2012
“The Cheerleader”
Cheerleading study for a solo, with Low Kee Hong (former General Manager of Singapore Biennale and Singapore
Arts Festival) as cheerleader
Side by Side, Esplanade 10th Anniversary Celebrations
"Napoleon D."
Cheerleading study for a solo
with Post Theater, Dock 11, Berlin
"X-Choreografen" Pole Dance Solo,
Tanz Im August / TanzNacht, Berlin
"ddd" Dance-film commissioned by Objectifs, Singapore
- Dance/Film, Singapore Arts Festival 2012
- POOL12 TanzFilm Internationale Plattform, Dock11, Berlin 2012
- Loikka Dance Film Festival, Helsinki 2013
2011 - 2013
"The Gay Romeo"
Produced by Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum für Tanz (HZT)
- SODA.Works, Uferstudios, Berlin 2011
- Festival/Tokyo, Theatre Green, Tokyo 2012
- 18th Exodus Festival, Ljubljana 2013
2011
“Love Your City”
Collaboration with Eisa Jocson (Philippines) with artistic residency at Nadine (Brussels)
In Transit Festival 2011, Berlin
2010
“HOKKAIDO”
Commission by The Esplanade Theatres By The Bay, Singapore
In collaboration with Takayuki Fujimoto (Japan), Ming Poon (Netherlands), Victric Thng (Singapore)
Esplanade Theatre Studio, dans:fest10 (Singapore)
2009 - 2013
“Q&A”
Dance & Lecture Performance Commissioned by the Singapore Arts Festival 09
- Esplanade Theatre Studio, Singapore Arts Festival (Singapore) 2009
- Museo D'Orient, Lisbon (Portugal) 2009
- New Town Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe (Scotland, UK) 2009
- Kwai Tsing Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival 2011
- In Transit Festival, Berlin 2011
- Imagetanz Festival, Brut, Vienna 2012
- Chulalongkorn University Conference, Bangkok 2013
- Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting, Yokohama 2013
- BO:M Festival Seoul 2013
2007
“Fight Club, A Chorus”
Multidisciplinary Performance in Collaboration with Posttheater (Berlin/New York)
National Museum of Singapore 120th Anniversary NMS Gallery Theatre
“Morpheus”
Dance Performance with Cyril Wong, Bani Haykel, Adam Noel Shah
Forward Moves, Singapore Arts Festival 2007, Esplanade Theatre Studio

a.) Why do you want to do research?
b.) About Tender Institute: formated discussion.
Elke places a lecture as a starting point for a discussion.
In the discussion everyone is supposed to start a speech with one of the following sentences.
Every one has to use all these sentences and each only once.
I don't agree because...
I agree because...
This reminds me of…
I think we could open this up by….
If you read this politically, then….
Here, the recorded discussion:


Paz Rojo is interested in the figure of ‘we’.
Searching a different expression, relational grammar of plurality for ‘we’.
But, she got used to how she was working, methodologies that felt ‘safe’ and
even got bored with it.
So she was letting go of that and meeting a
text of Agambden on ‘The Whatever’: question of abnormality.
Reference: film ‘Gerry’ by Gus Van Sant
“what if we stop being artists”, Paz Rojo
To keep on doing what we do, without identifying ourselves to what ‘artists’ mean today: ways of production, market, visibility, recognition,...
SEVENTIES IDENTITY
70ies: dancers & artists play with the concept of equality, fighting for democratization of how one wanted to live, for their subjectivity and the recognition of their identity as a group and individual. Emancipation and asking for visibility and acknowledgement. But because of that different labels and groups emerged.
A body (of a dancer) could be the body of everyone. They were exploring the body in their quotedianity, setting up social events and happenings. But the collective itself was always a group of ‘outlaws’ trying to protect their individualism. So they needed to apply the idea of acknowledgement.
And in the end they were just fighting for their own label in the market.
WE the feminists (for example) à the idea of identity, identity of a group.
Then there was also the practice of ‘contact improvisation’. In doing that, no major protocols, no specific model or style was at hand, but focussed on the experience of weight and gravity by supporting eachother with fixed coördinates. But then the encounter with the other was still placed in a dispositive. Still creating a coprotagonist relationship.
CRISIS
All the systems of beliefs are falling over à wellfare state gave us the belief we existed, but because of the fall of that (crisis), qualities are changing and there’s even a loss of human qualities. But still there seems to be the idea that the works needs dancers and artists. “But I might not be nessesary”. We were even never needed. There is a lot of potential in that.
MOURNING
The state = father. The father is providing all the parameters to exist and makes me exist.
But now the father dies. And I realize it was
not me who was thinking, but the father...
The mourning for the father is an existential
mourning.
The illness of adolesence: to be in the realm of acknowledgement.
But now there’s a realisation of that and
reaction to it...
“The father (state, enemy) is not so recognisable anymore, it’s all around,...”, Veri
“There is no outside”, Simon
So the ‘enemy’ is us...
And we are ‘whatever’.
“‘We’ is not a topic, it’s something to experience.”, Paz
So the question of experience comes back... If
we are not nessesary, we might not exist!
We fear that to be excluded from any kind of
work means not to exist...
What does it mean to work? When do we feel we are working? Where does that happen?
The job today is to exist. This causes a stress: our nervous system is plagued by a state of adolescence and/or a state of chronic fatigue.
We should
learn to deal with the idea of ‘loneliness’: in order to be together, we should
learn how to be more lonely. What does that mean?
It means not searching or claiming a solution, but weighing: dismanteling the systems of belief, labels, truths. To make a nihilistic travel.
NOTHING & NOTHINGNESS
“To be noone, not to be what we can, what we could, but what we are, whatever we are.”
I weight to I am. To touch and be touched by things.
A way of dealing with the now is to test yourself with the environment, take messure... To get in touch with what is putting you into a little crisis. What’s the wheight on you?
FILM ‘GERRY’, Gus Van Sant
In this film two guys are walking, soon you see that they don’t know where they’re going and everything and everyone is ‘Gerry’ or is ‘Gerrying’. There’s time and the whole film is an ‘experience’, a travel for the sake of a travel.
STOP BEING A DANCER
Text by Martin Sparenberg
Dancer is what one does, not what one is.
2. practice
BODYING
weighing and moving the different planes of the body.
Moving the sensation, being in a liminal state.
A kind of active meditation
between forcing and losing









The
Proposal:
Share as much as we can for an
hour and a
half!


I will be publishing a book that is something of a sequel and a reworking of La sorcellerie capitaliste, but which sets up the question differently. La sorcellerie tried to deal with the question of our vulnerability to capitalism starting from the
idea that what’s at issue is the hold over us a type of sorcery has, and the fact that because we take pride in no longer “believing in sorcery” we have failed to produce the necessary protections.















|
||
| Sven seems to be stalking me. One by one he talks to all the women I
talked with. First we have Eva, whom I hardly had a chance to get to
know. I'm a little shy when I address her. I vaguely idolize her, since I discovered that she is the assistant of Arnon Grunberg, one of my
favorite writers. I should know better. This whole conference was all
about playing with authorial power reversal for me. Well the conference
was not about one single thing, but the game I played in my one-on-one
was amongst many other things, overemphasizing the power role of the
speaker, by blindfolding the listener. |
|
||
| The second women Sven talks with is Nelle. I was happy to see she responded to my invitation to the conference. We only talked about some things not directly related to the conference. She is going to coordinate and assist the choreography of a TEDx-lecture by a acquaintance of mine, John B. This TEDx-lecture is conceived as an overturning of the relation between talk and illustration: in stead of using a power-point, John will use live dance to demonstrate his ideas about communication of complex ideas.I actually have the feeling I didn't really talk to anybody at the conference, about the concerns that it lay on the table. I spoke in debates, or posed questions, ... But I do remember meeting people, the chemistry, with a sense of receiving guests at a place which I consider a little bit my home: excitement at handling fragile mental luggage, adjusting the level of amphiphile actants, confronting cultural immunities on all kinds of levels. |
|
||
| Sven also sat with Nicolas, the male co-organizer of the conference. I wonder why Sven didn't put into this soap of his, my talks with Elke
and Adva, the women-co-organizers of the Don't Know conference? Does he
have some problem with women in power. Indeed. An other conversation
that is missing from this little photo-novel: my visit to the one-on-one
of Margareth Kaserer, which started with me purposely throwing a glass
of water at Margareth. It was no coincidence that I did this: In my own one-on-one I asked my visitor to look at a picture of a glass of water; I then explained that the meeting between my visitor and myself is a place, not unlike the space obtained from the surface between air and water, by covering the top of the glass with your hand and shaking it. |
|
||
| I never met Eung before the
conference. But the first time I approached her, during the opening coffee table, I wasn't wearing my glasses and I thought she was Michele Yang. So our first encounter was
more informal than it normally would have been. I realized she was a stranger as I got closer, but decided not to interrupt the impulse to great her warmly. In spite of her surprise
I decided to pretend nothing was wrong. I guess this determined to a
certain measure how smooth her visit to my one-on-one proposal went. She
was my first client and I was definitely less nervous, because of the
way I could "play her" from our first encounter. |
|
|||
| Caroline came to the conference, out of general interest for how things happen in a.pass. She shared some impressions with me, from the one-on-one sessions she visited: she felt she was part of an experiment and that people were trying to get information from her. She also recommended to me, on the second day of Don't Know, the worktable with Robert Stein, after participating in it herself, at the morning session. In fact she saw my physical temptation and hesitation to join this worktable at the first session in the morning, but then I decided to first participate in the proposal of Joel Verwimp about value. I took Caroline's recommendation serious and joined Robert's magic Circle in the afternoon. I confirm: it's really something I want to dive in to deeper. Caroline and me should talk more about why she thought that was so good for me. I would have loved to hear also what she had to say during her session in Robert Stein's circle: what story does Caroline come up with, when she has a chance to just talk about whatever she wants, in front of an audience of strangers, with whom you have just shared a massage. |















|
||
| Michiel said "Mayonaise is foam: liquid and solid at the same time. Can you get your head around that Sven?" |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| Since the word Soap and the genre it names became an obsession, Sven has trouble relaxing in bath. |
The fun seems to be out of waiting for the Eureka moment. |
What else can soap produce for entertainment? |












