To the Lighthouse (faroway pioneers) [working title]

Exchange between peer artists across Europe (to begin with people from Amsterdam, Utrecht, Brussels and Faro); regarding their practices in interactive performance, relating to dance, choreography and other arts; where artistic precision and ambition function together with engaging all kinds of audiences, between generations, across artistic disciplines and social orders like class and race; proposing different forms of open composition; doing a soft but non the less radical activism in (semi-) public domain, like the street, educational bodies and art venues; concerning bodily (sensory) and cultural practices intersecting (or swimming together, borrowing from Emilie Gallier); as a base for coming together. 

Through small steps of exchange, sharing practices, knowhow, resources, networks and experimental proposals amongst each other and with a few smaller institutions in Faro; slowly expanding the circle of affinity, mutual interest, challenge and respect, specific (local) needs and potential, eventually across Europe, building a platform for these often un- or under-acknowledged pioneering forms of expanded choreography; wishing for smaller artists groups and individuals to find access to, gaining respect from bigger, more traditional institutions and organizations, whether funders or presenters, furthering art, education and other investments in the public domain. 

Invitation by Fransien van der Putt on 26 March 2021 to Nicole Lissy, Anne-Beth Schuurmans, Iris van Peppen, Heike Langsdorf, Netta Weiser, Alice Ciresola en Marie-Rose Mayele.

Dears, 

Inspired by your work and my visits to Faro over the last two years, calling this project To the Lighthouse is totally incidental. But Woolf’s novel actually might be an inspiration at some point :> 

“Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no direct action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art and the problem of perception.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Lighthouse.

For me there are a few things at stake, which I started to describe above and below. If and how they fit together, we will see. I count on you to put your desires, preoccupations, ideas, work and love in as you please. This project should benefit us, have a relaxing effect and give a peer to peer feeling of support and recognition for the work we do. In our pace, as we please, get inspired or feel a need to do and/or propose (not) more.

There are 3 or 4 levels I see unfold, almost by nature:

1 Peer to peer exchange in Faro – November 2021 one week

2 Exchange of practices in Faro on a small scale – Spring 2022 one week

3 Discuss how to find a budget (I will start preparing the usual shit for this, with the help of people connected to NL, PT, EU and other funding) to get more ambitious with the bloody thing – I imagine latest November 2022, and only if we feel up to it.

4 Develop a platform across Europe for these kind of practices in a natural way, grassroots, learning by doing, doers decide, you do what you can, you join as you please, opening up the practice little by little to more participants and stakeholders, from affinity and earnest investments, without a massive bureaucracy or hierarchy, instead networked and pioneering, as it is what we do – only god knows when :> but i don't think it is out of our reach, it depends on whether we want and know how to invest wisely.

Maybe this already goes too quick for some of you, don’t worry, for me ething is open but the first week in November 2021, when we have to see how we feel about the exchange, what is common practice, what is needed, what is practical, what is offered almost by itself.

1:

As you might know some years ago already I was surprised that the main people I related to in contemporary choreographic work all did something with accumulation, cross disciplines, cross generations, breaking the borders between pro/amateur, audience/performer, all the while clearly referring to elements from choreography and dance. When being invited by Heike to join …Through Practices in the spring of 2019, I found out that Iris and Anne-Beth were both very aware of her work, while she didn’t know theirs.

At the same time in Holland, this kind of expanded approach to choreography was not at all valued, and still is not. Even minimalism - which I see as a precursor of the materialism, accumulation as a strategy, away from dominant authorship, and consequently a conceptual turn towards inter-many things (beyond dichotomies, like above) – is in The Netherlands not really taken serious (unlike it’s musical pendant) while it really has a long tradition in the Dutch scene. Few people, even when very engaged with more radical forms of dance and performance art, seem to not understand, even fear the logic of your work, where actually for me it is so clear, and of course not simple, as it is complexifying and engaging and therefore all the more important.

I could write about why, but right now I am not interested. I just would like you ladies to have a working holiday with your fellows and me, peer lady artists, to see whether actually meeting up would give you/us a sense of fun, recognition, and maybe some inspiration for unexpected avenues. I don’t want you to produce work together or even per se practice together, I just feel knowing about each other's work would be interesting somehow for all of us. 

Nicky (Nicole Lissy), who hosted me now already three times in Faro, is no exception to this. Growing up with a mother movement therapist, she worked as a visual artist and when arriving in Faro fifteen years ago soon began to work with kids and art. Her experiences come so close to what the other three of you have been telling me, that I couldn’t stop thinking of bringing you together in Faro.

Of course when I would be a curator sitting on a bag of money, I would have programmed all four of your works and practices alongside times ago, and would have added quite some others. For now it stays here. Swim, eat, sleep, watch some video’s, discuss, exchange, whatever comes to mind and feels good. Nicky’s association in Faro, Amarelarte, is perfect for that.

I will contact the Dutch embassy in Lisbon to see if they want to support the travel and the stay, but in the worst case, if nothing comes out, I suggest the ladies from the North pay for the trip themselves. Expenses will be low, with the help of Nicky and Pedro :>

I chose a week, because I think flying for less days is really not worth it. Also it allows us to go slow, sleep and/or swim a lot, cook and wander around town or outside, and still do some exchange work everyday. We might even consider visiting a kindergarten or discuss with Nicky and José Jesus (with whom I have started a collaboration, including my shadow studies) the ways we could organize a form of exchanging practices in the first half of 2022, and consider further.

A 7 days stay means arriving day 1 and leaving day 8? The guesthouse of Amarelarte is free from the Oct 25, 2021. Please, tell me what weeks (or 7 days) would be possible for you between 25^th of October and the end of November. Then I hope we find a match and I start arranging things. If we find commmon dates I also really want to invite Marie-Rose Mayele to come along. She is Anne-Beth's partner in crime, performer, maker and producer Brussels, in Brussels.

Hope you are all well, let me know

love from Amsterdam

Fransien