Sint Lucas Antwerpen Research Group (SLARG) and Kunsthal Extra City joyfully invite you to their Naively Radical Research Week. Come discover the lively artistic research scene of Sint Lucas Antwerpen and the discursive program featuring artists participating in Radically Naïve / Naively Radical exhibition at Kunsthal Extra City. Check out our program and participate in seminars, workshops, lectures, round tables, conversations, presentations, …
# The Trembling Body. 3-Day PhD Seminar hosted by Paul Hendrikse,
investigating several aspects of performance and how it affects and may emancipate us. Each day focuses on
a different aspect of performance and embodiment.
Day 1 Remember, redo, restage. Memory and
history are returning topics in many artistic practices today. During the first day of this seminar, we
will explore the archive, living history and re-enactment in relation to performance. Invited
guests: Maika Garnica and Ans Mertens (warm up) Jeremiah Day (presentation), Béatrice Balcou
(performative lecture), Paul Maheke in conversation with Helena Kritis, Andros Zins-Browne (performative
lecture) and Cecilia Lisa Eliceche with Jean Daniel Lafontant and Bayinah Bello (workshop).
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat
25, 10:00-18:00.
You are encouraged to subscribe for the full three days but attending
one or two days is possible too.
Subscribe: paul.hendrikse@kdg.be
# Generative Design & Machine Learning. One Week Workshop by Frederik De Bleser and Lieven Menschaert. A collective experiment in image-to-image translation, a fascinating process of machine learning. We will kick off with an introduction and then narrow it down to pix2pix, the formal procedure that we will take as our lead. Get an intro into the vocabulary of machine learning and find out what a tensor is, what it means to be given to the discriminator and why we should be perhaps a bit more careful with our data. The workshop is also a gentle introduction to Figment, inhouse software that serves as an intermediate between the user and the rather complex procedures.
Open to Sint Lucas Antwerpen students and researchers only.
Sint
Lucas Antwerpen, 4-8/10/2021, 10:00–17:00.
Subscribe: lieven.menschaert@kdg.be
# How do you do Research? Sharing methodological tools for artistic research. Workshop
facilitated by Loraine Furter, Marnie Slater and Wesley Meuris.
Open to Sint Lucas Antwerpen researchers only,
Sint Lucas
Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 10:00-13:00.
# Refusing the Frame, or changing the game? Round Table Discussion facilitated by Hoda Siahtiri
and Joachim Ben Yakoub with invited guests: Afsaneh Salari (film director, co-founder Docmaniacs
Collective), Sofia Dati (programmer audio-visual arts at Beursschouwburg, Brussels) and Hari Sacré (artist
and researcher, UGent). How to refuse odd labelings and categorisations, how to refuse
being framed – with stolen virtues of decolonization – into diversity policies? To refuse the dynamics
of commodification and being objectified as the new normal of the hyped current of art. To refuse
whatever the white gaze may perceive, value, and prioritize. To refuse being miss perceived and abused
in favour of capitalist agendas. To refuse being eaten as ‘that kind of thing right now’.
Toko139, Statiestraat 139, 2600 Berchem, 19:00-21:00.
Subscribe: hoda.siahtiri@kdg.be
# Hate Memes and Countermemes. Lecture by Tom De Smedt on the European DeTACT Research Project. In the period from February 2020 to July 2021 we tracked over 15 million toxic messages on social media. More than 1,000 trained volunteers responded to (some of) these with a combination of countermemes designed by art students, text, and text generated by an AI. This has led to unique insights into the “language of hate” and what strategies can work or won’t work when responding to haters on social media.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 19:00-20:00.
Subscribe: tom.desmedt@kdg.be
# The Trembling Body – 3-Day PhD Seminar hosted by Paul Hendrikse,
investigating several aspects of performance and how it affects and may emancipate us. Each day focuses on
a different aspect of performance and embodiment.
Day 2 Collectivity, collective learning. Sharing responsibilities,
experiences and activities is common in theatre yet has recently made its way also into art performance.