Bonjour,
J'ai un problème avec un gang-stalking, leurs armes sont principalement des ondes. Je suis victime d'un harrassment 24/7 via silent sound que je ne sait pas enregistrer depuis plus de un an et demi. Un perpetrator joue impunément avec des databases de l'intimité des gens (utilisation de leur empreinte vocale e-a) qu'il gère avec un C4ISR armé. Ces pourris de nazis sont en train de commettre des crimes gratuits et crapuleux, ce genre de scénarios existe et à bien exister dans d'autre pays. Mon pays, votre pays d'accueil, ne sait pas que ca existe, auriez vous des informations là dessus, pourriez vous m'aider à expliquer celà, que je puisse me protéger. On me laisse pour fou. Je suis en contact avec deux autre personne subissant un protocole similaire en Belgique. Je connais un jeune gars qui en est mort, la tête devant une locomotive ne supportant plus les assauts de ces agresseurs.
Ces connards ne me lâchent pas une minutes, ils ne savent pas me "décrocher".
Je propose à la sureté de l'état Belge 4 gb de doc à ces sujets (rassemblée depuis un an pour trouver une solution) et on m'envoie proprement me faire foutre. Ils ne sont plus en copie car je les saoule, et je reçois ce genre de réponses là invariablement:
" Monsieur,
Nous avons bien reçu votre message qui a été transmis à qui de droit.
Je vous rappelle que si vous ne recevez pas de réponse de la part de notre, c'est que ceci n'entre pas dans nos compétences et missions.
Bien à vous,
__________________________________________
SURETE DE L'ETAT - VEILIGHEID VAN DE STAAT
Cellule Information et Communication
Cel Informatie en Communicatie
__________________________________________ "
Pourriez vous examiner ceci?
je cherche de l'aide.
Merci
Benjamin Simon
Ruelle Burton, 27 5340 Gesves
Corbion, 46b Leignon
Belgium
0032497615904
www.chauffage-industriel.be
Benjamin Simon <bsimon@chauffage-industriel.be>
Hi,
I have enormous problems with a gang stalking. These sons of bitches have a big collection of non lethal weapons like describe in the bibliography database of M.Rich
I have lots of possibilities to destruct these assholes, but i can't make that without net (i'am crazy...?). I have a "personal army" if i need that.
I'am harrassed 24h/24 since more than one year by clear silent sound everywhere, they are watching everytime and everywhere. I'am alone in these mind game, They speak to me with the voices of my friend, family, client, ect , to proof me the fact they are so watched.
This nazi network is based on a organisation perpetrators- informants-targeteds like describe in the book of GmB Bailey, or by M Rich http://www.thehiddenevil.com/, but adapted for there own nazi games with wallon expressions and childrens voices.
I need a economic solution to have some real sounds. I'am almost going bankrupt. My governement don't know that crime...
Have you got some tips for me.
www.gang-stalking.be for most complete explications of the facts
Benjamin Simon
Ruelle Burton, 27 5340 Gesves
Corbion, 46b Leignon
Belgium
0032497615904
I am not sure that my mailbox work correctly
Messieurs,
Au risque de vous agacer. Je tiens à vous dire que ce genre de réponses, que je reçois de vous depuis des
mois me font vomir.
Vous avez quatre liens sur votre website de merde (et je mesure mes mots), dont la CIA.
Je vous donne assez d’éléments pour vous compreniez qu'il s'agit, d'un réseau, criminel, d'espionnage, et
dans un système (comint, SIGINT, domint, ou assimilé) .
Les personnes visées par ces ordures sont des "simples" citoyens.
Vous êtes une cellule information et communications, vous avez un e-mail public (INFO@) et vous ne
voulez pas de mes dires, de mes documents.
Le seul "risque" que vous preniez était de me rencontrer et qu'au pire mes assertions soient fantaisistes.
Mais elles ne le sont pas,...
Vous m'invitez à me diriger vers les autorité compétentes: quelles sont les autorité compétentes à ce sujet?
L'anonymat favorise ce genre de criminalité, d'après ce que je vis et je lis.
Je vais donc me débrouiller sans votre aide, vous êtes des sous-merdes.
Au cas où vous ne recevez pas cet e-mail (comme je me fais pirater), Je vous le met à disposition sur
www.gang-stalking.be, et je l'envoie, en copie, à une pincée de témoins.
http://www.google.be/#q=gang+stalking&hl=fr&prmd=ivnsfdlb&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryBE&
cr=countryBE&sa=X&ei=_y0mTvGTMY7KtAbqpLyGCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQpwUoAg&
bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=c9408e638b8909ff&biw=1600&bih=809
Bien à vous,
Benjamin Simon
Corbion, 46B
5590 Leignon
De : CIC - VSSE <info@vsse.be>
Objet : Re: problèmes de stalking
À : benjamin simon <benjamin.simon@advalvas.be>
Répondre à : info@vsse.be
lun., 11 juil. 2011 07:38
Monsieur,
Nous avons bien reçu votre message.
Comme déjà dit, si vous ne recevez pas de suite à vos messages, c'est que ceux-ci n'entrent pas dans
les missions légales qui sont confiées à notre service.
problemes de stalking toujours
6 sur 8 20/07/2011 4:39
Dès lors, nous vous invitons à vous diriger directement vers les autorités compétentes afin de régler
ce prolème.
Bien à vous,
__________________________________________
SURETE DE L'ETAT - VEILIGHEID VAN DE STAAT
Cellule Information et Communication
Cel Informatie en Communicatie
__________________________________________
Re bonjour messieurs les espions,
Je me permet de vous renvoyer cet e-mail, avec d'autres personnes en copie, car en ce qui me concerne, et
pas que moi en fait, la situation est urgente et je n'ai pas de nouvelles de votre part.
Je crois toujours que ce qui suit est dans vos attribution, et je pense qu'au minimum, vous devriez informer
la police que ce crime existe et leur donner des informations afin que je puisse déposer plainte.
Ou au moins me demander les 3 gigab d'articles scientifiques que j'ai rassemblé sur le sujet.
Comme je suis en train de me faire "stalker", il est évident que je ne peux pas être certain de mes e-mails
et ça vous devez le savoir aussi. C'est pourquoi, copies de ces e-mails sont sur la toile, toujours sur le site
www.gang-stalking.be .
De plus je vous offre la possibilité de les suivre sur le forum des tueurs du Brabant-wallon
http://tueriesdubrabant.winnerbb.com/t2256-reseau-de-gang-stalking-en-wallonie
Bonne vacances.......
Benjamin Simon
Corbion, 46B
5590 Leignon
Bonjour,
Je suis toujours victime d'un gang stalking, et toujours harcelé 24h sur 24 et 7 jours sur 7 par ces pourris,
par le biais de
silent sound que je ne sais pas enregistrer (voice to skull). Ces types me visent avec des armes à énergies
dirigées.
Les techniques utilisée par ses sous merdes sont apparentées aux techniques de nazis (mk ultra,
monark,cointelpro, ...).
Internet, toujours indicateur principal des phénomènes sociétaires, indique clairement que cette forme de
terrorisme perpétré
par des ordures est en plein essor.
problemes de stalking toujours
7 sur 8 20/07/2011 4:39
J'en suis à matériellement +- 300.000 euros de dégâts (compris les manques à gagner), et pour le reste
combien coute un an et
demi de vie, et je ne sais combien de temps d’espérance de vie.
Autant vous dire que je n'ai plus un sous et qu'il est moins une.
Vous êtes un service de renseignement et de communication et moi je vous propose une bibliographie
rassemblée de milliers de
pages à ce sujet qui me fait gerber (maintenant +- 3 gigab de textes scientifiques).
Je suis à même d'expliquer techniquement toutes les armes et techniques utilisées par ces fils de putes et je
suis de formation scientifique.
J'ai les preuves que ces bâtards backup l'intimité des gens par le bais de silent sound (self-modulation) , et
d'ondes hautes
fréquences (permettant d'avoir aussi le backup visuel) accrochées aux fréquences de ces champs
magnétiques (ce que j'appelle
leurs échelons).
Tout cela planté dans les foyers. C'est ainsi que ces pourris disposent de l'empreinte
vocale des gens et
dans mon cas, ils utilisent la voix de mes proches pour me parler dans la tête.
J'ai mis à jour nombres de techniques que ces assassins utilisent dans le cadre de ce gang stalking que l'on
peut dès lors et pour d'autre raison que je connais qualifier de multivictims.
Je vous indique même que je suis capable de démonter ce réseau de pourriture si on m'aide un peu, et
quand je dis.... c'est.
Le problème, est que, comme on me parle dans la tête, je suis fou, que ces crimes sont totalement gratuit
et basés sur
le sadisme à l'extrême.
Je ne m'étend pas plus sur le sujet ici....
Malgré vos réponses précédant sous le découvert de l'anonymat, et comme la police ne sais pas que cela
existe, je pense que
vous savez que çà existe. Et, d'après ce que je lis (votre plan stratégique 2008-2012) tout cela est dans vos
attributions.
C'est pourquoi, et au vu de vos réponses précédant, je vous met à l'honneur, ainsi que mes agresseurs,
dans ce site internet: www.gang-stalking.be
Je cherche de l'aide, je ne peux pas me défendre contre ces ordures en étant fou.
Respectueusement,
Benjamin Simon
Corbion, 46B
5590 Leignon

I spent the whole of the 3 hours trying to map my answer on to paper. With the help of Sven Goyvaerts (who originally posed the question last night) I have put together some form of notation for mine/our consideration of this notion of sharing through art.
Below is a link to a series of photographs showing the break
down of
this question in particular reference to Instability in Stability .
Please note that these drawings have some gaps in because im still stuck
on certain ideas, so if you wish to add any comments/ask for
clarification you’d be more than welcome to : )
Please check the photographs out at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66181698@N05/sets/72157627279376225/


| Time | July 24 at 12:00am - July 25 at 12:00am |
|---|---|
| Location | Werkkamp 011, Fort 8, Scheld'apen Schansstraat, Hoboken, Belgium |
I don't really want to make art that explicitly takes on an existing popular genre, that is: tries to engage a discussion on the basis of a label and the mainstream critique attached to it. I certainly do not see myself cozying up to a fictional critic, tactical approach to seduce an audience for my own medium. I really don't want to write this soap. I don't understand how I could let myself be tricked again, into such a project. I've always been trying to make dance theater performances, with the question “why dance” on a hidden agenda. Now it seems I'm trying to do the same thing all over, in a setting totally foreign to me. How did I imagine having any chance of achieving whatever ambition that drives me. That at least, I must conclude, is what drives me: ambition, in the blandest sense of the word. Career goals. My question “why dance” I must admit, is just given in by a jealous insult thrown at successful colleagues: “why the fuck are they still dancing! don't they realize the stink that fills their personal atmosphere comes from the shit they produce themselves!
The logic of the soap for foam idea is a flimsy excuse anyway. Soap as a solid form! As an ingredient of foam! What am I trying to hide, in pretending to offer -how generous- an answer to an imaginary demand. What am I covering up in the self fabricated image of a demand, projected onto what was actually just a superficial remark pronounced in a momentarily careless attempt at advise about the apparent absence of form in the path of my search. Any critique on soap has to start with the admission that the genre has no clearly defined borders, that it holds to no consistent form. And thus I can only use this soap impulse, this flash of consciousness-ex-absurdum, as another example of how the obsession with form keeps leading us, me, astray. The polarization of form against content crumbles as soon as one tries to touch it, as one tries to grasp whether the form is appropriate for the content. Not necessarily in order of appearance: the idea of soap, the word, the material, the everyday commodity... they all have already turned up at some point in the foam saga that I'm sucked into. I've tried chewing on soap to see if I could blow foam. The need to work in confrontation with something which one might call 'a form', namely 'the form of soap opera', is part of a systematic interest for the philosophical-narrative-productional function of foam. Is it a metaphor? Is it a figure of speech? We have called it a 'thought figure'. I came up once with a name to still be filled in: 'figure vivant' – implying that it could die also. But soap opera! What's in a name? Here I really border on hallucination... of an intimate relation between my personal search and a genre. When in fact, on first but very caring glance in the mirror, only in the absolute contingency of its name, does the form of the serialized television drama perhaps graze the skin of my puzzled and foamed face. No blood drawn.
But wait! The crumbling! This fragility to the touch, what about it! The terms, perhaps are spheres? “Form-sphere” and “content-sphere”. And to ask the question of their relation, is to fold their meeting surface. No! Hold it. I've the feeling I'm running in circles. Because now it seems like any two concepts, any two big ringing bells of words, can tauten the screen on which to project a little moving image of foam coming into existence. What an illusion.
Perhaps not in circles then! I'm running in foam. Aaarrrrr
Hold it! The horses got foam on their bits.
…
Did we take a wrong turn? Yes! At the number two! Just as much as the geometrically termed 'sphere' is not about oneness, foam is not about 'fundamental duality'. Foam figures – I interrupt myself again, because the word “figures” spells a huge potential for my attempts at reaching a public meeting place. Research en masse. Figures! the verb. In Dutch it rather connotes an unimportant role, an element in a group, which only as a group means anything. In English it means exactly the opposite. If foam figures in my vocabulary, it is to say that I do use it an awful lot of the time and that its meaning is essential to what I want to stimulate – in English.
So that is the tension which keeps me alive. The gain in translation. The form of writing is the space for this meeting of apparently mutually exclusive senses.
So the meeting is not merely about the duality of form and content. It's not just the two of us. I guess then I have to tell more about all the other spatial and mobile constituents: why surfaces? why tension? why contaminants, bubble nuclei, surfactants or amphipathics, evaporation, elasticity...
…
So Perhaps I do want to make a soap. Or at least fantasize about it.
In that case an answer is due, to your remark about the similarity between our projects.
Let me throw back your favorite question of the day: what do you want? What response are you aiming at with that remark? How exactly do you want to deal with this issue. Can I add to it, an other of your questions? What role do I want you to take in this request for mentoring? I'll start by wondering which role you already take. You're a pain in the ass. That's what you are. What about making this disagreeable provocation reciprocal? I think that the wild story of foam is about to be gently folded in to the sticky batter of urgent issues: an instantaneously improvised list goes from tolerance, equality, difference, society, solidarity... over progress, system, reality... to co-ecstatic being, inter-autism, hyper-dimensional folding, trans-human invention...
How are we going to survive this close identification. Is it real? Perhaps it could be part of a symmetric strategy, to elaborate our respective projects and meet regularly, to continue describing them each time in two ways: once to make them appear in all their similarity, and again to stage them in heated disagreement. We're confronted now with a question of value: what is worth disagreeing about, and when assuming two things to relate on an equal base, do we expect anything in return of such a favor, or is it a gratuitous opening? Concerning our cross contamination, if the old question is, where do we come from? - where do we get the stories that we tell, the stories on which we depend for survival – then I would propose to ask, at least as a preliminary inquiry, where are these stories that we live off? Or even better: what kind of a place do we want them to be for us?
I'm suddenly reminded of the version I saw of Xavier Leroy's Project/Projet. The piece then consisted of a sequence of gaming rounds. First just one game of football was played, and the participants, performers, were divided in two equal teams. In the second round, two games happened at the same time on the same stage, lets say football goals were set, one at the left and one at the right of the stage and two handball goals back and front. So four teams equal in number were playing against each other, but important to know: each person belonged to two teams at the same time, so half of the people who would be your team mates in the football game, would be your opponents in the handball game and vice verse. In following rounds people competed in more and more games simultaneously, each player belonging to more and more teams playing different games at once. After each round the score and the winners were announced. Of course, if you imagine the first round, it's clear who are the winners: one team. But in the second round, within the winning team of one game, one has to consider the two halves that won or lost in the other game. Of course if you belong to the winning teams of both games, you rank higher then if one of your teams lost. As the amount of simultaneously played games increases, the intersection of winning teams must decrease in size – leaving aside the case of ties. So you end up with an individual ranking. This whole construction could be a direct mise en scene of a basic game-theory class. But beyond that mathematical element, visually the games are not easy to follow from the spectators chair. Besides the competition between the playing teams, the games themselves seem to be competing for the spectators attention. And the final surprise: by repeating the exact moves of a small section of the game action, we are made to wonder if the whole thing is not choreographed, or at least the games are set up. Indeed, how else would a decent demonstration of the game-theory be possible: the scores of the live performances have to be somehow representative, a statistical sample.
The structure of the latter competition-composition reminds me of the descriptions by sociologists of soap opera dramaturgy: different story lines compete with each other, to draw out our attention, the separate lives of each character perhaps not rallying enough interest glue an audience to the screen. So all together now: what about a soap opera which would open with would introduce the team compositions at every new episode, ending with a score board after the 45 minutes tranche de vie? Why would you want to show something like that? What kind of rules would those games have? How would a drama look if every interaction in it is actually played out by two teams? Of course the whole team is not at the ball at once, but they operate in a common strategy. Would the teams be composed of equal amounts of players, or are there other criteria to start from a fair balance of forces?
Competing egos, morals, desires, needs, ideas, forms, moods, drugs, politics, cultures...
Where does this reframe your remark on how my ambitions seem to have grown on yours? Which teams are we playing in? What if we both ask subsidies with a dossier written on the basis of the 'similarity and disagreement' redoubling principle I described above? Totaling four project descriptions, for two projects involving one and the same duet, us. Worries for later. Back to soap now.
To be continued.
M
May 23 - June 14
2011
varying times,
each day
"The main idea of Following Piece 2.0 - Everytrail is to make a contemporary rendition of the
original
by Vito Acconci. Two substantial additions are made to the old
version. First of all,
the road travelled in pursuit of the anonymous passer-by is tracked, mapped and shared
using
the online application EveryTrail, controlled by an iPhone 3G.
Secondly, the report of
the
walk is sent
out on Facebook immediately
after. On May 23 I began the Following Piece 2.0
in order to finish it at June 14 and reach the same number of days Acconci performed it originally."
EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY
Anette Baldauf & Aras Ozgun
Rits Film School Jan 2011
Scientific documentation
Scientific discipline in part of sociology
TRUTH and documentaries & ethnography
1) Borat to Foucault (Borat’s other interview? date service and Neil Armstrong?)
2) Birth of orginal ethnography – colonization
3) Ethnography applied – visual ethnography
4) Experiemntal Ethnographic films 60’s- 80’s, 80’s- today, post colonization. What is reality? What is truth?
5) The Power of The Faux
|
The quote below is from Franco Berardi’s book The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy (Semiotext(e)2009)
“The soul is the clinamen* of the body. It is how it falls, and what makes it fall in with other bodies. The soul is its gravity. This tendency for certain bodies to fall in with other is what constitutes a world.
The soul does not lie beneath the skin. It is the angle of this swerve and what then holds these bodies together. It spaces bodies, rather than hiding within them; it is among them, their consistency, the affinity they have for one another. It is what they share in common: neither form, nor some thing, but a rhythm, a certain way of vibrating, a resonance. Frequency, tuning or tone.”
*Clinamen is the Latin name Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus. |



