a.pass organizes two programs (the post-master and PhD program) with slightly different goals and end qualifications, which are both sustained, fed and communicated through the efforts of the a.pass research center. In this point we will clarify the organization of the different cells and their aims, and define their specific research goals that are addressed on all these levels.
index
- a.pass
- 09 January 2025
- 28 February 2025
- yes
- How does your collective include artistic research within your (collective) practice? Which methods do you want to explore during a fallow period to organise (collective) artistic research and which conditions do you create for that?
- How does your collective share/open up the process of artistic searching to inspire and dialogue with others? What kind of methods does your collective want to explore during this residency in order to be able to transmit what is found in/through artistic research to others?
- Within your own collective practice, how do you see a future balance between production, presentation, and research? How would you organise periods of lying fallow in a sustainable way?
- PERIOD: 2 months (or 8 and a half weeks) in a row or spread over a maximum of 5 months (June-October). Please indicate which period(s) would be most convenient for your group within this timeline. There will also be 2 exchange moments after the residency: one with the other selected collective/s and one during the final a.pass symposium taking place in December 2025.
- SALARY: 3 to 5 persons: €10.000 per person for the whole residency (2 months or 8,5 weeks, all costs and VAT included). In case of 6 to 10 persons: the total salary budget (€50.000 in total for the whole residency, all costs and VAT included) as well as the working time (8,5 weeks) will be divided, making sure people are paid correctly for the time they invest.
- TRAVEL + ACCOMMODATION COSTS: for people coming from outside of Belgium to Brussels, a maximum of €2.000 per person for the whole residency will be available for travel and accommodation (refund based on receipts). In case of 6 to 10 persons coming from outside of Belgium: the whole travel budget (€10.000) will be divided. ATTENTION: we don't have any accommodation to stay, we only provide collective workspace, location to be confirmed.
- RESEARCH BUDGET: €2.000 for the whole residency (on top of the salaries) for small production costs related to your research (to make your research possible, or to document or to share your research for instance). Basic technical equipment is available. You will have access to the a.pass library and access to the archive and an update about earlier steps made in this transition process.
- SUPPORT: a conversation partner/dedicated mentor and a.pass curator will be in touch with the collective for at least 3 moments during the residency and will also be in dialogue with a.pass (board and General Assembly). Our general coordinator is also present in Brussels to give administrative and productional support.
- SPACE FOR THE RESIDENCY: the residency will take place in Brussels, but since the nomadic character of the organisation at the very moment, now a.pass no longer exists as an educational institution, this place might change. Collaboration with other organisations, to create intersection with other worlds, other realities is possible too. You can also indicate in your application what specific conditions this workspace must meet for your residency.
- PERSONAL NEEDS: in case you have questions regarding specific personal needs (family, accessibility,...) please contact our general coordinator.
- made ideally of 5 persons (minimal 3 - maximal 10) coming from any artistic practice and discipline; please note: this call is not for individuals, nor for duos;
- having an artistic practice that is research-based and active already at the time of submitting the application;
- busy with, or interested in, bringing their practice in a fallow time and space, exploring what happens there, sharing with others their research tools and methodologies, and transmitting what was found fruitful during the residency;
- having experience with reflecting on institutions, or pedagogical or anthropological experience, or researching and practicing transnationally and/or transculturally;
- creating intersections with other worlds, other communities, other realities (social practices, farming or cooking, or other fields like the political, ecological, economical, juridical, urbanistic, subcultures, etc…).
- APPLICATION LETTER: (max 5 pages or 15 min of recording) this can be in writing or via an audio or video recording. We would like to know how you would take care of creating the fallow ground? Which methods would you like to explore to do artistic research and to share your experiences with others during the fallow period? What would be a desirable outcome for your group? What is your motivation for working on conditions for lying fallow, how do you imagine working together and why would you make a good group? Who is part of the group, have you worked together before, and in what fields is each of you active? Also good to mention briefly the collective and individual need in (artistic) research and your relation to it, as well as your relation to a.pass and/or Brussels.
- TIMELINE: (max 1 page) indicate your favourite periods (2 months or 8,5 weeks spread over max 5 months) and give us a more detailed planning or timeline of your residency.
- BIO’s + CV’s: (max 2 pages per person) of all the people involved in the group
- PORTFOLIO: (max 3 pages per person) this can be added to the PDF or you can share links to the online portfolio of the collective and/or of the single members (extra info, website, other links)
- is all the information requested in the form present?
- is it a collective (3-10 pers.) applying or not ? (individuals and duo’s will not be selected)
- is it a research application or not? (project and production applications will not be accepted)
2) a second selection will be made by the jury: each eligible application will be read by at least 2 jury members (each time a duo consisting of an a.pass member and an external jury member), they will look into the following criteria:
- how the notion of artistic research has been dealt within the proposal
- the pedagogical aspects of the proposal
- the proposed methodologies
- diversity of backgrounds, gender identities, and/or expertise within the groups
- the recognition of today’s challenges
3) a third selection will be made by all jury members: maximum 5 groups will be selected and invited for an online talk with the jury to elaborate on their application before a final selection is made.
4) a final selection will be made after the talk with the 5 groups, the jury will discuss the group they selected with the board and General Assembly of a.pass
- a.pass
- 20 August 2024
- 13 October 2024
- How does your collective include artistic research within your (collective) practice? Which methods do you use or do you want to explore during this residency to organise (collective) artistic research?
- How does your collective share the process of artistic searching to inspire others? What kind of methods does your collective want to explore during this residency in order to be able to share artistic research with others? How to learn from each other?
- PERIOD: 2 months (or 8 and a half weeks) spread over a maximum of 5 months (December 2024-May 2025). Please indicate which period(s) would be most convenient for your group within the timeline. There will also be 2 return moments after the residency (to be organised later).
- SALARY: 3 to 5 persons: €10.000 per person for the whole residency (2 months or 8,5 weeks, all costs and VAT included). In case of 6 to 10 persons: the total salary budget (€50.000 in total for the whole residency, all costs and VAT included) as well as the working time (8,5 weeks) will be divided, making sure people are paid correctly for the time they invest.
- TRAVEL + ACCOMMODATION COSTS: for people coming from outside of Belgium to Brussels, 3 to 5 persons: a maximum of €2.000 per person for the whole residency will be available for travel and accommodation (refund based on receipts). In case of 6 to 10 persons coming from outside of Belgium: the whole travel budget (€10.000) will be divided. ATTENTION: we don't have any accommodation to stay, we only provide collective workspace.
- PRODUCTION BUDGET: €2.000 for the whole residency (on top of the salaries). Basic technical equipment is available. You will have access to the a.pass library and access to the archive and an update about earlier steps made in this transition process.
- SUPPORT: a conversation partner/dedicated mentor will be in touch with the collective for at least 3 moments during the residency and will also be in dialogue with a.pass (board and General Assembly). Our general coordinator is also present in Brussels to give administrative and productional support.
- SPACE FOR THE RESIDENCY: the residency will take place in Brussels, but since the nomadic character of the organisation at the very moment, now a.pass no longer exists as an educational institution, this place might change. Collaboration with other organisations, to create intersection with other worlds, other realities is possible too. You can also indicate in your application what specific conditions this workspace must meet for your residency.
- PERSONAL NEEDS: in case you have questions regarding specific personal needs (family, accessibility,...) please contact our general coordinator.
- COLLECTIVES: the residency programme is aimed at collectives from ideally 5 persons (minimal 3 - maximal 10) ( ATTENTION: this call is NOT for individuals, NOT for duo’s) preferably having experience with artistic research, or with reflecting on institutions, or pedagogical or anthropological experience, all disciplines are welcomed though. You can either work with an already constituted collective or with a newly and for this occasion only formed collective.
- VOICES LESS HEARD: During the selection process of the 1st call we noticed a tendency to focus on local collectives from Brussels/Belgium. With this 2nd call we want to encourage collectives from the Global South to apply for this residency, since we are very open and interested in hearing non-European voices on this topic. We warmly invite you to make your group a multitude of voices, with different perspectives and different disciplines and different expertises gathered around the table.
- TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH: creating intersections with other worlds, other communities, other realities (social practices, farming or cooking, or other fields like the political, ecological, economical, juridical, urbanistic, subcultures, etc…).
- APPLICATION LETTER: (max 5 pages or 15 min of recording) this can be in writing or via an audio or video recording. We would like to know how you would take care of the fallow ground? Which methods would you like to explore to do artistic research and to share your experiences with others? What would be a desirable outcome for your group? What is your motivation, how do you imagine working together and why would you make a good group? Who is part of the group, have you worked together before, and in what fields is each of you active? Also good to mention briefly the collective and individual need in (artistic) research and your relation to it, as well as your relation to a.pass and/or Brussels.
- TIMELINE: (max 1 page) indicate your favourite periods (2 months or 8,5 weeks spread over max 5 months) and give us a more detailed planning or timeline of your residency.
- BIO’s + CV’s: (max 2 pages per person) of all the people involved in the group
- PORTFOLIO: portfolio of the collective or per person, extra info, website, other links
- PROCEDURE:
- rue Manchesterstraat 17, Molenbeek
- 07 July 2024
- a.pass
- 09 April 2024
- 09 June 2024
- application letter: this can be in writing or via an audio or video recording. We are happy to read or listen to you in Dutch, French or English (max 5 pages in writing or max 15 min of recording). We would like to know how you would take care of the fallow ground? What would be a desirable outcome for your group? What is your motivation, how you imagine working together and why you would make a good group. Who is part of the group, have you worked together before, and in what fields is each of you active? Also good to mention briefly the collective and individual need in (artistic) research and your relation to it, as well as your relation to a.pass and/or Brussels.
- your favourite period (max 5 months) in which you would like to have the residency and a more detailed planning or timeline.
- short bio’s + CV of all the people involved in the group (max 1 pages per person)
- documentation: website, video links, portfolio (limited to 3 pages per person - 10 MB )
- a.pass, Moussem, SOTA, Lagrange Points
- The Whirling Ear - Kunstberg, 1000 Brussels
- 29 November 2023
- case of: Vladimir Miller
- Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi
- a.pass
- 29 June 2023
- 30 June 2023
- Kate Briggs
- a.pass
- 05 July 2023
- 06 July 2023
- Aslı Hatipoğlu, Martin Sieweke, Martina Petrović, Nada Gambier
- a.pass 4th floor
- 02 June 2023
- 03 June 2023
- POSTER...POSTER.pdf
- Nada Gambier & Jen Rosenblit
- a.pass
- 15 March 2023
- 16 March 2023
- case of: Nada Gambier
- 01 March 2023
- 02 March 2023
- online
- 22 May 2023
- case of: Vladimir Miller
- MEYBOOM artists-run spaces
- 29 September 2022
- 30 September 2022
- egy kaparós sorsjegy;
- árak 1,500 Ft-tól;
- legalább 150 szokatlan hely;
- 03 June 2022
- case of: Chloe Janssens
- Portfolio mobi...ile CJ.pdf
- ZSenne ArtLab
- 27 June 2022
- 09 July 2022
- gathering, seminar, performance
- case of: Lilia Mestre
- KBK Brussels
- De Markten
- 11 June 2021
- 12 June 2021
- yes
- 03 May 2021
- 31 July 2021
- yes
- case of: Sina Seifee
- case of: Vladimir Miller
- yes
- case of: Vladimir Miller
- 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?
- 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?
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.)
- Larger systems
- 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
- Wrong horizon of the word ‘autonomy’
- 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?
- ANNIHILATION
- 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)
- (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.
- 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....
- 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.
- 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
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens
- 10 June 2021
- 30 euro - annex + 2 books + 1 game
- archive 10 6 2... final.pdf
- a.pass annex 2... email.pdf
- Close Encounters series
- ISELP & a.pass
- 06 February 2020
- 06 February 2020
- 01 September 2018
- 30 November 2018
- case of: Maurice Meewisse
- Marialena Marouda, Christina Stadlbauer and Nicolas Geleazzi
- Becoming Water
- a.pass Research Centre Associates in residence
- ZSenne ART Lab / Brussels
- 24 June 2019
- 14 July 2019
- Nicolas Galeazzi
- 29 April 2019
- 28 July 2019
- case of: Nicolas Galeazzi
- case of: Geert Vaes
- The Rooster and the Bread Bag
- The Seemingly Empty Stage
- My beloved grandmother Marie, the playground and a little clown.
- The Farmer and the Widow
- Black Lola from the Striptease Bar
- My Second Holy Communion as a girl.
- The Real Cowboy from Begijnendijk
- 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.
- 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:
- The hippie and the punk
- Miss Piggy
- Tommie Has Milk
- Luisa Fillitz / Esther Rodriguez-Barbero Granado / Eunkyung Jeong / Marialena Marouda / Ekaterina Kaplunova / Shervin Kiarnesi / Lilia Mestre
- 24 May 2018
- 26 May 2018
- case of: Lilia Mestre
- BLOCK 18/II
- Brussels
- 30 April 2018
- 02 September 2018
- case of: Pierre Rubio
- Critical Administration Forum
- 2001-1233.pdf?...ence=1.pdf
- DONALD-BROOK-E...rt.pdf.pdf
- SVEN DEHENS & ZOUMANA MEÏTÉ
- Manchesterstraat 17
- 25 January 2018
- 27 January 2018
- a.pass, 3rd floor
- 01 January 2018
- case of: Femke Snelting
- Florian Feigl
- 26 February 2018
- 02 March 2018
- ecologies of m... feigl.pdf
- Nicolas Galeazzi
- 08 January 2018
- 01 April 2018
- Geert Vaes
- 26 October 2017
- Eleanor Ivory Weber
- 23 October 2017
- 22 October 2017
- 17 November 2017
- case of: Vladimir Miller
- descriptive practices of poetics and natural history
- women in my life: Avital, Haraway, Ahmed, Scher, Barad, Despret, teaching me science and art, attentive modes of differential reading and writing, practices of noninnocent care and concern
- men in my life: Serres, Sennet, Delanda, Levinas, Anand, teaching me a non-guilt-driven knowledge of history and past, a different mode of remembrance which provokes a different mode of response and responsibility
- interrupting stories with stories
- partial connection (and its performance)
- moving arguments through by infecting them with other arguments (=/= dialectical)
- mobilizing (multidisciplinary) fields (=/= the imperative of knowing A, B, and C first before you do D)
- mobilizing citation apparatus --> that which gives sense to what enables this work --> deliberately having a conversation with ajayeb al-makhlughat عجایب المخلوقات, Sa'di, Attar, Sadra, Sohrevardi, etc.
- remembering what one knows (=/= owes) (and organizing, performing, reworking it, sustaining a state of generative transformation = my ajayeb.net)
- having stakes in rationality (i constantly criticize rationality, but as you can see, i am not at all throwing it out)
- Workshops http://ajayeb.net/?q=workshop
- ajayeb.net
- Rigs (http://ajayeb.net/?q=Rig) --> pop-up book
- notes --> highlighting as part of a material reading practice http://ajayeb.net/?q=read%2Bpractic
- Routines http://ajayeb.net/?q=routin
- Excessive approach
- Bibliography
- Wonder
- Ongoingness
- Ontology
- study as artwork
- reading as artwork
- bottom-top approach to writing
- every research practice:
- must include "the image of body"
- must employ ontological attention to differential productions
- must rework decompose redefine its root-metaphors
- must give extensive equipment list
- must trace its social connections in a wider ecology of practices
- Mirabile dictu... (miraculous to say...) (--> wonderful to relate… / Virgil’s citation making) (=/= sad to say…, unfortunately...)
- histories of standards in knowledge production, which, i argue, is key to all sorts of other productions
- the politics of remembrance : the politics and philosophy of classifying certain textual/material activities such that they have a chance of being part of the cultural potential memory)-->{Olga, Hoda, Sana}
- the first question has no clear answer, what i know is not placed somewhere in me, it is always an articulated matter of ‘with’ or in interaction with, it is an always compound relation between matters, changes before i can grasp, knowing is done always with a figure or a thing, it includes all sorts of optics and technologies, (affect theory, media theory, epistemology, semiotics, ajayeb theory, Sadrian imaginal ontology, etc.)
- the response to the second question is also not clear, i can never be sure of what i am told, i don't remember or even hear, what i am told is infolded in what i know
- --> what are the set of skills needed for my work?
- --> which problematics these skills equip me to address?
- --> can i (or should i) not know these problematics in advance?
- use as ironic: incongruity (عدم تجانس) in expectations of what is meant and what it will mean in advance
- use to symbolize: as a way of not dealing with transference and sujet supposé savoir
- use of anamorphic gaze: a non-diffractive optical system
- use of palindromic model --> to be careful (or keep in check) with sequential palindromic notion of pop-up book, to deal with the parsable seesaw motif inherent in the pop-up book Blickmaschin
- am i creating an ego (for ajayeb) in my ajayeb.net? if yes, that would be interesting how? To equip a being with “ego”.
- in ajayeb.net the so-called url address or location bar, is itself a control panel, a graphical user interface widget;
how did i come to use “?q=”: rhetorics of technologized inquiry in place before i even could think about how do I allow my objects constituted by “?”, “q” and “=” of the language and grammar of internet- selection pressure of ?q= : a (abstract) probe head: explores a space of possible forms (of writing), is blind or shortsighted, nevertheless effective in certain circumstances ==> double articulation http://ajayeb.net/?q=double%2Barticulation
- producing highlights: embodied attention that produces non-zero clusters of salient words that come to glow different than others
- ?q= is an abstract machine that differentiates the process of sedimentary-sentence formation from the process that yields textual species
- selection pressure of ?q= : a (abstract) probe head: explores a space of possible forms (of writing), is blind or shortsighted, nevertheless effective in certain circumstances ==> double articulation http://ajayeb.net/?q=double%2Barticulation
- google webmasters tools is my first readership, it communicates its reading with me; (did i have a desire to make the hypertext for a machine?)
- url passed in facebook post, results into a link to فلزیاب ، مطالب علمی و آموزشی / مدار فلزیاب و دستگاه فلزیاب تضمینی, a series of websites for selling treasure finders, finding metal under the ground, ganj, and so on...
- alphabetical proto cloud (Serres) --?--> without law, random
- what are the laws of good combination that i am reworking or resisting or acquiring or answering to, in my ajayeb hypertext? (how composition is reproduced?)
- ajayeb's version of the network of primordial elements in communication with each other
- is it a support for my various tasks and practices outside the computer? --> excess-driven storytellings =/= minimum data set
- a non-data-driven systems in this society are named secretive and mysterious in the name of transparency
- pop-up book: an instrument with fixed parts ==> concept of “position”
- Rigs on the other hand tries not to exclude other concepts such as “momentum” from having meaning
- my Rigs and books are basically about how discursive practices are related to material phenomena
- (but again, how can I answer) which ontological practices are embodied (or embedded) in (the productive and constraining dimension of regulatory) apparatuses of my ajayeb? (rigs, hypertext, pop-up, my sayings, etc.)
- (resisting the anti-metaphysics legacy) how can I keep insisting on accountability for the particular exclusions that are enacted in (my) ajayeb and taking up the responsibility to perpetually contest and rework the boundaries (of my objectives)?
- (if i continue with digital tech in reading ajayeb) how the digitized ajib knowledge can resist appropriation and translation into an idiom that will not sustain its metaphysics?
- La Bellone, Brussels
- 22 June 2017
- 24 June 2017
- case of: Lilia Mestre
- Agency 001678...001678.pdf
- Agency 001678...001678.pdf
- Agency 001678...001678.pdf
- Luiza Crosman, Juan Duque, Sana Ghobbeh, Sébastien Hendrickx, Aela Royer
- Greylight Projects
- 23 May 2017
- 25 May 2017
- 06 March 2017
- Myriam Van Imschoot
- 07 February 2017
- 10 February 2017
- case of: Maarten Van den Bussche
- Change Log of Common Things
Please encircle up to five keywords across all categories, or add new keywords in the space provided, then hand this page to the writer.
- Change Log of Common Things
RESOURCE: The Care-taking Scores 30 September 2016
posted by: Arianna Marcolini
Written translations of videos capturing the body movements and gestures of my mum taking care of the domestic environment.
These written translations take the form of poems/scores - set of instructions, sequences of movements.
23 September 2016
I start the translation of the written translation into a dance choreography.
I invent the movements and I try to remember them during the same session. For that I practice what I invented right afterwards, repeating small bits of movements time after time, while trying to add something each time I repeat the sequence. I test the memory of my body in sparkles of joy. I try to build up fluidity and spontaneity of the body starting from a condition of constraint and given instruction.
During the act of translation, I notice how high is the normative strength of choreography.
In the practice both of the care taking gestures that I can reconstruct in my memory through the reading, and in the dance movements I am doing now, the wrists play an important role. I sense how they could be considered the site for tuning (regulating, adjusting) the degree of care one applies through the gesture.
30 September 2016
This second time I enter the resource, I am transforming my first experience and experiment into a commitment.. into a sustained practice.
While addressing this resource, I in fact realize I am also working on the gap `practice`.
It is very difficult at first to cross the threshold of the space of the body, the space of the practice, trusting the letting go of the thought-processes where I am immersed.
After a week passed, I want to test my memory of the choreography by directly diving into it, without reading the written score of instructions.
As during the first time of this try out, there is a video camera as an external device to record my movements and verify my memory from an outside source of documentation. It is also a tool through which I aim at observing my body position, the orientation of it in the space, and how to work on composition.
TOOL : Need a Text? - Writing Score 14 October 2016
posted by: Maarten Van den Bussche------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------- WRITING SERVICE ----------------------------------------------
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Language:
ENGLISH / DUTCH / FRENCHMethod:
LAPTOP / NAIL-POLISH / PEN & PAPER / TYPEWRITER
Style and Form:
ACADEMIC / ADVERTISEMENT / ANGRY RANT / CYNICAL / DIARY ENTRY / FAIRY TALE / FREE ASSOCIATION / FREE VERSE / INSTRUCTION LEAFLET / LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION / MANIFEST / MYSTICAL / MYTH / ODE / OPTIMISTIC / PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE / PESSIMISTIC / POETRY / PRAGMATIC / PROSE / RATIONAL / RHYME / ROMANTIC / THEORETICAL / .................... / ................... / ................ /
Content:
209 / ATTENTION / BELL / BOX / CONFLICT / CYBORG / DIARY / DISPOSITIF / DOCUMENTING / CAMBIO DE CERRADURA SIN LLAVE CARE / CLAPPERBOARD / CORRESPONDENCE / DECLARATION / DESK / EMBODIMENT / EXCESS / FRAMING / FRIDAY / GENERICALY SPECIFIC / GOD / HAND-EYE COORDINATION / INVISIBLE / LIGHT / LIGHT THEREMIN / LILITH / LOCATION / LOVE / MD-RECORDER / MIRROR / MOIRRRE / MOVEMENT / NAIL-POLISH / NON-DUALITY / NON-UNDERSTANDABLE / OPENLY CONCRETE / PASSAGE / PERSONAL / POETRY / POLITICS / PRACTICE / RECALL / RECORDING / SCORES / SELF / SPACE / SOUND / TEXT / TEXTING / THE HOLE CAMERA / THEORY / THE SELF / THIS SPACE / TRANCE / TRANCE TEXTING / TYPEWRITER / VERGENCE / VISIBLE / ..................... / ................ / ..................... / ................ /HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT YOU AND YOUR MIRROR IMAGE HAVE IN COMMON?
-ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A WAY BEYOND FLATNESS ?-
TRY OUT OUR NEW FRIDAY SESSION – SEE YOURSELF THROUGH THE CHAOTIC LENS OF A FLUCTUATING SELECTION OF CONTEMPORARY POOR
RETURN TO YOUR PROJECTED LIVE KNOWING THAT A REVOLUTIONARY SYSTEM OF COMMONING WHAT WAS ONCE PRIVATE IS SO COMPLICATED IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN DURING YOUR LIFETIME. WATCH GROWN UP PEOPLE DO WEIRD THINGS YOU DONT UNDERSTAND AND FEEL HOW LIVE COULD BE WAY MORE COMPLICATED THAN YOU EVER FELT. IT IS EASY!
FIND PEACE AGAIN WHEN YOU LOOK INTO YOUR MIRROR
FREE TOOLS AND RESOURCES PROVIDED TO FILL YOUR GAPSWARNING: ALL FOOD SERVED WILL BE VEGETARIAN – NO REFUNDS
SUBJECT: 01101100 01101001 01101100 01101001 01110100 01101000
CREATION DATE: 0 – 134064h.HUMAN ACCES CODE: L I L I T H
MANIFESTATION:
subject breached non-dual protocol by applying nail-polish __subject stated 'I got Friday on my mind / I could be your Fairy / Baby / Let's embody across all categories / your SELFSPACE or mine / let's become invisible / doesn't that sound fine?'
SOLUTION:__recommend increase testosterone dosage during next TRANSE fase __removal of excess SELFSPACE __thorough cleaning of the optic fiber passages __removal of the other
- APROVAL OF NCH DIVISION REQUIRED -- case of: Maarten Van den Bussche
The half-way-days are the second assembly gathering in each block. It is the moment where the exchange of practices include the direct involvement of the others into our own practices. This intense week of exchanges is a practical research moment and a chance to test and develop our methodologies.
TELESCOPING THE INTERVIEW three day intensive
12 January 2017
posted by: Pierre Rubio
'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/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
YOU CALL THIS PROGRESS?! 3/4 (Revisiting SF Cinema) curated by Dehens & Kaplunova
03 March 2017
posted by: Pierre Rubio
Program for Monday 06/03Screening starts at 19h30TestamentJohn Akomfrah1988 / Ghana / 88 minPreceeding the visit of Dr. Edward George, member of Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), we present Testament, the first narrative feature film of the collective. Link to the event / on FacebookIn Testament, the condition of the postcolony is embodied in the figure of activist turned television reporter Abena who returns to contemporary Ghana, for the first time since the 1966 coup that ended President Kwame Nkrumah’s experiment in African socialism. Adrift in a ‘war zone of memories’ in the words of the film’s subtitle, Abena is caught in the tension between public history and private memory Testament is characterised by a depopulated frame and the deliberately cold look that evoke an emotional landscape of postcolonial trauma.The Unity of All ThingsAlexander Craver & Daniel Schmidt2013 / USA, Switzerland, China/ 97 minThe Unity of All Things is a work of experimental science fiction about the construction of a particle accelerator beneath the U.S./Mexico border. It is grappling with questions of self and other by employing particle physics as a metaphor for the morphing nature of human identity. The film engages the utopian impulses of the genre, not through the imagining of another world, but through the rendering of this world as Other. All subjects are treated as alien, or as radical others, who search for, or advance different ideological, psychological, or sexual ideals of belonging. Subjects oscillate between the contemplation of past societal traumas and idealizations of futurity that refuse to synthesize or resolve, but instead reveal a troubling satire of the present.Program for Monday 06/03Screening starts at 19h30Entrance freelocation a.pass 4th floorhttps://www.google.be/maps/place/Rue+Delaunoy+60,+1080+Molenbeek-Saint-Jean/@50.8530792,4.3300367,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47c3c3f46c54e4c7:0x4e61e376c2f6b53a
HEARSAY 09 May 2017
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
At the end of a one year research cycle at a.pass, Luiza Crosman (BR), Juan Duque (CO), Sana Ghobbeh (IR), Sébastien Hendrickx (BE) and Aela Royer (FR) open their thoughts and practices to a larger audience through (lecture-)performances, installations and performative scores. You are welcome to explore a tentacular collection of interests and concerns, relating to site-specificity, alternative eroticisms, complex narrativities, urban protest and diagrammatic speculation.
____HEARSAY____
a.pass end-communications by
Luiza Crosman, Juan Duque, Sana Ghobbeh, Sébastien Hendrickx and Aela Royer
MAY 23-24-25 GREYLIGHT PROJECTS 5-10pm
Rue Brialmont 11
1210 Sint-Joost-ten-Node/ Brussels
____HEARSAY____ is a three day event hosted by GreyLight Projects. Five artist-researchers from the Brussels based post-master program a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) make a public presentation of their respective researches.
The end, self-evidently, isn’t the end. ____HEARSAY____ offers space for reflection and informal dialogue, in order to co-imagine possible research futures. In between scheduled performances, a comfortable bar/terrace/library is open to spend some time, share your experiences and questions with the artist-researchers, and get in touch with the research backgrounds through a communal publication and a selection of books and documents. Or simply enjoy a drink, food and listen to some music of your choice.
Limited capacity: reservation for the (lecture-)performances is recommended. Guarantee your place by subscribing via the doodles.
– Sana Ghobbeh: max 30: DOODLE 1
– Sébastien Hendrickx: max 30: DOODLE 2
– Aela Royer: max 50: DOODLE 3PROGRAMME
MAY 23-24-25 @ Greylight Projects
5-6pm: performance
This wall grows at its root. Performance by Sana Ghobbeh. Audience capacity 30; subscribe here.
6-7pm: installations + bar/food/terrace/library
UNFOLD, site-specific installation by Juan Duque
Notes on Institutional Fictions and a hypothesis to be developed by practice; INDEX 3/3 – ALIBI: “Dummies”; “The Prophecy of the Ceiling made of Glass”; “A Space into a Diagram”, installation by Luiza Crosman.
7-8pm: lecture performance
Research presentation, by Sébastien Hendrickx. Audience capacity 30; subscribe here.
8-9pm: installations + bar/food/terrace/library
9-10pm: performative lecture
Eros the Joyful, by Aela Royer. Audience capacity 50; Subscribe here.
Thanks to: Greylight Projects & Bains Connective:
The Document Transformed + Book Launch Dirty Room /Juan Dominguez a.pass seminar and master classes
11 May 2017
posted by: Lilia Mestre
Curated by Sofia Caesar and Lilia Mestre, the public program “The Document Transformed” invites four practitioners that offer very distinct questions, methods, and proposals to problems related to documentation. Join Femke Snelting, Olga de Soto, Vincent Meessen, and Agency (Kobe Matthys), and others, for three days of presentations, screenings, performances and conversations. How does the document affect practices, bodies, histories, and experiences? The event brings together practices that not only give sight to the power relations engendered by apparatuses of documentation, but also move towards the transformation of the systems in which we produce history, law, art, and the body. Held in the context of The Problem of the Score, block curated by Lilia Mestre in the a.pass post-master research program and supported by a.pass.
This seminar is organized in collaboration with La Bellone - BrusselsTo inscribe to the master-classes please send an email to production@apass.be
JUNE 22-23-24 @ LA BELLONE
Rue de Flandre 46
BrusselsDetailed program:
Thursday June 22nd
10:00 > 13:00 Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)
What if ephemeral things become included within art practices? Intellectual property seems to be mostly reserved for “fixated” things. Although the European copyright law doesn't exclude variability, during jurisprudences judges consider movements that are “recordable” in some way or another. Agency calls forth different controversies from recorded movements in dance and performance and sport. By paying attention to the consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property right for the protocols inherent to practices, the fragility of the mode of existence of singular art practices is made explicit.
14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)
This edition will be dedicated to a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one of the most commonly used file-formats for transposing movement captured in physical space, to a computational environment. Around this relatively legible format, a rich ecology of software tools developed. The file-format functions as a boundary object between practices and bodies, as it is used by animators, game developers, interface researchers, medical professionals, dance-historians, sports-analysts and engineers.
Together we will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.
The reading of the .bvh file format is developed with Adva Zakai in the context of Possible Bodies, a collaborative research initiated by Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, and the matter-cultural conditions of possibility that render them present.
Friday June 23rd
10:00 >13:00 Exhibition visit (Bozar) and discussion with Vincent Meessen
Starts at Bozar Main entranceIn this afternoon, artist Vincent Meessen will take us through his Bozar show, that comes from his recent practice that involves research, historicization, and speculation about congolese works of art that have been commissioned and (re-)contextualized in the early 30’s. Starting from there, we can raise some issues about what a work of art is expected to be and how it can shift meaning with context and neighbouring artefacts.
More about the show Patterns for (Re)cognition by Tshela Tendu & Vincent Meessen, Opening 16th June at BOZAR: http://www.bozar.be/nl/activities/124891-tshela-tendu-vincent-meessen
14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto will share her research project that has Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table (1932) as a starting point. She will display the process, methods, research protocols and strategies that she has developed over time, and through which she addresses the question of reconstruction, re-enactment and revival from the perspective of the trace, both material and immaterial, in order to analyse the several charges the work contain (social, political, dramatic, emotional...).
She will share with us how she approached Jooss' work through the archive, the trace and the document, proposing to circumvent the traditional modalities of transmission in dance, in order to probe the archive’s "capabilities" to say the work, as well to examine the archive's "becoming-work".
We will observe how the project and its process unfolded simultaneously into two levels: on a documentary research level and on a creation level. With the help of several documents, we will observe how the documentary research was developed, dedicated in part to researching and documenting the perception and transmission of The Green Table, seeking out iconographic material (through the gathering of numerous documents of different kinds), analysing the choreographic characteristics of the work and looking for witnesses – dancers and audience members from different origins and generations, in order to study the perception of the work through the prism of the viewer’s gaze (using the interview as a tool to collect memories, focusing on the importance of the testimony and oral sources).
Saturday June 24th 12:00 > 18:00
In this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.
12:30 Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk
13:00 Femke Snelting
Femke Snelting will present a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. Together they will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.
14:00 Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto will share some excerpts of Débords, work presented at Les Halles in 2012, as well as some excerpts of the installation she is currently working on, and that was partially presented this Spring at Museum für Neue Kunst, in Freiburg. The presentation will be punctuated with a discussion on the work.
PAUSE
15:30 Vincent Meessen
Vincent Meessen will screen “One. Two. Three.”, piece presented in Wiels in 2016, followed by a talk about his strategies of re-composition and counter-narratives.
16:30 Agency (Kobe Matthys)
“What if ephemeral things become included within art practices?” Thing 001678 (Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) concerns a conflict between on the one hand Roger Eudes, Théâtre Champs-Elysées, and on the other hand Jean Guttmann (Babilée) and Jean Cocteau about the performance Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. On June 8, 1960, the court case Eudes c. Gutmann, Cocteau et autres took place at the Cour d’appel de Paris. Judge Rousselet had to decide who owned the rights over the movements of the performance, Eudes who hired Jean Gutmann to “translate” Jean Cocteau his drama into ballet movements or Cocteau who wrote the script of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.
17:30 Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo
The book Dirty Room is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher. Dirty Room is a collection of outlines, notes, ideas, reflections, photographic materials, maps, manifestos, fragments from diaries, transcriptions of conversations, interviews, email exchanges, memoirs, memories and scripts, among other documents from the working and research process that led to Clean Room. Clean Room was a project based on the concept of seriality with a pilot and 3 more seasons of 6 episodes each that took place from 2010 to 2016.
Dirty Room offers the readers an immersion in the process of the project Clean Room. It is a book in which there are no critical essays, or texts speaking only from the external position of the spectator. All of the contributions are part of the ongoing research and working process of Clean Room, either continually accompanying it over long periods or as one-off contributions at a specific moments. This decision highlights the great potential of the process in its fragmentary, undefined and open nature not only for the transmission of knowledge and ideas, but above all for stimulating imaginative processes to connect with the concerns that set the series in motion.
Dirty Room
Edited by: Juan Domínguez and Victoria Pérez Royo
Editorial: Continta me tienes
Executive Production: manyone
Madrid, May 2017
Translations by Ana Buitrago, Simon Malone and Catherine Phelps
This is a publication by the a.pass research centre.
About the participants
Vincent Meessen
"Transform documents into experiences and vice versa". This phrase by Aby Warburg could definitely be used to introduce Vincent Meessen's speculative realism, or as he calls it: 'documents d'expérience'. His archival investigations always lead to loose associations and appropriative gestures that are rewritten into critical narratives.
In his latest modular installations he combines films with printed matter and sculptures. Meessen produces narratives that question our ability to deal with the colonial ghosts of modernity. In his recent Vita Nova, he makes use of the filmic essay to re-read Roland Barthes in various postcolonial African situations, applying Barthes's deconstruction tools to some of his famous texts. Vincent Meessen likes to use procedures of collaboration that undermine the authority of the author and emphasize the intelligence of collectives and of conceptual characters. He is a founding member of the artist collective Potential Estate and of the platform for artistic research and production Jubilee (jubilee-art.org).
Recent shows include KIOSK (Ghent), ARS 11, Kiasma Museum (Helsinki), Stedelijk Museum Bureau (Amsterdam) and Contour Biennial for Moving Images (Mechelen). He worked together with the collective Potential Estate for the Brussels Biennial and M HKA (Antwerp). His filmworks were screened at Jeu de Paume, at Cinémathèque française (Paris), at Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), at the Swiss Institute (NY) and at international festivals such as IDFA (Amsterdam), IFFR (Rotterdam), Cinéma du Réel (Paris) and Transmediale (Berlin). His films are distributed by Argos center for art & media (Brussels) (see also section on Art Organisations). Meessen has curated several film programs and exhibitions for various institutions including Extra City (Antwerp), Argos (Brussels), C.E.A.C (Xiamen, CH), E.R.B.A (Valence, F).
