Outline

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LODGERS #4
School of Missing Studies Rotterdam 31.10.15–17.01.16 [EN]

PROGRAM

CHAPTER 1 Mapping the terrain: field- and studio work. Ongoing and on view: Dirk van Lieshout; Fucking Good Art (Rob Hamelijnck and Nienke Terpsma); Sol Archer; Common Room

CHAPTER 2
 Uploading the archive: research and examples. December 11, 12, 13, 20

CHAPTER 3 Could the desire for the fully automated movements of goods also be a desire for silence, for the tyranny of a single anecdote? January 4-16, 2016

M HKA and AIR Antwerpen have invited the School of Missing Studies (SMS) to be the fourth guest in the LODGERS programme, occupying the 6th floor of the museum for three months. SMS began in 2003 as an initiative of the artists Bik Van der Pol together with the architects Srdjan Janovics Weiss and Sabine von Fischer. SMS functions as a nomadic, collaborative platform for experimental research of public environments undergoing abrupt transition. Following the observation that singular disciplines frequently fail to discern significant knowledge about uncommon or unprecedented situations, SMS invites participants to develop, discuss and share possible methods to scout for this information, which seems to flow freely in unbound space and through open networks. SMS brings together practitioners with diverse backgrounds, who aspire to find ‘the missing key’ to their mission and are interested in artistic practice as a means for imaginative and productive speculation.

WITH Sol Archer, Liesbeth Bik, Kees Brouwer, Maurits de Bruijn, Ellen C. Feiss, Lars Fischer, Rob Hamelijnck, Christian Hansen, Rachel Himmelfarb, Martin Schepers, Anja Isabel Schneider, Nienke Terpsma, Jos Van Der Pol, Juha van ‘t Zelfde, Jeroen Verbeeck, Huib Haye van der Werf, Kym Ward

LODGERS is developed as a partnership between AIR Antwerpen and M HKA.

CHAPTER 2
 Uploading the archive: research and examples. December 11, 12, 13, 20

Friday December 11. Location: AIR

15.00: Maurits de Bruijn (designer) and Juha van't Zelfde (curator and DJ) present and discusss Shppr, a tool for investigative journalism on maritime open data. Shipping plays a crucial role in the global economy. About 90 % of world trade goes by sea (source: IMO). Despite the enormous impact of the sector on our daily lives, there is virtually no news about it; conventional media pay most attention to incidents (collisions, refugees, pirates, etc.) Shippr attempts to create an entry into this largely invisible territory, by collecting and distributing open data and making them available to third parties for further investigation. One application of this is ‘Foursquare for ships’, a mobile application that converts location data of vessels into check-inns and badges.

16.00: Christian Hansen is a performer and researcher of infrastructual boundaries as sites of spiritual importance. He is concerned with capturing the energies being released on locations where opposing intentions are rubbing against each other. He will talk about his practice.

17.00-19.00: Break

19.00: Jeroen Verbeeck worked as a Chef in different commercial restaurants, as well as in a community project with families in poverty. He studied art history and philosophy, and has published several texts and publications, for example The Politics of the Rear View Figure in the Films of John Akomfrah in Black Camera (2015); Reverse Magellan (2010); Allan Sekula’s Last Slide Sequence in Photoresearcher (together with Hilde Van Gelder (2015). Jeroen will talk abut his current research that focuses on Allan Sekula’s last and unfinished project Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum

19.45: The Forgotten Space (2010) by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch. Screening. The sea is forgotten until disaster strikes. But perhaps the biggest seagoing disaster is the global supply chain, which – maybe in a more fundamental way than financial speculation – leads the world economy to the abyss. The Forgotten Space is seeking to understand and describe the contemporary maritime world in relation to the complex symbolic legacy of the sea. The Forgotten Space is an essayistic, visual documentary about one of the most important processes that affects us today.


Saturday December 12. Location: MUHKA 11.00-18.00 I can only understand what I draw. drawing session Martin Schepers and Dirk van Lieshout In Poetics, Aristotle defines the term ‘temenos’: a world inside of a world. Applied to architecture, this term points towards the strong border between two spheres. For instance: if you enter a temple may have a completely new feeling; there is the world outside the temple and there is the sphere inside the building – ‘temenos’ - a world inside of a world. The harbor is the opposite. It is hybrid and open in its structure. It has no boundaries and no beginning and end, perhaps not even in the vertical direction. During a big wall drawing-session artists Dirk van Lieshout and Martin Schepers will draft the possibilities of a new harbor architecture. Share it with them!

13.30: I can only understand what I draw, talk by Martin Schepers

14.00: De Slimste Haven van de Wereld (2015), a film by Kees Brouwer. Screening, followed by responses and discussion. The port of Rotterdam, a world of ships, containers and hard workers, will in 2030 be a self-thinking transit port for digital communications, chips and sensors. Kees Brouwer describes what happens when the most physical of our worlds becomes an Internet of things.

16.00 performance Common Room What’s the problem? This question is central to how common room works. The question defines a process of searching, experiencing, interacting, and communicating that not only informs how we understand architecture and approach projects but also how we work (together). The problem is that most often, collaboration is used as a synonym for cooperation. Our collaboration is not very cooperative. common room’s process of collaboration is a complex reality, not a romantic notion of “common ground.” This is represented in our projects, and it is part of the process of how we produce. Because in the end the process defines the problem.


Sunday December 13. Location: MUHKA

11.00-18.00: I can only understand what I draw. drawing session Martin Schepers and Dirk van Lieshout

15.00: De Engel van Doel (2006), Tom Fassaert. Screening Sandwiched between the Antwerp container port and a power plant lies the village of Doel, endangered by the megalomaniac expansion of Antwerp harbor. Tom Fassaert investigates how the inhabitants of Doel experience their uncertain future.

Sunday December 20. Harbour tour

10.00-17.00: harbor tour with Wiebe Eekman. Limited seats. Wiebe Eekman follows the port and its developments critically and closely. After his study he was a steel worker and trade unionist and later an environmental coordinator and working at the Safety Department at the refinery harbor. He participated in the trade union struggles. Currently he is a volunteer at the environmental research department of the Belgian PVDA and inspirer of the 11th March Movement. Through an intensive tour of the harbor, he will show all sides, including those that are not visible, those we do not want to see, or those kept secret.


A particular site as a lens for speculation The harbour - a large complex environment with a specific utilitarian infrastructure,
a 24/7 environment where different functions and activities are realised through the dynamism of businesses, organisations, governments. As a living organism, harbours push, pull, consume, transform, create. Intersections, interwoven systems connecting people, machines, information, goods and places, formed and defined by flows, and where they cross, opportunities arise and change. Taking the ‘harbour’ as concept and site of exploration, we will examine, in three different chapters, its role and significance, now and in the future. What possible transformations are just around the corner, and what opportunities will new interlocking systems bring? What perspectives are created by new paradigms? Can we speculate on the implications if Antwerp and Rotterdam would be one major European harbour in 2050? Departing from the importance of strengthen cooperation between different fields, while offering a wide time frame and the potential for engaged commitment, SMS will take shape here as an experimental, collaborative, process-based residency in three chapters, developing perspectives on the concept of ‘harbour’. Seeking to investigate its social, cultural, historical, infrastructural and architectural context, they will work in collaboration with several engaged actors in order to use the space at M HKA as a work-, dialogue-, rehearsal-, and exhibition space, where its working processes will unfold. Come and meet our LODGERS and contribute to their activities. Learn more about their ongoing programme via Facebook (M HKA and Schoolofmissingstudies4lodgers) and Instagram (muhka_museum)