"Poszukiwania artystyczne w pamięci kulturowej" to intensywny warsztat, którego uczestnicy podejmują próbę przerzucenia mostu nad przepaścią jaką jest brak wzajemnego zrozumienia miedzy wspólczesnymi twórcami i tymi, którzy są zaangażowani w badanie dziedzictwa kulturowego. Składa się on z krótkich prezentacji, działań artystycznych, dyskusji. Biorą w nim udział artyści, architekci, planiści-urbaniści, specjaliści w sprawach dziedzictwa kulturowego i polityki kulturalnej, historycy, krytycy.
Krzysztof Czyżewski wygłosił wykład "Pamięć zagubionej agory".
Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University
Artistic explorations in cultural memory
research workshop
Leiden, Friday-Saturday, 3-4 November 2006
With the kind support of the European Cultural Foundation
An intensive workshop on the interdependence and interaction between contemporary creativity and cultural heritage, generating ideas and approaches to be pursued in cultural policy discussions, integrated in the contemporary cultural heritage and artistic practice and disseminated via subsequent courses, events and publications.
The workshop seeks to abridge the gap and a certain lack of mutual understanding between professionals engaged in the contemporary creativity and those in the cultural heritage and highlight emblematic cases of confluence, interaction and mutual reinforcement, benefiting artists, experts, policy makers, cultural commentators, students and ultimately the audiences.
The workshop consists of short presentation of artistic practices and other cultural memory endeavors, followed by a discussion in which of all participants are expected to take part.
Participants: artists, architects and urban planners, heritage and cultural policy specialists, historians and critics.
Workshop conveyor: Dragan Klaic, theater scholar and cultural analyst (Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University).
Program
Friday, 3 November 2006
2 pm: Welcome by Prof. Frans de Ruiter, Dean of the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University
Introduction and program review by Dragan Klaic, the workshop conveyor.
2:15 Speak memory! Grasping the past, reshaping memory
When does Creativity become Heritage? Let’s explore. Ritsaert ten Cate, visual artist, Amsterdam
One game, seven statements. Kirsten Delholm, theater director & Ralf Richardt Strøbech, architect and designer, Hotel Pro Forma, Copenhagen
Preparing The Suppliants. Paul Koek, theater director and composer, Veen Fabriek, Leiden
Digital oral history. Zelimir Zilnik, film maker, Novi Sad
The Agile Citizen-Spectator. Chris Baldwin, performing artist, la Rioja
Discussion
4.20 Break
4.40 Traumata
Of diasporas and memories. 2 characters in search of memory. Ong Ken Sen, theater director, 72-13, Singapore
Monument to the birth of the 20th century. Michael Blum, visual artist, Vienna
The Memory of a vanished agora. Krzysztof Czyszewski, President, Borderland Foundation, Sejny
Seven projects. Mrdjan Bajic, visual artist, Belgrade
Discussion
Closing remarks: Adrienne Goeller, curator and cultural policy expert, Berlin
6.30 Ends
7.30 Dinner in Scheltema
9.00 Film program
Nine Hungarian Ballads, dir. Zelimir Zilnik (1981, 29 min).
Rembrandt and Hitler or Me: an interpretation by Mike Figgis filmed from inside the Mickery production (1985, 29’45”).
Saturday, 4 November
10.00 Opening and program review: Dragan Klaic
Exploring urban textures and layers
Chorography tradition and site specific performance. Mike Pearson, theater scholar and performing artist, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Recollecting the city, recollecting time. Katarina Pejovic, dramaturg & media artist, Shadow Casters, Zagreb
Man is Space. Vitić Dances. Boris Bakal, performing artist, Shadow Casters, Zagreb
Shared memories. Titia Bouwmeester, performing artist, 5e kwartier, Haarlem
11.30 Break
11.50 Mobile Horizons. Lucia Babina, cultural entrepreneur, iStrike Foundation, Rotterdam
Discussion
Closing remarks: Anne-Marie Autissier, sociologist & cultural policy expert, Univ. Paris 8
12.45 Lunch
2.15 Museums and alternative memorials
The theft of the presence: the contemporary museum and cultural memory.
Janneke Wesseling, art critic, Amsterdam
Towards a Museum of Europe. Krzysztof Pomian, historian, Paris
Santralistanbul: From Electricity to Arts. Asu Aksoy, cultural researcher, Bilgi University, Istanbul
In the Memory Arena: Who is Who in Europe 1933. Luca Ruzza, architect and designer, Rome
The art of memory communication. Tomislav Šola, professor of heritology, Zagreb University
Discussion
4.30 Break
4.45 Final discussion, Creativity, cultural memory and European citizenship. Introduction by Otto von der Gablentz, ret. diplomat, former Executive President of Europa Nostra
Moderator: Raj Isar, Jean Monnet Professor of Cultural Policy Studies, American University Paris, President of EFAH
6.15 Closing
6:30 Leiden cultural memory walk
7.30 Dinner in Scheltema
10.30 Judith Nab/Theatre Espace. No Talking, Theater performance (optional) in the Laktheater. Visual theater about critical parrot, a smoking automechanic and a dreamt about man-pig.
Workshop language: English
Reporter: Mariangela Lavanga
Location: Scheltema, a recently restored former blanket factory, whose joint tenants are the performing arts ensemble De Veemfabriek, the municipal museum Lakenhal and Leiden University. Address; Marktsteeg 1. ph. +31 71 331 8053.
Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, the host of the workshop, is the youngest faculty of the Leiden University (1575), connecting its eight faculties and other resources with the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague.The faculty offers master programs in photographic studies and media technology, major/minor combinations, optional and selective courses and prepares master programs in arts and science and in teaching of arts. DocArtes is a PhD option offered in a consortium with selected Dutch and Flemish conservatories . The Faculty seeks to bridge the gap between the artistic ands scientific inquiry and experimentation and develops its own pedagogical philosophy, curriculum, degrees and collaborative engagements on their nexus. www.artsandsciences.nl
The European Cultural Foundation (ECF) is one of the leading independent organizations devoted to cultural development, and is a passionate advocate of cultural cooperation. ECF believes in the enriching experience of diversity, and in the power of culture to promote mutual understanding and respect. It therefore supports cultural cooperation and advocates strong cultural policies for Europe. The Foundation develops new cultural experiences and media activities by offering grants and by initiating and coordinating programs for organizations and individuals. Furthermore, ECF is actively involved in cultural policy development, particularly for the integration of European society. It strives to give culture a stronger voice and profile at all levels and works in partnership with other leading European cultural organizations (www.eurocult.org).
The Workshop is open without charge to a limited number of observers, primarily from the Leiden University community and for the arts and culture professionals, upon prior registration (rhm.vanderpoel@kunsten.leidenuniv.nl).
Artistic Explorations in Cultural Memory
Research workshop
Leiden, 3-4 November 2006
Participants and presentations
Asu Aksoy: Santralistanbul: From Electricity to Arts
Santral Istanbul is a conservation and regeneration project involving Ottoman Empire’s first electricity power plant that was in operation from 1914 to 1983. The plant generated electricity which was then distributed widely to households, streets, trams and factories. Electricity had a radically transformative effect on the society, paradoxically though of an integrative kind, public spaces emerging as sites of modern identity-making for the disparate classes and different life styles. Now, with Santralistanbul, the power plant is set to become a generative force field, drawing in artistic and creative endeavors from around Istanbul and Turkey, serving as a contact and networking zone, a hub for the generation of new insights through the coming together of artists, thinkers, cultural practitioners and policy people. Santralistanbul aims to build on the radically transformative potential of arts; a powerful resource that is both subversive for its potential for introspection and shock, but also integrative (at a global scale) as it builds itself into the circuits of cultural (creative) economy.
Asu Aksoy is a researcher and project manager, focusing on urban and cultural transformation in the context of migrations, globalization and technological change in Turkey. Over the years of research, she has broadened this agenda to address the nature of social change in Europe and has carried out many research projects based in British universities, specifically looking at migrant identities and migration policies in Europe. She has published widely on these topics and has organized many events, festivals and conferences, both in Turkey and in Europe, bringing together artists, academicians and cultural industry professionals, to open up these issues to the interest of a wider audience of arts and culture. She is presently in charge of the project development at Santralistanbul, a new international arts and culture initiative by Istanbul Bilgi University and serves on the advisory board of Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture initiative.
Anne-Marie Autissier (Commentator) teaches Sociology of Culture and Cultural Policies in Europe at the Institute of European Studies, University Paris 8. She has been a consultant for various European organizations since 1986. She is the President of Culture Europe International, a quarterly magazine and press review, dedicated to cultural policies and practices in Europe, appearing in French and English and distributed throughout Europe. Her most recent publications are: L’Europe culturelle en pratique, AFAA, Documentation française, Paris 1999; “ Cultural networking in Europe ”, in ECA Report, Copenhagen 2003 ; L’ Histoire de la Fondation Européenne de la Culture, Amsterdam 2004 ; L’Europe de la culture, Histoire(s) et enjeux, Actes-Sud, Arles 2005.
Lucia Babina: Mobile Horizons
Lucia Babina will present her experience as a participant of the Mobile Academy (MA) 2006 in Warsaw. Her presentation will focus on how the MA works as a tool for the comprehension of the cultural heritage and the emerging creativity of Warsaw. She will, in particular, deal with two activities organized by the MA: the “Black Market” event – a series of multidisciplinary exchange meetings that give participants the opportunity to confront themselves with local professionals in different fields – and “City as Stage,” one of the courses within the program held by the artist Stefan Kaegi, which was focusing on the exploration of the city through a custom-built Bulgarian truck. This mobile research unit, through a large side window, allows an atypical gaze on the city and functions as a unique observation point of the urban landscape. Every stop of the truck becomes the opportunity to transform the city in a “stage, a performance, the patient on the couch of analysis, the topic of discussion, the subject of criticism.” Through this experience Lucia Babina will disclose the positive and negative aspects of this methodology and will report experiences of local artists in relation with public space and cultural heritage.
Lucia Babina is a cultural entrepreneur, based in Rotterdam. She has a first class degree MSc in Modern Arts at the University of Bologna and a Masters Diploma in international cultural management from the University of Genova. Her main interest is in how culture and arts can affect urban areas and in processes aimed at producing unexpected visions of the urban environment. Since August 2005 she is the chairman and co-founder of iStrike Foundation, environmental organisation which aims at highlighting and surveying new dynamics of intercultural exchange and international cultural co-operation. She is currently working on several international projects, such as SUD 2007, a long-term programme of cultural events on the city of Douala (Cameroon), an attempt to understand and interfere with the urban and social realm; Moving in Free Zones, whose purpose is to experiment unconventional uses of the public space in Rotterdam; Space&Love, a research project that intends to look at the urban space from the height of human eyes and at the scale of affections and emotions.
Mrdjan Bajic: Seven projects
Seven projects elaborated from 1996 to 2006 in Belgrade, Serbia, with a strong desire to communicate with spectators beyond the regular confined exhibition spaces, to communicate with those who are not only professional consumers of visual arts but passers-by, net-surfers, citizens in general. These seven projects (ProgressProgress, Monuments, Yugomuzej, Theatre Sculpture, Belgrade Pillar, Tatlyin, Money) have a common short destiny: each of them remained in a strange and quite particular way invisible in its wholeness. All seven projects represent a certain attempt to cynically re-formulate the historical memory - the one imposed by the dominant ideological matrices as an interpretative mode. Cultural memory, as shaped by ideological forces and their lasting impact, determines in turn the social and political milieu, which prevents the projects to question their very foundations, to come in the field of general view. At least, not in a clear way.