Agency
Agency is a Brussels-based initiative founded in 1992, which constitutes a growing list of 'things' that resist the radical split between the classifications of "nature" and "culture" and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and common, mind and body, etc.
Femke Snelting (Possible Bodies)
Artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of Constant, the Brussels-based association for arts and media, and co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP). With delegates Jara Rocha, Seda Guerses and Miriyam Aouragh she takes part in the Darmstadt Delegation, assigned to explore techno-political and socio-emotional relationships between activist practice and tools. She formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring and recently co-ordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a European partnership investigating inter-relations between free software tools and artistic practice. Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (Master Media Design and Communication).
Possible Bodies is a collaborative research on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, asking what matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them present. This becomes especially urgent in contact with the technologies, infrastructures and techniques of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. Intersecting issues of race, gender, class, age and ability resurface through these performative as well as representational practices. The research is concerned with genealogies of how bodies and technologies have been mutually constituted. It interrogates corpo-realities and their orientation through parametric interfaces and looks at anatomies that are computationally constrained by the requirements of mesh-modelling. It invites the generation of concepts and experimental renderings, wild combinations and digital and non-digital prototypes for different embodiments. Collectors: Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting.
Her collaborator Adva Zakai is a choreographer, performer and curator who explores how body and language are perceived through each other.
Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto Olga de Soto is choreographer and dance researcher, born in Valencia, she lives in Brussels. She graduates from CNDC / Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, after having studied classical ballet, contemporary dance and music theory in Valencia and in Madrid. Her creation work begins in 1992, and includes the creation of numerous works of different formats. Since the end of the ’90, her work focuses on the study of memory, and it questions the impact of live art, its usefulness its lasting quality, deploying itself along two axes. The first centres on the study of the body's memory through the creation of works, aiming at a pluralistic approach to dance and the body, in works creations such as anarborescences (Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris, 1999), Éclats mats (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004-2009). The second axis explores works from the history of dance as part of an approach governed by the study of perceptual memory, that of spectators and dancers. The resulting projects emphasize the importance of the processes and pay particular attention to documents, to the process of documentation, to testimony, to archives and oral sources, narrative and storytelling, particularly in works such as histoire(s) (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2004), An Introduction (Tanz Im August, Berlin, 2010) or Débords (Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2012). These projects are interested in the experience of the viewer and in the anthropology of the spectacle, while developing through an approach that studies the aesthetic experience based on the oral history of works from the past. Her last projects genuinely mix the languages of choreography with those of documentary, performance, visual arts and installation, playing with the porousness of these disciplines. The work of the choreographer also reveals the strong links between art history, social and political history, and personal paths. Olga de Soto’s work has been shown in some twenty countries, an she is regularly invited to teach and to lead workshops and classes in various universities, as well as to collaborate in conferences where she shares her research methodology and her documentation work. She was awarded the SACD Prize 2013 in the category of Performing Arts for both her trajectory and her research work on Dance History, and specially for her research and creation work on The Green Table.
End-presentations May 2017 13 May 2017
posted by: Kristien Van den BrandeTrouble seeing this email? Online version here.
____HEARSAY____
a.pass end-communications by
Luiza Crosman, Juan Duque, Sana Ghobbeh, Sébastien Hendrickx and Aela Royer
MAY 23-24-25 GREYLIGHT PROJECTS 5-10pm
Rue Brialmont 11
1210 Sint-Joost-ten-Node/ Brussels
____HEARSAY____ is a three day event hosted by GreyLight Projects. Five artist-researchers from the Brussels based post-master program a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) make a public presentation of their respective researches.
At the end of a one year research cycle at a.pass, Luiza Crosman (BR), Juan Duque (CO), Sana Ghobbeh (IR), Sébastien Hendrickx (BE) and Aela Royer (FR) open their thoughts and practices to a larger audience through (lecture-)performances, installations and performative scores. You are welcome to explore a tentacular collection of interests and concerns, relating to site-specificity, alternative eroticisms, complex narrativities, urban protest and diagrammatic speculation.
The end, self-evidently, isn’t the end. ____HEARSAY____ offers space for reflection and informal dialogue, in order to co-imagine possible research futures. In between scheduled performances, a comfortable bar/terrace/library is open to spend some time, share your experiences and questions with the artist-researchers, and get in touch with the research backgrounds through a communal publication and a selection of books and documents. Or simply enjoy a drink, food and listen to some music of your choice.
Limited capacity: reservation for the (lecture-)performances is recommended. Guarantee your place by subscribing via the 3 doodles.
- Sana Ghobbeh: max 30: DOODLE 1
- Sébastien Hendrickx: max 30: DOODLE 2
- Aela Royer: max 50: DOODLE 3PROGRAMME
MAY 23-24-25
5-6pm: performance
This wall grows at its root. Performance by Sana Ghobbeh. Audience capacity 30; subscribe here.
6-7pm: installations + bar/food/terrace/library
UNFOLD, site-specific installation by Juan Duque
Notes on Institutional Fictions and a hypothesis to be developed by practice; INDEX 3/3 - ALIBI: “Dummies”; “The Prophecy of the Ceiling made of Glass”; “A Space into a Diagram”, installation by Luiza Crosman.
7-8pm: lecture performance
Research presentation, by Sébastien Hendrickx. Audience capacity 30; subscribe here.
8-9pm: installations + bar/food/terrace/library
9-10pm: performative lecture
Eros the Joyful, by Aela Royer. Audience capacity 50; Subscribe here.
Thanks to: Greylight Projects & Bains Connective:
a.pass
tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
email: office@apass.be
web: www.apass.be
There has been a shift in humanities scholarship:
(feminist science studies, the post humanities, the ecological humanities, animal studies, queer theory,) humanities scholars have represented their matters of care with an aesthetic (and therefore political) commitment to narrating stories with an emphasis on the relationality among agencies, forces, phenomena, and entities usually kept separate, in the background, or out of the story altogether
--> redistribution of agencies
political stake ==> aesthetic tactics
(the reading of ajayeb portraits) the global [and therefore ethical] consciousness (at the end of 12th century middle-south asia, “the east”)
situated perspective ==> storytelling
my interest in your work is to become skillful at reading with you our situated perspectives --> Zoumana’s, Hoda’s, Sina’s, ajayeb’s, apass’, etc.
#i am learning from Kohn that the survival is complicated, from Haraway that world works by excess and therefore filled with hope, with Sennett and Delanda a better account of socio-material history, from Ahmed a different understanding of psychoanalysis, from Barad poetry and argumentation, from Scher the effort needed to become interested, from Kenney that there is no need for a “standard language” to describe your interventions or to produce a body of knowledge about your matters of concern,
http://ajayeb.net/?q=hypertext
stories that collect stories [~= archive? my hypertext? a mouth full? --this specific type of stories are dangerously worlders, usually handed to the unquestioned mechanics of universalized taxonomy and 17th century rigs: encyclopedic homogeneous tables. they are the stuff of ajayeb]
(kinda mispronounced by Ekaterina > captured by Hoda > made found object by Sina)
stories that collect other stories:
1- archive ~--> sortability
2- translation ~--> linearity
3- dictionary ~-->
==> universality (that both these stories claim)
(my work on hypertext apass ajayeb graph rigs, is to deal within these conditions of storing/storying. i wasn’t interested in this some time ago: a shift in my interest)
excess : there is always more that we don't know, what yet has to come; the world is constantly doing stuff; (--X--> accelerationist manifesto, apocalyptic narratives, technophobic narcissistic stories, etc.)
(i am drawn to and by excess, and i am engaged in it: in my lectures, talkings, writings, and I take it up also visually in my drawings. my ajayeb hypertext search is contingent and opportunistic, and its searches are non-systematic.)
(as you have already noticed, my:)
Routines:
Practices:
Trajectory:
Productions:
Findings:
citation apparatus
to begin writing about ajayeb with the citational ‘avardeand ke...’ (...آوردهاند که)
citation, an important characteristic of fables, is about relational histories
absence of definitive source (in my old childhood favorite radio show, by bring an endless list of fantastic source and bodies of lures) allows monsters to flourish and me the full range of my passionate crafts. ajaybe's compelling mystery demands (from me) an unorthodox and omnivorous approach (hame-chiz-khar همه چیز خوار).
اما راویان اخبار و ناقلان آثار و طوطیان شکرشکن شیرین گفتار و خوشه چینان خرمن سخن دانی و صرافان سر بازار معانی و چابک سواران میدان دانش توسن خوش خرام سخن را بدینگونه به جولان در آورده اند که ...
(with Despret's talking parrots)
parrots (shekar-shekan) (and philosophers) really like to control the exchange, to keep control of a conversation : their refusal to let another individual choose the topic of conversation
(parrots have) a pragmatic rather than a referential conception of language
[?am i also referential (=/= pragmatic) in my conception of language?]--> to teach a being to speak presupposes not only a tolerance of but also a profound interest in misunderstanding (this ‘profound interest in misunderstanding’ is precisely both cognitive and political aspect of what I am trying to bring forth) ~-> (how language-learning with animals can help us learn) restating and inverting the question of control? (Despret asks)
exchange can only be achieved when there is “a continuous reprisal of translations and betrayals of meaning” ==> understanding itself is compromised
“we”: constituted by the assemblage of different (animal-, nonhuman-, machine-, human-)beings equipped with an apparatus aimed at making them talk well
***
(one thing i am learning in apass is that) modeling ontologies involves articulating knowledge in ways that sometimes appears alien to that domain community
[asking with Bowker:] for my ontology-building to appear representative, does my community itself have to learn the goals and language of my knowledge modeling?
(the question i asked Sven: to tell others 'which language one is using.')
in a way, my work and interest in ajayeb is about:
-artists are using a lot of standards (of representations or materials)
-(out of) control standards
-there is a huge amount of standards i am depending on in my hypertext http://ajayeb.net/bibli
-international diplomacy depends on manufacturing and enforcement of standard vocabulary --> how much are we really in diplomatic businesses?
(it is about) organizing my memory
(it is about) that which comes to (my) mind, and “things” coming to mind(s) (of the people around me, and before me)
(it is about) the things I am told
__(these are perhaps other names of cognition, affect, memory, semiotics, history, inheritance, figuration, interface, thing-relations, huntology,)
__in our shared space where we let each other in the effect of our languages, I want to practice what comes to mind when I stand in front of you and your work, ask myself ‘what else’ comes to mind? in a sense, my project on ajayeb is that kind of training
also in apass i want to catch you in your acts
it is my privilege to recognize you (as...)
asking:
1- what do I know?
2- what am I told?
(when i started with my islam lecture series i was testing the waters of these two questions and the possibility of staying with them without freaking out of ambiguity, panicking into a meaning i don't actually want to mean, or plotting an answer, plotting relevances)
is all about loving to tell you about what i am reading
to become a skilled listener : listening ~= response (=/= simply answering) --> (when we speak) we give other people talismans that are not (perfectly) clear to us----we penetrate and unpack what someone doesn't have the words clearly and response to what they intend
-these have nothing to do with “common understanding,” “make something work,”
cooperation is about getting deeper into something
(i am more interested in) conditions that more skills are required (and not the opposite)
(digital reading practices of) data mining =/= reading for the reactions of an implicit reader --> what the scholar of ajayeb (in the medieval) might have felt?
#on hypertext note:
i am becoming skilled at looking at my own notes:
{(1) what are the skills necessary [=/= tabula rasa (of the reader, of the audience) of the communo-capitalism's standard of “user-interface”--the strange idea that the interaction and reading doesn't need or must not need learned-efforts or skills, that it should be “easy” and “effortless” --> fallacy of the unskilled listener.] to engage, interact, and get involved with the interface, data-set, grammar, and literacy of (my) reservoir? }--> ** let's ask that question with every apparatus that engages us into desire, movement, articulation, ...
skills --> to become literate in this particular way --> situated knowledge includes this situated literacy and skills of reading particular to the object of “text” (in that case how do i address my interest in the pervert reader? the skills of the unlearning*)
--> (2) this skills of (my) reservoir, what set of questions or problems equip me to address?
(Sennett’s) varzidan, varz, varzide, ورزیده
ok, again, the ‘skill’ question:
as you can see almost all my crafts and tropes are related to social order, communities of concern and research, practices of response, interactions in collective life, etc. the meanings of community and knowledge
because of working on ajayeb, i am becoming sort of a “definitionist,” or “definitionologist” (not in the classical sense of concept theory)
a definition i give is a local abstraction, even when it is making boundaries for a dispersed or global concept, it is still a situated knowledge. that means it might be categorical but not applicable outside this particular niche of space and time, even when accessed in my hypertext (--> wht Sven’s music sounds different when he plays it in the group?)
(committed to the imperative of the Rig,) things not to do in the pop-up book:
*a non-ironic non-symbolic non-anamorphic non-palindromic work
my Rigs diagrams are swarms? -a multitude of different creative agents
ajayeb.net (how can it be:) not a website but a “para-site”
topos/topic of hypertext, spatial character of electronic writing
topic [from Greek ‘topos’: a place, in ancient rhetoric used to refer to commonplaces, conventional units, or methods of thought] exist in a writing space that is not only a visual surface but also a data structure in the computer --> Hypertext: “is not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places, spatially realized topics.” (Bolter < Hubert)
-in my hypertext, which writing materials, cognitive mappings, itineraries of reading, textual stability, loops and reductions are addressed?
the English (since World War II) --> (1) international lingua franca of high technology, (2) the language of computers
-in ajayeb.net the enforcement of standard spelling and grammar is weak or nonexistent
-the amount of linguistic replicators that circulate through my ajayeb hypertext are bound to a colloquial English, they are nevertheless “English”. but this English is being changed and adapted by my foreign use in multiple ways. Is this language really “English”?
-(towards) a flourishing of a neo-English + Farsi miniaturization of Eng
ajayeb's craft and undisciplined tradition can be called empirical, it is an example of an archival research (done by historian.) i want to highlight the aesthetic quality of this activity.
aesthetics: how elements are arranged together, how they are composed, how they are brought into relation in the space of a text (Kenney > Latour,Stengers, Bellacasa) (--> La Guin's bag, bundle) }--> rigs
**aesthetics are political because they do consequential relational work**
novels, poetry, feminist theory, speculative fiction, bestiary list categories --> these genres of composition gather together and stage their “matters of care” in ways that perform relations between things and teach their readers to inhabit sometimes unfamiliar, agential world. they are practices of sf worlding.
bottom-up writing
my ajayeb hypertext, what is there the specific law of putting together letters ([and atoms?] to produce a text)? That means the question of Greekness and syntax technology, and my reworking articulated
--> (the law enunciates [تلفظ کردن ,مژده دادن] the federated,) the law repeats the fact =/= the things of ajayeb are (still) in the process of being formed (--> the morality of reading that i am working on)
(in the facts of the law there is no space between things and language, is reduced to zero)
-language and things are born together with the very same process (Serres - Hermes.) --> stable gathering of elements
my interest in the devil is in the details of my makings (and others)
*please take in mind that these names are my guess at my own rabbit chasings, (they are not “wants” or purposefully organized tracings or mobilized intentions)
(do we need?) to get at (and maintain?) the deep structure of the one's situation
--> transformational grammar
--> bring intuitive decision-making to a conscious level
-->
in my hypertext writing, am i trying to enable myself to talk about my work in a language (that computers could understand)?
common language ~= standard language
(we can't talk about the commons without sorting out our understanding of our standard-saturated world)
(my hypertext is not data-driven [= a system with focus on the acquisition, management, processing, and presentation of atomic-level data] nor a process-driven (or process-sensitive system, for example delivering a care), what is it then?) (also not systematically storing [my] “knowledge” for later access, storage of information in such long-term memory, no no no)
#in a way i am building an adequate mode of encounter with an idea of “Iranian scientist” (?)
authors of ajayeb approached nature not in a way to sketch the boundaries of a discrete animal event, therefore, a unit of analysis, (which is very “natural” at 21st century;) rather an infrastructure itself in flux, providing an unnatural hierarchy
questions for my ajayeb's Rigs and pop-up book:
my rigs and pop-up book are descriptive concepts, that means: they obtain their meaning by reference to a particular physical apparatus ==>? a constructed cut between the object and the agencies of observation
--> ajayeb's variables require an instrument with moveable parts for their definition (?)
exclusions (= physical & conceptual constraints) are co-constitutive
objectivity (= possibility of unambiguous communication, boundary articulations) --> reference must be made to bodies in order for concepts to have meaning (?)
reading: “text” is the interface between the materialization of “reality” and subjectivation of “reader” --> inseparability of language and reality in ajayeb
(“We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down, The word ‘reality’ is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.” Petersen < Barad)
ajayeb's iterative processes of materialization
عجایب نامه =/= imagined and idealized human-independent reality
ajayeb's stories of historically nonhuman people
in ajayeb's descriptive intra-actions with reality, humans and language are part of the configuration or ongoing reconfiguring of the world (= phenomena)
(with Barad)
we cannot so easily answer where the apparatus ends, and this poses serious questions about the ontology of our practices
The Document Transformed - invite 19 May 2017
posted by: Kristien Van den BrandeTrouble seeing this email? Online version here.
You are warmly Invited to
____
The
DocumentTrans-
formed____
Masterclasses and Seminar
+
Book launch 'Dirty room' Juan Dominguez
a.pass research centre publicationJUNE 22-23-24 @ LA BELLONE
Rue de Flandre 46
BrusselsCurated by Sofia Caesar and Lilia Mestre, the public program “The Document Transformed” invites four practitioners that offer very distinct questions, methods, and proposals to problems related to documentation. Join Femke Snelting, Olga de Soto, Vincent Meessen, and Agency (Kobe Matthys), and others, for three days of presentations, screenings, performances and conversations. How does the document affect practices, bodies, histories, and experiences? The event brings together practices that not only give sight to the power relations engendered by apparatuses of documentation, but also move towards the transformation of the systems in which we produce history, law, art, and the body. Held in the context of The Problem of the Score, block curated by Lilia Mestre in the a.pass post-master research program and supported by a.pass.
In the frame of the seminar the book Dirty Room will be presented. It is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher.
This seminar is organized in collaboration with La Bellone
PROGRAM
Thursday 22 June10:00 > 13:00 Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)
14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)
Friday 23 June10:00 >13:00 Exhibition visit ( Bozar ) and discussion with Vincent Meessen
14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Olga de Soto
To inscribe to the master-classes please send an email to production@apass.be
1 Masterclass: 15 Euro, 2 Masterclasses: 20 Euro, 2 days: 30 Euro.
Free for (ex) participants of a.pass
Saturday June 24th 12:00 > 18:00
FREE, reservation appreciatedIn this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.
12:30 Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk
13:00 Femke Snelting
14:00 Olga de Soto
PAUSE
15:30 Vincent Meessen
16:30 Agency (Kobe Matthys)
17:30 Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo
Don't forget to reserve for your Masterclass by sending an email to : production@apass.be
DETAILED PROGRAM DOWN BELOW
Detailed program:
Thursday June 22nd
10:00 > 13:00 Masterclass Agency (Kobe Matthys)
What if ephemeral things become included within art practices? Intellectual property seems to be mostly reserved for “fixated” things. Although the European copyright law doesn’t exclude variability, during jurisprudences judges consider movements that are “recordable” in some way or another. Agency calls forth different controversies from recorded movements in dance and performance and sport. By paying attention to the consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property right for the protocols inherent to practices, the fragility of the mode of existence of singular art practices is made explicit.
14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Possible Bodies (Femke Snelting and Adva Zakai)
This edition will be dedicated to a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. It was developed in the mid-nineties and remains one of the most commonly used file-formats for transposing movement captured in physical space, to a computational environment. Around this relatively legible format, a rich ecology of software tools developed. The file-format functions as a boundary object between practices and bodies, as it is used by animators, game developers, interface researchers, medical professionals, dance-historians, sports-analysts and engineers.
Together we will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.
The reading of the .bvh file format is developed with Adva Zakai in the context of Possible Bodies, a collaborative research initiated by Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, and the matter-cultural conditions of possibility that render them present.
Friday June 23rd
10:00 >13:00 Exhibition visit (Bozar) and discussion with Vincent Meessen
Starts at Main entrance of Bozar.In this afternoon, artist Vincent Meessen will take us through his Bozar show, that comes from his recent practice that involves research, historicization, and speculation about congolese works of art that have been commissioned and (re-)contextualized in the early 30’s. Starting from there, we can raise some issues about what a work of art is expected to be and how it can shift meaning with context and neighbouring artefacts.
More about the show Patterns for (Re)cognition by Tshela Tendu & Vincent Meessen, Opening 16th June at BOZAR: http://www.bozar.be/nl/
activities/124891-tshela- tendu-vincent-meessen 14:00 >17:00 Masterclass Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto will share her research project that has Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table (1932) as a starting point. She will display the process, methods, research protocols and strategies that she has developed over time, and through which she addresses the question of reconstruction, re-enactment and revival from the perspective of the trace, both material and immaterial, in order to analyse the several charges the work contain (social, political, dramatic, emotional…).
She will share with us how she approached Jooss’ work through the archive, the trace and the document, proposing to circumvent the traditional modalities of transmission in dance, in order to probe the archive’s “capabilities” to say the work, as well to examine the archive’s “becoming-work”.
We will observe how the project and its process unfolded simultaneously into two levels: on a documentary research level and on a creation level. With the help of several documents, we will observe how the documentary research was developed, dedicated in part to researching and documenting the perception and transmission of The Green Table, seeking out iconographic material (through the gathering of numerous documents of different kinds), analysing the choreographic characteristics of the work and looking for witnesses – dancers and audience members from different origins and generations, in order to study the perception of the work through the prism of the viewer’s gaze (using the interview as a tool to collect memories, focusing on the importance of the testimony and oral sources).
Saturday June 24th 12:30 > 19:00
In this afternoon of presentations, screenings, and performances, the four invited practitioners will take us to dive deeper into different case studies.
12:30 Sofia Caesar: Introduction talk13:00 Femke Snelting
Femke Snelting will present a collaborative dissection of the BioVision Hierarchy file format. BioVision Hierarchy (.bvh) is an ASCII file format used to import data from various motion capture systems into 3D-animation software. Together they will analyse the .bvh specifications and samples of the file format in order to understand what imaginaries of the body are encoded into it, what a bipedal skeleton hierarchy consists of, and how rotational data for rigid bodies might constitute a movement in itself.
14:00 Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto will share some excerpts of Débords, work presented at Les Halles in 2012, as well as some excerpts of the installation she is currently working on, and that was partially presented this Spring at Museum für Neue Kunst, in Freiburg. The presentation will be punctuated with a discussion on the work.
PAUSE
15:30 Vincent Meessen
Vincent Meessen will screen “One. Two. Three.”, piece presented in Wiels in 2016, followed by a talk about his strategies of re-composition and counter-narratives.
16:30 Agency (Kobe Matthys)
“What if ephemeral things become included within art practices?” Thing 001678 (Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) concerns a conflict between on the one hand Roger Eudes, Théâtre Champs-Elysées, and on the other hand Jean Guttmann (Babilée) and Jean Cocteau about the performance Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. On June 8, 1960, the court case Eudes c. Gutmann, Cocteau et autres took place at the Cour d’appel de Paris. Judge Rousselet had to decide who owned the rights over the movements of the performance, Eudes who hired Jean Gutmann to “translate” Jean Cocteau his drama into ballet movements or Cocteau who wrote the script of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.
17:30 Book launch with Juan Dominguez and Victoria Perez Rojo
The book Dirty Room is the fourth and last phase of Juan Dominguez’s research, developed during 2015-16 as a.pass associate researcher. Dirty Room is a collection of outlines, notes, ideas, reflections, photographic materials, maps, manifestos, fragments from diaries, transcriptions of conversations, interviews, email exchanges, memoirs, memories and scripts, among other documents from the working and research process that led to Clean Room. Clean Room was a project based on the concept of seriality with a pilot and 3 more seasons of 6 episodes each that took place from 2010 to 2016.
Dirty Room offers the readers an immersion in the process of the project Clean Room. It is a book in which there are no critical essays, or texts speaking only from the external position of the spectator. All of the contributions are part of the ongoing research and working process of Clean Room, either continually accompanying it over long periods or as one-off contributions at a specific moments. This decision highlights the great potential of the process in its fragmentary, undefined and open nature not only for the transmission of knowledge and ideas, but above all for stimulating imaginative processes to connect with the concerns that set the series in motion.
Dirty Room
Edited by: Juan Domínguez and Victoria Pérez Royo
Editorial: Continta me tienes
Executive Production: manyone
Madrid, May 2017
Translations by Ana Buitrago, Simon Malone and Catherine Phelps
This is a publication by the a.pass research centre.
About the participants:
Vincent Meessen
Through the use of various media, Meessen aims to ‘experience the document and document the experience’. His investigations lead to associations and appropriative gestures that are rewritten into critical narratives, pointing to the colonial matrix of western modernity. Meessen reactivates hidden traces of the colonial in the present and opens up new speculative scenarios.Both in his work as an artist and in his para-curatorial activities, Meessen likes to use procedures of collaboration that undermine the authority of the author and emphasize the intelligence of collectives. With ten guests artists, Meessen represented Belgium at the 56th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include: OK/KO in the frame of Dans la pluralité des mondes / Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse (F), 2016; Sire je suis de l’ôtre pays in WIELS, Brussels 2016 and Patterns for (Re)cognition at the Kunsthalle Basel, 2015. Recent group presentations include Gestures and archives of the present, genealogies of the future, Taipei Biennale, Taiwan and The Family of the Invisible at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA).
Agency
Agency is a Brussels-based initiative founded in 1992, which constitutes a growing list of ‘things’ that resist the radical split between the classifications of “nature” and “culture” and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and common, mind and body, etc.
Femke Snelting (Possible Bodies)
Artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminism and free software. She is a core member of Constant, the Brussels-based association for arts and media, and co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP). With delegates Jara Rocha, Seda Guerses and Miriyam Aouragh she takes part in the Darmstadt Delegation, assigned to explore techno-political and socio-emotional relationships between activist practice and tools. She formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring and recently co-ordinated the Libre Graphics Research Unit, a European partnership investigating inter-relations between free software tools and artistic practice. Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (Master Media Design and Communication).
Possible Bodies is a collaborative research on the very concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that “bodies” are, asking what matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them present. This becomes especially urgent in contact with the technologies, infrastructures and techniques of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. Intersecting issues of race, gender, class, age and ability resurface through these performative as well as representational practices. The research is concerned with genealogies of how bodies and technologies have been mutually constituted. It interrogates corpo-realities and their orientation through parametric interfaces and looks at anatomies that are computationally constrained by the requirements of mesh-modelling. It invites the generation of concepts and experimental renderings, wild combinations and digital and non-digital prototypes for different embodiments. Collectors: Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting.
Her collaborator Adva Zakai is a choreographer, performer and curator who explores how body and language are perceived through each other.
Olga de Soto
Olga de Soto Olga de Soto is choreographer and dance researcher, born in Valencia, she lives in Brussels. She graduates from CNDC / Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, after having studied classical ballet, contemporary dance and music theory in Valencia and in Madrid. Her creation work begins in 1992, and includes the creation of numerous works of different formats. Since the end of the ’90, her work focuses on the study of memory, and it questions the impact of live art, its usefulness its lasting quality, deploying itself along two axes. The first centres on the study of the body’s memory through the creation of works, aiming at a pluralistic approach to dance and the body, in works creations such as anarborescences (Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris, 1999), Éclats mats (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2001), INCORPORER ce qui reste ici au dans mon cœur (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004-2009). The second axis explores works from the history of dance as part of an approach governed by the study of perceptual memory, that of spectators and dancers. The resulting projects emphasize the importance of the processes and pay particular attention to documents, to the process of documentation, to testimony, to archives and oral sources, narrative and storytelling, particularly in works such as histoire(s) (Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, 2004), An Introduction (Tanz Im August, Berlin, 2010) or Débords (Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2012). These projects are interested in the experience of the viewer and in the anthropology of the spectacle, while developing through an approach that studies the aesthetic experience based on the oral history of works from the past. Her last projects genuinely mix the languages of choreography with those of documentary, performance, visual arts and installation, playing with the porousness of these disciplines. The work of the choreographer also reveals the strong links between art history, social and political history, and personal paths. Olga de Soto’s work has been shown in some twenty countries, an she is regularly invited to teach and to lead workshops and classes in various universities, as well as to collaborate in conferences where she shares her research methodology and her documentation work. She was awarded the SACD Prize 2013 in the category of Performing Arts for both her trajectory and her research work on Dance History, and specially for her research and creation work on The Green Table.
THE
DOCUMENTTRANS-
FORMED
JUNE 22-23-24
@ LA BELLONE
Rue de Flandre 46
Brusselsa.pass
tel: +32 (0)2 411.49.16
email: office@apass.be
web: www.apass.be
It seems obvious that the conditions for making something (anything) will influence the thing made . Other "I " words are maybe more specific than influence: infuse, impregnate, infiltrate, interrupt, incinerate, incarcerate, inveigle, imbue, illuminate. The larger axis of conditions, as I see them, are largely related to money, time, health and the political situation of the land and/or institution surrounding the workplace. The more intimate and malleable aspects are ideas and process. The qualities and hazards of the large-axis conditions in relation to the ones deemed "creative" produce what we could call a form.
The base line of dance is perhaps understood as the body but mostly it is bodies ( minds implied) together someplace, deciding to work in a certain way . The how of the work, the process, is something that is always to be reinvented and renegotiated. Each dispositif of dance making already contains a nascent content, one that will inevitably be more influential than any idea or concept in the production of the form. So, in imagining how to design the making of a dance, the translation of the concept or content into a thing-which-can-be-done is a crucial, poetic and political task.
In this workshop we will practice dancing and make the making of dances, or otherwise said, processes.
Within the workplace/studio our first and most important gesture is to decide how shall we spend our time and how we shall be with each other and then be alert to the dances that are produced and what they might need to continue. My primary proposition is to cultivate processes derived from your own work, translating their conditions and content into practices that produce some dances (we will simply call all that we produce "dance"). There is no necessity to have had any experience dancing.
As an artist who has worked under a myriad of different large-axis conditions, I have found the greatest necessity and source for me is to render transparent these larger conditions and mix them into the content or desires that preoccupy me, to consciously make a process that can only exist within this specific alchemy. This is my way but there are many varied conventions of contemporary choreographic practice that hold with in them poetic, social and political forces that become be the dominant aspect of the work, even if by accident. We will play with a few of these to observe their forces in action but most of our energy will be devoted to your own work,devising ways to share their doing that retain the integrity of your vision and perhaps reveal the influences of the specific conditions of your work. Or more truthfully, we will start to do this, as 5 days is rather short for such an ambition! I like to refer to working processes as punctual social contracts. Ones that might be extreme in certain ways but that are agreed upon and that we know will end and so we can commit without anxiety.INSCRIPTIONS ; production@apass.be LIMITED CAPACITY (price 50 euro)
Everyday from 10:00 till 17:00 a.pass 4th floor
Uninvited Research II Excursions 19 October 2017
posted by: Vladimir Miller
In the course of the upcoming two weeks the a.pass researchers of this block will each propose an excursion coming out of their current research focus. You are cordially invited to join. Please sign up on the a.pass main page on the detail page for each of the proposals.
26. Okt
Eleanor Ivory Weber
The World Today / All In The Mind
"“…a 100% probability of nothing happening, and that’s often when it’s more interesting…”
– Peter Ryan, ABC Senior Business Correspondent, 2 October 2017
On Monday 23 October 2017, several todays, today. An instruction-based, public yet solo, listening & reading exercise, derived from radiowaves. Thinking about the public mind and testing what is produced from chance and structure. How language functions on different registers, at once, in time, and beyond us.
//// Please bring ID for library registration, a smartphone/laptop (with charger) and head/earphones. "24. Okt
Pia Louwerens
From I to we - Excavating reality together, at home
From I to we serves as an introduction into my practice inside its subjective core: my own home at Rue Blaes 244. After a performance the audience is invited to rewrite the script, rewarded with a warm meal cooked by the artist herself.
25. Okt
Hoda Siahtiri
If the past is really passed?! An introduction to co-experincing the others' trauma.
The city of Brussels is holding a part of my past, I take you to one of the most traumatic places of Brussels for me.
26.Okt
Geert Vaes
La Flandre Profonde/Into The Heart Of Flanders
Visiting and interrogating theatre amateurs rehearsing 'Het Gezin Van Paemel', a flemish classic and theatrical mask for a flemish identity. The 'interrogation' consists of a group constellation + witnessing the rehearsal + an interview.
27. Okt
Sven Dehens
Untitled Excursion
Critical voicing, reading, enactment of Alien (1979). Process of audio-visual documentation. Generation of a subtext to the script.
30. Okt
Shervin Kianersi
For to Know Nothing Is Nothing
Imagine natural daylight, the best kind of light to see things clearly. Then imagine the light getting brighter and brighter, until it becomes so blindingly white that you are filled with anxiety. The information overload that we experience in our everyday lives is similar to that blinding light. Its origins date to the early 90s, when computer networks attained critical speeds and scales. Today, each of us yearns to be informed 24/7. The dictatorship of information creates in us a desire for round-the-clock information. We have become the organic components of an integrated global data and information system. Yet this yearning we feel is about our search for the Real, which a never-ending stream of information, that informs us only of the reality of facts, can neither satisfy nor fulfil. Because information is always directed at you. Information informs but is no guarantee of getting any closer to the truth. In fact, information sometimes operates as an obstacle to the truth. Instead, what if we started to filter out what we could of the information, in order to better understand the truth? What if we ignored information about the given facts and instead tried learn about something or someone for ourselves?
31.Okt
Elen Braga
The masters meeting: A Journey to the unpromised land and the magic balls
You shine through my atmosphere. And when you show up, my mountains move like bushes in the wind, and the rocks are scattered on all sides. I hear you. I hear amazing bang like a storm to come. I hear the noise of thunder, the voice of demons, the winds, the monsters. The whole earth rises, dilating like the waves of the sea and my surface breaks down. My own ground seems to be subside, and... Take your hand car and come with me. We need to find another ground to walk by: the unpromised land and the magics balls...
1.Nov
Leo Kay
The time it takes to think
How can we think together? How can we make Space for deep reflection on complex issues? How can we come close enough without intruding? How can we engage in group dialogue and take the time that is needed to think before producing more, contributing more to the system we are locked within?
A day of observing, listening, walking, kneading, thinking, talking and baking, as we navigate a critical socio/political issue that effects us all and will continue to affect us in the forceable future.
2. Nov
Luisa Filiitz
A collection of Impressions
Coming together in a place. Where and how do our perceptions, according to the surrounding/the place and the situation where we are, manifest themselves? Where and how can we locate them in our body? How is our intuitive reaction? Linked together in groups, we would then — following a score-proposal — try out how everybody`s own intuitional desire of where and how he/she wants to move is affecting the movement of the others in the group as well as their movement is affecting each one. Afterwards everybody is invited to create a zine in any form – according to ones wish – trying to remember the different impressions and the thoughts, feelings, that they provoked.
3.Nov
Eszter Némethi
War-/-Lace and Vertigo
An excursion is a military term to describe a short entry to enemy territory without formal announcement of war. This excursion is an invitation to explore the ways in which spaces and materials can become instructions and how this relates to participation in complex systems. What is the the agency of things, participants and also the host. Can we listen to things in order to decipher their fictions? And can we remain complicated to each other? You will visit the Kantcentrum in Brugge and the NATO Headquarters in Evere . I will do my best to host you. You will be largely following instructions, reading, making, observing, walking and looking for gaps. You will then return to a playground for discussion at a.pass. I will make you dinner.
17. Nov
Marialena Marouda
Flemish Marine Institue: Marine Station Ostend (MSO)
A tour of the Marine Station Ostend and its research vessel Simon Stervin by marine biologist Dr. Andre Cattrijsee. My interest is to get a glimpse of the tools that the research institute uses in order to study the ocean. What language is used and what are the measurement instruments in the laboratories? What kind of ocean is produced through them?
The World Today All In The Mind 20 October 2017
posted by: Vladimir Miller
“…a 100% probability of nothing happening, and that’s often when it’s more interesting…”
– Peter Ryan, ABC Senior Business Correspondent, 2 October 2017On Monday 23 October 2017, several todays, today. An instruction-based, public yet solo, listening & reading exercise, derived from radiowaves. Thinking about the public mind and testing what is produced from chance and structure. How language functions on different registers, at once, in time, and beyond us.
//// Please bring ID for library registration, a smartphone/laptop (with charger) and head/earphones.
meeting:
Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België / Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (kbr.be), Kunstberg / Mont des Arts, 1000 Brussels (Central Station). Meet Eleanor in the lobby, please advise the time you will come, between 11h and 12h. Piece lasts approximately 5 hours (including regular breaks).
