AFFECT presents
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MODUEL I BERLIN FEB 28–JUN 05 2014
MODULE 1 : AGORA COLLECTIVE’S PROGRAM FOR COLLABORATIVE ARTISTIC PRACTICES CAIQUE TIZZI Founded in June 2011, Agora is an independent initiative and project space in Neukölln with the mission to be an ass that allows and supports the organic development of collaborative networks and relational environments. Agora Collective as a self-organised entity has managed to work both as an art collective and an institution – producing and curating artworks and making them public. Embodied in the Agora Collective´s artistic practice is the concern to generate lines of action between private and public spheres, taking into consideration the way art can addreso a broader spectrum within innumerous social agents. Within these three years of activities, our processes have been committed to exploring new ways of socialization, offering alternatives to models of production through community practice and experimentation, activating methodologies of work and collective strategies.
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The idea to structure (start / create) AFFECT, Agora´s Program for Collaborative Artistic Practices, came from the desire to create a platform that would reflect Agora´s relational aspects. From this premise, we observed and compiled our methods of developing projects bringing together the knowledge of peop(who?)le who throughout our trajectory affected Agora´s view. With that in mind, we started to ask ourselves: How can we create a program which allows us to work with social issues, without disconsidering the aesthetics? How to assist the participants in dismantling the notions of the social? How can a group become an entity, one body? A speculative scenario and a methodology was built for AFFECT, fragmenting the program into 5 phases: Contextualizing, Nourishment, Conceptualizing, Materializing and Outcome. Eric Ellingsen, John Holten, Rodrigo Maltez-Novaes, Sarah Lewis, Diego Agulló and Judith Lavagna
Seven artists: Amie Lin, Beth Dillon, Merlin Carter, Michael
teamed up to lead the phases proposed by Agora. These
O´Hanlon, Peter Biggart, Raquel Nava and Tomás Espinosa.
cultural practitioners, all based in Berlin, were chosen both
Stranger to each other, this heterogenous group, bravely
for their relationship with previous works within Agora or
accepted to invest their time to dedicate their practices
for their expertise in working in complexes group dynamics
into a structure of work to be implemented, observed and
such the one developed for AFFECT.
explored for its very first time. The artists, together with their facilitators took part in workshops, curatorial visits, walks, art seeing, talks and public activities. They danced together, shared meals, agreed and disagreed, found consensus on discord to make in the time frame of 12 weeks, Model Behaviours, this collective project presented at Instituto Cervantes Berlin and this publication edited by Broken Dimanche Press.
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Where does Art intersect with the Social? - the question posed by AFFECT worked for this first group almost as an ironic reflection towards how we can work together in today´s context. And we, as proposers, could not be more intrigued to identify that a question like this could become throughout the process almost something new from its embryonic reason to be. Model Behaviours, the outcome of the first AFFECT Module, gives Agora Collective the opportunity to reconsider speculations over practices and to develop other ways to look at our own set of values. Without taking for granted that art continues helping us to see the world differently and this is its critical power.
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CONTEXTUALIZING P.10 AGORA AFFECT MODULES
EXPLORING P.18
MATERIALIZING P.22 NOURISHMENT P.14 OUTCOME P.24
RESIDENT PROFILES P.36
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CONCEPTUALIZING P.20
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RESIDENT PROCESS
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With you we waited without language. We studied the bland corridors and unemployment lines of bureaucratic structures. We observed and were observed. With you we dabbled in the professional: a group of amateurs, open to negotiation. We were a fresh-formed cell, one fluid body squeezing excess liquid from our limbs. We shook collectively in anticipation. With you we made names for ourselves, compiling surveys of sensitive information. We contextualised, legitimised, and decried the gentrified. We followed trajectories of social inquiry. With you we played musical chairs. We performed the quiet rebellion of a seated assemblage. We were sedentary echoes unfolding in stairways, hallways, on the lawn, against trees, behind parked cars. We were silent choreographies of attention and surveillance. With you we sat in the dark with strangers, without a cue. We were denied entrance to Berghain. 12 CONTEXTUALIZING | Facilitated by Diego Agullรณ
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14 CONTEXTUALIZING | Facilitated by Diego Agullรณ
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With you we danced like everybody was watching. We felt charity feelings. We found ways to listen to each other, the other and the other’s other. With you we were revolving dictators. We exercised control. We broke bread, spat rhymes, climbed stairs and scaled the social. We bathed tired feet and gave inanimate objects new rhythms. We offered dreams to the black sheep seance. With you we reflected collectively on the precarious ethics of contemporary social art practices in twenty words, more or less. We were automatic writing machines. We churned out half formed thoughts and gut-felt feelings. We were an empathic civilization in microcosm. We trod gingerly on artistic soil. With you we made do. We were an improvised structure, forming foundations. We were osmotic entities. We let ourselves go.
