Permeable City | 2012

PERMEABLE CITY is an investigation in the form of a series of workshops organized by a.pass <<<, exploring artistic activity in the urban context. They respectively invite practitioners as well as theoreticians.

The urban context has become the working field for many artists over the last decades. This movement outside the established art spaces can be seen as means to make a direct connection with and to have a direct impact on a larger (urban) audience and/or to (re)connect with the social, economical and political realities of the city. 

What are the economies involved in this ‘fieldwork’ and what are the possibilities and difficulties of the artist’s position in this relation? In which way do these artistic interventions disseminate and propagate?  Very often these interventions are temporary. Which are the impact and the material and immaterial traces in the urban territory over time of these practices? How do they relate to the very different temporalities of the urbanist and architectural timelines involved in the continuous making of the city?

 

PC / I 8 - 12 October 2012
The concrete case of Brussels and the very different practices in the city of three ex a.pass participants, Heike Langsdorf, Einat Tuchman and Jozef Wouters, were the starting point of a first workshop where their work was presented and contextualized. Together with the artists they explored the neighborhood and places they work in and the theoretical framework they have built. 
This first theoretical week was a preparation for the second workshop two months later where the participants of the workshop were invited to explore their own artistic practice in relation to the city and the work-space proposed by a practitioner.



PC II 19 - 24 November 2012 *
During a week a.pass occupied an empty shop in rue Delaunoy, close to where a.pass is situated. Participants were invited to challenge the personal artistic practice in this specific situation following a research piste the future is now of radical_hope <<<. Investigating in how to develop artificial routines and un-formats, we found a place in rue Delaunouy, the same street where the school is situated. Presently for rent as commercial space to merchants we could rent it for only 2 weeks and co-use it with the participants to the workshop. The idea was to confront our personal practice with the place. The rule was to not change the place but adapt the personal practice on the basis of interstitches.
more further down *



PC III spring 2013
In spring 2013 a.pass plans to organize a conference, a public presentation and discussion forum, with participants and guests where the experience of The Permeable City I and II will be shared with a larger audience.

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*
evaluation after the PC II workshop / 19 - 24 November 2012 at 109, rue Delaunoy.

What we tested:
Taking up the artistic work with as much implicitness as possible, in order to exist first parallel to the ‘already existing life’ of the place, and then in dialogue with the surrounding: we took on an attitude with which one can physically stay and mentally walk and search at the same time. Develop a state drawing attention and being attentive.

The place allows a view inside through two windows. Our work is more or less exposed. We can control the degree of drawing attention from our side through the use of the lights inside and depending on the whether.
But what kind of specificity do we pay attention to ?
Or are we the specifity ourselves ?
 
We consider our work as artificial routines ‘arriving’ next to other local routines.
Artificial or not, routines take time.
Our artfical routines make us starting up a ‘life’ there and transform the understanding of ‘what’ we are and can be. We can develop from whatever interstitch towards a presence ‘for’ this place.

It seems that whatever artistic 'approach' can be a good excuse to get started, to find an entrance. We use our understandings and misunderstandings, coming along with first contacts, impressions, conversations for the production of interstitches. Personal / cultural interstitches to depart from.

What does our presence do ?
It de-cycles. It suspens the time before this place becomes a real shop, selling purchasable products. In a way it 'cuts into' an exspected development or cycle:
decycling an artistic strategy for the production of attention and reaction.

Here in rue Delaunoy it goes without saying that the renter of a 'shop' makes his products available (deliveries), promotes them (exposes them) and sells them (makes money). It goes without saying that there is a time for prayer every day. The shops close in the middle of the day and people let their workplace alone for a while.

We - renting number 109 - take our job as serious as the butcher, the mother, the fisherman does. We expose our work without making money. We are supported by a.pass (subsidies).

We make contact through going into practicalities. Embracing a certain implicitness.

"Hello"
"Hello"
"We have a question."
"What is it?"
"We are students from a.pass and rented the space over there for two weeks."
"Yes, yes, I saw it, there ... with the drawings and the painting ..."
"Yes, exactly ... but today we would like to do a tonal experiment and wonder if we could install a radio-antenna here in your shop."
(chopping fish, talking in arab to a collegue) "What do you need ? A cable ?"
"No, just a wall-socket in"
(chopping fish, talking in arab to a collegue) "Ok, no problem, but what gets transmitted?"
"The sound of your shop will get transmitted to the empty space we work in."
(chopping fish, talking in arab to a collegue) "Aha, but what do you hear?"
"One will hear the athmosphere from here ... over-there ... Concrete sounds, - like the chopping of the fish ... Your voices ... but rather as a sonoric landscape. We will not understand what is said. ... We are not from the Maffia ..." (Little laughter)
(Big Laughter) "... Ok, bring it over, you can use the wall-socket over there." (Chopping fish, talking in arab to a collegue)
"Great, thanks!"
"You are welcome, succes with the work!"

at present and as a continuation of a Permeable City - workshop at a.pass a group of people is developing SHOP, a commercial place where transactions are made <<<





initiative :
a.pass, Bart Vanden Eynde, Carlotta Scioldo
practitioners/participants/guests of PC I :
Simon Allemeersch, Eric Corijn, Rebecca Collins, Chris Dupuis, Bart Van den Eynde, Heike Langsdorf, Christophe Meierhans, Raquel Santana de Morais, Karl Philips, Carlotta Scioldo, Einat Tuchman, Jozef Wouters a.o.
organization PC II :
Carlotta Scioldo, Bart Vanden Eynde
practitioners/participants/guests of PC II :
Bart Van den Eynde, Sven Goyvaerts, Dolores Hulan, Heike Langsdorf, Ariane Loze, Michiel Reynaerts, Raquel Santana de Morais, Carlotta Scioldo, Karl Philips, Loic Geronnez