Salon #9: Developing practices together
15 December 2012, 2-5pm at Kaaistudio's (Working Title Platform)
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? A series of salons organized by Sarma on different locations in Brussels, create a live research environment for makers and researchers to address issues of new artistic practices and discourses.
Audio documentation on Oral Site.
Collaborative practices
Modern society has weakened our skills of cooperation needed to make a complex society work, writes sociologist Richard Sennett in his recent book Together (2012), which studies the rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. More than once, Sennett hints at the rehearsal practices in the performing arts as a model for collaboration and human interaction that require specific skills, such as empathy, listening and open dialogue. Sennett's is a traditional understanding of the chamber music rehearsal though, which makes it necessary to confront his claim with a wider scope of collective artistic practices. Perhaps it is not only in the skills, but as much in the experiments with collaboration that today's performing arts hold a promise for society. This also brings up the question of how these experimental and emerging practices can be shared (through performances, but also through documentation and discourse, workshops and education).
In her book Listen to the Bloody Machine (2012), which seeks to document the entire creation process of Kris Verdonck's End, essayist and dramaturge Marianne Van Kerkhoven points out the interest of such an internal discourse that focuses on the studio work: "Following the collapse of ideologies, we need, I think, people who above all develop practices together. This requires a much more direct responsibility - agreeing with new manifestos is not enough. I sense a hunger among artists to learn more about how people in all areas of society organise their work, how they produce, explore and develop things that may contribute to the 'reconstruction'. By the same token, artists want to open up their practices to share them with others."
Guests
In the salon, Marianne Van Kerkhoven will unfold some of the intuitions lingering in this quotation further and trace connections between her own dramaturgical practice and the larger social-political field. Speaking from their respective practices, the artists Sara Manente, Anna Rispoli and Michiel Vandevelde will enter into dialogue with Van Kerkhoven.
In works such as Faire un four (2011), choreographer and performer Sara Manente insists on the internal dynamics of collaboration and the creative process to define the shape of its outcome. This leads to "challenging the three months rehearsal/one hour performance model" that is common in the production of contemporary dance, which has both practical and political aspects. What are the preconditions for developing practices together? What is the role of production houses and workplaces in this? Does experimentation with artistic practices lead to institutional experiments and vice versa?
How do we organize work and spend our time? In her project Casting Out the Nines/Spending it and Casting Out the Nines/Paying it back, performance artist Anna Rispoli approached this question via LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems). Alternative monetary systems were discussed on stage, but also created a different productional and temporal frame for collaboration, as well as an altogether different relation with the arts centre STUK, which produced the work for its Artefact festival in Spring 2012. Being paid in time, Rispoli received help from STUK personnel in painting her house and babysitting her daughter, or gave herself lessons Italian to her performers.
In his choreographic work, Michiel Vandevelde addresses notions such as "disorder, disagreement, unproductivity, inefficiency, participation, labor, playfulness, slowness" to organize production and collaboration differently, against the grain of modernity's hyperspecialisation. This interest also led to creating walks, a study of anarchistic farms and ecovillages, and at the Bâtard festival 2012 to setting up a public think tank around the question of deliberative democracy and a concrete European politics. How can artistic experiments with cooperation find a wider resonance and nurture alternative social and political fictions?
Concept and moderation: Jeroen Peeters
Guests: Sara Manente, Anna Rispoli, Marianne Van Kerkhoven, Michiel Vandevelde
Organized by Sarma @ WorkSpaceBrussels
Photo: Frances Johnston, Making a Staircase (1899-1900)
Bios
Sara Manente created projects that have a choreographical starting point but also touch the field of visual arts: Democratic forest, a practical and theoretical research in collaboration with Alessandra Bergamaschi about movement of masses, crowds and communities (www.democraticforest.com), the video Some performances in collaboration with Ondine Cloez and Michiel Reynaert, the dance performance Lawaai means hawaai, selected for the prix Jardin d’europe 2009, Grand Tourists in collaboration with Ondine Cloez and Michiel Reynaert (grandtourists.weebly.com) and the lecture performance not not a lecture. two commentaries (2010) together with Constanze Schellow. In December 2011 her dance performance Faire un Four, premiered in Monty (Antwerp). At the moment she is working on This place with Marcos Simoes. She works as a performer for Aitana Cordero Vico and Kate McIntosh.
Anna Rispoli is an artist working in visual art and performance. In her work, she explores the conceptual and aesthetic options that are possible between the public space and the private realm. She is a founding member of the collective ZimmerFrei, which presented work at the 50th Venice Biennale and at Manifesta07. In her performance Casting Out the Nines at Artefact 2012 in Leuven, she worked with alternative monetary systems. Her essay on this project in Rekto:verso can be found here.
Michiel Vandevelde (° 1990) started dancing in the youth theatre and dance company fABULEUS. In 2012 he graduated as a choreographer/dancer at P.A.R.T.S. From an early age onwards he began to create and develop work, often together with others. His work includes small actions in public space, performances, and building structures. In the beginning he often worked together with Jozef Wouters and Menno Vandevelde. They created Festiviteit (2006, fABULEUS), Ichten (2007, Villanella & fABULEUS), OPERA/een werkstuk (2008, fABULEUS), en TOREN/een voorstelling voor pendelaars (2009). In 2011 he developed an evening titled ‘Tentproject (a space for ideas)’. A project based on the search for alternative political and social systems. This performance was developed into ‘Stageproject (a space for ideas and action), for a festival around art and activism at the Beursschouwburg (Brussels). Currently he is working an a series of public think tanks in preparation for the foundation of a political party in 2014. He is also co-organizing Batard, a festival for young makers, together with four other artists.
Marianne Van Kerhoven is a writer and dramaturge. She started working in theatre in the 1970s and has been the dramaturge of the Kaaitheater since the early 1980s. She has worked, among others, with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jan Lauwers, Josse De Pauw, Jan Ritsema, Guy Cassiers, Hooman Sharifi and Kris Verdonck. From 1990 to 1995 she was editor-in-chief of Theaterschrift.