Mrdjan Bajic, BA and MA at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade, Department of sculpture. (Prof. Jovan Kratohvil). Since 1997 Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade, Department of sculpture. Exhibits: 1988 Belgrade, Salon Muzeja savremene umetnosti (solo). 1989 New York, Metaphysical Visions - Middle Europe, Artists Space.Zagreb, Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, (solo). 1990 Sydney, The Ready Made Boomerang, VIII Biennale of Sydney. Venezia, APERTO, XLIV Biennale di Venezia. 1990/92 Cite International des Arts, Paris. 1994/95 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Paris. 1996 Paris, Galerie Rabouan-Moussion (1992,1990), (solo). Saint-Fons, Centre d’Arts plastiques, (solo). 1999. Tübingen, Galerie Ingrid Dacic (1995,1993,1988,1984), (solo). 2000 Wien, Aspekte/Positionen, 50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949-1999, Museum Moderner Kunst. 2001 Belgrade, Yugomuzej, CZKD, (solo). 2002 Sao Paolo, XXV Biennale di Sao Paolo. 2002 Wien, Kunsthalle Wien project space, (solo). 2003. Belgrade, Centre Culturel Francais, (solo). 2004. Wien, Secession, Belgrade art inc.
Chris Baldwin: The Agile Citizen-Spectator
Combining archaeology with theatre has been one of Spirals´ major lines of enquiry over the last three years. The company is now actively managing three projects across Spain which bring together museum services, archaeologists, artists and theatre practitioners with those responsible for regional rejuvenation and tourism. The equation between people, cultural memory and land is central to a time-space investigation. Where theatre and archaeology combine it becomes clear that underpinning notions of Romantic nationalism are usually cultural attachment to land. As theatre practitioners and archaeologists we generate both meaning and pleasure in the way we can help a wider community become more agile in handling definitions of cultural memory. Such ‘agility’ is of profound importance in a Europe convulsed with doubts about the efficacy of its integration project. This presentation will offer one or two examples of the work in a community-based contexts in Spain.
Chris Baldwin is the founder and Artistic Director of Spiral, a theatre, performance and research project, based in La Rioja, Spain. The company develops long term, multi-lingual and multi disciplinary festival projects with local communities and with directors and performers from across the world. Such projects are specifically designed for outdoor spaces and within social development contexts and funded by Spanish and European sources. Baldwin has been artistic director and chief executive of various British theatre companies and has written award winning plays. He is a regular guest director for theatre companies in England, Germany, Spain and Poland and a teacher of theatre practice. His books on directing and devising are published in English and Spanish. He is presently Visiting Professor at Rose Bruford College in London.
Boris Bakal: Man is space: Vitic dances
A long-term project, already in its third year. From an accidental glance that captured the deteriorating beauty and extraordinariness of a 10-storey condominium in Zagreb, “Man_is_Space: Vitic_Dances” grew into a complex interdisciplinary endeavor that combines permanent artistic activities with consistent social engagement, with the goal to restore and save one of the greatest achievements of Croatian (and the-then Yugoslav) modern architecture. The site, the subject and the focus of this project, is the building designed in the late 1950’s by the architect Ivo Vitic, a visionary of his time. As a result of deep involvement in the history of the building as well as in the past and present of its tenants and their current problems – including the tenancy of the project’s authors in the building itself –the project extended its ambitions to become a synthetic view on the negative transformation of the notion and practice of solidarity from the times of Socialism up to today, on the dreary lane of Transition. It also records abuses and misdemeanors in and around the building, accumulated mainly throughout the 1990’s. Following the recent decision of the city authorities to allocate means for the restoration of the building’s façade, the authors are finalizing a documentary film on the Vitic’ building.
Boris Bakal, theatre director and actor, intermedia artist, writer and macrobiotic cook. Throughout his versatile career, he founded three groups (Theatre of Obvious Phenomena, Orchestra Stolpnik, Shadow Casters), launched a festival (Stagione di Caccia, Bologna, Italy), authored numerous projects spanning from theatre performances to installations, multimedia and cultural-social-political initiatives (most notably Stolpnik, Cathedral, The Order of Bank and Money Worshippers, B.E.N.E., Mi ami ancora?, XXX Documento No. 2, Hotel Europa, Un'Italia tutta per me, Shadow Casters, all projects by Shadow Casters group); took part in initiatives and platforms; wrote for magazines and newspapers. His work is marked with pronounced exploration of the site-specific and the interactive elements of arts. Although working in various places he produced most of his pieaces in Croatia, Italy and Belgium. His works have been presented and/or produced at festivals and manifestations in Croatia, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, France, Senegal, Macedonia, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Luxembug, Belgium and the USA.
