creative process, namely the phase where things are not yet shaped, the phase of nothing.

      Having in mind the dialogical relationship in which most dramaturgical practices take place, the first scores I developed were about dialogue and conversation. Gradually, the scores and methodologies developed borrowed the form of a somatic lesson.

      In my work I bring together text and experiential anatomy, shaping an expanded dramaturgical practice that can vary in form and content depending on the given context. The aim is to facilitate the appearance of embodied aesthetic experience by addressing the inner sense.

      The practice manifests in installations, scores and somatic lessons. Also, it functions as a critical commentary on authorship and the seductive power of language, mainly in relation to the use of instructions.

      Link to the portfolio: Practicing Interstices by Nassia Fourtouni

    • Goda Palekaitė (b. 1987 Vilnius) is an artist and researcher whose work can be described as a combination of artistic, theatrical and anthropological practices. It evolves around long-term projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and collective imagination, and social conditions of creativity. Their outcomes usually manifest as performances, scenographies, installations, and texts. In the last year her projects have been presented at the “Swamp pavilion” in The Biennale Architettura 2018 in Venice, Contemporary Art Center (CAC) Vilnius, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, RawArt gallery in Tel Aviv and the Art Cube Artists’ Studios in Jerusalem, and Kanal Centre Pompidou in Brussels. In 2019 Palekaitė received The Golden Stage Cross - highest Lithuanian theatre award. PORTFOLIO:

      7 DREAMS WITH IMPLICATIONS by G_Palekaite_compressed (1)

      "During my time in a.pass I became increasingly interested in historical narratives and characters, who operated outside the official discourses, were seen as troublemakers, and excluded from the mainstream systems of knowledge. I am fascinated by the indistinguishable personal and political in the lives of these parrhesiastes, and the academic confusions their stories evoke. I propose seeing them as proto-artistic-researchers even though most of these people did not perceive themselves as artists, yet, I suggest their modes of operation to be comparable to those of some contemporary artists working today."

    • newscaption
      REMINDER

      @ Hacktiris (6th floor) - Rue Paul Devauxstraat 5, 1000 Brussel

      Doors open at 18:00
      There is food and drinks, bring some cash. 

      19:00 GODA PALEKAITĖ - How to Infuriate a Historian
      21:00 NASSIA FOURTOUNI - Waiting Room Meditation
      22:00 KATINKA VAN GORKUM - Distance Learning in Close Proximity


      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 and portfolio

       a.pass
      p/a de Bottelarij
      Delaunoystraat 58-60/p.o. box 17
      1080 Brussels/Belgium

      tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
      email: lilia@apass.be
      web: www.apass.be

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • Body Virtual Institution 30 April 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Nassia Fourtouni / Goda Palekaitė / Katinka Van Gorkum
    • Hacktiris (6th floor) - Rue Paul Devauxstraat 3, 1000 Brussel
    • 31 May 2019
    • 01 June 2019
    • Body Virtual Institution


       

      @ Hacktiris (6th floor) - Rue Paul Devauxstraat 3, 1000 Brussel

      Doors open at 18:00

      19:00 GODA PALEKAITĖ - How to Infuriate a Historian
      21:00 NASSIA FOURTOUNI - Waiting Room Meditation
      22:00 KATINKA VAN GORKUM - Distance Learning in Close Proximity


      Virtual Body Institution
      is the coming together of the 3 concepts that intertwine in the End-Presentations 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?

       

      Short description of the researches and links to the respective portfolios:

      Nassia Fourtouni

      is a dramaturg and dance researcher. She came to a.pass with a research upon dramaturgical practice with a focus on the initial phase of a creative process, namely the phase where things are not yet shaped, the phase of nothing.

      Having in mind the dialogical relationship in which most dramaturgical practices take place, the first scores she developed were about dialogue and conversation. Gradually, the scores and methodologies developed borrowed the form of a somatic lesson.

      In her work she brings together text and experiential anatomy, shaping an expanded dramaturgical practice that can vary in form and content depending on the given context. The aim is to facilitate the appearance of embodied aesthetic experience by addressing the inner sense.

      The practice manifests in installations, scores and somatic lessons.  Also, it functions as a critical commentary on authorship and the seductive power of language, mainly in relation to the use of instructions.

      For the a.pass end-communications, she is developing an in situ audio installation based on a score about the past, the present and the future of the building, using excerpts from texts by Virginia Woolf, Robert Walser and Ivan Illich.

      https:///www.apass.be/profile/practicing-interstices/

       

      Goda Palekaitė

      is an artist and researcher whose work can be described as a combination of artistic, literary and anthropological practices. Her long-term projects explore the construction mechanisms of historical narratives, political agency of dreams and imagination, and social conditions of creativity. Their outcomes usually manifest as performances, installations, scenographies, and texts.

      In the context of a.pass Goda continued her investigations on the construction of historical and political ideologies, and the agency of imagination in processes of legitimization and instituting. Her interest lies in narratives, stories and characters of diverse identities, which operated outside the official discourses, and were seen as troublemakers. These people did not see themselves as artists, neither have they had a place in art history; yet Goda sees their modes of operation as comparable to those of some contemporary artists working today.

      For the End Communications event at a.pass she is writing a script and directing a performance-conference where three of such characters meet. The debate will take place between a 19th century Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, the ancient Greek female poet Sappho and a controversial Jewish-Muslim writer and journalist Essad Bay. This semi-scripted debate will manifest as a live discussion between three contemporary artists and researchers whom Goda encountered within the context of a.pass: Nicolas Galeazzi, Marialena Marouda, and Sina Seifee. They will embody the characters, yet contributing with their own practice.

      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=103

       

      Katinka Van Gorkum

      is a visual artist interested in the (domestic) interior as a figure for interiority. Previous work includes video, performance and installations, all with a strong physical component. She arrived at a.pass with a desire to explore further the concept of home and how it's being shaped by ideas, ideologies, theory and philosophy. Besides that, she felt the need to dematerialize her art practice, experiencing difficulties with the inflexibility, heaviness (literally) and the origin of the materials she used. She also had questions about her work as a single-use artwork and art as an ecological act.

      She started working with the 3D design program SketchUp which is used by architects and designers. In this virtual environment she tries to exteriorize the interior. Working in virtual space further problematized the question of exteriorizing the interior and brought up questions concerning (dis)orientation, scale, groundlessness, perspective, entering and sharing an interior.

      Throughout the a.pass trajectory she has attempted multiple points and modes of entry to the spaces of the research. For the End Communications she intends to open the virtual research environments through a (lecture) performance and screen recordings of the SketchUp spaces, exploring the program as a tool for distance learning in close proximity.

      https:///www.apass.be/profile/dear-visitor-a-portfolio-by-katinka-van-gorkum/

       

       

    • end presentation
    • performative publishing
    • postgraduate program
    • Subtracted Seduction 07 January 2019
      posted by: Lilia Mestre
    • Adrijana Gvozdenović / Pia Louwerens / Eleanor Ivory Weber
    • Hectolitre
    • 01 February 2019
    • 02 February 2019
    • Subtracted Seduction

      On Friday 1 and Saturday 2 February 2019, from 18:00 to 22:00 Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens and Eleanor Ivory Weber present their artistic researches at the former swingers club, La Porte des Senses, today an art space called Hectolitre, to mark the end of their participation in the a.pass program.

      With Subtracted Seduction, their individual researches are framed through shared concepts such as anxiety, non-consensual collaboration, authorship and institutional critique. In each of the three approaches, narratives created through these symptoms of the contemporary artist are investigated. The romantic artist is negated and the multi-faceted artist materialises as both instigator and instigated, made up of multiple voices. The three researchers engage with the complexity of being both unnameable and contained in the knowledge-network immanent to the institution. There appears Subtracted Seduction.

      Gvozdenović, Louwerens and Weber all work with writing and performance. They use notions of script and publication as tools to reveal contexts as partners to the doing and thinking of artistic practice. The institutional is key to their approaches, both as a way to understand what predetermines the performativity of the artwork and in how it relates to issues of authorship. The question is often, "who is voicing?"

