September

A proposal conceived by the Parisian committee of The Public School for The Public School Paris
RDV 7, 11 and 12 // 18 and 19 // 25 and 26 September at Bétonsalon – centre for art and research

September is a series of talks, workshops, lectures, classes, performances, readings and diverse interventions, whose aim is to think in acts, by combining theory and practice, about the conditions and forms of production of the research in art, about their deployment and about their sharing.

During three successive week-ends, we will launch a Pickpocket Almanack in Paris, we will organize several seminars of The Public School and we will study research projects borrowing tools and methodologies from pedagogy (discursivity, collective experimentation, auto-organization, open-source practices, transmission methods…).

In parallel, artist Carson Salter will invest the physical space of Bétonsalon, installing a workstation for his project The Teachable File in the permanent public Library of bétonsalon, conceived in 2009 by artist Katinka Bock in collaboration
with bookshop castillo/corrales. This will be the first activation of the Bétonsalon’s Library, which will now be officially open.

With:

• Pickpocket Almanack, a project by Joseph del Pesco with Franck Leibovici (artist), Sébastien Pluot (art critic), Vivian Rehberg (art critic), Eric Périer (curious) and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc (artist)
• The Public School and seminars 12 gestures with Renzo Martens, Communism’s afterlives by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina, Performing Memory by Virginie Bobin and Julia Kläring with Franck Leibovici
• The teachable file by Carson Salter
• Activations of discourse in the European dance scene, a proposal by Alice Chauchat
• The Workers Punk Art School Berlin
• A LOUER # 3 by Emilie Parendeau

The Public School is a project to propose seminars for Bétonsalon. The Public School website enables to post a proposal and registrer for others. The Public School Paris committee members choose to organize some seminars.

The Public School was initiated by Telic’s Director, Sean Dockray, in 2007. It operated in Los Angeles for a year before new schools, enacting the same model, were started in Chicago and Philadelphia in 2009. In fall of 2009, Telic and common room received a fellowship from the Van Alen Institute to launch The Public School (for Architecture) New York. At the beginning of 2010, the school moved into 177 Livingston in Brooklyn with Triple Canopy and Light Industry and the "(for Architecture)" was dropped from the name.
Also in the fall of 2009, Telic traveled to Bétonsalon in Paris and Komplot in Brussels to help start new schools there. Since then, The Public School has also popped up in Helsinki (supported by the multipurpose space, Ptarmigan) and San Juan (with Betalocal). The Public School Paris committee members are Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc (artist), Virginie Bobin (free-lance curator), Mélanie Bouteloup (director of Bétonsalon – centre for art and research), Grégory Castéra (codirector of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers), Sean Dockray (founder of The Public School), Nicolas Fourgeaud (art critic), Sandra Terdjman (director of Kadist Art Foundation), Mathilde Villeneuve (co-director at ENSA Paris Cergy).

PROGRAMME

TUESDAY 7 : 12 GESTURES THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
7pm: seminar ‘12 Gestures’ with guest artist Renzo Martens, screening of ‘Episode 3’ (2008) (90 min)
and talk with Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc
In his films, Renzo Martens, raises issues regarding image production and the political and social claims of contemporary art. The films prompt the viewer to think about the construction of a documentary, the role of the filmaker in it, and their responsibility as viewers themselves. For Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, Martens travelled for two years with his video camera in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an area marked by humanitarian disaster. Martens shows how NGOs and Western media delineate an image of this situation. His film confronts the public with the fact that the Africans themselves do not profit from the images that foreign photographers take of them. So what if, the artist was directly teaching the Africans how to use a camera to benefit also from the image of their own poverty ?
Episode III: Enjoy Poverty has been recently presented at the Berlin Biennale, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the New Museum in New York, at Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London...

Renzo Martens was born in 1973 in The Netherlands. He lives and works in Brussels, Amsterdam and Kinshasa.

The 12 Gestures seminar is the result of a discussion between The Public School, which opened at Bétonsalon in September 2009 and a project initiated by the Kadist Art Foundation’s philanthropic and artistic branches bringing together an artist and an NGO. Conceived as a series of interventions programmed over one year, this seminar focuses on artistic practices developed in a close relationship with a context, a community and question what we call “social practice” in the field of art. The seminar will present experiences, which keep questioning the role of the artist, curator or art centre outside of mere exhibition making, when artists work in a collaborative, process-oriented and discursive approach, sometimes borrowing its methodologies from other disciplines. We would rather use the term ’gesture’ than ’action’ since these projects are often modest and very local; they address the complexity of a society taking into account subjectivities and raising political questions, meaning “revealing the presence, behind a given situation, of forces that were hidden until then” (Bruno Latour, "Changer de société, refaire de la sociologie").

