Hosting

research center

Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre, Pia Louwerens, Nicolas Galeazzi Hosting

1 September-12 December 2020 / a.pass

Research Center Cycle 2 Block II

"Double Spiral" by Maurice Meewisse

There, we go on…

The Associate Researchers are sitting together again physically. Sometimes masked, hands well disinfected and -as usually, hosted by the institutional care of a.pass. This care might be physical as never before. After several months under the lockdown’s separating conditions and a half-suspended block, live meetings seem to be a real relief! It feels like re-starting the real. Of course, this feeling is not justified. However locked away from the real-‘live’ and however difficult the Corona-spring was, the productivity of the online collaborations was astonishing! A new online working-site has been filled with masses of texts, notes, and plans. It might be difficult to document live working processes with the same intensity. Last block ended with a residency in Zsenne Art Lab in July, when physical meetings were possible again. Workshops were proposed by each researcher as a way to share and exchange. This residency stayed contained within a small group of people, that for the first time came together physically.

Now, the autumn block has started with a new constellation of people and new conditions – the conditions of the post-lockdown-yet-infectious-city-life. The associate researchers Pia Louwerens, Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Lili Rampre, Esteban Donoso, and block curator Nicolas Galeazzi meet again regularly. More or less every second Thursday one of us is hosting the others in their research ‘field’.

When we meet, half of the meeting, we are guests in the field of the other. We think-with, take part, and relate to whatever is proposed to be practiced. The second half of the meeting is explicitly not pre-conditioned by us. We relate to what is there, to what comes up, or what is needed at the moment. The possible plays of guest and host – amongst bodies and viruses, parasites, and hosts – are multiple, and allow us to experience our relational dependencies.

There, we are again…

Again and again, it is necessary to think through the relational field we are working with. Not only the forced physical distancing, the prohibited hugs, and the masked faces, but also the role of the institutional and individual responsibilities, the new urgencies for presence and absence, and a new mix of carefulness and caring, are tinted the relational questions at a.pass with the Corona crisis.

What and who are we to each other in a research group? What does the research group do for us? What does it mean to be Associate Researchers – what does it mean to be a host? What is the institutional framework – what does it allow, and what does it problematize? What kind of projections are made into the institutional, and what kind of speculations could we unleash on them?

The virus highlights these questions in a very special way. Bodily distanced, we are still physically related. It feels like a real-time training in relational ontology. Donna Haraway manifests it as “beings do not pre-exist their relating” and therefore relations do produce us, not the other way round. This way to see ontology is into our face any time we have to say hello to somebody and hesitate whether to show the elbow, to hug, or just to stay still at 1,5m apart. Anyway, or specifically now, it’s worth putting the focus more on shaping relations around us rather than to shape ourselves. If this is true, attitudes of hosting, being it places, practices, contexts, and perspectives is an approach we will explore.

“We are going”..

Derrida starts his article on Steps of Hospitality / No Hospitality with this ontological statement about being guest, always! “We are moving around: from transgression to transgression but also from digression to digression.” What does that mean in the contemporary context? “This step too many.” These days we are crossing lines at any moment. Unavoidably. The lines of the subject are massively shaken, enforced, penetrated, and transgressed or at least put in question by a multitude of crisis – Crisis of trust (replaced by control), a crisis of care (replaced by security), a crisis of mattering (denied by ignorance).
Derrida invites us to practice unconditional hospitality and sets out the conditions for it: to go on, step by step, to put oneself in a constant not-knowing the lines guest/host-hood.

What can that mean with respect to Haraway’s relational ontology?
Probably we can explore this by speaking out invitations. Let’s challenge unconditional hospitality and ask how to shape relations as a conditioning factor to deepen our understanding of the specific relational fields we find ourselves in.

We are going on a walk..

As a starting ‚seminar’ in this block, we invite ourselves for a walk in the Ardennes. We will be hosted by Elke Van Campenhout at her new residence and invite her to join our ‘going on’.
Originated in the wish to give attention to all the physical and social side-processes around our research in focus, which inform our relations, trajectories, and perceptions, we want to share an experience of time besides the habitual working patterns. A hike seemed to be a simple push out of habits into a habitat where we are guests per se. Let’s see how this attention infects us and our research.

postgraduate program

Block 2020 III

2020 has so far been a turbulent year: of course, the global background we are all aware of, but also for a.pass and all involved, as a community, as a group of colleagues and as a place of politics and organisation. We need time to meet despite all difficulties, and we need time to think together. We think of this block primarily as a meeting of ideas and practices of the researchers and the block contributors, in order to make space for an emergent support structure shared between all involved. Our desire is to ground the support structure of a.pass in a close relationship with the necessities and practices of the researchers. Curating here refers again more to care, than to an overarching trajectory. The core of what we do, practice artistic research, is what needs input and support. Starting from the question of what we need and how to organise it we want to create transitory and sustainable modes of organising and sharing research. The block practice, starting with the Settlement gathering, is focused on organisational and structural awareness and feedback: which spatial and temporal structures do we propose, how is it working with us and our research, and is it something we should keep for the future?