      Pia Louwerens works with spoken-word performances in which she performs an unreliable subject intra-acting with its institutional framework.
      Eleanor Ivory Weber uses conceptual writing techniques to arrive at multi-vocal recompositions of existing text-sources, combining formal structures with the spontaneity of the body.
      Adrijana Gvozdenović collects and annotates symptomatic artistic practices that recognise their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality. This results in publications of sorts or “exhibiting otherwise”.

      The concept of the anarchive as a way to reactivate meaning through revisiting traces is a common process to the three researches. Through either activating authored texts, institutional conditions and/or artistic practice paraphernalia, new iterations appear that re-actualise and re-situate the event. Each variation is always already allied with new subjectivities.

      To access the Research Portfolios follow the links:

      Adrijana Gvozdenović
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=97

      Pia Louwerens
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=99

      Eleanor Ivory Weber
      https:///www.apass.be/blockboard/my-case/?user=98

       

      Schedule of the event:

      18:00 food & drinks (€)

      18:30 Subtracted Seduction
      19:00 Subverses I: Play
      (break)
      20:00 7 anxieties and the world
      20:30 Subverses II: Glossolalien missive
      (break)
      21:15 Subverses III
      21:30 The big gesture is many small gestures dispersed

      Performances by:
      Adrijana Gvozdenović, Pia Louwerens, Eleanor Ivory Weber

      With contributions by:
      *Subtracted Seduction: sound editing and mixing Teresa Cos
      *Subverses I & III: performers Lydia McGlinchey, Marcus Bergner
      *7 anxieties and the world: sound mixing Marko Radišić

      Thanks:
      Henry Andersen, Simon Asencio, Marcus Bergner, Deborah Birch, Elen Braga, Kate Briggs, Mladen Bundalo, Teresa Cos, Sven Dehens, Nico Dockx, Diego Echegoyen, Paolo Favero, Luisa Fillitz, Nassia Fourtouni, Anastasia Freygang, Nicolas Galeazzi, Camille Gérenton, Caroline Godart, Katinka van Gorkum, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Philippine Hoegen, Eunkyung Jeong, Steven Jouwersma, Ekaterina Kaplunova, Leo Kay, Shervin Kianersi Haghighi, Pauline Hatzigeorgiou, Heike Langsdorf, Joke Liberge, Bart Lescreve, Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Lydia McGlinchey, Michèle Meesen, Maurice Meewisse, Zoumana Méïté, Lilia Mestre, Wesley Meuris, Vladimir Miller, Caterina Mora, Eszter Némethi, Elizabeth Newman, Anouchka Oler, Goda Palekaitė, Lucia Palladino, Laura Pante, Vijai Patchineelam, Peggy Pierrot, Piero Ramella, Marcelo Rezende, Kate Rich, Esther Rodríguez Barbero, Pierre Rubio, Margaux Schwarz, Hoda Siahtiri, Vanja Smiljanić, Femke Snelting, Geert Vaes, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Camilla Wills, Roberto Winter, Aurore Zachayus, Adva Zakai.

       

       

       

       
    • 1. TEXT FROM THE PUBLICATION OF THE END COMMUNICATIONS OF SEPTEMBER 2018

      The Who Are You Talking To Talk Show / Geert Vaes

      Kiosk @ Elizabeth Park

      14/09/18 and 15/09/18 at 18:00 and 22:00, 16/09 at 18:00 and 20:00

       

      'You are invited to be a guest and/or audience member at The Who Are You Talking To Talk Show.

      A talk show where we all will try to playfully disappear and grow closer. So who will you be? And who will you be talking to?'

       

      'U bent uitgenodigd als gast en/of publiek van The Who Are You Talking To Talk Show. Een talkshow waar we zullen proberen om spelenderwijs te verdwijnen en elkaar beter te leren kennen. Dus, wie zal je zijn? En met wie zal je praten?'

       

      أنت مدعو لتكون ضيفًا و / أو عضوًا في جمهور برنامج "من هو الذي تتحدث إليه”.

      برنامج حواري سنحاول من خلاله جميعاً أن نختفي بشكل هزلي. فمن ستكون؟ ومن هو الذي سوف تتحدث إليه؟

       

      'Vous êtes invités à participer et/ou à assister au talk show :'Avec qui parlez-vous?'. Une conversation-performance où nous essaierons tous de nous amuser à disparaître. Alors, quel rôle jouerez-vous? Et avec qui allez-vous parler vraiment?'

       

      THE WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO TALK SHOW

      ‘Everything is Fiction.’

      It was 1980-something. I was a kid and I used the meadow at the back of our house as a playground. We kept chickens, goats, sometimes a sheep or two and Fik, the donkey.

      These pictures are taken after the rooster got stuck in a bread bag. After I saw him doing it for the first time, I made sure to always bring empty bread bags for him. I knew he would put his head in them, peck away at the remaining crumbs and eventually become so eager for more that he would get stuck until I would come to his rescue.

      The rooster didn’t know he was putting on a mask. Disappearing. Changing form. Shapeshifting into a creature that is half white bag, half a rooster’s bum and legs. By wearing the bag he draws attention, becomes something out of the ordinary. By showing less of his rooster-ness, he became more interesting to me. My aim as a performer has always been disappearing, going beyond the ‘I’, stepping into the unknown without knowing what will be the result of the exercise. The mask is a supreme way of vanishing and coming out the other end as more than I could possibly imagine.

      Putting on a bag is also a way of surrendering to the unknown. The rooster gets lured in by the promise of more crumbs. I get lured in by the promise of a heightened state of play. The rooster’s eagerness for food is my eagerness for play. The mask becomes the stage. The mask doesn’t need the physical space called theatre. The mask is the theatre. The false face is the battlefield and the playground where sense, nonsense and no sense fight for attention. Inside and outside the mask a sense of excitement and freedom reigns. The mask destabilizes the wearer and the observer. The rooster on the picture is obviously lost and doesn’t know up from down (he always needed to be rescued), and I, the observer, would always be mesmerized by the absurdity of the situation.

       

      I use the mask to disappear. And I invite you, the public, to also disappear. To become part of the process and to flow with whatever is being presented, to let ‘something else, something unspoken and unspeakable’ take over. I feel the need to explore the space between you and I. This space is the meeting point, the place where sharing occurs.

       

      I thrive on improvisation. This doesn’t mean that anything goes, though. It’s all about adopting a mindset that wants to shed the walls of the practice, make visible the mechanics and lay bare the inner and outer workings of the process.

       

      Wittgenstein once wrote an allegory where he describes mankind as living under a red glass bell. There are three ways of dealing with this, he says. One way is represented by people who are oblivious to the fact that they are living under a red glass bell, they see everything is red and go about their lives without thinking about it. Then there are people who realize that something is not completely right, they investigate and get close to the glass where they can touch the bell, but instead of doing something with this new knowledge they return to the middle and go about their lives. According to Wittgenstein, these people tend to become humorous or melancholic. Finally, there’s a third kind: the ones who try to break through the glass bell and aspire to see the actual light without the interference of the red glass.

       

      I ‘d like to invite you to take a stroll outside the glass bell with me. Hoping you might start to notice that what we call ‘I’ is a story. What we call ‘history’ is a story. What we call the world, a country, who we are, where we are,... are collections of stories.

       

      Note to self: These words I am writing (the same ones you are reading) are similarly building blocks of yet another story I tell myself (and you).

       

      I want to be your tour guide, to unmask the collection of narratives we surround yourselves with. What you do next, is up to you. You are free to ignore everything, to build a house at the edge, to try to break through or to go back to the middle and become a melancholic.

       

      In stating that everything is fiction, I also state that everything we are constantly doing is staging our own drama’s, comedies, thrillers… The notable mister Shakespeare observed it quite strikingly: ‘The world’s a stage, and each must play a part’.

       

      Using theatrical tools in non-theatrical situations alongside deconstructing or extrapolating ‘the theatrical’ has always fascinated me. Using performance as a tool to try to create awareness about our personal and societal conditioning (the grabbag of narratives) is very important to me. The theatrical is the place where I can investigate and work with the narratives, those given to us and the ones we create ourselves through an unending process of copy-pasting. I discovered that the theatre has the potential to show me my dependence on these narratives. That’s why I love to inject the fictional into the real without saying what is real and what isn’t. It is disrupting the logic of the stories we tell ourselves. Taking the character out of the play stirs something essential in people: their obsession with believing and disbelieving and their fears around sanity and insanity.