We will investigate authorship and differ, ent models of working and collaborating. Invited
guests: Alexis Gautier (warm up), Yael Davids (presentation and workshop), Roos Gortzak
(curator) in conversation with Mor Bashan member of The Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group, Kristof Van Gestel
(performative intervention), Mylan Hoezen (workshop) Kim Gorus (cool down).
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat
25, 10:00-18:00.
You are encouraged to subscribe for the full three days but
attending one or two days is possible too.
Subscribe: paul.hendrikse@kdg.be
# The Art of Precarity. Socio-economical precariousness within the arts and the artist
as a catalyst for sustainability. In this PhD Seminar hosted by Sarah Hendrickx, you will
exchange research methodologies and outcomes and first-hand professional experiences regarding how artists
organize themselves in a context of increasing socio-economic 'precarity'.
Lectures provided by experts
will be alternated with interactive discussions. Our guest speakers and workshop leaders
will be artist and economist Hans Abbing, the artist duo Katleen Vermeir and Ronny
Heiremans with their research project 7 Walks, artist Ronny Peperkamp from the Art Reserve
Bank, Anna Rispoli and Christophe Meierhans from The Common Wallet and the Institute of
Radical Imagination and Katrien Reist (arp, State Of The Arts).
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 09:30-18:00.
Subscribe here.
# Uncommon session. On Domestic Space and Education. We invite you to join an uncommon session hosted by Kinda Ghannoum and Joud Toamah on mapping educational experiences in domestic environments. For a year and a half, we have largely retreated into our homes, where we were protected against the coronavirus. During that time, this space, which symbolizes safety and security like no other, has changed around us, with kitchens serving as classrooms during the day, living rooms alternating between studio, home cinema, and gym, and bedrooms transforming into workspaces. The idea of the workshop would be to share about our individual experiences of educational systems brought in our personal environments. We will do that through an exercise of sharing and listening, describing these places, sharing stories while drawing them in small groups, reflecting on what effects did that have on our relation to these spaces.
Uncommonsessions is a neighborhood that experiments with post-institutional educational models and operates at the intersection of design, open-source, and politics. It performs in a cross-sectional educational context and is initiated by Disarming Design from Palestine, in connection to the PhD research of Annelys de Vet on alternative design pedagogies, and shaped by PING.PING is a collective infrastructure experimenting with tools for building physical and digital frames for communication, action and distribution founded by Miquel Hervás Gómez, Sascha Krischock and Agustina Woodgate.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Library, 10:00-17:00.
Subscribe
here.
# PhD Lunch Talk with Saddie Choua. Visual artist Saddie Choua is two years into her PhD research at
RITCS. Petra Van Brabandt will go in conversation with her about her research project The personal is
(not) political in which she investigates how art can be political-emancipatory given the
patriarchal, racist and capitalist society in which it operates. How to make images that are not only
telling stories about the other but that also transform the viewer into a political subject. How to make a
film that does not only confer knowledge about the world, but that also generates self-knowledge and reveals
one’s own position in relation to the existing power relations. How to speak and imagine from a subaltern
position and which tools to break the dominant images and narratives?
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25, 12:00 – 13:30.
# Abolition Place Study - PhD Lecture Robin
Vanbesien. Visual artist Robin Vanbesien will share some of the thoughts, considerations
and reflections that underpin the film project Abolition Place Study, which focuses on the
social imagination of a citizen collective that emerged in response to a recent tragic case of police
violence in the context of migration border control in Belgium. By enabling and capturing the collective's
public forensic investigation into the wider field of causes, this film project leads us to an imagining of
a thick or wild justice. At the same time, it attempts to construct a ‘holding environment’ in which a
different way of hearing justice can take place by playing on the senses.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25, 14:00–16:00.
