Salon Practising Dilettantism
Organized by Sarma @ WorkSpaceBrussels
June 16 at Kaaistudio's Brussels. 3pm and 3.45pm: Jennifer Lacey, Consultations. 4.30-6pm: talks and dialogue.
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.
Dilettantism currently finds a revival in the performing arts. Practices outside of one's formal training migrate into the work in order to thwart habits and expectations. Bricolage and collage spur on a basic desire of making, in confrontation with the resistance of materials that are often simply at hand. How do dilettant practices and practising dilettantism operate as artistic strategies? Jennifer Lacey, Alma Söderberg and Rodrigo Sobarzo will present and discuss some dilettant aspects of their work.
Throughout 2010, choreographer Jennifer Lacey had regular meetings at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers in Paris with “local, dilettant dramaturges” for her project Ma première fois avec un dramaturge. She was interested in “discussions with non-specialists around the context and meaning of a dance, the relation between process and product, the incorporation and breaking of codes, the construction of personal freedom through process, and of social freedom through form.” The project yielded an archive (video and sound recordings, photos, notes, etc.) and a lecture performance that will be presented at the salon: Guided Consultations in the Archives of Amateur Dramaturges To Resolve Problems of Life and Creation. The consultations will take place at 3pm and at 3.45pm - reservation required.
At the Working Title Platform choreographer Alma Söderberg presents Travail, a collaboration with Igor Dobricic as dramaturge and Rodrigo Sobarzo as set designer or "space man". What guides them are things at hand and the arbitrary contract they establish. Söderberg: "Words, images, phrases, spaces, colours and texture are some of the many things to be found in the daily newspaper. I practice reading the newspaper with scissors in my hand cutting out things that for known or unknown reasons catch my attention. Playing with combining the fragments, I build new information and open up space for ‘other’ meanings to occur. I later create scores out of these collages. I practice them over and over until premiering, not choosing in which way the fragments of thought and imagery should be expressed but rather trying not to censor any form." Söderberg and Sobarzo will discuss some dilettant principles in their work.
Concept and moderation: Jeroen Peeters Guests: Jennifer Lacey, Rodrigo Sobarzo and Alma Söderberg Production: Sarma @ WorkSpaceBrussels