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- 16 October 2015
- Veridiana Zurita
- 24 October 2015
- 24 October 2015
- Adriana La Selva / Mika Juusela
- 05 October 2015
- 09 October 2015
- Adva Zakai / Raphaële Jeune
- 18 September 2015
- 20 September 2015
- Bureau d'Espoir
- Abbeye de Forest
- 01 September 2015
- 31 December 2015
- case of: Elke van Campenhout
- Bureau d'Espoir
- Abbeye of Forest
- 09 November 2015
- 22 November 2015
- Juan Dominguez
- a.pass studio
- 12 October 2015
- 22 October 2015
- Vladimir Miller
- a.pass studio
- 14 September 2015
- 02 October 2015
Pharmakon : whitch culture ?
‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’, is a Thematics artistic research residency project, taking place in Brussels from the 15th of October until the 15th of December 2014. This residency is one of the stages in the development of the broader, transnational ‘Pharmakon’ research project undertaken by Institut Nomade. The ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’ conference will last three days and will explore the theoretical and artistic approaches to dealing with an increasingly toxic economic, ethical and cultural environment, in search of other techniques by which to connect, share and imagine the fabric of our togetherness. As a ‘performative conference’, this meeting involves artists as well as theorists, dissolves the boundaries between ‘specialists’ and ‘public’, and between ‘performers’ and ‘theorists’, and opens up a space for desire and reflection.
Thematics is organized by Bains Connective, in collaboration with Institut Nomade, the a.pass research center and Kaaitheater.
Pharmakon: whitch culture?
This Thematics project builds on the notion of ‘pharmakon’ as coined by the contemporary philosopher Bernard Stiegler. In ancient Greece, ‘pharmakon’ was understood both as ‘poison’ and ‘medicine’, and in some cases also as ‘scapegoat’. The word might mean either the one or the other depending on the context, which implies a certain knowledge, or ‘knowledge-ability’. A skill of dosage and use, witchcraft involving insight and imaginative contextualization.
At the ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture?’ conference, a group of artists and theorists will investigate the notion of ‘pharmakon’ in our society. As Stiegler suggests in his analysis of the need for a ‘pharmacology’ to counter the poisonous fumes of economic, ethical and cultural impoverishment, it is clear that the fabrication of our culture(s) has urgently to be (re)questioned. What are the categories we use to produce and develop the culture in which we ‘individuate’ ourselves? What is the change in ‘technics’ that is needed to re-imagine our desires, stepping out of ourselves, as ex-isting in the public sphere? What sort of witchcraft is demanded from us, as artists, citizens and thinkers, to come up with the right spells and potions, and to dose our practices to transform poison into medicine.
The ‘Pharmakon: whitch culture’ conference is part of the Thematics two-month research residency project, organized by Bains Connective, which brings together artists and theorists to work on, share and perform their concerns on this matter. They experiment on developing artistic remedies and toxic fumes, in search of a reformulation of the agency of the artist in contemporary society. In this way the Pharmakon project inserts itself into a growing movement of artistic initiatives that engage more directly in the political sphere, that want to make the public, the other, the citizen, part of their researches, that question how the artistic relates to the world we live in. These artistic interests speak of the willingness to restate desire in its fullness as a societal driving force. A desire that is not reduced to economic drives, but that is structured and transformed in accordance with the practices and thoughts of its members. Or more simply: we speak about set-ups that could inform and produce knowledge, and which could question the drives and urgencies that produce our social agencies.
Participants in the Thematics residency:
Alexandre Le Petit, Flora Pilet, Sophie Quénon, Lilia Mestre, Elke Van Campenhout, Joséphine de Weck, Michiel Vandevelde, Michiel Reynaert, Veridiana Zurita, et al.
Guests invited to the conference:
Bernard Stiegler, Pieter de Buysser, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Maika Lond , ...
Partners of the project :
(1) Bains Connective
Thematics is a two-month residency program for artists and theoreticians, curated by Lilia Mestre within the framework of Bains Connective. Every time the residency addressed another topic, deemed to be urgent or relevant for the current state of (artistic) affairs. During this period, different artists and thinkers share their works, strategies and ideas. The work space Bains Connective creates the initial context and set-up, and offers work spaces and a communal starting point by inviting artists, theoreticians, academics, politicians and activists to add and contribute to the research. As a basis for the exchange, we organize weekly meetings as well as two public encounters, where the participating artists can share their work in a format of their choice. Starting from these basic principles, we work closely together on developing ways to share interests and processes of work.
Thematics develops for each residency project a strategy of questioning and interviews that follow up and register the artistic processes so as to create a written publication that reflects every Thematics residency. These publications are also a working tool that expresses to necessity to communicate, to speak out, to share the practices, methodologies and artistic trajectories with each other and a larger public.
(2) Institut Nomade
The activities of the Institut Nomade are fundamentally trans-disciplinary in nature. Concerned with how the notion of "performativity" resonates in both artistic practices and cultural constructions, the Institut conducts research into the ontology of performative language, the relationship between the performer/author and the stage, and the stage itself as a scene of collective individuation and thus a form of micro-politics. The global project of the Institut could be described as an inquiry into "modern culture", that mobilizes the conceptual tools provided by the performative arts, the heritage of J.L Austin's concept of performativity, and Bernard Stiegler's contemporary elaboration of the idea of the "pharmakon". The Institut is concerned with all forms of writing that compose our public voice– forms that we create by and for ourselves. This research takes on a variety of formats including interviews, performances, texts, images, videos, installations, soundscapes, etc. The interaction between these media is organized by rhizomatic systems of writing and by experimental loops of representation that participants are invited to appropriate and reconstruct.