# Fashion Curation as Decolonial Practice. Seminar on
African and non-European Textiles in the context of European fashion museums, hosted by PhD researcher
Pierre-Antoine Vettorello. (1) Discussion between Angela Jansen
(Research Collective for Decoloniality & Fashion), dr. Delacey Tedesco (University of Exeter) and Amanda
Maples (curator of African Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art)and
Pierre-Antoine Vettorelloon the presence of African and
non-European textiles in European fashion museums and the question of decoloniality in the museum space.
(2) Round Table Conversation Fashion in the City – The case of Antwerp, moderated by
Anna Jamieson,with Kaat Debo (MoMu Antwerp), Stella Nyanchama Okemwa (Researcher), Lies
Van Assche (Doek vzw) and Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, about the place of non-Western fashion
practices within the city and their institutional recognition.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 13:00-15:00 and
15:30-17:30.
Subscribe: pierreantoine.vettorello@kdg.be
# Artist Talk by Anouk De Clercq, about the video OK that she made together with Helga
Davis for the Radically Naïve – Naively Radical exhibition at Kunsthal Extra City. Helga
Davis and Anouk De Clercq collaborated on One, a film as a 21st century protest song. On
the request of Kunsthal Extra City, they discussed a follow-up piece, linked to the radical naivety of this
exhibition’s title. After numerous intense discussions, the following statement by Davis proved decisive in
what would follow: “I don’t have the luxury to be naive.” Out of friction encountered regarding the themes
of this exhibition arose OK, the first work co-signed by the artists. Central in this piece are text,
voice, and intonation. OK scrutinizes the relations between Black and White while searching for the
essence of collaboration and caring about the other. De Clercq will
show One (2020), We’ll find you when the sun goes black (2021)
and OK (2021) and will elaborate on the thinking process behind her recent
work.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25, 19:00-21:00.
# The Trembling Body – 3-Day PhD Seminar hosted by Paul Hendrikse, investigating several aspects
of performance and how it affects and may emancipate us. Each day focuses on a different aspect of
performance and embodiment.
Day 3 From activation to
activism. Political activism was in the arts contested for a long time. The renewed attention for
history and global movements like Black Lives Matter or the debate on colonialism set new grounds for
artists and performers. We will look into the relationship of activism and the body. Invited guests: Petra Van Brabandt (warm up), Katarina Zdjeldar (presentation), Francesco Urbano Ragazzi
(private visit to La Loge in Brussels with a guided tour to the current exhibition of Chiara
Fumai).
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25,
10:00-18:00.
You are encouraged to subscribe for the full three days but
attending one or two days is possible too.
Subscribe: paul.hendrikse@kdg.be
# PhD Lunch Talk with Sammy Baloji. Visual artist Sammy Baloji is two years into his PhD
research at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. His supervisor Bambi Ceuppens will talk with him about his research
project Contemporary Kasala and Lukasa: towards a Reconfiguration of Identity and
Geopolitics. This project aims at creating new memory devices, based upon two
existing ones uses by different Luba groups living in the DRC; Kasala, a ceremonial poem and Lukasa, a
memory board used in ritual performance. The two groups using these memory devises were divided during the
colonial era by boundaries erected between the former provinces of Kasai and Katanga. The art works to be
created in the context of this research project are meant to bridge these groups back together through a
narrative that is part personal, part historical, part fictitious.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25,
12:00–13:30.
# PhD Lunch Talk with Danial Shah. Visual artist and photographer Danial Shah is just starting
his research at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. His supervisors Ruth Loos and Paolo Favero will talk with him about
his research project Visions of becoming and belonging: an (autobiographical) exploration of photo
studios in Balochistan, Pakistan. This research builds upon a creative practice-based engagement
with the world of photography in the context of Pakistani popular culture. Focusing on the world of photo
studios in contemporary Balochistan (Pakistan), the project enters the terrain of the vanishing. With the
arrival of digital technology photo studios are disappearing and along with them also their hand painted
backdrops, props, costumes and cameras, the long sessions, the chatting and the manuality that make up the
social life of these environments. What is not disappearing, however, is the desire to transform life by
means of photographs where individuals are allowed to enter a fantasy world. Focusing on photo studios and
portraiture, the aim is to investigate the performativity of photographic images.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25, 12:00–13:30.
