Porous Body: performative practices as research
in contexts of socially-environmentally-engaged art
Walmeri Ribeiro
Dear reader,
This page contains our documentation of the Connective Symposium in descriptions, reflections and images. The symposium consisted of 15 contributions spread out over 3 days. We've included documentation of each contribution in a random order. At the bottom of the page, you'll find a summary of and reflection on the closing conversation about the ethics of participatory arts, amongst other threads of thought.
Welcome and warm regards,
Xenia Tsompanidou & Juriaan Achthoven
1.
We gather in a large circle for the last time to reflect on the central notion of ‘artistic connective practices’. There is a brief deliberation on how to organise the conversation, which I see as an illustration of a connected way of working together. We’ve somewhat arrived at operating as a (temporary) community. There is spontaneous space for people to think together about how we organize ourselves. Later in the conversation, we are going to share some pretty tough thoughts, which I find meaningful. Throughout these three days, it seems as if we have created a safe space for friction.
Throughout the conversation the notion that ‘connectivity’ is a very open concept is reiterated. Elisavet Kalpaxi reflects on the wideness of the concept: “After these three days, I realize that the term allows for a wide range of practices that could be incorporated, such as: practices starting from art and practices that start from sociology.” Jessica Renfro develops this line of thought: “I was surprised and delighted to see the variety of ways that people are engaging with the topic. Not just through interdisciplinarity or participation, but through something, I think, is a need. A visceral need that needs to be further defined and researched.”
The concept, indeed, has worked like a magnet; attracting a wide variety of works that resonate with our values, as described in our call for contributions. A strong side of this wideness-openness is that it can be seen as a “new concept under incubation” (Elisavet Kalpaxi). Personally, I hope it can remain in that mode of unclarity for a little longer, because it means suspending its normalization, instrumentalization and exploitation (and therefore its loss of critical potential). This raises the question of what an institution for artistic connective practices would look like. Something like our professorship?
If we were to narrow down artistic connective practices after all, what seems to rhyme is: socially engaged, community-based and participatory practices. The issue of how these practices may be understood and/or critically seen as artistic, has barely been raised as a point of discussion. The issue of aesthetics was raised once in reference to the work of Magdalena Kallenberger, with regards to her usage of very strong aesthetic representations of children. The main points of friction however, revolve around the ethics of participation and the overall criticality with regards to our own practices. Before going into these major points of friction, I would like to make remarks on womanhood (as addressed above) and general, positive experiences.
2.
The majority of participants are female. “Was this taken into consideration while organising the symposium?,” asks Elisavet Kalpaxi. As organisers, Falk Hübner and Heleen de Hoon say this was not the case. To them, this was also a surprise. Then, several speculations are formulated about why women would be more drawn towards artistic connective practices. Amanda Hodgkinson: “For me, the call had a nice space within it that allowed for the emotional within the critical. And I think it’s really important that lived experience connects to the critical.” Danae Theodoridou: “It was a fact that came up in the presentations of my book on democracy. The vast majority of people that come are women.” Chrystalleni Loizidou: “We are more ready to change, probably.” Danae Theodoridou: “Or more sensitive to community.” It raises the desire to further inquire what resonances may be found between artistic connective practices and feminine points of view.
In general, there was much praise and appreciation for artistic connective practices. Katy Beinart expressed a sense of hope to continue to connect internationally. Speaking from the concrete feeling of being cut-off from Europe and isolated in the UK, after Brexit, she says: “So I think what I am going to take away, is the possibility to expand beyond the context in which we exist, and find out new things from other ways of doing.” Amanda Hodgkinson expresses her awe and gratitude for the personal involvement that she felt was present from everybody during the symposium: “So yes, there is the critical, there is the creative, there is the social and the contextual – but what really struck me, was that I felt that everybody came here with themselves. With what they cared about. That was really surprising and quite empowering.” And Elena Stamatopoulou expressed something very personal and intimate: “I don’t feel safe easily. And I don’t feel sociable easily. I like distance. And here, I felt nice.”
3.
A more critical view on artistic connective practices was also present. Magdalena Kallenberger, for example says: “I was missing criticality about where methods come from and which contexts are used for what purposes”. Reyhaneh Mirjahani continues: “Although you’re all talking about engagement with different groups and in some practices even between ourselves, we are not talking about ethics. We are not talking about the invitation to participate. And we are not talking about care.”
A major point of reference for the critical discussion that follows, is what happened in the contribution of Eleni Kolliopoulou earlier that day in the dance studio. At the end of this session, during another conversation, strong sentiments of objection and critique were uttered. One of the strongest utterances I recall is: “It’s unethical to trigger fear in any practice”. Apparently, this workshop did trigger fear for some. Not only as a participant (fear of moving along) but also from the perspective of observers (people who dropped out fearing that the situation could easily be misused to harm the vulnerable person in the middle). The strongest critique was about the fact that the workshop did not take into account people that feel uncomfortable with participating in physical activities. Topics of violence, vulnerability and inclusivity were brought up.
Danae Theodoridou raises the question of how to be in conflict without being aggressive: “Being critical is one thing. Being cynical is another. Aggression is a third. And it’s very interesting how all of us - how we are sensitive to things that are sensitive for us. Because if I talk about what was very aggressive for me today, it was the fact that many of us abandoned Eleni’s suggestion. You just stopped being in the task! Because you thought something was for you annoying. And for me, being in the group, I felt abandoned.”
Someone else expresses her experience of having physical limitations and not being able to be self-aware of her physical position. This is damaging to her. There is a dilemma with wanting to care about the person who is presenting and thus to participate, but there is also the need to take care of oneself and to respect your own physical and mental boundaries. How can we avoid anyone being put in the position of feeling: “I’m not capable of doing this?” How can we leave space for people to participate and not participate, without either choice becoming aggressive? And how can we avoid putting everyone in a position where they must participate?
A final perspective is brought in when someone states that participation is not necessarily an act of doing. It can also be observation, or sharing something in writing. Even standing in a place and taking your position in a room is in a way, a form of participation. These forms should also be respected as such, without them being labelled as aggressive, passive or disrespectful.
“I disagree if you’re out of context” – says Danae – “But let’s continue”.
This thread about the ethics of participation seems to show that it is delicate to facilitate participation in the right way. What seems to be crucial is: taking time and care to tune into the different mental and physical abilities of a group prior to getting into action. And also: giving potential participants the opportunity to choose if they want to participate or not. Taking time and care in the phase prior to getting into action (preparation phase) seems to be crucial for providing a safe space for participation.
4.
Time is ticking and therefore pressure is present, also at the symposium. We had a pretty tight schedule and I believe some of the required carework has been overstepped because of a lack of time. Or put differently: because of the pressure of time.
In the middle of the conversation people were already leaving to catch a plane. Towards the end of the talk Falk suggests discussing two more comments before ending the symposium. Danae suggests taking another 10 minutes. Katy agrees with Falk and then Jessica, who had just left, comes back in: “my device is telling me that my iPad is somewhere in this room.” People stand up to look for the iPad. A cacophony of conversation in the room ensues, and the symposium abruptly comes to an end.
