WORKSHOPS 02/12: may-july 2012
Dedicated Mentors:
Nicolas Galeazzi, Anna Hoffner, Peter Stamer, Pierre Rubio
OPENING WEEK
see google doc ‘opening week’ for full description
HIGHER PERFORMANCE (workshop in economy)
Nicolas Galeazzi & Elizabeth Ward
a.pass de Bottelarij
7th - 11th of May and 14th - 18th of May from 10:00 to 17:00;
We think some workshops in economy for artists are in order! Let's be prepared for the take-over!
It
became clear in 2008 at the latest, that the economic system we are
living with and many of its assumptions are wacky, unjust and not
sustainable. Many of its instruments are either exaggerated, or
exhausted. The bubbles it produced in different markets are getting out
of control, and deregulated fiscal constructions are dramatically
failing. Yet, business is going on as usual, destroying the social
fabric on the way. The current economic crisis is not only a result of
some major failures in speculating practices, but the outbreak of a
constant crisis inherent to the system. Exploitation of the society and
the environment through a reliance on constant growth, the possibility
of infinite creation of money for some through the creation of debt for
the majority, and the binding of most life-procedures to procedures of
money are creating a precarious and dangerous economic climate.
The current cuts of public funding and the absence of interesting
jobs are just some visible signs of the consequences of governmental
reaction towards the 2008 crisis. Arts all over europe are now more
concretely targeted for cuts then ever in the last 40 years.
This is at least why we - as artist - have urgently to rethink our
relationship to economics, and have to leave our triple position as
critics, prototypes and profiteers of the system, while not making our
hands dirty by being protected through governmental funding. We rather
have to occupy and appropriate the "economics" and fill it with new
practices and new meaning. There are enough alternative economics, which
have many comparables with art making, to be inspired by, enact, and
develop.
We have to occupy the vocabularies, the practices and the
appearance of the economy and to open it to a bigger spectrum of life
than just a financial success.
The economic euphoria of the New Economy in the 1990's and the
housing bubble of the following decade washed itself away and caused
many predictable social, economic and even logical problems (not to
forget about the ecological disasters). On many, still not effective
corners, people are looking and working for their vision of an other
'New'. The spectrum goes from Perma Culture to new kinds of structured
finance packages wrapped in eco-paper with a fair trady touch. Social
economies, eco energy, 'prosperity without growth', and many other
concepts popping up in many discussions. At the same time many artistic
practices - based in creative industry or in anti-capitalist movements -
are trying to touch ground in the debates around the crisis. Here, we
have to interact.
These workshops should launch a discussion about a transition from
the passed 'new' to a 'new' post-... What do we expect? How do we react?
What is our real contribution to the crisis and how do we fictionalise
the changes to come? What kind of traps are we constantly taping as
artists? What kind of an economy could we establish out of an artistic
(researching) practice which makes a real difference?
Taking over economy!
These questions can be attacked by analysing the different notions of 'performance' in economy and in the arts.
The understanding of "performance" differs in general in their aims,
aesthetics and actions in both fields. Performance on stage has to do
with appearance, or transformation, performance on 'stock' with
accomplishment, growth and power (thrust).
A mixup of this different understandings happens in a very complex
way, when it comes to the commodification and dissemination of knowledge
- and even more when this happens through artistic practices.
We would like to propose a two week workshop in two parts. The first
week should concentrate on performing the reality of the economic
crisis and the crisis of art-making in relation to financial policies.
By inviting theorist and artist Georgios Papadopoulos, ("Notes towards a
Critique of Money") we would undertake an extended analyse of the
relation between art and currency. What is our currency? What is the
promise behind this currency? But also what are we actually dealing with
by dealing with currencies?
While in the second week we would like to go more into alternative
economic systems. For that we will collaborate with the behavioural
economist Marieke Huysentruyt and will appropriate and translate
economic ideas such as the 'Gemeinwohlökonomie' and Parecon. How are
alternatives possible? How can art-making develop economic alternatives?
How can the economy of art-making be reclaimed and recoined with other
meanings and values?
The workshops are based on a similar lab structure. In order to
compare and relate the differing understandings of 'performance' in a
practical an discursive way, we will setup a lab where artistic
performances and economic performances should coexist, contradict and
corrupt each other.
The lab is a simple square furnished with some material and
positions for artistic and economic activities. It will be constantly
filmed from the ceiling above. This should allow to understand the
procedures on the 'playgorund' as scores or choreographies - the
choreographies of relinking and rethinking art and economy. Or in other
words - the workshop is a lab for the performance of the reality of art.