Michael Blum: Monument to the birth of the 20th century
The Monument to the Birth of the 20th Century is not a monument. It is an art project initiated by Michael Blum upon invitation of Stella Rollig for the O.K Centrum für Gegenwartskunst in Linz, Austria. It intended to use the idea of a monument to address the uncanny common school year of Wittgenstein and Hitler and all speculations that might arise from it: like the construction of history, the relevance of monuments and memorials and the role of memory in daily life. The letter which marked the starting point of the project, was sent to 400 people in Linz, the rest of Austria and worldwide in January 2004. Its aim was to inform and collect ideas, and above all start a discussion, provoke reactions etc. Even though the prime focus of the project was ultra-local (the school which Wittgenstein and Hitler were attending was 100m away from the art center), it had to endorse a worldwide scope, as the consequences of the encounter were global. Following an intense correspondence, the second phase of the project occurred as an exhibition, part of Open House, O.K Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, Linz, 12.03-02.05 2004. The exhibition was an attempt to provide available yet contradictory sources and discourses to a local audience swinging between denial and ignorance. Because of the debatable facts and problematic occurrences related to the common school year of Wittgenstein and Hitler and the wide range of debate it caused in the end, the main part of the exhibition was devoted to a critical re-reading of Blum’s initial letter. The second part was a full display of all the responses received before the exhibition and an invitation to all visitors of the show to further add their proposals and comments to the existing contributions. Eventually, a book brings together all material generated by the project and render it legible through an almost narrative guideline. It handles several levels of information and many discourses, their multiplicity and variety constituting its very value. In the end, the book itself, with all its focuses and themes triggered, is the monument itself. In July 2006, the project was showed in Galerija Nova, Zagreb, as a conceptual framework for WHW’s project on Nikola Tesla. The book has been published by Revolver-Archiv für aktuelle Kunst (Frankfurt), 2005. www.revolver-books.de
www.blumology.net
Michael Blum is an artist currently based in Vienna. After studying history in Paris and photography at Ecole Nationale de la Photographie, Arles (F), he developed a body of work - videos, publications, installations... - that aims at critically and humorously re-reading the production of culture and history. Some works attempted to find contemporary resonances for Marx (Wandering Marxwards, 1999), Adam Smith (Homo Eoconomicus, 2000) or Marcel Mauss, Georges Bataille and the economy of gift (potlatch.doc, 2002). Blum also attempted to confront theory with very personal situations in a global context, ie. learning Spanish from ex-street kids in Mexico City (The Language Course, collaboration w. Carlos Amorales and NGO El Caracol, 2000-01), traveling his Nike sneakers back to Indonesia (My Sneakers, 2001) or collecting stories related to his house in Cape Town (17 Aandbloem Street, 2003).
More recently, his work has been focusing on 20th century European history: a speculation based on the common schooling of Hitler and Wittgenstein 100 years ago (The Monument to the Birth of the 20th Century, 2004-05), a museum dedicated to the Marxist-feminist woman who influenced Atatürk’s reforms in the 1920’s (A Tribute to Safiye Behar, 2005) and an exploration of ideas of real and fake along a murky layer of Dutch history (Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co., 2006). Blum’s latest publication La dernière brève (Centre d’art la Synagogue de Delme/Revolver Verlag) has been released in September 2005. www.blumology.net
Titia Bouwmeester: Shared memories
Can we contribute to the creation of collective memory by sharing stories in local communities? Titia Bouwmeester collects en represents such stories. She will show fragments of different productions and explain her work and method. The following projects will be highlighted: Rent a Granny (2003), grandmothers and young kids living in Amsterdam Southeast shared stories about “being at home”. Verhalen op Sterk Water (2005), stories of elderly men and women about their adolescence in a small village on the island of Terschelling, Allerzielen Allicht (2005)”, stories in a graveyard, Het Dolhuys (2005), stories of psychiatric patients represented in an old hospital. All original stories are in Dutch.
Titia Bouwmeester studied visual arts on the Art Academy in Amsterdam (1983-1988). Directly after her study she started to work with Dogtroep, a theatre company making at the time visual and musical site-specific productions all over the world, in collaboration with the local people. In 2003 Bouwmeester started her own company 5ekwartier, oriented towards the community art. The company prefers to dwell in spaces with an outspoken social context in order to collect stories from people. For each site, Titia Bouwmeester develops new forms to share the stories with the community, combining her skills as a director and visual artist. The stories are presented in installations, theatre performances or exhibitions. 5ekwartier wants to create an awareness for the beauty of the daily life.www.5ekwartier.nl
Ritsaert ten Cate: When does Creativity become Heritage? Let’s explore.
I want to offer 7 items and 2 DVD’s which may throw light upon the potential richness of this workshop. I will refute the existence of a gap and suggest its an inspiring traffic- jam.
Ritsaert ten Cate, visual artist with roots in film and a long record of involvement in the performing arts, as a producer, director, designer, festival programmer and thinker. His Mickery ( Loenersloot and Amsterdam) was between 1965 and 1991 a seminal place of international cultural cooperation and innovative performance, launching several generations of artists. In 1993 Ten Cate founded and led Dasarts , an iconoclastic postgraduate training place for theater makers in Amsterdam. After working as a gallerist, scriptwriter, publisher, actor, creative producer and pedagogue, Ten Cate turned fully to the visual arts in 2000, produced many installations, held exhibits, attended the Rijksacademie voor beldende kunsten in Amsterdam and spent a year in New York. His selected speeches and papers on the performing arts have been published in a volume Man Looking for Words (Amsterdam 1998). Recipient of many artistic prizes and a founding member of IETM. www.xs4all.nl/~rtencate
Krzysztof Czyszewski: The Memory of a vanished agora
My story would be about the reinvention of agora in the borderland community. The memory is crucial for this and that's why I am saying re-invention rather than invention. What I understand by agora does not work with oblivion, moreover, it counters oblivion. To create a commonly shared space within the community you work with the memory of the space, with the memory of the language, with the memory of the neighbor. It is a cultural work. The only tools we have belong to the craftsmen of art, word and thought.
Krzysztof Czyżewski, practitioner of ideas. Poet, essayist. Culture animator. Editor.
Founder and President of the Borderland Foundation and Director of the Center Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations in Sejny, Poland, which he founded in 1991. In 1993 he became the editor-in-chief of the magazine Krasnogruda and of the Borderland Publishing House, both devoted to Central and Eastern European history, cultures and literature. In 2001 he published in Poland and USA a book The Path of the Borderland.
