Choreography as Self-Conditioning — A Written Exhibition

‘Piles of Bricks / Piles de briques’ by Bie Michels presents the working proces of her project ‘Bricks in Madagascar’. This project consists of two films, ‘La couleur de la brique’ and ‘Ingahy Kama’, the installation ‘Circular construction versus human body—referring to Toshikatsu Endo’, which she showed in Madagascar (October 2017) and Argos Brussels (May 2018), and the performance ‘Piles of bricks (working process)’, on which she will work 8 weeks before the book presentation and which will be performed at that moment.

Besides images and stills, five writers deliver a contribution in their own working field related to the project: Hobisoa Raininoro (Art assistent and former director of CRAAM (Centre de Ressources des Arts Actuels de Madagascar, MG), Rafolo Andrianaivoarivony (Professor History University of Antanarivo, MG), Petra Van Brabandt (Doctor philosophy Sint Lucas Antwerp, B), Gwyn Campbell (Professor History Mc Gill University, CA) and Nanne op ‘t Ende (writer, NL)

Contributions by: Julien de Smet, Ronny Heiremans, Heike Langsdorf, Vanessa Müller, Filip Van Dingenen, Stijn Van Dorpe, Clémentine Vaultier, Katleen Vermeir.

The books included in the series Choreography as Conditioning are rooted in a cycle of work sessions entitled CASC at KASK, in which students work together with invited guests. They explore the notions of choreography, understood as ways of organizing subjects in their surroundings, and conditioning in both art-making and society-making. Where, how, and by whom are things organized and what kind of landscapes of experience are made (im)possible by the practices we enact and encounter?

The Orphans of Tar – A Speculative Opera answers the question posed in the second book by transforming life into voices and presenting possible mindsets through co-authoring a factual fiction. As such, it constitutes a mental space in which ficti­tious characters find an almost disturbing expansion of their thoughts. Accordingly, the book can be considered as an alle­gory of human thoughts as (possible) actions: what could happen becomes what does happen. For better and worse.

October 2019

Chile Chico et le quartier Versailles, c'est une exploration qui inventorie, interroge et révèle les mémoires invisibles en listes et en collections. Une mémoire qui ne soffre pas en bloc, qui résiste, se fragmente, se transforme. A travers cette archive collaborative, nous avons voulu capter ces va-et-vient ď'un passé qui dialogue avec le présent, des images qui oscillent entre Vintime et le collectif. 

Le point de départ de cette fabrique visuelle, c'est lexil des Chilien.nes, débarqué.es dans les années 70, qui se tissent une nouvelle vie sur le sol de Neder-Over-Heembeek, dans le quartier Versailles à Bruxelles. Ces trajectoires, arrachées à un ailleurs, s'ancrent dans des espaces rêvés comme de transit pour devenir des lieux d 'appartenance, où lexil se mue et les racines finissent par se déployer. A ces récits se greffent d'autres histoires, d'autres trajectoires. Un quartier comme un carrefour, ou les individualités se rencontrent, où les vies se croisent et s'allient.

Fugue is published on the occasion of the eponymous duo exhibition by artists Aaron Amar Bhamra and Céline Mathieu, presented at Jester in Genk, Belgium. The title, derived from the Latin fuga (flight), evokes both its musical and psychological meanings: a contrapuntal compositional technique and a state of dissociation. These dual connotations—aural and mental—resonate throughout the exhibition and this accompanying publication.

Céline Mathieu's work moves between the sensory and the conceptual, integrating multiple media to explore the circulation of thoughts and materials in relation to specific sites. Aaron Amar Bhamra's practice draws on recurring forms and materials to construct evolving personal and social archives, often reactivating exhibition spaces by engaging with their historical contexts.