[Shoes off - circular seating arrangement on the floor]
[Artist introduces session by describing similar arrangement in her teaching practice]
[Interconnectedness through dialogue-based art]
Istanbul case study: Performance in Taksim square | performative protest expressions (preparing food/eating collectively – painting murals/banners) |
Artistic Research: facilitating and finding ways of expression |
'FEELING SILENT’ in a new setting motivated her to start a garden in the university under the frame of inclusive ecology. Garden storyline:
[Artist initiated a garden; university delayed approval of the project | students started joining | they chose to have plants that do not grow in Germany; that arrived in the country years ago due to colonialism, world trade etc | immigrant plants – supporting the frame; more-than-human factor, in search of ‘re-forming’ connectivity in the unfamiliar’ |Student number grew - cooperative management of garden – everyone contributes and co-designs | cooking and eating together also used to reinforce connectivity
[Writing exercise on stream of consciousness]
[Presentation format and setting, circular seating arrangement]
Research project (artists co-create an artwork with terminal cancer patients)
Transdisciplinary co-creative processes *Shared authorship
Aesthetic interaction with bodies, materials, spaces | Artistic process begins with exploring the physical and embodied side of ‘touching’ (experimenting with textures, surroundings, movements in relation to other bodies, spaces) | Expanding awareness (sensory and material engagement) shapes creative process
Research Question: How to set the conditions or prepare a context in which the sense of touch enhances connections?
Story-building / story-telling techniques (preliminary phase)
Artistic phase: artist meets patients (5 meetings) to connect and initiate collaboration
Artist offers patient materials to touch and asks questions | knitted textiles to find patterns, structure, elements | Touching brings memories and wishes | encourages sharing
Work process: Marloeke gets inspired by elements and topics that come up during the collaborative process and puts pieces together | work process is shared, connecting on 1-on-1 level | reflecting together ‘seeing the opportunity for choices in the work’ | co-ownership of the artwork (the artwork here is both the process and the final outcome) |
Co-creation on the basis of reciprocity, mutual engagement, embodied gestures, dialogues, aesthetic experiences.
Artistic work produced bears traces of material dialogue, of memories and stories, tangible and intangible; products of connection at the most precarious moment in a person’s life.
A note on Connectivity and Fourth-Wave Feminism
The very first person I talk to, upon arriving at the Connective Symposium tells me she’s glad to see another man. Apparently I am one of the few. I haven’t noticed this just yet, and I am surprised that this is one of the first things she notices. A few moments later, the dean of Fontys Academy of the Arts gives an introductory speech, in which she also makes an indirect remark on the ratio of women to men. Later that day, Danae Theodoridou mentions that she has observed that women seem to be more interested in democracy.
In the closing conversation on the final day, the topic is raised again. The majority of proposals came from women, why is this so? It turns out that the selection procedure had no interest in preferring proposals from women over proposals from men. It is suggested that women may be more open to political change. It suggested that women are more sensitive to community. It suggested that the call for proposals made space for emotions within critique. And what I’d like to add is: women have not been in positions of power for centuries. Our cultural history is built on male ideas and imageries. Now, in the fourth wave of feminism, shouldn’t we embrace the fact that the majority of people within this context are women? Shouldn’t we be glad that women become more present in professional contexts and also in more powerful positions?
The fourth wave of feminism was introduced by feminist scholars in the 2010s. Kira Cochrane, for example, published All The Rebel Women: The Rise of the Fourth Wave.[1] In this book she identifies four areas as central to the wave: rape culture, online feminism, humour, and intersectionality and inclusion. In an article for The Guardian, Cochrane emphasizes the online, technological dimension of the wave, alongside a brief summary of preceding waves:
Nonhuman Connectivity & Aesthetic Rationality
After a small break I believe we were still pretty much on schedule to arrive at the presentation by Walmeri Ribeiro. We gathered in the column-room with a kind request to bring our coats, as we were about to go outside. Firt, we were introduced to the Sensitive Territories project, of which Walmeri is coordinator and artist-researcher. Faced with the current global climate crisis, especially within the Brazilian context of colonisation and excessive exploitation of natural resources, the Sensitive Territories platform was created in 2014 to connect artist-researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, scientists, environmentalists, and local communities across Brazil to investigate and propose different modes of co-existing and co-creation between human and nonhuman entities, through ethical-political and participatory ways of making art. Operating within this context, Walmeri is inviting us to take part in an immersive experience.
After a meditation that slows me down and makes me calm, we are asked to stay silent and follow Walmeri to the city park ‘Oude Dijk’ (old dike), just around the corner. As we arrive a row forms itself next to Walmeri. We are looking at the trees, the leaves, the football court. We have been instructed that this is what we’re going to do: we are going to stay silent and perceive the space so as to feel the space.
It strikes me that we are spending time together but apart. We are asked to perceive the space individually in silence, yet stay together as a group. There is something that touches me when I look at all these individuals, wandering around the park, looking for … a connection? It takes some time for me to connect to the rhythm of the trees. In the beginning I’m too occupied with my role as the anthropologist-observer with the task of writing this report. Then, at some point I’m able to let this go, and surrender myself to the mesmerizing details of a piece of moss on the trunk of a tree.
I wonder about the romantic idea of having a kind of ‘pure’ access to nature. Is it possible to have an ‘immediate’ experience? Is it possible to have a purely ‘sensuous’, non-conceptual experience? Like being taken into the music? Like being moved by the music? Is it possible to be moved by the tree trunk?
I’d say yes. And I love it. I cherish the space of indeterminacy and the sensation of ‘pure’ perception like a liminal space of an aesthetic experience. And to me it’s very real - as long as it lasts. I believe we have access to another kind of thinking, another type of rationality which is non-conceptual and non-practical. I think this is aesthetic thinking. In this situation we are invited to practice our aesthetic connection and understanding with non-human beings.
Visual Connectivity & Aesthetic Conversations
The first contribution on the Symposium’s program explicitly plays with the question of time. Writer Lizzie Lloyd and interdisciplinary artist Katy Beinart aim to revisit and reactivate artworks from the recent past, all of which were developed or enacted through some form of social engagement or public participation. Their interest lies in the afterlife of such engaged works. What traces do participatory artworks leave behind? What kinds of meaning are here to stay? In their own words: “How might the afterlife of such projects be meaningfully represented?” And: “How can the documentation of such projects enact emotional, physical, psychological or conceptual transfer to engage or impact future audiences?”. [4] Mediating between the workings of engaged and participatory art in the past and in the future, Lizzie and Katy use mixed methods to generate new artworks and texts that retain some sense of the original artworks.
During their performative presentation the column-room was transformed. As Lizzy was speaking, Katy installed construction tape around the audience, making a clear separation of spaces. Through these red-and-white, plastic barriers, the space which I shared with the other audience members was being highlighted and transformed. I felt likeI was being imprisoned and at the same time becoming more intimate with my fellow audience-members (fellow inmates?). This performative gesture made me think of protest- and crime-situations. But I’m not sure if this was right, nor how it would relate to specific artworks in the past, for I couldn’t hear what was being said. What would be the source of this performative gesture? What in which artwork of the past inspired Katy and Lizzy to revisit and reactivate in the form of this particular gesture?