SATURDAY 11: LAUNCH OF PICKPOCKET ALMANACK AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
A Paris Wide Compendium, Autumn of the Year 2010
The Pickpocket Almanack is an experimental catalyst for social encounters with knowledge. A temporary faculty of artists, curators, writers and musicians create courses by selecting from public events already scheduled to take place at venues around Paris. Each course takes these pre-existing events (lectures, screenings, workshops) out of their initial context and provides a new narrative. The result is a set of journeys around Parisian cultural life, some unexpected connections, new discoveries, and a variety of perspectives proposed by a diverse group of cultural figures.

6pm – 7pm : talk between Joseph del Pesco (founder of Pickpocket Almanack, San Francisco) and Sean Dockray (founder of The Public School, Los Angeles)

7pm – 8pm : presentation/registrations for Pickpocket Alamanack faculties selected by Franck Leibovici, Sébastien Pluot, Vivian Rehberg, Eric Perier, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc and seminars The Public School proposed by Bétonsalon and Kadist Art Foundation, Virginie Bobin and Julia Kläring, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina

From 8pm: party !

SUNDAY 12: THE TEACHABLE FILE AND PERFORMING MEMORY THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
1pm – 2pm: brunch and presentation of project The teachable file by Carson Salter
The teachable file is a working catalog of alternative art schools and a pre-pedagogical reference on experimental education. The file is actively forming itself through communicative action and engaged research. It is what it is; it will be what it will be. During ’September’, the teachable file will take up residency in the library of Bétonsalon, recording the month’s activities and exploring the holdings of the library. Carson Salter will act as ‘Filer’, generating a network of information that connects the gathered data with his own ongoing research on the topic through various tools and sources, including interested members of the audience.
Carson Salter (b.1984) works in performance and publishing. His artwork and coordinated projects blur the borders between art, research and fiction. Salter’s work has appeared in many shows across the United States, including You have to have not been there... (curated by Salter himself) at the NY Art Book Fair, PS1, New York ; the PROMPT (curated by Michael Portnoy & Sarina Basta), Kunstverien NY with Performa, New York ; [Frieze] Frame (curated by Gintaras Didziapetris), Tulips & Roses at Frieze Fair, London ; Punctuation: four stops, two marks of movement... (curated by Chris Fitzpatrick and Matthiew Post), Right Window, San Francisco ; and at 16 Beaver, Bard College and Light Industry. His book collaboration with Garth Weiser was recently published by Onestar Press. Bétonsalon will host his first residency and show in France – he was invited to be part of We Don’t Record Flowers, said the Geographer, curated by bo-ring, opening October 9, 2010. http://carsonsalter.com/

2pm – 3pm: presentation of The Public School Brussels, Komplot by Sonia Dermience
Created in Brussels in 2002, Komplot is a curatorial collective concerned with nomadic creative practices, trends of specialization, survival architectures and the infiltration of private, public and institutional space. The nomadism of Komplot as a platform of variable composition allows it to explore new terrain in relation to objects, spaces, artists and the public. Komplot investigates the concept of collective authorship. Research on this topic commenced with a seminar (2005) and led to two full length documentary films Sad in Country 1 & 2 (2007/2008), which focuses on Belgian art collectives; both contemporary and historical. This issue was also explored in a series of lectures at Brussels art school La Cambre (2008/2009) and more recently with the film MARCEL that will be released in 2010.

3pm – 5pm: seminar Performing Memory with Franck Leibovici
« performing a document – introduction to sequence 7 of the mini-opera for non musicians."
when wikileaks released 75 000 classified pdf this summer, a public issue instantly rose up : how to harness such a huge amount of documents ? how to manipulate such heterogeneous materials ? what intellectual technologies can we invent in order to seize elements that are presented to us as leading to the truth ? »

franck leibovici (paris). the mini-opera for non musicians, project in 10 sequences, is a tool for the re-description of “low intensity conflicts”. the performances, based on protocols from experimental music, dance, science studies or conversational analysis, do not belong to “living theater”. quelques storyboards (2003), 9+11 (2005), des documents poétiques (2007), portraits chinois (2007)"

