Author: elli vassalou

Participatory lunch performance produced with the School of Love for the “EXERCICES IN AWERNESS” programme, “Women and Children First” festival, Vooruit, Ghent | January – February 2019.

Syntrofi [σύντροφοι] is a greek compound word – coming from feed [trofi] + together [syn] – which means: “companions, comrades, lovers…”
AN INVTITATION TO DINE ON PRIVILEGE

Syntrofi takes on a perspective of a vulnerable observer, who looks into art and education institutions from within the position of the marginal and the excluded. Around the lunch table audience and performers will become Syntrofi. Personal stories on privilege will be served, chewed on, and digested through conversations and engaged togetherness that acknowledge the complexity of contradicting desires.This project was first initiated in 2017 by Elli Vassalou and developed within the School of Love [SOL]. In this iteration, Syntrofi will be co-created and performed by Yared Yilma, Elli Vassalou, Hazal Arda, Weronika Zalewska, Adva Zakai, Martina Petrovic, Marcus Bergner and Sawsan Maher.

more pictures
performance / lunch performance / lunch / privilege / unlearning

Sep 2nd – Nov 30th
https://apass.be/a-pass-meets-sol-school-of-love/
A curatorial proposition by Adva Zakai

Study Days in pdf

From Sep till Nov 2018 a.pass and School Of Love will start a flirt with each other, develop a relationship and hopefully make (produce) love.

SOL is a collective platform that was initiated some years ago*, inspired by the interest in both love and school as charged with potential to generate new politics and relations in the world. SOL is practiced through regular meetings, but follows no curriculum. Instead, it develops a spontaneous program through the presence and interest of its participants. SOL is basically an invitation to hang out. But to hang out deeply. To practice school as a place of free time – free to study things as they appear, separated from the dependency of the time and space of social order and production. And to practice love – Not the kind of love that is generated through affirmation of who we think we are, but love as an act of giving in to alterity allowing it to transform us.

And now SOL is here, at a.pass, with a call to the participants to engage with their artistic researches through love itself. a.pass and SOL will get together, without knowing ahead what is going to happen, but with the trust that everything we live outside of SOL – artistic researches, experiences and desires – will manifest themselves inside SOL in a way we could not imagine elsewhere. And once this happens, maybe the difference between art and love will not be so obvious anymore..

Alongside the weekly meetings of SOL at a.pass, a program of study days and workshops will look into various aspects that bring together love, art, school, improvisation and politics. Those sessions will be led by: Johan Grimonprez, Bleri Lleshi, Femke Snelting, Brendon LaBelle, Eva Berghmans, CW/ Common Wallet project, Jan Masschelein, Laurence Rassel, Caroline Godard, Elke Van Campenhout, João Fiadeiro, Alex Arteaga, An Mertens, Daniela Bershan.
More details soon!

Joining in:
SOL will meet every Tuesday at a.pass and is open to anyone interested to take part. All welcome! A special introduction day into SOL: Tuesday 3rd september 10h – 18h.

STUDY DAYS and WORKSHOPS – Non a.pass participants who are interested to join – please contact a.pass lilia@apass.be or Adva advazakai@gmail.com

* Adva Zakai is a part of the SOL collective. SOL’s protocol can be practiced by anyone and anywhere, be modified and transformed through the encounter with a new context.

SOL/SCHOOL OF LOVE IN THE FRAME OF PARALLEL-PARASITE
A.PASS / ZSenne gallery, Brussels
4 – 9 June (except for June 6^th), 2018

Documentation of the residency here

Out of the many definitions of love, SOL was always attracted to the one that describes love as the willingness to let go of what you thought you were before meeting the other. This kind of love can exist among strangers, not only within romantic couples. Schools should teach how to love this way. Schools should facilitate this mode of being.

If both Love and School engaged in the practice of being open to change through encounters with others, we might develop sensitivities to deal with unknown paths better. Maybe we would be better off improvising through, with and within the unknown, instead of needing to know. Maybe improvisation today can be approached as a mode of resistance to a life dedicated to an anticipated and defined future.

Proposing to put improvisation back in the agenda might seem like stating the obvious. Life itself is an improvisation, of course, we never stopped improvising. But as we already did with love and school, SOL would like to dedicate a special attention to improvisation in order to examine its relevance to contemporary realities. Not the improvisation that aims to emancipate repressed self-expression, nor the one that provides skills and the mastery to maneuver within individual lives and careers, but an attitude of improvisation that may create an actualised set of relations between us and other people, us and other things, us and anything that is not us.

Let’s call it a pre-research. The week we’ll spend in ZSenne gallery is mainly a theoretical exploration, aiming at beginning to understand what these thoughts might mean. Perhaps by the end of the residency we will prefer not to use the word improvisation anymore/at all, and will name things differently. For now, we will share our first thoughts on it, read texts together, practice and reflect on the directions that this process can grow into.

* Members of SOL develop projects collectively, or invite SOL to join a process they initiated individually. This process was initiated by Adva Zakai and will be practiced in collaboration with SOL members and whoever is interested in joining.

** Participation conditions: Preferably follow the whole week, so that we share a process. If a whole week not possible, come for a full day. If planning ahead is too difficult, pop in and we’ll see what this does to our and your process.

Please inscribe here: https://bimestriel.framapad.org/p/VoV7C6HGQX

Weekly Plan

Monday June 4^th
11h – 12h Settle in, introduction of participants and their interests.
12h – 13h Listen to lecture On not knowing and paying attention / Tim Ingold + discussion
13h – 14h30 Lunch break
14h30 – 17h Read fragments from Speaking and Sensing the Self in Authentic Movement: The Search for Authenticity in a 21^st Century / Seran E. Schug
17h30 – 19h Socratic discussion on the term Authentic
19h – 20h Introduction of the School Of Love

Tuesday June 5^th
11h – 13h Read Improvisational Necessity and its After Affects / Sher Doruff
13h – 14h30 Lunch break
14h30 – 17h Read Improvisational Necessity and its After Affects / Sher Doruff
17h30 – 19h Socratic discussion on the term Improvisation

Wednesday June 6^th
SOL OFF

Thursday June 7^th
11h – 13h Authentic movement guided by Julien Bruneau, (ONLY for those who follow other days in the process)
13h – 14h30 Lunch break
14h30 – 17h Authentic movement practice guided by Julien Bruneau (ONLY for those who follow other days in the process)
17h30 -19h TTTell (Time-Term-Tell discussion)
19h30 SOL interview by Lauren Grusenmeyer for the WORKOUT publication http://bureaugrusenmeyer.com/projects/WORKOUT

Friday June 8^th
11h – 13h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
13h – 14h30 Lunch break
14h30 – 17h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
17h30 – 19h Rumor Machine (discussion)

Saturday June 9^th
11h – 13h Read Towards a Politics of Immediation / Erin Manning
13h – 13h30 Break and lunch preparation
13h30 – 15h Final discussion, plans for the future, feedback on the week and goodbye.

Additionally:
Tuesday June 26^th
SOL will meet with Erin Manning and the Sense Lab at ZSenne Gallery at 19h, in an open public discussion about the text of Manning that was read during SOL’s residency.

 See in PDF