      There’s a story I once heard where a man visits his friend in the insane asylum. When the friend asks how are you, the man says: ‘Great! You see these walls here? They protect me from the crazy people outside. You should try to get in too, so you’ll be protected from the madness on the outside.’ Inside the mask, it feels more easy to see the fiction on the outside. I am very inspired by what the Situationists, the Dadaists or comedy genius Andy Kaufman did. They were all busy trying to make cracks in the ruling narrative. I think Andy Kaufman put it very, very well:

       

      What’s real? What’s not? That’s what I do in my act. Test how other people deal with reality.

      Yes, theatre is magic. For when I walk into a room as a character, the room changes. My reality changes but yours is also changing because you have only two options: you are playing along or you aren’t.

       

      It all comes down to giving and taking. And this only becomes possible when there’s a willingness from both parties (you and me) to engage and discover together. What’s required is openness, an attitude of trust and the willingness to spend some time together in order to be inspired, entertained, taught, surprised,...

       

      Participation is all about one pair of eyes looking straight into another pair of eyes sharing that moment of recognition. After all is said and done, the most important thing is other people (you!). And the closest I can get to you is by looking into your eyes. Especially when I look through the eyes of the mask. And this can be scary.

       

      When I put on a mask I take a risk, when I ask you to wear a mask I ask you to take a risk. The risk is to tread unknown ground. Inside the mask I may feel like an impostor, I may feel like other people know something’s wrong, I may feel like I’m losing control. When I put on a mask my senses heighten. It is impossible to sleepwalk because everything is different. This may cause excitement or fear. I am seen differently by others. The people I know don’t recognize me. My dog barks at me. I start to interact very differently with my surroundings but also with myself. When I wore my old man mask for the first time I noticed young people didn’t see me. The only eye contact I could make was with other old people. The world changed, people bumped into me. I became invisible for most and all of a sudden of interest to others. It changed my perspective on my surroundings but also on myself. I became another so to speak. When I change physically, the world and my place in it changes, and the way I participate in it too. I suddenly find myself venturing into a liberating state of play. And I believe playing together is one of the highest forms of contact we can achieve.

       

      So, could I ask you now to pretend to be a rooster?

       

      References

       

      Swami Premodaya (Satsang, ‘You experience what you expect to experience.’, ‘Your perceptions are your limitations.’), Swami Prem Prasad (‘Freedom through De-Conditioning’), OSHO (‘The Path of the Mystic’), Meher Baba, Adrian Piper (‘Ideology, Confrontation and Political Self-Awareness’), Stuart Price (‘I’m lost in the space between the concept and the execution’, ‘I’m stuck in the void between the instinct and the institution’), Ludwig Wittgenstein (‘Licht en schaduw: een droom en een brief over religie.’), Martin Buber (‘I and Thou’), Caroline Astell-Burt (‘I am the story’), Robert J. Landy (‘Persona and Performance’), Luigi Pirandello, Hannah Arendt (‘Lying in Politics’), Sören Kierkegaard (‘...the jump into the absurd...’), Codrescu (The Posthuman Dada Guide), Robert Crichton (‘The Great Impostor’), Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Eli Jaxon-Bear (‘Sudden Awakening’), Andy Kaufman, Bourdieu (‘Identity is given, not created’), Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, one man continuously calling me ‘Christophe’ in Morocco and my irritation with that, Rabia of Basra, Artaud, Frantz Fanon (‘Black Skin, White Masks’), Reni Eddo-Lodge (‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’), Nassim Taleb (‘Antifragile’), James Baldwin (‘The Fire Next Time’), John Cage (‘Silence’), Lou Reed’s rendition of ‘This Magic Moment’, Tommy Maitland, Mike Myers, The Gong Show, Sarah Paulson, Kokoroko, Fanna-Fi-Allah, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, Anandamayi Ma, Gangaji (‘Hidden Treasure’), RuPaul’s Drag Race, Tony Clifton, Charles Aznavour, Lilia Mestre, Vladimir Miller, Pierre Rubio, Nicolas Galeazzi, Philippine Hoegen, Peggy Pierrot, Kate Rich, Geert Opsomer, Sara Manente, Heike Langsdorf, Sina Seifee, Michael Sugich (‘Signs on the Horizons’), Abdelwahab Meddeb (‘Instants soufis’), Ranchor Prime (‘The Birth of Kirtan’), Shomari Dev, Loka Dev, Jai Dev

       

      2. TEXT OF THE PORTFOLIO

       

      EVERYTHING IS FICTION



      12 MUSINGS ABOUT MY RESEARCH


      Geert Vaes

      a.pass end communications

      (September 2017 - September 2018)




      “You, I and It walk into the World. I love to get close to You, I love to know You. You love to get close to I. You love to know I.

       

      I see You. I recognize You. I approach You. You don’t recognize I. Because I am wearing It. You tell It You are waiting for I. It starts a conversation with You. You show I another side of You because You are not talking to I but to It.

       

      It shows I You. I tell You I was using It to learn to know You. I lend You It to let me know You more too. We use It to get closer. It makes I love You and You love I. It creates US.”



      From the writing workshop with Peter Stamer in Block I (Vladimir Miller): ‘Your research told as a joke’

       

      1. The Rooster and the Bread Bag

      It was 1980-something. I was a kid and used the meadow at the back of our house as a playground. We kept chickens, goats, sometimes a sheep or two and Fik, the donkey.

      This picture is taken after the rooster got stuck in a bread bag. After seeing him doing it once I made sure to bring the empty bread bags for him. I knew he would get his head in, peck away at the remaining crumbs and eventually become so eager for more that he would get stuck until I would come to his rescue.

      The rooster didn’t know he was putting on a mask. Disappearing. Changing form. Shapeshifting into a creature that is half white bag, half a rooster’s bum and legs. By having the bag on he draws attention, becomes something out of the ordinary. By showing less of his rooster-ness, he becomes of more interest to the observer, in this case, me. My aim as a performer has always been disappearing, going beyond the ‘I’, stepping into the unknown without knowing what will be the result of this exercise. The mask is a supreme way of vanishing and coming out the other end as more than I can possibly imagine.

      Putting on a bag is also a way of surrendering to the unknown. The rooster gets lured in by the promise of more crumbs. I get lured in by the promise of a heightened state of play. The rooster’s eagerness for food is my eagerness for play. The mask becomes the stage. The mask doesn’t need the physical space called theatre. The mask is the theatre. The false face is the battlefield and playground where sense, nonsense and no sense fight for attention. Inside and outside the mask a sense of excitement and freedom reigns. The mask destabilizes the wearer and the observer, as is the case with the rooster. He is obviously lost and doesn’t know up from down (he always needed to be rescued), and I the observer would always be mesmerized by the absurdity of the situation. My interest in masking and disappearing awakened.

      ‘The mask as a tool of awareness. The proposed research aims to investigate how hyper-realistic silicone spfx-masks can be used as tools of awareness to shed more light on race, gender and class issues in an experiential, sensual and non-mental way. How to help performers and non-performers create another persona and let them experience how it feels to literally be in somebody else’s skin, wearing another one’s face in non-theatrical daily situations. How does this change their perspectives? Or doesn’t it change anything? How does this, in a broader sense, affect the notions of ‚I’ and ‚You’? How does it affect one’s outlook on one’s own community, conditioning, and beliefs?’

      This is the first paragraph of the research proposal I sent to a.pass in May 2017.

      Some of the questions I had, deepened and became richer, others faded into the background.

      What seems to be at the heart of the research is that I invite you to look through a different lens. And while looking through this lens, maybe you will see that everything is a construction of stories. What we call ‘I’ is a story. What we call ‘history’ is a story. What we call the world, a country, who we are, where we are,... It’s all a collection of stories. Our lives are collections of stories we build upon. These stories crystalize into the more or less cohesive narrative called ‘I’.

