Free School @ Kunstenfestivaldesarts
UNLEARNING LEARNING – LEARNING UNLEARNING
An open conference about a practiced ecology of knowledge
March 24th; 14.00 – 19.00; Unlearning Center, BlueFactory, Fribourg (CH)
SOL intervention by Elli Vassalou and Adva Zakai
The Unlearning Center invites to an open conference: a meeting for people engaged in rethinking the practice and content of learning. This meeting asks: what space, what practices do we need the unlearn the knowledge that let our supposed knowledge society drive full steam ahead into the climate- and other catastrophes?
The experience of knowledge is in a precarious state. Learning today is more than ever confronted with a fundamental conflict. On the one hand, the available knowledge multiplies exponentially, but at the same time it seems to be put completely into question and erodes in a cloud of confusingly contradicting discourses. The speed of technological transformation is forcing us for constant reparation; the fake news epidemic is pulling the ground from under the solidly taught knowledge more the critical thinking was ever capable; and the climate catastrophe encourages us to see learning less as a growth modle than as constant adaptation to changing realities. Contemporary learners do not enter a secure terrain of knowledge, but a precarious gray zone.
What is to learned in this open terrain? Which platforms, frames and connections are needed? which focus points and voids must be created to move in this precarious interdependence? How can we practices places as tool for self- and common-learning?
In this open conference everyone is invited to present their experience, proposal, theories, questions, practices or institutions – if they relate and respond to the above questions. Based on these presentations we will enter a phase of on site proposed practices that emerge in between these presentations. Come and propose what learning you imagine for unlearning what we need in this climate!
Nicolas Galeazzi, a.pass Brussels
SYNTROFI “ON PRIVILEGE”
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.
CREDITS
Thu 29.01 – 12:30 – 14:30
Wed 30.01 – 12:30 – 14:30
Sat 02.02 – 12:30 – 14:30
Balzaal
performance / lunch performance / lunch / privilege / unlearning
The Swamp Pavilion. 2018
Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice International Architecture Biennale
Via Giuseppe Garibaldi
1815 Venice
Italy
Paulius Vaitiekūnas, Andrius Ropolas, Jautra Bernotaitė. The Swamp Pavilion. 2018
The School of Love presentation and discussion by Adva Zakai and a.pass
SWAMP PAVILION
The Swamp Pavilion is a networked effort in creating new imaginary hybrid space for exercises in architectural and artistic practices, theory and pedagogy through various forms and formats of public interventions, field trips, workshops, lectures, discussions, chat channels and printed publications.
SWAMP SCHOOL
Throughout the Biennale Architettura 2018, the Swamp School will function as a changing, flexible, open-ended infrastructure that supports experiments in design, pedagogy and artistic intelligence. Invited designers and scholars will conduct performative lectures and lead workshops for participants and visitors to the Biennale.
COMMONISM
On cohabitation
Date: September 24-29, 2018
Through contributions by theorists, designers and artists this chapter will interrogate the commons as an ideology – an aesthetic of the real – as a way of giving a form to society and our contemporary human condition. With an understanding of aesthetics as ‘the art of thinking beautifully,’ as way of seeing a better, more beautiful world, this chapter will learn from the reciprocating movements for the commons asking questions: how is the commons constituted in society, how does it shape our reality of living together, and what strategies and what aesthetics do artistic commoners follow?
Full program and participant list can be found at The Swamp Pavilion.
A.PASS MEETS SOL / SCHOOL OF LOVE
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.
INSTEAD OF NEEDING TO KNOW
SOL/SCHOOL OF LOVE IN THE FRAME OF PARALLEL-PARASITE
A.PASS / ZSenne gallery, Brussels
4 – 9 June (except for June 6th), 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 4th
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 21st Century / Seran E. Schug
17h30 – 19h Socratic discussion on the term Authentic
19h – 20h Introduction of the School Of Love
Tuesday June 5th
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 6th
SOL OFF
Thursday June 7th
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 8th
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 9th
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 26th
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
Syntrofi performative lunches
Master visual arts – Autonomous design
master thesis here
Syntrofi: Greek compound word coming from feed [trofi] + together [syn] and means companions,comrades,lovers…
Syntrofi is a series of performative Lunches in which stories of exclusion within art schools are served, processed and digested. Taking on a perspective of the vulnerable observer who is being both an artist in and a researcher of the educational institution, Syntrofi examines the (missed) potential of school environments to facilitate practices of commoning and inclusion. The project draws its material from collective processes, classrooms and kitchens, students, teachers, maintenance personnel and administrators, as well as from those who, for one reason or another, ended up outside art school’s walls. Throughout the performances, we share our stories, not as individuals but as cases that bring up interesting dilemmas and reflections about the world and art education today.
Assemblism is an urgent response to the need for new social infrastructures . The Syntrofi project crosses through artistic and social design practices, where the observer is the part taker, the public is the performer, the artistic is the political and individual cases become a collective concern. In the Syntrofi table, public is invited to chew upon stories served by the performers and is welcome to have a conversation on each of them. The public is also asked to share their own stories, experiences and thoughts and research concerns about schools in nowadays societies.
Initiative, Concept: Elli Vassalou
Realization, Performance: Hazal Arda, Bilal Kamilla Arnout, Ritam Hazarika, Elli Vassalou
mentors: Adva Zakai, An Van Dienderen
Supported by: SOL, KASK, HOGENT, BUDA art center, 123 Logements
exhibition/performances:
M55 Art residence, Athens, Greece, March 2017.
KASK, Zwarte Zaal – graduation expo, Gent June 2017.
Nominated for the Horlait-Daspens price.
Published on Metropolis M Magazine, August 2017