DasArts / Master of Theatre

Block Semester 2009

Learning by Looking
Learning by Living
Learning by Teaching

About this Block
'To be born an artist is both a privilege and a curse. How can it be taught…? It is not in my power or is it my responsibility or am I willing to try the impossible aim of teaching someone to 'become' an artist. However, we can talk about Art Education until the cows come home. It is nice and it can even be funny.' Louise Bourgeois

Each DasArts Block creates an environment of inspiration, challenge, questioning and therefore learning. But how do we provoke, organize and recognize learning? Block Semester 2009 is focussed on the notion of learning within the context of arts education, at a moment when DasArts itself is at the beginning of its existence as an official Master of Theatre programme. Let’s raise our awareness about the process of learning and its strategies.

In Deconstruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father, a compilation of writings and interviews from and with Louise Bourgeois, there is a text which was originally made to accompany a series of etchings. It’s a mantra, written in the first place to comfort her own mind, to keep herself on the right track. In this text she talks to and teaches herself…and offers us some bright and wise words to bear in mind throughout the block:

The View from the Bottom of the Well
‘I learn. I learned, I learned, I learned, I learned, I learned, I learned, you blew it. I learned a lot. I learned something, I did learn. Did you? I learned today, and it made my day. I learned a lesson, I feel better, to learn. I learn, you learn, he learns, you learn, we learn, they learn, we learn together, and we begin to understand each other. Make no demand on me the way I make no demand on you. Let us just learn a little every day, try to. It is so difficult to learn. What keeps us from learning? Be in a learning spirit, do not be afraid to spend time learning. You have lots of time, we have lots of time. If we just learn nothing will go wrong. Just be receptive, just be accepting, just be tolerant, just be self-loving, not self-indulgent, not selfish, but self-respecting, self-forgiving, self-relating, self undemanding, self-repeating, self-unafraid, self-trusting, and learning will be less difficult. Do not pass judgment, wait and see. Give it a chance, try again, so many chances, so much time, so much patience, give yourself a chance as you give them a chance, endless chances, every day is a new chance, tomorrow too a whole lifetime of chances, no reason to despair, no reason to be finding complaining, pushing, wanting, extracting from the others or yourself. The others do not judge you, they do not even know that you are there, no one is against you, do not worry, you are not that compelling. Who are they to judge you? They do not know enough, they are going to learn about you, and so they will begin to understand you. To understand is to forgive - no problem - but you certainly have to learn, to understand and that is truly difficult - whether it is mysterious, complicates, heavy duty, or weird. To learn is difficult, but it is rewarding. Try again, and start again tomorrow and cry if you have to. Learn to learn. Do you like to learn? Are you good at it? Do you get there? Learn for the sake of learning for itself, be crafty at it. Do you have the knack to learn to discover, to uncover, to turn upside-down and side-up again. To deconstruct and reconstruct, to make sense out of the unlikely, learn to answer, to question, to make out the other one for the sake of discovering, not telling anybody that you progressed step by step, from position to position, you put the puzzle together. You learn for yourself not for the others, not to show off, not to put the other down. Learning is your secret, it is all you have. It is the only thing you can call your own, nobody can take it, and remember ignorance is no excuse, you better learn or else.’

We have chosen three different learning strategies and have invited three inspiring curators to design a programme that allows intense involvement and experience:

Learning by Looking, Learning by Living, Learning by Teaching

Learning by Looking
7 September to 30 September
Curator:Dennis Molendijk (NL)

The group of master students will visit all the performances of ‘De Internationale Keuze’ at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg. Curator Dennis Molendijk will focus on different aspects ofperception in reality and in the arts. He has developed a programme of meetings and workshops with a variety of artists, scientists, philosophers, medical professionals, illusionists, and other experts on specific areas of looking, seeing, awareness and interpretation. The objective is to get an in-depth experience of the complexity of our processes of perception, followed by the question: ‘What are the implications for the way we look at theatre?

’Motto: A fact is a fact, but perception is reality’
We live in stories. This is reality. Who we are and how we function are determined not so much by the events that shape us, but by the interpretations we give to these events and the stories we tell about them to others and to ourselves. This perception of reality determines who we are and how we do business, enter into friendships, quarrel, et cetera, et cetera.

Everyone is a master storyteller. Of course, only a few people can really tell a story well; nevertheless, the narrative structure is in the genes of every single human being on earth. This means that we all have the ability to think in cause and effect, to filter information and then select from it based on relevance and usefulness; that we all possess the art of thinking and acting in terms of structures, plot and theme. Stories are not only the reflection of reality –stories create reality.

