Notes on presentations opening week

our notes into the following three categories:

    QUALIFIER(s) ( words or short assemblage of words)
    (how do you qualify the presentation form and/or content)

    PROPOSITION (s) (statement/sentence)
    (what do you say about/on/through the presentation)

    QUESTION(s) 
    (pose a question to the work presented)

---

Wednesday January 8th

→ about Kasia's

*qualifiers*

-visual poetry

-surrealist, photography, subconscious, metaphysical, eroticism of abandoned objects

-situating gestures in city-landscape

-poetics of thresholds

-expanding the scope of materiality

-

-

...

*propositions*

-the visual sense always sees a frame

-try out different lenses, there are interesting new stabalising lenses for cameras (with modes like soft movement, suspension...)to experiment/changing how you perceive or track your own movement in relation to what you are framing and time passing

-engagement with other people’s practices and thinking through participation and readership

-the paradox of speaking about the point in which language dissolves

-you could watch Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

• the notion of 'bleed' as described in 'Ask before you bite' (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/103/292645/ask-before-you-bite/)

• the notion of 'decreation' as described by Anne Carson (https://www.docdroid.net/pNeSj5A/253248545-carson-anne-decreation.pdf: p155 essay about female mystics and the project of writing while striving to dissolve the boundaries of the self)

...

*questions*

-what does not have boundaries? What is in need of boundaries?

-are you interested in giving a workshop about some of your excersises, in order to practice artwatching?

-how would you describe the relation between the practice of making videos in the city and the practice of writing?

-would you consider the borders of your own authorship as something to be dissolved or transgressed? (Like for example Ferrante’s use of pseudonym and her caracther Lila's will to disappear/resistance to become a writer)

-in relation with the encounter with the abandoned teddy bear, would what you call ‘violent’ become a singular theory of violence?

-could your project/practice of 'dissolving boundaries' create other ones?

-could you define the nature of the 'instant' in your project of creating instant performances with the audience?

-why is writing 'not enough'?

-how do the 1st and 2nd body interact in observation, in the archive, in writing?

→ about Andrea's


*qualifiers*

-discipline versus willed amateurism, computing, dance as software, making conditions, give up control

-open, accepting

-uncentering/decentering/recentering otherwise

-radical affirmation

-education on the spot

• vulnerability / fragility / sensibility

• putting herself into a difficult position / uneasiness

  propositions

-escape expertise

-give up control in a controlled way (with a set of conditions)

-I can only be a visitor of another medium.

-no central research question but...

• doing new things to make things more complicated, multilayered

• diagrams & maps

• journey through media & categories

• solitary

• fragility yet strength, sensibility yet sharpness, vulnerability yet persistence ...

  questions

-what do you hope to resolve by momentarily dissolving the opposition figure/background?

-What is a tool?

-What is narrative?

-If you see it as a shift in position (maybe I got it wrong) – from working with choreography as a software, and to writing autobiographically about love stories – how would you describe these two positions?

-why do you consider to stop making art? What is about art or not-art that couldn't be encompassed by art making? (eg: how can art or artistic research offer a place to question or discuss sexuality, and how can art do that similary or differently than for example a 'classical' study of sexuality?)

-what is the problem with (not) having one research question?

• how to expose yourself

• what is the journey and what is the path

  → about Stefan's

  qualifiers

-critical paradox composer

-promising, expecting

-Grammar, repetition, rehearsal, preparation, focus, reference, analysis, the power of language

-bracketing the subject (the 'I') to let language operate

-performing (for) others as research

-performing poems

-subject formation again

-I repeat

*propositions*

-The politics of differently arranging what will be before and what was after, in order to get through terrifying times.

-invite people to work with you

-Consider language as a system and watch how meaning is created when one reorganises the elements of it.

-internalised conditions condition subjectification through an always-already anticipated model to correspond to and to perform.

• going deeper, getting rid of layers and layers

  questions

-what is before and after a serial poem, that enables expectation and ancipation as dramaturgy?

-what response-ability for critique?

-how would you describe the caracther of the subject (the "I" which has been left out at the beginning of the phrases) that figures in your poem/song?

-what is critique for you?

-where is critique today?

• when you perform in others' work what agency do you carry

• how to do rewind? what can't be repeated?