La Flandre Profonde / Into The Heart Of Flanders 20 October 2017
posted by: Vladimir Miller
'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 all these notions in place? How will I go from here to using masks again? And how will I finally get out of Flanders?
Meeting point a.pass 4th floor at 16:30.
Two cars leave at 18:00 to drive to Tejater De Orchidee in Tielen.
At 20:00 starts the rehearsal, following that an interview. Then ride back to Brussels.
Back in Brussel latest by 23:30.
Artistic Research & a.pass : a critical practice by Elke Van Campenhout (2015)
30 November 2017
posted by: Pierre Rubio
1. Questioning artistic researchTo clarify what kind of research a.pass sustains, a minimum of conceptual transparency is needed. When we combine the terms ‘research’ and ‘artistic’, most of the time we are dealing with a research ON the arts (art history, musicology, theatre sciences, aspects of cultural sociology, aesthetics etc...) or a research IN the arts (a research that is part of a (regular) artistic practice). What we in a.pass consider as artistic research – a term that is often understood in reference to the Anglo-Saxon models for practice-based research – often is the result of a research in the arts, but cannot be reduced to it. A.pass doesn’t want to limit its range of research to the ‘artist research’ full stop: the necessarily research-oriented attitude that accompanies any kind of serious artistic endeavour, which does not necessarily have any link to the communication and valorization of research results as it is demanded in an academic context. ‘Research’, as it is understood in the artistic practice, is an evident part of this practice which allows for a result-oriented reflection on the work, or in other words: a research oriented towards the production of the art work as a product, as a repertory and/or as an oeuvre. In the a.pass environment, and in a playful questioning of the ‘academic’ research mind-set, this individual artist is not the sole focus of attention, or at least not in the sense that we perceive our researchers as artists tout court. An artist research has an inherent logic and validity, but does not necessarily have a need to be communicative to an outside community in any other form than through the production of art works. A.pass reflects on a research in the arts that is more than a report – in the art work itself or in the accompanying dissertation – of the individual research of an artist. What we consider an artistic research project is rather: ‘a new practice in the arts, which differs from the individual artist practice, as well as from the art historical or scientific research practice. One researches not only the art through the art works, but the functioning of art and the breadth of the art practice by way of interdisciplinary interventions in the (semi-)public, societal domain. Artistic research is an interdisciplinary concentration around a ‘binding’ problem that catches the attention of a pluriform group of participants.’ (Jouke Kleerebeezem, De Witte Raaf) This means that a question in the research of a.pass is always situated in a broader context than that of the sole artist: a lot of the questions that are posed in a.pass generate collective discussions and critique, find their way (partly) into other researches or attempt temporary coalitions in the defining and/or broadening up of a certain problematics. Important in this environment is the shared reflection concerning ways of working, diverse understandings of artistic research, the development of (post-disciplinary) perspectives and the experimentation with methodologies and strategies. The work of the artistic researcher does not coincide with the work of the artist in the sense that it is self-conscious, and explicitly communicates and circulates this self-reflection within a wider group of stakeholders. In other words, the emphasis in this kind of research is not so much on the conception and production of an art work – although this undeniably and unavoidably is part of the whole of the research – but rather on a questioning that puts the individual art practice and even the recognizable mono-discipline in a wider perspective. This kind of research originates from and builds on the demands and problematics of a shared debate, and can be approached by different specialist researchers, each addressing the question out of his own domain. The length, the quality criteria, the form, the communication strategies and the required ‘relevance’ of the research – and thus also the understanding of the requirements of the PhD -project that might eventually result out from it- are thus in principle dependent on the context and have to be negotiated on a project base between the researcher and the institution(s) involved. It is in this case very important to recognize a wider ‘public’, the potential users of this research, as a partner in this trajectory, and to develop the appropriate communication channels to make this participation possible.
2. Constructing a general intellect
Other than the ‘artist’s research’, artistic research overwrites the isolation and the hermetics of art production in the classical sense, in addressing in one way or another a socially relevant problematics. This kind of artistic research opens up new ways for the creation of a ‘generous cultural memory’. But at the same time the societal relevance of this research cannot coincide with its utilitarian value, since the direct impact of the research practice and reflection necessarily develops through artistic, affective gestures of experimentation and communication that resonate with, but never answer to, the concrete questions posed within the societal fabric. This kind of research thus will only influence the daily social, political, economic or scientific reality by a detour, through the unsettling of its self-reflection and imagination(s). This independent position, free from any preconditioned political preconceptions, economic value or socially determined relevance is a necessary and undeniable characteristic of this research practice. More than a pragmatic laboratory for the production of answers on societal questions, the research platform that is a.pass offers the possibility to construct a ‘general intellect’: a way of working wherein researchers collectively give form to diverse practices to produce and articulate knowledge in an open, shared research environment.
3. Investigating divergent forms of knowledge
In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that the development of this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the art practice does take a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge.
4. contextualising a singularity
The a.pass Post-master Program and Research Centre are positioned within a larger context of the arts and education, and develops its working out of a questioning of the current organization of artistic and educational (institutional) practices. In its trajectory, a.pass has on all levels of its organization critically reflected upon the economy of knowledge as it is being employed today in higher education and the media, the logics of the arts market, the recuperation of institutional critique by the institutions themselves, the capitalist drive for the new, the seductive and the quickly consumable, and the role and responsibility of the artist researcher in all of this.
In a.pass the relevance of the research is measured by the degree in which researchers, out of their different backgrounds and knowledge horizons, manage to formulate innovative perspectives on potential knowledge production, as well as on the development of tools to share and experiment this knowledge on the public scene. It is clear that this kind of research environment also resonates with other institutions for art education on an (inter)national scale. Artistic research in a.pass can be seen as a third way, wedged in between the artistic practice as such and the more academic understanding of knowledge production. Different from the artistic practice the research is not limited to the individual trajectory, the personal questioning and aesthetics of the artist. But at the same time the artistic practice does take on a central role in the development of new perspectives and methodologies, a way of working that relates to, but doesn’t coincide with, and even explicitly questions an academic AND an artistic framework. Artistic research in a.pass is not limited to the development of arts-practice-related knowledge, but also involves the creation and testing of formats, methodologies, communication strategies and shared practices, ‘tools for collaboration and communication’, that broaden up the understanding of artistic research from an art work with paper validation form to a more critical investigation into the statute, the circulation and the valuation of divergent forms of knowledge.
This means that a.pass is an environment that reflects and practices knowledge and artistic strategies with the windows open to an outside reality. In that sense a.pass is not so much a preparation for the ‘professional life’, as it is a putting-into-question of what these professional sectors (both the artistic and educational organizations of institutes, values and work) are symptoms of. Throughout the years, a.pass has used its own institutional status – and the opportunities offered by being an artistic educational program embedded in a larger network of schools, art centres, research places, workspaces, etc… – to seriously reconsider its role, and the role of the artist researchers within the current ethical, political, economic and social context of knowledge production and sharing.
On the level of ethics this means that we consider both the institute as the institute’s participants to be part of a larger network of relations, that give them their value and meaning. In a.pass the relation between the ‘I’ of the researcher and the provisional construction of the ‘We’ of the research practice within the institute, is a recurring, and politically charged, topic. The institute here is considered as an experimental field to try out strategies for the now and the future within a larger society. A.pass gives a lot of attention to the transindividual character of practice and knowledge, and how the collective environment can be both a source of frustration and feedback, as of nourishment and challenge to the individual researcher’s trajectory. Also, a.pass in that sense always takes the ‘ethical’ concreteness, the situational reality of research seriously: artistic research is always already embedded in the relations that produce it, and these relations encompass elements of discourse, social and economic factors and spatial settings, as well as institutional givens, societal demands and resources at hand. Therefore an artistic research strategy or outcome is not transparently reproducible without changing in the process. The ethical (here understood as relational and situational) character of the research, makes it resistant to commodification on a larger scale. But this doesn’t mean that the research can not be communicated or shared, using strategies that differ from the promise of serial reproduction.
This interest in the transindividual character of learning and research, however, does not exclude a strong focus and interest in the development of the individual’s trajectories. Since the institute can not function without the invested interest and contributions to the common environment of the researchers, a.pass strives towards creating an environment in which the aesthetic and artistic idiosyncratic qualities of each practice can be challenged into being. A.pass considers the artist researcher not so much as an artist-producer of work, but as an artist-researcher, reflecting self-critically on the trajectory already accomplished, and reconsidering the notions of work, value, the market, responsiveness and responsibility through the practicing of the research. A.pass encourages the exploration of ‘risky’ practices that do not directly correspond to the current demands of the arts market or academic understandings of research, in order to create an experimental environment in which certainties can be subverted, undermined, or simply reappraised from another point of view.
Block overview plenum & forum
20 December 2017
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
This post gives a short overview of the organisation and agenda of the block.
PLENUM
Plenums are gatherings of a.pass as a whole. All participants of the block program take part in each of the 3 plenums to share the state and development of their researches, as do the mentors, the research centre, the daily team and the core members as far as possible.
Plenums are gatherings to exchange about individual researches and practices, and are used to discuss how we, as a group of researchers, and the structure of a.pass can best support them.The plenum doesn't start until everyone announced is present.
FORUM
Forums are timeframes to discuss and work on the topics of MAKING/CONDITIONS, to develop and exchange knowledge or to practice the making of research.
A forum can be a physical gathering from 1 hour to 5 days. Forums can be internal a.pass work gatherings, held publicly in presence of invited guests, or even take place in collaboration with other institutions.
Forums start at the announced time, wether the participants are present or not.AGENDA
Plenum I 8. - 17. January: Displaying Conditions (opening week)
10.-11. January: participation in U-Ghent seminar 'What are we training for?'
by Adriana la SelvaForum I 18.-19. January: 'How do we do the things that we do?'
with Florian FeiglForum II 26. January; 2., 9., 17. February; 1., 8., 16., March: Pattern Language
with Nicolas GaleazziForum III 30. January - 3. February: Critical Administration; or Shaking down the Enterpreneur
with Kate RichPlenum II 19. February - 23. February: Making Conditions (HWD's)
Forum IV 26. February - 2. March: 'How do we do the things that we do?' with Florian Feigl
Forum V 9. March: Performing Knowledge
with Pieter Vermeulen (Antwerpen)Forum VI 16. March: Alternatives to Economy (the Macao Model)
with Alberto CossuForum VII 19. - 23. March: Pattern Testing
with Nicolas GaleazziPlenum III 26. March - 1. April: Reflecting Conditions (end week)
How do we do the things that we do? #2 a rewrite of twelve design principles
29 December 2017
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
In this second period of my visit in the a.pass block „making/conditions“ I want to propose a sequence of practical, object based approaches that allow to broaden perspectives on the individual research projects as well as oon the over arching theme of this block.
How do the objects, thus the different elements and entities of an individual research perform. How do they interact with us, human agents, and with other elements, what suppoprt do they need, how would this potentially articulate the individual research processes as processes of radical imagination (Katja Rothe).
Each participants is asked to bring three objects (not more then five if you cannot decide). The practical sessions will be slow approaches towards the objects starting with drawing, associating, moving, writing. These first approaches will be followed by a series of exercises focusing on spatial constellations based on improvisation and movement introducing strategies of composition and sequencing. In a concluding session we elaborate based on these previous experiencies micro sequences of possible performances: performances of the objects, performances for and with the objects.
The sessions are based on individual and group exercises. Practical exercises will be followed by group evaluation.
To accompagny this practice based research we will read in depth a text by Katja Rothe „Permaculture Design Praxis“ and discuss basic terms, ideas and visualizations from permaculture design practice (Mollision, Holmgren). Experiences and results from both the practical and more discursive approaches will be related to your ongoing research and developments in the formulation and desgin of patterns and their articulations in the spatial situation in the common studio and work schedules.
Schedule.
We will work from Monday to Friday, 10.00 to 17.00. Depending on the days each day will be divided rouhgly into two blocks of three hours with a one hour lunch break. Or three blocks of two hours with a lunch break.
Day 1:
Katja Rothe „Permaculture Design Praxis“ – reading and exchanging – part 1
Introduction of object based, practical work, exchange and clarifications regarding objects
You don‘t need to have your objects fixed and prepared already – you are welcome though. However, a rough idea would be good. Because on day 2 you will need to have them with you.
Day 2:
Katja Rothe „Permaculture Design Praxis“ – reading and exchanging – part 2
Practical session: First exercises with the objects. Exchange and evaluation of practical session.
Day 3:
permacultural design practice part 1: the zone model, edge effect – introduction, exchange, discussion
Practical session: exercises with the objects – spatial constelllation – part 1.
Exchange and evaluation of practical session.
Day 4:
permacultural design practice part 2: twelve design principles – introduction, exchange, discussion
Practical session: exercises with the objects – spatial constelllation – part 2.
Exchange and evaluation of practical session.
Day 5:
Practical session: object work – sequencing and micro performances
Exchange and evaluation of practical session.
revisiting patterns
revisiting ideas of performance
revisiting conditions
Requirements:
As the days, the discursive inputs and practical exercises build up from day to day full-time commitment is required from the whole group of participants. Individual necessities can be discussed in advance but can be accomodated only as exceptions. Please contact me latest until Wednesday, February 21st und mail@florianfeigl.com
Possible Bodies 05 January 2018
posted by: Femke Snelting
Possible Bodies is a disobedient action-research project that Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting have been developing since 2015. The project works with the concrete and at the same time complex and fictional entities that 'bodies' are, in the context of technologies, infrastructures and techniques of 3D tracking, modeling and scanning. This collective research becomes especially urgent because through those performative and representational practices, intersecting issues of race, gender, class, species, age and ability resurface.
The Possible Bodies inquiry operates along an inventory that by now contains a mutant set of artworks, scripts, documentation, manuals, guided tours, interfaces, vocabulary, performances, software-demos, tools, physical objects, animations, mathematical concepts, games, renderings, etc. This traveling collection forms a shared context to pay attention to the dimensional, notational, scalable and organisational apparatuses that make so-called-bodies appear and co-relate, and allows us to ask questions the matter-cultural conditions of possibility render them present.
At the start of 2018, Possible Bodies is one-and-a-half year under-way. It will have had rotations in an art institution in Stuttgart (Schloss Solitude), a technology-oriented centre for arts production and research (Hangar) and a design college (Bau) in Barcelona. From January onward, we open up the inventory in and to a.pass as a resource to be reworked, annotated, appropriated and expanded. Possible Bodies changes rhythm in order to prepare a fourth rotation in the fall that might take the shape of a publication.
The presence of the Possible Bodies inventory, its methodologies and some of its agents at a.pass can hopefully allow further inquiries into the tensions between ‘probable’ and ‘possible’. As an object of study, we will for example be exploring the workings and worldings of Slicer, an open source software platform for medical image informatics, image processing, and three-dimensional visualization. The software ecology of Slicer interests us because it allows us to explore processes of articulation, dissection, separation, segmentation, segregation and difference.
Jara Rocha (Barcelona) is a mediator/curator teaching projects at Bau Design College of Barcelona. She is co-inventor of the Possible Bodies project (Schloss Solitude, Hangar, a.pass, Constant) and participates in The Darmstadt Delegation. Jara often works with the materialities of present cultures (infrastructures, text logistics, body inscriptions) and tests non-formal ways of learning in collective situations like Euraca Seminar, Objetologías, or Relearn Summerschool.
If a question could lie 25 January 2018
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
a.pass end-communications is a public event for the sharing of the one year trajectories of the a.pass researchers. It’s a moment to bring to a larger public the questions and methods that their practice of artistic research at a.pass entailed. The event focuses on the sharing of their processes and on the invitation to reflect on the emerging topics and concerns of their research question(s) in the context of artist practice today.
'If a question could lie' brings forth or wants to insist on the agency of the question. It aims to raise the issue of the appearance of criticality and its location. It's as much claiming the right to pose a question as opening its ability to gather around a multitude, a poly. It could be read as a dating strategy. Saying, I wouldn't be here if I weren't interested. The I being the issue and the subject, at the same time. The set up for this End-Communications addresses the agencies of ‘performing’, ‘publishing’, ‘curating’ and ‘soft architecture’ as strategies for artistic research. It focuses and exposes text, performance, installation, technological apparatus as chapters, editorial parameters, contexts for the reader-audience. It wants to bring together a ‘collection’ or ‘assemblage’ of performative materials that are autonomous on themselves but brought together in relation to one another in a permeable physical space. These materials are the indicators of processes of thinking and doing which are not conclusive on themselves but that are on the edge of making emerge or unfold questions, meanings, feelings.
Over two days Zoumana Meïté and Sven Dehens invite you to come, see, listen and share. They will present their means for changed ways of reading, pointing and publishing.Zoumana Meïté
Practiced Dramatic Arts in different context (street, contest, Studies, social, laboratory, company, outside look, postmaster...). He is working as staging dramaturgist in Brussel.
Sven Dehens (°1990, BE) www.svendehens.orgThese evenings on 25th and 27th January start at 19h till about 22h
We recommend you come for the full evening.++
In addition to the end-communications two episodes of the Close Encounters series will take place in the afternoons on the same location.
25 January – Marcelo Rezende in conversation with Adrijana Gvozdenović – – 15h to 18h – public talk – more info
27 January – Femke Snelting, Nicolas Malevé & Pierre Rubio – Close Encounters – 15h to 18h – public talk - more info
admin's & enterpreneur's reading list 29 January 2018
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi1. Entrepreneur & Creative Economy
art and economy
Hans Abbing (2010). Why are artists poor? The exceptional economy of the arts. Amsterdam University Press.
Tatiana Bazzichelli (2013) Networked disruption. Aarhus: Digital Aesthetics Research Center, 73.
PhD thesis
creative economy
Richard Florida (2002) The economic geography of talent. Annals of the Association of American geographers, 92(4), pp.743-755.
creative economy flag-raiser
Richard Florida (2005) Cities and the creative class. Routledge.
Bridgstock Entrepreneurship Education in the Arts
quadruple bottom line theory, career self-management
Hartley et al Key Concepts in Creative Industries
entrepreneurship and innovation
creative economy critique
Banks, M. and O’Connor, J. (2017) Inside the whale (and how to get out of there): Moving on from two decades of creative industries research. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), pp.637-654.
Timely self-critique from apologetic creative economy former enthusiasts. Creative cities, cluster theory, Landry, Florida etc.
Paul Chatterton (2000). Will the real Creative City please stand up?. City, 4(3), pp.390-397. [online]
Banks, M., 2010. Craft labour and creative industries. International journal of cultural policy, 16(3), pp.305-321.
Richard Sennett and craft.
Anthony Davies (2007) Take me I’m yours: neoliberalising the cultural institution. In Mute Vol 2 No 5 It’s not easy being green [online]
http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/take-me-im-yours-neoliberalising-cultural-institution
A principle contradiction: the content of the institution’s discourse can be utterly inverted in the institutional form.
Jones, C. and Murtola, A.M. (2012) Entrepreneurship and expropriation. Organization, 19(5), pp.635-655.
Entrepreneurship as individual activity which rests on appropriation of production in common.
Angela McRobbie 2016. Be creative: Making a living in the new culture industries. John Wiley & Sons.
Book. Forensic examination of the UK cultural economy.
2. Diverse Economies
Performativity
..& research
Butler, J., 1993. Critically queer. GLQ: A journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1(1), pp.17-32.
Performativity as a research strategy.
Queer theory.
Law, J. and Urry, J. (2004) Enacting the social. Economy and society, 33(3), pp.390-410.
Sedgwick, E.K., (1997) Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, You're so paranoid, you probably think this introduction is about you. [online]
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10224/3628/2001-1233.pdf?sequence=1
.. & art
Brook, Donald. Experimental Art [online]
Art as ‘mimetic innovation’
Wright, S. (2013). 1:1 Scale, Toward a lexicon of usership. Van Abbemuseum. [online]
Art on a 1:1 scale
.. & economy
Çalışkan, K. and Callon, M., 2009. Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3), pp.369-398.
Performing the economy / economy as performance.
Çalışkan, K. and Callon, M., 2009. Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3), pp.369-398.
Callon, M., 2006. What does it mean to say that economics is performative? [online]
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00091596/document
Diverse economies
JK Gibson-Graham and Ethan Miller (2015) ‘Economy as ecological livelihood’. Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, pp.7-16.
Rethinking economic action as a space for ethical negotiation. In economic geography, JK Gibson-Graham challenges the idea of “the economy” as a unified, capitalist domain, to instead reframe it as diverse practices and interrelationships of sustenance and livelihood. This “diverse economies” approach is grounded in methodologies from feminist theory, which emphasise the need to recognise, theorise and engage with diversity. It constructs a different vision of "economy" where a host of informal, underground, non-market, collective and co-operative behaviours and activities are considered not only prevalent, but also primary and consequential.
JK Gibson-Graham. (2008) 'Diverse economies: performative practices for other worlds'. Progress in Human Geography, 32(5), pp.613-632.
Gibson-Graham, J.K., 1999. Queer(y)ing Capitalism in and out of the Classroom [1]. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(1), pp.80-85.
Zanoni, P., Contu, A., Healy, S. and Mir, R.,(2017) Post-capitalistic politics in the making: The imaginary and praxis of alternative economies. In Organization, Vol. 24(5) Sage Publications pp 575-588
Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2014. Rethinking the economy with thick description and weak theory. Current Anthropology, 55(S9), pp.S147-S153.
3. Radmin
Art and admin
Andrea Phillips (2015) Invest in What
howtoworktogether.org [online]
Arts organisations' structures shape their policies. A history of artistic work proposing radical forms of cooperation
vs potlitcally endorsed models of entrepreneurship.
Caroline Woolard (2017) Ourgoods, BAMBAPHD [online]
Art-based critique of art economies. Objects and contexts: together, objects
and contexts create space for reflection, circulation, and social transformation.
Angela McRobbie (2010) Rethinking Creative Economy as Radical Social Enterprise. Variant Magazine
[online]
How does teaching students critical understanding tally with also encouraging self-reliance and entrepreneurship?
Proposes a renewal of radical social enterprise and co-operatives as self-organised collectives, to provide working structures for diverse occupations, including artists.
Business studies
Martin Parker Art as Work
Critical management studies perspective on Art. Being an artist is supposed to expose the constraints of rules by bending / breaking conventions .. but art is work and involves rules, and work is creative and produces difference.
Matthew Manos (2012) Business as a Medium in Hertz, Garnet. Critical Making. 1st ed. [United States]: Telharmonium p.27-32. [online]
Business as a medium for critical enquiry and meaning-making, to change perceptions.
A means of designing a future the entrepreneur would like to inhabit.
Business as a non end-dated project; an ultra accessible medium; a platform for experiments.
Martin Parker et al (2013) ‘Horizons of possibility’. In: Parker, M., Cheney, G., Fournier, V. and Land, C. eds., The Routledge companion to alternative organization. Routledge.
Assimilation and recuperation (Boltanski & Chiapello) vs operating in the cracks.
Essential laboratories for post/non/modified capitalist practices, ‘less-governed’ (Foucault).
Critique is a limited strategy if the real goal is social transformation. (A positive critique which brings new things into the world).
Does the scale of resistance have to match the scale of the problem?
Calls for a radical insurgent entrepreneurship as form of social creativity. Changes in daily practice, invents futures.
Entrepreneurship as a set of unstable, untested, potentially transformational practices of collective invention and reorientation.
Craig Deegan (2016)
Twenty five years of social and environmental accounting research within Critical Perspectives of Accounting: Hits, misses and ways forward. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 43, pp.65-87.
Critical accounting.
The transformational potential of accounting, vs producing incontravertible facts.
Accounting as a means of identifying which action one must defend.
Systems thinking
Gregory Bateson (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Form is the primary mode of communication, understood analogically. Significant meta-level change requires a change of context as well as content.
Bruno Latour (2011) What’s the story? Organizing as a mode of existence. In: Passoth, JH., Peuker, B. and Schillmeier, M., Agency without Actors.
Organisation staves off disorder. Being-in-action, organisations as scripts. Organisations as a flock of sparrows.
Legal
Janelle Orsi
Bronwen Morgan
Morgan, B. and Kush, D. (2015) 'Radical transactionalism: legal consciousness, diverse economies and the sharing economy'. Journal of Law and Society 556-587
Bronwen Mogan and Declan Kuch Radical Transactionalism
An expansive concept of enterprise as ‘any productive activity that might bring us sustenance’.
The legal, financial and organisational structures of our current economy do not sit comfortable with small-scale sustainable economy initiatives.
A Pattern Language: Art/istic, Institutions*ing, and Research (practices) 22 March 2018
posted by: Nicolas GaleazziIn analogy – or response – to the idea of a Pattern Language as Christopher Alexander described it in 1970’s the researchers at a.pass tried to understand how a pattern language could be written for the context of artistic research and especially for the creation of good conditions for the practice of research as an art form.
The team around Alexander described patterns as following:
“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to the problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million time over, without ever doing the same thing twice.” Ch. Alexander, 1977.
In general we were able to imagine the translatability of this approach to our environment, yet the here described problem-solution relationship didn’t feel appropriate for the arts and especially not for the ways research may take – from the unknown into the unknown. For the sake of workability we propose to translate problems in to needs, issues, or question and solution into (good) practice, proposition or even speculation.
However we decided to take the experiment to the test and try to apply the protocol Alexander proposes for the writing of a pattern onto our writing in order to discover where this protocol finds its borders.
The language of those patterns and it’s function Alexander describes as following:
“[The order of the patterns] is presented as a straight linear sequence, [and] is essential to the way the language works. […] What is most important about this sequence, is that it is based on the connections between the patterns. Each pattern is connected to certain “larger” patterns which come above it in the language, and to certain “smaller” patterns which come below it in the language. In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.” Ch. Alexander, 1977.
The order of the actual ‘sentence’ that one want to create from this language for her/his concrete case is as much free as it is in a spoken or written language. Words can’t be placed in what ever kind of order, there is always a specific syntax and grammatical structure required by a specific language – yet quite everything can be said and in most cases language finally allows for a quite a great redundancy. One can say a sentence in a grammatically ‘wrong’ way, yet one understand what you mean.
Milieus, associations, sieves and other matters... 24 April 2018
posted by: Pierre Rubio
Milieus, Associations, Sieves and other matters
some orientation guidelines
Today, to the question ‘what is technoscience?’ the answer is: it is the medium of knowledge. Just as technology is not the instrument of science but its epistemological framework, so it is not the instrument of our communication, but our medium of meaning. Everyone seems to admit today that we are inhabited by our habitat, built by our niche, processed by our technical environment, which is neither external nor peripheral, but inherent to our being and to all meaning. Now it seems obvious that it is one and the same milieu that surrounds and separates us, and that which crosses and connects us, but this environment has become technical. The co-birth of humans and technology means that the latter is both our medium (the midpoint through which individuals maintain each other) and our environment (our space-time). The technical environment perfectly illustrates the idea that our environment or what surrounds us is actually in our midst (au milieu de nous). That technology is both our exteriority and our interiority, our cage and what takes us away from it. How, in an artistic research environment, do these ontological, ethical and political contemporary concerns resonate?
Proposal
Composing a processual environment, the block consisted in a sequential ensemble of collective dispositives that were proposed to be appropriated, interpreted, developed and problematised by the artists and researchers. A metastable milieu in ‘crisis’ which evolved by shifting to new dimensions out of a series of analyses and temporary resolutions of problematics linked with the artists and researchers’ projects considered as technologies.The basic structure was an arrangement of 1-self organised interactive events intersecting with 2-a series of three theoretical study days and 3-a series of advanced forms of feedback.
Organisation / Trajectory
1. Twenty two self-organised interactive events of different dimensions : the C.R.I.’s
(from May 31st to July 19th)The acronym C.R.I. stands for Collective Research Interface. The researchers were invited to compose and propose participatory events that one could identify as shareable practices out of/around/through their individual researches. Instead of qualifying -and reducing- simply the object by ‘collective practice’ or ‘workshop’, the name ‘Collective Research Interface’ produced momentary shared interstitial spaces between different scales (private, public, cultural, social, personal, artistic, aesthetic, political and so on…) and enabled and supported a certain mode of attention, the one of technical mentality. Experiencing with this mentality was possible as the mode of production of the C.R.I.’s followed a principle of compositionality. The performativity and meaning of the C.R.I’s, as complex technical ensembles, were determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and the modes of relating/assembling used to combine them. A structuring loop was formulated : invent, invite, do, participate, share, document, discuss, reflect, problematisatise… and back again. The researches were not only presented but organised into shareable dispositives, that then were described, analysed, filtered driving the attention to their resonances in term of constructions and modes of assemblages. Their technological qualities.
2. Three theoretical study daysa/ The diagram and the residual (June 12th)
The program visited the artist residency project ‘Villa Blanche’ within the Solvay Parc in Brussels with Martino Morendi (philosopher-hacker-activist) and Pietro Fortuna (philosopher-artist). The day was articulated around the tension between two conceptual outlines, two proposals that sketched complementary or opposite modes of understanding reality. The diagram, as the systematic representation of a set of relations between elements, where logics, organicism and industrial engineering converge in the effort to govern and organize these relations and the residual, as the irreducible part that remains beyond one's hunger to explain and describe, that recedes and escapes any attempt of organization and rationalization.
United if only by their distance from the subject-object mode of disclosure, Martino Morandi and Pietro Fortuna oriented us through a series of ‘objects’ like an elegy by Rilke, passages from von Uexküll and Agamben, a bourgeois villa, a tree, a giant Olmec head made of stone, the Solvay ammonia-soda process ... and a series of readings of objects related to every researcher’s art and research.
b/ on Participation (June 17th)
The program visited the project ‘Precarious Pavillon #1 - Don’t eat the microphone’ -an artistic project initiated by Veridiana Zurita and Petra Van Dyck, curated by Michael Vandevelde and co-produced by Vooruit- happening in the garden of the Psychiatric Hospital Dr. Guislain in Ghent.
The study day was dedicated to the critique of participatory art and ideas of participation. Don’t Eat the Microphone represented for us a grey zone where we could think but also be challenged in our certainties about the nature and function of participation. Currently focused on the development of the Collective Research Interfaces and exploring the value of several modes of participation, we wanted to problematise the issue(s) in a problematic environment.
What is participatory art? What does it mean to participate?
What are the relations between participatory art and utopia?
Which kind of public space and social fabric participatory practices do (and do not) produce? What are the relations between participatory art and communicative capitalism?
What is participation-as-injunction the diagram of? Is it still possible not to participate? Is it still possible even to imagine non-participation? How to foster (non) participatory arts and (un) communicative thus militantly collective aesthetic educations of possibilities? After a phase of various reservations expressed about the optimistic rhetoric accompanying collaboration and participation, could we now be entering a new phase of a practical re-invention of participation?
This tentative list of problems and questions guided our study day displaced in the frame of Don’t Eat the Microphone. We read some Hal Foster , Chat Rooms / some Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells / some Yves Citton, Ecology of Attention / some Derek R. Ford and Tyson E. Lewis, On the freedom to be opaque monsters, and discuss in various ways our doubts on participative art with the curators of ‘Don’t eat the microphone’ project and the patients of the psychiatric hospital.
c/ Poieien (July 14th)
Invited by the summer program to structure a day around concerns traversing researchers and artists when thinking about methodologies and their politics, Bojana Cvejic, then-curator of the research program at p.a.r.t.s., guided the group of researchers and artists through a critical reflection that she currently conducts on methodologies, opposing practice and action to poiesis. During the encounter with the researchers of a.pass, she proposed two points of entry: how poetry pierces through other mediums than text and poiein, as in how to make, compose, form... more than do and act... a kind of thought that arises from within, or close to, artistic practice that in turn becomes an instrument of looking past art. She accounts for it by “poetics”, using the term to emphasise the productive power of thought as opposed to the genre of interpretation that classifies specimens of kinds. Bojana Cvejic shared that poetics entails engagement with art in imaginary and speculative senses that ‘theory’, tout court – in the way that it has become the superstructural element of art production in capitalism – no longer enables.
The participants did map out their imaginary around their matters of concern, read some texts and discussed with Bojana.3. Three 'Sieves' proposed by three human 'analogous algorithms'
The aim of these three advanced modes of feedback named ‘Sieves’ -performed by three ex-a.pass researchers identified as 'analogous algorithms'- were to create conditions that could define practices of creative feedback experimentations on artistic researches envisaged as technical dispositives to investigate how each rhetoric of presentation and its digestive techniques could be expressed in terms of data model (Sina Seifee in May), in terms of recipes and cook books (Gosie Vervloessem in June) and in terms of idiotic practice (Vanja Smilianic in July)
a/ Sina Seifee / Filters
The basic question of 'Filter' was : what happens when linking the symbolic space of data-model to the (relational, procedural, emotional) qualities of the researches of participants? The work started with working on/with the feedback material produced during the block’s opening week and processing this material in diagrams. The proposal centred on the notion (and practice) of topological analysis to investigate questions of connectivity and boundaries, in order to find out what remains invariant as a result of transformation. This did direct us to construct ‘transversal objects’ actualising what connects and joins, what delinks and disconnects in the culture of each participant researches.some documentation of the process here
b/ Gosie Vervloessem / Vision and Digestion
The protocol was to bring one’s research and start to think about the taste of it, the way it could move through one’s intestines and try to visualise the tools and methods one would use to transform one’s questions into a dish. How to boil down questions, how to crystallise the background dramaturgy of researches? As a way of documenting the symposium, Gosie proposed to write the recipes of the ‘dishes’ and to edit the cookbook out of the ‘digested’ researches.c/ Vanja Smilianic / Idiotic Mandala attacked by a parasitic octopus
The Idiotic Mandala -indicating a weird circular configuration with a centre that radiates outward into compartmentalised areas deranged by the unvited presence of a creeping octopus- asked to switch off one's rational thinking and opened it up to wandering and wondering. The practitioners were invited to introspectively transform the Vicious Circle ( sad passions at work disguised as set of tools and technologies that became behaviour patterns in one's research) into the Virtuous Circle (creating a universe in which idiots are able to act)Milieus, Associations, Sieves and other matters
some justifications
Thematics, Research questions, approaches, potentials, methodologies, relevance
In response to a proposed frame given by a.pass coordinator and research center curator Lilia Mestre to structure the block in relation to the Senselab concepts and practices, postmaster program curator Pierre Rubio choose to design entry points to different set of practices and theoretical notions accessing a central theme for Senselab and him, the one of technical mentality. A few years ago SenseLab published a special issue of Inflexions ‘Simondon : Milieux, Techniques, Aesthetics’ and Brian Massumi’s lenghtly interview ‘Technical mentality revisited’ was published in Parrhesia. Rubio, since 2010, regularly revisits Simondon’s texts in relation to his practice as artist/dramaturge and observes the growing interest for the french philosopher's ideas in the academic and artistic fields. He curated an a.pass block in 2014 -'Milieu(s)'- that problematised some aspects of technical mentality within a collectively constructed ephemeral public school dispositive. The possibility of considering artistic researches trajects and projects as technical objects and experimenting with technical mentality seemed to be relevant for this block especially in the vicinity of Senselab's residence invited by a.pass Research Centre within the 'Parallel/Parasite' project.
-A poly semantic space to activate problematisations and progressive resolutions through concretisation
-The individual CRI’s as case studies of non-autonomous technological open objects
-Constructivism, technical mentality and artistic research
-Simondon and artistic research : a promising diffractive equation
.
... to be continued...
This is 1000 liter fuel. So - & Tectonic Friendship book launch 21 May 2018
posted by: Lilia Mestre
This is 1000 liter fuel. So-
For this End-Presentations, six researchers come together in concepts of absence, invisibility, history and knowledge. They research in various ways to bring what seems to be ungraspable in the construction of subjectivities to the fore. Subjectivity here, not as an individual subjectivity, but one that collectively builds and positions (in transformation) outside of oneself. Subjectivities as constituted by cultural, economical, social and other interactions and seen as complex narratives that mediate our perception(s) of the world. How do we make sense of what is pertained as ‘real’ and how through the generalization of such a standpoint one is unable to connect with the singular, and its inherent complexities? What ethical utterances can appear from this way of addressing the world?
Following up on the idea of co-making worlds a.pass positions itself as a collaborative environment for the investigation and expression of artistic research. The media of the research are multiple and often combined. The cross disciplines and their interaction forces each specific (or even disciplinary) methodology to break down and instigate the construction of singular ways of doing/ thinking. This approach orients artistic research out of a categorical way of understanding knowledge production in the arts as much as it opens up distinctive and particular forms of addressing relationality, we could call undisciplined.
The work of the six researchers entails combined forms of research on what can be called transdisciplinary research in order to open up the complexity of the objects of study through combining experiential approaches.