(3) a.pass research center
a.pass is an artistic research environment that develops research on performativity and scenography, in an international artistic and educational context. a.pass offers a one-year artistic research training program at post-master level for artists and theoreticians, based on the principles of self-organization, collaboration and transdisciplinarity. a.pass participants develop an independent artistic research project, with a personalized curriculum in a shared and collectively created research environment.
The a.pass research center develops, documents and archives tools for qualitative and relevant artistic research practices. The research center uses this growing archive to communicate and interact with the artistic and educational field and functions as a forum for the development of a critical approach on
artistic research. a.pass emphasizes the relation between the research practices and a broader societal field, and encourages engaged transdisciplinary practices.In the context of its artistic research center, a.pass offers a tailor-made PhD trajectory for doctoral students that gives the possibility to develop the practice-based part of their PhD research in collective research environment.
(4) Kaaitheater
The Kaaitheater is a Brussels and international arts centre which has been a leader in theatre, dance, music and performance for over thirty five years.
A number of artists and companies have been closely associated with the Kaaitheater for many years: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Rosas, Jan Decorte, Jan Lauwers & Needcompany, Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods, Ictus, tg STAN and Tristero, and from abroad Jérôme Bel, Raimund Hoghe, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Jonathan Burrows, The Wooster Group and others. From 2013 to 2016 Eleanor Bauer, Kris Verdonck, Mette Ingvartsen and Ivo Dimchev are our artists in residence.
Social and ecological topics are a prominent element in Kaaitheater’s work. The Kaaitheater is part of two European networks: Imagine 2020, that focuses on art and climate change, and House on Fire, supporting productions that are intended to contribute to a critical debate on political and social issues.
The Kaaitheater presents about 75 productions each season and welcomes its visitors to two locations in the canal zone in Brussels: the Kaaitheater itself (the large theatre, on Sainctelettesquare) and the Kaaistudio’s (small theatre and rehearsal studios, near Dansaertstraat).
APPLY TO THE A.PASS PROGRAMMESOpen Call
SIGN UP TO EVENTORDER
the new structure for dedicated mentorings (3x2 or 2x3)
The dedicated mentors for this block are Abu Ali * Toni Serra, Bart Van den Eynde, Lilia Mestre and Elke Van Campenhout. Since some participants preferred to have a more in-depth contact with their mentors, we changed the set-up of the sessions as follows: out of the four mentors each participant chooses
-3 mentors and has 2 sessions with each of them (regular)
OR
-2 mentors and has 3 sessions with each of them (intense)
Since the dedicated mentors each are responsible for one day during the first Workshop on Artistic Research, we will be able to decide on who, what and how at the end of the first week.
On top of these mentors you will also be mentored a peer participant of your choice who will follow you throughout the whole block, and with whom you meet also at least twice. For this block we would like you to experiment with the mentoring format, and to contribute to our Toolkit for Mentoring, by adding alternative formats for mentoring through practice, movement, double self-interviews, through intermediary pets, objects or cooking sessions, ... Whatever you think might get the juices flowing.
the INTERVIEW SESSIONS
Throughout the block each participant also develops an interview practice, in 3 sessions, based on questions that appeared in their own cases. The three stages of the interview throughout the block can take on different forms: through language, audio or image, addressing one person at the the time, or conducting (small) group interviews. Written or spoken or walked. In the end the three stages of the interview will serve as a starting point for the sessions during End Week in PAF.
Settlement VIII TOWARDS FRAGILITY
01 August 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
(fragile: unstable, disintegrating, malleable, temporary, sketchy, self-sabotage, needs care, gone when not needed, anti-territorial, only there as long as invested in, can’t hold)
I have some questions:
What can be a truly feminist architecture? One that does not create territory, does not claim, does not exclude. (Will society be different if it builds in another way, or is it the other way around, or are they actually inseparable form one another?). How much of the utopia of Occupy is due to the haphazard conditions of camping and DIY? Should we be sad that it’s gone? Or is its ability to disappear its most precious, most pioneering trait? Every social movement must find, claim and hold a space or perish, yes? – become an institution or die.
But how to keep on dying?
Processes of institutionalization are also processes of architectural shifts away from the fragile: from sticks and fabrics to metal and concrete, from sit-ins on the floor to tables and chairs, from open spaces to chambers with doors, from expanding circles to sitting arrangements. All of these we justify with productivity concerns. So maybe the question is: how to be productive and fragile at the same time?
Settlement is a spatial proposal that tries to sustain its architectural fragility hoping in this way to initiate a temporary social, organisational and ideological one. Simply put, it is a collective workspace, a camp and a hangout, open to all who step by and would like to contribute to it. Like many other such meetings it is a place of informal exchange and presentation. It is a space for practices instead of products, a place where our individual ideas and processes have not yet achieved a solid state and can flow into each other.
Settlement starts with a haphazard collection of materials in an otherwise empty space Everything one might need for one’s work has to be built and (re)invented there. There are no tables, no chairs, and the materials and objects resist easy categorization and usability. They have to be mis-used, adapted, they have a will of their own. The built environment has to be negotiated (with) on the level of the object. There is a potential in a thing being one thing one day, and a totally different thing the day after. There is also a potential in a thing changing hands. (You will be surprised how quickly ownership is established from communal beginnings: you just have to take pick up something and move it somewhere else.)