• what is the language here

• what does silence signify

  → about Adriano's

  qualifiers

-audienceship as generator

-color coordinated, interdependent, instructional

-a poster that requires a certain distance between the print and the reader

-manual-esque, experientially conceptual

-Engaged, entertaining

• archive of watching & witnessing & spectating

• landscape of impulses and memories

• affective archive in the body

  propositions

-You do not know anything before you practiced it

-You can/could/should solve rebuses while watching propositions about spending time

-A desire for performances to “matter” (a mode of address that is specific?)

-An attempt to put as much “effort” on the side of the spectator as on the side of the maker – question where is “the work” produced. Be a co-producer of the work as a spectator (like the emancipated spectator of Jacques Rancière?)

• a practice of sharing the unshareable

• a community of lost and hold

  questions

-what is really hapening between a spectator and a performance?

-what is actually hapening between a spectator and a performance?

-what is exactly hapening between a spectator and a performance?

-What is the difference between activation and demanding?

-do you consider the notion of 'middle'?

-what do you mean by 'practice of depersonalisation'?

-What refuses to be politicized? What refuses to be shaped?

-under which conditions something is made available?

-How to turn (micro)practice into a resource?

-Could your work about practice-based spectatorship take the form of a performance?

-could 'practice based spectatorship' be articulated as a manifesto, a movement, a program, an -ism?

-What are the differences between 'relational art/aesthetics' and 'practice based spectatorship'?

• is there any moment that you are not a spectator?

• do you think this practice can heal something?

  → about Katrine's

  qualifiers

-political thought

-pedagogy

-fantasy as a powerful political tool

-Sketch of a forthcoming process, intentions

-socially relevant

• children as future decision makers / those in charge of shaping 'big things'

propositions

-Models for children to feedback the labor of adults.

-Children think political thoughts

-Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? — N. K. Jemesin, The Fifth Season

-Receiver and sender are not neat entities; translation between both is not verifiable; translation is unlike equation

-An aim to create a space for children to engage in the political.

-Insist on the value and existance of a political consciousness in children

-from practice-based research to artistic research through the problematisation of political theater addressed to children

*questions*

-What is a (political) child?

-Why can we not avoid to talk about 'simple' vs. 'complex' when considering children as an audience?

-Why can we not avoid to talk about pedagogy when considering children as an audience?

-What is the role of the child in your work? A collaborator, a consultant, a co-author? What would be a “fair” relationship?

-what is the difference between a political theatre targeted at children and a politicised children's theatre?

• what is seriousness?

• what is a mainstream audience?

  → about Muslin Brothers'

  qualifiers

-clothing as identity problem

-Collaboration, participation, social contract

-multi-channeled

-social design

-uni-form

• clothes as a second skin

  propositions

-to experience sawing/mending/fitting as re-writing social relations between the person their clothing

-Investigate how clothing affects and produces subjectivity

-Clothing as a form of social control.

-Movement from intimate (fitting, confession as a form of care-taking, attention to the specific subject) to public (exposure of the clothing on the subject to others).

-etymology of the Dutch word 'confectie' and the English 'confession'

• clothing vs fashion

• fashion as a crime, clothing as a skin given by...

  questions

-the difference between clothing and fashion?

-what are the experiences of the prisioners that you can share?

-I was thinking about the documentary The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis in relation to your work, and was wondering if you watched it?

-How do you share the outcomes of your prison-related investigations? How does transparancy function in your project?

-How might the way the bodies on the videos are positioned, cared for and/or engaged with matter to the content of the videos themselves?

-Can a history of power be distilled from the history of the prison uniform? what is the system of power a personalized uniform operates in?

• can fashion be innocent or politically relevant?

• when uniform is limiting and when liberating?

  Thursday January 9th

  → about Kristien's

  qualifiers

-interesting in the way in which it explicitly tries to think the act of 'completion' (after having had a lot of talk about instability and ongoingness etc.)

-nice bunch of references concerning reading/writing practices (marginalia writing, pathetic criticism, annotative writing).

• knowing and not-knowing in a relation

• coexisting, corelation of different qualifies

• scraps, margins, poor spaces that holds the most precious content

• personal affective attachment to moments, words, sentences

• marking the importance

• writes as a figure, writer as an identity

  propositions

-I'm helping but in the act of helping out I might be in need of help myself. 'Help' is (always) reciprocal.