Kirsten Delholm (with Ralf Richardt Strøbech): One Game, seven statements
Within 15 minutes we would like to present 1 game and 7 statements. We will do this with a lap top and a beamer / power point, and a small performative presentation. The presentation is a poetic game of words that are part of daily life and society. Words that give various meanings according to the way they are composed. The game we invented in order to bypass readymade meanings when we think of artistic exploration in cultural memory. The statements will be short sentences that we compose specifically for the theme, accompanied by images.
Kirsten Delholm’s background is in the visual arts but she has been working in the performing arts since 1977. She is the founder and artistic director of Hotel Pro Forma (1985), Copenhagen. Her performances fuse performing arts and architecture, involving visual arts, sound, language, movement, light design and digital media. Every production is a new experiment and contains a double staging: partly matching the content and the space, partly questioning the notion of theater itself. The architecture and the tradition of the space become part of the performance, the space becomes a co-player. Hotel Pro Forma has created productions for theater venues as well as for museums, town halls and public buildings of special character and history. Kirsten’s productions toured extensively across the world and were featured at many international festivals. Her recent productions include Theremin (2004), about the elusive life of the Soviet inventor, I only appear to be dead (2005), a special commission by the Andersen Bicentennial, based on his diaries, and most recently The Algebra of Place (2006).
Otto von der Gablentz (Commentator) grew up in Berlin and trained as a jurist and political scientist before following a diplomatic career, serving ultimately as the German ambassador in The Hague, Tel Aviv and Moscow. On retiring from the foreign service, he became the Rector of the College of Europe in Bruge and Natolin and served as the Executive President of the Europa Nostra, the cultural heritage federation. He lives in Amsterdam.
Adrienne Goehler (Commentator) studied German and Romanic languages and graduated in psychology. Active in the feminist movement and for a while in the Green Party, she became the President of the Hamburg Academy of the Visual Arts, served shortly as the Berlin Senator for science, research and culture in the short-lived red-green coalition and worked as the Curator of the Cultural Fund of the Berlin the Capital City. An advisor, curator and public speaker, member of several foundation boards and commissions, she published in 2006 a book Verflüssigungen. Wege und Umwege vom Sozialstaat zur Kulturgesellschaft (Frankfurt/N. York:Campus).
Yudhishthir Raj Isar (Commentator) is the Jean Monnet Professor of Cultural Policy Studies at The American University of Paris; Maître de Conférences at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) and a visiting professor at various universities in Europe and the USA. Managing Editor of the Cultures and Globalization Series, a publishing project launched in cooperation with Prof. Helmut K. Anheier, Director of the Center for Civil Society at UCLA. Currently, President of the European Forum for the Arts and Heritage (EFAH). Member of the Board of the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London; of the International Board of the Forum Cultural Mundial (Rio de Janeiro) and of the Advisory Board of the Fitzcarraldo Foundation, Turin. Special Advisor to the World Monuments Fund (New York) and the Sanskriti Foundation (New Delhi); International Advisor to Aid to Artisans (ATA) and to the World Bank’s Development Gateway. Consultant to the European Commission, the Organization of American States and the European Cultural Foundation. Member of the International Council of Museums, the International Network for Cultural Diversity (INCD), CIRCLE and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
Michele Jacobs (Invited Observer) studied history and museology. She is a journalist and program maker in various cultural centers. She collaborates with Historic Café and is on the board of Myseology Salon and Onfile. She publishes articles on museums, art and culture and is the co-author (with Ineke van Hamersveld) of Schoonheid of herinnering: vragen over de presentatie van geschiedenis in musea (Boekmanstichting 2001).
Dragan Klaic (Conveyer), a Permanent Fellow of Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, teaches arts and cultural policies at Leiden University. Educated in Belgrade and at Yale, he held professorships in Belgrade, Amsterdam and the US, led the Theater Instituut Nederland, co-founded the European Theater Quarterly Euromaske, and led European cultural networks ENICPA and EFAH. He is the initiator of the European Festival Research Project and active across Europe as writer, lecturer, researcher and advisor. Publications include several books in the former Yugoslavia as well as Terrorism and Modern Drama (co‑edited with J. Orr, Edinburgh Univ. Press 1990, paperback 1992), The Plot of The Future: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Drama (Michigan Univ. Press 1991), Shifting Gears/ Changer de vitesse (co‑edited with R. Englander, TIN Amsterdam 1998), an exile memoir, Exercises in Exile, in Dutch and Croatian (2004 and 2006), Europe as a Cultural Project (Amsterdam: ECF 2005) and many articles and contributions to over 40 edited books. Contributing Editor of the Theater magazine (USA), member of various advisory boards.
Paul Koek: Preparing The Suppliants
In 2006 we developed Euripides’ tragedy Smekelingen (The Suppliants), through a long investigation that included talks and interviews with a lot of interesting people. We invited scientists, politicians and special people, linked to one of the themes or layers of the play, to share their experiences and thoughts with us and even with a small public. This process shaped a contemporary take on this ancient Greek tragedy. I will analyse the process and its outcomes and show some fragments from those preparatory events which we called ‘VeenProefavonden’ and from the production itself, performed this summer in Greece.
Paul Koek studied percussion at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. His main interest lies in modern and contemporary music. He was closely involved in the formation and development of several Dutch ensembles and collaborated with Peter Greenaway, Heiner Goebbels, Bob Wilson, Fred Frith and Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. Since 1991 Paul Koek has been teaching at the Image and Sound department (now: ArtScience) of the Royal Conservatoire. In 1987 he started working for the Theatergroep Hollandia (founded in 1985 by Johan Simons) of which he became co-artistic director in 1993, with special interest in the development of a contemporary musical theatre of a non-anecdotical type, where image, light, text, music and projection are all equal and have a meaning on their own, hence never illustrate one another. From 1997 till 2005 Paul Koek was in charge of the Veenstudio, as a part of Hollandia, to further explore and stimulate this line. In 2001 Theatergroep Hollandia and Het Zuidelijk Toneel merged into ZT Hollandia. Johan Simons and Paul Koek were the co-artistic directors of the new company, located in Eindhoven. The Veenstudio continued to initiate its own music theatre productions and to enable other productions by the company to benefit from its musical know-how and creativity. In 2005 ZT Hollandia ceased to exist. Paul Koek founded his new ensemble de VeenFabriek in the former Scheltema factory in Leiden, where artists and scientists work together. De VeenFabriek focuses on the confrontation of music, visual arts, theatre, film and science.