In the second part of their contribution ‘visual forms of connectivity’ would be co-constructed. We were asked to form duos and share what our research practice is like. I turned to my neighbour, Reyhaneh Mirjahani. I told her about my research practice which is about processes of identity-formation amongst youngsters through theatre. Reyhaneh was given the task to respond through creating a visual form of my story. She used one of the materials that Lizzy and Katy provided us with (a blue iron string, that could easily be bended, folded, twisted). And she created something very beautiful! You can see it in the photo here on the right. Each ‘wave’ of this form represents an individual (a youngster). The ‘inside’ of each wave represents the identity of each youngster (what one is). The ‘outside’ of each wave represents the potential space of each individual (what one could be). I was really touched by her visual creation, because it captured an important essence of what’s at stake in my research practice.
The space became even more messy in the third and final part of their contribution. We were asked to make groups of four and collect more material to create visual forms with. Within each group we were asked to reflect on questions concerning connectivity.[5] Rather than having merely conceptual conversation, we were invited to connect through the material objects by creating visual forms.
The conversation I took part in, together with Reyhaneh Mirjahani, Marike Hoekstra and Walmeri Ribeiro, took surprising and unforeseen pathways, as the visual-material dimension invited us to communicate more aesthetically; through and with the senses. Artistic connectivity in this context then seems to imply the activation of an aesthetic dimension in intersubjective communication through the co-construction of visual forms. In my experience it leads to a different more sensuary conversation.
Collective Subjectivity and other resonances with ‘Connectivity’
The third day started playfully. We gathered in the villa for coffee and tea. Then artistic researcher and artist Jessica Renfro invited us to do some morning stretching. These individual movements were followed by a game, in which we’d have to look around until we’d meet some other pair of eyes. And then we’d wink. Next, upon making contact with someone else in the room, we’d have to clap simultaneously. In a playful way, our minds and bodies were awakened and connected at the beginning of this new day. The warming-up was followed by a short story that Jessica told us. She took us into a fantasy world, to another planet with an open ending: “Once upon a time we called it _______...”
After having opened up our imagination we followed Jessica to the column-room, which had been transformed into a gaming-room. Four people were invited to control one organism together through a game-console. The space quickly transforms into a ludic learning place, as the players were having fun and gradually started understanding how to move together. When the game came to an end we were invited to have a loose discussion with Jessica on what we experienced, which gradually tranformed into a presentation of her work.
Jessica is active in the field of digital participatory art. She creates immersive experiences in order to explore alternative ways of being together. The game that we just played, entitled “We Called It Earth”, was designed to explore a path to progress in response to the climate crisis by designing mechanics for collective victory and authorship. The game can be used as a pedagogical tool, as it is designed to be a stepping stone towards a conversation about co-existence. In the presentation, different kinds of subjectivity were shared drawn from game-studies: player-subject, playing-subject, played-subject. Working with these terms, Jessica investigates how the virtual world can be used to experience ‘collective subjectivity’.
Even though the notion of connectivity does not come to the foreground explicitly, the idea of collective subjectivity does resonate with the idea of relational presence (in Ann Shuptrine’s contribution). Also, the usage of an artistic medium to open up a different kind of conversation, makes me think of Lizzie Lloyd & Katy Beinart’s usage of visual forms. Whereas Lizzie & Katy merge the visual-material form with the conversation (conversing through the medium), Jessica uses the game as a tool to converse about the experience of the medium. Finally, Jessica’s work makes me think of Danae Thedoridou’s contribution. Because the game is embedded into a social-political context of real crisis (climate change) and because it taps into the power of imaginary proposals, the work could be considered a hybrid speculative practice.
[Classroom setting | participants seated around rectangular tables]
[Reyhaneh introduces exercise]
Stage 1: Map and instructions/multiple choice questions forming route on the map | in pairs (7 minutes)
Stage 2: work in groups of 5 to answer the same questions (7 minutes)
[Artist and participants pin produced maps on the room’s announcement boards]
Difference in mapping between working in a pair and a group | friction is easier to avoid in pairs
On the Project
-Ongoing project investigating participatory artistic research | The question of Agency | (im)possibility of agency
-How can a participatory installation create a space to investigate the politics of agency?
-The installation space aims to form a space of political engagement/encounters
-Research methods/work forms: conduct conversations/participatory experiments
PARTICIPATION: the problematics
Cultural and political participation is high in the west. European agenda based on a liberal idea of freedom dominating European capitalism/neoliberalism.
Agents or players? | ‘Credibility, authority and authenticity’ | how are we positioned in this work and how do we relate based on our own experience?
[Question on the scientific process of examining the objective of an artistic experiment]
Opening up discussion: ‘in the frame of art we are always players’ - ‘as citizens we are always agents’ – art as a playful and imaginary way to inform yourself (Danae)
The value of play | ‘Some experiences are close to strong citizenship experiences’
Discussion on values of play: What is the point in binaries? – creating further divisions (Chrystalleni)
Conversation turns heated | ‘agonistic space’ | connective potential through disagreement
Artist views art as a tool for scientific or political research | problematics of artistic research | is it scientific? Artist works with political scientists to produce installations and accompanying participatory actions to reach answers to research questions | goal is to provoke this conversation |
provocation can push further into scientific results ‘CHOICES’? Disagreement on (participatory) art being used as a tool; Eleni points out that this limits the symbolic and social significance of art
Democratic Connectivity & Social Imaginaries
Performance maker and researcher Danae Theodoridou starts with another spatial, performative, participatory intervention. As the audience returns to the column-room after a coffee-break, the centre of the room is empty. We are seated on four lines of a square, facing the empty space in the middle. We are asked to step into the room one after the other, to either place an object in the room or ourselves. In the end everyone should find their proper place in this democratically stabilised space.
A rather remarkable game unfolds, where chairs are placed in funky ways and books are brought in like props in a theatre. Slowly, a cacophonic constellation of chairs, books and bodies is taking shape. Towards the ending, everyone has found their place. Interestingly enough, so Danae remarks, everyone is facing the same direction, namely: the direction from where we were given instructions. Apart from one person, who is looking in the other direction. Away from the one who, in this situation, is in the position of being the authority.
The second part of Danae’s contribution takes place in our democratically created space.. It’s in the form of a presentation, based on the artistic research project The Practice of Democracy (2018-2022), and on the recently published book that came out of it.[6] The Practice of Democracy consists of four performances each attempting to disrupt the normal rhythm of cities - even if only in a fictitious sense - to create public space(s) for new social imaginaries. As is written in the program book:
“By grounding democracy back to the materiality of the body, by approaching democracy via affect and the senses, performance can construct fictive microcommunities able to open space for new social imaginaries, other than the dominant capitalist ones. It is in this way that art can (re)construct public space”
The force underneath this work lies in the observation that there is a crisis concerning politics, democracy and social imagination across Europe and the Western world. Bluntly put: our democracy is functioning without ‘demos,’ i.e. without the people. A driving question behind the work is: “How to reconnect the people through performance?”.