Settlement is a space that tries very hard not to settle. Its instability naturally works against the establishing of clear boundaries between „your space“ and „my space“, what hopefully follows from that is that it is very difficult to establish boundaries between „your work“ and "my work". I believe that practice is bound by space, and if space gets shaky, unstable, shareable, so does the practice.
By starting from scratch Settlement invites a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. In the course of the three weeks Settlement lets your particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the encoded behaviors of ready-made spaces such as “table”, “studio”, “meeting”, “gallery”, “venue”, “library”, etc. The politics of practice in terms of co-habitation and co-working, of claiming one’s own space, inviting or excluding the outside, communication of ideas, inviting change and influence are all there to be questioned within this setup. As a practice is (in some ways) „re-built“ during Settlement, one can come to question its very construction.
dirty room 01 August 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
In these 10 days we will work together. That would be the most important. The togetherness. Working together, spending time together.
Agenda??? What is that, maybe something to discover???
I will ask you a lot of questions, over and over. From the begining till the end.
I will question you, you will question everybody, we will experience suspiciousness I guess.
In which conspiracy are you involved at the moment?
Angles, all the time different ones.
We will trip for sure, all kinds of trips or maybe not all kinds but different trips.
We will share expectations.
We will build new fictions and devises.
We will not go out, we will be trapped like el angel exterminador from Buñuel and we will not go, the negative of el angel exterminador. We will watch this movie again.
We will cook for each other.
We will sleep together.
We will gather people, as many as we can. We have to beat the Guinness record.
We will spend time, we will understand time and the time we want and what we want from time.
what are we going to do together that we cannot do alone?
we will build tension, all kind and we will have to hold it. how? together.
we will work in continuity. what is that?
also in friendship.
in simultaneity.
where the fuck are you?
Is there any infiltrant among us?
What are you doing here?
Follow me through the rabbit hole and lets visit Wonderland.
Mobile MNSTRY 01 August 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
The Mobile MNSTRY (Monastery, Ministery, Monster-y) is a collective location project, organised in and around the previous Abbeye of Forest. The MNSTRY will install a temporary (monastic) community that lives and works within a limited area, following a shared time score and accepting the rule of poverty for the duration of the workshop.
During this time all activities of the MNSTRY will be organised within the public contexts of Forest, and developed as an open invitation to the neighbourhood and passers-by. During the workshop the time score of the MNSTRY will bit by bit start to change: the original 'monastic' score will be taken over by the members of the community, who will start to decide on what there is to be done, what we will spend our shared time on, and what is it that is needed today, here, and for whom.
The workshop is part of the larger project Cité d'Espoir (part of the REcommerce social-artistic initiative, organised by Bains Connective) which develops a constant practice for about six weeks (starting half October) with intense public moments during the weekends. The Mobile MNSTRY starts out with one member and through a call on the internet, the development of the workshop but also through local advertising the community starts to grow.
The ‘cité’ of the Abbaye will be renamed ‘Cité d’Espoir’ and will house the artists and their guests, supporting their ‘monastic’ practices. Cité d’Espoir will develop into a social meeting place, with a silent space to hang out, daily soup dinners, a library and regular ritual and other activities. The temporary monks start to develop their practices on the basis of poverty, social service and artistic transformation. Neighbours and interested people can pass by to have a personal ritual made for them, but we also want to involve groups and youngsters to develop group public rituals with us, based on their needs and visions. For example, we develop mourning rituals for pets or family members, light rituals for those who can not stand the cold anymore, love rituals for the lonely, political change rituals for the disengaged, etcetera.
We also give short-term ritual training workshops: how to develop your own rituals, how to gather material for your rituals, based on the Psychomagic methodology of Jodorowsky, or the artistic methodologies of the temporary monks. The silent café in the Cité d’Espoir offers free tea and something, and would become the starting point for all projects. The monks would sleep on the premises and be available most of the time for a talk or a ritual ‘guidance’. On Sundays there is also a kind of ‘service’, which is not religious but only aims at developing an alternative ‘common’ event for the neighbourhood in the margins of the market.
For more information: read the self-interview of Elke Van Campenhout with Elle (Bureau d'Espoir) here.
SELF-INTERVIEW Elke - Elle 01 August 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
INTRO:
Elle sings:
i am free to give
what anyway isn’t mine
the energy i suck from the earth
and breathe back into the other,
i am free to embody the powers of this city
oscillating with ideas
that enter my bloodstream and exit my body
amplified, ordered, and displaced,
i am free to vibrate with the desire of the other
that lets me discover my soul, my knowledge and my being
i am free to let go of fear of losing
what anyway wasn’t mine:
the identities i share with so many others
the security blankets of opinion, belief and good taste.
i am free not to be bound
by my dependence on respect, affirmation and flattery
i am free to be what i anyway always was:
a wave, a thought, a vessel or a tree.
Elke (a.pass researcher):
Elle, with the new project ‘Mobile MNSTRY’ you again tackle some of the issues you have been dealing with in your extended project Bureau d’Espoir already for some years: the recuperation and embrace of practices and terms that have been categorized, marginalized and recuperated by capital strategies.
For example: you worked on the mobilization of the concept of ‘anorexia’ in the Hunger and Anorexic practices as tools for rethinking our relation to the consumption of food, and our own place in the ‘food chain’ of capitalism. You worked in ‘Battery’ on the embrace of circumstances that are considered detrimental to the ‘healthy’ development of the individual: 21 days of imprisonment, hunger and lack of private space as a spiritual-aesthetic machine for the production of hope and change.