Mariangela Lavanga (Reporter) is an urban economist with a PhD in Communication Economy from the IULM Milano and master degrees from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Boccioni University Milano. She worked as a researcher for EUR and various Italian organizations, taught at the universities in Milano, Brescia and L’Aquila and published articles in journals and chapters in several books. She resides in Leiden.
Ong Ken Sen: Of diasporas and memories. 2 characters in search of memory
First: When we see something, it registers in our memory; it merges with other memories to create a landscape that is neither fact nor fiction. Our memory is never as concrete as we think it is, it’s always malleable. It is being manipulated by the media, by us. We make decisions, conscious or unconscious about what we want to remember, what we want to forget. Second: If we want to see something, we can see it. As children of the Diaspora, if we want to validate our origins, we only have to invent them. Everything is there, waiting to be found. Of Diasporas and Memories. Ong Keng Sen discusses the research with Asians of diasporas amassed over 9 cities in 6 months of research in 2006. The beginning of a larger project tracking diasporas in the diverse continents.
Ong Keng Sen, interdisciplinary performance practitioner, curator, artistic process researcher. Artistic Director of TheatreWorks since 1988, now artistic director of the newest space in Singapore, 72-13. Ong graduated from the National University of Singapore in law in 1988 and went with a Fulbright scholarship to post-graduate studies on intercultural performance at the Performance Studies Dept, Tisch School of Arts, New York University. Ong’s productions have toured cities in Asia, Europe, Australia and the US. They mostly emerge from long and complex collaborative processes, bringing Asian artists of various backgrounds and orientations together (The Flying Circus Project) and expanding to include Asian, Arab, European artists, various generations of masters, professionals, urban orphans and terror victims (Continuum Asia Project). Founder of Arts Network Asia (ANA). Initiator of the DVD series, Roots, Re-invention and Continuity in Changing Times. Numerous productions in the USA and across Europe. As curator made programs in Berlin and London, taught in Singapore, Amsterdam, New York City, Melbourne and lectured all over the world.
Mike Pearson: The Chorography tradition and site specific performance
The nature of chorography is to distinguish and represent the unique character of individual places; above all, it is a specific scale of geographical study that serves to identify and differentiate sites of significance as potential places to visit within a given region. Chorography espouses the local: it concerns specificities, particularities and peculiarities. In so doing, it disattends, ignores or chooses not to acknowledge other places that fall outside its sphere of interest. Seventeenth century English chorographies collected and arranged natural, historical and antiquarian information topographically in a specific area, place-by-place, village-by-village, without necessarily relating it to larger spatial frames. In the form of a gazetteer, they involved the systematic description of a region’s natural features; its inhabitants; their histories, laws and traditions; antiquities including church monuments; ecclesiastical and manorial customs, property ownership, and the etymology of names. They incorporated elements of historical narrative, biography, pictorial maps and architectural sketches; they had political intent in legitimizing claims to title and land. In their inclusion of details of flora and fauna, chorographies presage the development of both archaeology and natural history. And whilst they distinguish place from place, they also serve to draw them together, creating an impression of the essential nature of that region: to create region itself. This approach finds echoes in the German concept of Landschaft in attributing significance to community, custom and law as much as physical geographical characteristics. Within a given region and in a form of chorographic account, we might include performance and its places: modes of traditional practice; folk drama and calendar customs; and manifestations of contemporary devised theatre are thus co-present, in relation as much each other, to other modes of regional cultural production and to geophysical conditions there, as to instances of their generic type elsewhere. They become topographic phenomena of local history and natural history, related as much to conditions of geology or traditions of agricultural land-use as to parallels from elsewhere. There is a shift from nationality, period, genre, author, opus and company as orientating taxonomies of practice, to close examination of the immediate details of the ecology of exposition. And site-specific work is cast as just that: specific in form, content and function at a specific place, rather than as a local example of a widespread genre with common characteristics. It is manifest in direct relation to and arises from sets of local historical, social, cultural and environmental circumstance, and in juxtaposition with all else that constitutes the grain of the region, rather than as transferable techniques and technologies in search of a suitable location.
Mike Pearson trained as an archaeologist. For the past thirty years he has pioneered innovative approaches in the practice, theory, pedagogy and documentation of performance in Wales and further. From 1981-97 he was an artistic director of Welsh theatre company Brith Gof, known for its large-scale, site-specific productions. Since 1997 he has worked with artist and designer Mike Brookes in the Pearson/Brookes group, most recently concentrating upon multi-site, mediated works for the city. He is the co-author with Professor Michael Shanks (Stanford University) of Theatre/ Archaeology (Routledge 2001); his monograph In Comes I:Performance, Memory and Landscape is due in fall 2006 by the University of Exeter Press. In 1999 he was appointed Professor of Performance Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Katarina Pejovic: Recollecting the city, recollecting time
This project, a joint venture of Shadow Casters and another artistic association, BLOK, deals with detecting, archiving, studying and exhibiting the documentation on artistic actions in public space as well protests and public gatherings that took place in Zagreb from 1945 to this day. We strive to capture all the ephemeral events which left mainly immaterial traces in the cultural, social and political history of that city. Within a three-year span, the project leaders work on tracing documentation (film, video and sound recordings, photographic and written documents, testimonies, material traces etc.) by contacting authors and/or participants of those events as well as the general public – the onlookers, accidental passers-by. Apart from this step-by-step search, the collecting process also takes on a public form, the so-called «open offices»: three times a year, the project is hosted by a Zagreb public space for a week during which a series of events unfolds, including exhibitions and screenings of collected material, round table discussions on relevant issues connected to the project topic and interviews with those who come to testify on the events. Another manifesting form of the project is at the same time its reflection: the street display boxes of the now closed Croatian Cinematheque are at the project's disposal, where each month a new theme is explored through presenting collages of various visual and written materials – a sort of new-day «wall newspaper» - and the past events are connected to the actual city locations of the display boxes. «Re-collecting City, Re-collecting Time» will conclude with all the documentation, both gathered and the one coming out of the project itself, being handed over to the new Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb, due to open in 2007.