The fine line between art and politics can be illustrated in one of the artworks that was briefly presented. “What if…?” is a speculative performance in which Danae conducted numerous interviews and discussions with artists, politicians, urban planners and real estate experts to ask questions about possible forms of living together in ‘the city of the future’. Can we imagine a new social structure in the urban living space of the future? How can we help to shape the development of neighbourhoods? What role do art and culture play in processes of urban renewal?
Apparently the project was so successful, that the local leader of the communist party was inspired to say something like: “I have been in politics for 20 years, and this artwork makes me realise that I forgot how to connect to the people.” A few months later, the politician achieved a great political victory. The anecdote suggests that the politician did learn a thing or two from affective strategies oriented towards new social imaginaries.
During the presentation three characteristics of artistic connectivity are mentioned that underlie Danae’s artistic research practice on the fine line between politics and performance. For this occasion I have translated these into working invitations:
Let’s work on the basis of: sustainability, care and trust.
Let’s work through speculative practices.
Let’s work for the sake of community building.
[Setting stays the same]
[Artist Introduction]
Thoughts that came up at the beginning of the pandemic related to theater and the absence of theatrical practice | Analysis of the term ‘theater’ – connection – collaboration – collectivity | Introduces terms characterizing artistic practice and process in bilingual form
CONCEPTUAL FRAME OF PROJECT (foundations: connection, communication, contribution, collective creation)
[Corresponding dimensions of theatre] - Practice of ‘ecological theater’
Experimenting with alternative work forms | Facta Non Verba: political theatre collective
[Screening of video footage from public space interventions/performances
Project structure and work tools: Monthly frequency / Public space setting / energy tools (yoga) / theatrical improvisation
Connection with: I, the other, the invisible
[Outdoor Activity | Fontys garden]
[Artist and participants move outside and set themselves in the surrounding area of a tree, fenced with tree trunk benches]
Instructions given (exercise to connect to inner self): Bend knees | Move arms in circular manner | Connect to sacrum | Connect to the earth | Well-grounded feet | Sound production to resonate with each other
[Circular seating arrangement | Chairs | Table with materials in the middle]
[artist introduces practice | focus on arts education]
Focus: physical-spatial aspects of studio spaces
Concepts: studio/third space pedagogy/placemaking/human geography/arts-based education research/geography of education/children’s geography | Inclusion and democracy in education | ‘third space’ opens up public sphere for marginalized groups (feminist theories, post-colonial theories) | studio as a ‘third’ pedagogical space
Re-approaching physical space for art education: aiming at connective dimension?
Research Design: studio space is shared by artists and children as an inclusive learning environment (education + residency space)
Geography of Education | children’s geography - things to look at:
1. Micro perspective of the interior of a room (ground plan/arrangement) | Wall in the middle of the room; takes down the ‘panopticon idea’ | provides shelter
2. Ways to enter the building/exit into garden | position of studio in building
3. Location (example: studios/community buildings in Rotterdam Zuid | vital demographics)
4. The Body | Embodiment | Agency: in a studio, arrangement can dictate who can express an opinion, who belongs, who has agency over the condition of being together
5. Children’s public sphere: spatial arrangement is significant | children are active place-makers | they are always in the process of place-making (school, home, playground)
6. Connectivity examples in art education rooms: absence of teachers desk | circular seating arrangement to encourage interaction/participation etc.
[Artist invites participants to approach the materials table and ‘construct’ a floor plan of the studio space in groups of 6]
HOW CAN A SPACE BE INCLUSIVE IN ITS MATERIAL ASPECT? [Spatial basis for connectivity]
‘Mobile walls’ | ‘patios’ | openness | directness| sunlight | active setups
‘You need to have spaces that aren’t productive spaces but relaxing spaces’
[Setting: AcademieTheater]
Start: Physical Exercises, Synchronization-oriented
[Split in groups: different move for each group; Hulya guides; 3 groups create a sound act made of different patterns]
Group experiment finishes | participants stay in the same position | Artists position themselves in the middle and sing
[Hulya introduces practice: adult activities inspired by children’s play]
*Student engagement
Connective elements of the project: collective manual labor in nature | horizontal | radical care | non-hierarchical
[Hulya reflects on collective research processes -> circle and harvest | weekly meditation (co-existing in a deeper way)]
[Chrystalleni introduces routine/processes/practices they follow]
- Connective basis: closer to non-extractivist thinking | political in its foundations | Politics of care | Recovering lost acts of being together | Singing together (spiritual) tunes to sync and connect
Connectivity without organs & Ethics of participation
For this presentation we move through the corridors of the arts school into a dance studio. We gather on the ground in a big circle and Eleni introduces her research practice. Inspired by the Japanese dance-form of Butoh, she wants to challenge the notion of a leader in the group. Principles from Butoh resonate with Buddhist principles and have a strong orientation towards being present in the here and now. Another principle is the idea to let things happen as they come (not being goal-oriented, but rather emergence-oriented). Eleni also draws on Deleuze & Guattari’s notion of the ‘body without organs’, which loosely means to undermine the authority of the brain and make space for non-brainy ways of thinking. Based on these thoughts, Eleni aims to challenge the notion of the leader in a group and to practice non-hierarchical and self-organising forms. She proposes making the central person in the group the most vulnerable.
Normally, the one in the centre is the leader. Now, we are asked to form a circle around the central person, as if we are a cell surrounding the core. The circular shape is emphasized by a hula hoop that the central person is asked to hold onto. The central person is wearing a blindfold. And the first circle of people around the core start moving the hula hoop, so as to move the vulnerable person in the centre. Around this first circle is a second circle, which is called the membrane. This is meant as extra protection of the inner circle and ultimately of the person in the middle.
For a while we experiment with changing roles between the three positions: 1 central person, about 4 movers in the first circle and about 7 movers in the membrane-circle. We experiment with different directions, different locations (for a while, we’re moving in the corridor next to the studio) and with an object (a bench, which I put in the middle of the room to complicate the movement situation).
For me it was a great pleasure to play this game together, moving the central person safely and creatively through the room. But in the conversation that followed after the experiment strong sentiments of objection and critique were uttered. One of the strongest utterances I recall is: “It’s unethical to trigger fear in any practice”. Apparently, this workshop did trigger fear in some. Not only as a participant (fear of moving along) but also from the perspective of observers (fear that this situation could easily be misused to harm the vulnerable person in the middle). The strongest critique was about the fact that the workshop did not take into account people that feel uncomfortable participating in physical activities. It became an important point of discussion during the closing conversation of the Connective Symposium. The ethics of participation was not only triggered by this specific contribution by Eleni, but also in other contributions over the last three days.
Interestingly enough, one of the research questions from Eleni is: “What kind of possibilities and disorders open when we are faced with the challenge of staying together/ tuned in as a cell?”. I believe her contribution helped to address a point of friction with regards to the ethics of participatory practices, which has proven to be valuable for our discussion on connectivity.
