Special Program Proposals

PAF is open the whole year. For residencies and formation.

Every now and then PAF organizes also special events, like a winter or summer university, or whatever initiative is proposed by the participants of PAF.

During the special events PAF remains open for individuals or groups who want to work outside the frame of the special event.

PAF Repair Week, 7-14 May 2023

We are happy to invite you to volunteer for the fun, the sweat, the glory, and the bonding that will be:

PAF Repair Week 4!
From May 7th to 14th, 2023

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of Repair Week, it’s the somewhat-annual event when a team of 30-35 volunteers jumps into the many renovation and remodeling projects of PAF.

Repair Week welcomes people of all levels of experience; the sharing of skills and “learn by doing” creates a nice environment for those who are just beginning. The physical labor of renovation can be a very satisfying way of engaging with PAF and gaining a more intimate knowledge of the building and its needs; it’s sure to change your relationship with the place during future stays. Also, remember that working in the kitchen to feed the team is an equally valuable contribution!

In exchange for your efforts, PAF will cover the cost of your stay (nights of 7th-13th) and provide food for 3 collectively cooked meals per day (plus proletariat aperitif of beer and potato chips).

Some projects on the list this year are

Renovation of Kitchen One
Improving bedrooms with new paint and curtains
Preparing the space that will become the Summer Kitchen
Building a mezzanine bed to maximize space in a small room
Repairing the outside surface of the Chapel
Junk-disposal and clearing of spaces, plus a thousand other tasks around the house.

Our projected schedule is

Sunday 7th: arrival and group dinner, work discussion

Monday-Friday: 6 hours of work per day

Saturday 13th: well-earned day of rest, evening bonfire

Sunday 14th: farewell breakfast and departures

Please let us know if you have specific skills or tools you can contribute, then we can incorporate these possibilities into the plan. As usual we would like to send a special call out to people who are skilled bicycle mechanics and would be willing to lead a team and share their knowledge in the eternal battle against PAF bicycle entropy.

PAF Repair Week 4 is sure to be as fun and rewarding as ever, so please register soon with an email to contactpaf@gmail.com. For more details, questions, or suggestions, you can contact Lucas at lucasdanlucas@gmail.com.

We’re all looking forward to it!

Jean-Félix & Lucas

PAF's sister residency MASSIA calls for participation in FO.R.E.ST - Forum for Radical Ecology Studies

FO.R.E.ST - Forum for Radical Ecology Studies
Calling For Participants For The Opening Season
6th March - 17th April 2022
MASSIA, in Estonia.

FO.R.E.ST is an experiment in learning together outside the educational industrial complex, self-organized by an urgent need for socio-environmental transformation. It seeks to expand environmental studies with modes of activism and social practices that acknowledge the capacity of all of us to agitate for transformation with our participation in the world.

What is the politics in the knowledge we develop about co-existence with/in Nature?

How are we to ‘conspire’ – i.e. join forces and act together – to set up an experiment in studying, researching, living and working together in which we consider collaborative survival on a damaged planet?*

There are no lecturers, students, or staff. Study and practice are driven by the participants who come together for 6 weeks at a time (a ‘season’) to study, live, and practice an alternative lifeworld. The participants shape the program centered on several critical concerns and points of inquiry, along the intersections of environmental degradation, colonial and extractive capitalism, sexism, racism, imperialism, more-than-human relationality and the domination of nature.**

FOREST takes place in MASSIA, PAF's sister residency located in a former primary school in the village of Massiaru, which lies at the border between Estonia and Latvia. The environment is ideal for social exploration of its integrated and diverse ecosystem, abundant with forests, bogs, fields and the shores of the Baltic Sea. Adjacent to the house is a garden invested in herbal medicine and engagement with gardening as critical practice***. Thus, the experiment is inextricably entangled with the living surroundings of which it takes place in.

‘Conspiring’ in FO.R.E.ST means living together as a research community that investigates the potentials and pitfalls of production and reproduction on multiple registers: social, environmental, domestic, pedagogic, and ‘professional’. Furthermore, FO.R.E.ST is an invitation to question and reconfigure the ways we come to know, how we embody what we know, how we participate in the world, and what realities we produce and reproduce on a daily basis.

If you want to know more, visit www.forest-forest.org, or read on for details about spring at FO.R.E.ST.

-----------------------------------------------------

For spring 2022 we are looking for 12 participants. The call is both for the upcoming season and possibly an ongoing engagement with FO.R.E.ST.

Who should get in touch?
Anybody interested in expanded and critical understandings of ecology and socio-environmental struggles, who wants to co-cultivate a long-term collective learning situation.

When?
1st season: 6th March - 17th April, 6 weeks
2nd season: 1st July - 12th August, 6 weeks
3rd season: 10th October - 21 November, 6 weeks

And continuing this rhythm going forward.

Cost:
125 euro/week (750 euro/6 weeks) covers accommodation and the presence of Co-conspirators and Complotters, and excludes food (ca. 30 euro/week).

Funding:
Fund-raising is in progress. If you need support in accessing funding for your participation, please get in touch with us. Likewise, if you have ideas or opportunities to support FO.R.E.ST financially, do not hesitate to add your proposals.

How to apply?
Please write an email to info@forest-forest.org and share about yourself, what resonates with you, what you would bring to the situation, and whatever else you feel relevant in the context of FO.R.E.ST. We will organise video calls with people who signal their interest, during which time we can give additional context and get a sense for one another.

Where?
MASSIA, Estonia (www.massia.ee)

Contact:
info@forest-forest.org
www.forest-forest.org
www.facebook.com/ForumForRadicalEcologyStudies

Who we think with in this email:
* Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
** Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology. The Search for a Livable World; TJ Demos, Beyond The World's End. Arts of Living at the Crossing; Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought
*** https://info.criticalgardeningcollective.net

Repair Week 3, 15th - 21st May

Once again you have a chance to join in the fun, the glory, and the bonding that is: PAF Repair Week! Yes, surfing on the good vibes of the two previous events, we are happy to invite you to volunteer for PAF Repair Week 3 from May 15th to May 21st!

This year there will be some simple masonry work of repairing cracks in stone walls, lots of plastering and painting to renovate rooms, plenty of junk-disposal and clearing of spaces, and a thousand other tasks around the house. As usual we would like to send a special call out to people who are skilled bicycle mechanics and would be willing to lead a team and share their knowledge in the eternal battle against PAF bicycle entropy. And remember that working in the kitchen to feed the team is an equally valuable contribution! In exchange for your efforts, PAF will cover the cost of your stay (nights of 15th -21st) and provide food for 3 collectively cooked meals per day (plus proletariat aperitif of beer and potato chips). We learned a valuable lesson at the end of Repair Week 2: people put in so much extra work and developed such close bonds that it felt too abrupt when we all departed on the day after the work was finished, so this year we are introducing a new feature of Repair Week: The Weekend! An additional day and night will now be included to give the Repair Week Hero*ines time to rest and enjoy the satisfaction of their work and new friendships.

The projected schedule is:

Sunday 15th : arrival and group dinner, work discussion

Monday 16th - Friday 20th : 5-6 hours of work per day

Friday Night: well-earned celebration

Saturday 21st : day of rest

Sunday 22nd : farewell breakfast and departures

PAF Repair Week 3 is sure to be as fun and rewarding as ever, so please
register soon with an email to contactpaf@gmail.com.
For more details, questions, or suggestions, you can contact Jean-Félix at sainthuitre@gmail.com

We’re all looking forward to it!

…It is Pathetic. I love it. May 5th - 12th

“In everything I write whether it’s poetry or an essay I assume an audience, that is to say I assume that interaction. It’s not a personal event.”

- June Jordan

“I don’t know why I got so offended”

- Grace Paley

…It is pathetic. I love it. is a meeting for playing with writing as it provokes doubt, offence, secrecy, perversity and defensiveness. It will take place from 5th-12th May 2024, and you are warmly invited to participate.

In Autumn 2023 we initiated the Anonymous Poets Society in collaboration with several groups of PAF attendees. In these meetings, the “poets” submitted their writings anonymously, which were performed live during the gathering, allowing for open and playful criticality and casual experiments with delivery and performance. Many of the submissions were not in fact poems, but polemic, song, essay, instructions for voice… Following on from the generative nature of this format, we will use anonymity as an instrument throughout the meeting.

Anonymity, why?
K: For play with the social weirdness of writing At All, the level of risk, social risk, when trying anything experimental. It’s a way to undermine politeness codes, to play with offence/defence, secrecy.
R: I like what it does to people and their ideas.
L: more about touching than seeing, anonymity to avoid pre-chewed performance, under-selling yourself, not this authorship shit.
R: Cool.
R: Also we should say something about the fact that maybe people know, but they’ll never really know if you don’t want them to.
K: You don’t have to be in allegiance with your writing
L: So no codependency there.

In keeping with this premise, we (Roya, Lumi, Kate) will offer our own days of pathetic interventions for playing with writing as a social (doubtful, secretive, perverse) act, and we also invite attendees to announce their own pathetic interventions ahead of time using this form and the instructions on it. At the beginning of the week, we will host an Anonymous Poets Society session. At the end of the week, we will produce a publication for the meeting with an accompanying printing ‘performance’. In between, there will be other things, such as recitals in the dark, workshops on literary self-defence/offence, ‘recipe’ writing exercises and morning movement sessions. A more detailed day-by-day breakdown will be sent to all participants at least a week before the event begins.

Practical details:

…It is Pathetic. I love it. will take place from 05/05/2024 - 12/05/2024. To come earlier or stay longer is of course possible. The meeting will have a cap of 30 participants so please book early in order to ensure your place.

Reservations:
contactpaf@gmail.com

This year PAF will implement a sliding scale payment system as part of a more extensive effort at making PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can start to address structural asymmetries among PAF users. 18 euros per night is the basic fee; combined with the volunteer efforts of all PAF users, it has enabled PAF, as a project, to stay afloat for the last few years. You can keep paying 18 euro per night if your financial situation is fragile and a higher nightly price would prevent you from coming to PAF. 20 euro is the advised base price per night. 20 - 25 euro or more if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth. PAF will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price to pay by yourself. The membership fee is now 20 euros per year. All contributions above 18 euro per night will go to The Mattress fund.

The price for food per day will be 12 euro, including breakfast, lunch, dinner. If you have any specific dietary requirements, please email patheticpaf@gmail.com

We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).

If you would like to participate but feel you are unable to for financial or other such reasons, please reach out, also to patheticpaf@gmail.com

Access notes:

At the time of writing, more detailed access notes are in the process of being made by a working group at PAF. Until then, we really appreciate you contacting us to ask about any information that is missing in the provisional notes below: patheticpaf@gmail.com

- There is a lift

- There are two bedrooms on the ground floor with toilets, and one with a shower.

- There are bathrooms on the ground floor but there is a step up to them. Please contact us if you would need a ramp to access these.

- None of the toilets are equipped with handrails.

- There is a big variation in mattress quality and light/sound levels in bedrooms. If you have any needs in this area, please get in touch with us so we can discuss options.

- There will be mediation volunteers on site to handle any accessibility/accountability issues that may arise during the course of the meeting.

There is no public transport from St Erme station to Paf, so it is best to get the taxi. It is around 25 minutes to walk, and it is uphill.

The taxi brings you for 6 euros to paf from St Erme station and for 35 euros from Laon. The same price for a 3/4 person taxi as for a 7/8 person one. Before 7h and after 19h and the weekends 7 euro and 42 euros. They only speak french. Call them in advance as they have to come from St. Erme - as they are a small taxi firm it is advisable to call at least a day in advance. Inform them when you have a lot of luggage.

Taxi Leblanc (St Erme) tel +33(0)323226909

https://www.pa-f.net/basics

SPRING MEETING 2021, 28 September – 3 October: Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self

IMPORTANT! If you wrote us an email and your stay hasn't been confirmed via contactpaf@gmail.com, your spot is not reserved and you should contact us ASAP. Since the announcement went out in July 2021, we have had a change of guests (see below).

This gathering, originally planned for SpringMeeting 2020, now takes place in two parts: the first this autumn, and the second in April 2022. In the many months since we began this undertaking, the themes have lost none of their relevance. Can aesthetic practice divest from the self? If so, how? This is an invitation to abandon, mediate, forge and falsify selves.

Today, Mladen Stilinović’s artwork stating, “an artist who cannot speak English is no artist” could just as easily be rephrased as: “an artist who cannot speak about their own work is no artist”. Is there a more exploited genre and pronoun among artists than speaking in first person singular?

For SM 2021 we would like to approach what is singular as already multiple, to reimagine the individual through mediation. We would like to question origin, identity and ownership in the act of directing attention instead to intercesseurs, mediators and intermediaries, to true and falsifying personae and to collective or common agencies.

Against two decisive factors of the art market today – the compulsion to speak of one’s own work, and performance of one’s own brand-name – we would like to inquire into other possible articulations of personhood, authorship, ownership, agency, milieu, transindividuation and production that do not begin with nominal identity, that do not start with or return to “I/Me”.

An example. “Intercesseurs” (mediators) was the word Gilles Deleuze used to portray his collaboration with Félix Guattari:

"Mediators are fundamental. Creation’s all about mediators. Without them nothing happens. They can be people ... but things too, even plants or animals ... Whether they’re real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, you have to form your mediators. It’s a series. If you’re not in some series, even a completely imaginary one, you’re lost. I need my mediators to express myself, and they’d never express themselves without me: you’re always working in a group, even when you seem to be on your own… There’s no truth that doesn’t ‘falsify’ established ideas. To say that ‘truth is created’ implies ... a series of falsifications.”

There are many more terms that could apply apart from intercession: intervention, interlocution, translation, appropriation, forgery, ventriloquy, bastardization, theft. There is an abundance of modes in which artists produce, collaborate, distribute subjectivities and present work. Collectivity or group work might also be an opaque façade that conceals and protects political strategies and undercover operations.

If our point of departure is not the individual but the common, then we must look into what we share at a level prior to or beyond the personal – language, modes of production and cooperation, sensory apparatuses and habits, and history. While we do not want to affirm dehistoricization, we recognize good reasons for its contestation that point to canons and canonization. In a canonical culture relations between artists serve to cement significance. Canonical artists are often those who are centers of influence or those whose networks include other canonical figures. What ways are there to be in dialogue with and through others, which does not further secure the position of the self in the canon?

The problems posed here seem ill-suited to individual inquiry. The world is neither neat nor kind. One’s interiority cannot present an innocent starting point or refuge of the beautiful soul. For SM 2021 we do not want to think only about single author-artists, but also to dedicate time to those who make the work possible but remain in the shadow: performers, assistants, translators, and so on. The author has long been declared dead, but shared authorship remains rare. Theaters, museums and other institutions demand unequivocally delineated individuals who guarantee for their products.