Luisa Fillitz's research positions itself on the relationship between physical and metaphysical realities and questions the predetermined borders of an effect we take as ‘real’. Esther Rodriguez-Barbero Granado works in the domains of architecture and body as constructors of space. Eunkyung Jeong, through a daily drawing practice, researches the idea of time within diverse forms of existence as the stone and the self. Marialena Marouda’s research on the ocean problematizes scientic knowledge as the single epistemology of nature. Ekaterina Kaplunova develops a systematic approach to family relations and cultural lineage in relation to the multifunctional artist. Shervin Kianersi Haghighi addresses the undocumented performance of everyday life as an invisible event produced within the confines of Art.SCORESCAPES BOOK LAUNCH
Medium Score -Tectonic Friendship & End Presentations Writing Score
a.pass book launch @ Brew with a dialogue facilitated by Philippine Hoegen and chocolate cocktails by Shervin Kianersi Haghighi!
We will engage in a collective discussion with Philippine Hoegen and will perform parts of the publication.
This publication serves the SCORESCAPES research - scores as pedagogical tool by Lilia Mestre and the End-Communications of six a.pass researchers. Medium Score builds on the previous iterations of scores as tools to practice dialogue and intersubjective formats for exchange in artistic research.
Before finishing the a.pass program in May 2018, the six researchers Luisa Fillitz, Esther Rodriguez-Barbero Granado, Eunkyung Jeong, Marialena Marouda, Ekaterina Kaplunova and Shervin Kiarnesi Haghighi worked for a month and a half in an adapted Writing Score to produce this publication.
Design: Miriam Hempel www.daretoknow.co.ukEND-PRESENTATIONS @ DecorAtelier 24 and 25 May from 17:30 till 22:30
Rue de Liverpool 24, 1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean
BOOK LAUNCH Medium Score -Tectonic Friendship & End Communications Writing Score
@ Brew 26 May from 17:30 till 19:30
1 Rue du Pene, 1000 Brussels
Geert Vaes/ TEXTS RESEARCH / 'Masks and play as tools of awareness and knowledge production' 21 September 2018
posted by: Geert Vaes
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 Vaesa.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’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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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):
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)
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,...?
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.
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 …
- case of: Geert Vaes
Block 2019/II Troubled Gardens ecologies of artistic research
23 April 2019
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
The earth faces troubles of kind humanity never experienced before: climatic changes induced by humankind are dramatically destructive and - meanwhile unavoidable. Therefore we can register a shift in the environmental movement from an understanding of trying to prevent the planet from a catastrophe to mere dealing with life within the consequences of climate changes. This perspective fundamentally shifts our culturally abstracted understanding of nature - and therefore it poses big questions to the arts as a source of cultural knowledge for that great deal of life. The catastrophe might mirror the impossibility of hierarchical understandings of the relation between nature and culture, but it also forces us to the obvious insight that all vital cycles - whether social, ecological, technological, cultural, mental, emotional, economic etc.- are inseparably connected ecosystems.
Knowing about their sensitivity and complexity, I’m asking myself, how does my artistic practice and research act within the disturbedness of these ecosystems? How can I understand myself and my research as transformative part of their troubles - knowing, that I’m a troubled and troubling ecosystem myself?
After having curated two blocks at a.pass with regards to the conditions which, and in which we create - the block 2017/II about the commons, as an alternative economy, and the block 2018/I about the making of conditions and Institutional Critique - I see the need to look beyond our cultural boundaries and understand the meshwork of diverse conditions we are living in together with other species, elements and time zones.
The aim of this block is to challenge our individual research aims as living creatures and companions in and as ecosystems. Hyper related, affecting, and never singular, our researches are - however - in resonance with their surrounding. We can not ignore the influence of these aspects, but we are also hardly aware of the performance of these influences on our practice.
Taking this ‚ecosystem-perspective‘ as the main tool for our investigations, this block shall give you the possibility to reflect your research as a relational field within a ‚terrestrial‘ landscape. On the other side, it will unavoidably put our researches in relation to the ecological crisis and catastrophes surrounding us and will help us to develop tools and understanding for a post-anthropocentric, post-atopocenic, probably post-artropocentric relational practice with your research.
Therefore, this block IN-vites you OUT. Where to investigate and experience a behaviour as ecosystem better then in the outside - an outside, that immediately takes us in, makes us being a part of it! ‚Outdoor‘ - at places with-out-doors - might be the right term. Where weather and biosphere meet industrial (side-)performance, migrant activities, walls, traffic, sun - and state power, written and unwritten laws etc. interact with each other.
This block takes you out into the systemically ‚wild‘. What allows structure? I don’t know - at the moment, before having taken up theses c/glasses any curated structure feels violent towards the tenderness of the ecosystems. Handling the idea ‚ecosystem as research as ecosystem‘ with care is as crucial as to care with the greatest sensitivity for the ecosystems we are about to enter by stepping out of the door.This in mind, I throw out my tentacles to propose a path to step into our ‚worlding‘ experience and to trace the stories we will tell on that way.
victories over the suns projects / events / agenda
24 June 2019
posted by: Pierre Rubio
general presentation of the project here
---------research projects-events-and-agenda---------
WICKED TECHNOLOGIES/WILD FERMENTATION
By linking practices of fermentation, feminism and artistic research, SARA MANENTE hosts a space for thinking, perceiving and doing togetherness in live cultures and live arts.
Sara is a performance artist, dance maker and researcher interested in narrowing the distance between the performers, the audience and the work. Her research starts from a dance practice that problematizes perception, translation and (aesthetic) value. Her work comes out in hybrid forms: book launch, 3Dfilm, written text, interview, choreographic piece, workshop, telepathic experience, collaboration et al.
For Zsenne she proposes and activates a Discursive lab on “fermentation and wickedness”. She will first lacto ferment a summer vegetable while discussing collectively the meaning of wicked, queer, wild and technologies in relation to participants personal researches. She then will leave the ferments in jars to age in the space of the gallery. On the last day of the residency the researchers in Brussels will open and taste them while discussing the same topics, this time informed by 3 weeks of collective fermentation. Meanwhile Sara will be in Fahrenheit 451 House in Catskill starting new alive cultures with the artists/curators Inju Kaboom and Steve Schmitz and their guests as a relay game of bacterial process. Among all the present participants of the residency, Antye Guenther, currently in residence in Japan, will join this online collective fermentation dinner.
Furthermore Sara will perform later in the week, an informal try-out concert on the multilayered and mashed sound that she has been making in the last few months : “Mush” musical cocktail.
FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS
ROB RITZEN assembles elements of his research as an associate researcher at a.pass. In several collective moments he will explore the idea that form is not only aesthetical but that there is no politics without form. If so those concerned with form everyday, artists for example, can bring forms into being that can generate (un)foreseen effects on the forms that dictate our everyday life and shape our world. With Forms of Life of Forms, in short, Rob wants to work with others to better understand forms in all their expressions and workings, but above all to gain insights into how we can use forms to change the world around us.
With every moment he will add different perspectives and new layers to the notion of form; in-formation, political forms, network forms, value forms, organisational forms. Each moment brings forward a text and visual works that will be explored and discussed together. These elements will form a growing assemblage of written and visual works by Caroline Levine, Marco Lampis, Catherine Malabou, Antye Guenther, Marjolijn Dijkman, Mathijs van de Sande, Judith Butler, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, James Bridle, PA Consulting Group, Bureau des Etudes Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, Nancy Fraser, Diego Tonus, and Zachary Formwalt.
Graphic design collective D.E.A.L will translate each moment and the added insights into a poster published for the following session.
Rob works as a curator with a background in philosophy, museum studies, art and architectural history. His curatorial practice is focused on self-organised and co-operative formats in close association with cultural practitioners — consciously positioned on the margin of established institutions and outside of market oriented spaces, but in the middle of communities of cultural practitioners. Most recently he co-initiated That Might Be Right, an attempt to reconfigure the politics of making art and alternative forms of production and presentation.
OTHERWISE EXHIBITING ARTISTIC ANXIETIES AND THE WORLD
‘My desires (or wills) are always in being produced, instead of producing. But some sort of production is expected.’
(Stefano Faoro, from the A4 press release of his solo exhibition ‘Soft Knees’, at Wiels project room 21.02 – 10.03.2019.)
Back in February, ADRIJANA GVOZDENOVIĆ related her thinking to Stefano Faoro’s text and how he used the standard format of A4 exhibition guide to be the work in the exhibition and a press release at the same time. How to engage with the time in ZSenne Artlab as a residency, a semi-public presentation, an open project, a traject, aiming to examine the formats of publicness of artistic research that pushes the border between research, mediation and production?
For three weeks, Adrijana proposes two ongoing practices that are at the same time a tool for conversation, an ongoing research and documentation process focusing on the temporal aspect of this kind of exhibiting. First, a cyanotype printing process, forming in time in relation to U.V. rays from sunlight to think together about traces and blueprints of and for the event, their sharp shadows and (non)transparency. Second, a one-to-one card reading, artistic anxieties and the world. In a 7 card spread Adrijana proposes to read (for and with) the artists and researchers - individuals that are concerned, fearful and hopeful, excited about their practice.
Adrijana is a visual artist and a researcher. In the last two years, in the collective studying environment of a.pass, she has been proposing activities and formats to explore possibilities of what she calls Otherwise Exhibiting, shifting the focus from
object to process to change. Since the beginning of this year, as a continuation of these lines, she started doing one year research at the Royal Academy of Antwerp with a project ‘Archiving Artistic Anxieties’, a proposal for self-archiving as an artistic practice. Adrijana introduces the concept of ‘artistic anxieties’ which stands for an artistic practice that looks for developing a mode of critique from an unstable position, exploring uncertainties and ‘follow(ing) the treads where they lead’.
*To take part in one of these two practices and contribute to the research, please send email adrijana.gvozdenovic@gmail.com
OTHER GEOMETRIES
Femke Snelting develops research projects at the intersection of feminisms, design and free software. In various constellations she explores how digital tools and cultural practices might co-construct each other. She is a member of Constant, a non-profit artist-run association for art and media based in Brussels.
She proposes for the residence a workshop : Other Geometries. It is an invitation to reflect on, re-imagine and train for togetherness with difference. It is a collaborative research-kit, a porous collection of trans*femininist renderings, eccentric imagery and recombinatory vocabularies. The kit is part of an ongoing conversation with activist collectives which rely on concepts such as 'sovereignty', 'freedom', 'independence' and 'autonomy' to ideologically motivate work on tools, networks and infrastructures we need and want. But by sticking to modes of separation rather than relation, we continue to evoke utopias elsewhere, instead of developing ways to stay with the trouble that we are already entangled in.
Other Geometries proposes 'complex collectivity' as a tentative framework to think with, for example, non-normative human constellations, or collectives where participants with radically different needs, backgrounds and agencies come together. ‘complex collectivity' can be self-chosen, or be the result of structural forces such as laws, racism, technology, wars, austerity, queerphobia and ecological conditions.
Many of the items included in the kit modify existing concepts by introducing dynamic tension. In the workshop Femke will extend this method to the way we relay stories of complex collectivities or the kind of geometries we invent for them. We will try to be attentive to generative vibrations between ontologies and cosmologies and speculate with ‘infrastructures’ that could hold more than one form of togetherness together. What non-utopian models can we design to interface with multiple collectivities? How can we do that without making their intersections dependent on the rigidifying assumptions of sameness and reciprocity?
MAKING PUBLIC
After a.pass last audit in 2015, the Ministry of Education supported our institution by rating it officially “excellent”. Nevertheless the ministry encouraged us to become more visible and disseminate our knowledge practices on a more regular basis. This administrative curatorial invitation became a point of critical discussion and complex -conceptual and practical- development in a.pass under the name ‘Making Public’.
Publishing more? But what and how? Are we not obliged to problematize what a publication of artistic research could be? And isn’t it as well coherent to question and develop other modes of publishing? Disseminating more? But in which direction, in which proportion and for who? What does quantity mean in a frame of experimental practice? And what is the public for artistic research if not one to be imagined and ‘actualised’ because it might not exist yet? Are we not supposed to speculate a public for speculative practices?
Since three years the different iterations and proposals under the ‘Making Public’ umbrella were numerous within a.pass at large and occupied quite some space in the newly reconfigured research centre. Going from the thorny problem of ‘contract’, to the dichotomy between ‘private versus public’, to the challenging concept of ‘performative publishing’, to discussions towards the development of experimental digital (non)humanities, to the ontological/political definition of publishing as an act, and more... our notebook and catalogue of actual practices is expanding.
For this residence we propose a discussion day around ‘Making Public’ as a title, frame and horizon where the participants will contribute by sharing their own relational arrangement between their practices and the publication problem. They will also share their definitions and discuss together their concern starting from the question of urgency.
CRITICAL BESTIARIES
A lecture performance by SINA SEIFEE presenting the making of a mini-scale quasi-organization, called the critical bestiaries, to host/construct semi-sustainable structures for storytelling and questioning techniques of bestiaries. Namely, the questions of relational histories, technologies of memory, modes of attention, differential consciousness, and animal subjectivity. This project in the shape of a magazine will be a quadrilingual (German, Farsi, English, Arabic) online and printed form, and its topics are both thematic and epistemic. It is both an inspiration for storytelling and a reading apparatus, to give a chance to an interest for multi-species studies and to define a hybrid mode of discourse to talk about the conditions of storytelling today.
This projects will practically address the question of: which sensory-technology for making are necessary to approach ‘description’ as speculative theory in practice of how a world works? The aim of the magazine is to entangle: design (making things that tell stories), storytelling (a materialist practice of how not to reach the end), science (an interpretative adventure), faithful and fantastic (mixture of the highly rational and the highly fabulous), boundary objects (workaround things, concepts, processes, even routines that permit coordination, sometimes collaboration, without consensus), objectivity (the possibility of unambiguous communication and of boundary articulations) and fable (relational and speculative empiricism).
Sina Seifee researches as an artist in the fields of narrative, performance and knowledge production. He is working on the question of technology and storytelling in the arts and sciences of the middle ages and the past-present of material reading practices in collective life.
SCORESCAPES
Lilia Mestre is a performing artist and researcher based in Brussels working mainly in collaboration with other artists. She is interested in art practice as a medial tool between several domains of semiotic existence. Lilia works with assemblages, scores and inter-subjective setups as an artist, curator, dramaturge and teacher. From 2019 till 2021 she has/will collaborate(d) with Brandon Labelle in Social Acoustic project - a research project supported by the University of Bergen, Norway and with Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga in Contingent Agencies - a research project supported by PEEK -Vienna. Since 2008 she is involved in developing the artistic research oriented young institution a.pass -she is currently a.pass artistic coordinator and co-curator- where she has been developing a research on scores as pedagogical tool titled ScoreScapes.
ScoreScapes is a research Lilia started in the context of a.pass, starting from questions such as: How to create an inclusive dispositive that enables learning through each other’s research proposals? How to deal with an un-disciplinary context that aims for transversal relations? By “score” Lilia means a set of instructions that can be repeated for a predetermined period of time. These instructions create a system through which participants interact, as the scores can be modified and used by anyone. Since 2014, she has developed four iterations of the practice: Writing Score, Perform Back Score, Bubble Score and Medium Score. And each iteration marked by the release of a conclusive publication.
Recently Lilia wrote ‘Scorescapes’, a text about the project that points to its transversal qualities and delineates some problems about its nature. Is ScoreScapes an archive? A documentary production? An art practice? A social practice? How does the project relate to artistic research as an unstable and unframed mode of knowledge practice? Does ScorScapes project’s ungraspable definition create conditions for something to happen in term of publishing otherwise?
During the residency in Zsenne ArtLab, Pierre Rubio will present the different dimensions and current state of the ScoreScape project with Lilia in an afternoon of collective reading, interview, Q&A and discussion.
TOWARDS AN ECO-EROGENOUS PARA-PHARMACEUTICS VILLAGE
In catastrophic times… Can the orgasmic body be a source for sustainable electricity production? Can the cavities that make up the landscapes of the human sexual organs be a territory for agricultural development? Can sex hormones offer alternative components for psychopharmacology and recreational drugs formulas? ISABEL BURR RATY is an independent filmmaker and performance artist, interested in the ontological crack between the organic and the artificially engineered, between the unlicensed knowledge of minority groups and the official facts. In her films, Isabel embodies human cosmo-visions that are in eco-survival resistance, bringing the imaginative realisms of the camouflaged and their subversive sense of chronology into the screen. In her artwork she interweaves new media, body art, installation and performance proposing hybrid narratives and bio-autonomous practices that play with synthetic magic. In her current work, Isabel creates hybrid performances and installations that invite the public to queer fixed categories of production understandings and experience the benefits of embodying SF in real time. She is currently running a Mobile Farm that starts by harvesting human female sexual juices, to produce beauty bio-products in Portugal and Holland, and will evolve into an ‘Eco-erogenous Para-pharmaceutics Village’ in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where “every-BODY” will harvest and recycle each other. The village will be a tentacular community of synergic mutualism that goes beyond the idea of corpus/body as biological transmitter of kinship and situates the human as a non-human species that can offer solutions to the planetary crisis we live in.
During the residence, Isabel presents three objects that revisit her project and outline a perspective towards the future of her research: Self facial abduction beauty treatment - This installation offers to the public the tester products of the unisex skin care lines manufactured in the Beauty Kit Female Farm and displayed in this Farm SPA. The visitors are invited to follow the application protocol an experience exotic transpersonal benefits - Male Farm : 1st encounter - To move the ideas of the project forward, during the residence, Isabel organises the first official Male Farm Encounter starting the conversation with a question: What’s happening with male sexuality today? A group of friends will join Isabel for an off conversation about how to address the incognitos around the male sexuality with the ambitious mission of transforming in the future male orgasmic genital and mental fluids in bio-autonomous technologies to produce electric energy. Beauty Kit Upgraded - Lecture Performance - In this lecture the artist hacks the focus group format to present the different lines of beauty bio-products that she conceptualized and manufactured using the female sexual juices that were harvested in her Mobile Farms. In this occasion the public is invited to help solving some of the riddles embedded in the alter-economic model of this project.
Isabel is associate researcher in a.pass.be, teaches Media art history in École de Recherche Graphique Brussels and is artist in residency in Waag, Mediamatic and VU Amsterdam.
POLITICS OF ENGINEERING
‘Politics of engineering’ is a one day of presentations and conversations about the questions of digital technologies posed by a.pass, as an institution, and addressed by its constituent knowers -Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, Open Source Publishing - in the process of making three models and adjustment to the work of documentation and digital publishing that has been recently done or currently in the making.
---The day will start with a public conversation and an inconclusive study on the technical and epistemological assumptions that were made in the making of Parallel Parasite : Timeline Repository, a visual and discursive apparatus made by Sina Seifee after Parallel Parasite, a month residency at ZSenne ArtLab, produced by a.pass Research Centre and curated by Lilia Mestre in the Summer of 2018.
---Afterwards we continue by a presentation of OSP (Open Source Publishing) an engaged graphic design unit founded in 2006 in Brussels. OSP comprises a group of individuals from different backgrounds and practices in typography and graphic design, cartography, programming, mathematics, writing, and performance. They will present their practice, commitments, tools and projects.
---We will then continue by publishing the RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface, a website hosting a collective and experimental radio project aiming at producing audio documents gathered and disseminated by the ad hoc fictional radio label/station, which is the outcome of voluntary contributions after the 2017 winter seminar of a.pass, curated by Pierre Rubio. The website will be presented by the makers, the result of the initiation and curation of Pierre Rubio with the artistic and technological dramaturgy of Sina Seifee. They will discuss the making of RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface as a hybrid dispositive, as a science-fiction entity, a problematic storytelling, a speculation site and some concerns around politics of imagination.
---Then, OSP in conversation with Sina Seifee, will question and problematise engineering mentality and the use-relation of digital technologies in/with the arts and complex artistic research practices and institutions.
---Finally, everybody will have a discussion/Q&A where complex politics of digital engineering can be addressed collectively.
CONTINGENT WEIRDNESS (workshop on horror)
Adrijana Gvozdenović and Sina Seifee propose Contingent Weirdness (workshop on horror).
A two-days training/hanging-out/sharing/practice for artists researchers focusing on the specific genre of horror to understand each other’s artistic commitments in a constraint and therefore generative way. Adrijana and Sina will explore and reshape historical elements of the genre, such as zombies, gore and torture of ghostly demons, vicious animals and cannibal witches, as well as medieval serial killer monsters, unnatural disasters and Frankenstein projects, and so on. Parallel we foreground different scales and registers of horror for reconsideration, ranging from speculative fiction, sci-fi cinema, to medieval bestiaries, inducing “bad feelings” such as fear, uncanny, awe, mania, panic, tension and anxiety.
The workshop starts by imagining an aspect of our practices as a horror story, locating the fear, and deciding, with the help of the group, what can be turned into horror. Doing so, we are interested in exploring the parts of our practice that are fucked-up, that means to which extent what we do can become a disaster, gore, torture. Starting from where one’s practice produces demage and when thinking disintegrate and disorient, we will map what escapes our peripheral vision. We will discuss together (arche-)type of horror categories and make a cliche/scheme/model for at least one or two of them. Then we will chose an affective, atmospheric, compositional technique of horror to ask how does this story relates to which existing social, political, cultural phenomena today. We will concentrate on both, to create horrors but also working on a specific setting, which is important for the genre not only to set up the mood but to create an ambience of the expectation of horror. In the workshop we will provide basinc accessories and tools to create settings - an ambience of ‘expectation’ pregnant with horror. In relation to this, we will prepare references for the reading and/or watching selected films together. In the second day, we focus on composing singular pieces (around individual proposals or in small groups) which we will share at the end of the day in the setting of a ‘scary stories night’.
Going through how this genre works is important, because genre is a way of gathering and staging what it cares for, in a performative and coherent way to teach a negatively affected audience how to inhabit their world. Adrijana and Sina are interested what comes out when we start from the fears and affects creating personalised monsters of our work and how will this training from another side of reasoning, while working in an atmosphere for a contingent weirdness, shape the language for not thinking clearly, yet precisely. Particular interest of the workshop is in those scales that are not necessary correct and of good intention. We propose to exaggerate consciously how great art practices are also awful, how the things we do are also often laden with damage and death, to trace our works in the matrix of rage, lure, and desire (and not necessarily in the matrix of truth, duty, and achievements).
DEALING WITH POROSITY
How to become porous? How to stay porous? Dealing with porosity, this quality or state of being permeable and/or capable of being penetrated, as a means to disrupt binaries, culture-nature, inclusive-exclusive, body-mind, information-matter... That is what Antye Guenther is up for.
Antye is a visual artist and artist researcher, born and raised in Eastern Germany. Drawing from her background in medicine, in photography, and in the military, her artistic practice treats themes like (non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, posthumanism and mind control, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and science fiction. She is an associate researcher at a.pass and holds the first Mingler Scholarship for Art and Science/ NL. At the Arita Porcelain Residency in Japan, Antye is currently developing ‘brain vases’, to investigate the problematic metaphor of the brain as a container or vessel. Her brain was scanned at the Neuroscience Department of Maastricht University where the MRI data 3D (re)constructed it within a scientific visualisation programme and was used as a source material to fabricate delicate and desirable porcelain vases. But what if these vases are dysfunctionally engineered and are porous? What if a vessel as iconic as a porcelain vase leaks? The material metaphor poses some questions: How to stay porous? How to get severely entangled with and influenced by other people, new environments, other cultures etc.? How to take part in each other practice? How to engage in each others’ thought processes?
For this residence in Brussels, and taking into account Antye’s geographical displacement in Japan, she proposes the following encounters: 1/ She will send every week an object in the form of an audio file to fill and potentially penetrate the gallery space and be discussed by the artists/researchers present in Brussels in her ‘absence’. The discussion will be recorded and sent back to her in Japan. 2/ One-on-one video conversations creating concentrated moments to discuss concerns in each others’ practices. 3/ a live video communication moment of presentation and sharing of Antye’s experiences so far at the Arita Porcelain Residency in Japan.
----------------------agenda----------------------
*all the events are public, except noted otherwise
FORMS OF LIFE OF FORMS Rob Ritzen
26.6 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF I - reading group
1.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF II - reading group
1.7 - 19-20:00h / FOLOF II - lecture by Mathijs van de Sande
3.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF III - reading
8.7 - 16-19:00h / FOLOF IV - reading
13.7 - 13-15:00h / FOLOF V ultimate and complete form of the installation - open and public from 16h00 to 20h00
[A series of reading sessions and installations that will add different perspectives and new layers to the notion of form; in-formation, political forms, network forms, value forms, organizational forms. read more]
WICKED TECHNOLOGIES/WILD FERMENTATION Sara Manente
25.6 - 12-14:00h / [by invitation]
5.7 - 19-20:00h / MUSH musical cocktail concert on the multilayered and mashed sound
13.7 - 18:00h / last poisoned supper of doom
[A discursive lab about Sara’s notion of fermentation and wickedness, on the meaning of wicked, queer, wild and technologies in relation to the participants personal researches. read more]
OTHER GEOMETRIES Femke Snelting
30.6 - 12-18:00h [by invitation]
30.6 - 20-22:00h / in collaboration with Sara Manente and the group : “other geometries non agonistic performative dinner” [by invitation]
[Workshop with a collection of femininist renderings, eccentric imagery and recombinatory vocabularies, with ideologically motivate work on tools, networks and infrastructures to re-imagine togetherness. read more]
CRITICAL BESTIARIES Sina Seifee
4.7 - 19-22:00
[Presentation of the “critical bestiaries,” a magazine in the making, a mini-scale quasi-organization to host/construct semi-sustainable structures for ‘storytelling’ and ‘questioning’ techniques of bestiaries. read more]
POLITICS OF ENGINEERING Sina Seifee,OSP,Pierre Rubio,Lilia Mestre
9.7 - 11-12:00h Parallel Parasite : Timeline Repository
9.7 - 12-13:00h OSP presentation
9.7 - 13-14:00h (lunch break)
9.7 - 14-15:00h RRadio Triton Data Retrieval Interface
9.7 - 15-16:00h Discussion between OSP & Sina Seifee
9.7 - 16:30-18:00h Collective discussion and Q&A
-from 18:00h on - open evening with the platforms available!
[A day of presentations and conversations about the question of digital technologies posed by a.pass and addressed by its constituent knowers (Lilia Mestre, Pierre Rubio, Sina Seifee, and OSP) in the process of making three models and adjustment to the work of documentation that has been recently done. read more]
SCORESCAPE Lilia Mestre
5.7 - 14-17:00
[A transversal scoring practice, reading group/presentation/interview/discussion about the project ScoreScapes by Lilia Mestre. read more]
TOWARDS AN ECO-EROGENOUS PARA-PHARMACEUTICS VILLAGE Isabel Burr Raty
6.7 / installation: Self facial abduction beauty treatment
6.7 - 11-13:00h / Male Farm : 1st encounter [by invitation]
6.7 - 19-20:00h / Beauty Kit Upgraded - Lecture Performance
[A collection of performances and installations that invite the public to queer fixed categories of production understandings and experience the benefits of embodying SF in real time. read more]
CONTINGENT WEIRDNESS Adrijana Gvozdenović and Sina Seifee
11.7 - 10-18:00h day 1
12.7 - 10-24:00h day 2
for registration email to sina.seifee@gmail.com
[Two-days workshop, training/hanging-out/sharing/practice for artists researchers, focusing on the specific genre of horror to understand each other’s artistic commitments in a constraint and therefore generative way. read more]
OTHERWISE EXHIBITING ARTISTIC ANXIETIES AND THE WORLD
Adrijana Gvozdenović / ongoing practice
for an appointment please contact adrijana.gvozdenovic@gmail.com
[One-to-one sessions for artists and researchers, a card-reading and interview practice concerning individuals that are concerned, fearful and hopeful, excited about their practice. read more]
CYANOTYPE PRINTING PROCESS Adrijana Gvozdenović
ongoing / installation and practice
[Made of processing traces and blueprints of U.V. sun rays. read more]
DEALING WITH POROSITY Antye Guenther
ongoing exchange of audio files with the participants
13.7 - 11-12:00h skype working session from Arite (Japan) [by invitation]
[A series of inquiries in the form of interview between Japan and Belgian, one-one-one video calls, and recordings on individual bases. read more]
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The residence is produced by a.pass Research Centre
and hosted by ZSenne ArtLab
From June 24th to July 14th 2019
9h00 - 23h00
Anneessens 2, 1000 Brussels
https://goo.gl/maps/nTVwbSAjK6yW76iY9
The Research Center at a.pass is a platform for advanced research practices in the arts. It invites six associated researchers per one year cycle to develop their artistic research practice in an environment of mutual criticality and institutional support. In agreement with the individual research trajectory of the associate researchers the apass Research Center supports and facilitates forms of publications, performative publishing, presentations, experimental research setups and collaborations. Rather than consolidating the existing discourse around the notion of artistic research, a.pass is committed to accumulating different understandings of artistic research through practicing its frameworks, archives and vocabularies. By bringing together differently practiced notions of artistic research, a.pass is reflecting on modes of study and knowledge practice within the artistic field. a.pass is interested in the actualisation of performing knowledge because it considers artistic research as a situated, contextual practice which is the consequence of ongoing negotiations between its stakeholders, contextual fields and discourses. a.pass interacts with academic, activist, or practice-based fields and methods of research, and supports the development of rigorous, inventive forms of artistic research on the intersections between those fields and in tension with academic artistic research as a developing discipline. The center itself is not a solid institutional body with its associate researchers as satellites, it is rather constructed as a support structure that brings different trajectories and fields of research to a multitude of temporary overlaps. It’s institutional and long term structures work towards a repository of methodologies, forms of archive and ‘making public’ of artistic research practice.
Writing into becoming water an instant conversation
16 July 2019
posted by: Nicolas Galeazzi
Imagining a two-day boat trip on the Dilje-Leuven Canal:
M.M.: A brief introduction into my practice: I see performance as a practice of inhabiting a specific ecosystem. Currently, I am focusing on the oceanic ecosystem, one that can only in part be inhabited by human beings.
Concerning the ocean, the question that interests me most is: What is my relation to the ocean, and how can this relation be described? What are the affects or elements that make it up? And how can those affects be performed and thus communicated? My focus lies on creating affective (an)archives. i.e. archives that communicate relational experiences and knowledges of the ocean.NG: What makes the ocean for you to the ideal ecosystem to be performatively inhabited?
M.M.: Well, I feel very attracted to it physically and mentally. And it also proposes a different way of thinking and being than land proposes. So I want to explore those. But it is not an "ideal" ecosystem because it is actually quite difficult to inhabit it physically. Very little is known of the ocean compared to ecosystems on land.
C.S.: For me, it is less the ocean than the water that triggers the idea of inhabiting it in a performative sense. Water is everywhere, in us, around us, we are made up of water - and the element is so common that we don't think about it much, as we live our lives. To give it a moment of special attention and to engage with it as a practice is like a process of becoming aware of something that we deal with every day, and that is so at the basis of our existence.
The ocean was extremely attractive to me when I was a child. I used to spend my entire summer holidays at the Mediterranean Sea, and I spent most of these months inside of the water. It was the experience of being submersed, totally enveloped by the salty moving body that intrigued me. The smell, the temperature, the consistency (compared with the bathtub water or the swimming pool water) of the Mediterranean became like a place where I would feel at home for me.
Today, much older, I don't have this urge anymore to submerse in the sea. I'm much more respectful of the gigantic body of water and enjoy more contemplating it by staying at its side, and not going in.N.G.: Probably, I could see the ocean in any water. Looking deep into the glass before I take a sip of delicious spring water - e.g. at Schwarzsee in the Alps - I see the sea, I see into the history of these molecules and can follow them through my body into my pee, into the ground into the flower, into the sunray into the rain into the river into the stream into the whole flow that cyclically generates life. Of course, on these waves, we perform our lives and are performed by them. In the case of water, the conditions it creates, the landscape it carves, I'm not sure if I inhabit and perform within or if it's not the other way, the water inhabits me and performs through me.
M.M.: I think different bodies of water work differently, affect the human body in a different way. So for me, the ocean as I recently encountered it Portugal, for example, the force that it has, is very different from my own experience of the sea in the Mediterranean in Greece.
C.S.: Can you tell more about the performative aspect that intrigues you with water or the ocean?
M.M.: Performance is for me the way we choose to enter into relation with the body of water that we encounter. So for example, if you say that you want to be engulfed by the sea, the salty and continuously moving water, I am interested to know more about this sensation that you have and how it could be performed now, for example, in the conditions in this room.
C.S.: The most intriguing part that comes to mind at once is the aspect of being carried. And of course, we have this much more on the earth. The earth is solid and carries us all the time - something that we also take for granted, and forget about it, as we sit on this chair.
In the water, especially the salty - thick - water, the buoyancy is a fantastic characteristic that gives me a sense of trust inside this ever-moving deep sea.M.M.: Yes, I recognize this feeling! What I would propose now on the trip is to explore how this sensation could be reconstructed through performance or how this sensation could influence what you are researching artistically.
C.S.: First association is STAGE DIVING!! But that is not very serious, of course!
M.M.: What is stage diving?
N.G.: The tricky thing might be, that the sensation is part of the ecosystem which should be performed. But probably that's exactly the chance. To perform WITHIN something not ON something (like a stage). If we take performance as a 'doing' not as a 'representing' it becomes very interesting, I think. Performance in an economic sense is an act of domination. To 'perform' witing a system, in respons-able relation to it, is something very different. The notion of being performed while performing is there very applicable.
C.S.: Stage diving is to let yourself be carried by the masses of listeners /audience standing in front of the stage when you dive onto their uplifted hands. It is a big test of trust!
M.M.: Aaaaahh yes, the rockstar thing. We could try it.
CS: Now, I have to think of VariousArtists - whose performance often has to do with experimenting with what he eats, drinks, how much he sleeps, or exercises. So a 40-day water fast could be a very embodied experience of what water does. And very cleansing, as well. Another important aspect of water, of course - the CLEANING!
In that sense, Trudo makes his body the ecosystem and the stage at the same time.M.M.: We can make a list of those aspects here, during this conversation? I was planning to do this also on the boat trip. Now we can imagine the ocean and that we are travelling on it. What sensation does it give us?
1. Being engulfed/ buoyancy
2. Sense of cleansing
3. ...C.S.: There is something that happens to the sinuses, also. And to the sense of smell that I find very interesting. In the ocean, of course, you smell the salt and the "sea" - like algae and dead fish and live fish and all the rest of it. But there is also something happening to the nose, in my case. It gets full of water and clogged, and at the same time, it cleans itself.
What aspect of sensation is that?!M.M.: How would you name it? If you had to use one word? Smell? Or salt-smell?
N.G.: For this, it would have been perfect to be on the boat. I'm sure we would find another answer than here!
C.S.: There is something that is inside and outside at the same time. It is as if the ocean gets INSIDE of my body through the nose. It is the one opening that lets the water in. So, it is not the smell, I think - it is more the permeability of my body to the body of water.
Of course, also the skin gets wrinkled and like a prune, that it keeps the water out. On the contrary, it may even lose a bit of my body water instead of letting the ocean in, because I always get very thirsty when I spend a long time in the water.M.M.: Permeability is a wonderful word for it! There is this concept of the Hypersea, that was put forth by two biologists, Mark and Dianna McMenamin. They understand all living organisms on land as "lakes" that communicate with each other by on the one hand keeping the water in and on the other being permeable and passing water from one organism to the other. It's as if all organisms on land form a deterritorialized sea that they carry in their bodies.
N.G.: The inside/outside is actually rather a human perspective. Nothing wrong with this, but from the water perspective we are simply a tunnel! A place of passage, and probably of transformation. Perhaps that's the most real performance we do. Being a catalyst for waters. WE ARE THE CANAL!!
C.S.: Now, I have to think of homoeopathic medicine, somehow. The transformation of the water inside our body tunnel.
A tangent.
N.G.: btw. What do you think is the boat a stage ? or rather an ecosystem within an ecosystem?C.S.: the boat is a very artificial object for me that allows us to traverse the body of water, to be on it without getting wet, to not engage with the water but only with the surface of the water, and there is an aspect of dominance in boats also. You are always (unless you are going under) on top of the water and you don't get wet. It is an object that divides you from the water. You feel it but indirectly only. The most stringent aspect of water - that it is WET - is lost. You don't get wet.
M.M.: You can get very wet on a boat! Have you ever been on a boat when there are strong wind and big waves? You get soaked.
For me, the boat is a machine that allows us to enter into relation with the vastness of the sea, that otherwise, we would not be able to approach. But yes, it also has an aspect of domination. Without boats, no "discoveries", no colonization, but also no communication, no fishing, no trade. It's a complex place to be, the boat. It also makes for a very specific surface on which to move and urges a particular behaviour regarding the human bodies that inhabit it.N.G.: We have this image of the sailors, that try to master the waters with their boat, fighting against the waves and storms, overcoming the overwhelming forces of nature. Like Ishmael fighting Moby-Dick the wale.
C.S.: I have an aunt who cannot swim. She would go on a boat, though. But she would not go directly into the water. Only where it is very shallow.
And Jonas who found himself inside the whale. How did he end up there again? That was an ecosystem inside of the water, and then he was inside the belly, and that was a bit like land again. Like a membrane that allowed him to be inside the water for a long time, but without touching the water. Was it so?M.M: So you would prefer a whale belly to a boat?
