We begin with the question “In what way does today's performance publish discourse?” and go on to ask: How to be without being? What does one perceive from a piece of performance when one only hears it, without seeing it? Could one ever perceive the space where it is performed and the image it produces? When does the body disappear? Is the voice body?
To answer these and other questions, we have made up a programme, consisting of presentations and two workshops given by Manuel Cirauqui and Peio Aguirre, which will raise theoretical and practical reflections on issues related to these themes.
Information about the call for applications: Una voz sin cuerpo, hacía el amor PDF
5-6-7 October
Spectral Maneuvers on the Radio, Workshop by Manuel Cirauqui
On the trails of the program Thanatophonics, presented at Mugatxoan in February 2012, this workshop will offer a practical and theoretical exploration of radiophony as a field of encounter for subjectivity and its phantoms. Since the times of its creation in the late 19th century, radio has proven to be the scene par excellence of sound disembodiment. The parting of the voice from the body, resonance, the return of the dead, and auditory hallucination are phenomena which radio, like no other medium, has helped to document. The workshop Maniobras Espectrales en la Radio [Spectral Maneuvers on the Radio] will take on three related levels: narration, the construction of sound, and broadcasting. The first session will provide a detailed survey of some of the most eminent cases of phantom appearances on the airwaves, through the history of spirit voices, the investigations of Konstantin Raudive, William Burroughs and Mike Kelley, among others, and the poetics of Jean Cocteau and Ezra Pound. The second and third sessions will be devoted to the fabrication and broadcasting of thanatophonic material by means of various sound production/recording devices, using Mugatxoan's temporary station and its surroundings as a testing field. Beyond the ironic or caricatural replication of certain inexplicable anomalies in sound, the aim of these working days will be to critically map a spectral territory: a space for non visible projection and performance, radio being the theater of a split consciousness haunted by multiple echoes.
http://mikekelley.com/academicut.html
Manuel Cirauqui
Writer and exhibition curator.
He currently works as the Curatorial Fellow for the Dia Art Foundation, New York. Author of numerous radio essays, sound art and experimental music, he is a regular contributor to magazines such as Bomb (USA), Frieze (GB) and 20 / 27 (FR).
8-9-10-11 October
Auto-reflexibilidad y auto-consciencia: hacía el amor, Workshop by Peio Aguirre
Last February’s workshop developed at Mugatxoan based on self-reflexibility and self-awareness, revolved around the position of the speaker in the representation and on the ways in which the subject gains awareness of him/herself starting from the presence or absence of the body, the regime of vision and the otherness of the voice. It also touched on other processes of subjection, such as class awareness and power relations. Different film materials used drew the attention towards some of these questions by creating a situation of alert in the individual and collective being. This workshop is intended to be a continuation or intensification of that experience, while at the same time offering a new opportunity, with an emphasis on the subject as producer; an increase in production capacity should be accompanied by a greater self-awareness. From Walter Benjamin's “author as producer” to the “author as receiver” identified by theorist Kaja Silverman in Jean-Luc Godard’s later work, the whole issue of production runs right through the question of what an author is, how and when this figure appears and what his or her relationship with the production of affection is. At the end of JLG/JLG Autoportrait de decembre (1995) Godard says, almost in conclusion: “I said that I love. That is the promise. Now, I have to sacrifice myself so that through me the word “love” means something, so that love exists on earth”. Taking this statement as a motto, we would like to ask now: how can a creative form arise that signifies love as production? In his essay, Silverman points to a series of transfers between giving and receiving; between becoming the transmitter or choosing to be the receptacle, reflection and at the same time propagator of external stimulus. This workshop will analyse ways of being, positions and modes of life forms derived from a productive position in contemporaneity and assuming our inherent postmodern condition on culture. It is targeted at people performing creative, theoretical and cognitive art practice in any mode or discipline. The workshop will encourage group discussion of these questions starting from working materials such as reading texts, viewing films and debate within the group. The workshop will be both theoretical and practical. In other words, certain guidelines for deliberation will be laid down and participants will be encouraged to participate and contribute to the discussion and the shared knowledge. The workshop will be held over four days in morning and evening sessions.
Peio Aguirre.
Art critic, independent curator and publisher.
Lives and works in Donostia-San Sebastián.
From 2000 to 2005 he was the co-director of D.A.E. Donostiako Arte Ekinbideak. He has curated exhibitions Imágenes del otro lado [Images from the Other Side], CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2007), Arqueologías del futuro [Archaeology of the future], Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2007) and Asier Mendizabal, MACBA., Barcelona (2008). He has published articles and essays in international journals including Afterall, A Prior Magazine, Flash Art, ExitExpress, and e-flux journal among others, and has written numerous monographic texts on contemporary artists. He writes “critique and meta-commentary” in his blog http://peioaguirre.blogspot.com
