DESCRIPTIVE NOTE

This text is an attempt to translate the symbiotic relationality in the practice of TAAT (a collective founded in 2012 between Gert-Jan Stam and myself, Breg Horemans) into the architecture of a publication, meaning the publication that you are now reading. Our practice is about practicing a symbiotic relationality through emboddied experience. The aim of this text is to give insights in an iterative discourse about the practice on the practice and through the practice.
 
The starting point to 'post-script' (or retro-script) parts of the HALL33 practice was a conversation between Gert-Jan Stam, Siebren Nachtergaele and Breg Horemans in the course of the running projects HALL08, -09 and -12 that took place on the Research Catalogue page of HALL09 Vilnius on xxxxxxxx. This first experiment of what later would be referred to as  'iterative discourse' was built on three distinctive parts in the conversation in which the collaborators went to and fro in between the sections. Or as Nachtergaele introduced: We will translate this in three dramaturgical sections: ‘action’, ‘reflection’ and ‘extraction’. Reflection is here about questioning and thinking on meaningful and critical moments in the unfolding dramaturgical process, this in advance, during and after the workshop. These moments are about crossing the ‘in-between position’ amid knowing and not-knowing and the ‘alterity position’ between the same and the other (cf. Georgelou et al., 2017: 59). Extraction is about distilling the revealing threads, connections and relationships between the different meaningful and critical moments. It’s about searching new potentiality of links and approaches for the future to emerge.

FACT SCRIPT/

TIMELINE

 

 

2012-2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MARCH 2020

HALL09 Vilnius

(3 day workshop)

 

APRIL 2020

 

MAY 2020

 

JUNE 2020

 

JULY 2020

HALL12 walks

(Szenne Art Lab)

 

AUGUST 2020

HALL12 walks

(Riga)

 

SEPTEMBER 2020

 

OKTOBER 2020

 

NOVEMBER 2020

 

DECEMBER 2020

HALL12 walks

(Maastricht, Winternights)

Generated through the TAAT Live Archive on www.taat-projects.com. Click to on pdf to download.

 

 

 

Where lie the poetics/desire of the research?

Where lies the desire of the research? And of the project HALL33?

 

The encounter between Gert-Jan and I, generated a third thing, a question with a spatial answer. Can we make a building that is a theatre play? Yes, let's call it HALL33. This third thing (a material thing in Rancieres sense) lay the footprint for a longterm project, materially and immertially, building (a) relationship(s). The desire and the poetics is outside of me, but in between us. This moment was fundamental in the formulation of the core values in which our practice developed, shared authorpship, transdisciplinarity and open source development.

 

Tuning in with each other. Tuning in with the social architecture.

 

What is a relational space?

 

The third thing is leading. (material thing Ranciere) It allows for:

 

(see notes, p1 on iterative discourse)

 

What is the motivation for going from 'inside' to 'outside'?

 

So what builds a strong relationship: giving eachother space, being constructively critical, caring, supportive, collaborative, trustfull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIRST ENCOUNTER BETWEEN BREG HOREMANS AND GERT-JAN STAM

RETRO-SCRIPT (DESCRIPTIVE)

The Live Archive at Zsenne Art Lab as both a working tool, a publishing format and a setting for feedback sessions with participants.

 

 

NOTES OF MY APASS DIARY

(making a note as a builidng stone in a conversation)


(NOTE BY ELKE DURING THE HIKE)

Where lie the poetics/desire of the research?
Where lies the desire of the research? And of the project HALL33?

The encounter between Gert-Jan and I, generated a third thing, a question with a spatial answer. Can we make a building that is a theatre play? Yes, let's call it HALL33. This third thing (a material thing in Rancieres sense) lay the footprint for a longterm project, materially and immertially, building (a) relationship(s). The desire and the poetics is outside of me, but in between us. This moment was fundamental in the formulation of the core values in which our practice developed, shared authorpship, transdisciplinarity and open source development.

 

(NOTE BY ELKE DURING THE HIKE)

What is the position of 'the architecture' and 'the performance' in a setup where 'un-built space' and a 'zero-degree performance' (shift to framing just the 'hyperreality' of a conditioned/scripted situation) seem established in the practice?

What is the position of 'the architecture' and 'the performance' in a setup where 'un-built space' and a 'zero-degree performance' (shift to framing just the 'hyperreality' of a conditioned/scripted situation) seem established in the practice?

In Theatre without Actors, Pedro Manuel introduces a series of staging strategies in which there is no human actors on the stage. Metaforically and practiclally, this fits into a post-anthropocentric dramaturgical strategy (Taskanen), but puts the absence of 'humans' also in wider theatre tradition. 


The greek notion 'theatron' (the place from where you look) was a starting point for a workshop-series that investigated the spectator-actor duality.