Seeing Sound
important: this project contains two workshops: ‘Soundwalk’ and ‘Fantasy Intervention’
!’The Soundwalk’ is not organized by a.pass but is open to our participants.
‘Fantasy Intervention’ is part of the a.pass workshop program!
organized by Julie Pfleiderer and Caroline Daish (ex-apass)
Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and de Bottelarij
"Fantasy
Intervention" is a workshop by Ant Hampton on imagination and writing
for site-specific theatre and live urban interventions. For artists and
practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds - theatre-makers, sound
artists, actors/directors, as well as choreographers, stage-designers,
architects, poets and writers.
What
can assist us in conceiving performance for locations outside theatre
buildings? What sort of imagination is required for this kind of
performance? What does it mean to balance fantasy with feasibility? With
a focus on observation imagination and writing and involving walks in
the city, discussion, film and photography the workshop culminates with a
series of presentations.
Context:
German director Julie Pfleiderer (http://www.julie-pfleiderer.de/) and
performance artist Caroline Daish have invited guest artists, including
David Helbich, Joanna Baillie & Paul Craenen for the May Soundlab
"seeing sound". The idea is to create 10 days around Sound and
Performance in the context of Soundwalks and inviting a expansive
interpretation of the form 'Soundwalk'. The discussion began with
Julie's attraction to the Walk & Talks of Philipp Gehmacher.
In the first week 14-18th May (Monday to Friday) we plan one ‘soundwalk’
each day that ends in a talk, each day in a different venue. Thursday
and Friday will be in collaboration with Pianofabriek 'open house'
event.
The second week is a workshop 21-25th May in Brussels. Ant Hampton will give a 3 day 'fantasy intervention' workshop which will be followed by two days of 'lab', an opportunity to continue working on ideas.
We
invited Ant Hampton, (http://www.anthampton.com/menu.html) as we feel
that his work manages to sit in an interesting place in relation to
sound and performance. From his installation "Etiquette", New Autoteatro
work ‘This is Not My Voice Speaking’ with Britt Hatzius which premiered
in Almost Cinema (Vooruit) to his latest "OK OK" in collaboration with
Gert-Jan Stam, a score for a live moment, an interaction amongst
strangers.
If you have any questions please contact Caroline (cjdaish@gmail.com) or Julie (info@julie-pfleiderer.de)
a.pass basics: collaboration and collaborative learning
28 May - 1 June
Elke Van Campenhout
de Bottelarij
Every
block, a.pass organizes some ‘b-workshops’: workshops that focus on the
basic principles of a.pass as a working environment. Every b-workshop
is accompanied by a reader of texts and information that will be the
starting point for discussion and a platform for (re)-thinking the
a.pass working environment. In the upcoming blocks we will gather around
topics like ‘collaboration’, ‘self-organization’, ‘tools, cases and
other methodologies for artistic research’, ‘feedback and critique’,
‘collaborative work spaces’, ‘transdisciplinary research practices’,
‘What is political about research?’, ‘Who’s afraid of the Institute?’,
etc... (New topics are always welcome!).
We
strongly invite you to take part in at least one b-workshop per block,
since these moments of discussion about the basics of the environment we
work in, offer us the opportunity to start building a common ground of
references that can make the positioning of every individual’s project
more transparent and more easily communicable.
This
first b-workshop on ‘collaboration and collaborative learning’ opens up
the field of collaborative practices as ‘open collectives’, as it grew
in the artistic practices of the last 10-15 years. We try to get a grip
on the social, political, economic and aesthetic context that has
produced this proclivity for communal working, and look at some
interesting examples of collaborative research projects. This b-workshop
is a Reading Sessions workshop: text and discussion based.
A space for working
Raumlabor (tbc)
4-8 June
We
invited the architectural collective raumlabor to join us to think
about creating a collaborative workspace for research in our big studio
in de Bottelarij. Together we look at the practice of different people
with different timings working in one and the same space: how to
organize space and attention, and turn the collaborative into an
invitation rather than an obstruction.
raumlaborberlin
is a network, a collective of 8 trained architects who have come
together in a collaborative work-structure. We work at the intersection
of architecture, city planning, art and urban intervention. We address
in our work city and urban renewal as a process. We are attracted to
difficult urban locations. Places torn between different systems, time
periods or planning ideologies, that can not adapt. Places that are
abandoned, left over or in transition that contains some relevance for
the processes of urban transformations. These places are our
experimentation sites. They offer untapped potential which we try to
activate. This opens new perspectives for alternative usage patterns,
collective ideals, urban diversity and difference.