Now you propose the Mobile Monastery: a practice that is based on rethinking the monastic rule, the disciplining and deep experience of the everyday, introducing ‘poverty’ and social service (karma yoga) into the practice. Your proposals all seem to verge on the extreme, uncomfortable, and frankly, possibly moralistic. How do you plan to make this collective practice seem inviting to collaborators.
Elle:
Although it is often perceived as such, my practice is not one of asceticism. It is rather a practice of finding pleasure, or even liberation, in reducing the overall demand for entertainment and ‘keeping busy’ that order our daily realities. If I introduce the ‘poverty’ demand to the temporary monks in the MNSTRY, this is not so much an act of moralistic self-deprivation, as it is an invitation for an active and vitalizing rethinking of our relationship and dependence on money: on subsidies, a steady income, a minimum requirement of comforts and ‘good circumstances’ to work and produce in.
A lot of our thinking as artists and citizens is based on a conscious or unconscious fear to fall out of the grid of organized society, to become invisible to the powers that matter. What the Mobile MNSTRY proposes is to do exactly that. To live without everything we think we need to be able to ‘live’, work, enjoy life, stay connected. By giving up on these things, we are able to install other connections to the city, the environment, our practice and other people. By taking away the markers of our social position (identity card, money, private space), we enter into another reality. A reality marked by a collective discipline, a shared purpose, an outward orientation. Together we rethink what it means to be alive: what kind of practices can keep us not only alive, but also charged, and aware of each other and the outside world.
The Mobile MNSTRY (which you can read as Monastery, but also as Ministry, or Monster-y), is an exercise in pragmatic ritualism: it opens up a space and time to reorganize our attachments and preconceptions to capital values. To make space for other ways to mobilize time, space and artistic practice, away from the confinement of the studio, the artistic workspace. To test our knowledges on another playground of society: to see what it is we can do with what we think we believe in.
Elke:
You could say that you try to rethink the economies of desire that rule our everyday lives. Making use of very diverse practices borrowed from spiritual body work, inventive object design, philosophical reconceptualization and artistic practice experience. But at the same time this ‘economic liberation’ is presented as quite a disciplining practice: proposing collective day rhythms, the denial of private space, limited resources to work with. In that sense, your practices might also seem old-fashioned, frugal, and out of tune with the individual freedom of the artist/collaborator/citizen to fill in their lives in a flexible, creative and singular way.
Your collective practice environments seem to stand in stark contrast to the contemporary ideology of flexibility, choice, individual creativity. In the arts field, in particular, any sense of pre-set rules or limitations to the practice are often labeled as ‘power games’ or even as ‘fascist’, a word that seems to fit any kind of disciplined practice these days.
Elle:
Yes, but this term has also been hollowed out by its frequent, uncritical use. Funnily enough, it lost its meaning exactly through the banalization of the term in so-called critical discursive environments that, by seeing fascism everywhere, actually disempowered the term completely. If fascism is everywhere, then actually it becomes life itself. If fascism is but a strategic stab in an intellectual debate to disarm the opposition, there is no serious consideration for the all-too-real context in which fascism took form as a societal transformational power. Such a ‘metaphorization’ of the term, which makes is applicable to all circumstances in which a play of hierarchical oppositions of power are at stake, is nearsighted, and cynical.
Elke:
Let’s say that by ‘fascism’ I mean a specific coming together of Beauty, Order and the practice of what I would call the Physical Sublime, that is often created by suffering, or disciplined bodies. Or maybe rather, the dual mechanical and massively reproduced political aesthetic organization that bases itself on Beauty and Order, and produces the violence of exclusion and exhaustion in its wake. Off course this term can not be interpreted separate from its historical contexts, and the often violent mass effects it produced. But whole generations of leftist critical thinkers have grown up in the shadow of the stormy historical heritage of the 20th Century, and their historical awareness of the traps of combined ideology, idealism and organization have made them hyper-sensitive to the telltale signs of power abuse or disbalance, but also of the uncritical embrace of Beauty as a bourgeois pacifier of unrest, revolt or social struggle.
In the wake of the 20th century, modernisms, fascist and communist critical strategies, a lot of aesthetic strategies have become suspect. Loaded with historical weight: be it romantic escapism, political incorrectness, social exclusion, uncritical acceptance of the bourgeois order, the crash and recuperation of the ideals of the 1960’s, and what more. What has been constructed however, out of the rubble of broken ideals, is a discourse police that has made a significant part of the aesthetic vocabulary off-limits, and brandished as naïve at best, hypocritical or ‘f...t’ in the worst cases.
My question is now if maybe it is not a time to dive back into that long-forgotten dictionary of terms and see if it is not high time to rescue some of them, reactivate their power, and make them speak out another reality, another world view, than the ones they have been associated with. It is my impression that we have gone through an every-expanding exclusion of possible terms to think our realities, a progressive retreat into the trenches of a politically correct aesthetic-political discourse that is now keeping us hostage to ideas that are no longer capable of creating worlds that we actually would wholeheartedly consider to live in. What critical discourse, or at least, the particular critical discourse I’m addressing now has come to establish (which, to be clear, was not always the case) is a state of feeling constantly under siege, beleaguered and in mortal danger of recuperation of any of our bright ideas by the corporations that be.