C.S.: that is difficult to answer. I don't have a clear image of a whale belly...
N.G.: Of course! Even in this nutshell, I dream of the big monsters.
M.M.: So we add 3. permeability, 4. whale-belly...
N.G.: Or let's say permea-belly.
C.S.: And now, the ice. What about ice. Is this ocean? But solid, you can walk on it. And it totally changes the experience of being in/on the water.
Or under it...?M.M.: Yes definitely, ice is also ocean. Just in a different form. With a whole different set of conditions. I talked to a glaciologist recently, and he said there is the category of sea ice and the ice shelf, that are both ice formations on the sea, which differ from the big glaciers that are usually land formations.
N.G.: For an ice bear it might be something different than for a penguin, or for the wind. For the ice bear it is (more and more ) a boat!
C.S.: With ice I find it confusing. Do I remember right that for a long time it was not known if the North Pole is solid or if the South Pole is solid - land or sea. Ice confuses things a bit, I find...
M.M.: Then lets end in this confusion? I think its quite appropriate.
NG: True!
Mathilde Maillard / I gave a hamac and it came back to me 01 August 2019
posted by: Mathilde Maillard
I like to think that objects decide the place where they want to be or with who they want to be.
That they could move until they find the good place or the good person to leave close by.
As an adoptee, I gave a yellow hamac that I get in Brazil last October. There were two main reasons for me to borrow this hamac to someone else : * I tried to find a place for it at home but (also because I don’t have any outside place) I never took the use of it. Was it because this place represents the laziness ? the place where I could rest and read ? (In relation to that, I share the link of this article called A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself » in the Guardian)
This laziness to me is connected to my research with club travail but also to the fantasy of the research which make me come to a.pass (a place where I could dream, read, think, share and… have time) . And because the block would happen outside I thought it would be nice to have it there in the garden. * the second reason is that I had this hamac in Brazil and that this travel there was really important to me and open a field of questions about the places I (feel) am privileged or not. So I thought in this international context of a.pass it would be a nice object to give in term of many subjects. I gave my adoptee with only one demand : that the object will come back to me at the end in one piece.
And then the hamac moved to Rui’s place.
But I don’t think he hang once the hamac at his place. He used the hamac in a presentation where he would film Tamar Lilia and Maurice as a group inside the garden, with Tamar trying to hang it somewhere. He told me that he wanted to hang the hamac because we wouldn't have any place to be confortable in the garden. But Rui explained me that the main thing for him was to think about this laziness. In the other movie that Rui did with Caterina in a.pass building, the first indications were about create empty space in an empty space, so in a way laziness related to the non-indications/ improvisations / non-rules that Rui.
Together with Cate and Rui, we talked about how laziness is connected to a bad behavior. And how from a country to another it doesn’t contain the same kind of guiltiness. To the clishé of the South American people who are very lazy rest a lot : clishé/ Disney character who is Brazilian is very slow and lazy (ze carioca)
Like we are « Lost in time » (expression in Brazilian)
And then the hamac became a vidéo
That Rui send to Caterina. The video of the improvisation in the garden.
(cf Pictures of Rui movie) Caterina said : « I was the only one looking at this movie ».
Actually Caterina received two videos:
* the one she was inside (in a.pass building)
* the one of the hamac with Tamar
Caterina explained us that hamac as an object didn’t catch her so much / it was a bit abandoned
More the editing process / how the edition build focus, narrative, story-telling
How much is this value of the edition by contrast with the laziness of the action
You don’t do so much but you get a lot because of the framing
I did a video for the presentation
I was a bit guilty of not taking attention at the hamac
I looked at the history of the hamac / images of the slavers using the hamac / symbol of power / it has a political symbol : who has the privileged to be carry in the hamac ///
There is hamac inside in our body ! the organes of the stomach are protected by thousand of little hamacs inside our body who car pour body / the transversal abdominal
To support the organs, the peritoneal folds that surround the viscera form not only a hammock, but a multitude of small hammocks, so that each organ is solidly attached to its neighbors and to the different walls. The transverse mesocolon envelops the subdiaphragmatic organs. This “hammock structure” supports the static of the viscera while allowing variations in volume, weight and displacement. This is how this “viscera” system adapts to significant variations in volume during pregnancy. This type of anatomical organization is possible thanks to the tissue continuity of the peritoneum.The peritoneum confers to the organs surrounding deformability qualities while maintaining its shape thanks to the collagen fibers it contains.The role of the mesos can be compared to that of a belt , which, while holding the organ, provides a range of measured movements around its reference position.
Our conversation about the symbolic of the hamac :
Hamac not just as a lazy place but also used by poor people in Brazil
J’ai acheté ce hamac 50 euros / 50 hamac / 15 dollars / 18 euros
70 % de la population de la campagne dort en hamac, 30 % en ville.
Quand il y a un hamac et un lit dans la maison, dans 9 cas sur 10, à la saison chaude c'est uniquement l'homme qui l'utilise pour y dormir la nuit ; le hamac procure un couchage plus frais qu'un matelas.
Les Européens découvrent le hamac au xve siècle grâce aux voyages de Christophe Colomb.
Quelques dessins expliquent la manière de se coucher dans un hamac ; Raymond Breton, un missionnaire français aux carabes, un dans un dictionnaire caraïbe-français rapporte : « Keyeyecoua tiem larangon callinago, tichati balanagle », ce qui signifie « Le sauvage se couche en rond et en travers, le Français étendu et en longueur ». Là est la principale raison pour laquelle le hamac fut modifié en occident avec l'ajout de barres en bois à chaque extrémité.Les Latinos américains n'utilisent jamais de barres en bois sur leur hamacs.
And the hamac came back to my place and I found a place for me.
Now I would like to invite Rui and Cate to my place and we continue this discussion about laziness, emptiness and what does it mean to make places for things. May be the next movie of Rui can happen in the hamac.
Mathilde > Rui > Caterina
Readings :
Jonathan Crary 24/7
The radical plan to save the planet by working less, Robert Pollin, Vice
Le droit à la paresse, Lafargue
Une apologie des oisifs, Robert Louis Stevenson
Maurice Meewisse Documentation Second Block - School of Love Curated by Adva Zakai
14 September 2019
posted by: Maurice Meewisse
"SOL is a collective platform that was initiated some years ago, inspired by the interest in both love and school as charged with potential to generate new politics and relations in the world. SOL is practiced through regular meetings, but follows no curriculum. Instead, it develops a spontaneous program through the presence and interest of its participants. SOL is basically an invitation to hang out. But to hang out deeply. To practice school as a place of free time – free to study things as they appear, separated from the dependency on the time and space of social order and production. And to practice love – Not the kind of love that is generated through affirmation of who we think we are, but love as an act of giving by allowing it to transform us." Curated by Adva Zakai, Sept/Dec 2018
The curatorial proposal seemed from the start interesting but problematic, so I decided to beforehand what my position should be and how I want to relate to the program and a.pass. From the start the claims made by the curator – it is not about love, but about political love, the willingness to let yourself be transformed by other, and that it was not a school, but there is an interest in school – formed the basis of my attitude of constructive opposition. In a not always subtle way I put the thesis of this block to test. The production of actual works was not the main goal of the block, they functioned more as conversation starters within the continuous political game.
test - the tower
I decided to start with a small provocation, in the middle of the space I build a tower where it was possible for one person to sit on top of. The tower formed a visualization of the attitude I approached SOL with. Halfway through the block, during some presentations I explained my motives and asked the people there if they thought that they excepted the tower. Everybody but one wanted to keep the tower – no unanimity - so the tower had to go.
test - the class picture
During the closing week of this block we traveled together to Performance Art Forum, in northern France. This school trip made me think about our group, what we are, what are status is and how we are related to each other. I decided to do an expiriment, with making a class picture - to see if that could clarify some those questions. I put up a camera on a stand and made every 10 seconds a picture, assuming that at one point everybody would have their eyes open. The actual picture didn't clarify much, but what remained was the act of the making the picture.
a.pass post-graduate program for winter-spring 2020 follows the habitual form of three collective gatherings: at the beginning: the ‘Opening Week’, in the middle: the ‘Half Way Days’ and at the end: the ‘End Week’. These are collective workdays where, at large, all the artists and researchers both present their work and feedback on everybody’s research. The three distinct gatherings propose different protocols of presentations and modes of feedback. All protocols are discussed during the block.
The block includes as well Zone Public, a curated seminar-like series of working sessions dedicated specifically to this block and happening mainly on Thursdays and Fridays. This ensemble of proposals is designed by Femke Snelting, Peggy Pierrot and Pierre Rubio.
January
6-14 : Opening Week Days
16-17 : Zone Public sessions #1
23-24 : Zone Public sessions #2
30-31 : Zone Public sessions #3February
6-7 : Zone Public sessions #4
13-14 : Zone Public sessions #5
17-21 : Halfway Days
27-28 : Zone Public sessions #6March
5-6 Zone Public sessions #7
12-13 Zone Public sessions #8
14-15 Zone Public sessions #9
22-23 Zone Public sessions #10
30-April 5 End Week at Perfomance Arts Forum (France)
The artists and researchers participating in this block with their projects are:Chloe Chignell
Signe Frederiksen
Quinsy Gario
Stefan Govaart
Adriano Wilfert Jensen
Mathilde Maillard
Muslin Brothers
Flavio Rodrigo Orzari Ferreira
Magda Ptasznik
Christina Stadlbauer
Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc
Kasia Tórz
Katrine Turner
Andrea Zavala Folache
The dedicated mentors, curators, and artistic coordinator are:Dedicated Mentoring
Kristien Van Den Brande
Kristien Van den Brande is a Brussels-based writer, editor, dramaturge and researcher. An ongoing interest in the (im)materiality, image and performativity of writing has characterized her work, which engages with a range of disciplines including literature, performance, expanded publishing, urbanism and sexuality. Inspired by ‘minor literatures’, she does ongoing research about 'Support de Fortune’, a notion that refers to forms of writing that take place in the margin of print or on throw-away paper. She is a living book and co-editor in Mette Edvardsen’s project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Together with Myriam Van Imschoot she set up oralsite.be, an online platform for expanded publishing. Lately, she is gaining interest in role-play as dramaturgic, artistic, therapeutic, sexual tool "to undo the creature in us”. That latter was Anne Carson speaking.Vladimir Miller
Vladimir Miller works as an artist, researcher, scenographer and dramaturge. His practice aims at re-negotiating habitual modes of spatial production by using fragility as a building principle. He uses collective construction- and building processes to investigate ideologies of labour and territory within ad-hoc groups and institutional environments. In his latest projects he works with the materiality of fluids to challenge ideas of stability embedded within the design of spaces of cultural production. Vladimir Miller has been a frequent collaborator with the choreographers Philipp Gehmacher and Meg Stuart. As scenographer, co-author, dramaturge and performer he took part or co-created a number of performances and video installations with the two artists. In 2018-19 he is dramaturge in residence at Decoratelier/Jozef Wouters. Vladimir Miller is co-curator of the postgraduate artistic research institute a.pass, Brussels and a PhD in Practice candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 2013 Miller was Fellow at Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin and in 2015 Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Vladimir Miller has been guest lecturer at the University of Hamburg and at KASK, Gent.Femke Snelting
Femke Snelting works as artist and designer, developing projects at the intersection of design, feminisms and free software. In various constellations she has been exploring how digital tools and practices might co-construct each other. She is member of Constant, a non-profit, artist-run association for art and media based in Brussels. With Jara Rocha she currently activates Possible Bodies, a collective research project that interrogates the concrete and at the same time fictional entities of "bodies" in the context of 3D tracking, modelling and scanning. She co-initiated the design/research team Open Source Publishing (OSP) and formed De Geuzen (a foundation for multi-visual research) with Renée Turner and Riek Sijbring. Apart from mentoring at a.pass, Femke teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute (experimental publishing, Rotterdam).
Zone Public Co-curatingPeggy Pierrot
Peggy Pierrot lives and works in Brussels. She works mainly with different associations and educational or research structures. Her most favourite tools are human sciences and free softwares. Since there are "profound links between gesture and speech, between expressible thought and the creative activity of the hand ", she is currently working at the Ecole of Recherche Graphique (ERG) both as a technical and logistical assistant and as a teacher in Media and Communication Theory. She is also involved in the master's program Récits et expérimentation - Narration spéculative. (Storytelling and experimentation - Speculative Fabulation) She gives lectures and workshops on Afro-Atlantic cultures and literatures, science fiction, media and technology and has an active practice in radio.Pierre Rubio
Pierre Rubio works as artist, independent researcher and dramaturge. At large and through different forms, his work questions modes of individuation to explore contemporary production of subjectivity in/through the arts. What is real for an artist? is his main research question. Pierre was a dancer and choreographer for a long time, holds a master's degree in the arts combining theatre & communication at the campus of Aix-Marseille University (France) and dance & choreography at the campus of Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers (France). Pierre is currently a core member, co-curator and mentor in a.pass - a platform for artistic research practices.Femke Snelting
(see above)
Artistic coordinationLilia Mestre
Lilia Mestre (Lisboa 1968) is a performing artist and researcher based in Brussels. She interested in art practice as a medial tool between several domains of semiotical existence. Mestre works with assemblages, scores and inter-subjective setups as an artist, curator, dramaturge and teacher. She’s currently co-curator and artistic coordinator of a.pass where she develops a research on scores - Scorescapes - as a possible radical pedagogical tool. In 2019 - 2021 she’s collaborating with Prof. Jill Halstead and Prof. Brandon LaBelle in Social Acoustic - a research project supported by the University of Bergen, Norway. And with Nikolaus Gansterer and Alex Arteaga in Contingent Agencies - a research project supported by PEEK -Vienna, AU.More information about Zone Public here
Zones of disobedience Elen Braga / Eve Kalyva / Steven Jouwersma
29 January 2020
posted by: Pierre Rubio
a.pass Close Encounters
Zones of disobedience
Elen Braga / Eve Kalyva / Steven Jouwersma
06/02/2020 - 15h00 at ISELP / 18h00 at a.pass
Close Encounters are light and irregular events to take time to meet, listen and evaluate an idea, a project, a research, or a specific point in an artistic -research- trajectory. The events are free-formed and singularly appropriated by their protagonists, but the format is always a dialog with one or more guests; all are invited to expand on their research or the problem posed through the lens of their expertise, experience or concern. The Close Encounters series holds a double intention of getting a closer look at things and of approaching somebody closely and tries to respond to three key questions in relation to artistic research and its current nature, function and conditions of possibility: What to study? What to research? What to practice?
For Zone Public, the current seminar of the postgraduate program in a.pass, the Close Encounters series invites guests that have relevant practices with regards to (infrastructures of) publishing and/or making-public and/or art and research publicness.
On Thursday 6th, for this special edition, a new monumental work Elen Ou Hubris by Elen Braga will be on display for the first time at ISELP from 15h00 to 17h00 three hourdiscussion with Elen Braga, Eve Kalyva and Steven Jouwersma unfold from 18h00 on at a.pass.
Thursday February 6, 15h00-17h00
Elen Ou Hubris
Elen Bragaa monumental tapestry on display for the first time@ ISELP, Boulevard de Waterloo 31, 1000 BruxellesThursday February 6, 18h00Close Encounters Series @ Zone PublicZones of disobedienceElen Braga / Eve Kalyva / Steven Jouwersmaa three hours public presentation and discussion hosted by Pierre Rubio@ a.pass, 60 Delaunoystraat, 1080 Brussels
When institutions have come to embody their own institutional critique, when participatory art becomes the new weapon of the established normalising order, and when attempts to further develop forms of artistic resistance are almost instantly liquefied in the commodifying reason of the market, a series of questions arise: Is it still possible to disobey? What could the forms of disobedient work be today? What new strategies should be invented in this context? How can one give the public the incentive to transgress its fears, inhibitions and limitations?Having these questions as a starting point, “Zones of Disobedience” opens up a space for discussion, reflection and debate. It presents examples from the past and the present and from across the spheres of the artistic and the political in order to problematise sets of relationships, conceptual frameworks and behaviours. These have to do with ideas about monuments, myths and experiences of the city as space but also as a site of memory, of belonging and of envisioning a future.The protagonists of “Zones of Disobedience” are equally interested in the relationships across the public, the artist, one’s environment and discourse, with particular attention on self-imaging in public spaces. Public self-imaging –and the different techniques of the self– are understood here in relation to a place and its image as this is perceived from different perspectives and for different audiences. Likewise, public self-imaging refers to the stories one tells about oneself and about the “other” (the artist, the audience, the immigrant, the policymaker, the army, the police), as well as to the mirroring of power, its ideologies and hierarchies. With this in mind, the performative conception of the self-image and its associated “hubris” enable to conceptualise strategies one can deploy in order to expose and destabilise the tenure of authority.If this can be achieved –for example in the works of Elen Braga and Steven Jouwersma through absurd, futile, uncomfortable or humorous encounters– how can such moments of critique be sustained or resurface in new forms? Which other public spaces can they generate? As such, “Zones of Disobedience” offers an evening of contestation, blurred limits, shifts and negotiations.Elen Braga
Elen Braga is a Brazilian artist based in Brussels. Her practice involves self-imposed tasks that border on the absurd. She investigates how one creates narratives of the self, and is particularly interested in how myths function in relation to an individual’s strength, ambition, futility and resilience.Elen's new project, Elen Ou Hubris, is an entirely hand-tufted 120 square metres carpet/tapestry reproducing the image of a 24-metre tall woman standing on a pedestal. Created in the form of a giant idealised self-portrait of the artist, this monumental object will be installed in front of the triumphal arch of King Leopold II in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels in 2020. By its size and location, Elen Ou Hubris addresses the notion of hubris, exposes an entangled multiplicity of self-images, seeks to open a debate on monumentality, pride and determined futures –and boldly claims the central place to question the very place of women in t-his-her-stor-y-ies.In 2014 Elen was selected in “Situações Brasília” Contemporary Art Award of DF –National Museum of the Republic, in Brazil. In 2016 she participated in AIR ANTWERPEN residency where she worked on the performance series named 'Os 12 trabalhos' (the twelve labors), inspired by the Greek myth of Odysseus. In 2017 she was selected for the residency at Central Saint Martins in London in partnership with SESC São Paulo. In 2018 she completed a postgraduate in advanced performance in a.pass, Brussels.Elen is currently in residence at ISELP – Institut supérieur pour l’étude du langage plastique (Brussels) and has exhibited and developed projects at SOKL (Antwerp, 2019) Tomie Ohtake Institute (São Paulo, 2015), 17th Bienal of Cerveira (Portugal, 2013), MUVIM – Valencian Museum of Enlightenment and Modernity (Valencia, 2015), Samples - MULF – Museo Universitario Leopoldo Flores ( Mexico, 2015), SESC Belenzinho (Sao Paulo, 2017) amongst others.Eve Kalyva
Eve Kalyva works on the relationships between images and texts in cultural production and visual culture. Her recent monograph, Image and Text in Conceptual Art: Critical Operations in Context (Palgrave/ Macmillan 2016), offers interdisciplinary perspectives on art from Europe, North and South America, and evaluates the different ways in which artworks advance their institutional and socio-political critique. Eve also works on the relation between art and politics, visual activism and social semiotics. She has developed the idea of “rhetoric of disobedience” to refer to the different ways in which art engages the associations one makes beyond what one sees, and is particularly interested in meaning making and communication as social and shared processes.Prior to moving to Amsterdam, Eve taught at universities in the UK and Argentina, and collaborated with international art institutions such as the Henry Moore Institute (Leeds) and the Museum of Modern Art Chiloé (Chile) as curator and artist in residence. Her creative practice explores the intersections of the real with the fantastic through texts, images, objects and bodily experiences; and her interdisciplinary research spans art, exhibition design, pedagogies of play, intermediality, discourse analysis and visual culture. Eve also develops museum workshops and cultural games. She is co-coordinator of the research group Global Trajectories of Thought and Memory: Art from the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, and will co-chair the panel ‘Radical women: the construction of Latin American women artists through exhibitions’ at the forthcoming 2020 annual conference of the College Art Association.Steven Jouwersma
Steven Jouwersma is a Dutch artist. His work develops always in relation to contexts and combines performance with film making and installations.Within specific contexts where socio-political tensions intersect, Steven Jouwersma invents performative situations that enable critical relations between him-as-artist and the expectations of the public. Steven (self) induces “crises” in the apparent status quo and engages in performing the inherent contradictions present within, often highly, unsettled spaces of cultural difference. Art in public space and in countries that are foreign to the artist always assert political dimensions. By defining antagonistic elements that provoke debates, Steven functions as a catalyst for these political dimensions to be exposed. Without being “classically” political, Steven’s works aim to challenge his own political and social position as well as his audience’s by acting “like an icebreaker in a congealed situation”. These singular forms of interaction in public spaces have unexpected outcomes. In some cases, in place of the predicted problems that might have occurred, the project is accepted and achieved. On the other hand, occasionally, the artist’s contribution is considered too controversial, straying too far away from conventions, and leads to its cancellation. Steven works with these missed expectations and miscommunications and sees them as potentials from which he operates, continually adjusting his own expectations.Steven studied at the Frank Mohr Institute and has a Master in Interactive Media and Environments. His most recent residencies and public events of the last three years are: dinA (Brussels), IBB (Curacao, Mondriaan Fonds), Buratinas (Nadine, Brussels) Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, Mondriaan Fonds), Het Resort E03S01 (Het Resort, group show –with Alban Karsten and Feiko Beckers, Groningen), Common sweat sauna #2 and #3 (Zsenne Artlab, Brussel) Spectacle of the Sweet… (Nodine, Brussel), Wandering Arts Biennale (Nadine, Brussel), Power and Ancestors (WM Gallery, Amsterdam), Casa Moderna (Willemstad), Grand Marcha (Carnaval parade, Willemstad)
WHAT YOUR RESEARCH DID TO ME research center associates Cycle II
17 February 2020
posted by: Steven Jouwersma
Performative publishing” opens other forms of doing that reflect the speculative attitudes of artistic research.
a.pass Research Center hosts associate researchers in one-year cycles. Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens were part of “Cycle II 2020/21”. Their research topics range from cultural discourse analysis in the dance field, institutional critique and immaterial art production, architectural encounter dispositifs, decolonial dance history and politics of listening. Throughout the year, they contributed with concerns, concepts and “ways of doing” inherent to their practice. They share their research trajectory and their entanglements in singular performative publications, as well as a collective digital publication on madewitholga.be. Excerpts of their collaborative work are published in The Annex, which functions as a printed index to the online collective publication, as well as to the multiform performative publications of the individual researchers.
THE ANNEX
Collective publication
What your research did to me is a collective online publication by a.pass “Research Center Cycle II,” with excerpts printed in The Annex. In response to a self-defined score, the associated researchers produced an online assemblage of conversations, film clips, letters, auto-theoretical writings and a storytelling/feedback game.
In a collaborative research environment like a.pass, a lot of creative and critical energy is devoted to developing modes of sharing. These modes range from spontaneous and informal, to highly orchestrated, artificial, constrained and designed. Whether called hosting, adopting, participating, initiating, presenting, borrowing, testing, or what have you – they all come with a different distribution of entanglements with each other, and eventually with a wider public.
The publication What your research did to me takes as a point of departure the fact that modes of sharing already happened, and that along the way, the initial projects lost their clear contours. They crossbred into each other and made (un)traceable lines and knots, without losing definition. When deliberating the making of a publication to impart something of the collective process, the first impulse was to find a common denominator in research subject (e.g. listening), if not in research method (e.g. note-taking). This strategy yielded a somewhat pernicious effect in that it tended to fade the singularities and intricacies of the approaches, how one inclined to another – but not necessarily to all. Sharing wasn’t the same as amalgamating into uniformity. Proximity engendered centrifuge as much as centripetal forces.
The solution adopted was to list each for oneself, moments where one’s research was inspired by someone else’s, and to readdress that moment of implicit borrowing or appropriating back into collective work, either with the proprietor of the question or with the entire group, and in any case, witnessed by all.
madewitholga.be or in print.
PDF OF ANNEX II here > a.pass_annex_2021
The Annex is 5 euro.
You get the Annex for free if you order one of the publications.
Price of Annex + the 3 printed publications = 30 euro
SITING DISCOURSE
Diary excerpt from Live Archive,by Breg Horemans
Siting Discourse is a dialogical diary that explores the protocols, politics and accessibility of a digital architecture-as-archive (www.taat-projects.com). Horemans shares the writing process through a recorded sequence of screen captures. Siting Discourse exposes the Live Archive´s digital spatiality and the implicit gestures, attitudes and coincidences of discourse making that it aims to facilitate. The title is a reference to the Live Archive as a (web-)site for discursive documentation and it addresses the academic citing mechanism as a form of “structural misquoting.” Siting Discourse is a collaboration between Siebren Nachtergaele (Social Sciences HOGENT, Theatre Studies UGENT, BE) and Andrew Filmer (Theatre Studies, Aberystwyth University, WA). Their first encounter was shaped by means of a drift.
PDF FREE DOWNLOAD > archive 10-6-2021_final
Breg Horemans is co-founder of TAAT, a liquid collective of artists working on the verge of performance, research and installation art. Since 2011, he renegotiates his relation to the architecture discipline through transdisciplinary collaborations. The desire of his research lies in shaping the spatial conditions for ‘sites of encounter’ that invite human and non-human entities to co-constitute each other. The projects initiated by TAAT generate spaces for co-activity and instigate fluid prototyping processes as ‘becoming spaces’. In the last two years, Breg is co-developing an online environment that enhance processes of open source writing, archiving and publishing.
I’M NOT SAD, THE WORLD IS SAD
Artistic research novel,by Pia Louwerens
I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad is an autotheoretical, semi-fictional account of a performance artist who lands a part-time job as an Embedded Artistic Researcher in an art institution. Invested in queer theory and institutional critique, she sets out to perform the artist “differently” through a process of negation and passivity, inadvertently causing her relationship with the institution’s curator to grow increasingly speculative and paranoid. Louwerens’ labor as tour guide, security guard, artist, hostess and researcher at different institutions begins to overlap and blend under the name of “performance.” I’m Not Sad, The World Is Sad is a fragmented story of paranoid and reparative reading, script and utterance, exposure and vulnerability.
Pia Louwerens is a performance artist and researcher from the Netherlands, living in Brussels. Her research revolves around the becoming of the artistic subject, the I who writes, speaks and makes, in relation to the (institutional) context. From 2019 - 2020 Louwerens was working as embedded artistic researcher at a big research project, for which she was embedded in an art institution. Through this research she attempted to perform or practice the artist, and thereby the institution, differently. Her work usually takes the shape of a performance in which she speaks, switching between registers of the actual, the possible, the professional and the anxious artist.
price 15 euro
ORDER HERE + preview PDF (coming soon)
POP-FI POSTER
A game,by Lili M. Rampre
Pop-Fi poster is a “choose your own adventure” game developed by Lili M. Rampre in collaboration with Júlia Rúbies Subirós. The game traces pre-public discourse, a semi-private collection of thoughts that, once shared and circulated, can shift a wider agenda on what matters to artists the most. The game aims to popularize common fictions and pop the bubble of others. Collectivizing half-digested thoughts potentially means bridging between personal and structural to effectuate change. Pop-Fi poster is part of Pop-Fi: a multifaceted project that entails a performative workshop ventriloquizing popular movie icons, video installations and script-readings. Pop-Fi foregrounds concerns of an artistic community through a variety of formats that act as a discourse prism. Pop-Fi poster is both a visual aid for the workshop and an autonomous object. Pop-Fi’s next step is developing strategies to funnel from anecdotal to factual and think about data and its visualization techniques informed by direct experience, commitment to action and intersectionality.
Lili M. Rampre is researching strategies to highlight “off stage”; processes, practices and actors behind, off, under or above the stage. Her focus lies on power relationships and the dynamics of disparities in cultural capital (audience-performer, fan-star, producer-artist). Her work has often a role-reversal in its core proposal, ventriloquism of a kind, or unreliable narration. Most recently Lili is looking into fandom and fandom civic practices authorising fiction to affect political action as an artistic methodology, to re-articulate essential parts of artistic production and circulation as fictional or factual aspects.
Price 3 EuroORDER HERE (coming)
WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE
BETWEEN ART AND POLITICS
Interviews,by Davide Tidoni
Where Do You Draw the Line Between Art and Politics consists of a series of interviews with individuals who have been active in various capacities at the intersection of art and politics. Between historical documentation, political memory, dialogic reflection, and motivational support, the publication examines the experiences, commitments and feelings that operate and inform aesthetic priorities in social spaces outside of art institutions; it’s a repository designed to inspire and encourage the politicization of aesthetics, as opposed to the aestheticization of politics.
Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher working with sound and listening. With a particular focus on direct experience, observation, and action, he creates works of different formats that include live performance, intervention, walk, video, audio recording, and text scores. He is interested in the use of sound and music in counter-culture and political struggles and has published a sound based field research on the northern italian ultras group Brescia 1911 (The Sound of Normalisation, 2018). Davide’s work can be accessed at: davidetidoni.name
price: 15 Euro
ORDER HERE + preview PDF (soon)
During this workshop Pia Louwerens will test scattered yet corroborating ideas and exercises linked to her research, grouped into two sessions. The first part of the workshop will revolve around the notion of being "embedded" and ways of becoming embedded on the one hand, and on the other hand the workshop as a superstructure, an exoskeleton, which adapts itself to its participants. Would it be possible to rewrite the workshop during the event itself, and what kind of structure could serve this soft workshop? For the second part of the workshop Louwerens will introduce new elements; attempts to evoke events which occured during her research trajectory in collaboration with several institutions in the Netherlands. We will become a loosely organized speaking-reading-writing-machine to collectively document these instances and provide them with an embedded subtext.
To participate in this workshop, please send an email to pia.louwerens1@gmail.com
Wed, July 15th at 14h
SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE CLOSED FOR THIS WORKSHOP
Research Futures Conference Report 15 October 2020
posted by: Sina SeifeePlease 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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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:
2 problems:
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:
Over-bureaucracy and looming of legal threats (seeking legal representation for conflict in the absence of a society of trust)
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
! Time-factor: what is the life span of an artist-run organisation, a research institute, a board.
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
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
Two distinct positions were articulated in the session:
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.
Comments
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A Good Workshop Conversation with Krõõt Juurak
07 December 2020
posted by: Vladimir Miller
- case of: Vladimir Miller
Not in the Mood Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Sina Seifee
05 April 2021
posted by: Sina Seifee
a.pass Block 2021 II curated by Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, Sina Seifee -
participants: Inga Nielsen, Anantha Krishnan, Jimena Perez Salerno, Carolina Mendonça Ferreira, Gary Farrelly, Aleksandra Borys, Amy Pickles, Chloe Janssens, Ana Paula Camargo, and Vera Sofia Mota.
Having completed a cycle of a.pass Research Center in 2019, the six of us proposed to co-curate the block of 2021/II as a group. We aim to collectively curate an a.pass block where we redistribute and redefine the roles of curator, mentor, guest and workshop facilitator. This implies putting our knowledges, our differences and kinships into (re)productive promiscuous interactions. Each of us thinks of a.pass as an ecology of sensitivities, sentiments, rhythms and styles of knowing, but also as apparatuses, technologies and infrastructures. We do a block curation that pays specific attention to the affective and emotional dimensions of research and knowledge production, which we call here “mood”. Not only do humans have their moods and mood swings, but more-than-human, eco-synth-tech systems, and also climates and markets have it, too. By thinking and proposing practices with and about mood, we are navigating with and within affective interactions, imperfections, subjectivities and sensations of making oneself orient in the research environment and the world.
Block Scenario
The block unfolds from the 3rd of May to the 31st of July 2021.
The fourth floor of a.pass will host two installations, Unrest and The Depository Cat, inhabiting the common space, before the block starts.
Unrest, an artwork by Sofia Caesar, is a kinetic space that can move and stretch with our interactions, triggered by the workshops and reading sessions throughout the block. The Depository Cat, by Isabel Burr Raty, is a tentacular inflatable that proposes an ongoing practice based on research-treatments sharing, oriented to harvest living testimonies of the block’s processes and moods.
During the Opening Week, Sara Manente leads the first collective practice called the Washing Machine. It is a fast-paced associative game and a way to use the filter of mood to look into our research.
In the first part of the block, Antye Guenther facilitates a hybrid workshop practice, titled Oh So Serious, around moodiness for de-professionalization.
Throughout the block, Sina Seifee takes the role of PR by interviewing the participants and publishing regularly online.
Multiple reading sessions will be conducted on Thursdays during the block.
In the first part of the block, we will read selected essays associated with or drawn from Affect Theory, namely Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, and Silvia Federici, under the working title Nail Art Affects Reading Sessions, facilitated by Sara Manente and Adrijana Gvozdenović.
In the second part of the block, Thursdays are reserved for The Labour of Laziness reading sessions, proposed by Rob Ritzen.
OPENING WEEK
During the Opening Week, Sara Manente leads the first collective practice called the Washing Machine. It is a fast-paced associative game and a way to use the filter of mood to look into our research. Every participant is asked to prepare in advance 10 heterogeneous items from their practice under the filter of “obsessions”: bring something that you cannot stop thinking about, or that keeps coming back to you. It can be an unreasonable idea or feeling, a fragment of your own or somebody else’s work. Items can be of any format: a quote, a research question, a scrapbook, a dance move, a thought, a video extract, an object, a dream, or a short practice.
ONGOING PRACTICES
THE DEPOSITORY CAT - Isabel Burr Raty
activated by a workshop at the beginning of the block on Wednesday 12th of MayThe Depository Cat is an ongoing practice throughout the block, which proposes the installation of an interactive space that invites participants to share their research in the form of self treatment/s or treatment/s for others. The idea is to open the possibility for the treatment’s giver/s and/or receiver/s to remain in a constant state of alteration, envisioning flux as one of the foundational resources in the processes of artistic research.
The “treatment” implies the sharing or design of “healing” tools that give the opportunity to translate personal artistic concepts into physical or imaginary forms. These are put into motion by being with the - self - or with the - other/Cat, to trigger inner and outer mutations that can particularize, de-particularize or meta-morph affects underlying in the creative process of research.
The Cat takes the form of a “first aid cavity” that creates a visual space composed of i.e: non-standard animisms technologies, syncretic beliefs and statements, that can be freely inhabited. This cavity is at the same time a tentacular organism, as its limits can be stretched throughout the block, populating the common a.pass room. Participants are invited to deposit the or various “remainants” of the treatment/s offered in order to imprint the memory of the “healing” that took place. The remainants can be ornamental, devotional, cathartic - human and more than human objects and/or non-objects - that can infect, disinfect, contaminate, or not the common a.pass space. The depository process is archived with photographs and shared in the form of an album at the end of the Block.
PR - Sina Seifee
ongoing interviews, public relationSina will make interviews with the participants throughout the whole block one by one on a weekly basis. The interviews are immediately edited into a short videographic piece with a collage style and animated elements from the imagination, the project, or the environment where the talk takes place. The pieces are published every week on multiple social platforms. The main host for the talks will be a subdomain of the a.pass website, which will be designed as a “collector” of the interviews for future access. The interviews in the format of video will be posted and prompted on both a.pass and non-a.pass platforms, where a wider audience has immediate exposure to it as it gets produced during the block.
The interviews are informal and playful, with a heuristic approach to getting to know the participants' work and their personalities. The interview will be a substitute for mentoring (around), questioning (at), guessing (what), inventing (off), entangling (with) and imagining (on) what they are doing, what they are up to, and which mood they are in. The aim is less about understanding, and more about engaging and guessing fabulously what their matters of care are, with a perspectival (i.e. a reaction that is particular to me) and speculative (the “what if”) force that I embody in my own practice. The talks might take a maximum of two hours of recording and the final edited piece will not be more than 30 minutes long. The publication of the content will be based on the agreement with the participants, how and to which extent each likes to be exposed on social media. The interviews might take place in a.pass or elsewhere.
WORKSHOPS / READING SESSIONS
NAIL ART AFFECTS READING SESSIONS - Sara Manente and Adrijana Gvozdenović
Thursdays, the first half of the block, before the HWD
13th, 20th, 27th MayWe propose a formalized but relaxed situation, a hybrid form between mentoring and a reading group. We will do each other's nails while reading essays on affect theory.
“In ancient Egypt and Rome, military commanders also painted their nails to match their lips before they went off to battle.” Similarly, we will take care of each other, talk about what makes us happy and why do we feel like we feel (Sara Ahmed) to prepare for the “age of anxiety” (Lauren Berlant), to learn how we can repair (Eve Sedgwick) and to “re-enchant the world” (Silvia Federici).
Doing manicure is a self-care or a professional service that can be considered a beautification process: removing the dead cuticles, massaging and moisturizing the skin, filing, polishing and decorating the nails. It is an intimate, private process and a ritual of preparation that serves the appearance in public. Could this be also a definition of what mentoring is? Can this situation create a space where different reading and discussing of the text can happen?