      So, we are surrounded by narratives, constructions, stories. We create them ourselves, they are created for us, we copy paste, add personal touches. We are inevitably moving through a narrative minefield: history, science, religion, countries, economics, politics, philosophy, love, you’s and I’s,...  Narratives are given to us but we actively rearrange them through an unending process of copy-pasting. We are all very creative in writing our own scripts, fitting our scripts into the bigger narrative, creating a dazzling array of storylines upon storylines.

      As a child, like many children, I was often busy dressing up as someone else, to the delight of my mother who would always be ready to take pictures. In creating other personas I found a way out of the narrative I was inhabiting. Later came my calling to study theatre and I became an actor and performer. Revisiting these pictures I realized: ‘I have been doing this since forever...’. What initially was just a very naive reflex: putting on clothes that were not mine and playacting and believing I was someone else, turned into a profession. I found the safe haven for transformation in the theatre. Later I started to take this urge to transform to the street, and in doing this I noticed the street transformed as well. By bringing the theatrical reflex into the street, the street becomes another character. In using this theatrical tool I hope to pierce through the veils knit together by the narratives surrounding us, and in doing so create more awareness.

       

      Wittgenstein once wrote an allegory where he describes mankind as living under a red glass bell. There are three ways of dealing with this, he says. One way is represented by people who are oblivious to the fact that they are living under a red glass bell, they see everything is red and go about their lives without thinking about it. Then there are people who realize that something is not completely right, they investigate and get close to the glass where they can touch the bell, but instead of doing something with this new knowledge they return to the middle and go about their lives. According to Wittgenstein, these people tend to become humorous or melancholic. Finally, there’s a third kind: the ones who try to break through the glass bell and aspire to see the actual light without the interference of the red glass.

      Wittgenstein’s allegory is related to Plato’s Cave. Plenty of similar allegorical examples can be found in mystical texts throughout the ages. What these metaphors and allegories all point at is that there is the possibility to look through the story, the mold, the mask. Using masks gives us the potential to become more aware of the multitude of masks and stories we surround ourselves with. Becoming aware of this we can generate more choices for ourselves. By using masks as tools we can address our biases and judgments and are able to reveal society's. With masks, we perform in the unconscious field of signs. We briefly are able to lose control and to step beyond our ideas of limitation.

      We all are master storytellers and interpreters. As long as we are all believers in all the narrative constructions surrounding us, we are doomed to live as characters in the fairytales we construct for ourselves and others. ‘The world’s a stage, each must play its part’ is a very striking observation of how we live.



      1. The Seemingly Empty Stage

      It’s 1980-something and this was my first ever performance. I am not visible. But I know I was there. The picture shows some audience member’s arms moving at the music. I am singing ‘We Are The World’ and attempting to do all the different voices (Willie Nelson, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Dion Warwick, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, Al Jarreau, Huey Lewis, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles,...). I am very shy and I feel I’m turning completely red, but the fun of using different voices somehow pulls me through. It makes perfect sense I am not in the picture. It was another exercise in disappearing. The stage is the place for the performer to disappear and step out of her/his skin and turn into something more real than he or she could ever be. The audience is also not visible. The audience’s role is similar to that of the performer. Each member of the audience sheds its bag of flesh and bones and becomes part of The Play.

      My medium is theatre. I literally see everything as theatre. I think in terms of actors and audience, on stage and off stage, playing, rehearsing, improvising,... In stating that everything is fiction, I also state that everything we are constantly doing is staging our own drama’s, comedies, thrillers, musicals,... Everything is theatre. Therefore I like to infuse ‘reality’ with even more theatrical elements. Introducing a fictional character into the world but not telling he/she is fictional opens up lots of potentials to show the theatricality of the real. The theatre is a safe place when it does its work in the theatre space, but whenever theatre breaks out of the walls, then its potential becomes more dangerous, more subversive, more disruptive.

      Using theatrical tools in non-theatrical situations alongside deconstructing or extrapolating ‘the theatrical’ has always fascinated me. Using performance as a tool to try to create awareness about our personal and societal conditioning (the grabbag of narratives) is very important to me. The theatrical is the place where I can investigate and work with the narratives, those given to us and the ones we create ourselves through an unending process of copy-pasting. I discovered that the theatre has the potential to show me my dependence on these narratives. That’s why I love to inject the fictional into the real without saying what is real and what isn’t. It is disrupting the logic of the stories we tell ourselves. Taking the character out of the play stirs something essential in people: their obsession with believing and disbelieving and their fears around sanity and insanity.

      There’s a story I once heard where a man visits his friend in the insane asylum. When the friend asks how are you, the man says: ‘Great! You see these walls here? They protect me from the crazy people outside. You should try to get in too, so you’ll be protected from the madness on the outside.’ Inside the mask, it feels more easy to see the fiction on the outside. I am very inspired by what the Situationists, the Dadaists or comedy genius Andy Kaufman did. They were all busy trying to make cracks in the ruling narrative. I think Andy Kaufman put it very, very well:

      What’s real? What’s not? That’s what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality.

      1. My beloved grandmother Marie, the playground and a little clown.

      It’s 1980 something and it’s the day to celebrate carnival. Mimi (Marie) is posing with me. I am dressed like a Native American although the hat and nose are confusing the image a bit. I am pretty sure this picture was taken before or after the yearly school kids’ parade through the village. When talking about masking and disappearing and reappearing it is impossible not to talk about Carnival, the time of the year where it is allowed to change at will, to put down the burden called ‘you’ or ‘I’. We are all fools playing the fool’s games. And carnival makes us aware of this. The parade is an outside stage in the street. Streets are generally not safe havens for performance or theatre but the group aspect of a parade turns it again into a safe space allowing the inner playfulness to come out.

      During my year in a.pass I held my experiments back and forth between the safe (inside the building of a.pass, the ‘4th Floor’, and with fellow a.passees) and the riskful (outside a.pass, in the street, with the people occupying the street at that particular moment in time). It became an important part of my research in a.pass. I learned to understand more the difference between IN and OUT. Inside the mask, outside the mask. Inside the safe haven (‘theatre space’), outside in the great wide open (no literal ‘theatre space’). Me inside my propositions, out of them or in and out of them. The dynamics change radically when I allow myself to be a player in my own frame, or when I am instigating and holding space for others to play. I am always searching for ways to let people participate. So when I started working with masks, besides the joy of me putting them on and playing with them, I also felt the urge to share the mask. To let the audience also experience the inside of the mask, to let them look through the eyes of the mask. The first time I realized this could work was with a presentation I held during the Halfway Days in my second block (curated by Nicolas Galeazzi). I created a small TV studio with a score. Two persons: one puts on a mask and different clothes, and in doing so turns into the character called Johannes Bouma, the other person asks questions to Johannes about the research of the actual person wearing the mask of Johannes. Everything is recorded by a camera placed in front. Here, for the first time, the mask started to work as a tool of awareness. People who normally weren’t very good at talking about their own work, were very clear talking about themselves and their work (as Johannes). Others started to realize things about their work in relation to the public. They started to relate differently to themselves and to the person questioning them. The mask mirrored, mimicked and magnified the person and his/her research.

      1. The Farmer and the Widow

      .

      It was 1980-something and I probably wanted to feel the rush of disguising again… These pictures are all about a Flanders and its rural identity. Rural Flanders where my ancestors all come from. I am only the 2nd generation non-farmer. In these pictures, there’s clear evidence of remnants of ‘peasantry’. The traditional stove, the ‘fermette’ (a type of house that became in fashion again in the 80’s when people started to build new houses to look like old farms). These ‘fermettes’ are masks of what once was. The figures I portray are also molds from the past catapulted into that present moment when the picture was taken. I embodied my ancestors. The widow is my great-grandmother who I only know through pictures. The farmer could represent either of my grandfathers.

      During Block I (Vladimir Miller), when we were asked to prepare an excursion for the Halfway Days, I focused on my own personal flemish identity by visiting an amateur company rehearsing ‘Het Gezin Van Paemel’. This is the invitation I sent:

      'Het Gezin Van Paemel' (The Family Van Paemel) by Cyriel Buysse is a 114-year old theatre piece that's still showing the flemish what it means to be Flemish. The excursion will bring us to an amateur theatre company rehearsing the piece. Why are they, and with them, lots of other amateur companies, still so interested in this piece? Why am I? My questioning will be mainly about one scene in particular: the son who goes to tell his father he's leaving for America. An America he only knows through stories, an America that personifies a better life. How is this flemish identity created (the I) by the staying and the leaving? And how is America (the other) created? And isn't all emigrating originating in the America of the soul? How is this construction of I a mask/conditioning? How is history as a re-construction keeping in place all these notions? How will I go from here to using masks again? How will I finally get out of Flanders?

