Program Schedule

To begin with nothing may be difficult to conceive, and the idea of having to abandon our particular mindsets and certain aspects of our selves can be challenging. The emotional and cognitive demands of getting rid of our complacency need to be addressed if we are to open up new possibilities and ways of being in the world. As such to trust is to risk, and to risk is to trust. By taking hold of our vulnerabilities may we be able to access our shared world anew and enable an honest encounter with others?

NOTHING
How to begin with nothing and as strangers? We will consider the nature and consequence of nothing as a starting point when strangers assemble. A reflexive questioning of our intentions and interactions in our surroundings will free each of us to engage with how nothing can be formalized as a condition of entry into another community.

17:00-18:00
supper
18:00-19:30
introduction to the program with Cissie Fu and Eloise Sweetman on a constructive and substantive emptying out, born of discontent, and begin afresh.
19:30-22:00
collective reading of ‘The Other Community’ from The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common by Alphonso Lingis.

AGITATION
After having discussed the conditions that make possible encounters in an other community, as coined by Lingis, we will address those foundational elements — be they impulses, desires, needs, or our will to be distinctive individuals — which underlie agitation, which in turn triggers and propels political action.

10:00-13:00
free working period
13:00-14:00
lunch
14:00-17:00
workshop with Riti Hermán Mostert to observe and act out personal and social agitation through individual and collective non-verbal expression and movement.
17:00-18:00
supper
18:00-22:00
seminar with Galit Eilat on activist curatorship, with an eye on agitation in contemporary artistic practices and transdisciplinary collaborations.

ABANDONMENT
Is it necessary to break away from what we already think we know? Following from agitation as a source for action, we will explore that which we need to abandon, leave behind, and suspend in order to disturb those norms, values, and identities which hold us captive to a fixed, essentialized sense of community. Let us loosen our grip on everyday usages and understandings of verbal and physical communication.

  
10:00-13:00
free working period
13:00-14:00
lunch
14:00-17:00
workshop with Marianna Maruyama on how language moves and how translation as an artistic practice can be carried across bodies, space, and time.
17:00-18:00
supper
18:00-22:00
seminar with Frank Chouraqui on how human embodiment inflects our perception of and consciousness in the world, with implications for political, ethical, and epistemological communities.

EXPOSURE
Where is the threshold of trust? When we have nothing left to abandon, we cannot but bare our selves, face-to-face and body-to-body, to each other. Thus exposed, we will approach and approximate the threshold for trust by entertaining and experiencing possibilities to speak and act honestly and vulnerably as precarious subjects.

10:00-13:00
free working period
13:00-14:00
lunch
14:00-17:00
workshop with Michael Driebeek van der Ven to explore autobiographical storytelling as a mode of trusting our own voices and the encounter with the other.
17:00-18:00
break with light snacks
18:00-22:00
performance and workshop with Orly Almi on the artistic, ethical, and political movement between cooking, dancing, eating (dinner will be served!), sharing, and theorizing, which crosses cultural, geographic, religious, ethnic, social, and economic borders.

ENCOUNTER
In keeping with the burgeoning other community arising from risk and trust, we will examine and practice strategies to invite and engage others in this process, while attending to various threats and caveats along the way. A concrete sense of the political will emerge as we negotiate between our public, private, and increasingly electronic selves.

10:00-13:00
you are encouraged to work on your personal and/or collaborative project. During this time, we as a group will determine the public program concept and format.
13:00-14:00
lunch
14:00-17:00
personal/group project
17:00-18:00
supper
18:00-22:00
seminar with Eric Kluitenberg on tactical media theory and techniques for self-mediation, public access, and the necessity of physical embodiment for robust contestation in the public realm.

CONTINGENCY
Putting into practice all that we have discovered together since the beginning of the week, we will open our winter school to the public through presentations of our individual and collective projects. In this way, we will embrace and perform fully the very contingency of community-formation, which brought us together in the first place. Let’s celebrate!

10:00-16:00
preparation for public presentations, with light snacks to keep up our concentration and energy levels.
16:00-18:00
critical reflection with Chris Goto-Jones on the program and resulting projects, alongside questions that continue to come into play.
18:00-19:00
supper
19:00-22:00
public presentation with Chris Goto-Jones and Winter School participants featuring a short lecture by Goto-Jones, project presentations by participants, and discussion with the audience about the themes of the School to generate further food for thought and working conclusions for the future.