OH SO SERIOUS - Antye Guenther
two days practice, 31st May and 1st JuneAntye is proposing a hybrid workshop practice around seriousness - approached as a state of non-moodiness - as questionable traits of professionalism in the arts. The aim is to propose and test, in conjunction with the participants, various strategies to insert moodiness, non-seriousness and silliness (back) into artistic (research) practices as a way to de-professionalize. Where are our desires to be serious/ to be taken seriously in professional artistic contexts coming from? In what ways is this an attempt to champion objectivity and rational thinking in strong opposition to affects, moods and feelings, referring hereby as well to suspicious, idealized concepts of scientific practices in the 19th century? And what kind of strategies could help us to evoke processes of the-seriousness-ization for de-professionalization?
This two-day practice will consist of a (performative) input lecture to shed light on the complex intertwinement of academisation and professionalization in the Arts, which seem to have been fundamentally boosted by neoliberal demands of constant self-advertising and promoting. This lecture will try to trace back specific tropes of professionalism to the 19th century ideal of the scientist as an ‘objective’ data recording device. After this lecture a short reading session will be proposed, to start and stir a conversation around (problematic) seriousness and professional attitudes. This will be followed by the invitation to the participants to share and to reflect on their own seriousness in their practices, what seriousness might mean for them as artists/practitioners in the arts. At the end of the first day, the participants will be asked to think of strategies to oppose rational-objective thinking and to practice hyper-seriousness or non-seriousness as a way to ‘de-professionalize’, which we want to share and test out together the next day.
In preparation, Antye will collaborate with Sara and Isabel to invent and test specific ‘body practice’ to be added to the toolbox of de-professionalization on the 2nd day.
THE LABOUR OF LAZINESS - Rob & Steyn Bergs
reading sessions, Thursdays, the second half of the block, after the HWD and one moment in PAF
24th June, 8th and 15th JulyThe Labour of Laziness is dedicated to exploring the ambiguous, complex, and contradictory valences of laziness, and to examine its potentially subversive or invigorating political effects.
In neoliberalism, tirelessly working on and investing in the self becomes an exigency. Because of their relative economic precarity, but also because of the nature of their work, artists and art workers often find themselves at the forefront (or rather, at one forefront) of exploitation and, perhaps especially, self-exploitation. We are less interested in laziness as a mode of resistance to this neoliberal regime than we are in laziness as a lateral form of political agency. In other words, we are not necessarily after laziness as a straightforward opposition to work—as passivity, as a simple refusal of work, as ‘doing nothing.’
Instead, in discussing laziness, we want to raise questions about work and productivity in the arts. We will do so through collective reading sessions, taking place in an installation by Sofia Caesar.
Furthermore, for the duration of the block, participants will be invited to keep a ‘lazy journal’ as a means of reflecting on their own relation to work and (self-)discipline, as well as on their understanding of productivity and how it informs their practice. These journals will be used as a common ground for a final group discussion/workshop. Importantly, the journals need not take the written form; other formats—video, drawing, or other media—can of course also be explored.
PARTICIPANTS
Inga Nielsen, Anantha Krishnan, Jimena Perez Salerno, Carolina Mendonça Ferreira, Gary Farrelly, Aleksandra Borys, Amy Pickles, Chloe Janssens, Ana Paula Camargo, and Vera Sofia Mota.
CURATORS
Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenther, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen, and Sina Seifee
Isabel Burr Raty is an artist, filmmaker, teacher and sexual Kung Fu coach exploring the interstices between the biotic and the virtual. She is currently researching on the human body as a territory for sustainable agri-culture and intertwining performance, installation and film to queer labor understandings, offer SF in real-time and play with geo-synthetic magic.
www.isabel-burr-raty.comAdrijana Gvozdenović is an artist interested in artists’ motivation and ways of resisting (self)institutionalized structures. In the last three years, she has been developing methods of collecting and annotating symptomatic artistic practices that recognize their anxiety as a prerequisite state for criticality, which led to developing formats of publicness that push the borders between research, mediation, and production. These will be tested as needed during the block.
www.gadi.meAntye Guenther is a visual artist, born and raised in East Germany. Drawing from her backgrounds in medicine, photography, and in the military, her art practices orbit around themes like ((non)biological intelligence and supercomputing, computer-brain-analogies and mind control, think tank ideologies and self-optimization, neuroimagery and fictionality of science, body perception in techno-capitalist societies and science fiction. Her work comes then in hybrid forms: performances, performative ceramic objects, fictionalized video tutorials, photo-text works, speculative scripts, artist publications, and narrative installations in various collaborations.
www.aguenth.deChoreographer, dancer and researcher based in Brussels, Sara Manente, is interested in the dynamic relation between performer, work and spectator. Her projects are developed throughout hybrid research and become public in different formats. Currently, she works with aesthetics and ethics at the intersection between live arts and live cultures: namely, fermentation technology, noise, chimerization and (auto)immunity.
www.saramanente.weebly.comRob Ritzen is co-initiator of THAT MIGHT BE RIGHT, a founding member of LEVEL FIVE and coordinator of PERMANENT. My curatorial practice is focused on self-organized and collaborative formats in close association with cultural practitioners. In my research, I am concerned with social and political constellations that have a hold on everyday life. Cultural practices are a way to dislodge the hold the present has on us.
www.robritzen.infoSina Seifee is an artist based in Brussels, Tehran and Cologne. Using storytelling, video, and performance, he explores and teases with the heritage of zoology in West Asia. His work picks up on how epistemologies, jokes and knowledges get shaped in the old and new intersections of techno-media and globalism.
www.sinaseifee.com/
Dragon Love (?) a.pass End Presentations
19 May 2021
posted by: Lilia Mestre
June 11th 16-18h and June 12th 19-22h at De MarktenDragon 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 FolacheAndrea 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.
EXCITE WIN-miért érdemes itt játszani? 12 September 2021
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On Coloniality Chloë Janssens, Amy Pickles and Túlio Rosa
18 October 2021
posted by: Sina Seifee
Date: 10-13th of November 2021Location: KBK Brussels, Boulevard d'Ypres 20, Sainte Catherine, Brussels‘On Coloniality’ is a proposition by a.pass participants Chloë Janssens, Amy Pickles and Túlio Rosa of a temporary context for collective study. Through different artistic and theoretical speculations we will study coloniality and its manifold dimensions.Our understanding of coloniality departs from ideas developed first by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, and later expanded by many others, such as the semiotician Walter Mignolo and feminist philosopher Maria Lugones. Coloniality is an idea that points to the modes of organisation of power in so-called colonized territories, and how this extends out into supposedly postcolonial states. It differentiates colonialism, as a historical process, from its legacies. We have been thinking about ways to describe how the colonial rationale is at the very basis of our modes of social and political organisation, how those supposed histories have collapsed into, resonate with, and form our present.There is a shared desire between the three of us to learn how to articulate coloniality through artistic practices. Our collaboration has grown out of our individual motivations to discuss and re-narrate the colonial practices of the countries where we were born - Belgium, Brazil, UK - and challenge the dominant narratives that compose these histories.We are drawing connections between different times and locations by following closely methods of appropriation and extraction of land, resources, labour and data. Through different artistic practices we want to draw parallels, observe symmetries and find correlations across colonialism as it exists across all aspects of our lives; institutionally, economically, in corporations, governance, everyday structures of living and our bodies.‘On Coloniality’ will be hosted in KBK, an alternative space near Saint Cathrine, in Brussels. It is a porous programme open to the public. An exhibition will host the programme that consists of reading and listening sessions, screenings, a performance, workshops, public conversations and discussions.The full programme can be downloaded here: https://we.tl/t-3HCh0e58FjPublic ProgrammeDay 1: Wednesday November 10th, Positioning ourselves.11-13h: Visit to the Institute of Colonial Culture15h: Presentation of the programme16h: Presentation of the publication: Who’s still doing minimal design? A conversation between Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Chloe Janssens17h-18:30h: Helena Vieira [Listening Session]18:30h: Open conversationDay 2: Thursday November 11th, Accountability, Extraction and Ownership11-13h: Elodie Mugrefya [workshop]15h: Presentation Vermeir & Heiremans15:45: Presentation Line Algoed16:30: Open conversation with Vermeir & Heiremans and Line Algoed19h-21h: Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano [workshop]Day 3: Friday November 12th, Counter Narratives and Remembering Otherwise11h-13h: Visit Art and History Museum and reading of 'Curar o Mundo', by Glicéria Tupinambá14h: Presentation Sami Hammana14:45h: Presentation Satch Hoyt15:30h: Open conversation with Sami Hammana and Satch Hoyt20 - 22:30h: Arquivo Atlântico Film screenings at Pianofabriek: Rue du Fort 35, 1060 Saint Gilles, BrusselsDay 4: Saturday November 13th, Alternative Relatings to (and through) identity, borders and knowledge redistribution11h-14h: WORKNOT! X Sarmad [workshop]15h: Presentation Daniela Ortiz15:45h: Presentation Saddie Choua16:30h: Open conversation with Daniela Ortiz and Saddie Choua20h: Satch Hoyt [Sound Performance]The programme is open to anyone who wants to learn collectively about coloniality and artistic practices, who wants to engage in a conversation around this theme. Registration is not necessary. The website of a.pass will have the latest updates on time and locations.KBK has a wide entrance directly from the main street. There are no steps to enter the building. There is one toilet at the back of the space, on the same level. The space is illuminated with strip lighting on the ceiling, and a number of screen based artworks will be in the space. Hot drinks will be available for free, and there is access to drinking water. We will host a self made seating structure on which you are welcome to sit or lie down on.If you have questions on accessibility and/or the programme, you can reach us on the following email addresses: Chloë: chloejanssens@protonmail.com, Amy: amymaypickles@gmail.com, Túlio: rosa.tulio@hotmail.com
CORRESPONDANCES MANIFESTO // LUCIA PALLADINO 24 November 2021
posted by: Lucia PalladinoCORRESPONDANCES MANIFESTO
the real word for world is forest.
the real word for forest is time.
the real word for time is kairos
the real word for kairos is attention
the real word for attention is practice
the real word for practice is repetition
the real word for repetition is difference
the real word for difference is operation
the real word for operation is "x"
the real word for "x" is neverending
the real word for neverending is nonconsumable
the real word for nonconsumable is anticapitalism
the real word for anticapitalism is faith
the real word for faith is staying
the real word for staying is important
the real word for important is choice
the real word for choice is beauty
the real word for beauty is responsability
the real word for responsability is word
the real word for word is world
the real word for world is forest
entering the forest is the contestation of every other wor(l)d. this is reality.
to be able to tell you that it is not like that, that yes, it is similar but different.
entering the forest is practicing corresponding in a very similar manner
but slightly different
to what we know.
a practice is something I do and that I can repeat
and I keep repeating it even if it doesn't work all the time.
as repetition without difference it's almost impossible
every time I repeat it I don't know what to expect exactly.
a practice it is an operation
like + or x = the same operation leads to infinite results.
a practice is something you cannot consume
it's an ontological anticapitalistic shift in which to have faith
it's something you keep staying with because it is important
and it is important because I decided so
or because it's important for me
and we must be attentive.
make this revolution.
dear you,
I wanted to tell you that it's me, that if you don't manage at school you are not wrong, the school wasn't ready yet, it's me that has to find another way. and that seeing beauty it's a responsibility I choose to take.
as I choose loving you even if it doesn't work or you are far away.
loving is like praying or going harvesting wild herbs in the woods: it means going back to repetition.
it is a practice, an anticapitalist ontological shift in which to have faith.
a practice cannot be consumed.
as are my words for you.
you see?
can we go harvesting camomile once together? or any other plant if you prefer; just because of the doing of it.
that is like writing to you.
L.
"the real word for world is forest" is the title of a book from Ursula Leguin
Friday 21st of January 2022, a.pass received news from the Ministry of Education that their subsidy will come to an end by the end of 2023 the latest. From one day to the other a.pass is left with two years to find other means of survival or close the institution.
Three days later, January 24th, the Ministry of Education states in the newspaper that this decision is based on negative advice from the evaluation committee. According to the Ministry the a.pass-program wouldn’t add any extra value to the field.
This news is misleading, short and reductive.
For the last two years and half, a.pass fulfilled all requirements of evaluation set by the Ministry. We organized a benchmark evaluation with 4 other international art academies of similar standing; we went through a thorough internal evaluation; we submitted our structure to an external evaluation led by the government; and we presented a meticulous 5-year plan. These are costly, time-consuming and laborious procedures on top of the daily activities of a small organisation. The results of all these evaluations were GOOD to VERY GOOD. The commission gave concrete suggestions to grow or improve, all of which directed towards perpetuating the work of a.pass along the visionary principles of the institution. It is not correct to portray the institution in these terms.
With regards to discrediting a.pass’ unique value, we must stress the uncontested importance of a.pass in the field of art and education, and specifically in its contribution to the performing arts. A vast number of a.pass alumni and educators take prominent positions in academia and the professional art field, in Belgium and abroad. a.pass is widely acknowledged as a breeding space where artists and researchers of all kinds come together to raise critical questions and experiment with imaginative resolutions. It is beyond dispute that the merits of a.pass are invaluable rather than ‘of no added value’.
As an educational institute that is strongly embedded in the ways of working of a self-organized art scene, prosperous in Belgium since the 90s, we are concerned for the pervasive restructuring of the art field, following sequences of budget cuts and enticements towards merging into bigger institutions.
We are in a fragile situation and exhausted by demands that precarise art practice and art education.
This is for now. We are working on a response to this decision. We are consulting our various partners. And we will update this post with further action.
"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)
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“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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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“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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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
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"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,
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"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
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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
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"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
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"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)
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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 BrabandtPetra Van Brabandt, Hoofd onderzoek en maatschappelijke dienstverlening, Sint Lucas Antwerpen, KdG
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Autotheory Gathering at ZSenne ArtLab: Public Program In the context of Block II 2022: Scoring Intimacy of Discursive Others
30 May 2022
posted by: Lilia Mestre
For two summer weeks (June 27 – July 10) a.pass is moving to ZSenne ArtLab in downtown Brussels, where it organizes a gathering around autotheory that brings together several approaches to the term and its relation to artistic research practices. The program includes several working sessions, a reading group, a programme of performances, and is curated by Lilia Mestre and Goda Palekaitė. To set a theoretical framework, a two-day workshop will be offered by Maria Gil Ulldemolins who will facilitate a selected library and methodological tools to be further explored during the two weeks. Associated researchers of a.pass Research Center – Gosie Vervloessem, Simon Asencio, Rareş Crăiuţ and Vijai Maia Patchineelam – will present their current processes. Finally, a.pass alumni who engage with autotheory in their practice will present their recent work in a series of performances and conversations open to the public: Chloe Chignell, Aubrey Birch, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda with Charlie Usher, Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen, Vladimir Miller, Gary Farelly and Adrijana Gvozdenović.
SCHEDULE
28 and 29 June: Workshop Maria Gil Ulldemolins [10:00-17:00]
30 June: and 1 July: How to say my name Rareş Crăiuţ [June 30 at 11:00 & July 1 at 19:00 - duration 1h]
2 July: Performance Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen [17:00-19:00]
6 July: Online talk Alex Arteaga and Emma Cocker [cancelled]
6 July: Working session Gosie Vervloessem and Simon Asencio [14:00-18:00]
7 July: Working session Kin(s)Score a.pass program https://apass.be/kinship-score/ [14:00-19:00]
8 July: Performances and book presentation Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Charlie Usher and Vijai Maia Pachineelam [19:00-21:30]
9 July: Performances Chloe Chignell, Aubrey Birch, Eleanor Ivory Weber [18:00-21:00]
DETAILED PROGRAM
28 and 29 June [10:00-17:00]
Maria Gil Ulldemolins: The Autotheory Library
For this two day workshop, MariaI puts together a library of samples of autotheoretical (or autotheory-adjacent) texts. The group will read them and discuss them collectively, without rush, meandering wherever it is of interest for the participants’ and their practices. The aim is triple: to understand the very basics of what autotheory is understood to be up to now; to tentatively look at other hybrid works that might compliment it; and, last but not least, to make time for each participant to reflect on if and how autotheory might inform or challenge their own work. Participants will be able to permanently “borrow” from the library excerpts of the works, so they can take home a collected reader for their reference. The whole experience intends to highlight how autotheoretical narrators weave an intellectual and intimate network of relations; and consequently make time to read, think, and share as a collective, too.
*
30 June and 1 July [June 30 at 11:00 & July 1 at 19:00 - duration 1h]
Rareș Crăiuț and others: How to say my name?
For this gathering, Rareș will talk about the combination of art, research, narrative and food. First through his artistic research practice but also through 'CofetARia', a project hosted at a.pass, where he is also Associate Researcher. In his practice, Rareș works with cakes, and pastries as non-human collaborators in artistic contexts. He will address the topics of science and narrative, as well as the accessibility to research.
Cakes are generally more performative than other types of food and make it easier for humans to understand and feel the agency of food. Working with alimentary matter and live performance, CofetARia is an eating performance, at the confluence of durational practices like performance and baking.
*
2 July [17:00-19:00]
Flávio Rodrigo and Philippine Hoegen: On Versions/ NÓS
Flávio and Philippine will present a performance and conversation created collaboratively for this occasion. They take this encounter as an opportunity to relate their practices to each other('s body) in the importance they give to recognising that they exist as different selves. This performance takes the shape of a working session in which the performers and researchers borrow and lend each other’s dispositives of autotheory, putting them at each other’s disposal in a negotiated time and space.
David is a person(a) and practice of versioning, who first came into being as a version of Philippine, an exploration of who Philippine could be as a man with a beard, how they could move and be in the world and how the world would respond. David consists of different aspects and objects, one of them being a voice. In this working session David's voice seeks residence in a new body, an experience that confuses and excites him, and that recreates him in an uncertain game of determining and being determined.
Flavio, by incorporating this other voice, finds himself inhabiting his own body from a new perspective. The cohabitation leads to a different understanding and positioning of his body, with new layers of perception and performative gestures. David becomes a zone in between, where their bodies and practices cross and inhabit the same territory for a while, leading and being led, proposing and being proposed to, acting and reacting to David's mediation.
The organic devices that our bodies are, and the sound and motion they create, as well as the synthetic devices such as speakers, sound processors and projectors, and the ephemeral devices such as concepts and protocols - will enable this exchange. They will allow mirroring, resonance, vibrations and echoes that constitute the necessary elements for the research process to begin. This performance proposes to see mirrors, recordings and reproductions as ideas and gestures that function in both practices as forms of interlocution with oneself, in order to actualise or confirm the perception of the self as a multitude of selves. Such interlocution produces autotheoretical reflection and becomes a methodology for artistic research.
*
6 July [cancelled]
Alex Arteaga and Emma Cocker: Online talk about language practices in artistic research
Both Emma and Alex are part of Research Groups concerned with language practices in Artistic Research. They will speak from their perspectives and practices within several academic contexts. How do language-based artistic research practices relate to other research practices? What are the motivations, needs, desires, and aims that lead to establish these correspondences? How are the practices in mutual touch affected, modified, influenced, transformed? How do these connections, entanglements and intertwinements contribute to achieve the research goals? How do they affect the unfolding of research processes?
*
6th July [14:00-18:00]
Gosie Vervlossem and Simon Asencio:
The interrogatories:*
8 July [19:00-21:30]
Pia Louwerens, Marialena Marouda, Charlie Usher and Vijai Maia Patchineelam: On Artist as Institution
This evening brings together artists working with the practices of instituting and within institutions. It will comprise Pia’s work as ‘embedded researcher’ in institutional frameworks; Vijai’s Ph.D. research regarding the employment of the artist, as an artist, inside the art institution; and Marialena’s and Charlie’s practice of summoning, hosting and appropriating utterances with the Ocean through establishing The Oceanographies Institute.
*
9 July [18:00-21:00]
Aubrey Birch, Chloe Chignell and Eleanor Ivory Weber: On Writing Practices
The Autotheory Gathering will close with performative presentations of three writers and artists working with and on language. Reflecting upon the conventions of Western news media and the practice of reporting, Eleanor will perform a new piece of writing. Choreographically engaging with the space of ZSenne ArtLab, Chloe will present an extract of her Poems and Other Emergencies. Thinking through mineral erotics and linking our bodies with the bodies of more-than-human, Aubrey will propose a cocktail of spiritual calories.
9 July 2022Eleanor will draw our attention towards reportage, which, in the same movement, bears witness to the world and consumes it. It is also a technique for making equivalences out of what is irreconcilable. In her practice, Eleanor keeps track of the dates when important things happen as a way to remember how the past shows up today. All the while she is trying to understand how repetitions, forgetting and suspended apprehension are equally part of personal and public events, places and products.Poems and Other Emergencies*Poems and Other Emergencies by Chloe sits at the intersection of poetry and choreography. Centered on a fictional character The Girl-with-her-tongue-out, the performance questions if it is through language that we find ourselves a body, or through the body that we find language? Embodied voices and voiced bodies weave and echo throughout the space. Where does the word end and her body begin?
Aubrey's Material & Spiritual Calories is a practice that bridges the art of gathering around the table with the geological origins of what we consume. The body’s chemistry is altered both by the material calories of what we eat and the spiritual calories of how we eat, where pleasure and sociality nourish us as much as the proteins, sugars, and amino acids that we need to survive - that we need in order to wake up in the morning, to act, to hope, to protect. Between the immediacy of the meal and the endurance of our mineral origins, the body becomes a site where the ephemeral and the primordial meet in sensory experience.
* performance credits:
Performance and Choreography: Chloe Chignell
Conversation partner: Adriano Wilfert Jensen
Technical Support: Sven Dehens
Thanks: Sven Dehens, Bojana Cvejic, Stefa Goovart, Sabine Cmelinski and a.pass.Supported By: BUDA Kortrijk, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Workspacebrussels, La Balsamine Theatre, GC kriekelaar, Lucy Guerin Inc, Dancehouse Melbourne, Batard Festival Brussels, QL2 dance ACT, Kanuti Gildi Saal, Tallinn, RIMI IMIR (NO), Littérature Etc. and Rencontres Chorégraphique.
*
BIOS
Aubrey Birch is a transdisciplinary artist and academic living between Australia & Europe. Working in various mediums, shecreates immersive states that link our bodies in the here-and-now to the deep time of those bodies. Thinking through a mineral erotics and social sensuality, she brings the politics of immersion into contact with the more-than-human. She lives part-time in remote Australia, where she cultivates native and medicinal plants. In Europe, she is a member of a collective taking care of Performing Arts Forum (FR), where she also co-organises the queer feminist event Elsewhere & Otherwise. Her works and collaborations have been presented by institutions like KANAL–Centre Pompidou (BE), MaerzMusik (DE), Shedhalle (CH), rotor Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst (AT), Kunsthal Ghent (BE), Theater Neumarkt (CH).
Chloe Chignell is an artist based in Brussels working across text, choreography and publishing. Her work focuses on language within a choreographic and performative frame; she invests in writing as a body building practice, examining the ways in which language makes us up. Chloe graduated from a.pass (BE, 2020) and from the research cycle at P.A.R.T.S (BE, 2018). Since 2019 Chloe co-runs rile* a bookshop and project space for publication and performance with Sven Dehens. Her work has been presented by: Batard Festival (BE, 2019) Saal Biennale (ES 2021), Moving Words Festival (NO 2021), QL2 (AU 2022), KAAP (BE 2022), Littérature etc. (FR 2022), Dancehouse (AU 2016-8), The Kier Choreographic Award (AU 2018) Kottinspektionen (SE 2019) and Venice Biennale of Dance (IT 2017). She currently teaches at ISAC and P.A.R.T.S.
Eleanor Ivory Weber is a writer and artist based in Brussels. Her works expropriate the conventions and styles of Western news media to register and materialise a subjectivity that appears latent in the source. Recently her work has been shown at Kunstverein München (Munich), Maison Pelgrims (Brussels) and Kunsthal Gent (Ghent). In 2021 her essay ‘Australian Others: Penal Logic and the Pandemic’ was published in the literary journal Meanjin (Melbourne). Eleanor holds a Masters in Political Philosophy and Theory from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and graduated from the Post-Master program at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies). She teaches art theory and critical practice at Erg since 2018 and is co-director of Divided Publishing.
Flavio Rodrigo Orzari Ferreira, 39, gay, brazilian, artist, lives in Brussels. He is a performer and psychopedagogue. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Scenic Arts from State University of Campinas – UNICAMP (2004), a Master Specialization Degree in Psychopedagogy from FHO – UNIARARAS (2012), a Master Specialization Degree from UCB (2013) and a post-master degree in Performing Arts in A.PASS (Advenced Performing and Scenography Studies – 2020). Master's degree in speculative narration and videography at the École de Recherche Graphique (ERG) - Instituts Saint Luc in Brussels. His latest works as a performer and dramaturg are the solo The Ghost Scar (2019-2022), and the short film Fantasma Pédé (2022). He has worked for over 15 years as an art educator at both public and private Elementary and Secondary Schools. He currently works as a psychopedagogue coordinating a program to help students improve their learning processes at the ERG École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels.
Goda Palekaitė is an artist working in the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. Her practice evolves around long-term projects exploring the politics of historical narratives, agency of dreams and imagination, social conditions of creativity, and intimacy with historical characters. Some of Goda’s recent projects were titled Anthropomorphic Trouble (in collaboration with Adrijana Gvozdenović), The Strongest Muscle in the Human Body is the Tongue, Architecture of Heaven, Liminal Minds, and Legal Implications of a Dream. They were presented, respectively, at Whitechapel Gallery in London, Kunsthal Gent in Ghent, Centre Tour à Plomb in Brussels, Konstepidemin in Gothenburg and RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv. In 2020 she published her first book of fictional biographies Schismatics. Goda participated in a.pass’ postgraduate program in 2018-19 and currently is a Ph.D. candidate at Hasselt University and PXL-MAD School of Arts.
Gosie Vervloessem’s artistic research focuses on the position of the researcher in times of multiple crises. Her work faces the challenges that arise within this role, and looks for new ways of producing knowledge. Her practice is an ongoing quest on finding tools to relate to a world that is messy and chaotic. Therefore she juggles with and re-interprets the practices of cooking, digesting, co-digesting, immersion or osmosis, as tools to literally embody that relation. In scrutinizing this relationship she focuses mainly on the concept of nature and tries to unravel the ideas that underpin this concept. In doing that, she identifies herself as a Sick Detective, a character that involves the vegetal kingdom as a possible ally in her research. Her work is highly inspired by plant biology, comic books, horror movies. It is mainly presented as lecture-performance, in the form of workshops or publications.
Lilia Mestre is a performing artist, dramaturge and researcher working mainly in collaborative formats. She has been involved in a.pass since 2008 as Associate Program Curator and Core member (2014-17) and since 2017 as artistic coordinator. Mestre works with scores: inter-subjective set-ups and other chance-induced processes as emancipatory artistic and pedagogical tools, which have been documented in various publications. She is interested in forms of organisation created by and for artistic practice as alternative study processes for social political reflection. She was co-founder and latest coordinator of Art Laboratory Bains Connective in Brussels (1997-2017). Mestre lives and works in Brussels.
Maria Gil Ulldemolins is a postdoc artistic researcher at Hasselt University working on personal and artistic heritage, and interiority and interior architecture. Her doctoral work was a multidisciplinary autotheory on collapsing figures, sparked by the trope of the swooning Virgin in crucifixion imagery; and constructed as a writerly Warburgian atlas. Her practice is mostly hybrid writing that combines scholarly essays with more experimental approaches. She is one of the co-founders of Project Passage, a research line and academic journal that seeks to learn more and promote precisely these autotheoretical and performative writerly practices.
Marialena Marouda works in the intersections between performance, sound art and oral poetry. She studied philosophy and visual arts at Columbia University in New York, USA and continued her studies at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen, Germany. In May 2018 she initiated The Oceanographies Institute (TOI), as part of her research at the Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies Program (a.pass) in Brussels. TOI focuses essentially on the relation between two bodies of water: the human body and the world ocean(s). It gives particular attention to affectual and sensual encounters between the two bodies. The Institute therefore explores the relations of hands to mud, ears to the breaking waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than the ocean “in itself”, as if devoid of human presence. It collects, analyzes and reenacts people's personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. In 2019, composer Charlie Usher joined TOI, letting his practice of song-making flow into the institute‘s work.
Philippine Hoegen is a visual artist living in Brussels. In her multi-stranded, predominantly performative practice, she explores the ways in which we continuously create versions of ourselves, the apparatuses and processes we use for this and what their existence means for our understanding of 'self'. In the past 2 years she has focussed specifically on how this functions in contexts of work. Hoegen approaches performance explicitly as a research strategy: a way of thinking in which the physical is involved. Currently she is a researcher at the HKU Professorship Performative Creative Processes, and CARADT (Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology) Avans University, with a research project titled Performing Working.
Since 2012 Rareş Augustin Craiut has been caring out « practice a as research » project (Performing food). The main themes of his artistic research practice are centred around the agency of food and eating and creating conditions to collaborate with Food. He is particularly interested in devices of meaning and affect (Bain-Marie Brunch food performance re-enactment cycle, various locations, ongoing; or Anximentara, Ecole de Rechrche Graphique, Brussels, 2018), and food in artistic and convivial collaborations (Comfort food continuum 2016, Baia-Mare, Romania; or The Terni – Paradisi-Neighborhood- Cookbook, Centro per le Arti Opificio Siri, Terni, 2017). Bread or baked goods are of particular interest with several performance art pieces dedicated to bread (The Transitions, Banis Connective, Brussels, 2017, or Anatomic bread bodies Matera European Capital of culture, Italy, 2019).
Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institutions. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Vijai’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists—one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacement of roles is part of a larger trajectory that he has followed in his Ph.D. research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the University of Antwerp, “The Artist Job Description: A Practice Led Artistic Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution.” Vijai is currently an associate researcher in a.pass’ Research Center.
To dig my hands deep into the earth and listen 03 June 2022
posted by: Chloe JanssensResearch 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?
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Azoknak a fiatal srácoknak, akik agyi kaszinóélményt keresnek, fontos, hogy elolvassák a szerencsejáték-irányelveket, hogy megértsék, hol találják a legjobb online kaszinókat. Szinte minden nap megjelennek a horizonton újonnan alapított szerencsejáték klubok, amelyek igyekeznek kitűnni a többi szerencsejáték partner közül. Emellett egyes felhasználók a bevált és régi cégekre támaszkodnak, amelyekre mindig reálisan lehet támaszkodni. Egy nagyszerű kaszinó megtalálása szédületessé teheti az ügyfeleket. Új online kaszinókat kell választania, vagy a legjobb, ha a megbízható fejlesztőkhöz ragaszkodik? Az olyan platformok, mint a Reddit, AskGamblers, https://legjobbkaszino.hu/ segítenek ennek eldöntésében.
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A szerencsejáték klubokban nem lehet valódi pénzzel bónuszokat fizetni. A Pokerstars és az AmunRa Casino személyre szabott bónuszformátumokat hozott létre az élő kaszinójátékhoz. Nem okoz gondot bizonyos információk megismerése a YouTube-videókban sem. Nagyon gyakran a Pinterest médiahálózaton is találhatunk élő kaszinó videókról szóló véleményeket Magyarországon. Egyes játékosok szívesen posztolnak és osztanak meg ott kifejezetten az élő kaszinókkal kapcsolatos információkat.
Az élő kaszinó virtuálisan kaszinójátékokat kínál valódi osztókkal, akik érdekes szerencsejáték-fordulókon vesznek részt. Más szóval, azonnal úgy érezheti, mintha egy valódi kaszinójáték részese lenne. Ezenkívül a legtöbb élő kaszinójátékban van chat opció, amely lehetőséget ad arra, hogy bármikor beszélgethess az osztóval. Így lehetőséged nyílik arra, hogy a kedvenc gépeidbe valóságosan és a játékban való érzéssel szállj be.
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A szerencsejátékok legalizálása
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Folyamatosan jelennek meg modern és sláger kaszinójátékok, amelyek a különböző magyar online kaszinókban találhatók. Ezek a nemzetközi kaszinóiparban kínált legjobb technológia felhasználásával készültek. Emiatt biztos lehetsz benne, hogy olyan technológiát próbálhatsz ki, amely megfelel bizonyos elvárásoknak.
A magyarországi játékklubok 2023-ban tényleg sokat fejlesztettek a versenyeken. Klassz versenyeken vehetsz részt demo pénzzel is. Ez azért van, hogy megmutassuk a szerencsejátékosoknak, milyen menők lettek a versenyek 2023-ban. Tolnai Tibor szakértő szerint a versenyeken több más ügyféllel egyszerre lehet részt venni a kaszinójátékokban. Ez természetesen több kulcsfontosságú kihívást is jelent, ahol jogosultak vagytok elszaladni a nyereményekkel.
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Demolition, Damage, Deviation, Desire a.pass End Presentations of Gary Farrelly, Inga Gerner Nielsen, amy pickles and Jimena Pérez Salerno
11 September 2022
posted by: Lilia Mestre
The a.pass End Presentations of Gary Farrelly, Inga Gerner Nielsen, amy pickles and Jimena Pérez Salerno will take place on the 29 and 30 September 2022 at artist run space Meyboom, Boulevard Pacheco 34, downtown Brussels, from 18:00 to 22:30.
This public presentation marks the end of their trajectory at a.pass and invites the researchers to share their modes of doing, seeing and making artist research public after following the year-long postgraduate program. amy pickles (UK) is an artist and educator working on colonial infrastructures embedded within everyday technologies. She curated and organised, with Chloë Janssens and Túlio Rosa, a gathering titled On Coloniality [https://apass.be/on-coloniality/]. Gary Farrelly (IE) is a visual artist researching on infrastructure, bureaucracy and the architectures of power. A big part of his work is in collaboration with German artist Chris Dreier with the ongoing project Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. Jimena Pérez Salerno (AR) is a choreographer and dancer researching on the concept of expanded choreography as a critical modality for political awareness reflecting on linear time and productive behavior. Inga Gerner Nielsen (DK) is a performing artist with a background in sociology, researching immersive performance as an interstice of poetry and institutional critique.
With singular questions, processes and approaches, the four researches intersect and expand concerns in Demolition, Damage, Deviation, Desire by bridging intimacy and politics in very different ways. Their practices extend from the lecture performance to performative installation, drawing, crossing ritual making and never ending warmups, to research, share and exchange - together with the audience - questions that are embedded in our everyday lives.
The research of these four artists addresse architecture and administration with their conditionings and protocols; the perpetuation of colonial governance through digital infrastructures and our dependency on them; immersive institutional rational authority and the amazing potential of time to inherit, transform, conduct change and resilience.
The End-Presentations at a.pass are on themselves a study on curatorial practice, performativity and making public. By being together, these performative situations will shine attention to the context and environment they are in, their relationship with audiences, the materialities that are involved being them visible or invisible and what matters in these circumstances.
For this occasion they worked with Frédéric Van De Velde on a collective sound publication with vinyls that will be performed and spinned by Frédéric during the event.
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Gary Farrelly / It is official policy to appear unmovedGary Farrelly's research at a.pass departs from the work of deceased conservative conspiracy theorist William Milton Cooper. Coopers work, through his polemical Hour Of The Time radio show synthesised economic and political ‘research’, occult knowledge, personal grievance, and manic episodes into a paranoid tsunami deployed to undermine confidence in public institutions.
Cooper's transmissions were characterised by a highly affective voice, at once disdainful, concealed, intimate, furious and hyperbolic, inducing a hypnotic state of susceptibility and acquiescence to the content. A precursor to the corrosive ‘post truth’ ideation that contaminates our current public discourse, Farrelly takes Coopers work as a departing point towards a generative reimagining of the paranoid researcher/ coercive performer.
His trajectory at a.pass has explored various performative versions of himself, including: the bureaucrat, the crossdresser, the charlatan, the guide, the joker, the devils advocate, the instructor and the Cassandra. The core mission of Farrelly’s research is the affective deployment of body and voice as transmitters of anxiety, desire, disinformation and critical questioning in relation to invasive infrastructure and monumental architecture. Much of the content and material he has brought into play at a.pass was gathered in collaboration with Chris Dreier in the context of Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. O.J.A.I.'s ongoing mission proposes a reading of the built environment through lenses of coercive power, mind control, transcendence and magic.
BioGary is an Irish artist and educator based in Brussels. His work encompasses drawing, performance, publishing, installation and experimental radio. Exhibitions and performances have been presented by Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art (London), Marres Centre for Contemporary culture (Maastricht), Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris) and Salzburger Kunstverein. He is a lecturer at La Cambre ENSAV in Brussels and his work is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. A significant part of the work takes place in collaboration with Chris Dreier, through their shared practice the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence.