About Dennis Molendijk
Dennis has worked in the theatre as a dramaturge, producer and director since 1992. For the last ten years, until the end of 2008, he collaborated with writer/director Koos Terpstra as the dramaturge and executive director ofNoord Nederlands Toneel (NNT). Dennis is now owner of a company called CEO (Creative Executive Office). He works on different projects in film and theatre as a writer, producer, director or moderator. Trained as a conflict negotiator, he also works as mediator and coach in and outside the field of the arts.
www.ceo-online.nl
www.deinternationalekeuze.nl

Learning by Living
13 October to 9 November
Curator: Peter Stamer (D)

After having ‘looked at art’ and our way of ‘perceiving it’, we will dive into an experience of the real. With Peter Stamer,the master students move into a contemporary kibbutz, Neot Semadar in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel. The village, which was founded in 1989, is a community of people who try to acknowledge their relationships with each other and with their work. Since organic farming conducted around the village is their main effort, the 200 members of Neot Semadar keep up with a daily work routine. Living there creates a social community which is empowered and facilitated by mutual respect, collective bonds, economic autonomy, self-organization in villages – and athoroughgoing experience of sharing and collaboration. Thus, our trip will focus on physical work in order to create an altered concept of individuality, a different way of living, of seeing oneself in one’s surroundings, which may alter the presence, concept, and composition of the artist’s body, both mind and muscle.

At the end of our working residence at the kibbutz, the group will spend some days in Tel Aviv in order to get in touch with the local arts scene, using the new experience to share it with other artists, interveners, performers in that environment.

About Peter Stamer
Works as free-lance dramaturg, writer, curator, mentor and performer in the field of contemporary performing arts. Coming from the academic field of theatre studies, Stamer has been more and more practically involved in the process of performance making, collaborating with artists such as Claudia Bosse and Philipp Gehmacher. Recently he has developed his own projects, performative installations and socio-economic performances where it always comes down to ‘exploring discursive power within performative setups’. Over the years he has been asked to (co)develop and participate in ‘pedagogical formats’ such as APT Antwerp, Europe in Motion Bucharest or Impulstanz Vienna.
www.neot-semadar.com
www.practice-berlin.de

Learning by Teaching
16 November to 4 December
Curators:Antonia Baehr (D) and Lindy Annis (USA)

‘Learning by Teaching’ will concentrate on the act of creating a transmission of information. Some forms of performance can be very close to teaching. In this case, the theatre becomes a classroom and the audience the pupils, while adding a subject to the educational curriculum – just as when we sat in rows of desks and listened to the teacher bestowing knowledge upon us children who were mute and in the dark.
A stage empowers the performer in a similar way as Mrs. or Mr. So and So who told us to pay attention – there would soon be a test to see if we had successfully absorbed the material. We learned, for better or worse, in small steps or leaps or trips and falls. But it’s time to take the reins and decide what is to be taught and how. Do we try to break down the dichotomy between the naïve audience and the omniscient author? Or do we subvert this constellation to our own means?

The students will be assigned to make their own lesson-performance or performance-lesson and dictate not only its content but also its form and intended audience. The mentors of this session will not assume the role of teacher but rather of moderator and coach. There will, however be visitations, group critiques, and a public showing at the end of the period.

About Antonia Baehr and Lindy Annis

Antonia Baehr is a choreographer / director, performer and filmmaker. Her last performance, Rire, where she executes laughing partitions made for her by friends and family, is an international hit. Antonia Baehr is also known as the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, and the composer Henry Wilt. What characterizes her is a non-disciplinary oeuvre and method of collaboration with different people, using a game structure with switching roles: each person is alternately director / author and performer for the other one. One of the artists she has frequently collaborated with, in different roles, is Lindy Annis.
www.make-up-productions.net/

Lindy Annis studied acting and theatre at New York University (Experimental Theatre Wing) before moving to Berlin. She works as performance artist, theatre author and other related roles. People with whom she has worked include The Wooster Group, Anne Bogart, Xavier Le Roy and Antonia Baehr.

Warburgs Memo shown at Frascati
A recent collaboration of Annis and Baehr is the performance Warburgs Memo, a work about the iconography of passion and the body-archive. Starting with Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne, Annis uses the art historian’s theories and methods to develop her own performative atlas investigating the survival of ancient culture in today’s world. Together with the dramaturg Antonia Baehr and the composer Nicholas Bussmann, she investigates the concept of the body as archive for memories (personal, collective and cultural) and iconic body gestures as the expression thereof.

Warburgs Memo will be shown at Frascati theatre, Amsterdam on 24 November, within the scope of the Learning by Teaching programme.

www.theaterfrascati.nl
www.lindyannis.net

Students in Block Semester 2009
Jaco Bouwer (ZA)
Anton Bulayev (UKR/USA)
Ntando Cele (ZA)
Elina Cerpa (LV)
Gertjan van Gennip (NL)
Steffi Hensel (D)
Maria Kefirova (BG/CAN)
Miguel Angel Melgares (E)
Nir Nadler (IL)
Luca Andrea Stappers (NL)

Petter Alexander Goldstine (N/USA) Final Project
Christian Thompson (AUS) Final Project
Nadia Tsulukidze (GE) Individual Trajectory

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