VLADIMIR MILLER 

This research looks into into the relationship between scenography and politics. Focusing on a scenographic strategy called „settlement“ as its main site, it proposes a methodology of inquiry into the question of how spatial setups embody and facilitate certain ideologies of togetherness. It is a practice based research that aims on developing spatial arrangements, elements and strategies to destabilise and question those ideologies. Looking at the politics of post-foundationalism as its conceptual framework, it also encompasses an analysis and critique of the notions of territory, ownership and hospitality in relationship to artistic and research practices. Using „settlement“ a scenographic strategy to create self-reflexive participatory research environments it utilises a series of of research spaces to engage in critical and practical re-imagining of politics of collaborative spaces. Its aim to research possibilities and propose strategies for creating heterotope spaces that facilitate and sustain an inherent ideological instability.Settlement is an ongoing artistic research in the field of collaborative environments which has been developing since 2009 at the post-graduate program a.pass in Brussels. It is a shared workspace occupied by its residents for three weeks, where all that is required for a certain praxis to manifest itself in space has to built by the participants from scratch from the materials provided. It invites a mixed group of practitioners in the arts. The research centers on questions of emergence of property from praxis and on the ideologies that guide and shape common spaces of production. Its founding question is how and where does the political manifest itself in the material space. Settlement is a self-reflexive practice that organizes and gives space to a community of practitioners, it can be a fruitful critical contribution to an academic or research environment.