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Inga Gerner Nielsen / THiS INSTiTUTEAt a.pass Inga’s artistic research came to be conjured through THiS INSTiTUTE; a structure by which to constitute the sensual mode of her thinking. The past year she has been looking intensely into ահąէ it is a spacious feeling – where an imaginary world of analysis starts appearing through the objects and textures at hand, հօա it opens as a kind of summoning and closes when she is called into presence by matters of everyday life and ահվ it feels so urgent for her to institutionalize her artistic research as affect, as symptom, as dream.
Moving to Brussels from Denmark Inga lost the sociological overview of her environment. Normally, her artistic work unfolds as sitespecifc intervention in a concrete place, in the academic field or in an institutional setting, which she has carefully sensed in order to know how to highlight its features and make the invisible visible, often through an aesthetic and ideological juxtaposition. Her performance series My Protestant Origins and Catholic Fantasies combines her background in Sociology with her artistic work by making performance installations which open up a maximalist, celestial relation to space and objects in the otherwise secular rule of minimalist Danish design. Now, in the myriad of styles and institutions that make up Brussels, she didn't know what to juxtapose and how to intervene. And after quite some confusion, this lack of clarity started to feel good. It granted her permission to just gaze at her own gaze. In many of her previous works she had been exploring with performers how the gaze affects or choreographs the body, and now, with half-closed eyes she started to practice an intense mode of subjectivation.
Inside THiS INSTiTUTE she researches how to fall into a medieval perception of space/time; a mode of being in and knowing the world, she fantasizes to be a remaining counterweight to the renaissance's linear perspective once invented by the architect. She practices a bodily felt sense of her close surroundings as an emotional imaginary landscape, where the distinction between the inner and outer world falls away. At the End Presentation Inga will try to open up THiS INSTiTUTE to her community of artistic researchers and people interested in the question of how to build portals for other modes of thinking? And why might we need the institution to uphold and preserve them?
BioInga comes from a group of performers in Scandinavia, who work with immersive performance installations. Since 2007 she co-founded collectives and focused on developing their work as an activist strategy to give structure to sensuous modes of social interaction in different spheres of society. Today she collaborates with a nursing school in Denmark to introduce performance installations as a way to look into the mise-en-scène of care work. A relation, which the project mirrors with the interaction between performer and audience in one-to-one performance art installations. Inga's art explores how new modes of subjectivity or imaginaries come into existence or are transformed through interactions and refigured institutional settings.
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amy pickles / Chantal and TimothyThese two works take their name from human inscription on other than human entities.
Timothymade with George Chinnery and many others
Timothy is a multi-authored scene comprised of assembled debris from amy's experiments in a.pass. These experiments reconsidered formats for collective learning. The topic in question, colonial infrastructures and how they perpetuate modes of extraction and exploitation in a progressive western narrative, inherent within our communication technologies. Phew. Timothy is carrying a lot. Serendipitously, Timothy's name is taken from a tortoise, so it can accommodate a lot within its shell. Timothy the tortoise was taken by the british navy from a portuguese merchant in 1854, who in turn took her from the shores of turkey. She was kept in different colonising ships till she was moved to an aristocratic home in england, where they etched the family motto into her belly; "Where have I fallen? What have I done"?[1] If you're wondering, a tortoises underside is very sensitive. Timothy, as scene, resonates with the scar tissue of Timothy the tortoise. The scene is a prompt for us to think about ourselves as an accumulation of colonial narratives - these processes involve us all in some way - and to reconsider the "uncontested notion of information technology as freedom"[2].
Chantalmade with Max Franklin, Chloë Janssens, Anna Lugmeier & Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Chantal is a digitized Super8 film, that documents 'relational hood group call', a collective exercise made for a presentation in a.pass. The participants are bound together through a group video call on Signal - an internet based communication app - that is connected to their bodies through headphones, screens, and selfie sticks. They collaborate to form an experience for a primary vessel. This primary vessel is the participant whose head is engulfed inside a hood. 'relational hood group call' was a re-imagining and re-assembling of brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s relational objects, objetos relacionais[3]. The name of the film is from the tree in which the participants move around, Chantal being inscribed upon its trunk.
References1. "Timothy (tortoise)" Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_(tortoise). Accessed 7 September 2022.
2. Aouragh, Miriyam & Chakravartty, Paula. Infrastructures of empire: towards a critical geopolitics of media and information studies. Media, Culture & Society. 2016;38(4):559–575.
3. Butler, Cornelia H. & Pérez-Oramas, Luis. Lygia Clark, The Abandonment of Art, 1948 - 1988. The Museum of Modern Art. 2014. p281
Bioamy pickles is an artist, organiser and loosely institutionalised educator. In her work, she experiments with ways to hold onto, and consider, pervasive colonial infrastructures we are a part of. In our work, redistribution – of knowledge, tools, finances – and collaboration are ways to refuse individual ownership. She is a member of Varia, Rotterdam NL, an organisation working on everyday technology.
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Jimena Pérez Salerno / Unproductive willHow can we create a different relation to time than the one the western worldview imposes on us? How can we produce market-wise non-productive things?
Unproductive will is a choreographic practice installation that is part of a larger research. It suggests revisiting our relationship with the hegemonic notion of linear time and productive behavior. It proposes thinking of them as collective colonial wounds and impositions that run through our practices, affective bonds, and lives, wherever we are. I am developing exploratory collective practices such as Kung Fu tuning (a counter-normative body practice using simple martial arts warm-up), Collective readings (Payada: a popular folk music genre involving poetic recitations), and Technologies of attention (peeling vegetables following a choreographic score) to name some of them. I work with the idea of a never-ending warm-up to re- think the idea of practice and to engage with everyone who participates as a collaborator. This process does not seek an end but wants to remain in the continuity of the search.
I started my trajectory in a.pass exploring the normative notion of linear-productive time and how it is embodied in our behavior because I am interested in its political dimension. I observed how much thinking in a forward direction brings associations that build a certain life perspective. For example, forward-better-future-progress or backward-worst-past-degrowth. This reinforces a system of values creating a sense supported by binary thoughts. In an attempt against this logic, I followed a contradictory path. I will step forward to the past, I said, and I started to investigate, trying to detect how bringing practices from my sentimental and cultural education in Argentina to my current research, could speak of my relationship with a twisted time. I am interested in observing the transformations the project traverses in each place it is presented. To change its language and perspective, that is to say, the thickness that its affective, geographical, and political implications take both for me and those who participate in the experience. This research challenges the definitions of audience-participant, performance-practice, and encounter-training affecting the presentation dynamic that sets all of them in motion.
BioJimena Pérez Salerno is an Argentinian artist, based in Brussels (BE). She works and researches between Brussels and Buenos Aires. She experiments in the performing arts, artistic research, and teaching fields. As a dancer and choreographer, she collaborates and engages continuously with other artists as a fundamental part of her exploration of collective work. She considers choreographic practice like an expanded relations system that enables modes of imagination, attention, and coexistence. It leans towards performative practices that contemplate the activation of an unexpected context to think together through the experience of an implicated body. + info: https://cargocollective.com/jimenaps IG: @sashimishimi
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Frédéric Van de VeldeBio
Frédéric Van de Velde's artistic practice oscillates between publishing, producing and organising exhibitions and concerts. He worked for WORM and DE PLAYER in Rotterdam and used to run a bedroom-sized music venue called Antenne. In 2019 he founded the record label Futura Resistenza, which operates somewhere on the edges of performance, music and the visual arts.
inga gerner nielsen 23 September 2022
posted by: Inga Gerner Nielsen
Research Center Open Reading Group 28 September 2022
posted by: Vladimir MillerNEW: Every second Monday 19-21h
NEXT MEETINGS
22.05.2023 19h
"Narrate, Speculate, Fabulate: Didier Debaise and Benedikte Zitouni in Conversation with Isabelle Doucet"
proposed by Gosie Vervloessem
05.06.2023 19h
Marie Bardet: "Making a Front With Our Backs" Translated by: Ellen Heaghney
Jara Rocha: "testing texting South: a political fiction"
proposed by caterina daniela mora jara
19.06.2023 20h
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: "Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization"
proposed by Tulio Rosa
03.07.2023 19h
Tjalie Robinson: "Vivere Pericolosamente"
proposed by Paoletta Holst
17.07.2023 19h
W.J.T. Mitch: "Art And Public life: A Conversation Theaster Gates"
proposed by Maurice Meewisse and Vladimir Miller
The Research Center Open Reading Group follows the research trajectories of the Associate Researchers with text proposals from the collective library of the current Research Center and new texts written by the researchers themselves. The reading group is public and open to join in person and online.
ZOOM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7654748465?pwd=VjhFMFVkSUxRUjlkakRuTFBSSndldz09
Meeting ID: 765 474 8465
Passcode: apassPAST MEETINGS
28.09.22 @ Radical House
caterina daniela mora jara, AR
12.10.22 @ Radical House and online
Florian Cramer and Nienke Terpsma, What is wrong with the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research?
https://www.onlineopen.org/what-is-wrong-with-the-vienna-declaration-on-artistic-research
26.10.22 at apass and online
A House in the Dutch East Indies by Paoletta Holst
09.11.22 online
Maurice Meewisse proposes: Mark Cousins "On Support", from: Celine Condorelli "Support Structures"
23.11.22 online
Tulio Rosa proposes: a chapter from "Potential History, Unlearning Imperialism" by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
07.12.22 online
Vladimir Miller proposes: introductory chapter from "Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization." S. Shukatis, D. Graeber & E. Biddle (Eds.),
Wednesday 4.01.23 17h online
Paoletta Holst proposes: Ann Laura Stoler, "Interior Frontiers" in: Ann Laura Stoler, Stathis Gourgouris, And Jacques Lezra, [Ed]. Thinking with Balibar A Lexicon of Conceptual Practice. Fordham University Press: New York, 2020, pp. 99-115 (pdf)
Wednesday 18.01.23 17h online
Maurice Meewisse proposes: texts from
Manifesta Journal #8- collective curating (2009): "The crux of polyphonic language, or the thing as gathering" by Katharine Schieben and other textsWednesday 01.02.23 online
caterina daniela mora jara proposes: "inflation, debt, budget" – her own text in progress; and the chapter "Naming Material" by Jeroens Peters from "And then it got legs’"
Wednesday 22.02.23
Tulio Rosa proposes: "YWY, Searching for a Character between Future Worlds: Gender, Ecology, Science Fiction"
Edited by Pedro Neves Marques.Wednesday 01.03.23 17h at a.pass and online
Vladimir Miller proposes: Eve Tuck 'Breaking up with Deleuze: desire and valuing the irreconcilable', (2010)
Wednesday 08.03.23 17h at a.pass and online
Túlio Rosa proposes: "Self Defense: a philosophy of violence", by Elsa Dorli. Introduction and first chapter.
Wednesday 22.03.23 17h online
Maurice Meewisse proposes: Chantal Mouffe: "For an Agonistic Model of Democracy", chapter 4 from "The Democratic Paradox", Verso 2009
zoom link below
About MILK! Cheese-making workshop with Robin Bantigny
20 February 2023
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
For this cheese-making workshop, a.pass post-graduate researcher Marian Rosa van Bodegraven invites artist and cheese maker Robin Bantigny to host a cheese-making workshop at Radical House.Robin will introduce you to the transformation of milk into fermented dairy products with a focus on cheese. The workshop will first consist of an errand to a typical Belgian cattle farm to buy milk and get a glimpse of the dairy industry in Belgium. Later in the morning, we will initiate the milk transformation at Radical House with an introduction to the mesmerizing biological reactions behind milk coagulation. The next morning will be dedicated to the feel and touch of curds obtained overnight. Robin will also tell you about the art experiments that led him to cheese-making and Marian will introduce her research on milk. In the afternoon, every participant will bring a container that can be used as a mould; as well as spices, herbs, grains or jams they wish to add to the cheeses. The workshop’s conclusion will be the dinner where we will share food and homemade cheeses.
Robin is a member of the former art and research collective named The Soft Protest Digest, founded with Nickie Sigurdsson and Jérémie Rentien Lando. The collective worked with different narratives to test how food culture is created and altered. They used fictional traditions, multi-species storytelling, publishing and local knowledge to create kinship, much needed in a time of irreversible environmental breakdown.
Largely confined to the Jan van Eyck Academie during their 2020 residency, the collective adopted an introspective approach about transition and self-sustenance. Each member took its own path, Robin’s one being cheese-making, with the aim to settle in a matter of 1-2 years.
Marian’s research focuses on breast, condensed, and powdered milk, considering narratives around the containers that hold these kinds of milk, and how their production shapes the biopolitics embedded in motherhood, sex work, childhood, and forms of governance. Through storytelling, Marian combines methods of investigative journalism and biographic accounts to allow for the liquidity of the subject to form different ways of understanding it.
The workshop will last two days: March 1st, from 7 am to 12 am (we will travel together to the farm to observe the milking process at 8am, following their schedules); March 2nd, from 10 am to 8 pm . 5 spots are open for alumni and non-a.pass participants. For the latter, a contribution cost of € 50 is requested, dinner included. If interested, please fill in this form by February 26th.
Two-Day Shift Workshop
20 February 2023
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
Building on from a previous proposal (Night Shift) Nada Gambier in collaboration with Jen Rosenblit now invite you for the Two-Day Shift.
In this working shift, we will dive into the problematics that arise from coming together, engage in improvisational games and strategies, have fun with speculation and bathe in inconvenience as a way to look anew at our practices and get to know our researches from another angle. Once again, our attention goes to what it means to be of service to each other and the works and how by attending to parasites we come to another understanding of what we are doing. The question of desire and learning from what we don’t know will also linger as a larger drive and disorganizing method for the group and researches.
Through collective mentoring strategies, conversation and experimentation we will exchange ideas, desires, thoughts, materials and reflections.
The first day will largely be built around conversation. The second day we roll up our sleeves and get into action. At the end of the first day we will have dinner together.
Practical information:
Location: apass 4th floor
Dates and times:
15.3 2023 @ 10h (check-in) - 17h30 + dinner at 18h30-20h30
16.3 2023 @ 10h (check-in) -17h
There are a few places left. In case interested please contact Nada by mail at the latest by 10th of March.
For non-apassers we ask a 30 € contribution for the 2 days. Please email Nada Gambier if you're interested to participate.
Jen Rosenblit (1983. USA) is based in Berlin after many years in New York City. She makes performances inspired by architectures, bodies, text, and ideas stemming from problems that arise inside of agendas for togetherness. Rosenblit’s works lean toward the uncanny and maintenance of care, locating ways of being together amidst (un)familiar and impossible contradictions. Rosenblit’s writing practice spans from the paper to the stage, supporting an expanse of meaning as it emerges between things and toward an unwinding or the inevitably possible collapse. Desire and sexuality have offered reoccurring points of departure without demanding a singular aesthetic or representation. Rosenblit is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2014 NewYork Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, a 2023 La Becque (Vevey, CH) artist in residence and has collaborated with artists including Simone Aughterlony, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns and Philipp Gehmacher. Rosenblit’s newest work,<ElseWhereRhapsody> is a 2023 co-production of Tanzfabrik Berlin and Tanzquartier Wien, offering distraction as a guide to speak toward the illegibility of desire and forgetfulness as a way to shift toward something else, away from the damaging repetition.
www.jenrosenblit.net
Nada Gambier (1980. Finland) roams around in what she calls a crash-disciplinary world where theater, dance, performance, video, writing, curatorial approaches and languages and social concerns merge and collide. Her work often flirts with the borders between theatricality and abstraction and she is drawn to things that she doesn't understand or cannot grasp. The non-spectacular and the absurd belong to her most known trademarks as an artist. Since 2014 she has been focusing on long-term projects in which the separation between research, creation process and public event can be confused and/or abandoned. In 2020 she began monthly collective research sessions in Brussels, further establishing herself as an advocate for experimentation and research within the (performing) arts. Nada also regularly collaborates on other artists' projects as a performer and artistic advisor. She has worked a.o. with Kate MacIntosh, Edit Kaldor, Forced Entertainment, Simone Aughterlony, Jorge Léon, Maria Jerez, Diederik Peeters, Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Phil Hayes. Nada is currently doing the postgraduate course in a.pass.
www.nadagambier.be
THE TIME ITEM, THE ENDLESS WANDERER, THE TOURIST GUIDE AND THE LINE THAT WAS DEAD BEFORE IT HIT THE GROUND MEET AROUND A DINNER TABLE 18 May 2023
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
The table is set.
What is here is there. What is not here is somewhere, someone is doing something.
Martin Sieweke, Martina Petrović, Aslı Hatipoğlu and Nada Gambier invite you on a guided tour of wandering, exploring time, invisible structures, in-betweens, tastes of intimacy, heritage, abrasion, fermentation and reparation that ripple through space to mark the end of their research trajectory at a.pass.
There will be food, performances, boredom and a spa.
DAY PROGRAM
2nd of June
9h30 welcome
10h-17h working shift 1 (with Nada Gambier)
3rd of June
12h30 welcome
13h-17h working shift 2 (with Nada Gambier)
EVENING PROGRAM (2 & 3 June: same program)
17h30 doors open
18h sign up activities: green room (Nada Gambier)
6 slots for 2 persons every 10 min
time item - publication (Martin Sieweke)
foot massage (Aslı Hatipoğlu)
1 slot for 20 persons
where: sign up on the 4th floor
19h entrée (Martina Petrović)
where: dining table 4th floor
cirrendering - performance / sound installation ( Martin Sieweke & Josephine Stamer)
where: 4th floor
20h dinner (Martina Petrović & Aslı Hatipoğlu)
where: dining table 4th floor
yeast invasion - lecture performance/ installation (Aslı Hatipoğlu)
where: 4th floor
21h dessert (Martina Petrović)
where: dining table 4th floor
sign up activities: green room (Nada Gambier)
6 slots for 2 persons every 10 min
time item publication (Martin Sieweke)
beer spa - walk-in installation (Aslı Hatipoğlu)
max. 8 persons at a time
foot massage (Aslı Hatipoğlu)
2 slots for 20 persons every 20 min
where: sign up on the 4th floor
Aslı Hatipoğlu (TH/TR)
Aslı Hatipoğlu is an interdisciplinary artist and a self-taught chef who uses food as a focal point to investigate interwoven themes of psychology, science, political ecology, ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and mental health. Her work is influenced by her background growing up with a migrant Thai mother in Turkey where her father had a tourism agency. Asli curates participatory dinners that shed light on food history as well as question how climate change, agricultural politics and current technological developments are changing our contact with food. Through lecture performances with a pinch of satire, Asli brings a critical perspective on the definition of words such as ‘locality’ as a means to re-define them in the complexity of systems. As an antidote to nationalism, she proposes fermentation practices to raise questions around cultural history, locality, tourism and the dogma of economic necessity. Asli believes in the power of psycho-somatic relation to food. She creates interactive installations that bring a layer of humor around self, perception and deception.
Through physical engagement with her work, Asli tries to find the boundaries of one’s self with the ‘other’ in a visually appealing setting where questions around disgust are raised. She is interested in how architecture and ecology play a role in her fermentation experiments and how (or if) the space for making/cultivating/brewing influences the way people experience consumption. In addition, her questions around community-building around shared bacterias and yeasts set the tone around social structures, like dining together. Where are the boundaries of the mouth as an organ that lets other living organisms from another person in? Is there a common language that speaks to a consumer in order to convince them into consumption? Taking inspiration from commercial advertising techniques, Asli pushes the audience to re-question what, how and why we eat what we eat. She likes to engage the audience in food production systems to challenge a technological advancement that erases human presence in food production.
Asli’s research presentation consists of lecture performance yeast invasion, combined with a guided installation where her bacterial and yeast collaborators will invite people into a massage parlour that mixes receiving and giving touch, with the brewing of a collective fermented drink. A beer making demonstration takes people along the history of the special Senne valley which hosts the famous “Brettanomyces bruxellensis”, in the past 20 years also known as a wine maker’s worst nightmare. A spa invites people to relax into leftovers of the beer making and think about the outer body experience while sipping the special Belgian lambic brewed by the artist in a conversational set-up.
Bio
Aslı Hatipoğlu (TR/TH, 1990) is a textile culinary artist based in Brussels and Amsterdam. Her work often relates to topics such as ecology and sustainability and the challenges it imposes on our daily lives in complex systems of consumption. She is interested in science and what it can offer as well as the dangers it imposes (such as domination over nature and genetic modifications) that bring ethical questions towards our future as species. Through investigating ancestral knowledge with a community building approach, Asli is also interested in fusing diversity of her knowledge among her experiments in different environments. She often creates interactive installations, video work or uses performative storytelling through conceptual dinners as a way to bring topics of her interest forward.
After working several years as a self-taught chef, Asli deepened her knowledge with fermentation during her residency at the Food Lab Jan van Eyck Academie 2020-2021, along participating in several festivals such as Food Art Film Festival JVE (NL), Foodculture Days Vevey (CH), Oerol Terschelling (NL), Japanese Knotweed Festival at Mediamatic (NL) and Zamus Theaterhaus Cologne (DE) . Her works were exhibited in places such as Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, Framer Framed in Amsterdam, Fanfare Amsterdam, Perdu Amsterdam, Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam, Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht.
Special thanks to: Martina Petrović, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Martin Flugelman Olmeda, Elli Vassalou and many others for thinking, listening and advising me through this a.pass trajectory.Martin Sieweke (DE)
Martin Sieweke researches how the use of materials and objects can be prolonged, extended and reformulated in different ways. He proposes a multi-layered relationality, in which the given (the context, the conditions, already existing materials and familiar objects) influences and contributes as a dispositive.
It’s about searching for affections, altering the use context, exchanging components: to not only consume materials away but to stay and remain close to them. It’s about acknowledging the multiple while reaching for the specific. It’s about structuring a process as a relational response. To follow Erin Manning’s thought in her book The Minor Gesture (Thought in the Act), it’s about implementing the context and its very specific configuration, which influences processes not yet condensed into a form:, “(...) it begins with the in-act and embraces the force of the what-else at the heart of all speculative pragmatisms”.In the evening, Martin presents cirrendering (working title), a sound installation in collaboration with Josephine Stamer. It consists of a former vinyl player reduced to its basic operation. Amplified structures, alterations and repetitive textures will dissolve over time, as emerging traces are finding their multidirectional and conversational negotiation in a circular and sonic form.
TIME ITEM is a research publication by Martin Sieweke that gathers text, images and soft proposals around bag making, reuse and repairment.
Bio
Martin Sieweke works as an accessory maker and scenographer/costume designer between Brussels, Berlin and Stockholm. He often works with found objects and materials by detaching them from their intentional use context. He is interested in engaging with materials in a way that differs from a close link between artistic production and consumption, to structure creative processes more as a relational response.
www.martinsieweke.com
performance: Martin Sieweke, Josephine Stamer
Special thanks to: Asli Hatipoglu, Martina Petrović , Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Hannah Krebs, Mary Szydlowska, Tatsuya Inuikawa, May Abnet
Martina Petrović (SER)
Martina Petrović’s research focuses on how we, Western and Eastern European society, deal with complex socially generated emotions such as grief and love. How do we face the inevitable loss of parts of our culture and humanity, due to the crisis and disappearance of species and environments, abandonment and fast replacement of technologies and ways of living. And how do we find joy and moments in these circumstances?
Her sense of misplacement and need to have a strong connection with her culture is amplified with her residing in Belgium for the past 5.5 years. She gravitates towards connecting her artistic interests with traditions and rituals stemming from her Balkan roots. She investigates women’s sacred rituals, handwork, symbols and creativity and their legacy in modern culture and common everyday practices.
Martina proposes looking deep into our roots, finding strength in the past and support in our surroundings as a way to move forward, to create new rituals and new ways of being. They might enable us to transition from fearing the future and present, and move us towards reconnecting and exploring different ways of forming bonds and relating to each other.
In the evening Martina proposes gathering around the table, there will be food for the stomach and for the thoughts, shared energy and hopefully sparks of magic. The dinner table has its own politics, how one sets it influences the conversation around it. It can generate questions, introduce different ways of composing a menu, and explore the tools we use. It can unveil the social structures that make the table possible, sometimes unexpected flavors appear on one’s plate and many other delicious subjects can surface on it.
It will be an evening of celebration, with welcomings, conversation starters, and a format to practice openings and goodbyes. Come as a friend - excited to share our a.pass trajectory. Come as a wanderer - craving to have a taste of each of our practices. Come as a fellow researcher - curious to engage with questioning, rethinking and transforming art research. Come light, with an empty stomach, with an open heart. Come unprepared but ready to engage with different flavors that work together producing unexpected combinations. Come willing to leave some time for digesting processes.
We will gather 3 times around the table. Please join on time, celebration waits for no one, it has its own rhythm. The entrée will be served at 19h. The main course is prepared in collaboration with masterful food explorer Asli Hatipoglu and will be shared at 20h. At 21h we will meet for the final gathering before we disperse into our separate celebrative trajectories.
Bio
Martina is currently the art coordinator of art space Hectolitre, Brussels. She is a part of two active collectives, School of love (Brussels) and Garden of Delights(Gent). Her recent artistic projects are: Where do we go from here? (2023), Brussels, Gent, The Last Straw (2020-2022),Gent, Antwerp, Brussels, Belgrade, Moerdijk sculpture project (2022), Belgium, EcoSuites residency (2022), Greece, Terrestrial Odditties II, Belgrade (2021), BUZZ project on Ostavinska gallery, Belgrade (2019); Terrestrial Oddities, HBKsaar, Saarbrucken, Germany (2019).
https://cargocollective.com/TheLastStraw
Special thanks to: Asli Hatipoglu, Martin Sieweke, Nada Gambier and all the a.passers, Jana Vasiljevic, Adrijana Gvozdenovic, Irena Radmanovic, Petar Sarjanovic, Hijene, Mladen Bundalo, Lucia Palladino, Adva Zakai, Renata Turkes, Gorana Bacevac, Hectolitre community, SOL, GOD, BOSCH, Common Wallet, Emptor/Caveat, Kunsthal and many others for thinking, feeling and being with me through this a.pass trajectory.
Nada Gambier (FIN / FR)
At the heart of Nada Gambier’s current artistic research practice is the concept of gentle trespassing. For Nada this is a tool for relationality. Gentle trespassing rests on the premise that crossing separations between people, things and contexts is both a necessity and a pleasure. It stems from a belief that the walls we erect around ourselves and our work should be un-hygienically permeable, implying that trouble and mess are part of the process. Practicing gentle trespassing requires collaboration, listening, flirting with gray zones and instability, revealing confinement, enclosure and accepting disagreement and structured cacophony as grounds for progress. To frame durational proposals Nada works with the idea of working shifts.
Working shift 1
In this shift gentle trespassing is practiced between ideas, practices and questions. To begin, questions will be questioned and answered by new questions until eventually what remains cannot be attributed any longer to an “original” or ”an other”. Instead, what remains embodies the structured cacophony that coming together in (mis)understandings, assumptions, interpretations and imaginations may result in. From there we move into hands-on work, exchanging materials and engaging in a process of estrangement and reinvention.
This shift is for artists, of any discipline, with a work in progress or research they wish to bring into the room. You must be willing to hand your work over, momentarily, to another person. It does not matter how far into a process you are. What matters is your curiosity to see another person trespassing into your territory. At the end of this process we will do a round of performative presentations, sharing the outcome of the session.
The shift ends with an informal drink and some light snacks.
Please register by sending a mail to nadakatinka@gmail.com by the 26th of May latest! If you have a spot in the shift we will confirm it by email together with more details of what to bring and how to prepare.
Working shift 2
In this shift, we explore the potential of fiction in relation to gentle trespassing. Through a conversational game in which we engage as “another” version of ourselves we practice strategies of interpretation, exaggeration and collage. The aim here is to experience the simultaneous negotiation between who we are (or think we are) and who ‘we’ might be with a little interference from others.
The shift ends with an informal drink and some light snacks.
Please register by sending a mail to nadakatinka@gmail.com by the 26th of May latest!
Evening shift
In a confined space, anonymous characters live their lives in a loop. Stuck in an endless repetition of mundane events and unable to escape they busy themselves with work-like tasks and sleep, waiting for time to pass. In this work, Nada explores the confinement of spaces, identities, institutions and ideas. Surveillance camera feeds, anonymity and invisibility suits (chroma key green suits used in film when wanting to disappear the body behind an action) come together in this installation in three spaces. On the 4th floor of a.pass you can watch an ongoing video feed.
On the 3rd floor you are invited into a waiting room area followed by the green room (sign up on site).
Bio
Nada Gambier roams around in what she calls a crash-disciplinary world where performance, video, writing, curatorial approaches and languages and social concerns merge and collide. Her work often flirts with the borders between theatricality and abstraction and she is drawn to things that she doesn’t understand or cannot grasp. The non-spectacular and the absurd belong to her most known trademarks as an artist. Her work is experimental in nature and very often performative, with some form of live element in it. Since 2014 Nada has been focusing on long-term projects in which the separation between research, creation process and public event can be confused and/or abandoned. In 2020, she began monthly collective research sessions in Brussels, further establishing herself as an advocate for experimentation and research within the (performing) arts. Nada also regularly collaborates on other artists’ projects as a performer and artistic advisor. She has worked a.o. with Kate MacIntosh (NZ/DE/BE), Edit Kaldor (HU/NL), Forced Entertainment (UK), Simone Aughterlony (NZ/DE/CH), Jorge Léon (ES/BE), Maria Jerez (ES), Diederik Peeters (BE), Charlotte Vanden Eynde (BE) and Phil Hayes (UK/CH).
The evening shift is performed by Nada Gambier, Mark Etchells and Vic Grevendonck and includes writing by Nada and music by Klaus Wunderlich. The research is supported by a.pass, Nada & Co., WpZimmer, Workspacebrussels, Buda Arts Centre and the Flemish Ministry of Culture (research project subsidies).
Special thanks to: Martina Petrović, Martin Sieweke, Aslı Hatipoğlu and all the a.passers, Jen Rosenblit and many others for their input in my reflections and experimentations during the past year.
A big thank you to everyone who supported us during our a.pass time:
A.pass team: Lilia Mestre, Kristien Van den Brande, Kristof Van Hoorde, Hans Van Wambeke, Steven Jouwersma, Vladimir Miller
Block mentors: Jaime Llopis, Anna Rispoli, Samah Hijawi, Goda Palekaite, Sina Seifee, Pia Louwerens, Simone Basani, Vijai Maia Patchineelam.
Fellow researchers: Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Alyssa Gersony, Andrea Brandão, Amy Pickles, Gary Farely, Chloe Janssens, Inga Gerner Nielsen, Vera Sofia Mota, Jimena Pérez Salerno, Sarah Pletcher, Anna Lugmeier, Aleksandra Borys, Carina Erdmann, Amari, Lore, Marian Rosa van Bodegraven, Mlondi Dubazane and Merle Vorwald.
LONG-ING 13 June 2023
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
The purpose of this workshop is to explore together (through talk, writing, scoring and movement) some key compositional questions. The particular focus is on length, experienced as sequence and duration, and how to achieve it. Long-ing: how to make things that carry on? (If only for a short while?) Once initiated, how and when to make them stop? Our work will involve looking closely at transitions: the links or breaks between the smaller parts of a composition, as well as beginnings and endings, rises and falls in energy and interest. It will draw on the processes operational in our most immediate surrounds (the different durations of the bodies, objects and forces composing our work-space) and use these as both constraints and materials. It will also involve bringing in certain powerful shapes and positions -- social as well as aesthetic shapes such as the circle, the horseshoe or the line –, thinking about the work they do, then testing how to move from the one to other (from the clearing to the path, the scene to the summary). ‘I wish it were longer,’ it is written somewhere in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, ‘for I like it truly.’ In the end, the project of long-ing might come down to this: to matters of feeling, liking or not liking, tensions producing curiosities or failing to, and we will consider these vital questions, too.
Working times: 11am- 1pm & 2-4pm
Plus: July 6, 6pm: book launch 'the long form' at rile*
a.pass is located on the 4th floor inside the Brussels Event Brewery building. The studio is wheelchair accessible via elevator.
Stage so near so far 13 June 2023
posted by: Kristien Van den Brande
Stage so near so far is a two-day workshop following the newly published issue of Pages and explores forms of reading based on the printed texts in the magazine.
The new issue consists entirely of plays and performance texts by Iranian women writers living in or outside Iran. Whether based on actual experience, fictional, or drawn from archives, these texts deal in one way or another with the question of the stage. They produce a contested space of performance that is inevitably linked to the performer's body, whose thresholds are stretched and contracted into potentially new forms of staging.
Plays or performance texts are by nature anticipatory. They are oriented toward the stage on which they may be performed. One could say that the performance text carries with it the anticipation of a stage but one that is radically outside given condition of staging: as writing it conveys the idea of a performance and an audience that is yet to come.
Reading plays and performance texts to an audience perhaps comes closest to invoking this anticipatory nature. Play reading is a particular form of delivery: we listen to the written performance rather than watch it being performed. It highlights the pre-performed status of the text, nonetheless placing us the audience in a contingent relation to the performance of that play. In a sense, the reading calls forth an audience before a stage that is there and not there.
During the workshop the participants will experiment with forms of reading a pre-selected number of the published texts to the group. They will read, reinterpret and expand on them through other means, including other texts and voices and material they see fit. The intention is to explore the limits of delivery, its auditory space and the notion of stage that may emerge from that.
Working times: 10:30am- 1pm & 2-4pm
Reach out if you want to participate in the workshop! Send an email to Hans @ apass.be, before June 23.
a.pass is located on the 4th floor inside the Brussels Event Brewery building. The studio is wheelchair accessible via elevator.
SPACES AS CONTRACTS Block III/2014
19 September 2023
posted by: Vladimir Miller
SPACES AS CONTRACTS
curated by Vladimir Miller (Associate Program Curator) and Nicolas Galeazzi (Program Coordinator)
25 / 09 - 05 / 11 / 2014
POLITICS OF CHANGEABILITY
weekly meetings by Vladimir Miller, Nicolas Galeazzi and Fotini Lazaridou
For this project we ask the researchers participants to engage individually for the duration of this block with a private or institutional space outside of a.pass. The task is: to negotiate a permanent, irreversible change in the architecture of that space and to document the negotiation process. Changing our spatial circumstances, for adapting them to our needs, is so foreign to us in daily life, that we associate those changes with violence and social upheaval, with revolutions and public resistance. And maybe this holds true and points us to how powerful architecture actually is in upholding existing social order. Architecture and the political connect and hinge on access to change. Hegemonies manifest themselves and are upheld by architectural structures. So every attempt to change invariably become a political attempt. We are framing the attempt of change as a research methodology.
Taking the steps to negotiate a permanent change in an architectural setup reveals the internal structures of power distribution and decision making for any given space. If you want to propose a change, who do you contact? who will you be referred to? which groups need to come together under which premises and structures of decision making to allow for that change? To follow up those challenges to changes is to slowly reveal a diagram of power, an architecture within architecture. In fact those two architectures are inseparable from each other and we should invent ways of speaking of them as a whole. Would we have privacy if we never had walls, what kind of togetherness would we have if availability of space was not limited? Our way of living and our way of building cannot be separated from each other.
08 - 12 / 09 / 2014
SPACE AND CONTRACT
a.pass B-workshop by Vladimir Miller
In this workshop we will look at the non physical borders of architecture: the contracts and agreements that create and maintain our built environment. If you take a quick look around you and ask yourself how the things that surround you came to be the way they are, you will notice that all of them are man-made or man-transformed. Those processes of transformation are all initiated and facilitated through negotiations and agreements. The first step to connect contracts and architecture is therefore to realize that architecture is a product of an agreement. For our purposes we can loosely define a contract as a performative agreement. During the workshop we will discuss further how architecture also embodies and ultimately maintains social agreements of that kind This workshop proposes to look at the relationship between the architectural space and the contract through a series of collective building actions. We will use a simple material to build improvised structures together in order to understand how are we negotiating collaboration, aim and space. Which rules and ideological presupposition are at work? Can we come up with contracts, scores and sets of rules which would produce other architectures? What is the relationship between our social contract and the architecture we are able to produce?
15 - 19 / 09 / 2014
‘IF YOU LIKE IT, THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE PUT A ROOF ON IT’ (and put some chairs under)
workshop-project by Jozef Wouters & Vladimir Miller
Roofs, in the arts, are often provided. In climates like Belgium, having a roof to work under is not a bad way to start. The roof protects the work (against more things than rain). But the roof also tends to isolate it. From time to time, artists grow tired of the roof and the walls and, hoping it doesn’t rain, decide to work on a square. The work of a scenographer is often more about walls than about roofs (light designers don’t like scenographers who propose roofs). Walls are flexible. Walls can be discussed. Comparing this, it turns out to be way harder to negotiate about a roof and to design a roofed space that is a square as well. This proposal is modifying the original “lets build a house together” idea, which was already presented at a.pass. The idea is, rather than overwhelming ourselves with the house building, to have a closer look (through working) at what we identify as two key elements of structuring community and social space by the means of architecture: roofs and chairs. In a much too simple way we can say that roofs bring a community together, while chairs can be used to structure its politics of attention and visibility. By avoiding walls we also subvert a key instrument to privatization of space. The space under the roof is accessible and public by design, we don't have to distribute power/keys.