Economics.
What do we observe?
Macro-statements and micro-reality.
The setting is the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2011.
Ethiopia ranks n°5 in the world list «emerging countries forecast 2011» from (?? need to check this). After an initial surprise we come to the conclusion that this forecast is a macro-statement. How is this condition of temporal acceleration reflected in the country? How does this macro-statement relate to the country’s current micro-reality?
A whole scaled down to snatches.
What do we observe?
#01 photo taken at Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia December 2010
We are in the spaces of the ECX in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We see trade on the trading floor of the exchange. We see a carpeted, octagonal space with buyers in kacki and sellers in green. The images are uniform. There is action both in foreground and background. The images are both equal and in constant change.
The project drifts on an observation of details and a constant inversion between foreground and background, between subject and context.
What do we observe?
Bharat Kulkarni, Senior manager trading operations, is explaining the ECX model.
It’s a didactic presentation of an economic model (a macro-model). The attention drifts towards the rhetoric of the presentation, his vocabulary, his choice of words, his accent, the speed of speech.
What do we observe?
The
research has a wide scope. By observing the footage already taken,
links are created to possible other topics, areas and disciplines to
find interesting matches (more on that later).
Lecture Performance by Fanny Zaman
Global Villaging Research project, Stories of Cosmopolitan Anthropologists
April 8 – May 29
Opening April 8, 8 pm
















For “Interface Fiction” I wanted to be an explicit object of gazes to experiment the condition itself and to excercise and eventually ehnance the awareness of my own gaze.
I was looking for a device that could put me in a condition of maximum exposure (body, mind, emotions...) that heppens through the eyes.
The intention being to bring the gaze interaction to its extreme consequences.
I decided to put myself behind the window and spend there 2 hours a day.
-how do my whole body feels being looked?
-how do I look at people?
-what do my look communicate?
-does the people’s gaze respond more to my way of looking or to the device I’m in?
-Day 1-
The task of the day: to focus on the outside of the window and on the front of my body.
At the beginning I though that the image of a woman, sitting on a pedestal behind a window, would recall inevitably the one of the prostitute, so I assumed this possibility completely and decide to eventually bring the gaze interaction to its extreme consequences also in this case.
I look at the people passing by, I wonder what do you think I am?
I’m not playing sexy, seductive, but my eyes are very active and awake,
I feel the exposure of my whole being, when someone comes closer, the body sensation becomes more and more intense and I feel the power of what I can communicate with my eyes and my expressions.
It’s time to negotiate what’s going to happen next...
... I concentrate all my energy on one thought:
I’m here, looking at you. (nothing more, nothing less).
It seems that some people are desoriented by the set . They pass by with no expectation from this window .... most of them live or work in the area... No one comes too close, but from a distance they look at the contest trying to figure out what’s going on there.
I don’t know what they think I am, but anyhow they pass by while I’m staying there, i belong to the window: I’m an object.
- Day 2-
Task of the day: focus on the inside of the space and on the back of my body.
Behind me it’s a laboratory, an art space, a place of practice...
Each person define a mobile space by his/her presence, energy and sounds.
-Manne-
I recognize a space defined by movement that i could compare to the ones of a fly: this person moves aimless, comes close, stays a little while and goes, I don’t feel or hear him anymore, but then again his presence catch my attention, he’s on the other side now, moves around, he makes me curious to guess his actions.
I can feel a certain aimless consistency in what he’s doing.
-Lilia-
She describes a space with movements that I can compare to the ones of a spider that build up it’s net, does something in it, then it build down, moves somewhere else with a clear direction and build another space:
she’s somewhere, she adds stuff around herself, she builds something, she brakes it down.
-Elke-
She move within a world. It seems like as she changes her placement, she brings with her a whole life.
-Michiel-
He’s like a dot that appears and then you forget about, he’s not there anymore... ah no, here he is! a dot in another point. By the time you identify his position he disappears, his sounds are not there anymore, his presence become vague. And so on...
-Day 3-
task of the day: I’m on the pedestal, focus on my phisical base and play with turning my head and body to look from inside to outside and viceversa.
The outside world become less important, the sense of the space behind is very present.
When I turn to look behind me, I feel part of something and when I turn back to the window I bring this world with me to the front.
The look of the people passing by effect me less than the previous days, in my perception, the outside became the fiction.

NOTE: portion of the screen is missing on the right, due to improper settings made after connecting a beamer to the laptop
1st day
11am: setting up.
2nd day
4am: 1st painting, yellow.
Overestimation of the time needed to paint the whole room.
1.30pm: We placed a bowl in front of the board and broke 12 eggs in it and left the shells. We expected that the eggs would free their smell progressively until the next day but we surestimate the strenght of the molecules to persist in the room and the gallery or even liberate an odour to be perceived. The odour would have been a bitter smell, the choice of this element was to reinforce the colour of the room but to give at the same time a second layer, a new information ,in the relation with the space by smelling a reek.
3rd day
4 am: 2nd painting, blue.
The practice as religion. The action is framed
on time and space and give a structure that we follow without letting us taken
by the routine. Even if we are repeating the same procedure the fact that each
action is counted in time allow us to practice the score observing the differences
from the day before and let us live the present time. The freezing as mirror
gives back the past action, the present time and as a minute is long for the
brain to keep focused on one thought, it then make us look to the future, to
the next action.
The surprise: As Gabriel took the board off
the room to start painting he discovered Manne crouched behind the board with
crazy eyes,a wig and a knife in his hand. The joke made us briefly laugh but we
didn’t let it interfere as we were really focused and sensitive to the
incorporation of the score.
1.30pm: As the first element didn’t smell and was, because of this lack of
odour, just decorative we react in opposition by substituting the eggs by a
scented non visible element, a perfume that we could characterized as a
perverse smell. We choose “Serge Noire” from Serge Lutens and did the profile
of this perfume. Strong notes of camphre, pepper, incense, it leaves a smoked
impression. The image of someone that wears suits, smoke cigars and have a
certain financial position, or try to appear as. This perfume was making a
contrepoint to the reconforting feeling that the colour was giving to the eyes,
by suggesting a “script” through the smell.
4th day
4am: 3rd painting, green.
Challenging ourselves by detailing the action
more precisely, trying to stick to the score and being more attentive to the
frame of the camera that capture and document the practice. By wondering of
being exactly in time we were somehow confronted… The movements start to be
integrated in mind and body but, still, not yet timewise. As we depend on the
strenght of the color that cover the layer that has been done the day before we
can not let oursleves flow by only “listening” to our “natural” rythm. The
rolls are loosing their quality as we are using it everyday. The tools used for
the painting disturb the continuity of the action. The tireness doesn’t help
too although the timeframe that we define, 90minutes, give us us the strenght
to carry on in a good dynamic as we know and feel that the action has a precise
lenght. We go then over exhaustion and do the action meticulously, influenced
by the fact that the score push us to live in the present time the action.
The surprise: Manne prepared a breakfast table
for us. That create a really nice and relaxed atmosphere.
1.30pm: The element of the previous day has been noticed in the following hours
after we put it. But it didn’t last in the manner we expected it. Molecules are
volatile and need to be reactivated by breath of air to be able to smell them.
As i was cleaning the floor after the morning practice i could smell the
perfume and awaked it by scrubbing. The material lightness of the perfume
influence its life span by depositing its scent after being blown. Rather than
suggesting a script through the perfume, forcing the inhabitants of the gallery
or the passers by to embodied a certain posture to awake their sagacity, we
decided to project out the room its content by placing a small fan under the
board facing the entrance of the room.
5th day
4am: 4th painting, brown.
Timewise to score is totally incorporated. We
didn’t need to stick to the clock after each action although the tireness can
be perceived in the in and out the frame of the camera. We could observe
tensions toward each other and with people out of our score time. It’s getting
harder to be able to follow our daytime tasks. The choice of activating a space
inside the gallery in hours that are not expected push us away from the
regulated social time. We had until now defined specific actions for each of
us: at 4.14am Gabriel tiny jump, at 4.17am David start painting the sidewall
after Gabriel started painting the ceiling, and some more general tasks:
finishing the corners+2nd layer. The score at some point seems to be done for
one personn, that allow us to change from one day to the other (Gabriel did the
finishing one day and the 2nd layer the next one) but not for one personn as 1
individual but as a symbiotic relation between the two. We realized that the
score is expending by itself, setting up our way back and our entrance. It is
ponctuating us before and after the score.
The surprise: Manne hid a recording of his
voice wishing us a good practice and played 2 Lady Gaga’s songs. That
influenced our painting, hard to admit, but it seems that we enjoyed it and it
gave us a lot of energy, we had to slow the rythm as we were going to finish 10
minutes before we were supposed to.
1.30pm: The brightness of the green was calling the eyes but nobody was going
inside the room, we had practically no visitors since we all started.Therefore
we wanted to create a path that would appeal to the people to come inside the
gallery. As the fan was projecting the room by spreading its particules out of
it we inverted the force . We used chocolate candy that we spread from outside
the main door of the gallery to the inside of the room.
6th day
4am: 5th painting, white.
The surpise: we were totally unestablished and
lost timewise the tasks during the painting. We first get affected by the fact
that Elke was missing in her bed, then after switching on the light we
discovered that Manne painted the room and the board in white with two layers
but left the finishing for us to do. We got lost in time and were10 minutes in
late, but, weirdly, we managed to freeze on time and finished the practice as
defined in the score.
1.30pm: We placed 2 protection masks (the kind that workers use to protect from
dust) in the holes of the board in the manner that it would force people to fit
there face inside. In the masks we applied our sweat that we collected through
the practice. In that way we could display our labor through the week.
Here the video documentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9C4E5uSC6g