For SM2021, we want to devote time to the dependent, non-sovereign, subjected forms of making art and thought. We are specifically interested in working methods that say no to “working alone”. And we are also interested in artists speaking about the work of others in which they recognize something they themselves could not do. This is not about denying individual responsibility: one’s individual actions matter as they materialize the world. So, we ask: What can we learn from art’s investment in the divestment of the self?

The price is 18€ per night per bed if you stay more than 5 nights, otherwise, it is 20€ per night. Other expenses include a 12€ annual membership and 12€ per day for three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us. We can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).

In order to allow people with little or no resources to attend the meeting (and following similar initiatives currently taking place at PAF), this year we will experiment with a differential pricing or sliding scale. So, we will (un)fix the cost of the whole event to an amount between 172€ and 250€ per person. Even if you can pay 20€ more than the baseline of 172€, it will help someone else. If you would like to participate and you do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.

For these dates PAF will be fully compliant with COVID-19 regulations and operate at a reduced capacity of 50 participants, so book early, we’d like you to be there.

From the organizers,

Bojana Cvejić, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Nikhil Vettukattil, Stefan Govaart

Reservations at: contactpaf@gmail.com

Guests for Part 1:

Jackie Karuti is an artist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her practice employs the process of drawing, video and performance to generate thought. Her work is founded on ideas around knowledge production & accessibility as well as the depths of possibility enabled by radical imagination. Karuti is an alumnus of Àsìko, a roaming Pan African art school established by the late Bisi Silva, designed to redress the frequently outdated or non-existent artistic and curatorial curricula at tertiary institutions across Africa. Karuti was the 2020 recipient of the Henrike Grohs Art Award which will see a publication of her work released in late 2021. Further in 2021 she received the Follow Fluxus-After Fluxus grant for young contemporary artists and will have a solo exhibition later in the year at the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden. Other projects that respond to her practice include In The Case of Books, programming the Out Film Festival-Nairobi and her online workspace, I’ve been working on some MAGIC.

Subversive Film, formed in 2011 and based in Ramallah and Brussels, is a cinema research and production collective that aims to cast new light upon historic works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices and effects in these gestures of redistribution. Their long-term and ongoing projects explore this cine-historic field including digitally reissuing previously-overlooked films, curating rare film screening cycles, subtitling rediscovered films, producing publications, and devising other forms of interventions.

Georgia Sagri (born Athens, 1979) lives and works in Athens and New York. Her practice is influenced by her ongoing engagement in political movements and struggles on issues of autonomy, empowerment and self-organisation. From 1997 to 2001 she was a member of Void Network, a cultural, political and philosophical collective operating in Athens. In 2011 she was one of the main organisers of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York. Since 2013 she has been a member of the assembly of the Embros Theatre Occupation, and in 2014 she initiated Ύλη[matter]HYLE, a semi-public cultural space in the heart of Athens. She is professor of performance at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Guests for Part 2 will be announced in winter 2021

WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 26th 2013 - january 2nd 2014

WINTER UPDATE MEETING
- It's not about me -
26/12/2013-2/1/2014

PAF invites you to the 8th consecutive Winter Update Meeting: “It’s not about me”

Winter Update Meeting is seven days of conversations, sharing of commons, exchange of knowledge and social togetherness, only this time you won’t be talking so much about yourself.

You are invited to present, talk about, show, copy, misunderstand, teach or even fake other people’s work. It could be people or works you know about and you find important or it could be a good excuse to know something/someone you didn’t know before or a way to present others with unknown objects or theories.
Take it as a holiday from self-promotion and a chance to shortly be busy with other people’s work more than your own, as Einstein used to say.

PAF in the winter welcomes a wide variety of Christmas-fugitives who possess all sorts of different knowledge, competences and obscure references that would be a pity not to share around youtube fires on laptop screens.
Having said that, the end of the year always comes with a certain slowness and a need to recharge batteries, so you won’t need to squeeze knowledge out of yourself, rather gently release it while pressing or brushing against each other.

It is in fact up to each and every participant to determine what will happen and PAF’s facilities are there to be activated in all thinkable ways. WUM is also open for collective proposals and activities.

As usually and wonderfully Marcus and Siri will make life better by cooking all those good things and so much, that oh, nobody will suspect you haven’t spent Christmas at home.

You can participate for as many days as you want, reservation is as easy as sending an email with or without a proposal to Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

You can stay longer before and/or after these dates; PAF is open the whole year.

[As food will be served during WUM, self-cooking is not possible. Apart from the price for the room, 15 euro a night, one also pays 17 euro for the food&wine, together 32 euro for a full day. A membership, valuable for one year, is obligatory (12 euro)]
Jan

Practical information.
- you can come as many days as you want in the foreseen period of the Winter Update Meeting or stay longer, before or after.
- participation in the costs: per person 15 euros a night
- food is organised (only during WUM)and obligatory and costs 17 euros a day (tell us when you are a vegetarian or fish-vegetarian)
- total sum per day: either 32 euros per person per day
- reserve by email: janritsema@mac.com
- no application is needed, but make a reservation soon, as the interest seems to be quite big and PAF can only host 50 people
- general information about PAF and how to arrive there under the chapter 'How to get to Paf'.
- from january 2010 we introduced an obligatory membership of the association PAF for everybody who stays at paf, for security reasons, of 12 euro membership for 12 months. This is above the price for the room . Apart from how often one stays at paf one pays only ones per 12 months for the membership.

PAF is a open and relatively free site (and)
PAF is a nomadic space
PAF tries to stay cheap
PAF has almost no staff
(When PAF would have a staff, the prices would be much higher and the highly appreciated autonomy offered to the participants now would be strongly limited. PAF would no longer make a difference but would become a normal well organised artists residency, where space and material belong to the staffs responsability.)

The highly appreciated autonomy can only be maintained when everybody takes part in the every day maintenance organisation.
In other words: -Don’t leave traces and put things back where you found them.
To be more concrete: - clean up the personal and general dirt you and other guests left behind you/them. - do not colonize, space nor information (books, dvd’s etc.),(means do not keep this for yourself, in your room or such) - and keep information, materials, apparatuses and spaces available, organised and moveable.
To say it differently: -Make it possible for others, not by retreating, not by withdrawel, or by being modest, on the contrary, making it possible for others is thought as active participation. Through action one offers and opens spaces in which others can take part. One proposes participation in an open rehearsal, a lecture, a conversation, a film or documentairy showing and/or by cleaning up and maintaning general space.
In other words: one does. This makes that -the doer decides at PAF.

PAF has 3 no's.
-no partners (unless the partner has a project to work on), no animals, no kids. PAF wants to be a production place not a social one.

PAF has 3 principles.
1. Reversibility: The things in PAF ( whether they are objects, subjects or institutions/organisations) are there for you and you are there for the things as well. I.e. PAF or the coffee machine, the other or a corridor is there for you as much as you are there for PAF or the coffee machine, for the other or the corridor.
2. Exchange. Of whatever Knowledge, Machines, Expertise, Spaces, Times, Things
3. Liquidity. You are kindly invited to make fluid what is fixed, whether this concerns your mental (I am like this) or your material property.

To enhance the Taking Care For Yourself And For The Other, we experiment with a self-check-in. This is laid out in the entrance hall. Please respect the free (green) or occupied (red) sign, even when a room seems to be empty. This might have reasons of planning on our side. You find your sheets and towel in the laundry room, please respect orderly piles.
The mutual use of the available studios is discussed and negociated between the colleagues when you are in PAF. The principles and rules are the guidelines for this.

We wish you a fruitful time in PAF.

Jan Ritsema

SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2013, august 5 - august 15

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2013 5/8/2013 – 15/8/2013 | PerformingArtsForum, St. Erme, France www.pa-f.net

The «Universities» at PAF are a project initiated in the year 2005 by a number of artists, theoreticians and practitioners during the initial meeting in PAF. The «Summer University» [SU] in August 2012 is the seventh. The «SummerUniversity» is organized in the building in St Erme.

The main interest of SU13 is to experiment with and to test the practices PAF is developing and will develop in future: areas of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, types of projects, discursive engagement by all interested participants. In a few words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

«University» and participation «University» is the term that replaces «Academy» referring to the Renaissance principle of combining research and education in one location. Secondly, it is called «University» because PAF will be open to all areas of knowledge, even though art is the starting point.
SU11 isn’t an other international summer academy, offering workshops, lectures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. The participants of SU13 are at the same time its organizers, in that they are proposing, organizing, and taking part in different projects and activities proposed by themselves. In contrast to existing academies SU13 isn’t based on the principle of «pay to learn and teach to earn». Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part, no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer. The access to SU12 is open, but more specifically determined by each project/activity. The aim behind the open access and self-organization is to enable parallel heterogeneous research platforms, to experiment with configurations, extensions, transformations, interferences, mergings and forkings of projects/activities.
Preparation & Programme: Everyone is invited to propose the project or activity he/she would like to organize within SU12. The only limit of choice is the capacity of the house.

During the SU13 we have a cook then, and those days we supply the food (obligatory) 3 meals plus coffee/tea and wine, for 17 euro a day.
This is above the room price of 15 euro per night, so 32 euro a day, during SU12.
Before or after the SU period you only pay the 15 euros per night per person when you stay longer than 5 nights. less than 5 nights the price per person is 17 euro.

From January 2010 on we introduce an obligatory membership of the association PAF for everybody who stays at paf, for security reasons, of a 12 euro membership fee for one full year. This is above the price for the room . Apart from how often one stays at paf one pays only ones per 12 months for the membership.

How to become a participant? It’s as easy as sending an email with or without a proposal to Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

PAF is an open and relatively free site (and)
PAF is a nomadic space
PAF tries to stay cheap
PAF has almost no staff
(When PAF would have a staff, the prices would be much higher and the highly appreciated autonomy offered to the participants now would be strongly limited. PAF would no longer make a difference but would become a normal well organised artists residency, where space and material belong to the staffs responsbility.)

The highly appreciated autonomy can only be maintained when everybody takes part in the every day maintenance organisation.
In other words: -Don’t leave traces and put things back where you found them.
To be more concrete: - clean up the personal and general dirt you left behind you. - do not colonize space nor information (books, dvd’s etc.), - and keep information, materials, apparatuses and spaces available and moveable.
To say it differently: Make it possible for others, not by retreating, not by withdrawal, or by being modest, on the contrary, making it possible for others is thought as active participation. Through action one offers and opens spaces in which others can take part. One proposes participation in an open rehearsal, a lecture, a conversation, a film or documentary showing and/or by cleaning up and maintaining general space.
In other words: one does. This makes that the doer decides at PAF.

Winter Update Meeting (WUM) 2023 December 27th - January 3rd: “The Present of PAF”

Already one month before writing this invitation, PAF was fully booked for the period of WUM 2023. We’re genuinely sorry that if you haven’t booked by now, it’s unlikely your booking will make it off the waiting list. We still wanted to send out the invitation to keep you updated and share that the sessions will also be online.

In case you have booked already but will most likely not come, please let us know so we can still try to accommodate as many people as possible to take part in WUM 2023!

The Present. As usual, we will be discussing how PAF is currently running, and will continue to run, as a self-organised space. In slight variation to previous years, these discussions will formally occupy only two afternoons, in order to give back some space to the community, to also exchange amongst ourselves about our work, life, and the global situation we are living in at this moment.

One can also read “Present” as in Presence, since PAF can feel like a different place each time you come, depending on who is present. It’s a place of encounter, where you never know what kind of cross-pollination of ideas, forms and relations might occur within the unexpected influences of different approaches, particularly in an environment that encourages generative differences, where disagreements can lead into entangled explorations rather than defensive entrenchment.

As a verb, and in resonance with the main intention of the Winter Update Meeting, this is a time to present your work, complete or incomplete, scheduled or spontaneously, formally or informally, on (or off) a stage with an audience or just in conversation at the dinner table. What are you currently working on? what have you recently finished? what are you presently curious or concerned about? What are the ideas, tools, and practices that you would like to share with others?

To present your work to others is a generous act, as is the effort of an engaged response; contributing to a rich exchange is to engage in one of the main presents of PAF: generosity. From the collective creation of the event to the cleaning, the cooking, the conversations and the initiatives of WUM, it all requires and makes us practise it every day.

Call For contributions for WUM publication

Some words resist group conversations. And some sentences prefer to be written before they are spoken. The WUM publication will be a parallel room for conversation during WUM. Whether you are on or off ground you are invited to submit a contribution specifically written for WUM on risopaf@gmail.com, “WUM-publication” in the subject line, deadline December 24th.

PAF related PROGRAM

28.12: The SCI General Assembly will happen in PAF and on Zoom from 14-19h. The Zoom link will be sent out to SCI members some days before the GA.

29.12: Presentation and discussion of the continuing PAF self-organisation from 14-19h. Zoom link

30.12: Discussion around PAF orientation and continuity from 14-19h. Zoom link

Practical info

WUM 2023 will take place from 27.12.2023 - 3.1.2024. The price per night is 18€ with a minimum stay of 4 nights. Membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons, valid for one year. To come earlier or stay longer is of course possible.

The kitchen will be run by a team of experienced PAF chefs in collaboration with all of us helping out, from preparing to cleaning. Contribution is 15€ per day, including breakfast, lunch, dinner. If you have a specific diet please let us know here.

Please note that the house will be very full and that it is likely that you will be sharing a room with someone. In case you prefer a certain someone over a random someone, please let us know with whom you’d like to share so we can make it happen in the room plan. If you cannot share a room, please also let us know.

Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

An exchange of knowledge in the SUMMERUNIVERSITY 2011 5-14 of August and AGORA SEMINARS 10-20/8 2011

SUMMERUNIVERSITY (SU) 2011 5-14 of august and Agora Seminars 10-20/8

You are invited to attend this meeting.
You can propose a workshop, reading a book together, viewing films, show or discuss your work in progress or anything else you would exchange, share.
You can also do neither one of them and just attend the activities.

Stay is 14 euros per night (when longer than 5 nights, otherwise 16).
Food (obligatory) 18 euro per full day.
Together 32 euro per day.
You can stay longer or shorter. Food only obligatory during these 9 days.

From january 2010 we also introduce a membership fee, of 12 euros per person, valuable one full year, and every resident has to sign a paper for security and liability reasons.

Send an email (janritsema@mac.com) to reserve. Not so many rooms left.

PAF thanks the Kulturstiftung ALLIANZ (Munich) for their support.