# Info
Session Creative Europe: Cooperation
Projects. Over the last five years, Antwerp partners have secured Creative Europe funding for three
projects great and small. As Creative Europe has announced that it will open a new round for Cooperation Projects at the beginning of
2022, we will provide you with a short overview of the Creative Europe scheme, the opportunities for cultural
and artistic cooperation, and the financial requirements. Maybe you already have a first idea in
mind? Send us a few lines, and we’ll discuss it during the session.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 14:00 – 15:30 Subscribe: evert.peeters@uantwerpen.be
# DIY ∿ subversive translation practices, a discussion and
listening session with Loraine Furter and Clara Pacotte and Charlotte Houette (EAAPES),
questioning power relations through/with/within translation. What does it mean to translate
something? From which language(s) to which language(s)? With which media? What is gained and lost in
translation? What is (re)affirmed and what is subverted? What kind of power relations are embedded in the
act of translating? What room for (decolonial, feminist, queer…) emancipation can be found?
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 14:00-15:30.
Subscribe: loraine.furter@kdg.be
# Round Table on Artistic Research Publications. With Forum+, TYPP, Valiz,
ONOMATOPEE, TRIGGER, COLLATERAL Journal (tbc). How to Publish Artistic Research? Are text-based
publications the right platform to share artistic research? How do the different publication platforms deal
with these issues? How to avoid the traps of traditional academic formats and guarantee the unique qualities
of artistic research? And how to review, edit and accommodate visual contributions?
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 16:00-17:30.
# Launch TYPP#7. Come and celebrate the launch of our newest TYPP, the research journal of the
Sint Lucas Antwerpen community, embracing artistic research in all its shapes and forms! We will present
TYPP#7, fresh from the press. We will also add a loving wink to our former issues TYPP ADMA and TYPP#6,
which did not get to celebrate their launch last year. On the program: 19:00: Screening ‘The Wasp
and the Weather’ (2019, 19’) by Robin Vanbesien, followed by a short Q&A with the artist. 19:30: Lecture-presentation by Ruth Loos on ‘Reading Scripts
Outside Dictionaries’, an artistic research project with Bahia Shebab. 20:00: celebratory drinks and chats!
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 19:00-21:00.
# Opening Research Exhibition. Come and check out the work of our Sint Lucas Antwerpen
researchers! With work from Bianca Baldi, Marnie Slater, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, Helen Dowling, Wesley
Meuris, Loraine Furter, Sammy Baloji, Saddie
Choua, Saskia Van der Gucht & Irma Földényi, Danial Shah and many others!
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 20:00.
# PhD Lunch Talk with Bianca Baldi. Visual artist Bianca Baldi is one year into her PhD
research at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. Her supervisor Petra Van Brabandt will talk with her about her research
project Play-White: Racial Passing and Embodied Images. This research introduces a critical approach
to ‘racial passing’ and its complicity with image production. Someone who can pass for white is socially
designated as one racial construct but performatively plays out whiteness. Passing complicates our current
understanding of visual production and categories of identity. Through her image-making practice, Bianca
Baldi will reflect upon a visual history of racial passing in the South African context. Her research
functions as a meditation on passing, embodiment, self-presentation, and the aesthetic thresholds of
identity.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25, 12:00–13:30.
# to inform, to offer. Lecture and Roundtable with Vlad Ionescu & Wesley Meuris.
In his lecture ‘On the Cosmic Caravan, Verticality, and other Human Pursuits’, Vlad Ionescu shares a reading
of the research and work of Wesley Meuris. How do high-technological tools of observation change our gaze
towards earth? How to coop with the effects of machine data? How can research and its collection of
thoughts, sources and objects been transmitted into a (visual) image? The lecture addresses the impact
of data-collection on two fundamental aspects of visual arts: narrativity and a sense of
place. Following the lecture, Vlad and Wesley will start a conversation on how the process
of research finds possible outcomes in an image, a visual language, a communicating setting. During this
conversation, the participants are also welcomed to intervene and debate on the presented topics. After this
introduction there will be time and space to discuss work methods of participants. Participants are being
inquired to bring some material in relating to their research. Through a sharing of source material:
documents, arguments, drafts and texts, a group discussion intent to articulate some suitable methods to
unfold ongoing research into a communicating visual image.
