HOW TO THINK DISPOSITIFS IN CONTEMPORARY ART? 2010/2011

Reflection on Contemporary Art
Seminar of Contemporary Performing Arts X.
School year: 2010 / 2011
HOW TO THINK DISPOSITIFS IN CONTEMPORARY ART?
Maska and Cankarjev dom
 
We invite you to enrol into the Reflection on Contemporary Art: Seminar of Contemporary Performing Arts, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in the 2010/2011 school year.
The Seminar offers a model of education in which art practice intertwines with theory: it provides an open space for discourses, questions and the views of artists, theoreticians, spectators and followers of contemporary arts practices. We focus on contemporary performing arts and try to place them at the intersection of (contemporary) cultural, social and aesthetical currents, while indirectly enabling the participants to open their critical attention through various artistic and theoretical interventions, to conceive an event to their measure, create fanzines, compendia or search for a completely new and different production unit. The Seminar will be organized as a non-hierarchical educational model with self-education and the collective at the centre, since this is what increases the horizontality of production, the exchange and distribution of knowledge.  
We offer a space for creating a context of hybrid, interdisciplinary knowledge in the field of contemporary culture/art on the topic of the dispositif (curating, production, philosophy, contemporary art theory, examples and practices…).

“Apparatuses [dispositifs] are therefore composed of lines of visibility, utterance, lines of force, lines of subjectivation, lines of cracking, breaking and ruptures that all intertwine and mix together and where some augment the others or elicit others through variations and even mutations of the assemblage.” (Deleuze)
How is this manifested in performances, exhibitions, everyday life? Is it necessary to create a void in the performance in order to trigger the activity of the spectator? What establishes open points, points that offer various possible view(s), entries and interpretations, that is, points that “change” us, and how?
The Seminar wants to present current reflections and art procedures in contemporary performing arts created as a result of the increasingly faster changes in social life. The theory of the dispostif always tries to take into account the mechanisms that establish us and the ones determining our future (so something we are yet to become), it includes a part of history as well as a part of the present.
The participants will be able to gain knowledge through various “didactic” formats, from the traditional ones (lectures, workshops) to the more creative forms (research, group discussions and other forms of work, advising and directing the work processes with the help of experts in the mentioned field). The goal is to create one’s own production unit (the conceptualisation of an event ad libitum, a compendium with selected texts and reflections or fanzines, research report, creation of working tools, guidelines, advice, etc.). 

Guest lecturers and workshop leaders: Rastko Močnik, Vlado Škafar, Gerald Raunig, Janez Janša,, Tim Etchells, Adrian Heathfield, Rabih Mroué, Patrick Primavesi, Tomislav Medak, Bojana Kunst, Alice Chauchat,.. Many other experts may be included according to the wishes and needs of the group. 

If you are interested in learning about contemporary performing arts and discovering the meaning and mechanisms of contemporary art practices as tools of reading and understanding contemporary society and if you would like to delve into the connections between practical and theoretical work, you can enlarge your knowledge or critically reflect upon it within the group and with the help of top Slovenian and foreign experts. The Seminar is also an excellent opportunity to learn about the current goings on in contemporary performing arts, which, as live arts, are always in a race against the time of oblivion.
 
The Seminar is intended for humanities and art students, already established artists and cultural workers as well as all who are driven by curiosity and the desire for research and discovery, for sharing and extending their knowledge.
 
HOW TO ENROLL?
You can enrol by visiting Maska, Metelkova 6, calling 01 431 31 22 or writing to jasmina.zaloznik@maska.si, where you will also receive all additional information.

The enrolment will take place from 1 September until 30 September 2010, each workday between 10 am and 1 pm.

The enrolment fee is EUR 200.00 for first-time students and EUR 160.00 for returning students.
The enrolment fee must be paid in full, at the latest, by 30 September 2010

TIME TABLE 2010/2011