research center

What your research did to me

incoherent familiarities

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

18-22h

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

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

will read, perform, discuss:

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

research center

Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre, Pia Louwerens, Vladimir Miller RESEARCH CENTER CYCLE 2 BLOCK I and In-Between Block

1 January-31 July 2020

Research Center Cycle 2 block I

This January marks the beginning of the second one-year-cycle of the a.pass Research Center. Initiated out of a desire to be a shared platform of exchange, support and publicness for the Associate Researchers this year long initiative will continue to support and publish advanced research and investigate its trajectories within a.pass. The Associate Researchers will be hosted and supported during Cycle 2 by the Research Center curators: Vladimir Miller (Block I+II/20).

For the period of January to December 2020 we are happy to welcome following Associate Researchers to the a.pass Research Center:

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

During the upcoming block we will start and at the same time continue our work by imagining and negotiating the individual contracts between the researchers and the Research Center, which will speculate on the individual research process and the support needed during the year cycle.

research center, workshop

Esteban Donoso Re-

13-14 July 2020 / ZSenne Art Lab

- Nice picture! Are you in it? :)

How do we become visible? Within which frames? What are the conditions of that appearance? This workshop takes as points of departure objects and documents from our own archives as performance makers / thinkers, and creates a new environment for them. Via re-visiting their time, environment and our personal connections to them, we will open up a process of constant re-structuring of our own narrations. If we were to write a film script about these re-visited environments, what form would they take? How will we come to occupy the space of a film frame? Will there be enough space? How will our collective reflections and present tense entanglements become part of our fiction? How will we manage to exist and coexist within this commensurate space?
Read more..

research center, workshop

Davide Tidoni Spatial sound to movement

14-14 July 2020 / ZSenne Art Lab

How sound-space perception and spatial listening can be used as a tool for developing movement and creating performance works?

What knowledge/approach/way-of-doing do spatial listening and sound-space perception afford and how that can inform movement and performance work? How sound space awareness can turn or be translated into ways of moving, performing, and choreographing?

Can we think of specific ways to develop/approach movement and performance which are led by the ear-situated-in-space? What are the differences compared to a more eye-determined approach to movement and performance? What are the intersections and common aspects? And eventually, what are the consequences of this approach on other aspects of performance work such as set design, sound design and the positioning of the sound sources, dramaturgy, costumes, and the role/position of the audience?

research center, workshop

Pia Louwerens Writing subtext

15 July 2020 / ZSenne Art Lab

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.

research center, workshop

Breg Horemans What do you depend on, where you are?

15-17 July 2020 / ZSenne Art Lab

How can we share the performative potential of public space to explore ‘mutual vulnerability’? We invite you to think physically during a series of ‘staged encounters’ in the wider environment of Zsenne Art Lab, between July 15 and 17.

Every encounter offers a space to negotiate proximity with a stranger, addressing the possibility for an intra-active (Barad) relationship. These encounters take shape as silent walks for two people on July 15, 16 and 17 (mornings, between 9 and 10 am). The endpoint of the walk is Zsenne Art Lab.

Through this practice of physical thinking, we aim to configure a layered understanding of the relation between self- and social identity within the urban environment. We explore how the environment plays a role in the construction of an ‘environmental identity’ (Clayton). On Friday July 17th at 14pm, a public discussion will take place for the participants of the silent walks and external guests to share thoughts on the question: ‘how do our practices contribute to the construction of an environmental identity’?

These activities are embedded in the long term research project HALL33, by TAAT. Between May and November we continue organizing ‘staged encounters’ as a form of social activism in Brussels (BE), Dundee (UK), Riga (LV) and Athens (GR). How vulnerable do we want to be towards strangers in a ‘socially distant’ society?

reading session, research center

Lili Rampre Reading Session

16 July 2020 / ZSenne Art Lab

aaa

Lili Rampre’s recent developments within RC involved repurposing works of popular culture and their most prominent characteristics of an epic story to help re-narrativise group and community concerns. Lili’s long term interest in (re)imagining an audience, especially within performing arts, found a strong resonance with current examples of collective action carried out by various fan groups. In Zsenne reading session, Lili is inviting you to delve into some of the texts on citizenship through fandom as a vehicle and examples of such performances. The reading will start by addressing the proposed questions:

how conflations between activism and fan self-aware agency can re-shape our understanding of the audience,
potentials for public participation, civic action,
how new civic practices of engaged audience members are defining joyous activism and with your participation move on to opening new ones, concerning your particular practices and angles, approaches to the topic.