From 10-14 there is some overlap with lectures organised by the Agora Project (subsidised by the ALLIANZ Kulturstiftung).
The Agora Project are performances of Jan Ritsema, like Oidipous, my foot (Kaaitheater, Brussels and PACT-Zollverein, Essen), Shakespeare's As You Like it, a body part (Steirischer Herbst, Graz). The lectures are open for anybody, as long as one commits herself to follow all lectures of one lecturer, no shopping.

Read the announcement for the Agora Seminars of Mårten Spangberg, hereunder.

Jan Ritsema

Agora Seminars, in connection to PAF Summer University 10 - 19 August

A new set of Agora Seminars will take place in connection to PAF Summer University. After a successful spring session it is time to take on new challenges with three fresh kick ass seminar hosts venturing into notions of political activism, upgraded Marxist thinking, biopolitics of war and finally to the cross-roads between the public and institutional.
The set up is simply and the usual 5- 6 hour per day, no images, and for the rest we offer you PAF's all energetic opportunities and self-organized magic. We start up at 15.00 on the 10 August.

10 - 12 August: Nina Power

Nina Power is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Roehampton University, London. In '09 she published One Dimensional Woman opening up for a new discourses around feminism, economy and politics. Her direct and sometimes militant style brings speed to thought closing in on action. Since December '10 she is strongly active in relation to new policies in respect of education in the UK.
Nina Power has been editor of bunches of book and writes for among other publications European Philosophy, atomism, pedagogy, art and politics, and magazines such as New Statesman, New Humanist, Cabinet, Radical Philosophy and The Philosophers' Magazine. Nina Power is fast, forward and no forgiveness.

13 - 15 August: Julian Reid

Julian Reid is professor at University of Lapland, Finland and the author of several books most recently The Liberal Way of War (with Michael Dillon), The Biopolitics of the War on Terror and forthcoming a volume on Deleuze and fascism in relation to securitisation, war and aesthetic. The war-machine is back but in a new costume.
Julian Reid brings Foucault up to speed remixed with Clausewitz on acid hallucinating rocket science over actors network.

17 - 19 August: Simon Sheikh

Simon Sheikh is an independent curator, writer and critic based in Berlin. He has published numerous books with a particular interest in the transformation of institutions since wwII and notions of public space, not rarely connected. His writing on institutional critique and it's gentrification gained great interest from the art-world as well as his more recent writing published by e-flux journal.
His writings can also be found in such periodicals as Afterall, AnArchitectur, Springerin and Texte zur Kunst.

Follow the seminar before and on a distance on agorapaf.wordpress.com

For further information Mårten Spångberg - mgn@martenspangberg.org, Jan Ritsema - janritsema@me.com

One restriction for attending these workshops: To be attended from beginning to end. No shopping.

Besides these organised activities:
You can also give a lecture yourself.
You can also propose a workshop, reading, viewing, work in progress or anything else you would exchange
You can also not do either one of them and just attend the activities.

Stay is 14 euros per night (when longer than 5 nights, otherwise 16).
Food (obligatory) 18 euro per full day (only until the 14th, after this it is voluntary).
Together 32 euro per day.
You can stay longer or shorter.

From january 2010 we also introduce a membership fee, of 12 euros per person, valuable one full year, and every resident has to sign a paper for security and liability reasons.

Send me an email to reserve. Not so many rooms left.

PAF thanks the Kulturstiftung ALLIANZ (Munich), mychoreograph and Choreography As Expended Practice.

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 29/7-3/8 2019 @ PAF

The Sensing Salon expands existing ideas of art by recalling the healing arts; it is a studio for the practice of healing arts. Healing, as much as art, is a praxis. It is something to do and it does something: it restores. In our collaborative work, we explore healing as an art form, a praxis of sensing and making sense that includes studying, thinking, and restoring experiments that reach for the deepest level of our entangled existence.

This will be the third edition at PAF, through its iterations, the Sensing Salon has gathered a momentum and a core group of interested and involved people. This year we would like to experiment with a slightly new format that can be able to deepen the study we have entered collectively while still welcoming new participants. Instead of teaching as many tools as we can in the 4 days, from this year on we would like to share one tool only, every morning for the whole duration of the meeting, while in we will be running experiments of collective studies engaging various tools.

This year we will focus on Astrology. Artists and students of astrology Constantina Zavitsanos & Amalle Dublon will guide us through 4 sessions which will introduce us to their use of astrology as a practice of speculative planning. In the afternoons, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva will propose 4 study group sessions which will engage all the reading and healing tools available in the room to image and discuss political questions.

Provisory schedule:

29 July
Arrival day
21:00 Conversation and Introduction

30 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

31 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

01 August
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

02 August
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

03 August
Departure day

The Sensing Salon will take place at PAF Performing Arts Forum from July 29th to August 3rd 2019. PAF costs 20€ per person per night (or 18€ if you stay more than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be most probably self-organized (ca 10-12€ pp/pd) or if the number of participants requires it, we will arrange a coordinating cook (17€ pp/pd). We also ask an extra fee of 40€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 24/6 - 1/7/2016

For the third edition of Elsewhere & Otherwise we decided to continue along the lines set on the last encounter and further the work on rituals, formalisation, the erotic, magic, and social practice. The collective study we begun with E&O has so far invoked a large and varied set of practitioners and thinkers busy with those matters, especially from queer and politically engaged perspectives. This year we decided to step away from the format of one or two invited guests that guide conversations and activities, and we would rather invite each and every one of the participants to share their thoughts, knowledge and practices.

It is time for a more radical approach in which the knowledge that is already there can take enough time and space to be rehearsed, shared, articulated, transformed or even discarded. As we understand study as something closely related to the practice of care and simply of being together, we are already sending invitations to the participants whose contributions we would really value and to shift from a seminar format to an independent study group.

Participants that have so far confined and topics we want to explore are: different forms of readings (tarot, coffee, poetry, chocolate, astrology, philosophy), spells & magic, writing, anatomical workshops, forest explorations, self-healing, metaformic theory, somatics, philosophical and mathematical analysis of formalisation as a tool for understanding rituals, scientific rituals (for example in physics), DJ'ing and remixing, gut feminism, phytotherapy and pop theory.

We are communicating E&O 2016 ahead of time in order to give everyone enough time and space to think about what they would like to share with the group. Valentina and Daniela are happy to gather all the proposals and arrange possible sequences.

As no fees will be paid we are happy to announce that the price can be lower then in the past years. That is also thanks to some participants who have agreed to ask for grants (and can thus pay more) in order to keep the general price for the 8 days as low as possible.

PAF costs 18€ per person per night plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will either be self-organized (ca 10€ pp/pd) or we will arrange a coordinating cook (17€ pp/pd) depending on the number of participants.

If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) so to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 400€).

If parents with children would like to attend the meeting we will try to make it possible by organizing some form of collective care. Please let us know ahead of time.

The meeting will take place in PAF - PERFORMING ARTS FORUM where everybody will be hosted.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

<<Elsewhere&Otherwise V>> 13-22 July 2018 @ Performing Arts Forum

Tools for Visceral Sensibilities
*>>all bodies welcome<<*

Once a year we live together. For its 5th edition ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE wants to continue to host and nourish the ongoing study and collective sharing around the erotic, poetry, rituals, healing art and activism, that has been growing over the years.

In the past years several conversations and practices raised questions on ways of dealing with trauma and overwhelm. This year we would like to foreground a collective study, questioning and exploration of those complex notions, in their personal as well as systemic dimensions.

Polyvagal Theory questions the parameters that we use to define safety in educational, religious, political and medical institutions. Instead of a structural model of external states, it understands safety as a capacity for visceral sensibility. In this frame, our autonomous physiological states - our deepest feelings and literally our guts - constantly mediate our relationship to ourselves and others. Whenever we feel unsafe, the subtleties of that sensibility becomes less available to us, and the damaging effects of this disconnection are omnipresent, although not evenly distributed across society. Can we develop a readership of our viscera? Is it possible to develop a visceral sensibility to the state of another or others? What are the tools at our disposal? And what are the political implications and speculations that this definition opens up?

These and other questions will be discussed, felt and meditated upon during a daily general meeting with introductions of participants that have experiences and practices to share in these fields.

This year we will circulate and study Polyvagal Theory, TRE (Trauma and Tension Release Exercises), fascia work, lovework and other methods of non-sexual intimacy, brainspotting and blind-spotting, deep listening practices, a fisting workshop, plant intelligence, different philosophical and critical perspectives on xenophobia and violence, plus anything else you might want to add for sharing or experimenting with.

As there will not be any invited speaker and no fees will be paid, we are happy to announce that we can keep the price to the basic costs for stay, food and membership.

PAF costs 18€ per person per night (20€ if less than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be organized with cooking together scores to keep the costs as low as possible (ca 10€ pp/pd).
If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) so to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 350 €).

If parents with children would like to attend the meeting we will try to make it possible by organizing some form of collective care, perhaps gathering money to organise activities for them. Please let us know ahead of time as that requires organisation.

The meeting will take place in PAF - PERFORMING ARTS FORUM where everybody will be hosted. Given the nature of the event we only accept participants who can commit to the entire meeting this year.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

>> Elsewhere&Otherwise IV 23/6-1/7/2017 @ Performing Arts Forum <<

Once a year we live together. All bodies are possible and welcome: for the 4th time ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE makes itself available as an experimental space to practitioners and thinkers who want to take seriously, share and question the erotic capacities of their practice and thinking. The erotic is intended here as the kind of power that circulates amongst bodies and ideas, beneath and against vectors of political oppression and generative of other possible material compositions.

The collective study and care we began around rituals, magic, formalisation, healing, poetry, the erotic and activism has been unfolding and strengthening itself through the years as a form of necessary on-going care. The internet before the internet we invoked in the past edition of E&O, has been established and sustains us - we meet again this year to keep on charging it and ourselves in it. The solidarity we established is not just a grid to fall back onto, or a large “we” of belonging, it is rather an active power we secretly carry inside as we move through the world on our own.

There is a lot to be done, we take the current crises as a clue, a departing point for possible and necessary experiments in the ways we organise our lives together and in the ways we go about knowing.

Programmed yet not filled in, this years edition of E&O will take place from June 23rd to July 1st, 2017. We will circulate and study quantum feminism, more imaginative orgasms, various form of readings (astrology, tarots, chocolate), a shoplifting/con-ing workshop, the making of feminism 101 cards, aphrodisiac cooking workshop, healing herbs, boxing, aggressive snuggling, self-defence techniques, as well as anything else you might want to share or experiment with.

As there will not be any invited speaker and no fees will be paid, we are happy to announce that we can keep the price to the basic costs for stay, food and membership.

If parents with children would like to attend the meeting we will try to make it possible by organizing some form of collective care. Please let us know ahead of time.

The meeting will take place in PAF - PERFORMING ARTS FORUM where everybody will be hosted.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

ASYMMETRY STUDY GROUP – BIWEEKLY ONLINE SESSIONS

August 2, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism (Ariella Aïsha Azoulay)

August 16, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Potential History – Unlearning Imperialism (Ariella Aïsha Azoulay)

August 30, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Blackness, Nonperformativity and Indigenous Thought (Fred Moten, Zoe Todd)

September 13, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Blackness, Nonperformativity and Indigenous Thought (Fred Moten, Zoe Todd)

September 27, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Blackness and Nonperformativity (Fred Moten)

October 11, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Body and Flesh (Hortense Spillers, Combahee River Collective)

October 25, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Down at the Cross (James Baldwin)

November 8, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
What's at Stake?

November 22, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
What's at Stake?

December 06, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
Decolonization and the Case for Reparations (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang)

December 20, 2020 (19-21h CET time):
How to Be Afraid? (mayfield brooks and Mary Pearson)

January 03, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Bronx Gothic (Okwui Okpokwasili)

January 17, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
My Grandmother's Hands (Resmaa Menakem)

January 31, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Racial Capitalism (Cedric Robinson)

February 14, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Racial Capitalism (Cedric Robinson)

February 28, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Embodied Social Justice

March 14, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Embodied Social Justice

March 28, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Unsettling Coloniality (Sylvia Wynter)

April 11, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Unsettling Coloniality (Sylvia Wynter)

April 25, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Unsettling Coloniality (Sylvia Wynter)

May 09, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
The Lived Experience (Frantz Fanon)

May 23, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
The Lived Experience (Frantz Fanon)

June 06, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
The Zone of Nonbeing (Lewis Gordon)

June 20, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Becoming Human (Zakiyyah Iman Jackson)

July 04, 2021 (19-21h CET time):
Becoming Human (Zakiyyah Iman Jackson)

July 11, 2021 (19:30-21:30h CET time):
Becoming Human (Zakiyyah Iman Jackson)
(LAST SESSION BEFORE SUMMER BREAK)

Last year PAF introduced an additional fourth rule: “Mind Asymmetries” which has inaugurated a process of acknowledging and addressing the asymmetries circulating in the space. In order to maintain and open up this process we would like to start an online study group which will be meeting regularly on Sunday evenings (19-21h CET time).

We would like to study texts and initiatives that will help us to analyze the ways in which the colonial, imperialist, and oppressive capitalist system, in which we all operate, reproduces itself within and through PAF. We also would like to invite people who have been doing anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and social justice work and organizing to come and share with us their experience and help us question and think through alternatives for our individual and collective functioning.

We would like to rethink the ways in which life and its reproduction is organized, to think of modes of redistribution and production that would allow us to live otherwise.

This study group will run in parallel with the current experimentation in self-organisation at PAF and is meant to contribute to the unlearning and rethinking of practices and consolidated discourses.

Here is the link to the Zoom meetings:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/415758207

Meeting ID: 415 758 207

For questions or subscriptions to the mailing list of PAF or the Asymmetry Study Group, or to get access to the materials for the sessions, please get in touch with Vanessa at contactpaf@gmail.com.

Please note that the study group is currently pausing until someone feels they can take over the responsibility to keep it running. If you are interested in continuing with this study group and would like to take the lead, please write an email to Vanessa at contactpaf@gmail.com.

Categories for the Hard-Working Non-Mathematician - June 24th - July 1st, 2018 - Night Lessons with Gabriel Catren

In this workshop, we shall propose a philosophically oriented introduction to the basics of the mathematical theory of (higher) categories addressed to persons who do not have a university background in mathematics. Introduced in 1945 by S. Eilenberg and S. Mac Lane and developed by mathematicians like A. Grothendieck and (more recently) J. Lurie among others, the theory of categories can be understood as a general theory of mathematical forms (such as geometric spaces and algebraic structures).
In the theory of categories, we do not describe mathematical forms by their internal composition, but by their place in the network of transformations or deformations that they can undergo. Among the different possible philosophical takes on category theory, we shall focus — but not exclusively — on the radical novelty of category theory with respect to the philosophy of the notions of identity and difference.

