Installation - Performance (MA)

Teachers: Marialena Marouda, Anouchka Oler Nussbaum

The main objective of the workshop is to support and encourage students to pursue their unique paths towards artistic creation. This includes strengthening their capacity for self-organization, encouraging them to take responsibility for the conditions necessary for the development of their work, in the context of the erg.

The workshop aims to create a safe environment for experimentation and for sharing student questions, practices and skills with their peers. The aim is to create a process of mutual inspiration and “contamination” in which students learn from each other, even if their individual practices are different.

The workshop offers a process-based approach to artistic creation. Students are encouraged to share their practices throughout the year using different formats; presentation moments are therefore seen as tools to advance research rather than as “end items” in themselves.

The workshop encourages hybrid practices that link artistic creation to the field of ecology, activism or science.

Finally, the workshop aims to create links with the contemporary performing arts scene in Brussels and beyond, helping students develop their professional networks outside of school. This is done through visits to important workspaces and festivals in the field, organizing meetings with their organizers, inviting relevant artists in the field to give workshops, as well as organizing joint work with other MA programs in performance and installation in Belgium

This workshop focuses on relational, research-based and situated performance and installation practices. Inspired by [1] feminist and neo-materialist pedagogies, it seeks to challenge the prevailing presumption of individual human authorship in artistic practices, by drawing attention to the work of more than human presences within them. What types of kinship with these more-than-humans do our practices offer or can they offer? What types of groups do they form?

The notion of practice, as an evolving manufacturing process that brings together human and more than human collaborators, is essential to the workshop. During the workshop's two-year journey, students are supported in developing performance and installation practices and in sharing them with their colleagues. What does a person's practice do and how does it do it? What are his needs? What questions does it raise? How to answer these questions? Collectively, we will listen, engage, support each other, and study each other's practices in an environment that encourages collaboration and cross contamination between work processes. In this context, experimentation with in situ and site-specific methodologies to develop work that can move beyond more traditional spaces of artistic production and presentation is encouraged. What if a river, a forest or a city became a person's studio? But also: what if the spaces of a museum, a black box or a white cube became the more-than-human with which we collaborate, their specific stories and contexts revealed? How then does their performativity move from an "abstract" or "neutral" space of presentation to something much more historically specific?

goals

The key skills on which we will work are the ability to communicate about and share one's practice, by formulating one's needs and objectives. This includes becoming aware of its more than human collaborators and their relevance to the practice. Sensitivity and insight into the practices of others and the ability to give in-depth feedback are also important for the workshop. More specifically, the objective is to practice, on the one hand, different ways of opening up one's practice to a small audience and to test the formats most suited to the work: what are the specificities of a conference-performance, a workshop, an immersive installation, a concert...? It also includes moments of sharing what inspires and moves us in the form of texts, works of artists, materials, skills... On the other hand, we will practice being the public of the other, to be the witness of what is presented, to communicate on what we have experienced and to give our opinion. Collaboration among workshop participants is encouraged, so that students not only develop their ability to work independently, but also to contribute to the work of their peers. Critical thinking and the ability to situate one's practice within a larger political framework, asking questions that can also challenge the creator(s) and advance their practice, are goals to be achieved in the two-year course. of the workshop.

course structure

The workshop begins with the students sharing their practice in the large group, as a collective starting point. As part of their presentation, each student can articulate their needs and desires for their practice, so that we can work collectively to meet them. Then, and depending on the overall size of the group, we will form smaller groups, possibly organized by year, and together establish a rhythm for the regular sharing of student work. This can be done in different forms, depending on the stage of development of the work: introduction of the first ideas and presentation of the first materials, proposal of a workshop so that the group lives its proposals, or organization of a performance/installation to which the public can attend.

Artists whose work is related to the themes of the workshop will be invited to share their practice with students throughout the year. A book club, which will take place once a month, will be an opportunity to collectively read texts related to our practices and the themes of the workshop. Who/what to include in these sessions will be decided in collaboration with the students.

assessment

The evaluation is continuous and is largely based on the student's objectives and projects, as he formulates them at the beginning of the course. These can of course be redefined, refocused or clarified throughout the year. The progress of students in their artistic practice, their attendance at the workshop and their engagement in the practices of their peers are essential for a positive evaluation. Students' openness to challenging questions and their ability to place their work within a broader political framework will also be positively assessed, and expected, especially towards the end of the 2-year course.

documentation

As an important part of the assessment, and to make it easier, students are encouraged to document their process throughout the workshop. Possible questions to explore here are which media are most (or least?) suitable for the specific practice, as well as the question of what produces what: performance, documentation or perhaps the opposite?