This should not be misunderstood as an extension of the already well developed sociology and anthropology of fandom, but rather as the critical reappraisal that emergent large popular assemblages of self-identifying communities are an under-utilized and under-recognized potentiality for “performance” proper.

postgraduate program, workshop

Vladimir Miller Settlement 16

14 September-3 October 2020 / a.pass

The Unconditional Institution

Settlement 16

During the days of Sept 14th – Oct 3rd 2020 a.pass will come together and host an open workspace called Settlement. In the course of these three weeks we will share our current work processes within an open collaborative workspace. We aim to create a poly-central gathering that is self-structured, self-organized and open to contributions from anyone. You are cordially invited to join this process by establishing your own space in the a.pass Settlement and sharing some of your ideas, practices or works with others. The materials and structures available at the a.pass main space will be a common resource for all who join to create whatever is needed to facilitate this process. The schedule for these three weeks will be developed on site by its participants and shared online on the a.pass website.

please let us know if you want to join this workshop by subscribing a week before you come. covid measures will be followed in the shared environment to ensure it safety.

postgraduate program, workshop

Krõõt Juurak AUTODOMESTICATION

27-31 October 2020 / a.pass

Autodomestication

As a performer you provide your audience with something that cannot be measured in material terms. As regards the activity that produces the cultural content of the commodity, your labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognised as work – activities involved in defining and determining cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms and, on a strategic level, public opinion. As a performer you are primarily a producer of subjectivity. Typically, an artist’s value does not lie in what they “do” but in what they “are”. Now, remember, for example, how Richard Florida described the processes of gentrification caused by the migration of artists and creative workers – the artists may or may not be aware of the value of their mere presence but on a larger scale they produce “results” simply by existing. Survival in the (performing) arts requires creativity that goes beyond the artworks one creates. In fact, a typical performing artist spends about 99 percent of their time off stage – as an audience member, a critic, an administrator, a networker, friend, mentor, student, teacher and so on. Inventing and re-inventing oneself on and offstage, adjusting to various situations, restrictions, moving from project to project, one residency to the next, brimming with creative energy, training and forever educating oneself is the way forward.

postgraduate program, workshop

Elke van Campenhout Debunking the Myth

16-20 November 2020 / online

or The Emperor’s New Clothes Revisited

NEW DATES!

16.-20. Nov 2020

To be a contemporary artist comes with a lot of prerequisites these days: unspoken discourse rules, critical norms, and a general salonfähig consensus about values like fluidity, horizontality, collaboration, etcetera… Often these values are taken for granted while a strong discourse is ruling the artist’s world, zooming in on any hint of postcolonial insensitivity, patriarchal blindness, gender observations, and faintly non-consensual power use. This attitude stems from the bountiful history of feminist and queer studies, cultural studies insights, and a general growing awareness of her-stories and the damage done by biased educations and cultural misgivings. But at the same time there are also a lot of other untouched territories underlying these value markers: 19th century romanticism, liberalism, humanism, … Each one carrying within it a very specific view of what it means to be a human being in this world, how we are connected and what we are able to convey.

lecture, postgraduate program

Oxana Timofeeva On the Soul

19 November 2020

Video recording - online talk

Oxana Timofeeva

On the Soul

A talk and a conversation on the soul. This talk took place on November 19th.

The talk was proposed by Adriano Wilfert Jensen and supported by the a.pass participants assembly as part of a new modality of participants curated content at a.pass.

research center

Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre, Pia Louwerens, Kristien Van den Brande Printer’s devils

4 January-4 April 2021

Research Center Cycle 2 Block III

Singed bible from the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, in Rome

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

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

performative publishing, research center

Breg Horemans, Davide Tidoni, Esteban Donoso, Lili M. Rampre and Pia Louwerens WHAT YOUR RESEARCH DID TO ME

30 euro - annex + 2 books + 1 game

10 June 2021

research center associates Cycle II

apass

Documenting, archiving, and publishing are intrinsic to the ongoing practices of a.pass. They are seen as research tools that enable critical reflections through their exposure of artistic research processes. The program seeks to find public formats or outlets for research in the course of its ongoing development, and facilitates an understanding of the politics of such processes. With these concepts in mind, the a.pass Research Centre (RC) began a new program in 2018 that hosts six Associate Researchers in cycles of one year as a platform for exchange in artistic research. Cycle I hosted Isabel Burr Raty, Adrijana Gvozdenović, Antye Guenter, Sara Manente, Rob Ritzen and Sina Seifee. They contributed to the platform through concerns, concepts and “ways of doing” inherent to their practices.
Read more..
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