The workshop will take place during four days (starting on the evening of Sunday June 24th) separated by three “free” days in which the participants will have the time to work through the new material and read texts that we shall propose.

The workshop will be free (besides the accommodation and meals expenses).

Dates: June 24th (arrival date) – July 1st, 2018.
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint Erme, France
Accommodation: 18€ per night (to PAF) plus a 12€ one-year PAF membership
Teaching fee: None
Make reservations by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com.

Cooking will be collective. To make it possible, we will need at least five people to arrive on the morning of Saturday the 23rd (or earlier) to do all the shopping for the week, as well as to organize the ingredients in storage. Without these volunteers, the workshop cannot run smoothly. The recipes are already set, and the cooking will be handled by the participants, and preferably not by those who arrived early to help prepare.

For questions about the Category Theory week, you can get in touch with Gabriel Catren. For inquiries about Night Lessons generally (if you want to organize one, for example!), email contact@nightlessons.io.

Gabriel Catren is a philosopher and a physicist working at the Institut SPHERE - Sciences, Philosophie, Histoire (Université Paris Diderot – CNRS, Paris). This workshop is part of the pre-launch stage of the Interzonal Laboratory Identities, Forces, Quanta.

Deeply Organized Chaos: Getting into the swing of Simplicity and Complexity | Workshop led by Manuel Eguia | 22-26/06/2020

In this workshop on Chaos theory, we shall invite non-scientists to undertake a whimsical and hopefully pleasant path through the history of physics in the quest for simple laws and structures among the “multiplicity and confusion of things”, in Newton’s words. His law of Universal Gravitation, formulated using simple and elegant mathematical formulae, is perhaps the paradigmatic example of such a successful quest. Yet soon it was apparent that even for the case of only three bodies interacting gravitationally (like for instance the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun) the possible solutions turn out to be multiple and confusing.

At the end of 19th century, studying a simplified version of this problem, the mathematician Henri Poincaré found a solution so complex that in his own words he was “not even attempting to draw”. The new tools developed by Poincaré led to the development of Chaos theory during the last decades of the 20th century, widely popularised by the image of a “flap of butterfly’s wing in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas”. This interest for chaotic and complex behaviours arising from simple rules came along with a process swinging in the opposite direction through the discovery of new simplicities, hidden forms of order, and universal patterns emerging from otherwise disordered systems in different domains of science. Dramatic examples of this swinging between order and chaos can be found in the formation of whirlpools in the atmosphere, flocking in birds, fibrillation in heart attacks and bubbles in financial markets.

In this workshop we shall drive through and over these non-equivalent antagonisms: order/chaos, simplicity/complexity and determinism/chance, with the help of concrete examples, conceptualizations accessible to the non-experts, and also through aesthetic and embodied experiences (explorations with fractals, jam sessions with nonlinear dynamics, and forays into the wilderness of the forests that surround the site of the workshop).

The workshop will take place during three days (starting on June 22 in the morning and ending on June 26 in the afternoon) interspersed by two “free” days in which the participants will have the time to rest and/or work through the new material.

The workshop will be free (besides the accommodation and meals expenses).

Dates: June 22– June 26, 2020.
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint Erme, France
Accommodation: 18€ per night if you stay more than 5 nights, otherwise, it is 20€ per night.
PAF membership: 12€ one-year.
Meal expenses: 15€ per day.
Teaching fee: None

The maximum number of participants is 40 persons. People who attend the whole workshop will have priority. Reservations – by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com– are mandatory. For questions about this Workshop, you can get in touch with Manuel Eguia (eguiamc@gmail.com).

In order to organize the cooking, we shall need at least five volunteers to take care in advance of the shopping and the organization of the ingredients in the storage. Without these volunteers, the workshop cannot run smoothly.

Manuel Eguia is a physicist and an artist, founder of the Acoustic and Sound Perception Lab (LAPSo) at the College of Arts, National University of Quilmes (Argentina). This workshop is part of the L.I.F.E. project conducted at PAF by Gabriel Catren and has received funding from the Laboratoire International Associé (LIA) Identities, Forces, Quanta (CNRS, Laboratoire SPHERE - Sciences, Philosophy, Histoire, UMR 7219).

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 6 | 11-21 July 2019 @ PAF QUEERING TIMES

**ALL BODIES ARE POSSIBLE AND WELCOME**

E&O 6 is on the horizon and with it a whole new set of angles, lenses, challenges, excitement and experiments to continue the conversation around the erotic and all the modes of knowing powered by collective care.

Once a year we live together, this year we want to begin questioning the obvious, the given-for-granted, automated ways in which we come together and share. Especially we would like to pay attention and insist on the connection between the “what” and the “how”, between the content of our meeting and practices and their concrete conditions of possibility, emergence and maintenance.

E&O 6 will be structured spatially rather than temporally, with different stations set up through the building which can in principle run 24/7. There will be a Food/Love/Reproductive Labor Station in the kitchen, a Bitter Bar/Herb Kitchen in the hangar, a Healing/Care Space in the chapel, The Big Outdoors in the garden, a Kids Station/Como Clubinho in the external courtyard, a Time station of 24h for Being Together.

The proposal here is to create a space where each can follow one’s own rhythm and explore things alone and together and in different constellations. Participants this year are encouraged to feel, find and be in to their own rhythm rather than reproducing a “workday”. The central organ of a schedule will be dissolved, to create chaos, slowness and a queering of time together.

Nevertheless, we propose to have a time-based station in the middle of the meeting, a 24h slot of Being Together, in which we commit to be together and where things, practices, thoughts, knowledge and proposals can be shared with the whole group.

The stations can be seen as different parts of an organism that contains all of us and all our activities, rhythms, movements, energies, thoughts and emotions. The different stations enable to look at a certain part of this organism that can have its own temporality and we look forwards to see how these different temporalities will interact with each other.

The Kitchen will also be a station in itself, where proposals, readings and experiments can take place. We will buy food collectively and the only meals that will be organized and coordinated are the dinners which will follow the cooking together scores. During the day, anyone can come and cook from the ingredients which are available. The idea is that people can cook whatever they want and in a quantity that is larger than for themselves but that still feels comfortable and easy to them, so that there is potentially always food on the table.

The Kids station will also be opened for collective childcare and welcomes activities to be organized daily. If you plan to bring kids please let us know in advance so we can organize the best conditions possible given the limitations of the building.

We can foresee exciting as well as challenging elements to this organizational experiment, yet we have nothing to lose and we take this challenge as an opportunity to question some of the very basic modes of production of the meeting, the kind of things that seem so obvious that they become invisible, like our reliance on scheduled time and reproductive labor.

Queering Time invites all the participants to think their practices in relational time and to contribute to this collective care-making where different modes of being and making, pro-actively doing and wandering can easily shift or even collapse into each other.

If you have proposals or ideas or special attraction for any station and you would like to get involved as a care-taker of any of the stations, we will put you in touch with each other in case you want to discuss, imagine or organize something in/as the station. Or you can just think along these lines when preparing something you want to share.

To resume, our proposal is:

Day 1- 5 Stations
Day 6-7 Being Together (24h or more)
Day 8 nothing/blank day - integration time
Day 9 Round up – whatever is needed
Day 10 Cleanup

Elsewhere & Otherwise 6 will take place from July 11-21 at PAF (Performing Arts Forum). PAF costs 18€ per person per night (20€ if less than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be organized with cooking together scores to keep the costs as low as possible (ca 10€ pp/pd). We ask people to commit to the entire meeting; if this is not possible for you please let us know and we can see if we can still make your participation possible.

If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also, we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) so to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 350 € per person).

To reserve please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

Daniela Bershan & Valentina Desideri

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ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 10: PLAYING MULTITUDES guts / metabolising / futures (1-10 July 2023)

******* all bodies possible and welcome *******

once a year we live together…

…and it has been 10 years, wow! A moment, to take a breath, look at our amalgamations, allow ourselves to play with what is here, feel into what the collective mood is, understand the various forms of collaborative powers that have been built, grieve, celebrate and metabolise them into possible futures.

Drawing on our complex and promiscuous experimentations, erotic knowledges, epistemologies, ontologies and intimacies generated over the the past 10 years, PLAYING MULTITUDES proposes that we metabolise and play the multitudes we have generated together to see what futures we might excrete together.

We are metabolising all the time, with our guts, bodies, souls and minds, in our various constellations and dreams, shapes, forms, families, neighbourhoods, groups, collectives. While the social is without doubt an important sphere for us humans, we want to dedicate this issue of E&O to the multitudes of which each and everybody is composed of; through this we hope to radically open and complexify what the social – as being multitudes – is (and can be).

Cross-species metabolisms are very common and vital to every ecosystem. Symbiosis – as the study of the soil and mycology has taught us in recent editions – isn't rare, it's the rule. Symbiotic partnerships are of many kinds: the can’t-live-without-you kind. The harmless kind. The destructive/parasitic kind. As any other form of intimacy they’re not conflict-free, and can and are constantly shifting.

In philosophy multitudes are concepts of populations that have not entered into a social contract with a sovereign political body, which makes them feared by reigning powers and a potent source for the transformative collective politics we are aspiring to at ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE.

At this moment in time our ecologies lie gutted. We live in constant negotiation of a present full of pathologies and crises (ecological, political, affective and health). There are no techno- fixes, solutions, or promises to "become whole". Conventional forms of amelioration, or repair at best, patch up wounds temporarily, before we once again understand that we cannot detach cure from harm. Delusions of individuality constantly manifest and re-enforce harmful and extractive divisions. So what can we do?

Playing is apparently purposeless, "unproductive," voluntary, fun and attractive. We lose a sense of time whilst diminishing our consciousness of self. Playing has improvisational potential, we desire to keep doing it, and the pleasure of its experience drives the desire. We find ways to keep it going… and when it is over, we want to do it again. Pleasure, Play and the Erotic are and always were a fundamental component of ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE.

So, can we take this moment to look at the various multitudes we are composed of together and play with them? Specifically our gut biome as the guardian of our immune system, our hormonal cycles, our moods, our mental and physical health and it's direct relationship to other biomes like i.e. the soil biome? Can we look at our ingestions and excrements and playfully examine everything that happens in between?

What have we accomplished and where are we reproducing harm? What kind of metabolising and composting practices can we build on, (re-)invent, remix and dance with? What can choreographies of multitudes – like our gut-biome – teach us on how to get out of our individual subject-based practices in favour of putting our love and energy into a mutual and interdependent flourishing of multitudes? Play is deep medicine. Shit is (or at least can be) a golden web of resources. Metabolising is what makes it possible.

Over the past 10 years we have had multiple lenses to look at the present and propose – in an experimental and playful manner – practices and resources to do otherwise: The Erotic, Ritual, Magic, Sexuality, Trauma-work, Queering Time, Conviviality, Relationalities, Soil, Mycology, Poetry, have been some of the modalities allowing us to encounter each other and play on different levels.

Internal metabolising and the future of E&O

A 10 year cycle is coming to an end with this upcoming meeting of Elsewhere & Otherwise, which is also the possibility for new beginnings. The way E&O has been organised up to the present* will change and different people are to continue the organisation of E&O. So - unlike in other editions of E&O - there is a concrete task at hand.

This was already announced during the last edition and - Zoom meetings being difficult, as letting go and transforming from an abstract distance is - we have decided to dedicate propper in-person time to the internal metabolising process of E&O during our time of living together. We will communicate the time-slots for this internal metabolising of E&O closer to the meeting and it is open for everyone to join.

Whilst it is our desire that metabolising will happen on many scales and in many shapes and forms, let's also be explicit: we have 10 days where we can figure out the future modalities of E&O together, where we can play and re-imagine a new constellation and proposal and it is our aim to facilitate this in the most inclusive way possible.

*Dani is stopping the main-organisation and -coordination of E&O, as has Valentina already a few years ago. And whilst so many constant and changing humans have carried E&O with their love and dedication over the years, a certain type of organisational mode is coming to an end, so it is time for a fresh cycle to begin.

Your contribution to PLAYING MULTITUDES

As always E&O is a platform for sharing your practices and proposals. This year we need help with the tasks at hand.

You are invited to share your projects, research, games, thoughts and fantasies (also in progress). Please email these to Roni ronronch@gmail.com, Dani daniela.bershan@gmail.com & Red redtremmel@gmail.com.

Invited Guests

As last year there will be some invited guests to guide some of the collective study sessions. We will communicate more details on the program closer to the date.

-= Practical Infos

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 10 - PLAYING MULTITUDES will take place from 1-10 of July, 2023 at Performing Arts Forum in St Erme, France.

As one of our intimacy practises, we ask attendants to commit for the full 10 days of our studying and being together. Using a sliding scale, the 10-day meeting including food, materials and accommodation costs between 350 - 500 EUR per person.

Below is the cost of living together for one individual--food, accommodations and supplies.

35 EUR = Cost per day

14 EUR = breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee

18 EUR = accommodations

3 EUR = other supplies for study, medicine making, etc.

However, if possible, we ask you to pay anywhere from 1-15 EUR extra per day to help someone else attend. We would like to make E&O accessible to those who cannot afford to cover the costs listed above. This can be made possible if those that have access to more, pay more. Paying 36-50 EUR will make it possible for others. Keep in mind that the evaluation for the sliding scale is not how much money you have, but how much money you have access to. Even if you can pay 10 EUR more, it will help someone else to attend. Paying more than 50 Euros a day is also possible!

If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also, in keeping with the intention above, we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 450 - 500 € per person).

If you would like to come and you don't have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.

For parents and primary caregivers who consider coming with their children please carefully read the info below.

To reserve please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

PAF asks all event participants to consider the least environmentally harmful means of transport available in coming here. Thank you for your collaboration.

For any other question/doubt/idea/proposal, please email:

Roni ronronch@gmail.com, Dani daniela.bershan@gmail.com or Red redtremmel@gmail.com

We are excited to see you soon

With love

Dani, Red, Roni

Considerations for parents and caregivers before attending ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE with kid(s)

It is important for us to include the young and activities for and with them into ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE and it is important to us to find collective, integrative ways of doing so. Over the years, in an experimental way, we have taken baby steps into this direction and we are far from "being there" and at the same time happy that it is now possible. However, to avoid frustrations we think it is useful that you know what you sign up for, namely an experiment, NOT an institutionalised day care. PAF is - in accordance with security norms in most European homes and public spaces - not a child-safe building. The CLUBINHO - will have to be organised by interested participants, parents and caregivers - so not by "trained professionals.“ This is to say that kids at E&O are part of a relational system and experiment of self-organisation that needs to be and is in constant negotiation. Please email us if you want to come with kids and/or are interested in organising some activities for the CLUBINHO.

