Sarma presents, in collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods.


Many dance artists and cultural workers today are confronted with the unresolved contradictions in the practices and lives oscillating between nomadism and embedment, national policies and transnational migrations. How to make these contradictions productive is an important question for the reflection upon dance and performance at the moment. The arts world is strongly affected by the consequences of what we call ‘globalisation’. How do artists relate to the overriding imperative of mobility? How do they experience international residencies and production facilities? How do they maintain their artistic autonomy? What is the impact of migration on local artistic communities? Which are the new artistic identities and practices emerging in transnational networks? What about nomadism, belonging, alienation?
Urged by these questions, the platform for dance and performance criticism Sarma (www.sarma.be) set up the project B-Chronicles in collaboration with Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods. Curated by Jeroen Peeters and Myriam Van Imschoot, B-Chronicles encompasses a sociological and artistic research based on interviews with various people of the Brussels dance community, publications in Etcetera, Janus and Sarma, the creation of a community game, lectures, performance and video works. One can follow the different tracks of B-Chronicles on the website www.b-chronicles.be.
Concerned with context, Sarma seeks collaborations with different organisations and places in which this research can be shared, such as Kaaitheater. Responding to the specific context of Brussels, Sarma presents B-Chronicles at Kaaitheaterstudios with a series of interventions that explore the notion of ‘community’.

Credits

Curators: Jeroen Peeters, Myriam Van Imschoot
Coordination: Charlotte Vandevyver
Production: Sarma
Co-production: Damaged Goods, Kaaitheater and Kunst/Werk
With the support of the Flemish Authorities and the Flemish Community Commission.

Programme:

20.30 Introduction by curators Myriam Van Imschoot and Jeroen Peeters


20u40 Eleanor Bauer, Becoming room, Becoming Mac

Eleanor Bauer, member of the B-Chronicles think tank, conducted a series of about fifty interviews with performers, creators, critics, dramaturges, administrators, producers and programmers from the Brussels dance community, pursuing the question what a 'community' actually consists of in times of transnational mobility and new artistic identities. In the lecture-performance Becoming room, Becoming Mac, Bauer contemplates this process and interweaves it with her own story.
After studies at New York's Tisch School of the Arts, the American performer and choreographer Eleanor Bauer moved to Brussels to join the research cycle at P.A.R.T.S. Next to creating her own work, such as the solo ELEANOR!, she is currently collaborating and performing with David Zambrano, Mette Ingvartsen and deufert+plischke.

VIDEO:


21.00 Jorge Leon, Between two chairs

Film maker Jorge Leon, member of the B-Chronicles think tank, presents a video portrait based on an interview with the former dancer Ronald Burchi. After training as a modern dancer in the USA, the American Burchi used to live and work in Europe in the early nineties, didn’t manage to tie work permits to his actual working situation and ended up with an illegal status – a situation which is actually more common in the dance world than we know or want to admit –, to eventually go through a legalisation procedure in Belgium. Between two chairs sheds light on the many realities of the alien resident, making the fragile balance between the artistic visibility of international artists and their social and political rights clear in a striking way. In this work, Jorge Leon continues his artistic research on the format of the video interview as a potential portrait.
Jorge Leon studied film at INSAS in Brussels and has been working as a photographer and film maker with a specific interest in the documentary. He has collaborated with many people in the performing arts field, including Eric Pauwels, Wim Vandekeybus, Thierry De Mey, Michčle Anne De Mey, Olga De Soto, Hervé Robbe, Xavier Lukomski, Meg Stuart and Benoît Lachambre. Since 2003 he creates documentary film work, including de sable et de ciment, and U bent hier/Vous ętes ici/You are here.


Pause

21.45 Delphine Hesters and Dimitry Masyn, PROJECT -- THE GAME

In PROJECT, all the participants are players, developing their own artistic identity in a virtual dance community. Propelled by interaction and participation, the 'community game' simulates the Brussels dance world in a miniature form. In a series of negotiations between dancers and representatives of organisations in the field, a convincing artistic narrative is important, but in the foreground are far and foremost collaboration, production mechanisms, permits, residencies, and networking. The outcome of this simulation oscillates between all too real and unbearably absurd. Mobility and transnationalism, professionalization and technocracy: PROJECT probes reality, embraces experience, but doesn't renounce the intricate logic of the game itself. As such it becomes a basis for research and discussion in itself: which forms of productivity and community are desirable today?
PROJECT is developed by sociologist Delphine Hesters and game designer Dimitry Masyn, in collaboration with Sarma's B-Chronicles think tank. Delphine Hesters studied sociology and cultural management.
As a research fellow of FWO Flanders she is currently preparing a PhD on the second generation of Moroccan immigrants in Brussels at the KULeuven. In PROJECT she elaborates previous research on the careers of dancers in Brussels.
Dimitry Masyn is currently working as an agent for a transnational social service company. In the past he has amongst his activities in film, documentary and theatre, developed the game Majority, based on the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy. Since five years he’s working on Emo-globe, a hyperlinked glossary and map of 456 keywords about feelings.
Inspired by the Brussels dance community, the game PROJECT is presented for the first time in Kaaitheaterstudios. With special thanks to Eleanor Bauer, Jeroen Peeters, Charlotte Vandevyver, Myriam Van Imschoot, all the players, table hosts, volunteers, guinea pigs, advisors, and Kaaitheater. PROJECT lasts approximately 120 minutes, after which an open-ended discussion takes place.

VIDEO:


Media lounge

Throughout the festival Performatik II, Sarma equips a multimedia lounge at the bridge of the Kaaitheaterstudios with various documentation materials for browsing and further research, all related to B-Chronicles. One can find there among others things audiodocumentation, mappings and drawings of the Brussels dance community interview project, audiodocumentation of Alien Resident, community pictures of Cairo and Berlin, publication in Etcetera and Janus, and access to www.b-chronicles.be.