 

From which position do we look at architecture? Which position do we take inside architecture? (Psarra refers to Tschumi's labyrinth-metafor to dissiminate the narrative potential of space within a series of projects)

From which position do we look at performance?


To understand the position of architecture in my practice is to step in and out of the threshold of 'being in' or 'looking at', in the same way as we can represent 'a performer' (be a performer) or look at one.

-> reference of rolefluidity to Kögler as quoted in Kester's Conversation pieces (p95)


Did the architecture of HALL01-06 stage its spect-actors, or invite the participants into a frame to experience co-presence? In the latter: what are


The position in HALL33 as a 'zero-degree performance' is basically sharing a frame with another person to experience both the dulness and the richness of reality as it is. -> 'We are training ourselves in simply being with other beings (and things)' -> ref to Sodja's essay for Homo Novus.


Training this can be done within the educational frame, inviting students to creatively deconstruct the 'world as we see it through conventional eyes'.


 

 

HOW TO UNDERSTAND NOTING

 

MAKING A NOTE IMPLIES A SIDE-LINE, INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ADDED, BUT DOESNT HAVE TO, INFORMATION THAT IS OF A PERSONAL NATURE, SOMETHING THAT YOU LIKE TO KEEP TRACK OF, OR A CONNECTION THAT YOU MAKE.

IN WHAT WAY CAN A NOTE PLAY A SUBSTANTIAL ROLE ON THE OUTCOME OF THE 'WHOLE SCRIPT'.

VALUING NOTES, REFRAMING NOTES AS 'SUBSTANTIAL' CONTENT, AND SHOWING THE INFILTRATION OF THEM INTO THE BODY OF WORK.

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF A TEXT THROUGH NOTING, IS TO WRITE - IN RETROSPECT - THE INTRA-ACTIVE DIALOGUE OF ACTIONS AND REFLECTIONS THAT BUILT THE PRACTICE OF HALL12.

NOTES AS BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN ITERATIVE DISCOURSE.

How political is the work? What is political about two strangers that share time and space within the proposed framing.

What are the politics of (making and showing) the work?

 
Why do we care about the politicalness of the work? And where do we want to see the politicalness? On the level of the representation of the idea of ‘encounter’? Or on the personal dialogical level.

Do we care about the impact of ‘the idea’ of the work (putting the possibility of the encounter, or the encounter as an idea to the foreground)?

Ref David Weber Kreps: Occupying public space in a silent act of togetherness.


What are the politics of (making and showing) the work?

Politics of the open source approach (how is authorship defined? Social space, Ratti, Lefebvre)
Politics of materiality: the wood, the bolts, the connections, the material resourcing

Politics of presentation: the zero-degree performance and the ‘deconstruction’ of the architecture as a representation. Construction and deconstruction of architecture as a representational medium. Or installation art as a representational medium? (Dorothea van Hantelmann only talks about work in a strict white cube context, clearly stating that ‘the recognition of art as art is dependent on the artistic conventions as ‘guarded’ by the institution.

Politics of situating people: spatial component in what Ranciere calls the ‘metapolitical’ that incorporates an embodied experience of hierarchy for example, reciprocal visibility and a social component (the two people as two ‘identities’, representation of the every day serve, Goffman). The situation of two ‘people’ in the full awareness of themselves as human beings, as spect-ators: isn’t the politics lying in the acknowledgment of these people in there own fullness. How are the mechanics of this empowerment strategie working, and how does this work as an element of meaning making?

Of Rothko would make an installation: it would be an empty space, with colors and textures, maybe positions? ‘I don’t have anything to show you’ besides what is ‘not to show or not showable’. 

The above can be seen as the ‘front stage politics’. Or the politics within the ‘artistic conventions’  

Politics of a strategic collaboration (presentation partners, schools, festival, funds,…)
-> the process of ‘going outside’ goes parallel to finding a un-stutional model of organization, a rhizome. 


 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I do this trajectory almost daily, but now the uncanniness of the situation - this stranger that I just ‘met’, made me hyper-attentive of the public realm and the bizar moment we’re all in. What struck me is the consciousness of my personal character, my social identity that is evoked by the other’s presence.” (participant)


“I wouldn’t say we had a real encounter. Maybe the other could be anybody. But the walk had two qualities that stuck with me: occupying public space with/through another person gave me a clear frame and a pleasant confidence to look again at the city. This ‘just being to- gether’ felt like a welcome alternative to ‘filling any possible space between us’ with words about the lockdown...” (participant)

What might be encountered through the creation of encounters?


Reframing the question from the 'third thing' instead of the encounter:

What kind of 'other' third things might arise by creating condtitions for third things to arise?

A 'click' between two people that stay connected to eachother or stay connected to the practice, and even follow/use the practice as a 'third thing' between themselves and other beings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on image to play the clip.