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE is - next to many other things - also an intense and challenging space, and it’s not uncommon even for grown-ups to have a crisis moment at some point during the meeting. Crisis is often a moment of transformation so we don't avoid it but embrace it as part of the process and try to provide spaces and tools to hold it collectively. As a parent or primary care-giver, especially if you come as a single parentthis can be extra challenging as your kid(s) will relentlessly follow their own needs and rhythm while you and them are confronted with a whole new set-up that you will (also with help) only partially be able to immerse yourself into. We recommend that you try to build up an additional support system for you and your kid(s) before hand. For example ask one or two friends that are coming with you to split the time of care-giving for 24h each, so every other day or third day you can have a "day/night off". If you come with 2/3 parents/caregiver this is a system that seems to work quite well for some; If you plan to come alone with your kid(s) and don't know anyone at E&O let us know in advance so we can try to put you in touch with some people before hand; In the evenings a "rotational child-checking system" works very well; You organise 6 people that check the rooms once an hour each (10 past, 20 past, 30 past, etc.). Like this you only have to check on your kid once an hour and know that they are checked on every 10 minutes by someone.

Also understand that you are part of shaping the conditions in which we are living together also with the kids. If something does not work for you then voice it and take the initiative to change it and/or find people who help you change it. This shall not sound like you are alone or it is all up to you; But just be aware of what we are trying to do together is challenging and needs extra care and energy and pro-activity and the joy and love to experiment with the complex parameters we are dealing with collectively.

Lastly we need ALL custody holders to sign a legal disclaimer beforehand, that we will send you as soon as you reserve. It is not enough for one custody holder to sign this. All caregivers with legal custody MUST sign this beforehand.

We hope this does not sound off-putting. We are looking forward to welcome you and your kid(s) as part of the collective study at E&O. We just want to make sure you manage your expectations and prepare your situation as well as possible before hand to avoid frustration and overwhelm. Please email daniela.bershan@gmail.com if you have any more questions or want to be put in touch with some parents and care-givers who have agreed to share their experiences and observations of the last year(s).

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 11 Liquid solidarities : the magnetics of Grief, Erosion & Courage (July 2nd-12th 2024)

all bodies possible ~ all bodies welcome

Once a year we live together. In times characterised by profound and far-reaching forms of grief and disconnection—times of genocides and ecocides, extractivism, exploitation, chronic psychological and physical burn-outs and a lot of other normalised crises— we want to look at how to organise in solidarity without burning our energies in (proxy-)wars, unprocessed feelings, desensitisation, and loss of spirit.

We might describe ours as a time of erosion. When we think of erosion, we often centre the solid form that is eroded away by a liquid—the erosion of coasts, rock, soil. The solid is what attracts our attention; the solid is magnetic. But what happens when the polarity shifts and the liquid becomes the protagonist of the story? Liquid as magnetic. The cycles of rain carving a river, the purification heralded by a flood, the oceans that contain lost archives. Here is a different story about erosion: One evening in summer 1982, the poets Muin Bseiso and Mahmoud Darwish wrote a poem together; the historian Esmat Elhalaby translates one verse from their collective voice as “our history is rain, eroding stone.” Resistance, the poets suggest, is a slow, long, and collaborative process: single droplets that, through collective work, produce social change. Quoting Bseiso and Darwish forty-some years later, we can see both the slowness of social change and its impact. During the annual cycle of E&O, who is our “we”? Which histories are “ours”? And which figurations can we use to metabolise and catalyse a resistance that echoes and expands on ongoing histories?*

Despite our grief and disconnection, collective practices have the capacity to draw us towards solidarity. At LIQUID SOLIDARITIES, we invite you to take part in a collective phase change back and forth between liquid/collective and solid/individual states, between water and rock. Rather than forwarding a single ideological perspective, E&O invites play between that which attracts and repels, that which exhausts and replenishes. Past practices have taken up experimentation with promiscuous modes of togetherness remixing different ontologies and epistemologies, disciplines and rhythms, modes of knowing, living and being through an ever changing body of collective study. This has woven a web of arteries, patterns and relationships that are echoed on multiple layers and levels and reflected by the times, bodies and spaces we live with. LIQUID SOLIDARITIES seeks to pool and redistribute the knowledges, conversations and practices that resonate with the slowness of change and the erotics of grief alongside endless cycles of flow, growth and collapse.

Over the past decade, reproductive and emotional labour have been the lifeblood and heartbeat of E&O. As the event’s organisation moves this year toward a collective form, we invite participants to remain intentional about the balance of that labour—turning it into a sustainable and porous site. This means that we collectively take responsibility for the ecosystem of E&O, which is embedded in the larger ecosystem of PAF, which is embedded into the larger ecosystem of the village, and so forth. As this relationship is fragile we will formalise rotating roles during the event taking responsibility for noise, general cleaning and care outside the already collectivised cooking, shopping and cleaning centred around the kitchen.

If labour has been the lifeblood of E&O, pleasure, play, and curiosity have been the currents running through its nervous system, its myofascial networks and its fascia. Curiosity is a fundamentally different state than fight-flight-freeze-fawn, but its possibility requires collective participation in practices of co-regulation.

⁂

In loving memory of Xenia Taniko Dwertmann

⁂

Your presence at E&O 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES:

a practice in curiosity & solidarity

all bodies possible ~ all bodies welcome

In the spirit of solidarity and curiosity, we invite participants—new and old—to engage in a brief practice of somatic and interpersonal attunement.

To begin, consider the phrase “all bodies welcome” and pose to yourself the following questions:

How does it feel to read the phrase “all bodies welcome”? What is your narrative of “all bodies”? What forms of oppression does “all bodies” expose? What forms of grief does the inclusion of all bodies activate? Without the invitation to “all bodies,” who might otherwise be excluded or decentered?

If your body is often excluded from the usual narrative of bodies, how would it feel to rewrite that narrative as your own? What might you need from a collective in order for your own body to feel welcome—emotionally, energetically, and practically?

If your body is often included in the usual narrative, how would it feel to listen to a different one? How might you participate in a space where belonging extends beyond the boundaries of your own body, of bodies like your body? How might listening become a mode of resisting oppression?

When a space is not safe for “all bodies,” what forms of presence and what practices might make it safer for you and for others?

To close, imagine the boundary between your body and the collective body becoming more porous, then less porous, then finding an equilibrium.

This score shows that the potential of “all bodies are possible and welcome” relies on a continuous practice in flow that we can continue to explore collectively.

⁂

Your contribution to E&O 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES

As always E&O is a platform for collective study and for sharing your practices and proposals. You are invited to share your projects, research, games, (activist, artistic, erotic) practices, strategies and fantasies (seeds or in progress). Please email these to daniela.bershan@gmail.com and tof@contrepied.de so we can weave them into the program.

⁂

PRACTICAL INFO

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 11 - LIQUID SOLIDARITIES will take place 2–12 July 2024 at Performing Arts Forum in St Erme, France.

As one of our intimacy practices, we ask participants to commit for the full 10 days of studying and being together. The 10-day meeting costs 380€–500€ per person, to be calculated using a sliding scale. This cost includes accommodation, membership, food, and materials. Please see details below.

PAF/E&O asks all event participants to consider the least environmentally harmful means of transport available in coming here. Thank you for your consideration.

Accommodation & Membership

Following the practice of E&O, PAF has implemented a sliding scale payment system as part of a more extensive effort of making PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can continue to address structural asymmetries among E&Oers as well as amongst other PAF users:

18€ per night is the basic fee; combined with the volunteer efforts of all PAF users, it has enabled PAF, as a project, to stay afloat for the last few years. You can keep paying 18 euro per night if your financial situation is fragile and a higher nightly price would prevent you from coming to PAF.

20€ per night is the advised base price.

22–25€ or more per night if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth.

You are of course always invited to pay more if you can.

PAF / E&O will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price you pay by yourself.

In addition to the nightly fee is a 20€ annual membership fee.

Accessibility

PAF is in a process of improving overall accessibility. In terms of mobility, kitchens, workspaces, and a couple of bedrooms with bathrooms are available on the ground floor; we can provide pictures and measurements if needed. With any access needs and questions around accessibility of the event and the building, please be in touch here

Food & Materials

15€ per day covers three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us.

There is also a material cost of 30 € p/P for the entire meeting.

Payment, Mutual Aid & Grants

We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along. There is an ATM in the village.

All contributions above 18€ per night will go to The Mattress Fund that helps PAF to host users who are precarized by neoliberal regimes of racial colonial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.

If you would like to come and you don't have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters. Also, in keeping the intention above, we would appreciate it very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation (according to the kind of application you are able to submit) to help others in different financial conditions to also participate (suggested: 450–500€ per person).

In summary, the total cost for the 10-day meeting varies from 380–500€ per person. Paying more than 500€ is of course possible.

Booking

To make a reservation, write to contactpaf@gmail.com.

You are also welcome to mention whether you identify as BIPOC and/or Trans when writing in so that we can do our best to prioritise your booking.

E&O and PAF get quickly full these days, book early, and let us know who you want to share a room with.

For parents and primary caregivers who consider coming with their children please email to ktrn.jburch@gmail.com so we can send you some additional info.

⁂

For any other questions/doubts/ideas/proposals, please email us.

We are excited to see you soon.

With love,

the collective organising team of E&O 11

*We write this as Pluto enters the air sign Aquarius. Aquarius is air's most concentric movement and air relates, communicates. What is a plutonic relationship? Maybe a bond exposing raw non-duality, both solid and liquid, a bond embodied in boundaries? Pluto transforms, which means it’s both creative and destructive. This transit reminds of the generative nature of refusal and abolition. Refusal: "rejection of the status quo as livable, and the creation of possibilities in the face of negation" (Tina Campt). Abolition: "a dream toward futurity vested in insurgent, counter-Civilizational histories — genealogies of collective genius that perform liberation under conditions of duress" (Dylan Rodriguez).

Hacking and Philosophy at Pa-f | Oct 31st to Nov 4th 2019

Diffracting + Decentralisation: exploring collective asymmetry
Hacking and Philosophy at Pa-f

Oct 31st to Nov 4th 2019 in Saint Erme, France

T/H\X
https://thx.pa-f.org/

Come for 5 days of informing experience from/towards theory and combining desires into action. Through conversation, study groups, participatory workshops and diffractive readings we will address the implications of technology in our diverse collective endeavours inclusive of feminist and intersectional concerns:

- self-organisation ( agency of resistance networks - from autonomy to stigmergy )
- infrastructure ( decentralisation in the context of complex production chains from conception to disposal, through slavery and ecocide )
- solidarity ( freedom as responsibility )

Event open to all, we expect around (42 - 101) participants in the limit of available space.
Price: one-time PAF annual registration of 12€ (if you're not already a member) + 35€ per day including lodging, food and beverages.
(PAF is not sponsored or subsidised. PAF is paid for through the residency and membership fees of the about 1100 residents that pass by in a year)

Reservation: thx@pa-f.org

Call for workshops, activities to be announced.
ACTIVE PROPOSITIONS FROM:

* HCK - Ksenia Ermoshina - http://cis.cnrs.fr/en.html // https://delta.chat/en/
* PHI - Ludovic Duhem - https://www.ludovicduhem.com/bio
* PHI - Luciana Parisi - https://monoskop.org/Luciana_Parisi // https://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/l-parisi/
* HCK - Eliot Berriot - https://eliotberriot.com/ // https://funkwhale.audio/
* PXS - petites singularités - https://3ts.lesoiseaux.io/
* HCK - Stephanie Wuschitz - //

TOPICS / WORKSHOPS

Self-organized during the event.

FORMAT

Invited speakers would prepare among themselves before the event (during Summer) for a 4 hour conversation among themselves, on the first morning of the event, that would give the beat of the meeting. Then we would work with smaller groups where the invited speakers would 'float' from one group to the next, gaining transversal insight that could be used to steer the conversation towards some individuating goal.

MISC

- Chat: https://matrix.to/#/#thx-welcome:pa-f.org
- Forum: https://ps.zoethical.org/c/cooperation/paf (or email paf@zoethical.com)
- CfP: https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/THX

Hot Identities and Vicious Abstractions in the (Homotopic) Foundations of Mathematics 21-29 October 2023

Workshop piloted by Gabriel Catren in the framework of the L.I.F.E. Project

“[…] as one gathers one of those magical, closed water lilies, which spring up all of a sudden, enveloping nothingness with their hollow whiteness […]”

S. Mallarmé

Something is shaking in the so-called “foundations” of mathematics.

One of the most basic mathematical notions, the notion of equality – symbolized by means of the equal sign ‘=’ – is currently undergoing a radical reconceptualization in the framework of a mathematical theory known as homotopy type theory. The mathematical (and political) notions of equality and identity have always taken on a mysterious allure: whereas a proposition a = b stating that two different entities are equal seems to be a contradiction, a proposition a = a stating that an entity is equal to itself – that is, the so-called principle of identity – seems to be nothing but a mere triviality. As we shall see, homotopy type theory allows us to get between contradictory equality and trivial self-identity by revisiting the sharp opposition between the notions of identity and difference from a fresh (topological) perspective. In particular, homotopy type theory shows that self-identity becomes non-trivial only when it envelops a hole, an “extimate” absence, a bounded chunk of nothingness.

A privileged operation by means of which we can introduce equalities is abstraction, that is, the capacity to abstract from certain differences that can be methodically considered irrelevant in a context-dependent manner. By “forgetting” such differences we “equalize” entities that are strictly speaking different. Whereas bracketing differences is a necessary operation in order to afford the otherwise overwhelming complexity of experience, abstraction might also entail forms of violence exerted against all the differences that are abstracted away. If abstract concepts result from an act by means of which we methodically “forget” certain differences, the risk concomitant with abstraction is that of forgetting that we have forgotten these differences.

In this introductory workshop addressed to non-scientists, we shall explore the possibilities of higher-dimensional thinking, we shall carnivalistically train our capacities to stretch strict identities, we shall gather some translucent holes in a bamboo forest, and we shall learn how to cope with the pitfalls of “vicious abstractionism” (W. James). By capitalizing on the topic of this year, we shall continue to experiment around “politics of equality” associated with linguistic differences, gender differences, and cognitive diversity. As in the previous editions, we shall explore strategies to deepen the rootedness of science in the material, political, aesthetical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the concrete life that both makes science possible and provides the ultimate horizon for its deployment. All in all, we shall not give up on the commitment that orients this overall project: “to serve science only to the extent that science serves life” (F. Nietzsche).