Performing Memory is a project by Virginie Bobin and Julia Kläring (bo-ring), which consists in a series of seminars around works and researches that address the issue of the document and its transmission within the practice of performance. Beyond reflections about documentation of performance that have grown parallel to its development since the 70’s, Performing Memory considers performance as a medium for a potential critical history through the use, activation, interpretation and display of (real or fictitious) documents.
The project takes several forms in space and time:
– the website www.bo-ring.net gathers a selection of interviews with artists, choreographers, curators, art historians or critics who address performance practices as an act of critical mediation and or question the active use of document within these practices;
– the seminars allow for various ways of unfolding this research and space and time, through talks, lectures,
performances, screenings and displays of documents, depending on the context. One version of the project will occur on September 17, 2010 at Kunstraum Niederrostereich in Vienna, Austria.
For the specific context of Public School, a monthly program of talks and events featuring artists, dancers, critics, conservators and even graphic designers will approach the issues at core in Performing Memory through the prism of renewed forms of knowledge transmission and research-sharing. Upcoming sessions will feature g.u.i. (graphic and web designers – in November) and the Eco-Musée de la Performance (with Benjamin Seror, artist, and Nicolas Fourgeaud,
critic – in December).

SATURDAY 18: A LOUER # 3 Exhibition open from 9am to 10am, 11am to 12am, 1pm to 2pm, 3pm to 4pm, 5pm to
6pm, 7pm to 8pm.
A LOUER is a mechanism which purpose is to activate programmatic art works. The work, that takes a textual form when it has been created by its author, is considered as a score. Its execution in a material form constitutes the ‘activation’.
The process ends by the production of a documentation.
A LOUER # 3 is a one-day exhibition. The choice of the works and their interpretation depends of this situation. The exhibition consists of intertwined activations that take various durations.
A LOUER is a project imagined by Émilie Parendeau
www.alouer-project.net

SUNDAY 19: ACTIVATIONS OF DISCOURSE IN THE EUROPEAN DANCE SCENE
Program proposed by Alice Chauchat, choreographer and co-director of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers 4 structures for the production and distribution of knowledge in dance, using physical practice as well as publication as tools for the development of a discursive scene

11am – 12am: practical session with Chauchat’s movement practice "collective sensations"
A group practice based on individual sensations and imagination, in which possibilities for the moving body are shared through language rather than sight. No specific experience is necessary; bring comfortable clothes.

12am – 1pm: discussion with Frédéric de Carlo on the collective Praticable
Praticable proposes a specific model of working together between artists in the field of dance and choreography: it is a horizontal work structure, based on the sharing of body practices, which brings together research, learning processes, creation, production and distribution, multiplying circulations between them. This structure is the basis for the creation of performances that are signed by one or more participants of the project. These performances are grounded, in one way or another, in the exploration of body practices to approach representation. Praticable was created in 2005 by Alice
Chauchat, Frédéric de Carlo, Frédéric Gies, Isabelle Schad and Odile Seitz.

2pm – 4pm: introduction to the online platform everybodys (everybodystoolbox.net) by Mette
Ingvartsen, including discursive games and books presentation
The domain everybodystoolbox.net is dedicated to distribution and circulation within the performing arts.
Everybodys is a toolbox and a game creator, a score container, a data-base and a library, a publication house: a site for distribution and for long term investigatory discussions. It is a platform for the development of tools and content, for research and performance, for exchange and desire.
Everybodys is a collective effort to develop the discourses that exist in the performing arts and to create a platform where this information can be accessed by a wider audience than the practitioners it involves.

4pm – 5pm: presentation by Emma Kim Hagdahl on the Swedish performance network Inpex, including the release of Inpex’s latest Swedish Dance History International Performance Exchange (INPEX) is a Sweden based operation working for expanded international exchange in performing arts. INPEX emphasizes the importance of differentiated international networks, in particular knowledge intensive processes, education and peer-to-peer exchange. INPEX works for creators and makers, independent of festivals and venues, in order to strengthen the productive entities in performing. Inpex is a producing agency whose aim is to expand practice and theory of the field.

SATURDAY 25 : THE WORKERS PUNK ART SCHOOL BERLIN
2pm – 4:30pm: screening program and performative reading by the Workers Punk Art School Berlin
Workers Punk Art School is a temporary project. It appropriates its name in appreciation of the Workers Punk University Ljubljana.
The initiative is grounded in current protest movements at the Berlin University of the Arts.
In November 2009, the school started the self-organized seminar „Aesthetics of Resistance“, taking as its point of departure Peter Weiss’ seminal novel by the same name about the relation of politics and art in the 20th century, posing the question of contemporary art education in the context of the "collective pedagogies" proposed by Weiss. The discussion of questions related to educational policy and notions of artistic labor was further pursued in a series of video works that will be screened along with a reading of passages from Peter Weiss’ novel.