Physical participation was present in almost every contribution during the symposium. It raises the question: What’s the difference between artistic connective practices and artistic participatory practices? It makes me think of what Lara Staal said during our Connective Conversations series:
"‘Connectivity’ is an attractive term because it’s open, not yet loaded yetwith meaning, not active in contemporary discourse, also it’s more playful and generous than ‘participatory’. The risk though, is that the term is so broad that it can encapsulate everything. Another risk is that the term is exploited. How to make, to load, to practice the concept in a meaningful way?"[9]
Interconnected Practice
The last afternoon of the Connective Symposium takes place in yet another location, as we are gathering in the theatre hall of the arts school. We are joined by a group of students from different Master programs, who are participating in an interdisciplinary research day. We are a group of about 90 people. A nice crowd for the workshop/presentation by architect, writer, artist and educator Liana Psarologaki and novelist, journalist, poet and academic Amanda Hodgkinson.
The House of Seasonal Cleaning is a hymn to domestication in the form of an immersive interdisciplinary workshop. It connects three seemingly separated activities: cleaning, writing and architecture. According to Liana and Amanda cleaning is an act of care and repetition, which aligns neatly with the fundamental characteristic of crafting an artwork, which involves re-writing and reforming narratives.
"Cleaning is an often-invisible socio-political act of connecting and of connectedness, bonding bodies, minds and emotions with spaces and objects. It is poetry made of skin flecks and hair, of household dust and unmade beds. In the workshop, cleaning will become an act of commoning through, and with, dirt. " [7].
The audience is invited to collaboratively create a house of poetry on stage. Aiming to connect writing practices with the architectural environments that surround us, we are asked to think of a part of a house, e.g. the hall, the cellar, the attic, the bedroom. Then, we are asked to write a little poem that describes this particular piece of place. After this individual writing session, we gather on stage to lay down the written papers and form a house of poetry together.
What is celebrated in this workshop/presentation seems to me to be the act of caring and the creative dimension of the spaces we inhabit, through a strange and strong mix of cleaning, writing and architecture. Liana and Amanda have found a way to connect these different practices as one.
I have the idea that we are dealing here with a specific type of connectivity, which transfers, translates, transposes ideas from one practice into the other. Characteristics of cleaning, such as its repetitive nature and it’s essential interest in caring for bodies in places, are used as guiding principles to host a workshop that combines writing & architecture. Transpositional connectivity is like diffractive reading: we practice writing & architecture through the lens of cleaning.
Or am I reducing the connectedness between the three activities to a binary between cleaning on the one hand (as the source of inspiration) and writing and architecture on the other hand (as the practices of the workshop). It seems to be more truthful to keep the three practices apart and interconnected in their own ways. And this makes me think of the term ‘interconnected practice’. By combining cleaning, architecture and writing in the actual form of a workshop/presentation, a complex and strange field of connections between these practices is created.
[Setting: Fontys garden]
[Artist gives instructions to participants]
Eyes closed
How do I feel? How do I carry my weight?
‘Start walking’
How does weight change as you walk? How do your feet feel? Observe: what do you see around?
Notice colors, shapes, structures. What about the rest of your body parts? How do they feel when walking?
Try faster.
Stop.
Take straight or circular paths.
Stop.
Start again.
Walk with your muscles tense.
Walk with your muscles relaxed.
Find someone to share a walk with.
[Participants divided into 2 groups: given scores]
Walk as a group. Follow scores.
[Going back inside |Reflection part]
Groups drawing/discussing
Katy: ‘Felt like we were a constellation’
Connective Creation Methods
Magdalena Kallenberger is amongst other things initiator, co-founder and active member of the feminist art collective MATERNAL FANTASIES. It was created in 2018 as a case study to analyse how to curate a collective process from which new infrastructures, tools and methods could emerge for intergenerational, collective art production. An important aspect of Magdalena’s artistic practice is ‘autotheory’, which engages in thinking about the self, the body, and the particularities of one’s lived experience. Driven by her personal situation as a single mom as well as a frustration about how motherhood is represented in general, her ambition is to create new images of motherhood.
The MATERNAL FANTASIES collective consists of seven woman that are dedicated to the exploration of relations between art-production and mothermood, through questions such as:
“How do we – women who are artists who are mothers who are daughters who are artists – write ourselves into the (art) world? And, how do we unwrite an already written page? How do we draw from our experiences as splitted subjectivities an intergenerational dialogue with our feminist ancestors? What does poetry, collectiveness and fantasy have to do with resistance?”[8]
Working since 2018 on collaborative projects, the collective has been developing their own repertoire of methods – using performative games, writing sessions, rotational authorship/direction/hosting of events and coming up with various sets of rules for their different projects. They make use of a variety of media, such as: photography, performance, installations, workshops and video. At times they also carefully integrate their children in the process of their collective art production.
In response to a question from the audience we get a small insight into how MATERNAL FANTASIES works as a collective. Working-sessions are initiated by two people. These initiators rotate over time. So they have developed forms of flexible leadership in which the functions in the group rotate.
Here we can see another form of artist-to-artist connectivity (which we saw in the Dialogues project, as presented by Elisavet Kalpaxi); connectivity as a mode of organising the work collectively. Moreover, the notion of connectivity comes to the fore explicitly with regards to the creative writing prompts and performative tools that were developed within the collective. Due to circumstances we did not have the chance to experience these artistic connective tools that are designed to create on the fine line between motherhood and art-production. But in the picture (Traveling Drawing) you’ll get an impression of how such a performative tool could function connectively.
Artist-to-Artist Connectivity & Empathy as a Function of Art
The final contribution of the first day comes in two parts. In the first part Dr. Elisavet Kalpaxi introduces the concept and theories behind Dialogues: an art project, instigated in July 2022, that focuses on artists’ connectivity through art. Eight independent artists formed pairs, within which artworks were exchanged. Literally. For example: work by artist Klaus Wehner was presented in the personal space of artist Basil Olton, and vice versa. For a period of 10 days live-streaming sessions were held to explore hybrid spaces of exchange and interventions that blend private/public conceptions of space. A few of the participating artists were present during the presentation, both online and offline. “It was intimate to showcase someone else’s work,” says artist Marie Molterer via Zoom.
The project’s institutional independence enabled the process to be open-ended. No pre-established objective was expected in any dialogue. Operating in this non-institutional, open space, meaningful exchanges were realised. Working on the basis of trust, generosity and reciprocity are mentioned as key factors for meaningful interaction. Elisavet closes her presentation with a statement on an important function of art, which is often overlooked, and which was very much at the core of the Dialogues project, namely: empathy - the ability to identify with or understand another's situation or feelings.
