Battery 1
…
Battery 2
… In this void, specially in between myself and somebody else found here, people seem to strange me and therefor themselves. A kind of awkwardness between know intimacies take place in the battery. And then we struggle, myself ad the volunteer , trying to establish a different encounter. It is a sort of dispossession from both sides. Continue reading “23.12.2013”
Battery 1
1. Sleeping
is hard indeed. Literally . But also the cold, the men. It is like this place switches identity overnight. Jekyll and Hide. The beauty and warmth of the people during the day. The alcohol, sexism and territoriality at night. It is hard to stay vulnerable in those circumstances. I now change myself into a big blob with the army blanket as an outer skin. Completely opposite to the fragility of the sleeping body, now there is this kind of wurm-monster in its cage. If it is warmer I will go back maybe to the surrender, the exposure that I hope would break the aggressivity. But then again, there is not so much to say to the drunk guy. Just accept it as part of the experience I guess.
battery 2
Practice
I decided to go back to 3 sessions per day. I am now getting intimacy with the objects and with the differences among volunteers.It is indeed much better when they come back and the relations with the practice show their effects. I am now asking them to come in blindfolded already. So they enter the battery blind and then choose their material-object through touch. I am very impressed by the solid bounderies in relation to th senses some people have. It’s sad but at the same time hopefull because it means that there is a lot in there to explore. Some people can already connect a lot with the loss of their territoriality and of the one of the objects. The doubt of where does the body end and where does the object start is already there. When you see it happening, this is beautiful. You see the “I” i. the sense of a “person” dismantling in front of you. It’s subtle and rare , but when it happns it is clearly there.
I am sometimes in doubt if i can go much deeper with this practice here. I think yes, in the sense of sharpening th relation with the volunteers, the way inlisten for them for example. But in relation to the space, I have my doubts. The fact that they enter the battery is super strong, good, it works, since it is a membrane itself, a body which is living and being lived intensively. But when there is too much happening in the Bureau, I wonder if it is not what makes them too aware of themselvs …awareness which is hard to break in order to propose something else. (…)
3.
eye
ratio, public sphere, politics, institute
The Eye looms high above the clouds, in a city of its own. Like an eagle it has nestled on the top of the tower, at the summit of layers and layers of historical debris. Everything in this card speaks of a vertical move, a progressive accumulation of what came before. The Eye never closes, and it sees everything. The light beams hover over the city, simultaneously enlightening and surveilling the lives of its citizens. Next to the tower a flock of birds gathers in formation, flying off to their destination. Continue reading “3. eye”
Curating as environ-mentalism
‘to find a frame, a timing or a situation within which suggestions of others can be realized’ tom plischke (1)
1. In this text I would like to focus on a particular form of curatorship: a practice that grew out of (and in opposition to) the ‘new’ style of programming of the 1980’s institutions. An attitude in thinking about curating in which the role of the programmer and the role of the artist start to intertwine. I’d like to talk about a curatorship that tries to redefine the boundaries put up by the institutions that were built for the production modes and logic of a generation of autonomous artists, a rethinking of the role of the institution by introducing the notions of vulnerability, risk and imperfection into the programming idiom, and a translation of the ‘relational esthetics’ of the visual arts towards a more ecological phrasing of the time and space shared by the performers, ‘spectactors’, public members and the resisting (art)objects they encounter.
Interview with Bureau d’Espoir (Elke Van Campenhout)
Co-curator of the Residency “LaZone”, October 2010
Coralie Stalberg: How do you envision LaZone?
Elke van Campenhout: LaZone is a long-term project I am working on that is related to the topic of ‘critical hope’. In this collaboration with Bains Connective we worked with the invited artists of the Thematics, and we organized collective discussions and practices, reflecting on LaZone: as a space, as an intellectual environment, as a practice, etc… When at the end of the process every member of the group tried to formulate a definition for LaZone, the ideas that came out were very different, depending on everyone’s personal point of view, which fits the concept of LaZone somehow perfectly. The basic concept of LaZone is to propose an environment that is open, not yet specified, where the rules of behavior, speech and movement are not yet negotiated and recognizable for all the inhabitants. There is no common understanding yet for what you can think and say, for the way you relate to the other, the rules for using the space. Which makes of LaZone a kind of in-between space that is devoid of any function. Continue reading “Bureau d’Espoir about LaZone”