Evening with Marina Abramovic
At the Roland Levinsky Theatre University of Plymouth
Friday 15 October
6pm
Free
The
sensational vanguard performance artist Marina Abramovic discusses her
work in Plymouth.
Due to illness in January she was unable to attend
her collaborative event
with Plymouth Arts Centre The Pigs of
Today Are the Hams of Tomorrow. The evening will be a discussion of her
infamous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2010,
and the chance to hear about the future of performance art from this
sensational artist.
Supported by the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth.
Finisterra is Time and Space.
And we all know it’s inevitable presence. A space that brings us together.
It is a space of rethink
values, making judgments. It is a time of rest
and contemplation.
Finisterra is the end of reason and civilization. It is a land of
passive men. A Human purgatory.
If changing is a lie and any hope possibility inexistent, what stands Man? This is Finisterra.
“Dostoyevsky wrote: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted '. There lies the starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is allowed if God does not exist, man is therefore abandoned, since it does not find in or out himself, a possibility to hang on. First of all, there is no excuse to him. If indeed existence precede essence, will never be possible to refer to an explanation of the human nature, given and immutable; in other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. If on the other hand, God does not exist, we do not find beyond us the values or taxes that legitimize behavior. Consequently, we have, neither behind us, nor before us in the bright field of values, justifications or excuses. We are alone and without excuses. This is what I translate by saying that man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, and yet free, because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for every action that he takes. An Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. Do not ever think that a great passion is a devastating torrent that inevitably leads man to certain acts. Passion is an excuse. Man is responsible for that passion.
An existentialist does not believe in any sign given by the earth, in order
to help and guide man; because man is the one that will decipher it, and he
will do it in order to please him. Therefore an existentialist thinks that the
man, without any support or aid, is condemned at every instant to invent mankind.
Ponge said on a article: "Man is the
future of man." It is perfectly accurate. Only if we understand the
future has inscribed and ruled by Gods, it became an error. Anyway that would
not even be a future. But if we understand by it that, whatever man it is, and that
he has a virgin future on his hands, then this sentence is right.”
Vergílio Ferreira, in 'O Existencialismo é um Humanismo'
Based on the ethnographic field of rituals and superstitions, my work proposal intended to understand what are the limits between the art performance and ritual performance.
On the other hand, it was important for me to understand the importance of these specific rituals, which come from the Portuguese countryside, contextualized in the general national culture.
My goal was to understand how I could use the Portuguese ethnography in a larger and global understanding field and interpreting it through my artistic practice, centered in the materials and time performance. This artistic output is meant to be an exhibition at the end of the a.pass year. To do this, I had to divide my research in four different points of view.
The organization of this document is based on the four parts, described next.
I started by researching the ethnographic aspects I knew and had previous had worked on, to understand what are the main characteristics considered part of the Portuguese identity.
Then I researched the opposite. What may be considered universal on the Portuguese rituals?
After researching what is the Portuguese identity and of that, what can be universal, in the third stage I was focused on what are the mechanisms of the performance in ritual acts, and how they work.
The rituals identity, their universality and the mechanisms within the rite are combined in the art work developed throughout the year.
September 10th & 11th 2010
MIDDELHEIMMUSEUM ANTWERP
OPENING and PARTY on Friday September 10th 2010
19h - 21h: OPENING: castle Middelheim
Performance by Mikes Poppe
21h - 02h: PARTY: circus tent / bar
DJs Lieven Segers and Peter Verwimp aka The Sorry Sex Partners
LINE BOOGAERTS, LIEBERT DE BLESER, SVEN GOYVAERTS, KATIE LAGAST, ULYSSES OST, LAURENCE PLUMIER, MIKES POPPE
ERROR #16 is a two-day exhibition and ERROR
ONE party in light of Monument Vergara : the
installation : 'La vie d'une oeuvre d'art' by Angel Vergara in the expo Nieuwe Monumenten in the
Middelheimmuseum in Antwerp. For the ERROR ONE project, young artists are
showing videoworks, paintings, installations and performances inside the
stately Middelheim castle. The party itself will take place at the very centre
of Monument Vergara, a circus tent / summer bar;
the epitome of a lively and momentary site of encounter. Angel Vergara has put
the circus tent / bar aside the castle.
ERROR #16 puts entertainment next to experimentation and seriousness. Or is it the other way around?
The exhibition is open on Saturday September 11th from 10h until 19h, running simultaneously with the expo Nieuwe Monumenten in the Middelheimmuseum.
INFO:
September 10th 2010 from 19h opening exhibition castle Middelheim
September 10th 2010 from 21h party circus tent / bar
September 11th 2010 from 10h to 19h exhibition castle Middelheim
Entrance to Middelheim via small parking at Middelheimlaan 63, Antwerp
Free admission to exhibition and party
info@errorone.be
www.errorone.be
Research in Lopital,Antwerpen:
its all started with defining the liquid and the solid state in a movement language, what does it mean to become a liquid, how this quality in the body can react into certain situation. whats the physical expression for stress and relax. what does connects and disconnects our mind and body. in an other level we started playing on strength and weakness, we title strong as KILLER and weak as VICTIM, so the body goes through the process of killer victim state and solid liquid state. during the research we realized the body takes more of a killer role when it goes through the liquid state. and somehow becomes a victim when its solid. the solid state comes from stress and brings a blurry image in front of our eyes. the range of your vision becomes short in a neurological sense. you just don't see the things in front of your eyes, like the people in the tram listening to music and gets completely disconnect from the whole world. means start receiving things from the external space. may be thats why we don't see the stars in the day time, because there are other things affecting us and stopping us to see what we want to see, i heard if you stand inside the deep well, you can able to see the stars in the day time, because you limit your space around you and your eyes can easily see more deep and more precise. the process started with two people coming close and take a roles of killer victim , there is an establishment in the beginning which takes place in order to feel this role as being a killer victim, the killer is a strongest as i mentioned in the beginning, and for how long? the body starts to take a role of the victim after sometimes because it cant be in the solid state for a long time and it feels even heavier when the victim taking a role of liquid state, because the victims body is reacting to this closed atmosphere and tends to take a role of a killer. the heaviness increases as the victim starts to react from this state, sometimes its possible that the victim can become a killer by doing nothing. doing nothing is the strongest decision here because its close to the liquid state, liquid moves only when there is a gravity pulling towards certain direction and the space offered, otherwise it stays quiet but strongly grounded acquiring as much space as possible. there is a martial art principle which says, being connected with the centre and letting the body feel grounded is the most stable position one can achieve , like a container filled with water. when you cant lift you can only pour but huge amount of strength required. but just a small hole in the container is enough to spill the water out.this space we titled it as DOOR whenever body is in the closed atmosphere there is always a open DOOR which we don't see because of the stress and waiting for the moment. i think we always loose the moment when we wait for the moment, because moment is not related to time because we only feel the moment but we don't see it. i mean the mind cant see it. the moment happens when the time is NOW. waiting doesn't exist. if the task is to create a moment then we need other things like an activity which can trigger emotions and let the moment happens. moment shows the way to the DOOR , we tried to look for these doors in the closed atmosphere and its more visible when the body takes the liquid state. the mind is calm like water and you start to feel the water flow in the direction of the space offered, and you become the strongest (killer) by doing least amount of physical action, because just a feeling of liquid in our body is strong enough to make the way out of the situation. what happens to the killer is quiet reverse the more it starts to melt the more it becomes heavy and the role of the killer is in the victim state. when we did this task the roles were constantly changing because of the dialogue between the body and mind and the dialogues between two body and two mind. the information travels from one person to an other person. because of the closed body contact , our senses starts to receive information from an other persons and the body and mind starts to react. our mind and body deals has this killer and victim instincts and its irregular and the other body feels it and reacts to it. of course the other body has its own way of making decision and somehow it does gets affected by the information but reacts according to its own mental and physical state. being water is the feeling of going through informations and finding its way. like a river flowing in between rocks(information). these rocks tells water where to go but water makes its own direction according to its physical state. these rocks are the information coming from an other source or other body which we are dealing at that moment. the reaction of body is quiet clear and somehow it react exactly how it reacts in a real life situation. when you are stressed you get sick , thats a simple reaction from body for your stress. when we take a tram to the airport and we are late we cant able to sit and relax even though we know that we cant change anything by walking around in the tram. the stress wont allow you to sit and even take a breath or when you stand in a signal and if you are late. you stare at the red light, this staring is created from the stress.
we were exploring things which makes our body going through all these information and observing reactions
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Research in PAF:
we started with a disciplined practice of dealing with stress. we were informing body about the situation and asking our body to go through the safe practice. we put as much information as we can the prepare our body to deal with situation. we made our body to go through this feeling of water. we learnt to become strong and we were trained to react strongly.after certain period of time, we made a time limit to go through all the information and let the body react to it. as soon as we put our body in space, we were bit occupied with people around and the space and atmosphere. the stress starts to appear , we started losing all the information we received during our practice. there was a war zone situation, we captured in a video and we watched it and we realized we are quite unsuccessful in bringing this liquid state when its been put into a certain context, in this case it was the time and the space which created stress, the limitation of space and time and then the relation with people around related to this time and space is what the reason the stress is created. the reaction was quite aggressive but it is our nature. its not just our bones and flesh which is solid but also our mind. when we explored this water quality in our bodies , the movement was more fluid and we can even feel this surface tension. when we take a shower the water takes as much space as it can on the skin and then moves towards the ground. it even ignores gravity and stay in contact with the skin. when we explored this water quality, it was so hard to ignore the touch, it even attracts the contact and stay. may be thats the reason we can let things go out from us when we are in contact with the other person. only the water can stay in contact and still finds its way.
the stress appears from touch and the flow is the way out or way around. the more you look for way out the more you are trapped. staying and dealing with situation is more efficient than leaving , leaving doesn't mean doing nothing. doing nothing and still existing is the hardest but strong decision. it needs courage.
Violence has been the way of expression of the man kind for ages. In this work we are trying to investigate fights the most simple form of human aeration and incorporate it in to a movement theater. We are dancers, each from different cultures, backgrounds and experiences in dance, but still curious about exploring movement together, still trying to communicate on different levels.
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Dans.kias Residency:
The first phase of the project was a residency in Vienna at Dans.Kias studio were we where researching some ideas together with other dancers. We then continued to develop the ideas with dancers in India and other countries. As a collective we now want to continue this process towards a further research and production.
We aim discover different approaches to what means fight for us in a daily process, each bringing in his or her own dance-background, but also skills from other art forms as Karate, Kung fu, singing or Acting.
On one hand we work on the technique, how to handle a fight situation, we aim to create Partnering phrases with attack and defense movements. Our focus lies on the real situation in which you need to defend yourself. As dancers we research, how to do this, while it’s not so important to follow the exact rules of one specific Martial Art, but to use whatever could help us as strategy to get out of the situation where somebody tries to force us to stay in.
On the other hand, researching the real situation of a fight makes us question, what the term fight actually means. When does a person start to fight? Where does the confrontation get so dangerous that we call it fight? Is the point, where the person is still thinking and mentally handling the situation, a real fight? Or does this real fight start when the real fear comes, in the moment where you’re conscious self reflection stops; the body saves its energy and just reacts as fast as possible?
Working Method
The work is based on physical as well as ideological exploration of fighting situations, confrontation in between two bodies so two people and two forces.
Body preparation:
Basic Exercises from Kung Fu, karate and kalaripayattu (mostly focusing on training reflect, speed, different qualities of movement, concentration and coordination) - Intensive body work; yoga, breathing exercises including pranayama,- Working on the mobility of spine, exercises based on Axis Syllabus and Feldenkrais methods.
Description of the physical tasks during our first residency:
We were working on physical tasks and exercises which are based on techniques used in martial arts. During the process we were also composing improvised fighting sequences which were the combination of forms used in partnering and Contact Improvisation. Nevertheless it was all our creative work and exploration. One of the exercises which had the biggest impact on our understanding of fighting situation was about creating a situation in which one person is limited in the movement but still trying to escape from attack. The task was very physical because attacking person had to create almost maximum limitation. This situation was a starting point of fighting, arriving in the moment were there is no more freedom to move. Used force and limitation are evoking the physical and mental reaction. Dancers who are fighting in couples are going through different stages of feelings and emotions; often they have to face their own borders. It is a very rich and deep experience and getting even more intensive when partners are trying to escape from each other. Exploring physical reaction on situation where people are getting close on the fighting field is raising lots of question that appear in mind:
Am I enjoying being close before fight, what exactly do I feel? Where are my borders/limits? When and why do I want to escape or when and why am I enjoying fighting the most? Why am I curious about the next move even though it seems to be difficult to defense or attack?
We physically induce situations in which we experience the real necessity for defense. The moment of not having another chance but to fight is created for example by lying under several persons who don’t let you move. This specific physical state evokes a strong emotion, which makes you panic and concentrate all your energy to the single goal to escape, or as another reaction to attack. With experimenting the overload of a body with physical manipulations we experience the state of the “mindless” body.
We also ask for the situations in which we fight. In which relation the fighters stand to each other, which physicality do they use?
Is the voice a fighting instrument? By practicing Voice exercises we find out how to use the strength of voice and how it can affect the appearance in a fighting situation.
Another approach we work on is given by questioning our awareness: What do we perceive as fight? How is the body moving so that we call it fighting – maybe also fighting with itself? And finally the question arises : Where does the need for attack actually come from? What brings the peaceful person in the state of attacking?
Another very interesting aspect of fighting situation is concentration. Concentrating might be perceived as an action of coming into deep dialogue with your body and mind. Being able to arrive in a different state of mind is helping to be calmer in fighting. Sometimes the calmer is your mind the more alert becomes your body. In danger, in confrontation we tend to wake up senses very fast. Another exercise which is worth to mention was helping the dancers to reach a deeper state of sensation and awakening senses. Dancers were working in couples where one person was a leader and another had to follow the instructions so given directions of movement with closed eyes. That helps to develop trust or experience the lack of trust, to become more alert. Bringing another person into “unsure” is the most efficient way to awake the senses. The last exercise I want to describe shortly has a lot of potential to be interpreted and explore in a different contexts. It might even explain the social aspects of fighting situation.
Dancers were standing in front of each other in a distance and slowly moving to each other. From the moment they got closer, they were coming into “hug”. In the “hug” one person always tried to stop another, create limits, even to be annoying so that the other person was truly wishing to escape. That exercise was very physical and intensive, sometimes evoking states of aggression or fear. This fight was turning into longer improvisation which was developing into different directions. It was traveling between the moments of high physical intensity through softer dance. Such improvisation is like a constant dialogue. It might be a nice picture/metaphor of the situations when people somehow cope with each other. It is beautiful to observe that in dance. From my point of view dance is just reflecting us… How we deal, how we are in dance or in fight usually tells a lot about how we are in everyday life but also it is interesting to play with it!
Social aspects of fight
During the process we were also discussing a lot about different state of body and mind in the moment of confrontation. We were mostly trying to understand the reasons of fight, the way of behaving in fight, some reactions in body (conscious and unconscious) emotions that appear, reaching the state of calmness, acknowledging the power.
Conclusion
Fighting appears on a different platform of our life. You might say that it starts from the moment we open our eyes every morning because sometimes we have to fight tiredness or particular mood in order to start a new day. There are some days in our life when we are fighting like mad. Fighting for rights, fighting for love, for life for the things we carry the most. We never want to loose, rather be always ready and prepared, feeling strong enough to handle the difficult situations. How beautiful it is not let the nerves take over! In order to get familiar with the state of calmness we might want to build our inner strength. To do this we should get familiar with the state of fight, start to explore the situation of confrontation more deeply. It helps to understand ourselves more, to be able to recognize our limits. And finally to be able to survive in the wild world which might give us an impression of beautiful heaven but we never know when and how will disappoint…
For us it’s always interesting to explore various situations (in that case fight) through physicality. It requires mature approach and openness for the new situation especially when a person doesn’t come from a martial arts background. Trying to understand the nature of the fight leads us to different approaches of this situation. It was worth to explore and experience that in this movement research because I realized that fighting is a beautifully powerful dance and a constant game. Why do we play? I think each has a reason…
Project Motivation:
What we are interested in is looking at an interdisciplinary approach to dance. Rediscovering both martial art and contemporary dance through each other. The martial arts is predominantly seen as aggressive or brutal but if you see a real master you see the calmness, they are like dancers, they move at the right place right time. They breath, they stay still, grounded they are soft movers. Both these fields offer a completely body centric approach, knowing your body, knowing the space around you, letting your breath move your body and explore.
Attack
Counter attack
Defend
Reach out
Stay
Walk away.
Space becomes as alive as the body throbbing with absence and presence, being cut, sliced, made whole again with bodies in it, out of it. Time is an integral part of both these disciplines and more so in the martial arts. It’s a fight, a fight where your body is your weapon as well as your armor. A wrong step or a wrong move can be fatal. It is interesting to apply this to dance, to see your other dancers as opponents. Martial arts presuppose a fight between good and evil. The bad guys and the good guys those are available in most movie genres. The protagonist and the antagonist propelled by their own desires, their own ambitions. Life isn't so clear cut and dry, the world is not divided into the good and the evil. The shades of grey dominate such spaces. The antagonist is as much a shade of grey as the protagonist. Why is it that the hero always wins? I was thinking what if the bad guy wins because he is more courageous? Or maybe luck favors him? Looking at us performers the performance for us is like one big fight, we prepare like hell and we perform and then we get ready for another one. Somehow we are all fighters inside. Battle is symptomatic of the kind of lives we lead today. We fight for everything with everyone. We fight in relationships, in friendships. We fight for our views, for our beliefs. We fight against fighting.