      I made a detour from literal masking to the metaphorical mask, in this case: a theatre piece. The piece was first written and produced in 1903. Since then it has become a standard in Flemish theatre, and mainly in amateur theatre. It has been performed continuously since the first performance up until now. The piece is a Flemish classic. It portrays peasant life in 19th century Flanders and still now the piece is revered as a flemish icon. It is a naturalistic piece narrating the misery and heroism of a peasant family: the poor ‘pater familias’ and his obedient wife, one son got crippled because the baron’s son accidentally shot him, one daughter is more Catholic than the pope, another one is made pregnant by the baron’s son, another son has to join the army and shoot at the socialists, yet another son is a socialist,... My excursion took us to Tielen, a small village in the province of Antwerp, in the region called ‘De Kempen’, a provincial, rural area. The local company ‘Tejater De Orchidee’ was rehearsing their version of the piece and I was interested in how and why they made this flemish classic. We were allowed to come and watch the rehearsals and talk with the cast and the director.

      The piece was significant to me because of its resonance. I remembered as a kid watching the movie they made after the theatre piece. There’s one iconic scene at the end of the movie when the oldest son goes to visit his father and says: ‘Father, I’m going to America.’ He invites his parents to go with him, to go for a better life. But the father is stubborn and tells the son he will not leave the ground his ancestors are buried in. This piece is all about identity and roots and therefore it has been performed again and again to flemish audiences. It holds up a mirror of heroism, and ‘we always overcome hardship because us, Flemish, we work and work and work’. I was wondering how much this piece still influences the ‘flemish identity’. I never really understood what that meant. ‘Het Gezin Van Paemel’ has helped and is helping to construct this narrative.

      Looking at the mask, through the mask of the piece helped me to understand better the myth of identity. It was very revealing for me to talk with the local actors and to hear their answers to some of the questions I had. I remember one of the young men talking about staying in the village because it felt safe.

      The local company’ made one significant change to the piece. In the final scene of the written piece, the old father and mother stay behind while all the children have moved or are about to move to America. In the piece as rehearsed by ‘Tejater De Orchidee’, the old father stays behind alone while his wife also moves to America. The last scene became a heroic monologue of the aging man who gets left behind. ‘I will not move from the land my ancestors are buried in. I will stay and work, work, work.’ It wasn’t meant to be a commentary on migration, but it became a quite dubious one. Heroism masking the true reasons behind migration.

      Theatre as a mask, a mirror, a lens, a prism… This excursion rekindled my thinking about and interest in theatre. It made me realize how -I talked about it on the first pages- theatre still is the medium I work with. The excursion made me also think about history (personal and national) as a mask.

      1. Black Lola from the Striptease Bar

       

      It was 1980-something and in this picture, I personify Zwarte Lola (Black Lola), a Dutch singer infamous in the 1970’s and 1980’s in the Low Countries because of her -according to that era’s norms- raunchy lyrics and stage presence.  

      Dressing up as a girl -and especially this one!- was exciting, mainly because of the reactions of my mother, sister, and niece. I also remember my dad not being sure about what was going on. It was interesting to my young mind to see the effect of changing gender roles. It unconsciously released some tensions for me around the male and female stories we tell ourselves. And it showed me once again the impact of play and dress.

      In my initial research proposal, I wanted to focus on race, gender, and class. During the research, I started to focus on more basic questions: What do these masks do? What does changing your appearance actually mean?

      To work with these more basic questions I tried out ‘Moustache’ at ‘Don’t eat The Microphone’ in Gent with Pierre Rubio (curator Block III). Inspired by Adrian Piper’s essay ‘Ideology, Confrontation, and Political Self-Awareness’ (see p.22-24), we went to the garden the hosts of DETM inhabited and invited participants to create mustaches and by doing so alter their face and outlook and reflect on identity and the stories we create.

      In my third block  I made 4 sketches (short experiments): ‘Moustache’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who are You?’, ‘Stories, Stories’. This block was all about trying out different ways in how to use my new masks because the 5 of them had finally arrived in June after waiting almost 6 months (they had a delay of 4 months). This meant I had 7 masks in total now. So I wanted to see how they worked. More about ‘Who am I?’, ‘Who are You?’, ‘Stories, Stories’ later on in this text.

       

      1. My Second Holy Communion as a girl.

      It was 1980-something and I’m at Mimi’s. She showed me my sister’s old Second Holy Communion dress with bag and gloves. I put it on. This was the first time I didn’t put in extra effort to have a wig, make-up, or anything. No, it was me in my sister’s dress. Here I realized the comical potential of it. I was a bit older and more self-aware. I knew that I was a boy and that boys aren’t supposed to wear dresses. This was a seminal moment for the joy is also a joy of knowing I can be subversive by willing to break through conditioning. This is the first time I became conscious about that. The smirk on my face is a very self-aware smirk. ‘Look at me, ain’t I just hilarious and foolish? Don’t you just love my daring silliness?’

      It’s like I discovered fire. Before it all was just a lot of fun. Now my innocence got infused with a sense of danger and seemingly unlimited possibilities.

      One of the 4 earlier mentioned sketches in my third block was ‘Who am I?’.

      ‘Who Am I?’ was performed at Zsenne Gallery in the center. Outside the gallery is a small square which our group of researchers inhabited for our Halfway Days that Block. I was sitting on a chair, next to a mirror, at the edge of the square, facing the gallery. I had a sign reading ‘Who Am I’. I had a suitcase next to me with masks, clothes, and objects. In front of me, I’d put a small table with two chairs. On the table were pens, questionnaires to be filled in by visitors and objects changing per character. I was sitting on a chair facing the people at the table, changing every 45 minutes mask and clothing and objects on the table. The visitors were asked to fill out the questionnaire which had questions about who they saw in front of them: ‘What’s my name? Where am I from? Am I married? What do you and I have in common? …’. I was being watched but I was also the watcher, looking at people thinking hard about what to write. Both parties (the people at the table and me) were sniffing each other and trying to make sense. The written responses were revealing. They showed biases but also a willingness to understand. This exercise showed me the necessity of good and meaningful questions. The better the question, the more meaningful the response becomes.

       

      1. The Real Cowboy from Begijnendijk

      It was 1980-something and I am posing on a horse in Bobbejaanland. It’s a theme park built by Bobbejaan Schoepen, a flemish cowboy who made a career first as a singer, then as a theme park owner. The park was all about the Wild West (it still exists to this day). Bobbejaan died, but when he was still around he would drive through the theme park in his big American convertible dressed up as a cowboy. As a kid, I thought Bobbejaan was awesome. Here’s an adult man, in Belgium, Flanders, who pulls it off to be a cowboy. My dream was not necessarily to become Bobbejaan or a cowboy, I think I was intrigued by the sense of freedom he represented. He was free from the flemish mold, he recreated himself. He was Bobbejaan. How easy it could be to get out... This picture is important because whenever I was on a horse (although most of the time I was riding a donkey or a ram because we didn’t own a horse) I disappeared and became a cowboy on the prairie. I completely identified with the mask I chose and by doing so stepped out of the mask I was expected to wear in daily life.

      I love to give people the opportunity to become someone else, to step out of the mold. This is one of the core themes of my research. Becoming...

      Another sketch I made in Block III was called ‘Who Are You?’. Here I invited my a.pass colleagues to work in groups of two. One person was the shapeshifter (put on a mask and disguise, create a new character) and the other one was her/his chaperone. Then they had the possibility to spend the afternoon in the city at a location of their choosing. The role of the chaperone became very important. The chaperone is the link between the masked one and the unmasked ones. He/She is not only a safety guard but also part of the narrative. She/He plays along. The duos automatically created backstories between each other (‘She was my girlfriend and assistant’, ‘I was his caretaker.’).  Becoming another with an accomplice adds to the experience, for in dialogue you are more aware of what you project and what others project on you. The accomplice became the mirror.

