updated by bart van den eynde -- Thu 26 Apr 2012 - 14:55

Block 2

Dedicated Mentors:
Nicolas Galeazzi, Anna Hoffner, Peter Stamer, Pierre Rubio

OPENING WEEK
Meet & greet with the new & old participants of a.pass, introduction to the principles of the program, tools (calender, library, budget, website...) and presentation of the research proposals.

HIGHER PERFORMANCE (workshop in economy)
Nicolas Galeazzi & Elizabeth Ward
de Bottelarij
7-18/5

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!
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

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 means 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? Could we disarticulate and deactivate choreographic languages from the hyper-controlled mess we live in? Could we make of choreography a �sensible- weapon� by leaving its movements and its personalised languages out of any utility? Could we go for the adventure and get lost in the desert of the generic, and the impersonal? What would be the fictions, conditions and consequences of such a vital-deadly gesture?

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.

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�

Advanced Scenography

a.s tools

a.s contact info

page tools

jump ahead

a.s partners

Block 2