SUNDAY 26 : COMMUNISM’S AFTERLIVES THE PUBLIC SCHOOL
2pm – 4:30pm: seminar Communism’s afterlives organised by Elena Sorokina et Nataša Petrešin-
Bachelez. Participants to be confirmed. This seminar will focus on the cinema, notably on several films from the Soviet 60s and their reception in contemporary art projects.
Through a series of polemic dialogues, we would like to trace different generations of intellectuals (artists, curators, philosophers, art historians) from the former East and West of Europe that deal with "shades of red", the afterlives of Communism and its (un) expected turning points in its most recent philosophical and artistic reception following the financial and, more generally, post-Fordist crisis.
After the collapse of the Soviet block, communism as idea, image or problem has been regarded as "outmoded, absurd, deplorable or criminal, depending on the case". Today, it is often presented by the mainstream media as a parenthesis of history, an aberration of the 20th century, as "a completely forgotten word, only to be identified with a lost experience".
Although the communist hypotheses of previous eras may no longer be valid, their histories, narratives and key notions have never ceased to spark attention and inform recent discussions such as the communal versus the common, and material versus immaterial property, to name just a few. Perceived from a greater distance today, communism has reemerged as a topic for investigation in artistic and exhibition production, that reflects it in diverse ways, addressing the relevance of the term today or inviting provocative comparisons with the present.

Elena Sorokina and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez will moderate and discuss several recent projects, focusing on some surprisingly communist episodes in the history of Western modern art.

Elena Sorokina is Paris/Brussels based curator and critic. Her upcoming show is Etats de l’Artifice at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2010. Her recent projects include "Petroliana" at the Moscow Biennial 2007; "Laws of Relativity" at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; "On Traders’ Dilemmas" at YBCA, San Francisco, 2008; “Scènes Centrales" at Tri Postal, Lille, 2009.

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez is a curator and critic based in Paris and Ljubljana. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the EHESS in Paris where she also runs a seminar on contemporary artistic practices with Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Hans Ulrich Obrist. She is also codirector of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers.

Guillaume Désanges will present his project “Les Vigiles, les menteurs, les rêveurs” (now shown at the Centre d’Art le Plateau-FRAC, Ile-de-France, Paris), in which he confronts contemporary ways of witnessing events with a range of historically engaged art practices, such as the works originated within the French socialist realism or the Medvedkine groups’ work.

Guillaume Désanges is a free-lance curator and art critic, co-founder of Work Method, a Paris based agency for artistic projects. Member of the editorial board of Trouble, he collaborates with the magazines Exit Express and Exit Book (Madrid). He coordinated the artistic projects of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (2001-2007). In 2007-2008, he is invited curator at Centre d’Art Contemporain La Tôlerie. In 2009-2011, he is invited curator at centre d’art le Plateau Frac Ile-de-France, Paris, for a 2 years programmation.

Martha Kirsenbaum’s proposes a glimpse upon young polish creators, questioning the presence or absence of a communist heritage in polish emerging artists’ works and their response abroad, particularly in the United States.

Martha Kirszenbaum is the current curator-in-residence at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (Poland). She has previously assisted the chief curator of the Photography Department at Centre Pompidou in Paris, and worked as research assistant at the New Museum in New York. As an independent curator, Martha Kirszenbaum has organized numerous exhibitions, including NineteenEightyFour, recently presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.

The Soviet filmography, literature and certain philosophical schools of the 60-s, reinterpreting the revolutionary genealogy and rereading Marxist theory after Stalinism, will be at the center of Keti Chukhrov’s analysis of the de-alienation and Metanoya dimensions of “the communist” in art.

Keti Chukhrov is an art theorist and philosopher, PhD in comparative literature, post-doctoral fellow of Moscow Philosophy Institute of Academy of Sciences, editor of Logos-Altera Publishers; writer for Moscow Art Magazine; and author of numerous publications in various Russian and foreign editions most recently in the catalogs of the Istanbul Biennial 2009, Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, 2009 and the ongoing Former West project.

This seminar aims at presenting various works that recast ideas related to communism and revisit it as a complex and diverse arena of political and aesthetic attitudes, which varied between nations, communities and historical periods. By no means does the seminar intends to take a nostalgic tour through the past decades, but rather seeks to address the topic through concrete art and exhibition projects realized recently. All of them are trying to deconstruct the idea of monolith, still very present in today’s reception, and to recuperate various episodes, stories and notably, the "communist apocrypha" - texts, music, visual production - which have never been part of the established ideological canon, and whose intellectual patterns shed new light on what the contemporary uses of the notion of communism might be.
Instead of treating communism as pure political abstraction, the projects presented by the seminar deal with concepts, events and/or particular personalities related to communism and its history which have survived the Bildersturm of therecent past and can be artistically reactivated.