Practical Information

The lectures will be given by Gabriel Catren with the assistance of Manuel Eguía and Jonathan Lorand.

The workshop will take place at the Performing Arts Forum (Saint-Erme, France) and will start on October 21st (arrival day) and end on October 29th (departure day). The workshop consists of four working days (October 22nd, 24th, 26th, and 28th) interspersed by three “free” days (October 23rd, 25th, and 27th) during which the participants will have the time to rest, to work through the new material, and to participate in the related activities that we shall propose.

The costs including meal expenses, accommodation for 8 nights, PAF membership and the tuition fee add up to 316€ for the whole workshop per person (see below for details). In order to allow people with scarce financial resources to attend the meeting, we shall continue to use a differential pricing or sliding scale. So, we shall (un)fix the cost of the whole event to an amount between a baseline of 316€ and 400€ for eight nights per person. Even if you can pay 20€ more than the baseline, it will help someone else. If you would like to participate and you do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we shall do our best to make it possible for you.

Dates: Arrival on October 21st; Workshop from October 22nd to 28th; Departure on October 29th, 2023.

Location: Performing Arts Forum (PAF), Saint-Erme, France.

Cost (sliding scale): 316€ - 400€ per person. The baseline of 316€ corresponds to meal expenses (15€ per day including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee), accommodation for 8 nights (18€ per night), PAF membership (12€ per year), and the tuition fee (40€).

Accessibility: We are in the process of improving accessibility at PAF. In terms of mobility, kitchens, workspaces, and a couple of bedrooms with bathrooms are available on the ground floor (we can provide pictures and measurements if needed). If you have other accessibility requirements, please let us know and we shall do our best to make it possible for you to participate.

Linguistic accessibility: the lectures will mainly take place in English. Nonetheless, we are strongly committed to hold space for linguistic pluralism and to explore strategies to overcome prevailing forms of Anglocentrism. So, languages other than English will be very welcome as alternative channels of interaction during the whole event.

Academic requirements: Kindergarten degree.

Reservations are mandatory by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com. The maximum number of participants is 40 persons and we ask participants to commit for the full length of the workshop.

Important note: Since reservations followed by cancellations entail a significant amount of additional work for the different persons involved in the organization (e.g. answering emails, waiting list, etc.), we kindly ask you to be as sure as possible that you will participate before booking.

For any questions that you might have, you can write to Gabriel Catren (gabrielcatren@gmail.com).

Reading with Echo * 24-29 July 2024* @ PAF

Building on the past 5 iterations of the Sensing Salon at PAF, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva propose a new format Reading with Echo to present the next phase of their collaboration.

For the past five years we have been working to develop a new reading tool for our Poethical Reading’s toolbox: the Echo Tarot Deck. The process of composing the Echo deck is itself a reading practice since it is inspired by our poethical readings of Ai Ogawa’s poems, having only the poems themselves, our Tarot decks, Reiki Reading, and our intuition as guides for the creation of the deck.

The Echo Deck differs greatly from the traditional tarot decks. Not so much in content, it still includes 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana, but in how they are interpreted. Instead of presenting the major arcana as moments in a linear trajectory of self-actualization (self-development) represented by The Magician, in the new deck, the Major Arcana combine into a complex composition. In it, The Fool and The World as well as The High Priestess, The Empress, Strength, and Justice play key new roles. The numbered cards remain in the Minor Arcana but their meanings have changed to reflect the prioritisation of the elements while the court cards were replaced by descriptors of operations, which maintain a correspondence with the old roles. There is much more to be said about the new deck but, as everything else we work on, it is an unfolding, of which we only grasp what has become apparent up to a particular moment.

As we have now assembled an initial version of the deck - providing a structure, images and descriptions for each card - we are now ready to begin reading with it.

At PAF we plan to introduce the deck, share our approach and practice reading with it. Through our readings we will engage in a collective study of the mythological figure of Echo, its relation to the figures of Narcissus and Oedipus and their theoretical deployments.

Provisory schedule:

24 July

Arrival day

21:00 Introduction and film Sooth Breath by Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman

25 July

10:00 - 12:00 - Reiki Initiations

15:00 - 18:00 - Introduction to the Echo Tarot deck and reading of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

26 July

10:00 - 12:00 - Collective reading with the Echo Tarot deck

15:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Echo / Narcissus / Oedipus and reading selected texts of Freud and Lacan.

27 July

10:00 - 12:00 - Individual reading practice

15:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Echo. Reading Spivak’s Echo and Moten’s In the Break

28 July

10:00 - 12:00 - Collective reading with the Echo Tarot deck

15:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on on Echo. Reading interview with Hortense Spillers Sending Language into Battle.

29 July

Departure day

Practical details:

Reading with Echo will take place at PAF Performing Arts Forum from 24 -29 July 2024. To come earlier or stay longer is of course possible. The meeting will have a cap of 40 participants so please book early in order to ensure your place.

You are also welcome to mention whether you identify as BIPOC and/or Trans when writing in so that we can do our best to prioritise your booking.

Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

This year PAF will implement a sliding scale payment system as part of a more extensive effort at making PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can start to address structural asymmetries among PAF users. 18 euros per night is the basic fee; combined with the volunteer efforts of all PAF users, it has enabled PAF, as a project, to stay afloat for the last few years. You can keep paying 18 euro per night if your financial situation is fragile and a higher nightly price would prevent you from coming to PAF. 20 euro is the advised base price per night. 20 - 25 euro or more if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth. PAF will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price to pay by yourself. The membership fee is now 20 euros per year. All contributions above 18 euro per night will go to The Mattress fund.

The price for food per day will be 12 euro, including breakfast, lunch, dinner. If you have any specific dietary requirements, please specify it in your booking. We are also asking for a 50€ workshop fee to support the expenses of the conveners and materials for the workshop.

We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).

If you would like to participate but feel you are unable to for financial or other such reasons, please reach out.

Access notes:

- There is a lift

- There are two bedrooms on the ground floor with toilets, and one with a shower.

- There are bathrooms on the ground floor but there is a step up to them. Please contact us if you would need a ramp to access these.

- None of the toilets are equipped with handrails.

- There is a big variation in mattress quality and light/sound levels in bedrooms. If you have any needs in this area, please get in touch with us so we can discuss options.

- There will be mediation volunteers on site to handle any accessibility/accountability issues that may arise during the course of the meeting.

There is no public transport from St Erme station to Paf, so it is best to get the taxi. It is around 25 minutes to walk, and it is uphill.

Taxi Leblanc (St Erme) tel +33(0)323226909

SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2024 Aug 11th - Sept 2nd

Three weeks in one programme. No theme. No discipline. With multiple interventions running at any one time, SU programme works as the framework for an expansive university, to which participants are welcome to add to on site.

Find the program here: www.su24.webflow.io

Summer University 2023 — 6th-28th August 2023

...it’s here.

Three weeks in one programme. No theme. No discipline.

With multiple interventions running at any one time and ongoing labs, SU programme works as the framework for an expansive university, to which participants are welcome to add to on site.

Check out this year’s programme: https://su23.webflow.io/
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prices to attend the SU23 are as follows:
ฅ stay: 18€ per night, per person, if you stay more than 5 nights; otherwise 20€ per night
ฅ food: 14€ per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
ฅ event fee: 10€, regardless of length of stay
ฅ PAF Membership: 12€ per year

there will be an excellent team of cooks who will coordinate the kitchen, but they will need help from all of us ● we can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village) ● If you would like to come but your resources are limited, send us a heads-up and we will try to find a solution ● write to contactpaf@gmail.com with the dates you would like to attend.

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 11-16 June 2023

The Sensing Salon studies tools of the healing arts towards expanding existing ideas of art and aesthetics. By experimenting with knowing at the connection between thinking and feeling, in this studio we share tools and practices that make it possible to return healing to its place among the daily restorative activities, such as eating, sleeping, resting, etc. Healing, as such, as much as art, is a praxis. It is something to do and it does something: it restores. In our collaborative work, we explore healing as an art form, a praxis of sensing and making sense that includes studying, thinking, and restoring experiments that reach for the deepest level of our entangled existence.

This will be the fifth edition at PAF, through its iterations, the Sensing Salon has gathered momentum and a core group of interested and involved people. In 2019 we began to experiment with a slightly new format which allowed us to deepen the study we had entered collectively while still welcoming new participants. Instead of teaching as many tools as we could in the 4 days, each year we share one tool only, every morning for the whole duration of the meeting, while in the afternoons we engage in collective study groups around a shared set of questions.

This year we want to continue working with Astrology and deepen the study we began last year. In the mornings, artist, writer and student of astrology Amalle Dublon will guide us through 4 sessions which will introduce us to their use of astrology as a practice of speculative planning. In the afternoons, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva will propose 4 study group sessions in which Chiron will guide our study of four cardinal emotions (anger, shame, guilt, fear). We will use reading and healing tools available in the room as we image and discuss those emotions in light of contemporary ethical and political questions.

Provisory schedule:

11 June
Arrival day
21:00 Conversation and Introduction

12 June
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Chiron

13 June
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on The Hierophant

14 June
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Anger and Fear

15 June
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Guilt and Shame

16 June
Departure day

The Sensing Salon will take place at PAF Performing Arts Forum from July 18th to 23rd 2023. PAF costs 20€ per person per night (or 18€ if you stay more than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be 15€ pp/pd. We also ask an extra fee of 50€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

spring* meeting 2023: WE WORK WITH THE MATERIAL THAT RESISTS US, 17–22 May 2023

For this years spring* meeting, taking place 17 – 22 May 2023, we turn our attention to the form art takes and the techniques and techne within and between works of art. In this way we extend our ongoing conversation around the subject(s) of art with a turn towards the object in its making, impossible or otherwise.

Most operations of an artwork home in on the subjectivities invested or produced in its genesis, in the contextual variance of its reception or the lifestyle of its practice. The moment of its emergence, when something third comes into existence, falls outside the purview. Something is made and released to work or act on its own account, and this isn’t autonomy. It is the power of an object in its formal mode of existence to individuate and enmesh us; makers, recipients and things.

For now we won’t adjudicate on the best word with which to adequate this power. There are multiple terms, often contradictory, in which we understand objects of art to act of their own accord. Words turning in low orbit around the object include craft, material, metabolic, gesture, gimmick, queer form, failure, surface, repetition, overreading, virtuoso, (im)permanence, enskilment and task.

“We work with the material that resists us,” the filmmaker duo Huillet and Straub said, and they meant people, dialects, places, texts, music and more, in struggle with political ideas. The word ‘material’ still haunts us by its potent vagueness, heterogeneity and extent: what does it mean to allow material to direct and render the conceptual maneuver of a work-to-be secondary? How do skills and techniques passed from artworks foil the standardization of memory and commodification of preindividual potential? Listening and watching is then like recalling and performing that same journey taken in the company of another, virtuoso or user, retracing and reinvesting one’s steps at once, a metabolic cycle.

How to understand technique and virtuosity without reviving or replacing modern constructions of the genius? Can we instead engage with the material, attending to its deeply implicated existence, its emergent form, its position, as well as its legacies and the social histories ingrained within it?

William Pope. L. once stated, “One of the problems with time-based endurance performances like my crawl works is they have this marvelous creamy nougat center operating inside the performer, and this space is unfortunately not available in the images and mythologies that surround the work. So, typically, the surface of the work becomes the life of the work.” In the modes of existence of the work there resides a polyphony of times irreducible to the time of the work alone; time as a melting object for the performer, and the times of the work’s reception and transmission. Does the dissonance in material cause the work to resurface after its trace?

If we ask what is formally inscribed by means of technique and repetition, we may want to consider the passage from a socio-aesthetic practice to an artwork qua object. Art is commodified like any other object. And art also turns commodities into materials for new art objects. How to redeem social power from the commodity form of the artwork (technique) and its political economy? Could we look for ways to de-alienate the community whose work has been expropriated by individual authors? We are thinking here of the pauperization of the collective wealth of bodily techniques and dance idioms when they begin to circulate under registered licenses and trademarks.

In times where de-skilling, or the skill of the generalist, is the cool stance for both the precarious artist and neoliberal entrepreneur, how can we defend rehearsal and the time of apprenticeship outside of mastery? Conservatism invests in craft minus experiment, which it devalues. How can the valences of craft and creativity be redeployed against the conservative reproduction of stable art forms with their lifestyle values?

spring* meeting in 2021 and 2022 departed from the artist’s subject position in order to question single authorship and probe collectivities. Together with Jackie Karuti, Subversive Film (Reem Shilleh and Mohanad Yaqubi), Pirate Care (Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak), Christine de Smedt, Oxana Timofeeva, Kate Briggs, and Georgia Sagri, we asked: How can art avoid a sedimentation of the individual identity? Studying the multiple forms by which artists redistribute their subjectivities, we sought out intercession, translation, appropriation, forgery, ventriloquy, bastardization, piracy, collectivism and theft.

If these conversations had brought our collective attention to settle on the strategies of self-consciously forged identity, in the absence of that reified individual, the commoditised artist or objectified other, it is perhaps unsurprising to find here a desire again for the techniques of making and unmaking art.

For this edition of spring* meeting we wanted to invite an artwork as a guest, and to this end we will be hosting the artwork MOMENT 2 (2022) by Deborah-Joyce Holman as a video installation throughout the week. The film, nine hours in length, stars artist and performer Rebecca Bellantoni who tirelessly recites excerpts from Shirley Clarke’s charged 1967 film Portrait of Jason in real time. Holman’s reinterpretation offers a meditation on the politics of portraiture and refusal, one that bridges our concerns from the previous meeting to these questions of form and technique to which we now turn. The work will have its own dedicated space and we will collectively engage in conversation in its presence. Deborah will join us remotely to continue the discussion and we will also present related works.

With the New York based psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster we want to think about the impossible status of the object. In psychoanalysis the object is a polysemy: partial, total, internal, external, cause, excess, remainder, organ, feminine,... a. Webster reminds us that Lacan said that the object is a failure. The failure of the object shifts or deflects the stabilization that work calls for. How does a failing object take form? Is this another way of asking, what is an aesthetic object? Webster’s writing considers psychoanalysis as the challenge to restful thought. Webster will complement her psychoanalytic lecture on the object as supplementary with notes on some artists, notably Roe Ethridge, John Currin, and Kyle Thurman, and talk about them in particular as male artists. Additionally, Webster will help us read Lacan on Las Meninas.