Bergson writes about "la politesse comme l’amour de l’égalité, une passion profonde pour la justice".


A film by Oliver Ressler, 118 min., 2009
“What is democracy?” is not one question, but is actually two questions. On the one hand, the question relates to conditions of the current, parliamentary representative democracies that are scrutinized critically in this project. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a more democratic system might look like and which organizational forms it could take.
The project asked “What is democracy?” to numerous activists and
political analysts in 15 cities around the world, in Amsterdam,
Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, Moscow, New York, Rostock,
San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw.
The interviews have been recorded on video since January 2007. Even
though all interviewees were asked the same question, the result was a
multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints from people living
in states that are usually labeled “democracies”.
This pool of interviews builds the basis for a film in eight parts, which (re)presents a kind of global analysis about the deep political crises of the Western democratic model. In one video, Adam Ostolski (Warsaw) explains that originally “the modern idea of democracy was connected to the notion of progress” and parliamentary states “had some tendency to become more and more democratic by including new types of political actors, such as workers and women. […] But since the 1980s, since the neoliberal trend in politics and economy we have a regression of democracy.” Lize Mogel (New York) notes that situation changed in such a way, that when you think about representative democracy today “you are not necessarily talking about individuals being represented, but more capital being represented.” Nikos Panagos (Thessaloniki) even argues that “representation and democracy are incompatible terms. Therefore, under no circumstances could the present system be called a democracy. It is just a sophisticated form of oligarchy.” While some subjects in the videos elaborate their ideas of direct democracy or decision-making processes of indigenous communities, David McNeill (Sydney) raises the issue of whether it makes sense “to continue contesting for the right to own and define the term democracy” or whether “it has been so corrupted and polluted by the conservatives that claimed ownership of it, that it is better to be surrendered.”
The film discusses the contested notion of “democracy”, which is misused for the maintenance of order by those in power, while at the same time “democracy” still represents an ideal hundreds of million people in the South desperately want to achieve. Today it seems almost impossible to be against “democracy”, even though it is getting emptier and emptier. A potential strategy could try to fill what is called “democracy” with new meaning. In this sense, the film presents a multi-layered discourse on democracy, which expresses a broad field of opinions that go beyond the borders of nation-states and continents.
The film has eight parts with the following titles: “Rethinking representation”, “Politics of exclusions”, “Secrecy instead of democratic transparency”, “New democracies?”, “Is representative democracy a democracy?”, “Direct democracy”, “Reclaiming Indigenous politics” and “Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?”
I am wondering how could i change the meaning of an image by including odour.
During the 1st block i was researching using different approaches: anthropological, philosophical and scientific to widen the ground of my research and get more aknowledgement about the role and the fonction of the smell.
I was focusing more in anthropological know-how of sensory, more precisely how the smell is related, directly or not, to certain trade (ref: Mémoires et expérience olfactives, anthropologie d’un savoir-faire sensoriel. Joël Candau)Putting my daily self-experience with smell on the side i wanted to know how nostrils can play a prior role in the professions that are directly linked or not with scent.For example where the perfumer will explore the whole olfactive space, the oenologist will interpretate the odour in order to get informations about the evolution of the wine and the fireman will select all smells that, in a short time, can be integrated in the global apprehension that he can have of a disaster.This knowledge and know-how are acquired most of the time without thinking about it, implicitly, just by doing daily cognitives tasks according to the job. The distinction between two poles of dealing with smells in professions emerge: on one part working with smells (perfumer, oenologist…) and on the other interpretate it (nurse, fireman…) In the second case the interactions created by sharing informations will help to define words and build a common vocabulary around this sense. The smell has the reputation to be discreditate also because we don’t have enough words, distinctions, language subtilities to share our perception without being too subjective or not understood.
Sharing smells, sensations would be a way to materialize molecules.
There is always more to smell than what comes in the nose, this “more” can be either associated to idiosyncratic reaction and social and cultural determinations.Working on the categorization of smells, sociological aspect of smells and also create a dictionnary that has to do with “smell in performance” are the points that i would like to develop in the next blocks…
In the video bellow i’ve edited a meeting with Corinne Caufriez that is assisting the director of groupe GENES. I’ve been doing olfactive tests that have been done last year during “ la fête de l’environnement” in Brussels and got to know more about the activities of this ASBL giving their olfactive abilities to help citizen….The second part of the video is the beginning of an experiment about the construction and the categorization of smell. I went on the street and i’ve asked to people 2 questions, giving them the video camera, living them free to focus and frame smells…
play in full screen HD
Brus and Mühl participated in the "Kunst und Revolution" (Art and Revolution) event in Vienna, issuing the following proclamation:
... our assimilatory democracy maintains art as a safety valve for enemies of the state ... the consumer state drives a wave of "art" before itself; it attempts to bribe the "artist" and thus to rehabilitate his revolutionising "art" as an art that supports the state. But "art" is not art. "Art" is politics that has created new styles of communication.
Before starting apt:
My research started as an ¨experiment¨ that was influence by
my kibbutz. The experiment: A group of artists will shape a single performer -
me.
In the application I suggested an ¨experiment¨ of 10 steps.
During the process collective interventions, discussions and voting were the
main ingredients to reach decisions. ¨The artistic environment will be
used as a tool to study social behavior. The interaction within the social
reality, the ¨real life¨, will be then the main aspect for arriving at a
creative result where the ¨artistic¨ and the ¨real¨ will be interdependent of
one another.¨ Why to choose ¨me¨ as and individual? I am an example, an out
come of another attempt that failed to reshape humanity in an Utopian
manner. I am my research object, so I want to disconnect from being
attached to ¨me¨ personally. I am observing my reactions to the one that
observe me and I observe the observer. I am the observer of my reactions
to the relations I establish.
I started by reading the basic historical rules of the
kibbutzim movement. I also read documents describing the struggles people had
trying to define how to live an utopia in the real world.
I spoke to the person (nachshon Golds ) that few years ago
had a court case against the kibbutz movement. He claimed that he was a part of
an experiment which as a child could not refuse participation and that he is
mentally damaged by it.
Starting apt:First week.
Already after the first week of overwhelming, sometime
speechless, interactions, my approach to my ¨experiment¨ started to crack. I
experienced again group discussions. I have to admit, much more intellectual
then in the kibbutz where I grew up. One group discussion was
particularly influential. It was about: paradox. Thus as a result I was
wondering: do we need oppositions at all? I started to reflect over the way
opinions and assumptions are exchanged and form them selves. In that period I
spoke to Piet Joostens about communism. We spoke about the democratic elements
of elections, voting and the representation of the majority. It finally
register to me that those are all tools of empowering and control and are in
contradiction to my life travel of seeking communication, so why should I
manifest them again? I realize that my ¨experiment¨ has to change. I have to
discover the underworld of decision-making mechanism. Why do we discuss,
give opinions and let the majority decide? Then language, once more appeared to
be the focus of my imagination. If the juggler of speech becomes the
representative, ¨the majority¨, in a process of discussion, how can the hidden
messages come to life? How can language become a more equal landscape for
us to travel on, with out restricting variety of expression?
By reaching those shores of understanding I found out many
great people were and are dwelling on the same matter.
Reenactment work shop
The prominent aspect of the workshop personally was the
beautiful text of Peggy phelan ¨The anthology of performance¨. The other , the
woman, minority, the invisible with in the representation of the western
cultural world, all those terms assembled into a performative depiction. The
invisibility became a potency of structure flexibility. Performance is an
example of a construction which can never be copied. Every repetition or
documentation of it creates a new set of reciprocal events of exchange.
The context of reenactment has a significant roll in my
research. It emerged out of the necessity to reexamine the collective decisions
mechanism that had a dominant impact on my life as a Kibutsnik. As a result I
was playing with the idea of launching myself back to the kibbutz and reenact
with the remaining inhabitants a cultural event. That event should have a
particular connotation between the historicity of the place and the current
affairs.
Workshop collaboration - nicolas y galeazzi
The encounter with Nicolas and the display of potentials in
portraying the collaboration discourse were a big shift in understanding my
research. I realize that by departing from my authentic artistic circumstances
I entered in to a realm of political and social perspectives and influences.
We examined collaboration according to economical
development and political consequences. Some of the texts we read had a
significant influence. For example:
Jacques Rancière : The Emancipated spectator
¨an ignorant could teach another ignorant what he did not
know himself¨
The collective performance is a performance that is
not a product. It is a chain of interaction that allows people to exchange and
influence the creative moment, not only to consume it.
Florian schneider : the term collaboration originates from
operating with in the enemy structure. According to that the outsider is the
one ¨that will manage to add critically to pre-established power relations of
expertise¨ (Markus miessen)
Bojana Kunst write about reexamining the protocols,
the script , the set of rules. By acknowledging the protocols the artistic
process can find the ¨virtual spaces in between¨ to operate. ¨Inter
territorial spaces , in which connection among many different cultural,
historical and artistic experiences are at work.¨ ( Bojana Kunst)
The major focus, in my eyes, of the workshop was capturing
art as a direct and allusive field in the relation to economical political
structures. What is my position concerning collaboration as a social reference?
What would I want to enhance in the complexity of reflections between the
individual self and the value of a collective assembly?
Some of the aspects that came to display were:
decentralization, delegation, changing rolls constantly in the decision
mechanism, lost of authorship oppose to branding oneself, micro relationship to
distribute understanding with in the group, gathering people like thoughts, to
detached from identification to a project, anonymity or ignorance as strategies
of coming together, anti-hierarchical, anti-dialectic, anti- representative.
Reconfiguring my conceptions:
-Looking for methods of discussions as game format to
generate symbiotic interactions.
-Investigating composition of adding information and
opinions instead of dialog of disagreement.
-Approaching the experiment as one body of negotiations and
create a framework where people can join in.
-Create a space between the object of discussion and personal
identification. The accent is not on personal outlook but on changing
perception.
-Merging in to collaboration by tolerating distinctions,
diverse voices to coexist.
-Changing rolls thus everybody play all sides of the game.
By that diminishing the success of the I.
Out of all those recognitions and after a mentoring talk
with dear Nicolas the configuration of ¨give me a piece¨ appeared. It was a new
dimension in the process that interdicted another approach: Open up the
experiment to make a piece with the ¨whole world¨. To divide a performance to
its elements: movement, text, surroundings, music, light and so on. I will ask
people to give me information concerning one of those subcategories of a
performance. I will create all kind of systems of interaction. Can be a
discussion or an action with one or more participants that as a result I will
have an aspect of a piece. I will constantly bring the aspects together and
reshape the piece according to new interactions.
The points of reference were:
-How to realize the elements of a piece with the others?-
how to invent new impute and a flexible structure of generating material- me as
an empty container – how to define through the others my own thoughts?
city of illusion
there is an orgasm of the body
when Body dies to itself,
frees from itself
and becomes one with the body next to it
with all living beings in the world,
there is an orgasm of the mind
when Mind dies to itself,
frees from itself
and becomes one with the space between two thoughts -
silence, awareness, emptiness,
there is an orgasm of the soul
when Soul dies to itself,
frees from itself
and hears its life, like breath
through each movement of the air,
there is a continuous orgasm
of The time-space
in which time and space
are continuously dying and continuously
recreating themselves, and all the worlds within.
The study of Transylvanian Hills in 7 steps (on methodology)
1 Fly for a cheap holiday to the Black Sea and see them from the plane.
2 Google « Transylvanian Hills » and make a collage of the prints (select the best images).
3 Go to the Library and get some geography books and read about altitudes, fauna, flora, weather and population.
4 Google on travel logs and read websites of people who have travelled in the Transylvanian hills.
5 Take a new holiday and fly to Transylvania itself.
6 Get a hitchhike to the countryside, try to get to many different villages.
7 After you took enough pictures and made a new travel blog or log, forget all you learned so far, get on a top of a smooth hill, lay long on the earth, arms above your head, and surrender to gravitation, let the hill hold you rolling down to its foot. Eyes closed, feel what the senses are telling you once you reached down there (repeat until idle, if no message coming through).
PS. Forget about the Transylvanian hills and apply this procedure to whatever you want to research.


