2017 ~ Sunday September 24 in Arnhem: Roaming Assembly#15 ~ ON GUESTING ~ Curated and presented by iLiana Fokianaki
ON GUESTING features discussions, stories, anecdotes and other acts of host/guest interactions with
& curator & presenter iLiana Fokianaki
Perpetual guests: the students of DAI.
In light of DAI’s recent decision to become a roaming school and abandon the restricting and protecting walls of the educational art institution, this Assembly, which is the first of the new academic year of DAI, aims to generate new tropes of performing the role of the guest. It wishes to do so both from the position of guest and that of a host, trying to avoid the often empty and ghost-like cultural interactions that we observe in contemporary art realities. We look into artistic and cultural practices that have made it their signature to work in other places and with others, in order to engage with the concepts of hosting and guesting, as well as the notion of the other within the ambiguous power relations that the roles of both guest/host produce.
What formulates an “in equal terms” experience of guest-host? How does the notion of familiarity affect the dynamics of guest/host? What does in fact translate into proper hospitality? From the mega-exhibition to the short curatorial and artistic research trip, what does it mean to land in an unfamiliar place? How does one approach a new place as a guest, when a cultural worker? Through the perspective of art, how can we enact and perform our practice when we occupy the roles of the guest/host? When does our practice begin or stop being beneficial to others -and should we care? How quickly and easily can we translate others experiences and histories into our own? And in fact can we? On the other hand, do societal ecologies accept art infiltrators easily? And in turn do local art ecologies accept foreign bodies?
With these and many other questions in mind, this assembly will appropriate the space of DAI and the identity of DAI as a host. The guest will perform the host, in an introduction with presentations/conversations with other guests. The format will be informal and will enact hospitality as understood by the guests and the hosts respectively.
PROGRAM Sunday, September 24
13.30 Word of welcome by DAI-director Gabriëlle Schleijpen
13.35 - 14.00 iLiana Fokianaki: The curator as guest, host and at times a ghost – introduction
14.00 - 15.00 Sandi Hilal in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki “Who’s the guest in the living room”
15.30 - 16.00 Matthijs de Bruijne in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki “Artist as guest: Working with and for others”
16.00 - 16.30 Marina Otero: “Bin Laden in the garden and other unwanted guests” and in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki
17.00 - 17.30 Patricia Kaersenhout: “Guess who is coming to dinner too” and in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki
17.30 - 18.00 Angela Dimitrakaki : "The Guest: Property as Ideology"
18.00 - 18.30 DAI students - Notes on a protocol of guesting
Location
Theater aan de Rijn (public entrance is at Bartok Park, next to Feestaardvark) followed by drinks and communal dinner at WALTER books (Looierstraat 43, Arnhem).
About DAI's ROAMING ASSEMBLY
is a recurring public symposium scheduled to take place once a month, functioning as it were as the DAI-week's 'centerfold' event. This state-of-the-art speculative and hybrid program explores specific themes and topics of contemporary relevance to the thinking of art in the world today. It is considered a key part of the DAI's (version of the) Planetary Campus - an 'affective community' (Leela Gandhi) where caring for the earth goes along with the generous sharing of art and research, where complexity can be embraced and intellectual intra-actions are fostered, aiming to endow our praxes, wherever they are operational.
Although closely interlinked with the DAI's curriculum, Roaming Assembly editions are not conceived as plain extensions of the regular DAI classes and seminars, but rather envisioned as sovereign happenings, designed to mobilize our bodies, our intelligences.
Artistic director Roaming Assembly: Gabriëlle Schleijpen
Co-ordination Roaming Assembly: Peter Sattler
Documentation: Silvia Ulloa; see our VIDEO ARCHIVE
Communication design: Lauren Alexander/Foundland, this month the visual is based upon a work by Marina Otero.
If you want to receive our DAI-BULLETIN on a monthly base you are welcome to register here