Katarina Pejovic is a dramaturg and intermedia artist. She has authored and co-authored theatre projects, intermedia projects, video works, documentary movies and experimental audio works that were presented at various festivals (Ars Electronica, Steierischer Herbst, Eurokaz, LIFT, Wiener Festwochen, BITEF etc.); initiated or took part in different cultural-political-social projects (Mobile Theatre Network, hEXPO, Zagreb Cultural Capital of Europe 3000 etc.); organized festivals and collaborated with numerous groups and platforms (Cosmo-Kinetical Theatre Red Pilot, KPGT, 42, Zeramulix etc.). Her texts and essays were published in various magazines and books at home and abroad (The Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria etc.) as well as her translations. Together with Boris Bakal, she is the co-founder of Bacaci Sjenki (Shadow Casters) as well as co-author of most of its projects. After ex-Yugoslavia, the USA, the Netherlands and Slovenia, she currently lives and works in Zagreb.
Krzysztof Pomian: Towards a Museum of Europe
1. The history of the Museum of Europe since its beginning in 1997. - 2. The long term project of the Museum. - 3. The project of the inaugural exhibition devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, with the opening scheduled for October 2007.
Krzysztof Pomian, historian and philosopher. PhD (1965) and habilitation (1968): Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Expelled in 1966 from the Polish Unified Workers Party because of his public criticism of its politics and deprived in 1968 of his teaching position at the UW. Since 1973 in France. Presently, directeur des recherches emeritus at the CNRS, Paris, professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, scientific director, Museum of Europe, Brussels. As a philosopher, he is particularly interested in epistemology. As a historian,he worked extensively on the history of European culture and especially on history of history - historiography, historical researches, institutions of history – and on history of museums and collections. His works, written mostly in Polish and in French, were translated into twelve languages. Principal publications in French: Pologne :défi à l’impossible ? De la révolte de Poznan à Solidarité, Paris, Editions Ouvrières, 1982 - L’Ordre du temps, Paris, Gallimard, 1984 - Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux. Paris-Venise, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1987 - L’Europe et ses nations, Paris, Gallimard, 1990 - [Together with Th. W. Gaehtgens], Histoire artistique de l’Europe. XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Seuil, 1998 - Sur l’histoire, Paris, Gallimard, Folio-Histoire, 1999. - Des saintes reliques à l’art moderne. Venise-Chicago, XIIIe-XXe siècle , Paris, Gallimard, 2003. – Ibn Khaldûn au prisme de l’Occident, Paris, Gallimard, 2006.
Luca Ruzza: In the Memory Arena. Who is Who in Europe 1933.
I will present a project call The Memory Arena I realized with the Berlin composer Arnold Dreyblatt in Amsterdam Felix Meritis in 1998. I will also introduce and comment other site specific projects I have done in the last few year with my Company, the Open Lab. The Memory Hall. Data projection with plexiglass and wood structure, 1998. Data projection, plasma displays, wood construction, projection panels of black plexiglass, computer network. Black wooden platform, reading tables and archive area, four rear projection panels which continually display live software searches through the Who's Who in Central & East Europe in 1933 databases. The Memory Hall consisted of a large central monumental structure which was constructed on a black platform foundation, supporting 4 black transparent screens. This large rectangular structure represents a digital brain of the installation, containing 15 computers and the central server of the computer network as well as forming the large rear display panels which give a central focus to the hall. During the Installation Mode, these panels dynamically and continually display live searches through the ‘Who’s Who in Central & East Europe 1933’ databases. The panels are constructed of a black plexiglas material, so that the projected scrolling texts float is suspended in space. On three sides of the Brain are nine plasma data displays. Here were shown animated texts, chosen from Who’s Who, statements on memory and the nature of archiving, biographical fragments from the accumulating Amsterdam People Network, the T-Mail Communication Database. These texts are decomposed and transformed into one another continually during the opening hours, posing as a counterpoint to the large rear projection walls above. The Memory Hall was illuminated by a diffuse blue dark light that was repeated on the black PVC floor. During Installation Mode, guided tours to the interior of the brain were held at appointed times that were announced beforehand.
Luca Ruzza, architect & set designer. Drawing performance and architecture using high technology systems is the main focus of his interest and activities. He has been collaborating with national and international theatres and festivals for the creation of multimedia projects, dedicated to the examination of the relationship between the images and space of different identities. Ruzza lives in the "atelier house" designed by himself and built close to Rome, where he prepares the working drawings and the simulation of the final effect of the projects with 3D models. In the last ten years he has also been involved in educational activities as a professor at the University of Rome, in a course of digital set design. His projects have been realized in UK, Denmark, Italy, France, Spain, Norway, Finland, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Colombia, Brazil, Qatar and the United States.