16 NOURISHMENT | Facilitated by Sarah Lewis
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18 NOURISHMENT | Facilitated by Sarah Lewis
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With you we were architectures of permission. We oriented ourselves towards Africa, one finger pointing homeward. We suspended sausages from fingertips. We moved forwards looking backwards. We shouted laser beams onto concrete facades. We said many things in one breath. With you we rang loud the sound of steel on empty bottles. We sat high above the city and contemplated bodies of water. We conversed in rhythms punctuated by flight path interference. With you we waited three minutes. We fried everything and ate it all.
20 EXPLORING | Facilitated by Eric Ellingsen
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With you we asked ourselves the hard questions. We scrawled new world narratives on hung sheets and propped doors. We comprised and compromised. We sought a soft consensus. With you we mapped common ground. We were one think tank in lock down, searching for something bigger than ourselves. We set selfimposed parameters. We exercised restraint. We drew double-edged swords of the exotic Other. We rejected dead cat didactics. With you we were one big banana. We expanded on strange fruit socials. We pondered the root and the branch. We considered foreign objects. With you we proposed choreographies of non-spaces. We visualized success and failure. We began to feel rather anxious. We were accidental plagiarists
22 CONCEPTUALIZING | Facilitated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes
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WWith you we took action. We were one raging brain-storm. We were an assembled anxiety. We felt the pressure of deadlines. With you we were a collective of individuals heard. We sat in circles, mounting late night campaigns for difficult situations. We were a cross-legged contingent debating possible scenarios. We felt the strain of speculative structures. With you we were zone therapists. We demarcated, divided, gathered and dispersed. We sough a common thread. We forged links and acknowledged difference. We sought an aesthetic of intention. We were asked to explain ourselves. With you we were exhibited behaviours. We were queue management systems. We were reserved seating. We were exchanged cucumbers. We were roaming lecterns. We were empathy exercises. We were souvenir stalls. We were fridge magnets. We were Friedrich the Second. We were mixed messages. We were a nervous system.
26 OUTCOME | Facilitated by Judith Lavgna
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With you we were archivists on a budget. We thought of Lithuania and tight deadlines. We were stock photo scenarios. We were paste-up enthusiasts. We were guerilla marketing material. With you we lamented burnt soup. We dined from flimsy table tops, surrounded by books. We sat in bars and above bars, apologising for nothing in particular. With you we were perfomative documentarians. We scanned scrawled memos for content. We asked questions without answers. We ran late.
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EXHIBITION CONCEPTUALIZATION
Chair formation with reserved signs linked to signage and model audience performance. Used as structuring elements and to represent social hierarchies of access and permission in the exhibition space. The exhibition as assembled anticipation. Providing speculative scenarios of awkward social interactions with signage systems (referencing aesthetic of inflight safety diagrams, incorporate floor tape and limited use of queue poles). The exhibition as anxious encounter. Roving audience, scripted experience. Pre-coached audience members perform the perfect exhibition (with instructional video that shows route of ideal audience and models of engagement). The exhibition as model behaviours. Audience will be asked how comfortable and at ease they feel in the exhibition space. Bar and social comfort scale exercise. Empathic encounters. The exhibition as comfort zone. Ambiguous encounter with object. Pair of still life displays with emotive texts? Audience members engage in one on one interaction. The exhibition as affected objects.
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THE OBJECT OF SHAME
THE OBJECT OF ADORATION
Abuse me with your cruelest insults Tell me I don’t belong here That I’m a disappointment to my friends and family Tell me that you expected more from me That I’ve let everyone down Tell me that I’ll die alone and lonely Tell me I’m scum Tell me I’m a piece of dirt That I’m no good Let me know how you really feel Don’t hold back Scorn me Please I deserve it
Caress me with your kind words Tell me I’m beautiful Tell me you want me Tell me you need me That you’ll never leave me Tell me I’m your best friend That I make your world a better place Tell me that I’m perfect just the way I am Don’t hold back Love me Please I deserve it
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RESIDENT PROFILES
AMIE LIN
www.amielinart.com Amie Lin (b. 1978, Taiwan)– currently in exile from Taiwan after a decade-long affair with New York now resides and works in Berlin. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UCLA as well as a Master’s in Communications Design from Pratt Institute. Amie’s work is an unique hybrid of painting, fiber, wood and metal. Motivated by her respite from an ever-increasing reliance on technology, she consciously sought a direct and primal means of creation that require only her hands, mind and the most basic and primal materials. Her primary medium– raw wool, is one of the most primitive fibers on earth. To her wool symbolizes the scared value of humbleness, purity, mystery and power. Her work conveys the fragility of a single strand of fiber and the incredible strength when they unite.