Published in Polygraph n°17, 2005 (special issue "The Philosophy of Alain Badiou", Matthew Wilkens ed.), p. 143-155. Translation by Laura Balladur
In contemporary thought on aesthetics, one distinguishes philosophical alternatives according to their ability or willingness to address two major questions :
1) How much truth can art (still) bear ?
2) Is there, strictly speaking, such a thing as art ?
Can contemporary art educate us for truth ?
The preceding quote already suggests that the ambivalent montage known as "inaesthetics" translates less a theoretical contradiction or tangle (as Rancière suggests) than a concern for the ethical and political efficacy of art. What is at stake is the educational potential art. Badiou makes the wager, not only that art is capable of producing immanent truths, but that art teaches truth. As we saw, this very education must occur under the condition of philosophy, so to speak. It is philosophy’s responsibility to claim that art can provide an education to truth. And it is indeed a wager, which brings us back (this time most directly) to our first question : how much truth can art still bear ? Because the whole problem comes from the fact that truth, like the event, is rare. In the beginning citation, the definition of inaesthetics stems from "the existence of several independent works of art." What to do, in this case, with most artistic productions ? Must these be relegated to the ranks of non-art, placed alongside standard products of the culture industry that feed the usual aesthetic consumption ? And what to do if, as Badiou writes, "art is dubious," if "the present of art is only its own uncertainty, its fusion (or confusion) in the vague productions of bodies (or of capital-bodies) ?" What to do if "art repudiates all truth, or creates truth from the consumable absence of all truth ?" (24) "Inaesthetics is clear if art is obvious. As the horizon of art, does not non-art impose, strangely, an aesthetic ? An aesthetic of chaos, for example ?" In this case, inaesthetics must defend the axiomatic strength of art, "and reclaim, if need be, a return." The work is twofold. First, philosophy must pull itself together and not abandon its own productions to a commentary that, "under the guise of its devotion to the experimentation of the body of art," increasingly "incorporates production, fills a gap, compensates as best as it can in the chalky concept, the sinister deficiency of the sensible." Second, it is necessary to dream, to invoke (short of creating it) "a new regulated art" : "as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star." (25) This formula of Badiou’s occurs in the twelfth of his fifteen theses on contemporary art (collected under the title "Draft for a Manifesto of Affirmationism"). How to say it more clearly ? Despite all its "latent aesthetic," inaesthetics is not just another aesthetics : it’s a slogan.


Project Description:
Violence has been the way of expression of the man kind for ages. In this work we are trying to investigate fights the most simple form of human aeration and incorporate it in to a movement theater. We are dancers, each from different cultures, backgrounds and experiences in dance, but still curious about exploring movement together, still trying to communicate on different levels.
The first phase of the project was a residency in Vienna at Dans.Kias studio were we where researching some ideas together with other dancers. Abhilash Ningappa then continued to develop the ideas with dancers in India and other countries. As a collective we now want to continue this process towards a further research and production.
We aim discover different approaches to what means fight for us in a daily process, each bringing in his or her own dance-background, but also skills from other art forms as Karate, Kung fu, singing or Acting.
On one hand we work on the technique, how to handle a fight situation, we aim to create Partnering phrases with attack and defense movements. Our focus lies on the real situation in which you need to defend yourself. As dancers we research, how to do this, while it’s not so important to follow the exact rules of one specific Martial Art, but to use whatever could help us as strategy to get out of the situation where somebody tries to force us to stay in.
On the other hand, researching the real situation of a fight makes us question, what the term fight actually means. When does a person start to fight? Where does the confrontation get so dangerous that we call it fight? Is the point, where the person is still thinking and mentally handling the situation, a real fight? Or does this real fight start when the real fear comes, in the moment where you’re conscious self reflection stops; the body saves its energy and just reacts as fast as possible?
The work is based on physical as well as ideological exploration of fighting situations, confrontation in between two bodies so two people and two forces.
Body preparation:
Basic Exercises from Kung Fu, karate and kalaripayattu (mostly focusing on training reflect, speed, different qualities of movement, concentration and coordination) - Intensive body work; yoga, breathing exercises including pranayama,- Working on the mobility of spine, exercises based on Axis Syllabus and Feldenkrais methods.
Description of the physical tasks during our first residency:
We were working on physical tasks and exercises which are based on techniques used in martial arts. During the process we were also composing improvised fighting sequences which were the combination of forms used in partnering and Contact Improvisation. Nevertheless it was all our creative work and exploration. One of the exercises which had the biggest impact on our understanding of fighting situation was about creating a situation in which one person is limited in the movement but still trying to escape from attack. The task was very physical because attacking person had to create almost maximum limitation. This situation was a starting point of fighting, arriving in the moment were there is no more freedom to move. Used force and limitation are evoking the physical and mental reaction. Dancers who are fighting in couples are going through different stages of feelings and emotions; often they have to face their own borders. It is a very rich and deep experience and getting even more intensive when partners are trying to escape from each other. Exploring physical reaction on situation where people are getting close on the fighting field is raising lots of question that appear in mind:
Am I enjoying being close before fight, what exactly do I feel? Where are my borders/limits? When and why do I want to escape or when and why am I enjoying fighting the most? Why am I curious about the next move even though it seems to be difficult to defense or attack?
We physically induce situations in which we experience the real necessity for defense. The moment of not having another chance but to fight is created for example by lying under several persons who don’t let you move. This specific physical state evokes a strong emotion, which makes you panic and concentrate all your energy to the single goal to escape, or as another reaction to attack. With experimenting the overload of a body with physical manipulations we experience the state of the “mindless” body.
We also ask for the situations in which we fight. In which relation the fighters stand to each other, which physicality do they use?
Is the voice a fighting instrument? By practicing Voice exercises we find out how to use the strength of voice and how it can affect the appearance in a fighting situation.
Another
approach we work on is given by questioning our awareness: What do we
perceive as fight? How is the body moving so that we call it fighting
– maybe also fighting with itself? And finally the question arises
: Where does the need for attack actually come from? What brings the
peaceful person in the state of attacking?
Another very interesting aspect of fighting situation is concentration. Concentrating might be perceived as an action of coming into deep dialogue with your body and mind. Being able to arrive in a different state of mind is helping to be calmer in fighting. Sometimes the calmer is your mind the more alert becomes your body. In danger, in confrontation we tend to wake up senses very fast. Another exercise which is worth to mention was helping the dancers to reach a deeper state of sensation and awakening senses. Dancers were working in couples where one person was a leader and another had to follow the instructions so given directions of movement with closed eyes. That helps to develop trust or experience the lack of trust, to become more alert. Bringing another person into “unsure” is the most efficient way to awake the senses. The last exercise I want to describe shortly has a lot of potential to be interpreted and explore in a different contexts. It might even explain the social aspects of fighting situation.
Dancers were standing in front of each other in a distance and slowly moving to each other. From the moment they got closer, they were coming into “hug”. In the “hug” one person always tried to stop another, create limits, even to be annoying so that the other person was truly wishing to escape. That exercise was very physical and intensive, sometimes evoking states of aggression or fear. This fight was turning into longer improvisation which was developing into different directions. It was traveling between the moments of high physical intensity through softer dance. Such improvisation is like a constant dialogue. It might be a nice picture/metaphor of the situations when people somehow cope with each other. It is beautiful to observe that in dance. From my point of view dance is just reflecting us… How we deal, how we are in dance or in fight usually tells a lot about how we are in everyday life but also it is interesting to play with it!
Social aspects of fight
During the process we were also discussing a lot about different state of body and mind in the moment of confrontation. We were mostly trying to understand the reasons of fight, the way of behaving in fight, some reactions in body (conscious and unconscious) emotions that appear, reaching the state of calmness, acknowledging the power.
Conclusion
Fighting appears on a different platform of our life. You might say that it starts from the moment we open our eyes every morning because sometimes we have to fight tiredness or particular mood in order to start a new day. There are some days in our life when we are fighting like mad. Fighting for rights, fighting for love, for life for the things we carry the most. We never want to loose, rather be always ready and prepared, feeling strong enough to handle the difficult situations. How beautiful it is not let the nerves take over! In order to get familiar with the state of calmness we might want to build our inner strength. To do this we should get familiar with the state of fight, start to explore the situation of confrontation more deeply. It helps to understand ourselves more, to be able to recognize our limits. And finally to be able to survive in the wild world which might give us an impression of beautiful heaven but we never know when and how will disappoint…
For us it’s always interesting to explore various situations (in that case fight) through physicality. It requires mature approach and openness for the new situation especially when a person doesn’t come from a martial arts background. Trying to understand the nature of the fight leads us to different approaches of this situation. It was worth to explore and experience that in this movement research because I realized that fighting is a beautifully powerful dance and a constant game. Why do we play? I think each has a reason…
Project Motivation:
What we are interested in is looking at an interdisciplinary approach to dance. Rediscovering both martial art and contemporary dance through each other. The martial arts is predominantly seen as aggressive or brutal but if you see a real master you see the calmness, they are like dancers, they move at the right place right time. They breath, they stay still, grounded they are soft movers. Both these fields offer a completely body centric approach, knowing your body, knowing the space around you, letting your breath move your body and explore.
Attack
Counter attack
Defend
Reach out
Stay
Walk away.
Space becomes as alive as the body throbbing with absence and presence, being cut, sliced, made whole again with bodies in it, out of it. Time is an integral part of both these disciplines and more so in the martial arts. It’s a fight, a fight where your body is your weapon as well as your armor. A wrong step or a wrong move can be fatal. It is interesting to apply this to dance, to see your other dancers as opponents. Martial arts presuppose a fight between good and evil. The bad guys and the good guys those are available in most movie genres. The protagonist and the antagonist propelled by their own desires, their own ambitions. Life isn't so clear cut and dry, the world is not divided into the good and the evil. The shades of grey dominate such spaces. The antagonist is as much a shade of grey as the protagonist. Why is it that the hero always wins? I was thinking what if the bad guy wins because he is more courageous? Or maybe luck favors him? Looking at us performers the performance for us is like one big fight, we prepare like hell and we perform and then we get ready for another one. Somehow we are all fighters inside. Battle is symptomatic of the kind of lives we lead today. We fight for everything with everyone. We fight in relationships, in friendships. We fight for our views, for our beliefs. We fight against fighting.