      Ideally, this experiment should’ve been held over a couple of days. My initial plan was to start with basic acting exercises, then to extensively create a character, then to go to a well-pondered place in the city, everything is done with the possibility for the duo’s to switch roles.

      I have been trying out this format in the past and would like to continue working with it in the future. Taking time is a very important factor I learned. Two examples (1. from the past, 2. in the future):

      1. Some years ago I gave a workshop in Helsinki called ‘Pretend To Be Old’. I was playing the character of Walter Bourdin (with one of my highly realistic silicone masks). Walter helped the people to create wrinkles with liquid latex and chalk powder. The persons attending the workshop attached weights to their joints and on their backs in order to move more like an aged person, they changed their voices, and eventually, we walked through Helsinki in a parade of fake old people. After the workshop, we sat together to talk about our experiences. People were very positive: they had had very new and unexpected experiences in pretending to be old.

       

      1. In my second block, I had the artist and economist Kate Rich as a mentor. One idea I briefly developed with her was to use Airbnb for my work. Airbnb started to offer the possibility to advertise Experiences. The experience I want to create is giving tourists the opportunity to visit Brussels as somebody else. I would venture into the field of micro-tourism. I invite tourists to travel into someone else’s skin. I want to offer a two-day experience:

       

      Day 1: performance workshop ‘Find your other you’ (4 hours)

      Day 2: Explore Brussels as the other you. At the end of the day, I cook for you and we chat about the experience. (4 hours)

       

       

      1. The hippie and the punk

       

      It’s 1980-something and I’m a punk and a hippie. These roles I chose myself, knowing they were roles to play, not roles to be identified with completely (as I did with the cowboy). Here I was semi-consciously trying out subversive roles. Roles that wouldn’t have been tolerated within my family or village. Not that I really knew what these roles were about but I had enough sense from watching television that these stereotypes were considered to be highly problematic: ‘They don’t want to work.’ ‘They let everything go to waste.’, ‘They destroy stuff.’ ‘They don’t follow the rules.’ Not following the rules was something that interested me very much, but I wasn’t very good at it. I was a very law-abiding child and was horrified about getting punished.

      At a.pass I started to become aware of the fact that my masking game was potentially problematic. Mainly because I also wanted to experiment with gender and race. I wasn’t fully aware of the minefield I was stepping into.

      Another sketch I did in my third block  was ‘Stories, Stories’:

      I asked people who visited me if they were interested in trying on some of my masks. I took a picture and interviewed the masked person, asking very basic questions: ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? What are your hobbies?...’. I recorded the Q&A and put the answers (without the questions) into a text file, leaving me in the end with a picture and a written piece of information (A4) imagined by the wearer of the mask. I also went out into the park and asked strangers whether they’d be interested in trying on a mask, get a picture taken and interview. This resulted in 11 pictures and 11 texts which I presented to my fellow researchers on a table: matching the pictures with text (2 A4’s placed next to each other). It looked like a possible book (the talk show as a book?), in which I created a kaleidoscope of ideas and biases of people in Koekelberg (the 11 pictures and texts were all taken in Koekelberg).

      My questions could’ve been better, but I still think there’s a lot of revealing potential in this exercise. What happens when I take my masks to another place in the world? What does it mean there to pretend to be white for instance? What are the ideas we carry around? Like the ideas, I had about hippies and punks. These clichés are fertile ground to explore further.

      Also, what could we learn from putting the biases (imagined stories) from people in Koekelberg, next to those of Matonge, next to those of Ukkel,... Or how about the biases of people in Senegal, next to the ones of people in Canada, in Sweden, in India,...?












      1. Miss Piggy

      It is 1980-something and I’m relaxing on the couch as Miss Piggy. One of my first actual maskings. I remember the thrill of sitting on that couch and consciously playing with the proposed sexuality of the image. The mask helped me not to worry about ‘me’. I wasn’t ‘me’, I was Miss Piggy all the way. Even my mother taking the picture was a bit disturbed, she felt I was exaggerating. This was probably the last picture taken of me dressing up. Maybe we reached a point where we didn’t feel in control anymore. After this, I stopped play-dressing for quite a while. I had become a teenager, I was around 12 years old when this picture was taken. Only at the end of my teens, I would taste the sweetness of confusing other people again…

      This brings me back to Andy Kaufman. An important moment as a ‘player’,  ‘performer’, ‘artist’ was to learn to know Andy Kaufman. He brought playing to a whole new level. He turned it into more than just entertainment, he turned it into art, raising questions just for the sake of raising questions. Disturbing the status quo. Rocking the boat. Who are you? What do you believe? Is this really true? As in the quote I already put: ‘I am testing how other people deal with reality.’ Kaufman was not interested in making people laugh, although he was considered to be a comedian. He said: ‘I never told a joke in my life’. He just wanted to stir something in his audience. Anything. I also think this confusion is a good thing. It has the potential to wake you up. I have very vivid memories (not only because of the pictures) of all the disguising I did as a kid. Those were very alive moments, heightened states. And I have been chasing them ever since the first time I tasted the joy of pretending to be someone else. My research turned into an ode to play and rekindled my love for the theatre.

       

      10. Sharing with Tommie

      It was 1980-something and I’m sharing with Tommie. She was my pet poodle and my best friend from when I was 6 until 12. On the picture, I am sharing an ice cream with her. The ice cream reminds me of a microphone. I love microphones. That’s one of the reasons why I love the format of the Talk Show so much.

      For the last six months, I have been working with this format. Extrapolating its elements and abstracting them. One example was the first presentation of my third block:

      I created a literal Talk Show setting. Three chairs for the guest and one chair for the host separated by a big plant. There was a microphone. Mirrors, and an audience space. I was playing Walter Bourdin (old man mask) and I invited 3 fellow researchers to come up and take a seat. They could each choose one cut out picture of my face (Geert). Each picture-mask had a different facial expression: Angry Geert, Happy Geert, Confused Geert,... I gave two other picture-masks to researchers in the audience. Walter Bourdin (old man mask) asked questions about Geert and his research. ‘Angry Geert, what would you say your research is about?’ This experiment revealed a lot about my research and how I communicate it.

      The Talk Show set-up is also used in teaching and therapy. Anywhere where people talk with guests when other people are around to listen to the talking. I will continue to experiment with this format.

       

      1. Tommie Has Milk

      It was 1980-something and Tommie had puppies. They feed on her milk. As I fed on these references:

       

      Swami Premodaya (Satsang, ‘You experience what you expect to experience.’, ‘Your perceptions are your limitations.’), Swami Prem Prasad (‘Freedom through De-Conditioning’), OSHO (‘The Path of the Mystic’), Meher Baba, Adrian Piper (‘Ideology, Confrontation and Political Self-Awareness’), Stuart Price (‘I’m lost in the space between the concept and the execution’, ‘I’m stuck in the void between the instinct and the institution’), Ludwig Wittgenstein (‘Licht en schaduw: een droom en een brief over religie.’), Martin Buber (‘I and Thou’), Caroline Astell-Burt (‘I am the story’), Robert J. Landy (‘Persona and Performance’), Luigi Pirandello, Hannah Arendt (‘Lying in Politics’), Sören Kierkegaard (‘...the jump into the absurd...’), Codrescu (The Posthuman Dada Guide), Robert Crichton (‘The Great Impostor’), Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Eli Jaxon-Bear (‘Sudden Awakening’), Andy Kaufman, Bourdieu (‘Identity is given, not created’), Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, one man continuously calling me ‘Christophe’ in Morocco and my irritation with that, Rabia of Basra, Artaud, Frantz Fanon (‘Black Skin, White Masks’), Reni Eddo-Lodge (‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’), Nassim Taleb (‘Antifragile’), James Baldwin (‘The Fire Next Time’), John Cage (‘Silence’), Lou Reed’s rendition of ‘This Magic Moment’, Tommy Maitland, Mike Myers, The Gong Show, Sarah Paulson, Kokoroko, Fanna-Fi-Allah, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, Anandamayi Ma, Gangaji (‘Hidden Treasure’), RuPaul’s Drag Race, Tony Clifton, Charles Aznavour, Lilia Mestre, Vladimir Miller, Pierre Rubio, Nicolas Galeazzi, Philippine Hoegen, Peggy Pierrot, Kate Rich, Pol Pauwels, Geert Opsomer, Sara Manente, Heike Langsdorf, Sina Seifee, Michael Sugich (‘Signs on the Horizons’), Abdelwahab Meddeb (‘Instants soufis’), Ranchor Prime (‘The Birth of Kirtan’), Shomari Dev, Loka Dev, Jai Dev

      I add this essay by Adrian Piper in its totality because it perfectly fits with what I’ve been researching, and she explains it far more eloquently than I ever could:

      ‘Ideology, Confrontation and Political Self-Awareness’

      Adrian Piper is a conceptual artist with a background in sculpture and philosophy. Her performance work and writing during this period asked the observer to consider the construction of his/her own beliefs and their relation to action in the world. Art historian Moira Roth has written that Piper's work of this period "deals with confrontations of self to self and self to others, exposing the distances between people and the alienation that exists in our lives—personally, politically, emotionally." Here she puts forth some basic considerations about ideology. —Eds.