An
architecture in which it is possible to merge space with individual
experience can uncover new qualities and leads to new images of the city
created in the minds of its users. New options and possibilities appear
on the horizon of places or buildings, were nothing seemed possible
before, because they appeared finally defined, were given up or simply
forgotten.
Half-Way Days
! for everybody!
17-18 June
de Bottelarij
The
Half-way days are a two-day meeting moment for all a.pass participants
to regroup and discuss their Cases: where are we with the research? How
can we come to a better communication within the group? What is the best
way to share/communicate/present the research done? etc... It is
important for all a.pass participants to take part in these days, since
it is a rare opportunity to enter into one another’s researches and
thinking patterns, and to readjust the collective trajectory.
WHATEVER MOVING LIKE THIS
Paz Rojo
25-29/6
de Bottelarij
This
laboratory takes place within the framework "C O R E O G R A F X S", an
investigation that departs from a series of choreographic cultures that
emerged over the 70´s in NY, which sought to incorporate the collective
daily life through the body. The context was given by the revolution of
May 68, the emergence of the hippie movement in the '70s, the emergence
of the feminist and gay movements. "A series of movements" that claimed
other ways of understanding the concept of equality in democratized
societies. From this context "C O R E O G R A F X S” studies some of the
concepts that defined these cultures and, in turn, questions what they
mean in the current market democracies and in relation to the triangle
brand-body-work.
How
could we experience the question "what, why, who, where, what for, how
we live the tension between individuation and the necessity of
collectivity?” What are the conditions that make WE a problem to sustain
rather than a problem to solve? How can we address such a question
assuming that the sites where the sensible, the corporeal and
unspeakable are the battlefield where to challenge our existence? How
could we do so without addressing pre-existent models and protocols?
Could we experience (the) body as the very battlefield where the
"somatic" prime on the "cognitive" where "creation" prime on the
"creative" where “tacit experience” primes over “negotiation and
responsibility” and where softness, empathy and dispersion prime over
self-representation, self-management and self-control? What does being “democratically in contact’ mean today as
a performative and experienciable gesture? What could mean today such a
gesture, when historically "(contact) improvisation" began as an
emancipatory practice and ended up being an instrument to create (a)
language, establishing a model of communication under the basis of
recognition, negotiation and understanding? ¿What does this gesture
means when “democracy today” is just but a name that our governments
have appropriated as an instrument for their own interests under the
moral premise/promise of common good-citizen?
Paz Rojo
is a cultural worker. More specifically her work is developed within
the culture of choreography. Besides the "physical work" she does, she
moves, thinks, experiences and writes; activities that result in
choreographic actions, experiments, writings, lectures, seminars and
laboratories such as the lab "CHOREOGRAPHY: A PROBLEM TO PRACTICE”.
Graduated by School for New Dance Development (University of the Arts in
Amsterdam), she was part of LISA, a colective with which she lived the
tensions and problems of working under a collective brand unevenly
capitalized by its members. Together with Manuela Zechner, she was
editor of a book and created the lab VOCABULABORATORIES, with which she
experimented performatively vocabularies on shareable, colective ways.
Along with Cristian Duarte, launched the experimental frame-work "A
PIECE...TOGETHER?" through which she began to hold the question what,
who, what for, how WE today? Critically passionated, her activity takes
place on a sequence shot in which to live and be affected, being alone
and together with, being a-part without making (the) party. Currently
she has created the critical and experimental framework “C O R E O G R A
F X S” with which, among other things, she has worked with
non-professional dancers to create a distributed project. Framework that
includes the solitary actions “lo que sea moviéndose así” (whatever
moving like this); “exposición universal (democracy is a psycho-kinetic
training) and the lecture performance “I don´t like community in the
same way I don´t like contact improvisation”; as well as the collective
actions “Acción inaugural-estamos gerreando”; “yes, we cannot a
pre-formance en la era de la con-fusión”; and the seminary “Ocupadxs
Directly!” all of them developed during 2011-2012.
a.pass basics: feedback and critique
2-6 July
Vladimir Miller & Elke Van Campenhout
de Bottelarij
In
this second b-workshop (a.pass basics) of the block we address the
topic of feedback. Since a.pass is a shared environment, we depend a lot
on each other as sparring partners in our researches. Often the work is
presented within a group and the quality of the feedback is lacking in
precision, understanding or communicative strength. What is important in
giving or receiving feedback is that both positions are clarified: what
position do I speak out of? What kind of feedback would be useful for
my research?
In
this workshop we try to construct very diverse feedback techniques:
spoken critique, non-negotiated critique, direct feedback, indirect
feedback, written, walking, one-on-one or transformative feedback.