Relational Ontology & Nonhuman Connectivity
Ann Shuptrine is one of the participating artists in the Dialogue project and takes care of the second part of this contribution. She shares with us a fascination for the movement of relationships. “The idea of connectivity is running through all my work,” she says. Zooming in on relationality, she shares a quote by philosopher Martin Buber: “How we stand in relation to the other changes us”. Overall, the interest of Ann seems not to be in ideas of autonomy and independence, but rather in ideas of ‘relational presence’ and ‘relational ontology’. Such an interest in relationality is possible between people, as she illustrates with the dialogue that she’s been having with ceramicist Basil Olton: “The work came out of the relation and in that sense was about the relation”. But relationality can also exist in relation to earth. How do we sense and attune to nonhuman beings? Thinking through Buber’s argument: How does the way we stand in relation to earth change us?”
Towards the end we are asked to take off our shoes and join Ann in a short embodied sensing exercise, to awaken the ‘porous body’ (which is a reference to Walmeri Ribeiro’s contribution). We are asked to form pairs and choose a personal object to carry with us. Seated on the ground, we are invited to speak about the object while the other person listens physically. The listening exercise is not so much about what is being said, but rather how it is said; what it feels like, how the other is speaking and what resonances may appear between bodies. I feel we’re doing an exercise that fits well with Elisavet’s remark on empathy. We are practicing listening empathically to understand each other emotionally.
"Welcome to the fourth wave of feminism. This movement follows the first-wave campaign for votes for women, which reached its height 100 years ago, the second wave women's liberation movement that blazed through the 1970s and 80s, and the third wave declared by Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's daughter, and others, in the early 1990s. That shift from second to third wave took many important forms, but often felt broadly generational, with women defining their work as distinct from their mothers'. What's happening now feels like something new again. It's defined by technology: tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online."[2]
Another notable source that critically investigates the fourth wave in feminism, is the book The Feminist Fourth Wave: Affective Temporality, by Prudence Chamberlain (2017). In this book the 'wave narrative' is critically investigated as a form of feminist time keeping.
"It is the finitude of the waves, the impossibility that they can maintain the same level of energy for an indefinite period of time, that makes the wave moments so pronounced within the timeline of feminism. They do not negate the past, but instead acknowledge it, using it in conjunction with the future in order to allow for an intensely unfolding activism to take shape within the wave moment."[3]
Moreover, what is central to this way of thinking about the wave narrative, according to Chamberlain, is ‘affective temporality’. Waves are considered forces that must be experienced within the moment, as opposed to being identified and rationalised.
It inspires us with the question of what the characteristics of the fourth feminist wave could mean for us. What might be the performativity of online technologies, humour and affective temporalities in relation to artistic connectivity?
The call for contributions
All contributions answered to the call, which can be found online here. To give an impression of the call, we've selected two fragments:
"This symposium aims to bring together artistic researchers with an interest to contribute to society through their research practice: Not only to question, but rather to actively engage in the present, and ‘helping time forward’ through a dedicated relation to the world."
Thus critical engagement and dedicated relation to the world of artists is at stake in the notion of ‘artistic connectivity’. Moreover, artistic connectivity has an affiliation with a specific ethics.
"Artistic Connective Practices aim to provide a perspective on complex issues through a number of core values, such as: connecting through spending time together, rooted in the dedicated investigation of agreed common ground; mutual respect and endless curiosity; affinity, integrity and kinship."
Rather than defining the term or considering it as a thing, a genre or a field on its own, artistic connectivity could be seen as an invitation to think and work with, in order to enable and support artists and art educators in being critically and ethically engaged in their work and with the world.
Text from the program book:
I will speak about my recent research project “The Other Garden”, which I started
collaboratively with students at Berlin University of arts (UdK). The Other Garden is
both a green architectural space where we grow certain plant species which are not
‘native’ to Germany as well as a research space, in which we hold lecture series on
topics of ecology and inclusivity. In my talk, I will present The Other Garden as well
as inviting the audience for a short exercise we will do together.
Text from the program book:
In May 2021, I met my first participant within the framework of the research project In Search of Stories, a collaboration between the University of the Arts Utrecht (HKU), Universal Medical Centre Amsterdam (AMC), and Radboud University Nijmegen (and others, see https://www.hku.nl/en/research/projects/in-search-of-stories).
For this project, an interdisciplinary group of artists was invited to co-create an artwork with terminal cancer patients. In Search of Stories has multiple goals and research perspectives. For the participants, the project may improve the quality of the time they still have left or offer a creative tool to interpret their own life story and find new meaning. For the organizing institutes, the research focuses on the transdisciplinary cocreative processes between artist and patient and what these may offer for innovation
in education and healthcare.
For me, as an artist-researcher, this project is part of my PhD project in which I investigate our aesthetic interaction with materialities (bodies, organisms, spaces, things) through the lens of Touch(ing). In the presentation (text/photos/videos) I will describe the process of co-creation with three participants in different phases of their illness and how these three collaborations developed over time; discussing (personal) challenges related to aesthetics, ethical issues, and working within different spaces (atelier, home situations). I will do this by sharing the various artistic strategies, questions, and materials that were used in an attempt to create non-hierarchical and emergent forms of collaboration in an inclusive and diverse context.
This presentation will particularly zoom in on how physical contact with materials like
cloth, foam, paper, clay, magazine and book cuttings, and 3d letters, lines, and figures
made with 3d print material (PLA), influenced and shaped the dialogue between the
participants and me.
Touching, ripping, combining, molding, and shuffling the materials in a dialogical
manner, afforded us the to discover and play with new words, gestures, movements,
and shapes. These supported us to share our embodied sensations and emotions
evoked by the different scales and meanings of touching and being touched,
(re)presenting our reciprocal and relational being in the world.
Text from the program book:
This research project centers around the idea of creating artist studio spaces for
children as inclusive spaces for learning in schools and neighborhoods. Especially in
primary schools, that often don’t have specialist subject classrooms, studio spaces
enhance the possibilities for art education. However, facilities for children, especially in
neo-liberal society, are often based on the assumption that children are limited to the
role of fulltime students who need to be educated (Illich, 1970) or consumers who need
to be entertained. This leaves little room for places where children are able to
participate and have shared agency based on equality. The question would be how
spatial qualities of the studio enhance the creation of a childrens' public sphere (Negt &
Kluge, 1990) or a third pedagogical site, where pre-existing hierarchies are questioned
and inclusion of all involved is made possible (hooks, 1989).
Based on theory and the experiences of radical pedagogical practices a new initiative
will start in Amsterdam (Bos en Lommer area) in October 2022 that will become a
sustainable site for development and (artistic) research. The studio will be shared by
children from the neighborhood and artists-in-residence. The research takes the form of
artistic action research where researchers, artists and children collaborate to
increase knowledge on the artist's studio as inclusive space. At the moment of the
symposium the studio/research site has been working for a month. I propose to share
the first findings in an interactive working session.
This proposal relates strongly to the last question raised in the call: artistic work and
research as making socially engaged imaginary propositions. The proposition that the
project aims to make is to create a site for development and research in a continuous
process of making and researching, slightly similar to what is called place making in
urban development. Placemaking is a process that involves communities to reimagine
and reinvent public spaces. It is a bottom-up, grass roots approach to urban planning
where the participation and imagination of the people involved is conditional. When
working with concepts of space and place, an artistic methodology is an appropriate
way to engage children as co-researchers, as I have experienced in previous projects.