      We started out with beliefs about the world and our place in it that we didn't ask for and didn't question. Only later, when those beliefs were attacked by new experiences that didn't conform to them, did we begin to doubt: e.g., do we and our friends really understand each other? Do we really have nothing in common with blacks/whites/ gays/workers/the middle class/other women/other men/etc.?

      Doubt entails self-examination because a check on the plausibility of your beliefs and attitudes is a check on all the constituents of the self. Explanations of why your falsely supposed "X" includes your motives for believing "X" (your desire to maintain a relationship, your impulse to be charitable, your goal of becoming a better person); the causes of your believing "X" (your early training, your having drunk too much, your innate disposition to optimism); and your objective reasons for believing "X" (it's consistent with your other beliefs, it explains the most data, it's inductively confirmed, people you respect believe it). These reveal the traits and dispositions that individuate oneself from another.

      So self-examination entails self-awareness, i.e., awareness of the components of the self. But self-awareness is largely a matter of degree. If you've only had a few discordant experiences or relatively superficial discordant experiences, you don't need to examine yourself very deeply in order to revise your false beliefs. For instance, you happen to have met a considerate, sensitive, nonexploitative person who's into sadism in bed. You think to yourself, "This doesn't show that my beliefs about sadists, in general, are wrong; after all, think what Krafft-Ebing says! This particular person is merely an exception to the general rule that sexual sadists are demented." Or you think, "My desire to build a friendship with this person is based on the possibility of reforming her/him (and has nothing to do with any curiosity to learn more about my own sexual tastes)." Such purely cosmetic repairs in your belief structure sometimes suffice to maintain your sense of self-consistency. Unless you are confronted with a genuine personal crisis or freely choose to push deeper and ask yourself more comprehensive and disturbing questions about the genesis and justification of your own beliefs, your actual degree of self-awareness may remain relatively thin.

      Usually, the beliefs that remain most unexposed to examination are the ones we need to hold in order to maintain a certain conception of ourselves and our relation to the world. These are the ones in which we have the deepest personal investment. Hence these are the ones that are most resistant to revision; e.g., we have to believe that other people are capable of understanding and sympathy, of honorable and responsible behavior, in order not to feel completely alienated and suspicious of those around us. Or: Some people have to believe that the world of political and social catastrophe is completely outside their control in order to justify their indifference to it.

      Some of these beliefs may be true, some may be false. This is difficult to ascertain because we can only confirm or disconfirm the beliefs under examination with reference to other beliefs, which themselves require examination. In any event, the set of false beliefs that a person has a personal investment in maintaining is what I will refer to (following Marx) as a person's ideology.

      Ideology is pernicious for many reasons. The obvious one is that it makes people behave in stupid, insensitive, self-serving ways, usually at the expense of other individuals or groups. But it is also pernicious because of the mechanisms it uses to protect itself, and its consequent capacity for self-regeneration in the face of the most obvious counterevidence. Some of these mechanisms are:

      (1) The False-Identity Mechanism

      In order to preserve your ideological beliefs against attack, you identify them as objective facts and not as beliefs at all. For example, you insist that it is just a fact that black people are less intelligent than whites, or that those on the sexual fringes are in fact sick, violent or asocial. By maintaining that these are statements of fact rather than statements of belief compiled from the experiences you personally happen to have had, you avoid having to examine and perhaps revise those beliefs. This denial may be crucial to maintaining your self-conception against attack. If you're white and suspect that you may not be all that smart, to suppose that at least there's a whole race of people you're smarter than may be an important source of self-esteem. Or if you're not entirely successful in coping with your own nonstandard sexual impulses, isolating and identifying the sexual fringe as sick, violent or asocial may serve the very important function of reinforcing your sense of yourself as "normal."

      The fallacy of the false-identity mechanism as a defense of one's ideology consists in supposing that there exist objective social facts that are not constructs of beliefs people have about each other.

      (2) The Illusion of Perfectibility

      Here you defend your ideology by convincing yourself that the hard work of self-scrutiny has an end and a final product, i.e., a set of true, central and uniquely defensible beliefs about some issue; and that you have in fact achieved this end, hence needn't subject your beliefs to further examination. Since there is no such final product, all of the inferences that supposedly follow from this belief are false. Example: You're a veteran of the anti-war movement and have developed a successful and much-lauded system of draft-avoidance counseling, on which your entire sense of self-worth is erected. When it is made clear to you that such services primarily benefit the middle class—that this consequently forces much larger proportions of the poor, the uneducated and blacks to serve and be killed in its place—you resist revising your views in light of this information on the grounds that you've worked on and thought hard about these issues, have developed a sophisticated critique of them, and therefore have no reason to reconsider your opinions or efforts. You thus treat the prior experience of having reflected deeply on some issue as a defense against the self-reflection appropriate now, that might uncover your personal investment in your anti-draft role.

      The illusion of perfectibility is really the sin of arrogance, for it supposes that dogmatism can be justified by having "paid one's dues."

      (3) The One-Way Communication Mechanism

      You deflect dissents, criticisms or attacks on your cherished beliefs by treating all of your own pronouncements as imparting genuine information but treating those of other people as mere symptoms of some moral or psychological defect. Say you're committed to feminism, but have difficulty making genuine contact with other women. You dismiss all arguments advocating greater attention to lesbian and separatist issues within the women's movement on the grounds that they are maintained by frustrated man-haters who just want to get their names in the footlights. By reducing questions concerning the relations of women to each other to pathology or symptoms of excessive self-interest, you avoid confronting the conflict between your intellectual convictions and your actual alienation from other women, and therefore the motives that might explain this conflict. If these motives should include such things as deep-seated feelings of rivalry with other women, or a desire for attention from men, then avoiding recognition of this conflict is crucial to maintaining your self-respect.

      The one-way communication mechanism is a form of elitism that ascribes pure, healthy, altruistic political motives only to oneself (or group), while reducing all dissenters to the status of moral defectives or egocentric and self-seeking subhumans, whom it is entirely justified to manipulate or disregard, but with whom the possibility of rational dialogue is not to be taken seriously.

      There are many other mechanisms for defending one's personal ideology. These are merely a representative sampling. Together, they all add up to what I will call the illusion of omniscience. This illusion consists in being so convinced of the infallibility of your own beliefs about everyone else that you forget that you are perceiving and experiencing other people from a perspective that is, in its own ways, just as subjective and limited as theirs. Thus you confuse your personal experiences with objective reality and forget that you have a subjective and limited self that is selecting, processing and interpreting your experiences in accordance with its own limited capacities. You suppose that your perceptions of someone are truths about her or him; that your understanding of someone is comprehensive and complete. Thus your self-conception is not demarcated by the existence of other people. Rather, you appropriate them into your self-conception as psychologically and metaphysically transparent objects of your consciousness. You ignore their ontological independence, their psychological opacity, and thereby their essential personhood. The illusion of omniscience resolves into the fallacy of solipsism.

      The result is blindness to the genuine needs of other people, coupled with the arrogant and dangerous conviction that you understand those needs better than they do; and a consequent inability to respond to those needs politically in genuinely effective ways.