• tracing the invisible

• epistemology derived from ephemerality

• bleeding into each other's texts = writing into each others?

  questions

-What is the materiality of ephemeral experience ('as such'), that is, what is the materiality of performance other than the materiality of its traces or remnants? Performances leave traces, they are material, but how else might we think of something ephemeral as 'material'?

• what kind of roles (social roles?) does a writer play?

• what is the epistemology of a writer? / what kind of epistemology s/he produces?

• how to write about what is hard, opaque?

• how the change of a pseudonym influence the writing practice?

  → about Vladimir's'

  qualifiers

-focused, expressive of one central content but via different media (writing, installation, education) - fascination of ateliers, working space - melancholy of the unfinished - desire - suspension

*propositions$

-  a desire to leave things open, but full of stuff, packed

- the territory that is a container / a territory on the move

*questions*



→ about Lilia's

*qualifiers*

• speed
• utopia
• practice as a process / not-focused-on-the-result
• desire and way that we follow, not a target
• not-now, un-known
• freedom and the must of interpretation

• vitality

• artificial relations

  propositions

-There's no need for 'liking' in order to be in relation with something/someone; Commitment and repition are much more generative tools than taste or identification.

-Touch without recognition is weight.

-Repetition, tautology, difference work together. Tautology often has a more negative connotation...

-doing above all

• collaboration, not assuming too much

• rehearsing an institution

  questions

-What traditions for thinking-doing-feeling does 'artistic research' as a placeholder for thinking rely on? - don't you ever thing about 'the project'? - what makes you alive and vital? what makes you 'doing'? - what is the difference between artistic research and a project?

→ about Signe's

*qualifiers*

-calm and articulate - a lot is hidden here, you need to get there (somehow) - the weight of the text can be located in what is unreachable - tension between said and unspoken - against the identity of 'a researcher' - writing but not as a writer

*propositions*

*questions*

-To what extent are books institutions?

-What is the accessibility of books?

• what is inside and what is outside?

• what is the matter of a text?

  → about Mathilde's

  qualifiers

• Humourous, narrative, collaboration, consciousness-raising, facilitator, participation, games, platform-making

• busyness
• time as a currency
• art world as a labour environment
• burnout
• too much too say with to little means
• alternative institution

• in searching for non-neoliberal

  propositions

• Raise consciousness about the effects of work on each of us.

• Imitating forms of consultancy, coaching, self-help, facilitation, rendered slightly absurd, as a mode of address to public.

• Invite people to reflect on nature of intellectual labour through a fun, leisurely activity, such as a specially designed card game.

• Reflects on the absurdity of the institution of labour in current society.

• Constructs a critical position rather than a left or right wing political position.

-A contemporary marxian scholar writing on the politics of work/strike/riot/refusal: Joshua Clover. (eg the book: Riot. Strike. Riot)

• attraction to what is secret

  questions

• Is activism a strategy, a tool or an aesthetics?

• Do you take on a caracther when you do your work (do you wear a costume or something more subtle?), or do you consider you "yourself" when at work in the guichet for example?

-What are the different kinds of political positions one can imagine when advocating deprofessionalization, that is, the refusal to 'work'?

-What is your definition of work?

• can we be heatlhy in the artfield?

• what is the future of collaboration?

• is any look at the labour correct?

  → about Federico's

  qualifiers

• trailers

• Popular culture, consumerism, costume, monsters, resistance, collaboration, versions of self, role play, kitsch, machines, apocalypse

• a bag full of precious stones

• short excerpt, visual representations, speed, quick, efficient switches between pieces of information

  propositions

-The use of science fiction narratives to investigate lived experience.

• What is a human? (a monster, an animal, a human, something in between?)

-if you are interested in Garcia's work you could ask him as mentor

• hybrid beings

• desire and pain

• impossibly to embody all qualities

• creature that embraces many creatures

• pain of the multiply

• intimicy & fantasy

  questions

• I thought about the books of Octavia E. Butler, mostly the Parable of the Sower and Dawn, and I wonder if you know her work?