Instead of this kind of Repressive Criticality, or the Discourse Police, I would like to see a new wave of criticism come to be that is mainly creative: a creativity produced through a clarity of practiced conceptualization and experienced practice, that would create realities in its wake. A criticality that would not be afraid of being labeled as naïve, old-fashioned or uncritical. Since, frankly, the Discourse Police has produced a toxic reactionary environment for practicing art and politics, that is blind for the potential of other ways of doing, speaking and creating the worlds we live in.
Elle:
Aho. (smiles)
It is time to reconceptualize our concepts. Not by fleeing from them in horror, but by accepting them in all their confusing associations, radical unsuitedness, and therefore irritating potential. Beauty for me is not about Order, but about Orgasm. Beauty appears at the confluence of the experience of the interior and exterior, the experience of the self expanding into that what seems separate to it. Unlike the fearful trepidation in front of the Sublime, this beauty is nothing if not powerful, energizing, and emancipatory. To know you are connected, you are part of the whole, dissolves the fear of exclusion. Orgasmic Beauty, in that sense, is a tool to overcome alienation THROUGH alienation, a kind of homeopathic medicine. It is overcoming the doctrine of individuality that has captured and narrowed our desires to the handkerchief-size of a self-realization wellness project. I think we can do more with the energy of our desires than this empty craving for self-fulfillment.
I was just reading this rather interesting paragraph about sexuality, which might clarify what I mean with this orgasmic quality:
‘Sex, for its part, likes nothing so much as mixtures. Mixtures of skins, salivas, humors, organs, words to the point of delirium, images, as well; sex makes do with anything, can put everything to use. (...) Sex is not the body. It is even the forgetting of the body. It is what makes us, in jouissance, feel desire, or sadness, excitement, fear, longing - everything about the body that is not ‘the body’, that is, flesh. When the body becomes world, landscape, moor, sand, language, collage, collapse, memory, the entire body is convoked as other than flesh. Other indeed, for it is a matter of otherness, for philosophy as well as for sex. Their history is the same, like two sides of a single coin stamped with the seal of that recognition.’
Just like Criticality, indeed can be rethought as Creative Clarity, a courageous step into the unknown potential of concepts that are constantly redefined and tested through practice. And this goes for all terms that have been derided, labeled as unfashionable, and banned out of our life practices. ...
There is a big confusion in my practices indeed, especially around notions of self-organization, freedom and discipline. Off course this is due to the superposition of two different practice ‘myths’: the one of artistic research and creation, and the one of transformational ‘spiritual’ body practices which i started to use as ammunition, as weapons in my struggle to overcome the inertia that was keeping a lot of artists hostage in regard to the workings of contemporary capitalism: they felt their tools, their creativity, their imaginative powers had been largely recuperated by marketing, advertising, and the overall economy of affects that produces desires through the production of ever-more empty containers for the construction of ever-more ‘individualized’ selves. The artist-individual therefore has become wary of his/her ‘individual’ power, since individuality in itself has become suspect as a commercial construction of Capital. And rightfully so.
What I try to do in my practices is to liberate, to unveil, to come to a nude understanding again of what is the non-produced power of the self. And this can, paradoxically, only be done through the stripping away of the presumed ‘personal’, or ‘hyper-individual’ layers of comportment, habits, and convictions. Temporarily! To make other potentials visible. And as such, to rephrase freedom not as a freedom from, but a freedom FOR. FOR a collective project, for a shared dream, for a collectively supported change.
BUT, and this is very important to understand: this change is not a collective ideology as the ones that supported the communes and collective of the 1960’s and 1970’s. We do NOT have to agree on the world-supporting myths of political affiliation, religious normativization or economic regularization. At least not in Bureau d’Espoir. We only temporarily agree on a scored practice of time and action. And on linking this practice to an outside world. In this sense the Mobile MNSTRY is not built on stable grounds of conviction. While starting out with a proposed score, throughout the project, this score is bit-by-bit transformed by the collaborators, based on their individual myths and dreams, which we then begin to share through our bodies, and ending up with a monastic score that is probably far detached from the original proposal.
Elke:
Do you consider Bureau d’Espoir to be an activist cell? Do you see yourselves as producing instruments, weapons to fight affect capitalization. Are you a Warrior of Desire?
Elle:
Why do you ask me things you already know the answer to? Why do you need me as an excuse to say what you can not accept yourself saying? Why is Elle so much alluring, sexy and attractive as figure of flight for you? Why do you distrust your own desire so much you can not allow it to carry your name?
Elke:
Last night I spoke my name and there was no one there. The sound echoed in the long corridors but I could feel the house was uninhabited.
Elle:
Don’t get mystical on me. Don’t pose fake questions. Don’t play the ignorant. Practice what you know.
Elke:
(silent)
Elle
(drunk):
to the gathering of all people that can toast to the liberty that appears out of nowhere.
to the liberation that doesn’t need anything
that doesn’t need to be acquired
but that just appears in the middle of a conversation
a touch
a cup of coffee.
to the enchantment of getting lost in the situation and finding
there is no place like this place.
to the flight of folly that connects you to my projections
to the me i can only be through you
to the you that is here without expectations
to the we that will never be formed
to the air that keeps us from being glued together
as one big blob sharing everyone’s smells, headaches and anxieties
to the air that allows me to keep my distance
to the floor that supports my position
to the gravity that keeps me down to earth
to the sky that still hasn’t fallen on my head
and keeps on not doing so day after day
to the microbes that keep on digesting my food
to the hairs on my arms that allow me to feel the wind moving on my skin
to the hairs everywhere on my body for reminding me i’m an animal
a rabbit, a deer or a worm. well, maybe not a worm.
to your unhappiness that reminds me of my own good luck
to your ravings that tell me i should slow down
to your madness that tells me i haven’t seen nothing yet
to the streets that keep cars from crashing into houses, or people, or trees
to houses that keep people from crushing into each other
to walls for protecting our privacy
to carpets for muffling our sounds
to tables for keeping things from falling on the ground and messing other things up
and creating chaos
to clothes for giving me something to imagine
to no clothes for giving me something to imagine
to touch for allowing me to live in my imagination … … ...