Invited by bolwerK : http://www.ooooo.be/greyzone/program-3.html
and then?
Day six. Label. Announcement. Departure.
I stick a label on the wall above the candle I used to glue the fingerprints, on
which I wrote with a pen:
I was here too / On my way (2010)
Intervention / Installation
Interventions, traces / wax, label, name card
Iuliana Varodi
Read the entire text here :
http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojectpage&cwProject=61&cwContent=588









7.07 this morning. Same morning rituals, short version. Bright sunny morning. Coffee. Cereals. Japanese green tea. Room, window, table, laptop, books. Looking for the ladybirds, where are they? One is on the table, laying on her elytra, with open wings pointing outwards, her legs up in the air. I blow on her; it makes her fly straight into the dustbin near the table. A soft pressure, as if breathing got stuck a moment too long, in a vague location around/inside the chest. Is death part of life? Soon on my way to the next unknown space-time destination. Saying goodbye to things, views, people. And to you, dear reader.
was there a day five, day four, day three, day two, day one? yes, they migrated here http://iulianavarodi.com/sixdays.pdf
HOPE WEEK 2 : 22 - 26 Feb 2010
THE CIRCULATION OF HOPE / IMAGINEERING THE NOW
or Everything you always thought you knew about hope, but are about to redefine!
collaboration between a.pt and Micromarché

In this practice-based workshop radical_hope and aude thensiau explore the mobility of hope within a city.
hope as the now, de-futurized
hope as a social body, de-individualized
hope as an social affect, de-personalized
hope as invention
hope as auto-poetry
hope as a moment of change
hope as a choreography
hope as movement
how can this hope be communicated throughout the city?
how can hope be an answer to your own question?
how can you reach people you don't know to join in the circulation of hope.
in this 5-day workshop we will develop different strategies to make hope mobile and volatile, make hope travel and return,
set up conversations with unknown participants, start up dialogues with non-present collaborators.Possible strategies,
probably
not to be used, but nice as a starting point: recounting, laziness,
branding, self-instruction, wild card invitations, object-chain
letters, ...
working times: 22 - 26 Feb, (monday to friday), 10-18h
last admissions: 20th of february
place: MicroMarché, Steenkoolkaai 9, 1000 Brussels




Live Laboratory Symposium
and Durational Performances,
Exhibition and Publication
21 - 24 January 2010


"We do not move in one direction, rather do we wander back and forth, turning now this way and now that. We go back on our own tracks . . .' That thought of Montaigne's reminds me about something I thought of in connection with flying saucers, humanoids, and the remains of unbelievably advanced technology found in some ancient ruins. They write about aliens, but I think that in these phenomena we are in fact confronting ourselves; that is our future, our descendants who are actually traveling in time."
Andrei Tarkovsky

Public space is both a battlefield and stage for those visions and ideas in which a society puts its faith. At a distance, it also discloses that which is blindly supported in this society. One can survey it as if it were a kind of societal relief, or a contemporary witness of history, as it reveals both conscious and unconscious orders and structures.
In those times when the common faith in ideas is particularly strong, signs of this faith are placed into public space in the form of monuments which make beliefs concrete to us, alert us of the destructive power of faith, and signal the successful displacement of other beliefs.

The loss of faith in grand ideas has shown its effect by the occupation of public space by private interests. As a result, less public space is reserved for the monumental. The new landmarks follow the logic of commerce. The power of the consumer and the economy is reflected in the layout and occupation of public space - chalkboards with menu options, billboards displaying the fashions of the season, pavilions for company meetings, closed-off zones for large-scale events.
“Between purchases they savor the spectacle of the constant disintegration of the complexes to which they belong … Were the Mediterranean lapping at the avenue’s edges, the shops could hardly expose themselves in a more windowless fashion. They disgorge a stream of commodities that serves to satisfy creaturely needs; it climbs up the facades, is interrupted at street level, and then shoots with redoubled force up into the heights on the far side of the crosscurrent passerby. … No one invented the plan according to which the elements of the hustle and bustle scribble a jumble of lines into the asphalt. There is no such plan. The goals are locked in the individual little particles, and the law of least resistance gives the curves their direction.” (S. Kracauer).
With the decline of grand narratives, the selling-out of public space into the form of a street fair has fully begun. That which gains ground is less utopian, and just as less monumental in its space requirement, however, no less hungry and, as a diversified phenomenon, particularly assertive.
Under the title “Utopia and Monument”, Sabine Breitwieser has developed a two-part program for the “Steirischer Herbst” festival, in which she applies art to a discourse on public space. Examples of the unspoken being openly expressed on the street – understood here as a social platform for self-exhibition – are sought out. At the same time, the scope of art for public statements is tested, as well as its competitive power within the struggle over limited public space.
Fourteen international artists were invited to participate. Until October 18th, they explore the question of the validity of art between privatization and the public sphere. Part Two of “Utopia and Monument” will follow next year. (wh/jn)
to see the video:
http://www.castyourart.com/en/2009/10/07/utopia-and-monument-steirischer-herbst-festival/






















From Wikipedia on spider webs:
There are a few types of spider web found in the wild; and many spiders are classified by the webs they weave. Different types of spider webs include:
Spiders have several spinneret glands located at their abdomen which produce the silken thread. Each gland produces a thread for a special purpose. Seven different gland types have currently been identified, although each species of spider will possess only a few of these types, never all seven at once.
Normally a spider has three pairs of spinnerets, but there are spiders with just one pair or as many as four pairs of spinnerets, with each spinneret having its own function.
During the process of making a web the spider will use its own body for measurements, a very practical and ergonomic design feature of any web. This will allow the spider to move quickly around its own web with very few faults.
It will start with the most difficult part of construction, the first thread. The spider effectively uses the wind to carry its initial adhesive thread. With some luck the silk is released from its spinners and carried by the wind to a suitable adherable surface. When it sticks to a surface the spider will carefully walk over the thread and strengthen it with a second thread. This process is repeated until the primary thread is strong enough to support the rest of the netting.
After strengthening the first thread the spider will continue to make a Y shaped netting. The first three radials of the web are now constructed. More radials are added making sure that the distance between each radial is small enough to cross. This means that the number of radials in a web directly depends on the size of the spider plus the size of the web.
After the radials are complete the spider will fortify the center of the web with about five circular threads. Then a spiral of non-sticky, evenly spaced, circular threads are made for the spider to easily move around its own web during construction. The spider then, beginning from the outside in, will methodically create the adhesive spiral threads. It will utilize the initial radiating lines as well as the non-sticky spirals as guide lines. The spaces between each spiral will be directly proportional to the distance from the tip of its back legs to its spinners. This is one way the spider will use its own body as a measuring/spacing device. While the sticky spirals are formed the non-adhesive spirals are removed as there is no need for them anymore.
After the spider has completed its web it will chew off the initial three center spiral threads then sit and wait. If the web is broken without any structural damage during the construction the spider does not make any initial attempts to rectify the problem.
Webs allow a spider to catch prey without having to expend energy by running it down. Thus it is an efficient method of gathering food. However, constructing the web is in itself an energetically costly process due to the large amount of protein required, in the form of silk. In addition, after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and thus become inefficient at capturing prey. It is not uncommon for spiders to eat their own web daily to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. The silk proteins are thus 'recycled'.






Hi, everyone~
I'm in Seoul now, it was about 25hours trip from Antwerp to here by the way of Tokyo(horrible!). Few days ago, I went to Nam June Paik Art Center which is newly opened with new big building nearby Seoul.
I'd like to introduce it's ambitious opening exhibition specially performance part (named Station 2). Unlike any other presentation, it is planned to show in the exhibition space blocked by partitions like any Biennales so that each performance could be shown consistently without time laps, tickets and audience seats.Various well known performance artists are invited like William Forsythe,Boris Charmatz and Romeo Castellucci. (maybe they are too established? Not at all in Korea...)
http://www.njpartcenter.kr/root/festival/html_eng/station_2_1.html
(Click the red bar to see each works)
Anyway, for me and Aptee who are interested in convergence with visual art or those who searching for alternative way might be helpful this information.
I miss all Aptees and Antwepen~
If you interest in this exhibition, I'll visit again and
would video taped and show at Apt.
So,,, more reply could push me to document this exhibition. ha~
from far far way city ,
Sungmin
- masturbating theater for homless-
Actually no one is masturbating in this.
By sitting audiences on chair to see performance, homless people under audience seat
could get heating through weight sensor. (more audience gets more heating)
and temperature of homeless(RFID) send to billboard in public space and performers.
So, It's win-win circulation from audience-homeless-performers and even gas co. and
government who organized out door performing art.






















Can You Feel The Love Tonight
artist: Elton John
album: Greatest Hits 1970-2002
genre: Pop
year: 2002
Because You Loved Me
artist: Celine Dion
album: All The Way...A Decade Of Song
genre:
year: 1999
Suddenly
artist: Billy Ocean
album: Greatest Hits
genre:
year:
Three Times a Lady
artist: The Commodores
album: 20th Century Masters
genre:
year:
Tonight I Celebrate My Love
artist: Roberta Flack
album: Softly With These Songs The Best Of Roberta F
genre: Rock
year:
Just the Way You Are
artist: Billy Joel
album: Greatest Hits Vol. 1-2
genre: Pop
year: 1998
Wonderful Tonight
artist: Eric Clapton
album: One More Car One More Rider
genre: Rock
year: 2002
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
artist: The Platters
album: 20th Century Masters: The Best Of The Platters
genre:
year: 1999
What a Wonderful World
artist: Louis Armstrong
album: All-Time Greatest Hits
genre:
year:
When I Fall In Love
artist: Celine Dion
album: The Colour Of My Love
genre: Easy Listening
year: 1993
Boom! Shake the Room
artist: Dj Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
album: Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Greatest Hits
genre:
year:
Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
artist: Backstreet Boys
album: Backstreet Boys
genre: Pop
year: 1997
No Diggity
artist: Blackstreet
album: Another Level
genre: R&b
year: 1996
Jump
artist: Kris Kross
album: Totally Krossed Out
genre: Rap
year: 1992
Pump up the Jam
artist: Technotronic
album: Pump Up The Jam
genre: Other
year: 1989
Cotton-Eye Joe
artist: Rednex
album: Sex & Violiins
genre:
year: 1995
Let's Talk About Sex
artist: Salt-n-Pepa
album: Blacks' Magic
genre:
year: 1992
Now That We Found Love
artist: Heavy D & The Boys
album: Now That We Found Love
genre:
year:
Who Let the Dogs Out
artist: Baha Men
album: Greatest Movie Hits
genre:
year:
Hot Hot Hot
artist: Buster Poindexter
album: Buster Poindexter
genre:
year: 1987
Y.M.C.A.
artist: Village People
album: The Best Of Village People
genre: Pop
year:
Macarena
artist: Los Del Rio
album: A Mi Me Gusta
genre:
year: 1994
Hokey Pokey
artist: The Champs
album: Tequila: Golden Classics
genre:
year:
Can't Get You Out Of My Head
artist: Kylie Minogue
album: Fever
genre: Pop
year: 2002
Billie Jean
artist: Michael Jackson
album: Vol. 1-Greatest Hits History
genre:
year:
Holiday
artist: Madonna
album: The Immaculate Collection
genre: Pop
year:
Like A Virgin
artist: Madonna
album: The Immaculate Collection
genre: Pop
year:
ABC
artist: Jackson 5
album: The Ultimate Collection
genre: Soul
year: 1995
Dancing Queen
artist: Abba
album: Gold - Greatest Hits
genre: Pop
year: 1992
Oh, What a Night
artist: The Four Seasons
album: Anthology
genre:
year:
We Are Family
artist: Sister Sledge
album: The Best of Sister Sledge (1973-1985)
genre: Soul
year:
Strangers In The Night
artist: Frank Sinatra
album: 20 Hits
genre: Ballad
year:
My Way
artist: Frank Sinatra
album:
genre:
year:
Joy To The World
artist: Three Dog Night
album: The Best Of '3 Dog Night'
genre:
year:
Tequila
artist: The Champs
album: Tequila: Golden Classics
genre:
year:
You Can't Hurry Love
artist: Diana Ross & The Supremes
album: The Ultimate Collection
genre:
year:
Can't Help Falling In Love
artist: Elvis Presley
album: ELV1S 30 #1 Hits
genre:
year: 2002














