current projects
vocabulaboratories-publication
a print vocabulary with some 27 entries by different people, to be given away for free at workshops and labs. If you do not participate in a workshop or lab and wish to receive a copy, please write to info@associationlisa.com to order one (euro 10,- admin & postage cost).
Sher Doruff – a vocabulary of doing / Anja Kanngieser- non-specialisation / Stephanie Lusby - cultural mobility / Rodrigo Nunes - intervention / Paz Rojo&Manuela Zechner- entry/ Committee for Radical Diplomacy - radical diplomacy / Ann Cotten- bullshit / Carla Bottiglieri – Un-power / Simon O´Sullivan - fictions / Jan Ritsema- politics of aesthetics / Critical Practice - C/critical P/practice / Peter Pal Pelbart – bare life / Judith Schwendtner- small town / Diego Gil- intensity / LISA – Lisa / Igor Dobricic- Trace / Ludotek- Empowerment / Paz Rojo&Ricardo Santana- Reply/ Manuela Zechner&Anja Kanngieser&Paz Rojo- Movement / Manuela Zechner- self-train / Anja Kanngieser – militant research / Bojana Kunst – frame/framing / Tom Groves- fidelity, faith, belief / Fernando Broncano- testimony / Lawrence Liang – voice and vocabulary
Edited by Manuela Zechner and Paz Rojo
Associated editors: Anja kanngieser and Rodrigo Nunes
vocabulaboratories-laboratory
vocabulaboratories is an ongoing project initiated by Paz Rojo, Anja Kanngieser and Manuela Zechner. It consists of a series of laboratory spaces for working on self-made conceptual vocabularies, collectively as well as individually. The project runs throughout 2008/09.
laboratories in 2008:
13/10 - 18/10, Graz/AHow do we articulate spaces for action?
How can we make what we do (whether in theory or in practice) articulable and effective? How and when does working with concepts - beyond disciplinary boundaries - create new spaces for action? And how can we critically convey these possibilities?
vocabulaboratories is a long-term, collaborative project that works with individual and collective vocabularies. We take “vocabularies” to be tool-boxes based on ideas and strategies, with the aid of which we position ourselves in the world, try to understand ourselves and explore our possibilities for action.
The focus of this workshop - one stage of ‘vocabulaboratories’ - is on the spaces of meaning opened up by our own vocabularies and through the concept of ’strategy’. Our guests will contribute the notions of ‘empowerment’, ’survival’ and the ‘common’, from their respective perspectives - arts, architecture, philosophy, social work. We will go from practice to theory and back again, taking our concepts to facilitate research and interventions in public space, enter into conversation with local socially committed organizations and question our engagements, from a philosophical as well as strategic point of view.
Organized by: Manuela Zechner and Paz Rojo
With: Ludotek (ES), Judith Revel (F), Judith Schwendtner (A)
As part of Steirischer Herbst festival Graz
01/12 - 06/12, Reims/Finstituting spaces / making space in institutions
How can we find or make space to address our (individual and collective) desires and problems? Can we think of the making (and yielding) of space (a room, a building, a space for action or thinking, a laboratory, a meeting, a dinner…) as a form of practice? What problems and limitations do we encounter through this, and how can we creatively work with those constraints? How might we think about such practice, its organization and sustainability?
At the same time, we are all implicated in institutional frameworks in one way or another (schools, galleries, theatres, hospitals, NGOs) and struggle with as well as benefit from the ways in which those institutions are configured. How do we make spaces in existing institutions - what strategies can we work with in order to negotiate spaces for our ideas and practices in this case?
These two aspects of spatial and instituent practice will be considered through the following two perspectives:
• Instituting a space. To find a space that can be made into an institution, to invent an institution and its space. The Performing Arts Forum near Reims is an example of this: its founder, Jan Ritsema, will spend a day with the lab group to address the desires, reasons and also pragmatics underlying his process of setting up PAF. We’ll be working within the space of PAF, trying to understand it from different perspectives throughout the week.
• Making space within an institution. To find a space within an existing institution, which allows us to address problems and work around our own questions and desires. The university could be an example of such an institution; in what ways do we invent and install spaces for ourselves, to work collectively, address problems, think? Some examples of spatial production from within institutions could be understood through: student politics, the founding of clubs, discussion evenings, common rooms, unions. In our proposals, space refers to a material as well as a social and mental framework.
Carla Bottiglieri will take a novel by Robert Walser as point of departure to ask the question: “how can be inhabit institutional spaces without becoming subject and object to the power relations they operate by?”. Her entry on “Un-power” addresses possible strategies for relating to power by slipping under it, escaping its call. As a performer, somatic movement educator (BMC) and researcher, she will address this from various angles.
Organized by: Paz Rojo and Manuela Zechner
With: Jan Ritsema (NL/F), Carla Bottiglieri (F)
Held at Performing Arts Forum Reims, F
For more information about staying at PAF, go to www.pa-f.net
Free and open to all
Deadline for registrations (send us an email): 31st October 2008
after talk (new performance)
New performance work together with Ricardo Santana.
We are beginning to work, starting with the well-known concept of an after talk in theatre.
In festivals and venues, after dance performances, there is an after talk in which the artists, with the help of a moderator, explain, share, expose the content and issues, which they were engaged with during the making process of the work just seen. These talks normally work as a reflection and shared dialogue on the process of the performance, which the audience has experienced before. The spectator then has the opportunity to reflect back and get more information on what his/her thoughts or experience was when watching the piece, and the artist has the chance to rearticulate with language the work, behind the production, in proximity with the spectator. An after talk then is, on one hand, a resumé of the artist who articulates the work seen and made with a different language and vocabulary; and on the other hand, a chance where the spectator gets the possibility of reconstruction in and of the imagination and politics engaged in the piece, and the different ways of thinking and decisions taken in the construction of the work. The dialogue breaks the distance and both (spectator-artists) are active agents that remember the who, how and what of the experienced event.
The After Talk we want to produce exists in between being a product and an encounter. Imagine: we present an After Talk as a performance. The performance we are after-talking about, is a the situation of an “after talk”, that questions the what and how of its existence here and now; as two friends that go to festivals, debate, reflect and fictionalise their presence with what “they did and are doing” there.
Our intention is to give to the situation of an After Talk its own investigative character: instead of “explaning” what we do and why we did it, we are interested in “communicating” it by intervening in the very dialogue and in the debate that we propose and therefore produce; intervening in the dialogue in which we participate and relate, and in which we present ourselves to the public.
Showing a past experience by creating another experience.
13th and 14th December. TRY-OUTS Teatro Pradillo. Madrid
Concept: Paz Rojo and Ricardo Santana
Performance: Ricardo Santana, Paz Rojo, Oscar Villegas
Stage design, light design and sound: Oscar Villegas
Produced by LISA
Supported by Residencia de artistas Universidad Alcala de Henares/ Casa Encendida and Teatro Pradillo, Madrid
Financially supported by Fonds voor de Podiumkunst, NL
it’s my ass…(revisited version)
The solo performance premiered in 2001 is revisited and presented in various festivals and venues during 2008 and 2009:
Festival Internacional de las artes, Salamanca, Spain. June’08
Cococa festival Internacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina. October’08
Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo Reina Sofia. Madrid. 28,29 Jan’09. Festival Internacional Escena Contemporanea
Teatro nave de Cambaleo, Aranjuez, Spain, 31st Jan and 1st Feb ‘09. Escena Contemporanea.