Salon: To be continued?
Who do we really refer to when we use the expression ‘beginning artists’? How long can one be a ‘beginning’ artist and what comes next? Some artists find themselves operating time and again in festivals or production houses for beginning artists. Is it because they are reinventing and reorienting themselves all the time? Or has this circuit for beginning artists become a sort of habitat rather than a springboard for a next level? Who are the residents of this habitat? How did it come into being and how does it shape us?
Bâtard invited Sarma to speak to some ‘beginning’ collectives, with each of them having a particular view on this habitat, each of them their own motives to invent a sort of niche for sharing work, support or simply a voice, and each of them hosting a particular practice of collaboration. Diederik Peeters translated his lecture about the “desire of an archetypical individual artist” (April 2011, first presented at the launch of the field analysis of VTI) for us to English; the other members of SPIN will be present to contextualize this lecture and to speak about their collective desire to put the artist back in the centre of all aspects of art making. CABRA is invited to discuss collaboration on and off stage, open source production, various forms of engagement towards each other’s work, and friendship.
In 2011 Sarma organizes a series of monthly salons which all focus on new artistic practices and discourses. How do artists work today? How do they speak about their method? How can one make a start with documenting, discussing and sharing the hybrid and heterogeneous practices that underpin the performing arts today? How can the informal and embodied discourses, as well as the implicit knowledge they carry, find a wider recognition and accessibility? During the salon at Bâtard we will speak about practices of structural collaboration, both the political and artistic aspects of working together, and self-organization among artists.
SPIN members are Diederik Peeters, Hans Bryssinck, Kate McIntosh and Els Silvrants-Barclay. CABRA members are Rita, Sara Manente, Marcos Simoes, Varinia Canto Vila, Norberto Llopis Segarra, Kyung Ae Ro, Jaime Llopis and Santiago Ribelles Zorita. More about CABRA: cabra.weebly.com