In addition to documenting the exhibition, the publication features an introduction by Jester's artistic director Koi Persyn, a visual score of a sound composition by Charlie Usher, written contributions by Céline Mathieu, curator Eloise Sweetman, and researcher Johanna Schindler, as well as a series of analog photographs by Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Contributions by Koi Persyn, Céline Mathieu, Charlie Usher, Eloise Sweetman, Johanna Schindler, Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Austrian artist Aaron Amar Bhamra (born 1992) often procures exhibition spaces that subtly expose their systematics and physical experience by incorporating imprints reminiscent of other spaces or past exhibitions. He occasionally uses recurring forms and materials, weaving a site of shifting personal and social archives.

Céline Mathieu (born 1989) is a Belgian artist and writer. Her practice is often site and condition specific, using sound, scent, sculpture, performance, text and different materials in performative installations. The work is both sensory and conceptual. Her work looks into the circulation of thoughts and materials. Material and economic cycles merge with hyper-personal items, resulting in fluid work that cannot quite be pinned down.

A short text or a long line written by Mette Edvardsen for Etcetera magazine (June 2018) on an invitation to elaborate on her approach to text, writing and speech from a choreographic point of view. Held by a cardboard cover, the text is here published on its own as a very slim book.

Drawing on his experience in the field of contemporary dance, Jeroen Peeters discusses principles, methods and practices that contribute to an understanding of dramaturgy as an experimental, collaborative practice and a material form of thinking.

Written from practice, this book reflects a particular history of collaboration and conversation with dance-makers such as Martin Nachbar, Meg Stuart, Vera Mantero, Sabina Holzer, Lisa Nelson, Jennifer Lacey, Chrysa Parkinson, deufert + plischke, Eleanor Bauer, Philipp Gehmacher and many others.

Phantasmal archaeology, unfolding material, literal and physical reading, crafting method, articulating process, witnessing and performing not-knowing, naming and ritual destruction, conceptual landscapes, symbolic waste, internal fictions and foreign objects – they may all play a role in creation and in exploring the unfamiliar in pursuit of making sense.

And then it got legs is an invitation to think along or against, to discuss those ideas with others or explore them in the studio, and eventually to imagine and devise one’s own methods of research, observation, reflection and creation.

Edited by Michael Corris, the expanded edition of In the Belly of the Beast: Art & Language New York Project 1972-1978 is a survey of the tumultuous years of the political Conceptualism in the mid-seventies New York.

Artists have always experimented with politics, either by organizing themselves or uniting in support of a broader political movement. Today, "activist art" is taught in universities, supported by foundations, and featured in museums and international exhibitions. Is this the only possible way?

In the Belly of the Beast tells a different story, of the work of politically engaged artists and the conflicts they experienced. It is the history of artists wishing to continue working within the boundaries of the artworld and those who were intent on establishing new ideological and class relationships with activists to build a political party.

During the 1970s in New York, the Art & Language collective pioneered institutional critique; published a Marxist-influenced journal; agitated against racism and sexism in museums; challenged the cultural imperialism of international exhibitions; and forged a framework for a socialist organization of artists. This new edition includes previously unpublished documents illuminating the contradictions and disputes that lay at the center of the organization and practices of Art & Language and left-wing groups, such as the Anti-Imperialist Cultural Union and the Artists' Meeting for Cultural Change, mobilizing artists in New York at the time.

The new and expanded edition of In the Belly of the Beast features an extensive interview with Michael Corris, who annotated a collection of previously unavailable documents from the period, including manuscripts, pamphlets, transcripts, and letters.

Art & Language is the name of a group of English artists who choose to work collectively, and the title of a magazine that they founded in 1968. Proposing a critical analysis of the relations between art, society, and politics, Art & Language marks, even in its name, the importance of the “textual turning point” in the 1960s.

Since 1976, Art & Language's project has continued, through Mel Ramsden and Michael Baldwin, with the literary and theoretical collaboration of Charles Harrison. Working with very varied mediums, from painting to rock, these co-founders of Conceptual art remain, even today, attached to observing the consequences of what they themselves call the “depressing collapse of modernism.”