ARTISTIC RESEARCH: FOUR APPROACHES – IV/IV Collaboration, Erogation, Surrogation
http://www.mpa-b.org/
at Holzmarktstr. 25, 10243 Berlin
The ‘Erogate/Surrogate Performance Series’, which premiered last year during MPA-B 2013, is an ongoing experiment where artists are asked to trust other artists to perform their work on their behalf. The protocol is simple: in the months, weeks or days leading up to the performance, ‘erogates’ share their work with their appointed ‘surrogates’ while both sides keep journals of their processes and detailed records of all their negotiations and exchanges.
Although such a curatorial device allows ‘erogates’ to be as open they want to be to having their piece composed, recomposed and/or decomposed by their ‘surrogates’ – who in turn can decide what and how much to offer and risk for what at the end of the day might still be referred to as “somebody else’s work” – the project has revealed the possibility that ‘erogation’ and ‘surrogation’ are not two separate activities or roles, but rather two different stages of all creative processes. ‘Erogacy’ as a starting point (rather than as ‘the origin’) and ‘surrogacy’ as the act that keeps it performing, thus making it anew. Surrogation becomes erogation becomes surrogation becomes erogation…
Using the E/S example along with other MPA projects that encourage us to think about artistic practice as research, the final discussion of the ‘Artistic Research: Four Approaches’ series will center around collaborative practices. Co-labouring on making art, including the support structure that sustains it, is accepted as an integral part of performance. But how it makes it is as key as what it makes. There will be a moderated panel, the discussion will invite an ongoing and engaged participation by all those present, to explore the implications – aesthetic, social, political – of collaborative strategies for how we do research by and with artmaking.
Curated by Ilya Noé. Moderated by Lynette Hunter.
WITH:
Gema Álava
Francesca Romana Ciardi
Nathalie Fari
Camilla Graff Junior
Teena Lange
Joel Verwimp
The discussion will be held in English.