Open to Sint Lucas Antwerpen Pre/MA/AdMa
students only, max. 10 participants.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 14:00–17:00.
Subscribe: wesley.meuris@kdg.be
# Research Exhibition. Come and check out the work of our Sint Lucas Antwerpen researchers! With
work from Bianca Baldi, Marnie Slater, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, Helen Dowling, Wesley Meuris, Loraine
Furter, Sammy Baloji, Saddie Choua, Saskia
Van der Gucht & Irma Földényi, Danial Shah and many others!
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 14:00-18:00.
# Open Doors: To Put The Cat On The Table. Advanced Master Residency @ Studio Start. To put "the cat on the table" is a Finnish expression that means broaching a somewhat difficult or awkward topic, something that might make one feel vulnerable or even excited (such as telling someone you are in love with them). That’s what an artist’s table often looks like, a place of half-formed but thrilling ideas, of odds and ends, and mistakes that perhaps lead to new possibilities. The Advanced Master 2020-21 participants will literally put artifacts related to their artistic research on the table (along with assorted snacks and maybe a bouquet of flowers) as an invitation to guests and participants to engage in a lively and frank discussion on among other things the various “cats" that are at the heart of our practices. The collective presentation will also include individual works, as well as a collaborative film made during the residency week.
Studio Start, Refectory, Ploegstraat 25, 18:00 – 20:00.
# Conversation. For the documentary video work What Surrounds the
Words (2021) made for the Radically Naive / Naively
Radical exhibition at Kunsthal Extra City, Vesna Faassen and Lukas Verdijk invited five
Antwerp-based, grassroots activists of various backgrounds — Yassine Boubout, Sarah Bekambo, Mirjam
Henkens, Sarah El Massaoudi and Ida Dequeecker — to enter discussion. Inspired by the
book Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left (Ian Parker, 2017) the activists formulated
their own keywords to subsequently dissect them based on their own activist experiences and convictions.
The video installation is placed in the former priest choir of the Dominican church and will be
activated as a discursive space. Focusing on the keyword ‘collective’ a new discussion group is
formed for which Sarah Bekambo, Mirjam Henkens and Sarah El Massaoudi are inviting two other activists.
Kunsthal Extra City, Ploegstraat 25,
19:00–21:00.
# DIY Lunch Discussion. Design
your dialogue - cooking workshop with Laura Braspenning and Lamis Al Bayoumi & Sabine Verbanck of
Veggie=Halal (VOEM). Can (preparing) food design other dialogues? How does the act of preparing a
meal together connect people, make space for trust and personal conversation? How can cooking function
as a collaborative design method? We start with preparing our lunch together, with the help of a cook,
and share how food, cooking and eating together can function in each other's collaborative art and
design practices.
The Floor, Grote Steenweg 91, 2600 Antwerpen,
09:30 – 14:00.
Subscribe: laura.braspenning@kdg.be
# On Sculpture. Sammy Baloji Invites Mo Laudi @ De Singel This season, two sculptures
by Sammy Baloji will be on display on the stage in the
Blue Hall of De Singel. Johari - Brass Band is
a pair of works in the form of an enlarged French horn and sousaphone, two
instruments that were left behind in New Orleans by the French army and later
recuperated by ex-slaves to start up a new musical movement which culminated in brass bands, and which also
had a strong influence on jazz music. Displayed in black, crystalline structures - an allusion to mineral
extraction - on stage they become silent witnesses to the uncredited African contributions to musical
history and to the world.
