Ana Vujanović / CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO/IN ART

RE-HALLUCINATING CONTEXTS #2:

notes by Ana Vujanović

CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO/IN ART

Modern western art paradigm (from 18th century on):

  • art as praxis (not poiesis as it has been since ancient Greece: see Aristotle’s Poetics). But the notion praxis doesn’t mean a voluntary public act dedicated to the regulation and transformation of the social field and relations, but as an act of expression of an individual’s creative will.
  • Reference: Agamben, Giorgio. The Man Without Content, Stanford Ca: Stanford University Press, 1999.

According to Agamben:

  • “The metaphysics of will has penetrated our conception of art to such an extent that even the most radical critiques of aesthetics have not questioned its founding principle, that is, the idea that art is the expression of the artist’s creative will.”

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Published on 18/03/2010 22:49.
Filed under: Re-hallucinating Contexts

Bojana Cvejić / INTRODUCTORY THESES ABOUT THE CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO THE PERFORMING ARTS SCENES IN PARIS AND BELGRADE

RE-HALLUCINATING CONTEXTS #2:

notes by Bojana Cvejić

INTRODUCTORY THESES ABOUT THE CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TO THE PERFORMING ARTS SCENES IN PARIS AND BELGRADE

  • What, which context? (Context is structured by power relations)
  • Whose context? (Who is the subject of the context? In whose name do I speak? What is my relation of belonging to the context? In which grammatical person do I speak? When do I say “I” and when do I say “we”?)
  • What is to be done? (from critique to construction)

Context:

  • scene (performance), site (inscription), environment (atmosphere)
  • scene: magazines, festival and venue networks, conferences, dynamic of trends and fashions
  • site: leaving traces, possibility of structural changes, writing history
  • environment: general opinion or doxa (Roland Barthes), dominant fiction (Kaja Silverman)
  • constraints as limiting factors or as enabling conditions?
  • contingency (matter of circumstances, what’s given) and choice of position (the choice of taking a position)
  • familiar (native, or learnt, accommodated) and unfamiliar (new, to be explored)

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Published on 18/03/2010 22:40.
Filed under: Re-hallucinating Contexts

About: ILLEGAL_CINEMA

About: ILLEGAL_CINEMA

Paris edition of illegal_cinema is based on the project with the same title that Walking Theory platform (TkH) runs in Belgrade from 2007, and which was outsourced to Istanbul cultural center Depo in 2009.

illegal_cinema is conceived as an open (self-) educational project of exchange and contextualization of the auteur, documentary, activist, queer, anarchist, censored and other marginalized and in the local context hardly accessible films. The project is open to everyone interested to propose films, with obligation to speak about them, to open up discussion, or to invite guests. With this procedure we try to erase the boundaries between the editor (curator) and audience, to perform a long-term process of self-education and to create a critical cultural community. So, in this project, “illegal” means inciting another knowledge production and discourse among non-film specialists around more experimental, critical and minoritarian film production.

illegal_cinema program in Les Laboratoires means developments and transformations of existing illegal_cinema procedures and contents in the context of Paris alternative scene. As we consider continuity and regularity crucial for sustaining an influence on the context, the project will be realized every Monday at the same time (7:30 p.m.) at the Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (41 Rue Lecuyer, Aubervilliers). It is organized by TkH platform from Belgrade (www.tkh-generator.net) and Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (www.leslaboratoires.org). Concept of the project: Marta Popivoda, cultural worker, and film/video maker.

Published on 10/03/2010 01:03.
Filed under: illegal_cinema

About: LABorious PUBLIC EDITING

About: LABorious PUBLIC EDITING

TkH: Journal for Performing Arts Theory is an independent publication that deals with contemporary performing arts and their critical theories. Each issue is organized around a main focus – a theoretical concept or an artistic-theoretical problem.

The next issue of the TkH journal will be on the immaterial labour and conditions of work in contemporary performing arts. It would be prepared in new circumstances, and is planned as a joint issue of TkH and Le Journal des Laboratoires. The aim of the issue is not only to thematise the topic of work, but also to propose, examine, and discuss its own working procedures. Accordingly, the entire work process of editing will be transformed into the collective laboratory work of mobile teams in Belgrade and Paris. The laboratory work of editing will be done in public, opening a process of presentations and discussions about the written contributions before they enter the issue. The issue will be edited in May and June in Paris, and will be printed in August 2010, as a bilingual (Serbian/French) publication.

More details and most of the issues are available online:

www.tkh-generator.net/en/casopis

Published on 10/03/2010 01:01.
Filed under: Public Editing

About: SHARP THOUGHTS

About: SHARP THOUGHTS

Sharp Thought is a 30-minute format of public talk with performative dimension. It consists of a short lecture – consistent elaboration of one concept or term proposed by a “presenter”, followed by a brief polemic with a “sparring partner”, who is opponent that contests and problematizes the presented theses. After the dialogue, there are up to three questions from the audience, focused precisely on what was said. The concepts and terms are newly-coined and will gradually create the conceptual framework of TkH’s project at the Les Laboratoires. However, the framework is not only proposed in an affirmative manner, but is at the same time opposed, challenged, contested and made more complex. Besides, this format aims to promote the culture of public debate and “hard talks” where articulation in arguments is favored over opinions.

Published on 10/03/2010 00:59.
Filed under: Uncategorized

About: COLLECTIVE LECTURES

About: COLLECTIVE LECTURES

Discourse doesn’t always imply the speech in first person singular, in words. How discourse is generated and circulated in a group, collective, or assembly is a process in which not only words, but also images, sounds, films, and music take part, so long as they build a line of thought. Lecture in this format is a collective exercise of 3-4 participants in developing a thesis in arguments. What makes it a collective “lecture”, and not a conference panel or debate, is the consistency in elaborating one stream of thought meandering in several voices (and media), and obligation to inform and make the argument clear and understandable for an audience. The topics will evolve from Re-hallucinating contexts and De-schooling program-lines, as well as in relation to one external guest we will feature in each lecture.

Published on 10/03/2010 00:58.
Filed under: Uncategorized