Het Geluid I Maastricht
Maastricht, 22nd of April 2008
Dear organizing committee of Das FRIEDENSDPROJECT,
BERLIN 2008,
Hereby we theatre collective Het Geluid, Maastricht,
The Netherlands
Would like to propose our successful performance:
KIBUYE for your project.
Kibuye is based on Clea Koff’s book The Bonewoman or
Die Knochenfrau. At 22 years old, just graduated as forensic anthropologist
Koff leaves the US for Kibuye, Rwanda, to help open up a massive mass grave.
With a sort of professional distance and a great moving care and engagement
Koff speaks about the difficult work and the histories behind it. A post modern
tragic tale with an ancient ring. Clea koff is our present day messenger. In
Kibuye like in the old Greek plays the violence is described but not shown. So
via our ear the images will hunt our eyes. In a mediatised world where the
amount of images sometimes seem to make us numb. This play is a simple but
shocking revelation. Clea Koff is an impressive human being who without any
shame can say: I did something important in this world. For us Clea Koff is a
very inspire ring person who comes from a perspective of professionalism,
dealing with painful truths to a very realistic but moving approach to a new
concept of peace.
Kibuye played
with much success at several festivals in the Netherlands like ITS festival,
theaterfestival Amsterdam and opened at the coup in hometown Maastricht.
Het Geluid is an interdisciplinary theatre
collective: based in an old factory in
Maastricht, The Netherlands. In the Euregion on the border with Belgium (near
Hasselt and Liege, 15 min) and Germany (Aachen, 15 min)
Existing of graduates from Maastrichts Famed drama
school and operasingers, journalists, dancers, musicians and thinkers. Het
Geluid thinks beyond and crosses the borders of countries and the different
arts. It specializes in non theatre texts, (new) music theatre, working with
different content fields and what we call the humanities. (that is why we are so interested to
contribute to your project)
After successful performances around the Netherlands
we are excited to translate KIBUYE in German and play it in a very content rich
environment, like your project promises to be. The play takes 45 minutes, will
be translated for the project in German and can play in a non theatrical area.
Since it has no scenery.
Het Geluid also had much success with our rendition of
Arnold Schoenberg’s ERWARTUNG at the EUREGIONAL OPERA EN MUSIC THEATRE FESTIVAL
2008. Upcoming month our new production L’Intrus opens at the Theater aan het
vrijthof in Maastricht.
We are very interested in other contexts than the
average theatre setting to present our work in because we hope it brings our
work back to what it was in ancient Greece. A place for moral reflection!
Hope to informed you enough
My regards
Gable
Roelofsen
Collective
member Het GeluidIMaastricht




































Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik [Workers leaving the Factory] (1995)
Workers Leaving the Factory - such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this stillexistant sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home? These questions have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. For the space before the factory gates has always been the scene of social conflicts. And furthermore, this sequence has become an icon of the narrative medium in the history of the cinema. In his documentary essay of the same title, Harun Farocki explores this scene right through the history of film. The result of this effort is a fascinating cinematographic analysis in the medium of cinematography itself, ranging in scope from Chaplin's Modern Times to Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone!. Farocki's film shows that the Lumière brothers' sequence already carries within itself the germ of a foreseeable social development: the eventual disappearance of this form of industrial labor. (Klaus Gronenborn, Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, November 21, 1995) The first film ever projected is listed under the title The Workers Leaving the Factory. Chaplin played a worker, and Marilyn Monroe once exited the gate of a fish factory... but the workers' film has not become a main genre in film history. The space in front of the gate is far from being a preferred cinematic location. Most films begin when the work is over. I have collected images from several countries and many decades expressing the idea "exiting the factory", both staged and documentary - as if the the time has come to collect film-sequences, in the way words are brought together in a dictionary.
This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with Art Torrents

Dear Camille:
Do you think Courtney Love has surpassed Madonna as an icon of tough, sexy, smart womanhood?
Curious in New York
Dear Curious,
Courtney Love is clearly in transition, so it's too early to
predict how she may develop as an actress or musician. But at this
point it is preposterous to compare her achievements with those of
Madonna, who is a world figure of huge impact on the performing arts.
Courtney's core following is very limited by age, race and nationality,
while Madonna's ardent, multiracial fans range from children to mature
adults and number in the millions.
Courtney has already shown she is the better actress because of her ability to open herself emotionally to her character, as well as to her director and fellow actors. Paradoxically, this may be because she's less psychologically stable than Madonna, who is a mogul and control freak and too suspicious and guarded to really blend with an ensemble where she's not the boss.
The drug-free, perfectionist Madonna is much more profoundly visionary and steadily inner-directed than Courtney, who thus far has been primarily reactive, bouncing from place to place and thing to thing. I can't imagine Madonna -- or any genuine rebel -- saying what Courtney did after the Golden Globe awards about how much she was enjoying adults being "nice" to her.
Courtney's recent, drastic image makeover was long overdue. Not only did she hang on to that tatty "Kinder-whore" look for four years too long, but her reputation still needs emergency resuscitation in some circles. For example, about a year and a half ago, a famous, hip comedian said disgustedly to me, after she saw a dirty, disheveled, staggering Courtney "dragging" her tiny child through a packed, raucous party in the middle of the night, "Kurt Cobain killed himself to get away from her."
It must also be said that Courtney, as much as Hillary Clinton, owed her initial prominence to her association with a famous man. This cannot be said of Madonna, who learned her technical skills from a series of shadowy producers but who rocketed herself to superstardom.
Finally, Madonna's massive contributions to music leave Courtney's in the dust. Courtney's group, Hole, is a good but not great band that has yet to add a single important song to the central repertoire of popular music. Madonna, in contrast, is a major original composer and arranger whose blazingly beautiful, intricately layered songs have dominated the air waves and permeated the imagination for 13 years. When will the Grammy Awards judges, those gross hypocrites, get around to honoring her?
Please note that I
continue to defend Madonna despite the fact that she has been nothing
but bitchy, bitchy, bitchy about me! I am, you see, the second
Italian-American lesbian named Camille whom the gods have devilishly
sent to help and harass her -- the first being the pivotal, early
manager whom Madonna ditched on her way up.
March 4, 1997


Charles Mee: There is a vital relation between art en the
way societies are structured. As societies develop, it is the artists who
articulate the necessary myths that embody our experience of life and provide
parameters for ethics and values. Every so often the inherited myths lose their
value because they become too small and confined to contain the complexities of
the ever- transforming and expanding societies. In that moment new myths,
structures, relations, ways of embodying are needed to encompass who we are
becoming
I am an Artist, I am a researcher, I am a paraSITE| How
can we stimulate and simulate this community?
I have a background as a theatre artist.
An audience is a community for the duration of the
event.
It always amazes me that within the group of onlookers
everybody’s lonely individual inner experience seems emphasized.
Theatre is to me a mental space. The area where I
learned that we can construct reality. We can influence experience. We can take
of the façade of daily reality.
Having an interdisciplinary theatre collective in
Maastricht my constant question is:
How can I make work that keeps it‘s autonomy,
complexity, research quality but still find a connection with the direct community the work was made in?
I want to investigate the relation to and influence
the community I work in. But I don’t want to make Community work in the
seventies sense. No moral superiority. But an arena to share ambivalence and
complex disturbing realities. The success of a work, to me depends, on the way
we artists find new shapes for our shared ambiguities and uncertainties.
Embodying the other and telling constructed stories is
about the relationship to the self.
In the mental
space called theatre we can become aware of how much the borders, markings and scars
we perceive are caused by our own thinking, by our own ongoing interpretation.
A good actor is
like a vessel. A person who embodies collective knowledge and uses his or her
hyper individual expression/body/speech to reach for the universal. A good actor
knows it is important to keep his self images flexible not fixed. On stage a good performer remembers us by his
or her unmediated presence that human beings are both extremely vulnerable and
extremely powerful.
It calls on us to define our identity on different
terms. Than we normally do.
It is disturbing for most audiences in performances (that
are not like most commercially driving theatre works that seem to want to kill
time and the autonomous thinking.) to be confronted with the kind of theatre that
makes you aware of time, ambivalence, that remembers us of our vulnerability
and power, to keep our identity fluid. This
is to me is the basic ancient consciousness that theatre has to offer any
community. We become aware of the
relation to ourselves and the other. That is our mutual job, to see that we
keep the structures in our heads, minds, words and our communities fluid.
I am part of a theatre collective called HET GELUID, based
in AINSI in Maastricht. We are not just a producing company but we do very
active research.
One of our current multiyear projects is a project
called FREMDKOERPER, a series of more than ten performances around the strangeness
in ourselves and the relation to the other.
After performances that basically were only reflecting
on communities, lately we stumbled on variations of using the community we work
in. Our two latest performances took place in site specific situations in
Maastricht University and in a court room.
In the opera Erwartung, made in a courtroom, actual clerks and judges participated in the
performances. It goes beyond the question of using so called amateurs or
non-professionals. It is more a matter of the “knowing and the not knowing
body”. The trained theatre professional gained knowledge but lost a certain
amount of not- knowing. The amateur may not have the skills but that person may
be a judge for years and knows the “performative setting” he is functioning in
very well. Working site specific meant
that we got to learn new people with different preconceptions than ours and
that those people would reconsider their view on THEIR workplace. Our theatre
was always changed by what the specific place and its people brought to us.
Maastricht is a
laboratory. A mixed up, confused collective identity. Bourgeois? Middleclass? Rich? Dutch?
Provincial? Euregional? European?
Too much import? Too protective? Xenophobic? that in my opinion needs theatrical
intervention/intrusion. A common notion
in theatre is that it is political to give voice to the unheard. My research plan
is to make visible by theatrical and performative interventions in this city, the
unheard city.
The city is institutionalized. All the big art budget
is mostly spent on organization. The future ambition and identity of the city
follows a discourse of ARTS AND LEISURE. Art should keep and attract money,
companies, people, tourists and jobs to the city. Many rapports speak of a
casino, a new musicalshow theatre, Cultural capital of Europe in 2018 and
“protecting” the TEFAF arts fair of “Parasites”. This discourse has some violent sides to it.
It ultimately is together with the idea to bring the softdrugs to the borders
of the city area part of a discourse of exclusion.
Charles Mee speaks about artists creating new
mythology. I speak about the notion of giving voice to the unheard. We talk
about a discourse of inclusion. We are living in a power struggle with the
discourse of cleanness, tidiness and exclusion because it’s discourse violates
identities, possibilities, ethics, morality, communities. It doesn’t know how
to deal with ambivalence. I see this tension everywhere in the world. How do we
deal with the disturbing? Do we kill it or do we acknowledge that the
disturbing is a part of us.
I am a
researcher and Maastricht is my lab.
My lab will be a moving paraSITE.
A moving theatre that will see, hear, give voice….
That will intrude and invade!
Het Geluid I Maastricht
After
performances on ‘The strangeness’ of mass graves and an opera in a courtroom in
Fremdkörper 0# and 1#. Maastricht’s one and only interdisciplinary theatre
collective sets out on a new journey into ‘the strange’ inside us human beings. 
L'Intrus I Fremdkörper 2#
Inspired by
philosopher Jean Luc Nancy’s essay about the heart transplant he underwent
after heart failure.
The tale of
someone confronted by the stranger that intrudes his body. Someone who is taken
by the fear of losing his identity.
Nancy transforms this very
personal experience into an universal story. How do we deal with the stranger
in our lives?
Het
Geluid takes on this subject and goes to
heart of the matter. What do we know
about the most familiar and at the same time most alien to us, our own
heart? In our search we’ll bump into
heart surgeons, heart patients, donor
coordinators, refugees, xenophobia and a bunch of Roma gypsies.
We are glad
to announce that our performances will be ‘intruded’ by Antwerp‘s one and only Balkan Brass band the
AMBRASSBAND. You are invited for some food for thought, some lovely narrow
mindedness and who knows what more will intrude your heart on the melancholic
sounds of the Balkan brass band.
Freely
based on Jean Luc Nancy’s L’Intrus
Director: Gable Roelofsen
Actors: Romy Roelofsen,
Sofie van Moll and Ad van Gool
Music: Ambrassband Antwerp
Maastricht Toneelstad Festival 2008
Wednesday 14th of May(opening night)/
Thursday 15th of May/ Friday 16th of May (with party at Take Five)
21:00 Theater aan het
Vrijthof , Reservations UITbalie
043-350 55 55 entrance 10 euro
Extra: Het Geluid I Take
Five
DAS FREMDKŐRPERFEST
.
A PARTY
16TH
OF MAY, TAKE FIVE.
MELANCHOLY,STRANGENESS,A
BIT OF THEATRE, SOME ARGENTINIAN SOUNDS AND A WHOLE LOT OF BALKAN BRASS BAND.
(AMBRASSBAND, ANTWERP)







Mistake in contrat law page re-edited from wikipedia
In contract law mistake is an erroneous belief, at contracting, that certain facts are true. It may be used as grounds to invalidate the agreement. Common law has identified three different types of mistake in contract: unilateral mistake, mutual mistake, and common mistake.
A mutual mistake occurs when the parties to a contract are both mistaken but about different things. They are at cross-purposes. As such, there is no consensus ad idem, and this overlaps with the objective theory of contract, and there is no offer and acceptance.Hence the contract is void.
Raffles v. Wichelhaus 2 H. & C. 906 (Ex. 1864) Plaintiff Raffles agreed
to sell 125 bales of Indian cotton at 17 pence per pound to Defendant
Wichelhaus with payment to be made within a specified time after the arrival of
the cotton in
The buyer agreed to purchase cotton from the seller. The parties agreed the
cotton would be shipped on the ship “Peerless.” Unknown to the parties, there
were two ships Peerless. Buyer knew of October Peerless and expected the cotton
to be shipped on October Peerless. But Seller knew of December Peerless and
shipped the cotton on December Peerless. Buyer refused to accept the shipment
when it arrived later than Buyer expected, and Seller sued. The court held
there was no contract since “there was no consensus ad idem.” (No agreement as
to the matter.)
Mutual mistakes are rare, but they do occur. If there is a true mutual mistake, there is no contract, even though it may be said there was a meeting of the minds.