We are also delighted to bring music to the fore in this edition through the work of Simon Løffler. Løffler’s body of music can be described as a departure from music composed for new instruments and agencements between humans and objects/machines toward musicalizing the body in behavior. Observing soundless animal movement, such as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings or the motion of elephant’s eyelashes, Løffler began to experiment with extending his body with appendages that constrain movement, but incidentally give off unobtrusive rhythms and music sensed between gesture and sound. These performances of human bodies coming closer to animals without exactly imitating their musical ethos are driven by a problem Løffler poses to the tradition of Western music, which seeks to expand itself by way of new instrumental techniques, new materials and resulting forms. Is it possible to subtract instrumental specializations upon which contemporary music composition rests and musicalize the body tout court, without the historical mediation of musical figures? Simon will walk us through his experiments with extensions and constructions of body parts and the steps through which his compositional habits became unhinged.

Coming from Rio De Janeiro where she runs an open-access dance school (Escola Livre de Danças da Maré) in the favela Maré, Lia Rodrigues will let us into the choreographic processes of her latest works (Furia, 2018, Encantado, 2021). Working with “quite limited material” (Rodrigues) in time-rich and money-poor productions, Rodrigues involves dancers as a fiery collective that quilts rhythms, bodies and fabrics. A coiling ritual, non-linear frieze, shape-shifting procession or dreamwork… we are eager to learn about the craft of a magnanimous hand that sparks such intense and transformative collective improvisation in the wake of Bolsonaro’s regime.

Practicalities:

Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

The price for the seminar is:

– individuals 20€ per night

– institutions 25€ per person

Other expenses include a 12€ annual membership and 14€ per day for three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us. We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village)

In the spirit of helping people with fewer resources attend the meeting, we will experiment with using a sliding scale to raise money collectively. Beginning with a baseline of 182€ (20€ + 14€ x 5, plus 12€ annual membership), we encourage those who can afford it to pay up to 270€ per person. Even if you can pay 20€ more than the baseline, it will help someone else. If you would like to participate in Spring Meeting but do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will do our best to make it possible.

PAF asks all event participants to consider the least environmentally harmful means of transport available in coming here. Thank you for your collaboration.

PAF gets very full these days, sometimes overly, so book early, we’d like you to be there.

From the organizers,

Andrea Rodrigo, Bojana Cvejić, Nikhil Vettukattil, Stefa Govaart

Guests:

Deborah-Joyce Holman is a multidisciplinary artist based between London, UK, and Basel, Switzerland. Their work has recently been shown at Oregon Contemporary (2023); Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2022); Cordova, Barcelona (2022); Istituto Svizzero, Palermo (2022); schwarzescafé, Luma Westbau, Zurich (2022); Sentiment, Zurich (2022); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2022); Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2022); Last Tango, Zurich (2022); Unfinished Live, The Shed, New York City & House of Electronic Arts, Basel (2021), among others.

From 2020-2022 she worked at East London arts organisation Auto Italia, first as Associate Director then as Associate Curator. They are the founding director of 1.1, a platform for early-career practitioners in arts, music and text-based practices, with an exhibition space in Basel, Switzerland, which ran 2015 - 2020. Deborah-Joyce has curated the 2018 and 2019 annual group exhibitions for the arts and music festival Les Urbaines, Lausanne, entitled ...and their tooth, finest gold and Cinders, sinuous and supple respectively, presenting newly commissioned works by over 15 international artists.

Simon Løffler’s works range from intimate set-ups to enigmatic constructions, embracing traditional instruments (transformed in various ways) as well as novel instrumental concepts.

Løffler studied Composition with Bent Sørensen, Hans Abrahamsen and Niels Rosing-Schow at The Royal Danish Academy of Music and with Simon Steen-Andersen at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. Further studies at A.PASS (advanced performance and scenography studies), Brussels. From 2019 he has been a PhD fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

Since 2016 he has been a teacher of Composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.

His works has been performed by ensembles such as ensemble Nikel, Asamisimasa (NO), Scenatet, (DK), Ensemble Adapter (DE), Suono Mobile (DE), Plus-Minus Ensemble (UK), Speak Percussion (AU), Ensemble Pamplemousse (US), We Spoke (CH), Ensemble hand werk (DE), Curious Chamber Players (SE), Athelas Sinfonietta (DK), Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (DE), Defunensemble (FI), among others. He has performed in various festivals globally.

Lia Rodrigues is a dancer/choreographer and Artistic Director of the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças that she founded in 1990, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The company has built a solid reputation and has been invited to perform its repertoire in important festivals and dance institutions internationally. Besides its artistic productions the company gives classes, conferences and workshops toward beginners and professional dancers.

The Company is based, since 2003, in the favela of Maré, one of the biggest slums in Rio de Janeiro, where the company develops an artistic and educational project.

For Lia Rodrigues to do art in Brazil is an ongoing process of affirmation, investment and resistance.

According to ChatGPT AI: tktk, Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst and cultural critic who has gained renown for her innovative and incisive work at the intersection of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and contemporary culture. Her writing and teaching are marked by a deep engagement with the most pressing issues of our time, and a rigorous intellectual approach that draws on a wide range of sources, from Freud and Lacan to contemporary art and literature.

Webster's work is characterized by its ability to connect the personal and the political, to illuminate the ways in which our deepest desires and anxieties are shaped by the social and cultural forces that surround us. She has written extensively on topics such as addiction, trauma, love, and the body, and has contributed to a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and Artforum.

In addition to her writing, Webster is also a sought-after speaker and educator, and has given talks at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is a professor at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School in New York, where she teaches courses on psychoanalysis, literature, and philosophy, and is a founding member of the psychoanalytic collective Das Unbehagen.

Through her work, Webster has become one of the most important and influential voices in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, and a powerful advocate for the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis in our rapidly changing world.

spring* meeting 2024: We Work with the Material that Resists Us, Part II, 29th March - 4th April

For this year’s spring* meeting, taking place 29 March – 4 April 2024, we continue the conversation from SM2023: “We work with the material that resists us”. This inquiry into the material aspects of the making and dissemination of works of art focuses on form, technique and contexts within and between objects and operations of artworks. Form matters outside of art autonomy as artifact, externalized memory, sociopolitical history and a life practice. We are excited to think about these problems with ––and through the work of––Amy De’Ath, Bojana Kunst, Eszter Salamon, Marwa Arsanios and Sung Tieu.

In the past years, the participants of spring* meeting invested the space and conversation with the invited guests. We want to experiment further with collective participation to regenerate PAF as a place where we challenge the mode of production and geography of the institutional practice of art.

Marwa Arsanios’ practice tackles structural and infrastructural questions using different devices, forms and strategies. From architectural spaces, their transformation and adaptability throughout conflict, to artist-run spaces and temporary conventions between feminist communes and cooperatives, the practice tends to make space within and parallel to existing art structures allowing experimentation with different kinds of politics. Film becomes another form and a space for connecting struggles in the way images refer to one another. In the past four years Arsanios has been attempting to think about these questions from a new materialist and a historical materialist perspective with different feminist movements that are struggling for their land. She tries to look at questions of property, law, economy and ecology from specific plots of land. The main protagonists become these lands and the people who work them. Her research includes many disciplines and is deployed in numerous collective methodologies and collaborative projects.

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturge and performance theorist. She is a professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen where she leads the international master studies Choreography and Performance. She has lectured and taught seminars, workshops and laboratories in various academic institutions, theaters and artistic organizations across Europe, and has continuously worked with artistic initiatives and groups of artists. Her research interests are contemporary performance and dance, art and politics, and philosophy of contemporary performance. Her latest books are Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism, Zero Books, London, 2015 (in Slovenian, English, Polish and Danish) and The Life of Art. Transversal Lines of Care, Ljubljana, 2021 (in Slovenian and German 2023). For this spring* meeting, Bojana will share parts in progress of a longer essay she is writing that concerns the following: “When we think about art and politics, this relation is mostly approached through the context as a form. But what if the context becomes the material? Maybe this is exactly what we can observe in the explosive cultural conflicts around political art today.”

Sung Tieu’s works of sculpture, drawing, text and sound consider questions of governance, civic responsibility and justice, analyzing mechanisms of state control. Making reference to art history, and in particular to minimalism and the deployment of the grid, they highlight the translation of ideologies within industrial design and architecture and the prevalence of abstraction as an organizing force.Through the personal lens of post-colonial identity and cultural membership, she upsets the status of objective narrative and of proof when science works at the service of sociopolitical agendas. While addressing social and cultural class divides in both contemporaneity and recent history, Tieu’s work foregrounds the ways evidence is manipulated as imperialist violence both of a physical and psychological nature.

Eszter Salamon is a choreographer, artist and performer, who lives and works between Berlin, Paris, and Budapest. In her extensive body of dance, performances and films, Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing agency between various media such as image, sound, music, text, voice, bodily movement and actions. In 2014, she started a series of performances called Monuments with the idea of “resisting oblivion and exclusion”. The Monuments are “celebrating forgotten artists, aging bodies, rhythms and gestures of oppressed cultures”. Eszter creates “poetic documents” using “the potential” of these historical items to transform and repair Western history “in [an] act of creating memory”. Eszter will share her artistic research project focusing on German avant-garde artist Valeska Gert (Gertrud Valesca Samosch, 1892-1978) that she has been working on for the past few years. She will share her ways of rethinking the concepts of memory and archive with the aim of intensifying the connections between the past and the present and for opening up a historicity that is different from canonical art history.

Amy De’Ath is the author of a number of articles on contemporary poetry and Marxist-feminism. She has published essays in After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge UP), Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, The Bloomsbury Companion to Marx, SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory and Women: A Cultural Review. Her forthcoming book, Unsociable: Antagonism and Abstraction in Contemporary Feminized Poetry, offers an exposition of post-1960s readings of Marx and their ramifications for reading literary texts. Incorporating these insights into a reading method, Unsociable argues that contemporary feminized poetry from the US, Canada and Indigenous territories is alert to the recompositions of gender as social form, and can be read as an attempt to grasp how the lives of feminized people are shaped by abstract processes of capitalist value production. De’Ath is also a poet, and her first full collection, Not A Force of Nature, is forthcoming from Futurepoem in 2024.

For the spring* meeting De’Ath will revisit histories of second-wave feminism to examine how the representational problems posed by the mediating force of the value-form pose limits to the politics of consciousness-raising. If this once-dissident organizational and critical practice has been politically neutralized, as Michaele Ferguson and Nancy Fraser have argued, then how might Marxist-feminist critique transcend those limits and strategies of containment? Or to riff on Marx’s question about why labour takes the form of the value of its product, why is feminization still linked to degradation?

Practicalities:

Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

This year PAF will implement a sliding scale payment system as part of a more extensive effort at making PAF more accessible. We encourage you to pay as much as you can so that we can start to address structural asymmetries among PAF users.

20€ is the advised base price per night.

20 - 25€ or more if you have stable income, institutional funding, property or family wealth.

PAF will not ask you about your financial situation, you will evaluate the price to pay by yourself.

Other expenses include a 20€ annual membership fee and 15€ per day for three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us. We can only accept payments in cash (or French chèques), so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).

All contributions above 18€ per night will go to The Mattress Fund (see PAF's website for more info). They will help PAF to host users who are precarized by neoliberal regimes of racial colonial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.

If you would like to participate in the spring* meeting but do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will search for a possibility to support you.

PAF gets very full these days, sometimes overly, so book early, we’d like you to be there.

From the organizers,

Andrea Rodrigo, Bojana Cvejić, Nikhil Vettukattil, Stefa Govaart

As Below So Beyond Elsewhere & Otherwise 9 ** June 24 - July 03, 2022

******* all bodies possible and welcome *******

once a year we live together…
… and the conversation continues, meanders, intensifies, mutates,
as our relations too are spreading, dispersing, falling together and apart.

Understanding our being in relation, in as many ways and directions as possible, is a material, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, erotic and political challenge of our time. What to bundle our energies for and with? How to move together? How to be with the unknowable and uncontrollable? How to create, sustain and nourish the conditions for erotic beingness, for relational and inter-dependent generation and decomposition?

For almost a decade, we have engaged in promiscuous epistemological modalities of togetherness – dissolving and generating the parameters of space and time. Last year’s edition focused on conviviality and living with – rather than through – a pandemic. The soil, as a sustaining, bio-chemical, ritualistic, erotic and political ground, played the lead role–albeit not in the apparent foreground but rather (and literally) underground.

This year we feel it’s time to shift the mode of collective study once again by proposing quite specific and structured choreographies for the duration of our 10-days of living together. We will communicate more details about this closer to the meeting.

With As Below So Beyond we want to make explicit and study the interdependent relations between micro and macro worlds. In the style of Elsewhere & Otherwise, we welcome multiple entrances and ontologies, affirming our abundance of possibilities.

This year two invited guests will guide some of our main study blocks. As we continue to weave, extend, deepen, exchange, and remix ongoing forms of being together, we will focus our attention, relations, performances, and care in three main areas: erotic epistomologies, relationality, mycology and as always nourishment and reproductive care.

For first-time participants, as well as returners, we offer this contextualization…

Erotic Epistomologies

What is the role of intimacy and modalities of connection in the co-creation and transmission of knowledges? How might we approach, touch and relate to the unknown in an erotic manner? What is the role of the erotic, in the Lordean sense, in scientific inquiry? How might we nourish erotic research and thinking practices? What can we learn from rituals and disciplines that center the erotic in the co-creation of knowledge?

Relationnality

Working with history as present and future materiality, how might we play with the different strands of our 9-year-long conversations and relations? What might we learn from the accumulation and ruptures of our time travels together? How might we play with our history as we would with material, letting the strands of our conversations and relations react with each other, merge, collide, integrate, and decompose. How do themes of past editions like soiling, holding space, queering time, reproductive labour, ritual and magic, the internet before the internet, the lab and the erotic resonate within our relations over time? How can we stay fresh and humble towards lineages that invited us in? How do we extend these invitations to others? Who are our m’others? How to practice fluidity with edges, expressing boundaries and openness as relations of care? How to relate with intention to the temporality of one’s own and others’ life course, being with youthfulness and the many periods of aging?

Mycology

What might fungi and mycelial networks teach us about relationality, decomposition, fruiting, spreading, queer lineages, erotic potentiality, art and science? Mycelial networks expand as they break down and decompose, sometimes they fruit and the winds carry their spores elsewhere. What might we learn from mycology as a queer, erotic and excentric art and science?

In addition to continuing the study with the microscope from last year we will build a small mushroom lab at PAF before E&O starts. If you have capacity to help and join this part of the process please write to us. We have invited someone who works with fungi. Together we’ll learn how to grow mushrooms; from preparing spawn and other substrates, to sterilisation, inoculation and proliferation. From this hands-on, low threshold practices we will think, feel and study what mycology can teach us about (our) relations in the kitchen and the lab, through ritual, taste, healing and beyond it.

