postgraduate program

BLOCK 2020/I

6 January-30 April 2020 / a.pass Brussels

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 #3

February
6-7 : Zone Public sessions #4
13-14 : Zone Public sessions #5
17-21 : Halfway Days
27-28 :  Zone Public sessions #6

March
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-curating

Peggy 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 coordination

Lilia 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