Ralf Richardt Strøbech (with Kirsten Delholm): One Game, seven statements
Within 15 minutes we would like to present 1 game and 7 statements. We will do this with a lap top and a beamer / power point, and a small performative presentation. The presentation is a poetic game of words that are part of daily life and society. Words that give various meanings according to the way they are composed. The game we invented in order to bypass readymade meanings when we think of artistic exploration in cultural memory. The statements will be short sentences that we compose specifically for the theme, accompanied by images.
Ralf Richardt Strøbech, architect and designer, educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture as well as in music and film studies at the Copenhagen University. From these platforms he works at investigating the cultural mechanisms of his surroundings and to express them in the field between architecture, music and image. As an architect and artistic partner at Hotel Pro Forma he has been developing concepts for productions Theremin (2004), I only appear to be dead (2005) and The Algebra of Place (2006).
Tomislav Šola: The art of memory communication
In the world of diminishing quality, in which identities disappear daily, we need to know ourselves and be able to communicate this knowledge. That is the basis of survival. Academic institutions, priests, intellectuals and artists largely failed to fulfill their possible mission. Obscene and savage capitalism, assisted by politicians, is turning the world into a dangerous and ugly place for billions of helpless, neurotic humans. Collective memory is the chance. Remembering the dreams of mankind and retaining the fine tissue of quality, be it beauty or relations, may keep alive concepts and ideas that ameliorate human condition. Once beauty was confined to the pedestals and frames and stored into institutions it became the privilege and asset for the few. Art, like science, should stem from life and work for its quality: we have a Planet that offers in abundance all that we may even think of. Why are its riches unnoticed, hidden, manipulated, distorted and turned into commodity? Academics are rarely able to see what is truly important and largely unable to communicate even what they know. Their social autism is becoming proverbial. Artists are pushed and talked into the self-exclusion of the never-land, where tyranny of exalted innovation forces them to serve careless rich masters and worthless, false elites. About the collective memory: the only way to make it effective is by understanding it as scientifically reliable communicational art form. That means curators and artists working together with a new professionalism in their heads and - importantly - in their hearts.
Tomislav Šola studied art history, museology and journalism in Zagreb and Paris. PhD in museology, Univ. of Ljubljana; Curator and director in Zagreb, and since 1987 Professor at the Zagreb University, lecturing internationally (Ljubljana, Barcelona, Jyvaskyla, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Dubrovnik etc.). He wrote a few hundred articles on theory of heritage, some translated into eleven languages, chapters in five books abroad, one book on theory and other on marketing of heritage; formerly, a founder of International summer school for the heritage studies, Yvaskyla, Finland, a jury member of the European Museum of the Year Award (EMF-EMYA) etc. Founder of a NGO organising "The Best in Heritage", the global, annual review of awarded museum and heritage projects (Dubrovnik, Cologne); Advisory Board member of the Association of Peace Museums.
Janneke Wesseling: The theft of the presence: the contemporary museum and cultural memory
We live in a time of collective amnesia. Museums take an active part in the creation of this amnesia, however paradoxical this may seem, by limiting themselves to the role of storage place and show case of cultural artifacts. It has become the most important task of the large museums as part of the tourist industry to present the public a nostalgic view of the past, either by exhibitions of “top art works” or in thematic exhibitions of some historic subject. They offer consolation and entertainment, a moment of rest in the midst of the daily tyranny of fast information technology. Museums contribute to our collective amnesia by functioning as an anaesthetic. In doing so, they are in danger of loosing their meaning and relevance for the contemporary art. Artists play an essential role in the construction of cultural memory. Is there a way in which museums and artists can cooperate in the task of understanding and interpreting the present, and in building out cultural memory?
Janneke Wesseling, art critic for the daily paper NRC Handelsblad since 1982. President of the Dutch section of the AICA, Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (since 2002). Winner of the Jan Bart Klasterprize for art criticism in the Netherlands and Flanders 2003. Teaches at the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague and at the Leiden University. Numerous publications on the contemporary art, and of articles in catalogues and magazines. Currently working on a study of “the history of the horizon”, to appear with the Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, in 2008.
Želimir Žilnik: Digital oral history
In my film work I am seeking to identify ordinary people with extraordinary experiences and create a social context and an atmosphere of encouragement and attention that enables them to recall their remembrances and act them out in front of camera. I shall explain the circumstances of such an approach, the use of ambiance, props and friends that all together make the protagonist plunge in the past and re-enact it.
Želimir Žilnik is a filmmaker and Professor of Documentary Film at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia. After filming several socially engaged and critical documentaries (winning awards at the Oberhausen film festival in the 1970s), his first feature film Rani radovi (Early Works) brought him a Berlin Festival Grand Prix, and much trouble with the authorities of the former Yugoslavia, resulting in several years of forced residence in the West Germany as a so-called ‘Gastarbeiter’ (guest worker). Later he worked as an independent maker of docu-dramas for TV Novi Sad, TV Belgrade and TV Ljubljana. Even under the pressures of the UN sanctions, the Milosevic regime, and NATO bombardment of Serbia, he continued to make low-budget films. With Tito Second Time Among the Serbs and Marble Ass, Žilnik helped initiate video and television production for the most radical media outlet in Yugoslavia at that time – B 92 in Belgrade. His recent projects (the feature film Wanderlust and the docu-dramas Fortress Europe, Kenedy Goes Back Home, Where Was Kenedy Last Twe Years, Soap in Danube Opera) all deal with the post-transition dilemmas and destinies of ordinary people from Central and Eastern Europe.
Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University: Prof. Frans de Ruiter, Dean; Dr. K.J.J. Korevaart, Director, Rosalien van der Poel. Communication.
European Cultural Foundation: Gottfried Wagner, Director; Taja Vovk, Program Grants Manager. Isabelle Schwarz, Cultural Policy Manager.
Stichting Praemium Erasmianum: Prof. Max Sparreboom, Director, also Director of the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden University.