The research methodology for this project crosses the boundaries of activism, ethnography,
human geography and artistic research in order to make meaning out of a complex lived
reality.
Traditional Forms of Connectivity
The final presentation/workshop of the Connective Symposium is by Chrystalleni Loizidou & Hülya Dede. As practitioners of education through art, environmental education, traditional handicraft and of research on memory and ritual, they are looking for ways to meaningfully come together. By evoking ancient rituals, dances and storytelling practices, Chrystalleni and Hülya wish to generate social cohesion.
Their contribution consists of three parts. In the first part we are invited to join three phrases of body percussion. And it’s surprising to see how, through repetition and through doing, we are learning new movement vocabulary as a group. After we’ve learned the phrases, we perform them in three groups, like a musical canon.
The second part is a presentation that further explains what is driving their interests. Education and productivity are impositions that dominate life and separate us from the flow and rhythms of nature. Being is turned into work and people into things. And in this world care-work is imprisoned. Resisting these tendencies, Chrystalleni and Hülya wish to defy forces of division and share customs of mindful presence, belonging and connection.
In the final part we are invited to join the act of singing a traditional and spiritual song together. And so we are participating in traditional, ancient forms of connectivity, like body percussion (dancing), storytelling (listening) and making music together (singing).
Text from the program book:
This workshop will encourage participants to perceive walking as a ‘together practice’ in
the studio and public space. The walking experiment is divided into three parts. The
participants start with a warm-up in the studio with the scope to create bodily
consciousness in the act of walking. Later, they move together to the public space for a
performative participatory walk. The session ends back in the studio. Thinking
collectively through writing/talking, the participants will share and talk about walking
and what walking-with one another means to them.
Walking as a method and practice enables an embodied form of knowing together that
happens through an attentive, sensorial way of being in the world. When we walk-with
others new pathways of moving, learning, and knowing occur. How does walking-with enact
changes to our thinking, feeling, sensing, moving? How can we become response-able
for one another?
This experiment examines the performative, participatory, and mobile methods of
walking-with. Participants will engage in a process of walking together, knowing each
other, and making place. The aim is to explore how the walkers’ moves and decisive
actions in space, inspire them to be at once narrators, performers, and interpreters. The
space, interactive and performative, will act as a canvas to be inscribed with
movements, embodied practices, connections, and personal narratives. In this
experiment, the walk will become a laboratory for experimentation with opportunities
for a range of different encounters through a communal process of walking together.
Text from the program book:
An Experiment on Agency is ongoing practice-driven artistic research by Reyhaneh
Mirjahani, focusing on the notion of agency in dilemmatic political situations, where the
actors facing these dilemmas are in a ‘lose-lose’ predicament (Frost, 2003). These
situations leave the actor with a difficult choice between two or more undesirable
alternatives based on the given context – to choose between censorship and freedom of
speech in a critical context; to lie, leave, fight, protest, believe, follow, vote.
In this project, Reyhaneh is investigating and developing different participatory methods
to bring forward and contribute to the already existing debate on the (im)possibility of
agency in the field of political and social science. By facilitating an intertwined
relationship between practice-driven research and theory-driven research, the
proposed project aims to investigate the problematics of the western cosmopolitan
liberal idea of agency and instead of a binary approach, explore the intricate
relationship between agency and structure, individual, and community.
At the Connective Symposium, Reyhaneh will bring forward another iteration of the
project for the symposium participants and will talk about her interdisciplinary
approach in the previous experiments.
[Setting: Serre, Villa]
[Artist gives short introduction (tells a story) and asks participants to engage in movement exercises mimicking movements of others/warming up the ‘collective body’]
Scanning QR code – entering a game interface on our phones.
| this being the first session of the day adds to the willingness to engage and explore |
[Moving to Kolommenzaal]
[room is dark | screen on, game interface | desk in front of screen | led lights | 4 remote controls]
Game phase
Main character controlled by all 4 players | they need some time to get used to the rules | participants have to collaborate on multiple actions/functions of the game | playful connection | collective control
Presentation
‘We Called It Earth’: participatory, digital platformer game
| co-authors of the game/the world itself
[Setting: AcademieTheater]
[Amanda and Liana introduce project]
Working with overlapping practices | Idea is to create a big house inside the AcademieTheater
- By cleaning the house we re-shape its architecture
- Fragmented narrative
Installation (HYMN TO DOMESTICITY) made of poetry and sound | Looked at the ‘politics of cleaning/domestic politics’ | Architecture of hierarchy -> cleaning | What it means to be a housewife/caretaker (complexity/unpaid labor)
[experiment starts (20 minutes) | stage is filled with master students and symposium participants | work in groups or individually]
Think of elements of domestic space -> connect space + movement
Pick a place in the house (hallway etc)
AREAS – TOOLS – THINGS (e.g., mirrors, carpet)
Share your connective work | co-create a house of poetry | poetics of space and feminine labour
[Stage filled with working groups; sitting, laying down, squatting postures; laughs, voices, concentration]
[Participants gather around to ‘read’ the newly built house]
Scene.
[Everyone stands in the surrounding space]
[Artist introduction]
Danae instructs participants to place objects/bodies inside empty space in the middle, based on how they feel fit/resonate with surroundings
First participant enters space, ads an object, leaves. Next one. Some sit in squatting position on the green carpet-like floor; others lay down.
[Further instructions]
Those still left outside claim their position in the space and share something about themselves.
[Danae introduces Practice of Democracy project]
Visible forms to the embodied/sensorial | How the material arrangement of space and bodies affect community-building and democratic potential
[Participants listen seated in their chosen position facing or not towards Danae; a theatrical arrangement of people and objects in space]
Video Screening (protest slogans written and verbal examples from different political subjects -> performative reactivation of history of political demand)
[Screen is paused on: ‘Is this Europe?’ – white letters on black screen]
Connectivity elements:
attention + locality + diverse togetherness + poetics/performativity of politics
Coming together to discuss the materials found, connecting the local to the international, the slogans themselves (in a performative dialogue on screen and soundscapes) representing social struggles through the poetics of political protest.
‘When did you last think you were part of a community? What were the sensorial inputs?’
Text from the program book:
My contribution to this symposium will be the presentation of the project “Reclaim the city: Creating liberated zones” both as theory and practice. This is the current stop in a 20-year journey of the political theatrical collective "Facta Non Verba” on the use of public space. As a founding member of the group, I can say that the use of public space was a major concern of us, because we consider its limits as an indicator of the current state of democracy. We have tried several times to build a bridge of communication between the public space, the inner world and our utopian space-time, and also between history and environment, nature and senses.
After the collective introspection brought about by the dystopian pandemic we are
experiencing, demonstrating the state of emergency we have as humanity, we
wanted in addition to our sociopolitical aspect to include another perspective:
connection to the natural environment and its therapeutical energy, connection to
ourselves and others as parts of a living network.