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BETH DILLON
www.bethdillon.com Beth Dillon (b. 1987, Austrialia) explores negotiations of place and personal identity through costumed performance, video installation and collaborative live art events. Her work examines in-between states, focusing on the expressive capacity of the performing body, the poetics of everyday life, and the role of the artist in contemporary society. Her work is often presented as a collection of behavioural studies, incorporating elements of deadpan humour, wordplay and repetitive gestures. Beth’s has exhibited in Australia and internationally at a range of independent galleries, festivals and contemporary art institutions. She has undertaken artist residencies in Iceland, China, and regional Australia. In 2013, Beth was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts with First Class Honours from the College of Fine Arts, Sydney. She received the university medal for her studies in Sculpture, Performance and Installation. In 2014, Beth is undertaking independent research and skills development in Europe using funding support from the Georgina and Max Melville Memorial Scholarship (COFA).
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MERLIN CARTER
www.raumexperimente.net Merlin Carter (b. New Zealand) is a visual artist who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Merlin began studying art at the Berlin University of Arts in 2009 after a career working with information and language analysis technologies. In 2010 he joined the Institut fßr Raumexperimente (IfREX). IfREX was a 5-year educational experiment that was founded by Olafur Eliasson in April 2009 and ended at the beginning of March 2014. While working in Berlin, Merlin’s practice has focused on the relationship between bodies and technology, and explores that phenomenological questions that have emerged from this complex relationship. To what extent do our tools become extension of our bodies? What kind of interace is the body? How do we change when we traverse the bridges between the physical and the virtual? Merlin uses video, sculpture, and interactive installations to explore these questions and to blur the boundaries between viewer and user.
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MICHAEL JAMES O’HANLON
www.eurekamichael.blogspot.com.au Known as Eureka (b. 1957 Australia), Michael lives and works in Melbourne. His practice of mixed media, photomontage and artistic interventions are influenced by his experience as a social worker combining group facilitation and art making skills. As a queer activist his work pushes boundaries especially with the representation of the male figure in a political and religious context. He studied at Footscray Community Arts Centre and achieving a Certificate in Further Education Art Studies in 2009. Michael also has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Social Work at Melbourne and Auckland Universities and a Masters of Business at Victoria University. He is a professional Member of the National Association of Visual Arts Australia and exhibited in The Convent Gallery Daylesford in 2012.
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PETER BIGGART
www.peterbiggart.com
Peter has been working for the New York based architect Aristone from 2 0 1 2 to 2 0 1 4 . H i s a r t i st i c p ra c t i ce, oriented mostly on paintings and
Peter Biggart (b. 1987, United States)
installations, deals with identity in the
is an American artist and architect who
face of tragedy. He explores the human
currently lives and works in New York.
figure and its place in American society
Peter graduated in Visual Art from the
where feelings frustration and isolation
University of Colorado. In September
are condemned.
2014 he will be attending the Master Architecture Program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles.
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RAQUEL NAVA
www.raquelnava.net Raquel Nava (b. 1981, Brazil) works with a variety of materials and medias. Her recent works explores how the lifecycle of materials and living species changes in relation to each subject’s interaction and to our cultural habits and desires. She has participated in several exhibits since 2004. She also created scenery and video-scenerography for cultural institutions such as SESC and the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Theater.
She received an undergraduate degree in Visual Arts (2007) and a master ’s degree in “Contemporary Poetics” from the U n i ve r s i t y o f B ra s í l i a | U n B ( 2 0 1 2 ) and was also a student at the College of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires | UBA (2005), Argentina. Her works are part of the collections at the Museum of the National Republic in Brasília and at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels.
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TOMAS ESPINOSA
www.raumexperimente.net/de/participant/tomas-espinosa Tomas Espinosa (b. 1985, Colombia) studied Visual Arts with emphasis i n g ra p h i c s fo r f i ve ye a r s at t h e U n i ve r s i d a d J ave r i a n a i n B o g o t á f ro m 2 0 0 2 t o 2 0 0 7. T h i s p e r i o d wa s poignant to Tomas’ artic development as it was the time he begin using white clay– a material that became constantly present in his future work. In 2010, Tomas moved to Berlin and begin Bildende Kunst at the Berlin University of Arts (UdK). From 2011 till 2013 he studied under Olafur Eliasson and participated in the Institüt für Raumexperimente. Presently he lives and works in Berlin and is part of AFFECT– a residency program hosted by Agora Collective.
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