On Friday 8 October, Sammy Baloji invites the famous
South African Afro-electro DJ Mo Laudi (also a curator
and researcher at Stellenbosch University) to engage in dialogue with the artwork via music. Just as with
Sammy Baloji, Mo Laudi's practice is based on research into colonial dynamics in history,
albeit in music rather than visual art. In a compelling musical
discourse, Mo Laudi takes the audience on this exciting journey to Congo and South Africa
via New Orleans and France by means of musical numbers. The evening culminates in a DJ set by Mo Laudi in
the performers’ bar.
Mo Laudi composed the sound artwork Congo Square in D
Sharp Minor for Johari - Brass Band. Listen
to it here.
He also put together a playlist in honour of the two sculptures, a 9-hour musical archive. Listen to the
full playlist here.
Blauwe Zaal, De Singel, 20u, free
tickets here, CST required for access.
# Ciné Assembly with The Post Film Collective. In Ciné Assembly, The Post Film Collective
practices cinema as a form of gathering and communal assembly which entails collective knowledge-production,
reciprocal exchange, and an ethics of connectedness. The Post Film Collective explores a polyphonic cinema
practice while taking its cue from the poem ‘Recreation’ by Audre Lorde. In her poem, Lorde explores a
double binding of interrelating activities - ‘it is easier to work / after our bodies / meet’ - that led to
what she claimed was ‘recreation’, with its connotations of play, reciprocity, care, repetition, and
regeneration. The Post Film Collective is Sawsan Maher, Mirra Markhaëva, Mahammed Alimu, Hooman
Jalidi, Elli Vassalou, Marcus Bergner and Robin Vanbesien.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 14:00-16:00.
Subscribe: robin.vanbesien@kdg.be
# Research Exhibition. Come and check out the work of our Sint Lucas Antwerpen researchers! With work
from Bianca Baldi, Marnie Slater, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, Helen Dowling, Wesley Meuris, Loraine Furter,
Sammy Baloji, Saddie Choua, Saskia Van der Gucht &
Irma Földényi, Danial Shah and many others!
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 14:00-18:00.
# Articulating the intimate. Discussion &
Workshop. The field
of intimacy coordination is growing in both pornography and mainstream commercial film and series,
specifically where intimate or sexual scenes are concerned. An Intimacy Coordinator will typically
approach their role twofold: 1) They act as a third party to the director/ production company’s
demands to ensure the active consent and safety of the physical and mental well-being of actors. 2)
They help coordinate the intimate scenes in collaboration with the actors and other production team
members, ideally adding specialization and expertise. This work is at a nexus of forming intimacy
portrayal, the development of ethical production, and the language surrounding them. As a
new role, it raises awareness of the narrative potential intimate acts can have and the
negotiation involved in their production. This workshop looks at the parameters of
role-playing, acting and authenticity in intimate acts, whether for film, tv, or porn. This workshop
would ask us to place ourselves in the role of generators of intimate language rather than
observers. It is hosted by Helen Dowling and facilitated
by Katherine O’Keefe & Allie
Oops.
Katherine specializes in LGBTQ+ representation with an emphasis on female sexuality and
fluidity and works as both an intimacy coordinator and an LGBTQ+ consultant. Allie is committed to
developing skills for providing safer, ethical environments, whether it’s an indie porn start-up or
a Hollywood production. Allie consults to ensure fair, equitable, educational, accurate, and
pleasurable experiences for everyone on set.
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, 3rd Floor, 16:00 – 19:00.
Subscribe: helen.mauli@kdg.be
# Research Exhibition. Come and check out the work of our Sint Lucas Antwerpen researchers! With work
from Bianca Baldi, Marnie Slater, Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, Helen Dowling, Wesley Meuris, Loraine Furter,
Sammy Baloji, Saddie Choua, Saskia Van der Gucht &
Irma Földényi, Danial Shah and many others!
Sint Lucas Antwerpen, Showroom, 14:00-18:00.