The project consists of several workshops in various public areas of the city. Each
meeting will be announced with a call for entries, will be three hours long and will
combine energy tools (qigong, yoga, sound therapy) with our theatrical practices for
collective creation (collective improvisation, creation of collective soundscape, guided
theatrical moving meditation). Our aim is every time to look at the city and the people
who live in it in a multifaceted way, its macro-history and their micro-histories, ourselves
and others connected in a grip of energy. There will be a free contribution from the
participants that goes to “Agramythia", an artistic ecocommunity we are trying to build
at the foot of the Pieria Mountains.
[Empty middle space | people sitting around]
[artist introduces project | stages – participants – objectives]
Collaborations -> dialogue between practices-disciplines
- Responsibility | empathy | generosity
- Interaction | similarities emerging | online element – webcam was on during the exhibition
- Artists exhibited each other’s work in their own spaces
- Defamiliarization and refamiliarization
‘Intimate’ experience to showcase someone else’s work (Maria, artist)
Digital Connectivity exploration of hybrid spaces of exchange
Open-ended definition of connectivity | ‘Subjective rendering of meaningful interaction’ | No pre-established objective in connecting
Connecting element: installing each other’s work
Artist: ‘what was really stimulating was the liveliness and the agency of the artwork itself – how you experience a work of art – more extended forms of connective technology – ‘utopian avant-garde project that wanted to integrate art in life.’
Idea of: inclusion | fluid responsiveness | energetic availability | commitment to be changed by the process
[Ann asks everyone to take off shoes | plays video – metronome-like pattern]
[Asks participants to place fingers on the neck to feel the pulse | Pulse gets in line with metronome pattern]
[Invites everyone to move into space | Stops movement]
How do you relate to each other in space?
movement continues | walk in circle | stand in circle
How does the body feel? | Bending – folding – unfolding - Dissolving the shape – move into pairs/find partner/take a seat somewhere in the space/bring an object related to your practice - explain.
‘Connecting with ideas has a reaction in my body – I feel it in my core’.
[Kolommenzaal - Artists’ introduction - setting the scene]
[Katy wraps columns with barricade tape, creating a temporary border/nest. Liz reads a score-like text. Tape placement borders participants into a rectangle sub-space. A B&W film is shown in the background. Lizzie continues reciting the ‘score’. Katy continues wrapping]
‘Journal-like’ testimony from the artistic process | ‘Proof of our willingness to SURRENDER’
[Group Activity in Pairs]
‘Think about what your practice feels or looks like; think about how others can think of your practice; think about how others can get closer to your practice.’
Partner: ‘Shape your impression of that practice with the materials available; then change places.’
[Conversations/voices | smiles | movements – Katy distributes materials]
‘What is your idea of connectivity? How has the idea of connection disappointed you? What is the architecture of connection?’
[Activity in Groups of 4]
Groups working with materials/discussing the notion of connection/reflecting/knitting threads/stretching bodies
‘Deep listening is necessary when it comes to the collective’, Danae shares.
[Observe and converse]
‘What did you discover from your connective making and thinking?’
‘complex process that disrupts’
‘the INBETWEENNESS of things, skins, objects’
‘found myself trying to create a structure out of materials while the rest of the group was connecting verbally; resonating with their words by listening not interacting.’
‘Failure and connection’
How can connection be sustained in time, go further than being just a guided activity?
[Circular arrangement | squatting position | unguided meditation invited by artist]
Silence
Eyes Closed
‘Open up space in our bodies to be here, to be present’
[Setting changes]
Body of participants moves towards park
Fenced football court | trees | fallen leaves | brick temple-like structure
[Artist asks for simple actions]
See – feel – understand - sense (of) place
Participants turn into observers, wanderers
Process is unguided | based on connective practices with nature and one’s body/movement/senses
[Short statement by artist]
Participants share their experience
[relationship between environment and social relations |
performative research in devastated territories]
Modes of writing & Images
In this documentation, we bring two modes of writing together. Throughout, you will find Juriaan's more descriptive and interprative form of writing on one side, in response to the sessions on day 1 and 3, with a specific focus on the concept of artistic connectivity. On the other side, you will find Xenia's observations on each day's sessions in a script-like format. For each session which took place on day 2, we have included text from the programme book, written by the respective contributor.
[Setting: Dance Studio]
[Room/space to experiment | set of rules]
Group Movement Experiment | AIM: challenge the notion of the leader
- ‘Leader’ blindfolded (wears mask) inside hoop/nucleous
- Metaphor for hierarchical structure / nucleus in the center – body around
- Group moves around the studio in different speeds with leader blindfolded in the circle
- Leader changes
| Leader put in a precarious position – participation means more control?
Flow/rhythm | variety of formations | silence | experimenting with impulses, bodily consciousness, physical communication signals
Reflection | What was the sensation?
Danae: different sensation in and out; some people were led, other weren’t, so not what happened for everyone
Movement Negotiation
[RESPONSES]
What is the level of connection?
There’s always an exchange regardless of the position of authority each participant was in.
- Tension around the circle
- Person in the circle: vulnerable or in control?
- ‘felt like we were supporting’
Amanda: ‘underlying violent tension in the movement. When there’s vulnerability, there is always the potential of violence.’
FRICTION
Jessica: as plasma, surprising amount of control | In the circle: tried to refrain from using hands (minimizes control)
‘feeling collective energy/does someone care for me?’ | ‘Am I letting the others lead me?’
What do the moments of decision signify? To enter or to leave.
Liana: careful about forced participation | being able to participate should be cared for | Are people with different kinds of disability (such as anxiety) being considered in the design and execution of such an action? Is this an inclusive practice?
Liz: critical of participation in certain contexts), not always enjoyable
[Kolommenzaal | circular seating arrangement]
[Magda introduces practice/project]
[group seems more relaxed | more connection to one another and the space | familiarity]
Presenting performance - 8 locations - a household item producing sound in each location
CONNECTIVITY: exchanging/asking/presenting with/to people who don’t have regular artistic experiences.
Zoom meeting of mothers-children using household items | gestures/sounds | reflecting on domestic labor IN CONTRAST: images of playfulness, carelessness, non-gendered / not necessarily maternally expressed but based on politics of care and intimacy
[10-minute video: Suspended Time, On Caring by maternal fantasies]
Mother-children performances | multiple settings (decay, and rebirth, translation, synchronicity)
Process of Transformation: open/reflective/bodily/physically connective/forming structures/maintaining/repeating/delaying/enduring/preserving/recalling/remaining/ending (verbs featured/spoken in the video)
Experimenting with narration |mothers’ performance in which children are free to play and interfere.
‘Because it’s not perfect, it’s so accessible’
Participant feedback to videos: ‘aesthetic care and attention’, ‘moving’
‘Was it easy to engage kids?’ – ‘we kept it open, we didn’t force them to participate but included games for their age so they joined willingly’ | used additional elements – kid playing around within specifically set performance – kids brought unexpectedness, the unfamiliar, fascinating encounters of actions, events, bodies, faces | Existential meaning
INTERGENERATIONAL FEMINIST PRACTICE