24 HOURS LATER
Elke:
The Mobile MNSTRY is part of a bigger social-artistic neighborhood project, called Re-Commerce, in the commune of Forest. In what way do you consider the MNSTRY to fulfill a social engagement?
Elle:
The Mobile MNSTRY (Monastery, Ministery, Monster-y) is a collective location project, organised in and around the previous Abbeye of Forest. The MNSTRY will install a temporary (monastic) community that lives and works within a limited area, following a shared time score and accepting the rule of poverty for the duration of the workshop.
During this time all activities of the MNSTRY will be organised within the public contexts of Forest, and developed as an open invitation to the neighbourhood and passers-by. During the workshop the time score of the MNSTRY will bit by bit start to change: the original ‘monastic’ score will be taken over by the members of the community, who will start to decide on what there is to be done, what we will spend our shared time on, and what is it that is needed today, here, and for whom.
The workshop is part of the larger project Cité d’Espoir (part of the REcommerce social-artistic initiative, organised by Bains Connective) which develops a constant practice for about six weeks (starting half October) with intense public moments during the weekends. The Mobile MNSTRY starts out with one member and through a call on the internet, the development of the workshop but also through local advertising the community starts to grow.
The ‘cité’ of the Abbaye will be renamed ‘Cité d’Espoir’ and will house the artists and their guests, supporting their ‘monastic’ practices. Cité d’Espoir will develop into a social meeting place, with a silent space to hang out, daily soup dinners, a library and regular ritual and other activities. The temporary monks start to develop their practices on the basis of poverty, social service and artistic transformation. Neighbours and interested people can pass by to have a personal ritual made for them, but we also want to involve groups and youngsters to develop group public rituals with us, based on their needs and visions. For example, we develop mourning rituals for pets or family members, light rituals for those who can not stand the cold anymore, love rituals for the lonely, political change rituals for the disengaged, etcetera.
We also give short-term ritual training workshops: how to develop your own rituals, how to gather material for your rituals, based on the Psychomagic methodology of Jodorowsky, or the artistic methodologies of the temporary monks. The silent café in the Cité d’Espoir offers free tea and something, and would become the starting point for all projects. The monks would sleep on the premises and be available most of the time for a talk or a ritual ‘guidance’. On Sundays there is also a kind of ‘service’, which is not religious but only aims at developing an alternative ‘common’ event for the neighbourhood in the margins of the market.
Researchers Participants in the Postgraduate Program
Agnes Schneidewind
Anouk Llaurens
Arianna Marcolini
Brendan Heshka
Christian Hansen
Esteban Donoso
Hektor Mamet
Isabel Burr Raty
Mavi Veloso
Sofia Gerheim Caesar
Thiago Antunes
Varinia Canto Vila
Research End PresentationsAudrey Cottin
Danny Neyman
Jeremiah Runnels
Silvia Ramos Pereira
Vanja Smiljanic
Verónica Cruz
Research Centre ResearchersAdriana La Selva
Juan Doninguez
Ricardo SantanaPartners
Les Bains / REcommerce
PAF Performance Art ForumContributors for workshops
Elke Van Campenhout
Juan Dominguez
Vladimir MillerCoordinators a.pass
Bart Van den Eynde
Elke van CampenhoutMentors
Abu Ali * Antonio Serra
Bart Van den Eynde
Lilia MestreThe block is curated by Elke Van Campenhout (a.pass Research Coordinator)
14 / 09 - 02 / 10 / 2015
‘SETTLEMENT VIII - TOWARDS FRAGILITY’
workspace by Vladimir Miller
What can be a truly feminist architecture? One that does not create territory, does not claim, does not exclude. How much of the utopia of Occupy is due to the haphazard conditions of camping and DIY? Should we be sad that it’s gone? Or is its ability to disappear its most precious, most pioneering trait? Every social movement must find, claim and hold a space or perish, yes? – become an institution or die.
But how to keep on dying?
Processes of institutionalization are also processes of architectural shifts away from the fragile: from sticks and fabrics to metal and concrete, from sit-ins on the floor to tables and chairs, from open spaces to chambers with doors, from expanding circles to sitting arrangements. All of these we justify with productivity concerns. So maybe the question is: how to be productive and fragile at the same time?
Settlement is a spatial proposal that tries to sustain its architectural fragility hoping in this way to initiate a temporary social, organisational and ideological one. Simply put, it is a collective workspace, a camp and a hangout, open to all who step by and would like to contribute to it. It is a space for practices instead of products, a place where our individual ideas and processes have not yet achieved a solid state and can flow into each other.
Settlement starts with a haphazard collection of materials in an otherwise empty space. Settlement is a space that tries very hard not to settle. Its instability naturally works against the establishing of clear boundaries between „your space“ and „my space“, what hopefully follows from that is that it is very difficult to establish boundaries between „your work“ and “my work”. I believe that practice is bound by space, and if space gets shaky, unstable, shareable, so does the practice.