We refer also back to some basic texts on art critique and feedback systems.
The Walk
Anja Steglich & Elke Van Campenhout
13-22 July
PAF (Reims)
The Walk is a ten day workshop on location, focussing on two main questions:
-How to turn walking into a qualitative tool for artistic research?
-How to create a shared landscape through the individual investigation of connecting territories?
During
the Walk we will address these questions out of the proposals of the
individual researchers, that will investigate a limited domain and
devise a walk that can later be picked by others. Important in this
construction is the decisions made on the level of parameters: what do I
consider (out of my research) to be important ‘markers’ of the walking
experience: fe. sound, shapes, roads, attitude of walking, … Throughout
the ten days we try to come back to the PAF ‘head quarters’ with enough
information to turn our proposals and experiences into a shared map of
the environment, and add the instructions, tasks and guidelines into a
useable walking guide for others.
What
is important here that these guide lines are both addressing the walk
as a method for artistic research and the walk as an investigative tool
to discover the landscape as a ‘narrative’.
The main guest on this journey is dr. Anja Steglich, who is currently working on two linked themes:
Anja
Steglich works on a workshop-format called `telling.landscapes´ with
students from geography, urban design, art and landscape architecture.
The score was to figure out the `inner landscape´or intrinsic impulses/
trigger points to work about the topic landscape and to find different
images for working (like soundscapes, urbanscapes, infrastructure,
waterscapes). “Could imagine, that such an impulse help`s to find
individual scores while reading/ mapping a special landscape. Think it
could be usable to show emotional/visual/spatial interferences between
individual perception/ spacing and the `real surrounding´...
While
working with the students i used this format to develop/envolve ideas
about future landscapes, talking about topics like climate change,
urbanization, participation, regenerative energy- and water-supply - it
included individual ways of perception and needs and questions from
landscape design.”
Another interesting point of reference in her work is the landscape choreography:
“I’m
researching about `landscapechoreography´ together with choreographers/
performance artists - it is a trial to use the language and the methods
of choreography to imagine and to deeply understand landscapes dynamics
in a contemporary way - a lecture about this could show methodological
questions from the landscape sight like: where and how we perceive the
dynamics? How do we work with them - do we work with them? What meens
transformation in space and time and how it could be possible to
integrate the dimension of the body/ the understanding of movement in
design strategies ?
How
does a landscape perform?", how does a lanscape carry emotions? What
are the dynamics of landscape and in the different spatial and temporal
dimensions ... same time landscapes itself becomes the stage, this
research includes site-specific strategies in scenography ... working
about water, food, wilderness as contemporary questions in landscape
design.
More information on Anja Steglich you find here: http://hybrid-plattform.org/index.php/en/projects/41?view=item
END WEEK
23-29 July
!for everybody’
PAF (Reims)
Like every block we also end this one in the former convent PAF (Performing Arts Forum)
This
is the ultimate moment for presenting your researches, inviting other
participants into your practice, organized group and individual
mentorings, and construct an imagination for the rest of your research
period. PAF is the moment we close down and analyze a blcok and come up
with plans for the future. Every one is invited to participate in
proposing body practices, films, discussions and other activities.
WORKSHOPS BLOCK 1 2012 (january-march)
Please choose your workshops here before the 10th of january: http://www.doodle.com/sg8vgd24dcnzvcz5
DEDICATED MENTORS:
Nicolas Galeazzi (ngaleazzi@gmx.ch)
Vladimir Miller (miller.vladimir@gmail.com)
Robert Steijn (arran@xs4all.nl)
Marie de Brugerolle (brugera@free.fr)
OPENING WEEK
3-6/1
organized by the a.pass residents
You
all got the detailed program yet, but - as in every block - the opening
week is an opportunity to get to know the new participants, to catch up
on each other’s researches, to meet the mentors, and to prepare the new
block. This opening week ends on Friday with the end communications of
three of our participants: Margareth Kaserer, Doris Stelzer and Tim
Segers.
WEBSITE INTRODUCTION NOT A WORKSHOP
16/1
by ex-participant Sven Goyvaerts
10.30-16h
de Singel
The
a.pass website is the first introduction to the outside world of what
is happening in the program. Every participants has the liberty to
construct their own projects and pages in this shared environment, but
to be able to do this in a more or less organized way, it is important
to understand the logic and the workings of your website tools. Sven
Goyvaerts will introduce you to the finesses of uploading, editing,
organizing and publicizing your material.
info a apass.be
http://www.apass.be
share / save this page
get permalink