      The antidote, I suggest, is confrontation of the sinner with the evidence of the sin: the rationalizations; the subconscious defense mechanisms; the strategies of avoidance, denial, dismissal and withdrawal that signal, on the one hand, the retreat of the self to the protective enclave of ideology, on the other hand, precisely the proof of subjectivity and fallibility that the ideologue is so anxious to ignore. This is the concern of my recent work of the past three years.

      The success of the antidote increases with the specificity of the confrontation. And because I don't know you I can't be as specific as I would like. I can only indicate general issues that have specific references in my own experience. But if this discussion has made you in the least degree self-conscious about your political beliefs or about your strategies for preserving them; or even faintly uncomfortable or annoyed at my having discussed them; or has raised just the slightest glimmerings of doubt about the veracity of your opinions, then I will consider this piece a roaring success. If not, then I will just have to try again, for my own sake. For of course I am talking not just about you, but about us.

      This essay originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Spring 1981.

      Above copied from http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/ideology_confro.php

       

      12. What’s next?



      It’s 2000-something and what’s next?

      I end with a text I wrote in my first block. This text also serves as the conclusion of everything you’ve just read. I end where I started and I will continue from there:

      I=U

      „MIMESIS AS AN ACT OF ULTIMATE LOVE”

      - A SCIENTIFIC LOVE RESEARCH -

      I want to gain and produce awareness about „otherness” in a direct, experiential way, using a „scientific” method: the mask. Inward and outward ‚signifiers’ (of race, gender, and class) produce and influence relations and positions. We are constantly building (constructing) interpersonal images and meanings. Which signals provoke/produce meaning in another? In other words: how is your body perceived and how do you perceive bodies? What is your position? Using masks or roles is to gain insight in ourselves and in humanity, the collective of others. We are not moving in contact zones, we are the contact zones (being ‚othered’ by other contact zones). Essentially I’m looking for a way out of exclusive thinking into inclusive thinking, out of ‘impathy’ towards empathy, out of mind into heart. This research is about going beyond the mind (I) into and eventually also beyond the other (You). To put it bluntly, it is about LOVE …

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • Trouble on Radio Triton
    • TELESCOPING THE INTERVIEW three day intensive
      12 January 2017
      posted by: Pierre Rubio
    • Myriam Van Imschoot
    • 07 February 2017
    • 10 February 2017
    • TELESCOPING THE INTERVIEW

       

      'Telescoping the interview' follows in three days the route from interview-based art to vocal performance and bruitism. That was anyway the passage once taken by sound and performance artist Myriam Van Imschoot when she discovered within her interest in the interview several doors that led over time to appreciating speech for what it offers beyond meaning: significant aberrations, iterations, flux and rupture, modulation, and not in the least, different alterations of subjectivity away from the knowledge-centered ego to idiotic, pluriphonic and even nonhuman alternatives. It became the backbone of a body of works that persistently investigates the various agencies and colours of voicing.

      The three day workshop wants to act as an insert into Trouble on Radio Triton by interacting with the radiophonic and speculative concerns of this block.

      Rather than developing a full-on extensive practice-based workshop, this is a three day intensive that will combine artist talk, screenings, voice improvisations, score explorations, and other tele-scopic incursions into artistic practice and research.

      Have a look at the schedule below.

       

      Myriam Van Imschoot (1969) is a Brussels-based sound and performance artist who works in different media - with the voice as the recurrent motive -, often engaging large groups of performers/practitioners that bring their own sonic cultures, techniques and histories, on the edge of folklore and popular practice with extended uses. Her latest performance pieces, What Nature Says (2015) and HELfel (2016), evoke sensations of landscape in trouble, with the call as an emergent act of insistence and resistance. She is the founder of various initiatives, like Sarma, Voicelabs, Oral Site, and recently the sound poetic series Volume SP. In 2017 her new film Yodel Portrait Phil Minton will come out in Stuttgart, Akademie Schloss Solitude, followed by the première of the theater production IN KOOR! (with Willem Dewolf) at Campo.

      http://oralsite.be/pages/Myriam_Van_Imschoot_Digital_Portfolio

      http://oralsite.be/pages/WNS

      www.oralsite.be

      http://oralsite.be/pages/VolumeSP

       

       

      Schedule of the workshop

      Tuesday 7th from 3pm to 10pm

      Wednesday 8th from 10am to 5pm

      Friday 10th from 10am to 5pm

       

      Location of the workshop

      a pass / Studio 4th floor

      rue Delaunoystraat, 58-60

      1080 Brussels

       

       

    • postgraduate program
    • workshop
    • block 2016/I
    • Sub -(e)ject
    • VOCAL CIRCUITS (working title for a workshop at Apass)
      02 December 2015
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Myriam Van Imschoot
    • a.pass
    • 07 March 2016
    • 11 March 2016
    • VOCAL CIRCUITS

      In this one-week workshop we will use various forms of voicing and singing to co-write thoughts, ideas and presence in the multiple spaces of social interaction, communication and their architectural and acoustic envelopes. The week follows two tracks that at first seem different yet might intertwine as we go along: we explore sensorial awareness and possibilities of vocal sound production within moving constellations (distance, proximity, humming, vibrating, micro-sound
      and deep listening); and we engage in impromptu singing as a way to convey thoughts and ideas about ourselves and the world (Silly Singing)). No musical background is required: we don't aspire to be musicians, yet, like to unsettle, mobilize the rules that govern discourse, and our mindsets.

      The week encompasses warm-ups, improvisation, scores, listening sessions or screenings of support material. Participants are encouraged to develop their own compositional proposals and strike a note.


       

       

      Biography

      Myriam Van Imschoot is a performer and sound artist who explores the potential of speech, address and utterance. Her installations, videos and performance work often integrate interviews, spoken words, shouting or gestures that bridge large distances in time or space. Often she works with
      'found vocal techniques', open for reorganization as she looks for new charges and significances, cf. her work with yodeling, Arabic cries, or nature calls. Her last group piece, What Nature Says, investigated the phenomenon of audio-mimesis, with sliding lines between culture and nature, human and other entities.

      Link: http:// oralsite/pages/Myriam_Van_Imschoot_Digital_Portfolio/

      (to be consulted with firefox)

    •  
      To apply for the position of a researcher at the post-graduate program you are asked to submit an artistic research proposal. Your application should provide a clear insight in what you aim to achieve in the one-year working period at a.pass and the relevance of your proposal in a collective research environment.
       
      The application dossier should include:
       
      -your research proposal, including your larger research trajectory, the specific project or part of it you would like to engage in at a.pass, possible public formats of presentation, possible interactions with the a.pass the post-graduate and the kind of support that these proposals would need at a.pass.
      -Portfolio (relevant works in relation to the research proposal)
      -CV
      -Diploma or equivalent proof of a master-level qualification.
       
      Candidates should be holders of a master’s diploma (artistic or theoretical) and deliver a copy of it upon registration.  In certain cases application without a master's diploma can be considered, if the practice-based experience of the applicant is equivalent to the masters level. 
       
      Please upload your dossier as a PDF file via the online form.
       
    • information
    • NOT_index
    • Content of the Research Proposal 03 July 2014
      posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
    • Your proposal should consist of:
      • A description of your project, including a research plan addressing the central question and a proposed research trajectory and methodology. Please address the potential of your research to contribute to experimental performative or spatial modes of knowledge production.
      • Proposal(s) on the modes of communication and sharing  of your research within the a.pass environment and to a wider public (which formats would you like to explore to communicate, document and archive your research?)
      • A portfolio of your past projects : excerpts from videos, films, photos, texts, reviews, drawings, paintings, etc.
      • A curriculum vitae including information on your master's diploma (or the highest diploma you obtained) and your professional experience.
       
       




APPLY TO THE A.PASS PROGRAMMES

Unfortunately we no longer have applications. Both programs: the Postgraduate as well as Research Center have come to an end due to the decision of the ministry of education to stop financing a.pass. At the moment we look into new plans for the future. More news soon on our website.

Alternativly you can upload your Research proposal, Portfolio, CV and other documents here.

Maximum file size: 50 MB, maximum 5 files.

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