By starting from scratch Settlement invites a re-negotiation of the specific conditions of each practice. In the course of the three weeks Settlement lets your particular method of production and sharing find its own intrinsic spatial conditions, free from the encoded behaviors of ready-made spaces such as “table”, “studio”, “meeting”, “gallery”, “venue”, “library”, etc. The politics of practice in terms of co-habitation and co-working, of claiming one’s own space, inviting or excluding the outside, communication of ideas, inviting change and influence are all there to be questioned within this setup. As a practice is (in some ways) „re-built“ during Settlement, one can come to question its very construction.12 - 22 / 10 / 2015
‘DIRTY ROOM’
workshop by Juan Dominguez
In these 10 days we will work together. That would be the most important. The togetherness. Working together, spending time together.
I will ask you a lot of questions, over and over. I will question you, you will question everybody, we will experience suspiciousness I guess.
In which conspiracy are you involved at the moment?
We will trip for sure, all kinds of trips or maybe not all kinds but different trips.
We will share expectations.
We will build new fictions and devices.
We will not go out, we will be trapped like el angel exterminador from Buñuel and we will not go, the negative of el angel exterminador. We will watch this movie again.
We will cook for each other.
We will sleep together.
We will gather people, as many as we can.
We will spend time, we will understand time and the time we want and what we want from time.
What are we going to do together that we cannot do alone?
09 - 22 / 11 / 2015
‘MOBILE MNSTRY’
workshop by BUREAU D'ESPOIR / ELLE
The Mobile MNSTRY (Monastery, Ministery, Monster-y) is a collective location project, organised in and around the previous Abbey of Forest. The MNSTRY will install a temporary (monastic) community that lives and works within a limited area, following a shared time score and accepting the rule of poverty for the duration of the workshop.
During this time all activities of the MNSTRY will be organised within the public contexts of Forest, and developed as an open invitation to the neighbourhood and passers-by. During the workshop the time score of the MNSTRY will bit by bit start to change: the original ‘monastic’ score will be taken over by the members of the community, who will start to decide on what there is to be done, what we will spend our shared time on, and what is it that is needed today, here, and for whom.
The workshop is part of the larger project Cité d’Espoir (part of the REcommerce social-artistic initiative, organised by Les Bains) which develops a constant practice for about six weeks (starting half October) with intense public moments during the weekends. The Mobile MNSTRY starts out with one member and through a call on the internet, the development of the workshop but also through local advertising the community will start to grow.
The ‘cité’ of the Abbaye will be renamed ‘Cité d’Espoir’ and will house the artists and their guests, supporting their ‘monastic’ practices. Cité d’Espoir will develop into a social meeting place, with a silent space to hang out, daily soup dinners, a library and regular ritual and other activities. The temporary monks start to develop their practices on the basis of poverty, social service and artistic transformation. Neighbours and interested people can pass by to have a personal ritual made for them, but we also want to involve groups and youngsters to develop group public rituals with us, based on their needs and visions. For example, we develop mourning rituals for pets or family members, light rituals for those who can not stand the cold anymore, love rituals for the lonely, political change rituals for the disengaged…
OR SHALL WE USE THE STAIRS? 09 September 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
Brussels-based choreographer Adva Zakai and French curator Raphaële Jeune propose 3 days of lectures and exercises to collectively explore different aspects of the relationship between humans and machines. Together with special guests and anyone interested, we aim to share thoughts on the digitalization of our world, through introduction into concepts that developed in response to it: The challenging dialogue with algorithms, the splendor and misery of Transhumanism, recent developments in Donna Haraway’s thinking (author of 1985’s Cyborg Manifesto) and the theory of Accelerationism.
This working session is intended for people who consider a reflection about the relation between body and technology inspiring for their own investigations. We wish to explore links between ideas and concepts through perspectives of various (artistic) researches, rather than to look for merely ready-made knowledge.
Sessions will be guided by: An Mertens, Aline Wiame, Lendl Barcelos, Raphaele Jeune and Adva Zakai.
Inscription:
In order to develop a collective process, we prefer that participation will include all three days. If not possible to be fully present, you are welcome to join partly. Please send an email to Adva (advazakai@gmail.com) before Sep 15th, to inscribe and mention dates of participation. Max 15 participants, first inscribed first served!
Schedule
Friday, 18th September
10h - 10h45
Introduction by Raphaele and Adva
11h - 17h
A session with An Mertens about algorithms, including a lecture, meditation and (possibly) exercises.
18h - 21h
Technocalyps - a documentary film about Transhumanism by Frank Theys (2006)
Saturday, 19th September
12h - 14h
A critical discussion about Transhumanism, guided by Raphaele and Adva
15h - 18h
A talk by Aline Wiame about developments in Donna Harraway's thinking from the Cyborg manifesto till today.
Sunday, 20th September
12h - 15h
A talk by Lendl Barcelos including an introduction into CCRU (Cyber Culture Research Unit), Accelerationism & left/right inclinations within the exploration of technologically alienated perception
15h30 - 17h30
A discussion and work session, looking for further ways to explore the themes addressed during the three days, through artistic practices (projecting towards possible future work sessions)
The Bridge 11 September 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
This workshop is part of Adriana La Selva’s research on contemporary training methodologies for theatre. The beginning of the project concentrates on a deep understanding of physical practices which draw from the Theatre Anthropology vocabulary developed by Eugenio Barba, in order to question and push forward training principles devised by his group.