29 / 09 - 03 / 10 / 2014
OCCUPYING DEMOCRACY
workshop by Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans
Luigi Coppola and Christophe Meierhans are working in different contexts and with different means about common decision taking procedures - or let’s say, alternative democracies. While Christophe proposes, in a lecture performance series, a new democratic system based on disqualifying people in charge, rather than electing them, Luigi is developing social choreographies as democratic models and is currently involved in a communal project of reorganizing the political, agricultural and economic system of a whole village in south Italy. Together they propose a research workshop where most components of its activities will have to be decided commonly with the workshop participants. Just the very basic conditions are pre-determined: the workshop occupies a public space with only one person at the time - 24h a day. The rest of the group develops, discusses and observes the occupation from a distance and takes the relevant decisions.
13 / 10 - 17 / 10 / 2014 ‘
FORMS OF LIFE - A TRAVELING PYJAMA PARTY
workshop by Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga
During a period of 6 days, each participants are invited to host the rest of the group in their apartment for a day. We will cook together, discuss a series of texts, take turns using the shower and read bedtime stories from a book picked up from the shelf. We may find out about each other’s morning habits, favorite smoothie combination, different ways of folding the sheets. For six days and five nights, this workshop will attempt to explore different ways of living and living together, focusing on the domestic sphere, our daily habits and their spatial manifestation, as well as on the ways these forms of life may or may not slip out of the window and down to the street. During each short residency we will collectively try to come up with a proposal for a small modification of or intervention in the space we are currently in, and negotiate its terms with our host. We may or may not carry out the proposal.
24 - 25 / 10 / 2014
POST-FOUNDATIONAL ARCHITECTURES
scenography workgroup meeting by Vladimir Miller
In 2012 a.pass merged the two sections a.s (advanced scenography) and a.pt (advanced performance training) to one singular program. This move was a consequence of understanding performance and scenography more and more as inseparable parts of one and the same discourse. But the merge of discourses finally reinforced the need for a new specification of the term “scenography”. What does it really mean beyond the classical stage practice? What else than a stage - and under which conditions - can be declared as a ‘scene’ and who or what is designing it? What distinguishes a ‘performative space’ from a ‘sceno-graphed’ space? For discussing these questions Vladimir Miller gathered in the fall 2013 some space practitioners to a first ‘Scenography Workgroup Meeting’. In October 2014 he calls for a second one. It will be a public work meeting between and with artists, architects, and scenographers who engage in the production of temporary and performative architectures. They will critically explore the definition of scenography simply as ‘post-foundational architectures’.
03 - 07 / 11 / 2014
PHARMAKON
workshop by Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre
This workshop explores the concept of pharmakon developed by the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler in his book ‘On pharmacology - how to live your life’. Stiegler uses the term pharmakon, which simultaneously stands for ‘poison’ and medicine’ as a symptom of an ever-spreading capitalism: an economy that does not only affect our labour, but does affect also our psychic ability and reduces our desires to simple drives. As both a medicine and a cure, Stiegler emphasizes the role of technology in our society as an ultimate pharmakon. In his ‘pharmacology’, its doubleness is investigated as a possible ‘cure’: a strategy to deal with the recovery of our desires, to go against the pressure of identification trends, brands and an ever-increasing individualization. Pharmakon stands for the technical know-how we develop the strategies we use to build a different kind of future and to create another concept of our togetherness. But this is not without risk: pharmaka are both a source of misery and abuse of power, but also a stimuli of what makes life worthwhile. The workshop is part of a ‘Thematics’ research project organized by Les Bains. Four artists are invited to explore in a three month residency set-ups of 'trans-individuation’: how do we form temporary moments of sharing, how can we come together in diversity, how can we build together an organization of work and knowledge sharing that is open-ended for producing and opening up to an outside world. A constant process of infection and transformation, through testing and adjusting the dosage of the pharmakon.
27-29 / 11 / 2014
PHARMAKON
conference by a.pass Research Center, Les Bains and Kaaitheater.
The Ancient Greek word ‘pharmakon’ means ‘poison’, ‘medicine’ and ‘scapegoat’. According to the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, our society urgently needs a ‘pharmacology’ to turn the tide of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment. He says that we must urgently question our culture. With which witchcraft can we turn the poison into medicine? Pharmakon: whitch culture? is a three-day ‘performative conference’ that examines artistic and theoretical strategies to counteract this pollution of our society’s culture. This congress is part of Thematics, a residency programme for artists and theorists run by Bains Connective workplace. This started in mid-October and is still on until 15 December, and is in its turn part of the transnational Pharmakon project organised by the Institut Nomade.
Program of the conference
Day 1: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-1-on-the-notion-of-pharmakon-in-the-thinking-of-bernard-stiegler Day 2: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-2-rethinking-economies
Day 3: https://www.kaaitheater.be/en/agenda/day-3-body-technologies
BLOCK III/2014
Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program: Damla Ekin Tokel, Danny Neyman, Gosie Vervloessem, Hans Van Wambeke, Hektor Mamet, Jeremiah Runnels, Kleoni Manousakis, Silvia Ramos Pereira, Stef Meul, Vanja Smiljanic, Verónica Cruz, Yaari Shalem
Research End Presentations: Anna Sörenson, Camila Aschner Restrepo, Victoria Myronyuk
Research Centre Researchers: Cecilia Molano Mala Kline Veridiana Zurita
Partners: Les Bains Kaaitheater
Contributors for workshops: Christophe Meierhans, Elke van Campenhout, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Jozef Wouters, Lilia Mestre, Luigi Coppola, Nicolas Galeazzi, Vladimir Miller,
Coordinators a.pass: Elke van Campenhout, Nicolas Galeazzi
Mentors Femke Snelting, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Geert Opsomer, Lilia Mestre
- case of: Vladimir Miller
THE FOREST MANIFESTO 13 October 2023
posted by: Lucia PalladinoABOUT WHAT YOU DO
or neurologycal atypical patterns
or how to practice anticapitalism
if you want to tell one thing you tell another one
if you want to do something you get distracted by something else
you look at the frame
you never know anything about the content
you ask yourself if the content is the structure
is the structure the content?
you always need a context
you always recognise a context
you are always out of context
you always go out
you are out
you always go somewhere else
walking
dreaming
remembering
you go further away
you get completely lost
in the forest
in the room
in the streets
you keep on forgetting what it is about
you keep on doing what you are doing
you keep on repeating what you are doing
you copy
you repeat
you copy
you repeat with differences
you have faith
lost in the forest you find things you would never imagine
you always learn something you don't know
you are an idiot
a pioneer
you never know what you are doing
you difract attention
continuosly
you do hundred things at the same time
or just one for an immeasurable amount of time
when you want to write you go reading in the library
when you want to focus you go walking in silence
when you go to the cafe reading philosphy you write looking at people dealing drugs or getting out of the toilets after wild and short sex
you never went to school
you have kids and an extended family spread around
you weave impossible things together
you always do something else
you climb
you poledance
you do everything obsessively
you do nothing obsessively
you stay still in your room per hours
you wander all the time
you translate into words
you try to grasp what it is about with words
you take notes
you don't
you write millions of letters
you always need an interlocutor
a distance between you and the other
you practice metamorphosis
you become the tree
you become the bramble
you become the wild pork
you always come back
but you are never the same
you keep on doing always the same by doing always something else
you always move away from you and you always end up with another you
you listen to a song that brings you to that place
you listen to that song again and again
you listen to echoes from the pink floyd
you are half bear and very sexy
but not
you are with lots of people
while being somewhere else
you prepare the conditions
you offer whisky
and home baked bread if you had time
you share the structure with the interlocutors
you share the scores with the participants
you are the participants
you never manage to grasp the whole
you are always missing an important part
you practice losing an important information
you practice losing the other
you practice losing
a view
the sense
the direction
but you are always taking responsability
you lead
you are not original
you are always in relationship with something
you are alone
you are with the others
you are obvious
you do operations
like + or -
you love mathematics
and you don't want to know too much about it
you don't know mathematics
that's why you love it
because you can wonder about it
you do mathematical operations though
you know it is about the operation and not the esthetic of it
you are baroc
you are minimalistic
you are punk
you are pop
you pop up possibilities, reveries, dreams
you do with what is there
you are very slow
and you change your life in an eye blinck
you trust not understanding
you practice non productivity
you practice not
you don't practice
you are lazy on the sofa
you are a mother
you always shift perspective
you practice one millimeters shifts
you trust non agreement
you struggle
you fucking enjoy
you open the box inside the box
the reference inside the reference
the bone inside the muscle
the organ inside the bone
the philosophy inside the organ
the flash inside the philosophy
you follow the rules
you don't
dear N.
you are my favourite writer, which is like telling warrior.
I enter with you, I open the window and a myriad of animals enter the room.
since a while I am no longer surprised, they are part of the extended family, or of this dislocated way in which my neurons practice alliances in bumpy paths. I feel the greasy warmth and pungent smell of proximity now that these beasts are here. but they are still gentle enough to avoid the piles of books as if they were trees in my room and, to my amazement, they do not eat them. perhaps the books are trees even in this transformed version and retain a sufficient degree of roughness to ensure their survival in the encounter with the other, and somehow they resist.
roughness is a quality of the fractal indeed... perhaps the book is the pattern of the fractal tree seen much much closer. a millimetric proximity.
the crates of the latest publication arrived at home, I pulled out all the books because I wanted them to physically occupy space and in the scattered stacks they actually occupy a much more chaotic and cluttered order of ideas, in which, needless to say, I obviously get lost.
I manage, however, to make my way confusedly to the closed fireplace and pull out the chessboard. I place your letter A in B7, a peripheral position of presence that I like, hoping that even though you have it before your eyes you will not recognise it as insidious.
it isn't. it brings the mystery of all those things we don't see even though we are standing next to them, or we are immersed into them, thinking we have understood.
we didn't.
this letter A in our game, in B7, is a metal spinning top like the one in the film inception, whirling around the four walls of the game box because there is nothing to disprove between us.
there it is, now the cow has risen from the quadruple bed in which I chose to sleep and sniffs at my game puffing curiously between my childhood and my white hair, and while breathing in its whirling whirlwind distractedly, it doesn't notice the spinning top dancing.
the weight of her presence is a peace of galactic times. as soon as I think of her, I feel like leaning my body against the philosophy contained in her mass. then she moves her head in the direction of the window and I see that the water level is rising. I sit on the windowsill and notice that the whole street is now covered by a layer of water some ten centimetres thick. the cow makes its way through the water with its weighted step and a bird comes to perch between its horns.
you and I have been here before. do you remember?
I thought I didn't have images, but look at this.
Look how I think through images.
Look how I can learn through them.
How I can be with the world through them.
I take the chessboard like a tray and holding the spinning top still balanced inside its square I gently place it on the water and the chessboard begins to sail.
apart from you and me, the road is deserted, but to say so seems absurd.
tomorrow luckily enough there's the djset with the beautiful trans she-friends.
I don't remember the address though.
L.
A global reading of the Gaza Monologues International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
10 November 2023
posted by: Kristof Van Hoorde
The ASHTAR Theatre in Ramallah is calling on theatres and artistic organisations around the world to perform the Gaza Monologues on Wednesday 29 November and share images of the performances on social media. The play, produced by the Palestinian theatre company in 2010, consists of 31 testimonies from children and young people who lived through the war in Gaza in 2008 and 2009. In short monologues they recount what happened to them during those weeks. As the violence in Gaza has viciously erupted again, the text is as relevant today as it was 13 years ago.
The United Nations General Assembly has declared November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. That is why ASHTAR Theatre is calling for the text to be performed again on that day.
Several cultural houses and many artists in Flanders and Brussels are responding to this call, as well as organisations in 40 other countries. Together with SOTA, Moussem and Lagrange points, a.pass will organise a reading of these monologues in different langues in the public space: at the statue of Godfrey of Bouillon in the heart of Brussels.
In exchange for the use of the text, a financial contribution will be made to ASHTAR Theatre’s fund, which is dedicated to the psychosocial well-being of Palestinian children and trauma therapy.
By reading these monologues, we want to express our solidartity with the Palestian people. Reading can give a voice to those unheard, provide a platform to the voices that are currently being silenced. We have read, heard and seen many testimonies of the victims of the brutal terrorist attack on 7.10.2023. We got to see their faces in the newspapers; on television, we heard their stories and got to know their families. And that is undoubtedly how it should be.
When it comes to Palestinians, however, we only hear numbers: 5.000 killed, 10.000 killed, 15.000 killed. Reading these 31 monologues is a call for putting a face and a voice to the thousands and thousands people, children, who lost their lives. Those that simply can’t remain unheard and unseen.
Wednesday November 29
15h-17h at The Whirling Ear Fountain
between Koningsplein/place Royale & Kunstberg/Mont des Arts 1000 Brussels
Open Call #1 Open Call #1 for collective research residency
07 April 2024
posted by: Kristof Van Hoorde
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 1st CALL ******------*****
What could be lying fallow in the arts?
This a call for a 2-month paid residency for collectives (existing or newly established on the occasion of this call, ideally 5 persons). The period of 2 months can be spread over a maximum of 5 months. Read more about the practical details further below. First we would like to give you more info about the context and the framework of this call.
CONTEXT? WHAT? MISSION?
“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness
For about 15 years a.pass has been hosting a co-learning environment for research-based practices, focusing on collaboration, performativity, self-organisation and transdisciplinarity. a.pass is an acronym for ‘advanced performance and scenography studies’: ‘performance’ refers to how practices act in their surroundings, ‘scenography’ is the production of space and context, ‘studies’ stands for a co-learning pedagogical approach and the prefix ‘advanced’ is a dedication to challenge the frames of existing disciplinary determinations.
In 2022 however, the Flemish Ministry of Education decided to end their financial support of a.pass by the end of 2023. a.pass managed to get a transition budget and after a period of conversations with different partners (Schools of Arts, workspaces, universities, places for artistic research), and working on a new plan in order to make a restart. Nevertheless, due to the financial inflation, the tight budgets and even budget cuts in the other institutions, the budgetary framework needed to make an adapted restart was impossible to reach without any structural support from the Ministry of Education.
To make a virtue of necessity we chose for a more radical, more riskful path towards a possible future. Both programs, the Postgraduate Program as well as the Research Center, came to an end in 2023. We chose to embrace the fallow land that lays before us and a.pass entered a period of reflection, reimagination, and ultimately reorganisation: a field when it lies fallow - seemingly 'doing nothing' but in fact engaging in a deep process of rejuvenation and enriching as Rajni Shah says, a space for attention and transformation. An integral aspect of this process involves opening it up by inviting others to participate, to think together, to be together, to imagine a sustainable way forward for artistic research practices and for a.pass as a re-generated soil for collectivity and research. Therefore, we are extending invitations to 3 collectives (existing or newly established on the occasion of this call) for a 2-month paid residency to reimagine our fallow land and its implications for collective artistic research practices, methodologies, and sustainable harvesting.
Recognising the socio-economic challenges facing collective arts, wherein artistic research is fully embedded into its soil, a.pass hopes to carefully and responsibly re-plant our fallow land in the coming years, to develop and articulate frameworks, methodologies, and possible vessels that can empower sustainable collective studio environments of the near-future.
“The research is an artistic practice, the practice is an artistic research. The research is guided by the questions arising in the artistic practice and, at the same time, the formulations of the research, its theories and methodologies, are feeding back into the practice which will return with new questions to the research.” Veridiana Zurita in In These CircumstancesIf research is intrinsic to artistic practice, what constitutes this fallow land, and how can it be filled with sustainability and radical institutional re-imagining, how can it be maintained responsibly and collectively? In other words, how can we nurture this space and ensure its sustainability? Are there methodologies, economic models and networks that can support this? Are there philosophical frameworks that can inspire this? Allowing land to lie fallow offers a transitional moment outside the circuit of capitalist value creation and destruction, as Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo suggest. Recognising the profound impact of an ideology of continuous progress on urban infrastructure, social dynamics, ecological processes, and the climate at large, this open call would like to seriously consider the concept of institutional lying fallow, beyond the capitalist logic of perpetual construction and deconstruction for the sake of scaling up.
Embracing the collective, collaborative, and shared spaces, along with the exchange of research practices, is essential for sustainable artistic work. This call invites collectives whose practice is grounded in reflection and collaborative efforts to make lying fallow feasible on an institutional level. What kind of institution could embrace the value of idleness? What institutional framework is necessary for artistic research, both as a practice and a field, and how can it be facilitated in a sustainably radical way?“I do not mean to phrase this as some kind of utopian ideal, but to begin an attempt at articulating the ways in which the work of lying fallow lay in relationship to the world around it, without assuming the nature or texture of that relationship.” Rajni Shah on Lying Fallow
CONDITIONS? FRAMEWORK? WHAT IS EXPECTED?
Each collective residency period serves as a reflection on institutional frameworks within the field of artistic research, acting as an experimental pedagogical platform where collectives can propose new models, methodologies, and ways of exchanging knowledge and practices. Each group is tasked with developing an institutional reimagining grounded in their own research focus and interests, while taking into consideration the concept of lying fallow. Each collective residency will need to devise a way. The hope is that the three residency periods will create a palimpsest of possibilities for a sustainable and radical artistic research institution, and a possible future for a.pass. Each collective research residency should consider the following two questions:
How to nurture a process of searching within a (collective) artistic practice? Or, how to do artistic research?
How does the process of (collective) artistic searching inspire others? Or, how to share artistic research with others?
WHAT DO WE OFFER?
We foresee a paid residency for 2 months for ideally 5 persons (min.3 - max.10 persons). There is a salary for 5 people (in case of 10 persons: the salary as well as the working time will be divided by 10, making sure people are paid correctly for the time they invest) (in case of less than 5 persons: the salary per person remains the same). The period of 2 months can be spread over a maximum of 5 months. You can indicate which periods would be convenient for your group. There will also be 2 return moments after the residency (to be organised later).
The salary will be €5.000/month/person (all costs & VAT incl.) It is also possible to be on the payroll with an artist contract, in that case the gross salary will be €3.250 (according to the official scale of PC 329) and a.pass will pay the extra costs for social security, holiday pay and taxes.
For people coming outside of Belgium, a maximum of €1.000 per month per person for travel and accommodation will be available (refund based on receipts). We don't have accommodation to stay, we only provide collective workspace.
Production budget per group: €2.000 for the whole residency (on top of the salaries). There will also be administrative/productional/ technical support with basic technical equipment. You will have access to the library and access to the archive and the update about earlier steps made in this transition process.
Space for the residency: depending on the period the place might change, since the nomadic character of a.pass at the very moment, but it will be in/around Brussels. Also collaboration with other organisations, to create intersection with other worlds, other realities could be possible. You can also indicate what kind of place you would need for this residency in your application.
Personal needs: in case you have questions regarding specific personal needs (family, accessibility,...) please contact our general coordinator.
WHO CAN APPLY ?
The residency programme is aimed at collectives from about 5 persons (minimal 3 - maximal 10) preferably having experience with artistic research, or with reflecting on institutions, or pedagogical or anthropological experience, but all disciplines are welcome. You can either work with an already constituted collective or with a newly and for this occasion only formed collective.
We call for voices less heard until now in the context of a.pass, and invite you to make your group a multitude of voices, with different perspectives and different disciplines and different expertises gathered around the table. With a transdisciplinary approach: creating intersections with other worlds, other realities (social practices, farming or cooking, or other fields like the political, ecological, economical, juridical, urbanistic, subcultures, etc…).
We value artistic research that is without hierarchy within methodologies, where every methodology is taken seriously (e.g. a dream equals statistics as methodology).
FOR WHICH PERIOD CAN YOU APPLY?
The period for the 3 residencies runs from September 2024 until August 2025.
We start with a first call for a first group for the period September 2024-January 2025.
The period for the 2nd group will be December 2024-April 2025 (call will be out in July) and for the 3rd group it will be April-August 2025.
DEADLINE
There will be 3 different calls. The calls could possibly be adapted according to the inputs from prior chosen collectives during this period. Interaction with the other chosen collectives is encouraged.
Deadline for the application for the 1st group (period Sept '24-Jan '25) is June 9th 2024.
Deadline for the application for the 2nd group (period Dec '24-May '25) is October 13th 2024. Call will be published on July 9th.
Deadline for the application for the 3rd group (period June-October 2025) is February 28th 2025. Call will be published on January 9th.
HOW TO APPLY?
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 1st CALL ******------*****
You can only apply by filling in the application form here below (emails will not be accepted as application).The application form consists of 4 parts:SELECTION
The selection will be made by the board and the General Assembly of a.pass and 2 external jury members. Please be aware that our advisory committee always reflects a diversity of fields, gender identity, and geographical knowledge. In the selection we pay attention to the complementary expertise, the diversity/multivoicedness within the collectives and the recognition of today’s challenges.
All groups applying for the first call will receive a reply by email by mid-July. Shortlisted groups will be invited for an online conversation to elaborate on their application before a final selection is made. Upon final selection, an agreement will be signed between the group and a.pass. In case of any changes in the composition of the group members (like the withdrawal or replacement of one of its members) a.pass must be informed and has to agree before the project can continue.
QUESTIONS? AND MORE INFO?
Send an email to the general coordinator at kristof@apass.be
Every application will be offered a copy of the a.pass publication In These Circumstances: a collection of methodologies, insights, experiences, ideas, researches from 15 years of a.pass. When you would like to receive a copy of this book beforehand, in order to use it for your application, it’s possible to order it for €15 only (shipping included), just send us an email.
GOOD TO KNOW!
In case you need space to come together and to prepare your application, you can always reach out to us, we’re very happy to help and share a.pass-spaces.
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SUMMER DRINK with a.pass and nadine
19 June 2024
posted by: Kristof Van Hoorde
work in progress by Diego Echegoyen (sound performance) & Davide Tidoni (film)
July 7 at 18h30
rue de Manchesterstraat 17, MolenbeekLet's celebrate SUMMER ! After the Spring Drink nadine and a.pass are very happy to invite you for their Summer Drink ! This time with work in progress (performance, sound and film) by Diego Echegoyen and Davide Tidoni.
Join us, together with our friends of nadine, for a free drink and 2 presentations!
PROGRAM:
– 18:30 - doors open + drink
– 19:00 - Invisible Cities by Diego Echegoyen
– 20:15 - The Birth of a Song/Come nasce una canzone by Davide Tidoni*** Invisible Cities by Diego Echegoyen (work in progress, 50 min)
Invisible Cities is the new performative project by Diego Echegoyen. This sound performance delves into how, when and under which conditions the cities and memories overlap, how they dislocate, appearing somewhere else and coexisting with different landscapes. During his residency at a.pass, Diego explored the transition from sound installation to performative forms, incorporating elements and techniques from sound art, theatre and expanded choreography. The installation shifts to a performative sound piece by unleashing a choreography of shadows and lights as a glimpse of an ever-murmuring fictive city. Is it a matter of memories or perception, or is it about Migration? How can it be that a place reappears in another and then they stick together? How does it speak about the presence/absence? In any case, they all serve as backdrops and catalysts for Diego’s creative process. His relation to Brussels, where he currently resides, and Buenos Aires marks the pace of his work as the memories bridge one city to the other.
*** The Birth of a Song/Come nasce una canzone by Davide Tidoni (work in progress, 75min + aftertalk)
The video The Birth of a Song continues Davide's research on voice, protest songs, and the NoTAV movement (more info). The work shows the clashes between police and NoTAV, which occurred in Valsusa on July 4, 2011, and links them to the song, Il furbo celerino (The Sneaky Riot Cop), created by the NoTAV movement itself a few months after the clashes. The work reflects on protest songs as situated and relational gestures, actions intervening within a specific temporal contexts, expressing force and meaning in response to contingent situations.
WHAT COULD BE LYING FALLOW IN THE ARTS?
“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness
a.pass has been inviting collectives, existing or newly established ones on the occasion of this call, for a 2-month paid collective research residency. In total there will be three rounds, for this first round, with deadline June 9, we have made the selection of the first group!
In total we received 55 applications, our jury went through all the applications and selected 4 collectives with whom they had a conversation. Eventually, after listening to all 4 collectives, the jury (Heike Langsdorf, Lilia Mestre, Hendrik De Smedt, together with the 2 external jury members Ash Bulayev and Kopano Maroga) has unanimously decided to give the opportunity for this 1st call to the collective One Field Fallow (OFF), an already existing collective housing in a former night shop in Brussels.During reading all the 55 application letters we received, it came clear that for us that this first round of residencies will focus on local collectives (based in Belgium or connected to in a concrete way). We believe that One Field Fallow has the greatest capacity to offer a radical experimentation of a collective re-imagining of institutional status quo, through the lens of lying fallow proposed by the Open Call. OFF is a Brussel based collective that already has a project-space ( a former night shop) type of collective space, and is already offering an alternative to the institutional status quo, through their ongoing activities (permaculture, public space commoning, an inclusive approach to their activities, open space and self-organization methods, etc.). Because of this we believe that this collective could benefit from the additional support and malleable infrastructure offered by our Open Call, in order to expand and focus (even if temporary during the timeline of the Open Call) their experimentation and institutional reimagining enabled by the financial and other resources offered by the Open Call. They will start in September and will spread the residency over 5 months. Soon we will give more info about their residency program, in the meantime, find out who they are by following this link.
Open Call #2 Open Call #2 for collective research residency
20 August 2024
posted by: Kristof Van Hoorde
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 2ND CALL ******------*****
What could be LEARNING GROUND or GROUND lying fallow WITHin the COLLECTIVE arts ?
This is the second call for a 2 months paid artistic research residency for collectives, existing or newly established on the occasion of this call, ideally 5 persons (min.3 max. 10 - NOT for individuals nor duo’s).
CONTEXT ?
“In a world in constant motion there is an ecological imperative to embrace the value of idleness” Michael Chieffalo and Julia Smachylo in Lying fallow: the value of idleness
By the end of 2023 a.pass (‘advanced performance and scenography studies’) entered a period of (self-)reflection and reimagination, a period of lying fallow: a field when it lies fallow - seemingly 'doing nothing' but in fact engaging in a deep process of rejuvenation and enriching as Rajni Shah says, a space for attention and transformation. Due to the ministry’s decision to end their financial support (based on radical savings and political choices) we were forced to end both of our educational programs: the Postgraduate Program as well as the Research Center that were at the heart of our co-learning environment for research-based practices came to an end, and by this also the educational institution a.pass has been for 15 years. The organisation entered a transition process, and an integral aspect of this process involves opening it up by inviting others to participate, to think together, to be together, to re-imagine a sustainable way forward for artistic research practices and their pedagogical aspects. Therefore, we are extending invitations to three collectives for a two-month paid residency to reimagine our fallow land and its implications for collective artistic research practices, methodologies, and sustainable harvesting. The first collective, One Field Fallow, has been selected in the first round in July and they will start their residency in September 2024. This call is to invite a second collective into this process.
CONDITIONS ? FRAMEWORK ? EXPECTATIONS ?
This call invites a second group for a collective research residency that serves as a reflection period on institutional frameworks within the field of artistic research, acting as an experimental pedagogical platform where collectives can propose new models, methodologies, and ways of exchanging knowledge and practices.
The selected collective will be tasked with developing a reimagination of a possible institutional framework grounded in their own research focus and interests, while taking into consideration the concept of lying fallow. What kind of container, institutional framework, is necessary for artistic research, both as a practice and a field, and how can it be facilitated in a sustainably radical way? The collective research residency should consider the following two questions:
“I do not mean to phrase this as some kind of utopian ideal, but to begin an attempt at articulating the ways in which the work of lying fallow lay in relationship to the world around it, without assuming the nature or texture of that relationship.” Rajni Shah on Lying Fallow
WHAT DO WE OFFER ?
WHO CAN APPLY ?
FOR WHICH PERIOD CAN YOU APPLY ?
The period for the 2nd residency will be December 2024-May 2025
DEADLINE ?
The deadline for the application for the 2nd group (period December 2024 -May 2025) is Sunday October 13th 2024 (23:59 CEST).
HOW TO APPLY ?
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 2ND CALL ******------*****
You canonly apply by filling in the APPLICATION FORM here below (emails will not be accepted as application).******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 2ND CALL ******------*****
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 2ND CALL ******------*****
SELECTION ?
The selection will be made by 3 members of the board and the General Assembly of a.pass and 3 external jury members. Please be aware that our advisory committee always reflects a diversity of fields, gender identity, and geographical knowledge.
1) a first selection will be made by the general coordinator, based on the following very basic criteria:
- is all the information requested in the form present?
- is it a collective (3-10 pers.) applying or not ? (individuals and duo’s will not be selected)
- is it a research application or not? (project and production applications will not be accepted)
2) a second selection will be made by the jury: each eligible application will be read by at least 2 jury members (each time a duo consisting of an a.pass member and an external jury member), they will look into the following criteria:
- how the notion of artistic research has been dealt within the proposal
- the pedagogical aspects of the proposal
- the proposed methodologies
- diversity of backgrounds, gender identities, and/or expertise within the groups
- the recognition of today’s challenges
3) a third selection will be made by all jury members: maximum 5 groups will be selected and invited for an online talk with the jury to elaborate on their application before a final selection is made.
4) a final selection will be made after the talk with the 5 groups, the jury will discuss the group they selected with the board and General Assembly of a.pass
All groups applying for this 2nd call will receive a reply by mid-November 2024.
Upon final selection, an agreement will be signed between the group and a.pass. In case of any changes in the composition of the group members (like the withdrawal or replacement of one of its members) a.pass must be informed and has to agree before the project can continue.
QUESTIONS ? AND MORE INFO ?
Check out our website or send an email to the general coordinator at kristof@apass.be
Every application will be offered a copy of the a.pass publication In These Circumstances: a collection of methodologies, insights, experiences, ideas, researches from 15 years of a.pass. In case you want it sooner, to get inspired to write your application, you can ask for the PDF or order a physical copy of the book (€15, shipping within Europe included). Just send us an email.
“The research is an artistic practice, the practice is an artistic research. The research is guided by the questions arising in the artistic practice and, at the same time, the formulations of the research, its theories and methodologies, are feeding back into the practice which will return with new questions to the research.” Veridiana Zurita in In These Circumstances
Open Call #3 Open Call #3 for collective research residency
09 January 2025
posted by: Kristof Van Hoorde
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 3rD CALL ******------*****
HOW DO YOU CREATE THE CONDITIONS FOR YOUR COLLECTIVE ART PRACTICE TO LIE FALLOW?
“(Lying Fallow) is, above all, a way of providing a frame within which a group of people might work through some ideas together. It’s a simple premise but feels urgent and exciting to me, because it invites the possibility of great change without determining how that change might happen, where it might come from, or what it might be.” Rajni Shah
This is the third and final open call launched by a.pass for a 2 month paid artistic research residency for collectives.
This open call is to find a collective having an artistic practice that is research-based and active already at the time of submitting the application.
The selected collective is already busy with, or interested in, organising a sustainable 'laying fallow' period, observing what happens there, and in relation to other periods of production/development/presentation. Also, the collective wishes to share with others the research tools and methodologies used during/for the fallow period, and transmitting what was found fruitful during the residency.
The selected collective is ideally made of 5 persons (min.3 max. 10 - not individuals nor duos).
CONTEXT? What does it mean to lie fallow during the research residency at a.pass?
At the end of 2023 a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) decided to enter a period of (self-)reflection, attentiveness, and transformation, a period of lying fallow one might say.
A field when it lies fallow seems to 'do nothing' but in fact engages in a deep process of rejuvenation. Embracing a fallow time has been the weighted answer from a.pass side to another decision taken previously by the ministry of culture: the one of ending their financial support to the organisation, which meant forcing a.pass to end its educational programs in place at that time. What became quickly clear after receiving this news is that the organisation would cease existing the way it was, and that indeed a fallow time to explore possible futures, being disappearance or taking other forms of life, was needed.
For us, as a.pass current team, embracing fully this fallow time means to give time/space/energy to fostering the dialogue with different artistic collectives busy with similar concerns, like: how to lie fallow in order to re-imagine possible frameworks grounded in the focus of artistic research? What kind of container or framework is necessary for artistic research, both as a practice and a field, and how can it be facilitated in a sustainably radical way?
That is why we create the conditions for three residencies where collectives can reflect on frameworks within the field of artistic research, give attention to what is there already in terms of practices, methods, research tools, and to what might happen or be transformed during a fallow period. The complete cycle of the three residencies wishes to act as an experimental pedagogical platform for dialogues between the collectives, a.pass, and anyone else who is interested in looking at sustainable art research models, methodologies, and ways of transmitting knowledge and practices.
The first selected collective, One Field Fallow, researches in Belgium, mostly in Brussels, where they run a space open to polyvocality. The collective has been initiated by a group of engaged native artists and researchers interested in questioning and learning through inclusion, activism, and solidarity in different fields. The second collective, Topote de Acahual, is the artistic and pedagogical branch of the ngo Vivero de Tebanca based in Tebanca, Los Tuxtlas rainforest, Mexico. The members of Topote are Mexican researchers and artists who come from different practices, and explore various artistic-pedagogical tools in order to empower the life and heritage of the Los Tuxtlas. With this third open call we are looking for a collective who could be complementary to the first two, to widen the horizon of the research and exchange happening during/through the residencies.
CONDITIONS? FRAMEWORK? EXPECTATIONS?
“Lying Fallow as a frame that can embrace the exhausted and the silent and the passionate and the engaged in an act of listening.” Rajni Shah
During their residency time the selected collective should take into account what read in the paragraphs above (a.pass context) plus the following three questions:
All the above mentioned questions wish to guide the collectives in exploring during the residency, their own set of research methods, practices and questions they are busy with already, and/or to rethink them. The residency is not production-oriented and does not intend to ask the collective to present a project. It wishes rather to welcome proposals from collectives who (want to) enter a fallow period to reimagine radical possible ways of doing artistic research in an even wider, inter-connected collective dimension. We value the work of collectives drafting models or spaces of artistic research through collaboration, rhizomatic approaches, solidarity, self-organisation, alternative ways of funding, etc. Therefore challenging Western, neo-capitalistic, academic, statal parameters applied to learning and sharing in the realm of artistic research.
In the first instance, the selected collective is invited to share with the other two collectives, plus the a.pass coordinator and the a.pass curator, what is found fruitful (in their view, and in terms of methodologies, practices, research tools..) during their residency time. Secondly, they will be invited to think how they want to transmit such practices/models/tools to others (peers, experts, students, generic audience) during a symposium organised and curated by a.pass, taking place in different locations in Brussels during December 2025. Please note: the specific time, place, and modalities of engagement of the collectives in the symposium are to be confirmed and discussed during the residency.
WHAT DO WE OFFER?
WHO CAN APPLY ?
The residency programme is aimed at collectives:
We extend an especially warm welcome to applications from people of colour, people from the Global South, people with disabilities, displaced people, people of the LGBTIQA+ community.
FOR WHICH PERIOD CAN YOU APPLY?
The period for the 3rd collective will be JUNE - OCTOBER 2025
DEADLINE?
The deadline for the application for the 3rd collective (period June - October 2025) is FRIDAY FEBRUARY 28th 2025 (23:59 CEST).
******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 3rD CALL ******------*****
HOW TO APPLY?
You can only apply by filling in the APPLICATION FORM here below(emails will not be accepted as application). We request you to upload all materials combined in 1 PDF - please name each chapter clearly :******------***** IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS 3rD CALL ******------*****
SELECTION?
The selection will be made by members of the board and the General Assembly of a.pass and 3 external jury members. Please be aware that our advisory committee always reflects a diversity of fields, gender identity, and geographical knowledge.
PROCEDURE:
The selection will be made by 3 members of the board and the General Assembly of a.pass and 3 external jury members. Please be aware that our advisory committee always reflects a diversity of fields, gender identity, and geographical knowledge.
1) a first selection will be made by the general coordinator, based on the following very basic criteria:
All groups applying for this 3rd call will receive a reply by mid-April 2025.
Upon final selection, an agreement will be signed between the group and a.pass. In case of any changes in the composition of the group members (like the withdrawal or replacement of one of its members) a.pass must be informed and has to agree before the project can continue.
QUESTIONS? AND MORE INFO?
Check out our website or send an email to the general coordinator at kristof@apass.be
Every application will be offered a copy of the a.pass publication In These Circumstances: a collection of methodologies, insights, experiences, ideas, researches from 15 years of a.pass. In case you want it sooner, so you can use it for your application, you can ask for the PDF or order a physical copy of the book (€15, shipping within Europe included). Just send us an email.
“The research is an artistic practice, the practice is an artistic research. The research is guided by the questions arising in the artistic practice and, at the same time, the formulations of the research, its theories and methodologies, are feeding back into the practice which will return with new questions to the research.” Veridiana Zurita in In These Circumstances
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