-The game is to make a space where belonging, identity, preju

• what is your attraction to fiction about?

• the beauty of the monstrous

  Friday January 10th

  → about Pierre's work

qualifiers - sensibility

• brokeness

• distortion

• collection of images that creates a particular universe

• contact improvisation

• body to body, image to image

• landscape of the abandonness

propositions

-Saying no is always also reaffirming that which is refused.

• exhibited subject

• rather why and what, not: how

• creating an emancipatory space

questions

-What is your interest in saying no? What is your political interest in it?

• how to depict? give an image report?

  → about Magda's work

qualifiers

• tools and forms

• Construction, space, survivalism

-First image/video is captivating.

• the idea of shelter as an intimate and political space

• snake skin shedding

• ecology of thinking & moving (thinking through moving, moving through thinking)

• questioning the temporality

propositions

• erosion

• what is needed for the position of viewer and participant to permeate or weave?

• delegated choreography - cocreate - what is needed to invite?

• Investigate the relation between mental space and physical space

• shelters create wormholes in time

questions

• How do you communicate what is inside the shelter? Could other people enter it?

-What in the core interest concerning shelters? What motivates your choices to show the examples of shelters that you chose to show?

• speculation through choreography ---> philosophical practice through choreography?

• what is the relation between choreography and writing?

• can we write the movement (as spectators?); can dancing be a sort of writing?

→ about Chloé's work

qualifiers

• Interdisciplinary practice, platform making, engage in a network, laguage-body relation

-community-building, reimaginative of one of choreopraphy's major question, i.e. language-body relation

-how body and language share the same conditions

• text and movement as an inseparable couple

• automatisation of being

propositions

• Investigate the relationship between language, body and movement.

• Apply terms connected with publishing on dance, and vice-versa.

• Make a platform for your own work ("form the library you need to work and make it public")

-Saliva produces books.

-When reading and writing are more than "desk".

• a survival protocoll

questions

• Do you consider the relationship between language and body as a violent one? Which one is dictator of the other? How would you show that in your performance?

-When is the relationship between language and body the relationship between your language and your body and when is it more than that (many gradations possible). How does your body/language slide into some bodies/languages into all bodies/languages.

• can we transcribe every act into a movement (and vice versa)?

• what kind of encounters with the text are impossible?

→ about Flavio's work

qualifiers

• Storytelling, personal story, ressourceful, generous, evoking empathy, emtional, entertaining, seducing, politics of the body, position of the artist, construction of identity.

• fearless

• biography <-> trajectory

-materiality of the construction, always contextualized construction, of identity, resulting in certain forms of movement, freedom, grievability (j.butler's term).

• tenderness and sharpness

• openness

• no self-pity

• acknowledging individual fate

• ritual

• body-magery

• alchemy

• encounter of spirits that inhabit bodies

• biography of an individual and collective body

propositions

• The political in the personal narrative.

• Fictionalize autobiography to form a critical position to speak about political implications of a specific body. -making work is always autobiographical, whether in overt or implicit manner

• personal pain transcribed into a wider landscape

questions

• I thought about the work of Lygia Clark (especially her late work with body/healing practice) and wondered if you know her?

• what would it mean to assume 'being' what you look like?

• can every scar be told?

• do you create a space for compassion?

• can I always do a new version of me?

• how to communicate my own story and never made it a finished story?

→ about Femke's work

qualifiers

-promising set of cards; dealing with the difficulty of starting 'from the start'; the difficulty of narrative arch when the work is from within narrative intra-relation.

• questioning, questioning

propositions

-Geology's digital figurations; tracking the continuity of the industrial complex of 3D spaces.

-The fine thread of deviation of sabotage is something you ended on I think, and that's so interesting: thinking about sabotage, the political does not reside in determining what is good and what is bad; rather, the political is about understanding how so many things can be turned into either good or evil. This is about adulteration up to the 'tipping point' (Global warming/enegy discourses on tipping point).

• in an ongoing conversation with others

• rendering

• critical & onirical & technological

• the violence of computer (digital system)

questions

-Do you know Evan Calder Williams' historical-conceptual tracking of the term sabotage (https://thenewinquiry.com/manual-override/)?

• what is under the ground and what is above the ground?

• what is the body of 3d?