During this week of physical work at the a.pass, we will be looking at the principle of repetition from many different angles, in order to understand the creative possibilities of this tool and test philosophical and neurological notions developed around the theme. The main physical work concentrates on the training for the actor used and developed by the international ensemble The Bridge of Winds, a theatre group created by Odin’s actress Iben Nagel Rasmussen.
During its 25 years of existence, the group has developed a series of exercises to work with the actors scenic presence. These energy exercises may be simple on the outside but difficult to master. Exercises have common form, they are done in contact to the others, but at the same time the work is highly individual. It develops and demands a great amount of alertness, sensitivity and willingness to overcome ones physical comfort.
As a way of having a common theoretical ground (and developing practice-based research methodologies), the participants will receive previously to the workshop a paper Adriana has just developed on the theme, to be questioned in the practice.
Mika Juusela is an actor/director/pedagogue from Finland. He has been a member of the Bridge of Winds from 1999 and since then he has been teaching and performing with the group. In his own country Juusela is working in various projects (from performance and scripwriting to artistic research). He is also a founding member of Laboratorytheatre Fennica and publishes and translates theatre literature.
Practical: 05 to 09/10/15, from 10.30 to 16.00 (to be confirmed) @ a.pass, 4th floor Maximun 15 participants Bring your training clothes, a sense of discipline and a will for physical engagement.
don't eat the microphone / televizinho / mommy, daddy, me invitation research sharing
13 October 2015
posted by: Elke van Campenhout
24/10/2015, 7-10pm, a.pass studio, de bottelarij
In 2014 I started working as an artistic researcher in a.pass. Since then I developed three different projects. ‘Don’t Eat the Microphone’: a weekly session developed together with the residents of the psychiatric hospital Dr. Guislain in Ghent, ‘Televizinho’: a series of re-enactments of Brazilian soap-operas with no-actors of a river community in the Amazon and ‘Mommy, Daddy, Me’: a letter trialogue about love relationships between me and my parents. Through these experimental set-ups I gathered a lot of materials of various kinds. Now I would like to share these video’s, texts, experiences and set-ups with you. I would be happy to host you during an evening-long sharing of materials from the research, and offer an idea of the contexts and imaginations that brought these ongoing projects to life.
More information here
Thiago Antunes / Darling, what would you do for being integrated in a new country until the end of the week otherwise you I dont know what but something very bad would happen? 16 October 2015
posted by: Thiago Antunes
How to desintegrate as quick as possible?
I think it is better to put it this way.
Skype mentoring with Luanda. The two of us sleepy, having coffe at a distance.
Colonization, gamification, scores, characters, diagrams, schedules, plans. But, Luanda, how to live from art in Belgium? Should I prepare myself for being a Chef de cuisine at least to earn more mony from restaurants? Yes, of course, if you like it don’t lose your time. I regret not having done the same few years ago. It is hard to be an artist here, very hard, darling.How to clean the house and prepare lunch for husband and one guest as quickly as possible? With the hands I would say. But using all your body. Dividing attention between the right hand cleaning the toilet and the right foot smashing some onions. She is vegan. A vegan sex worker from Mexico. I have to improve my Spanish. Maybe in one hour I will be probably a native speaker, I just have to begin using my mouth too. Quinoa and beans, some bread. Very frugal. Exactly on time. After “Hola, que tal?” I gave up the Spanish. Everybody happy.
How to desintegrate my belly fat in the GYM as quick as possible? Training in circuits, almost no pauses. Nobody will notice that I have never done it before, that I don’t even know how to use these objects properly, or which weight I should choose to begin. This paper with the circuit thing was on the floor of my appartment for some months, and I found it under the sofa probably. It was time to use it somehow. Looking to the mirror with confidence. Nobody noticed that I was an impostor. That I was not from there exactly, despite the confidence in my steps, in the certitude going from one spot to the other, completely determined.
How to get money in a pleasant way? I should work in this Ethiopian café. It as really nice the flavour of that espresso. While I waited for Esteban one guy behind me was trying to integrate with everybody, speaking loud about Saint-Exupéry. Such a good writer. He was preaching, let’s put it this way. But everybody there pretended he was not there, and tried to maintain a civilised attitude. What is the ceremony of the Ethiopian café, madam? It is a bit hard for me to explain it in French, do you speak English, she said? I said I think I speak English, and it is a little better than my French. We smiled relieved. She explained the ceremony, but I couldn’t understand it really. But I was completely convinced that it would be a good idea to have it on my birthday. Unfortunately they don’t do it on Sundays.
Let’s go to another coffee, Esteban. Maybe it is not the best place for a tarot reading. Or we can ask for the guy behind us to join, he is up for integration. Let’s go to a Belgian café, darling, he said. Or not exactly this way. I am not sure about the darling. And instantly we were in this Belgian café, ordering coffee and beer for our tarot reading. Long pause. How to doo tha?
I should work as a tarot reader. In Belgian cafés, like Jodorowsky in French coffees.
We were very integrated there. I wondered if I could work in that Belgian café. Maybe I could be a blond waitress too, and I could learn hoe to be sympathetic in Flemish and French. Even make some jokes, which certainly would result in more tips and loyal costumers.
I was on time during the whole daym for every event. I could meditate, train Dutch, exercise my Brain with Lumosity, to have mentoring, to clean the house and receive guests, to go to the gym, to read tarot to a friend and to work. And all the time I was working on my research. Not so sure about the utility of my documentation for the workshop.