Nourishment

What might the kitchen teach us about nourishing and nurturing, broadly defined? How can taste be a cypher for understanding lineages? Power and knowledge? Material and spiritual calories? Toxicity as resource? How do the boundaries between science and sensuality collaborate in the laboratory of the kitchen? What is the role of history in practises of nourishment, nurturing, taste, desire and well-being? We have invited an alchemist, cook and poet to guide us through different elemental progressions - from micro to macro - in, through and with the kitchen.

Reproductive Care

How can we continue to practice our reproduction in the heart of our being together? How can we continue to make visible and share the work of our on-going daily rituals in relation to each other for ten days? The kitchen. The cleaning. The laundry. The accounting. The shopping. The garbage. The clogged toilet. The emotions. The relations with the village. The building.

You

If you have any practices, rituals, readings, performances, study proposals that you would like to guide and share resonating with the above please write to us as soon as possible. Other spaces to activate are the Kids space (Como-Clubino), the Lab, the Healing Space, the library, chapel, the studios, gardens, and of course the medicine making in the herb-lab/pharmacy.

________

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 9 - As Below So Beyond will take place from June 24th to July 3rd, 2022 at Performing Arts Forum in St Erme, France.

Below is the cost of living together for one individual--food, accommodations and supplies.

30 EUR = Cost per day
10 EUR = breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee and wine
18 EUR = accommodations
2 EUR = other supplies for lab, medicine making, etc.

However, if possible, we ask you to pay anywhere from 1-15 EUR extra per day to help someone else attend. We would like to make E&O accessible to those who cannot afford to cover the costs listed above. This can be made possible if those that have access to more, pay more. Paying 31-45 EUR will make it possible for others. Keep in mind that the evaluation for the sliding scale is not how much money you have, but how much money you have access to. Even if you can pay 10 EUR more, it will help someone else to attend.

For academics we suggest an institutional rate of $600:
10 nights at $36 for housing (2 people) = $ 360
10 days for food at $20 (2 people) = $ 200
Extra Fees 10 days for $4 (2 people)= $40
Total Housing Food and Conference Fees = $600

If you would like to come and you don't have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.

For parents and primary caregivers who consider coming with their children please carefully read the info below.

To reserve please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

For any other question/doubt/idea/proposal, please email: daniela.bershan@gmail.com or redtremmel@gmail.com

We are excited to see you soon

Daniela Bershan & Red Vaughan Tremmel

________

Considerations for parents and caregivers before attending ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE with kid(s):

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE is - next to many other things - also an intense and challenging space, and it’s not uncommon even for grown-ups to have a crisis moment at some point during the meeting. Crisis is often a moment of transformation so we don't avoid it but embrace it as part of the process and try to provide spaces and tools to hold it collectively. As a parent or primary care-giver, especially if you come as a single parent this can be extra challenging as your kid(s) will relentlessly follow their own needs and rhythm while you and them are confronted with a whole new set-up that you will (also with help) only partially be able to immerse yourself into. We recommend that you try to build up an additional support system for you and your kid(s) before hand. For example ask one or two friends that are coming with you to split the time of care-giving for 24h each, so every other day or third day you can have a "day/night off". If you come with 2/3 parents/caregiver this is a system that seems to work quite well for some; If you plan to come alone with your kid(s) and don't know anyone at E&O let us know in advance so we can try to put you in touch with some people before hand; In the evenings a "rotational child-checking system" works very well; You organise 6 people that check the rooms once an hour each (10 past, 20 past, 30 past, etc.). Like this you only have to check on your kid once an hour and know that they are checked on every 10 minutes by someone.

Deeply Organized Chaos Workshop piloted by Manuel Eguia 07-13/07/2022

Deeply Organized Chaos

Getting into the Swing of Simplicity and Complexity

Workshop piloted by Manuel Eguia in the framework of the L.I.F.E.
Project conducted at PAF by Gabriel Catren

July 7th - 13th 2022 @ Performing Arts Forum

In this workshop on Chaos theory, we shall invite non-scientists to undertake a whimsical and hopefully pleasant path through the history of physics in the quest for simple laws, patterns, and structures among the “multiplicity and confusion of things”, in Newton’s words. His law of Universal Gravitation, formulated using simple and elegant mathematical formulae, is perhaps the paradigmatic example of such a successful quest. Yet soon it was apparent that even for the case of only three bodies interacting gravitationally (like for instance the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun) the possible solutions turn out to be multiple and confusing. At the end of 19th century, studying a simplified version of this problem, the mathematician Henri Poincaré found a solution so complex that in his own words he was “not even attempting to draw”. The new tools developed by Poincaré led to the development of Chaos Theory during the last decades of the 20th century, widely popularised by the image of a “flap of butterfly’s wing in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas”. This interest for chaotic and complex behaviours arising from simple rules came along with a process swinging in the opposite direction through the discovery of new simplicities, hidden forms of order, and universal patterns emerging from otherwise disordered systems in different domains of science. Dramatic examples of this swinging between order and chaos can be found in the formation of whirlpools in the atmosphere, flocking in birds, fibrillation in heart attacks and bubbles in financial markets.

The lectures will be given by Manuel Eguia. Manuel is a physicist and an artist, founder of the Acoustic and Sound Perception Lab (LAPSo) at the College of Arts, National University of Quilmes (Argentina). This year we shall also count with the assistance of Emily Roff. Emily is a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). Her research has to do with notions of magnitude or size: volume, dimension, diversity, capacity.

The workshop will take place at the Performing Arts Forum (Saint-Erme, France) during seven days (starting on July 7th in the morning and ending on July 13th in the afternoon) consisting of four working days interspersed by three “free” days in which the participants will have the time to rest, to work through the new material, and/or to participate in the related activities that we shall propose.

The prices including meal expenses (15€ per day), accommodation for 8 nights (18€ per night if you stay more than 5 nights, otherwise, it is 20€ per night), PAF membership (12€ one-year), and the tuition fee (30€) adds to an amount of 291€ for the whole workshop. In order to allow people with little or no resources to attend the meeting (and following similar initiatives currently taking place at PAF), this year we shall experiment with a differential pricing or sliding scale. So, we shall (un)fix the cost of the whole event to an amount between a baseline depending on the number of nights you stay (e.g., 291€ for eight nights) and 400€ per person. Even if you can pay 20€ more than the baseline, it will help someone else. If you would like to participate and you do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.

Dates: July 7th - 13th, 2022.
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint-Erme, France.
Price (sliding scale): 291€ - 400€ per person.

Reservations are mandatory by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com. The maximum number of participants is 40 persons. People who attend the whole workshop will be given priority. For any questions, you can write to Manuel Eguia (eguiamc@gmail.com) and/or Gabriel Catren (gabrielcatren@gmail.com).

This workshop has received funding from the Laboratoire International Associé (LIA) Identities, Forces, Chaos, Quanta (CNRS, Laboratoire SPHERE - Sciences, Philosophy, Histoire, UMR 7219).

Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self * SpringMeeting 2021 continued * Part 2: April 15 - 20, 2022

For this edition, SpringMeeting continues its inquiry into de-individualised and collective modes of acting, making and being together in, through, and past the arts. For this gathering we ask: how is labour displaced in the name of the artist? If we know art is so much more than the ‘I’ of authorship, how do we act on this knowledge? What happens when we engage in artistic creation and cultural production from the place of translators, performers, assistants, dramaturgs, audiences, activists, cultural workers, and all others who make the work but often remain in the shadow of (single) authors? How can we then collectively intervene, and re-appropriate the contexts and infrastructures of our work?

Today, Mladen Stilinović’s artwork stating “an artist who cannot speak English is no artist” could just as easily be rephrased as: “an artist who cannot speak about their own work is no artist”. Is there a more exploited genre and pronoun among artists than speaking in first person singular?
We would like to approach what is singular as already multiple, to reimagine the individual through mediation. We would like to question origin, identity and ownership in the act of directing attention instead to intercesseurs, mediators and intermediaries, to true and falsifying personae and to collective or common agencies.
Against two decisive factors of the art market today – the compulsion to speak of one’s own work, and performance of one’s own brand-name – we would like to inquire into other possible articulations of personhood, authorship, ownership, agency, milieu, transindividuation and production that do not begin with nominal identity, that do not start with or return to “I/Me”.

An example. “Intercesseurs” (mediators) was the word Gilles Deleuze used to portray his collaboration with Félix Guattari:
Mediators are fundamental. Creation’s all about mediators. Without them nothing happens. They can be people ... but things too, even plants or animals ... Whether they’re real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, you have to form your mediators. It’s a series. If you’re not in some series, even a completely imaginary one, you’re lost. I need my mediators to express myself, and they’d never express themselves without me: you’re always working in a group, even when you seem to be on your own… There’s no truth that doesn’t ‘falsify’ established ideas. To say that ‘truth is created’ implies ... a series of falsifications.

There are many more terms that could apply apart from intercession: intervention, interlocution, translation, appropriation, forgery, ventriloquy, bastardization, theft. There is an abundance of modes in which artists produce, collaborate, distribute subjectivities, and present work. Collectivity or group work might also be an opaque façade that conceals and protects political strategies and undercover operations.

If our point of departure is not the individual but the common, then we must look into what we share at a level prior to or beyond the personal – language, modes of production and cooperation, sensory apparatuses and habits, and history. While we do not want to affirm dehistoricization, we recognize good reasons for its contestation that point to canons and canonization. In a canonical culture relations between artists serve to cement significance. Canonical artists are often those who are centers of influence or those whose networks include other canonical figures. What ways are there to be in dialogue with and through others, which do not further secure the position of the self in the canon?

Art occurs, regardless of whether it resembles the canon of autonomous, functionless, exceptional, single-authored, manifestations of the artist’s will. Some occurrences might be found in invisibility, refusal, collectivity, name changes, shifting the locus of art making and thus its legibility as such. In a time of over-investment in the self as commodity and an aggressive disinvestment in collective resources and services – so that we can all have the privilege of loneliness – how to choose the group every time, above and beyond the impoverished and impoverishing path of atomization?
The problems posed here seem ill-suited to individual inquiry. The world is neither neat nor kind. One’s interiority cannot present an innocent starting point or refuge of the beautiful soul. For SM 2021 we do not want to think only about single author-artists, but also to dedicate time to those who make the work possible but remain in the shadow: performers, assistants, translators, and so on. The author has long been declared dead, but shared authorship remains rare. Theaters, museums and other institutions demand unequivocally delineated individuals who guarantee for their products.

For SM 2021, we want to devote time to the dependent, non-sovereign, subjected forms of making art and thought. We are specifically interested in working methods that say no to “working alone”. And we are also interested in artists speaking about the work of others in which they recognize something they themselves could not do. This is not about denying individual responsibility: one’s individual actions matter as they materialize the world. So, we ask: what can we learn from art’s investment in the divestment of the self?

Prices to attend the meeting are:
– individuals 18€ per night per bed if you stay more than 5 nights, otherwise, it is 20€ per night
– institutions 25€ per person

Other expenses include a 12€ annual membership and 12€ per day for three meals prepared in our exquisite kitchen. There will be an excellent team of cooks who will need help from all of us. We can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).
In order to allow people with little or no resources to attend the meeting (and following similar initiatives currently taking place at PAF), this year we will experiment with a differential pricing or sliding scale. So, we will (un)fix the cost of the whole event to an amount between 172€ and 250€ per person. Even if you can pay 20€ more than the baseline of 172€, it will help someone else. If you would like to participate and you do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.
For these dates PAF will be fully compliant with COVID-19 regulations and operate at a reduced capacity, so book early, we’d like you to be there.

From the organizers,
Bojana Cvejić, Nikhil Vettukattil, Stefa Govaart, Andrea Rodrigo
With special thanks to Eleanor Ivory Weber who was co-organiser of the first part of this meeting

Reservations at: contactpaf@gmail.com

Guests:

Tomislav Medak is a doctoral student at Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures. His PhD is on the political economy of technology and the planetary ecological crisis. He is also a member of the theory and publishing team of the Multimedia Institute/MAMA in Zagreb, a co-initiator of the Pirate Care project, and an artist in the performing arts collective BADco.

Oxana Timofeeva is Sc.D., Professor at “Stasis” Center for Philosophy at the European University at St. Petersburg, leading researcher at Tyumen State University, member of the artistic collective "Chto Delat?" ("What is to be done?"), deputy editor of the journal "Stasis", and the author of books Solar Politics (Polity 2022), How to Love a Homeland (Kayfa ta, 2020), History of Animals (Bloomsbury, 2018; Jan van Eyck, 2012), Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille (2009), and other writings.

Christine De Smedt is a choreographer and dancer whose work pursues various forms of collaboration, dialogue and duration. Her research-based projects challenge result-driven modes of production. Finding forms of representation necessitates setting up a thorough study of the problem/question/material at hand. Residues from past projects emerge and leave their traces in this initial phase. Extending her research to invited collaborators, the work takes form in collaborative complexity, conflict, and the refusal of systematicity and functionality. Numerous collaborations include pieces she co-created with a.o. Eszter Salamon and Myriam van Imschoot, pieces by a.o. Mette Ingvartsen and Xavier Le Roy in which she performed as dancer, and pieces she was involved in as artistic assistant. De Smedt was a member of the collective les ballets C de la B (1991-2012) and pedagogical coordinator at PARTS (2013-2016). She remains active as a mentor, advisor and teacher in various educational contexts. Her current project L’inconnu, a collaboration with Liza Baliasnaja and Theo Livesey, examines low-intensity violence as it permeates contemporary social life. In her career––most notably through the works 9x9 (2000-2005) and 4 choreographic portraits/Untitled 4 (2012, that she will perform during SM)––De Smedt has questioned the status and reproduction of the single author.

Kate Briggs is a writer, educator and translator based in Rotterdam, NL. She is currently working on an English translation of Hélène Bessette's first novel Lili pleure and The Long Form, a novel about the novel-form, rhythm, co-living and duration. She is the author of This Little Art, a long essay about translation as a creative practice which draws on her experience of translating two volumes of lecture notes by Roland Barthes (How to Live Together and The Preparation of the Novel, both published by Columbia UP). A Table Made Again for the First Time: On Kate Briggs's This Little Art, edited by Francesco Pedraglio and Paul Becker, was published by Juan de la Cosa / John of the Thing in 2021. She is the recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction and runs Short Piece That Move! an intermittent reading, writing and co-learning platform for artists.

Pirate Care (https://pirate.care) is a transnational research project and a network of activists, scholars and practitioners who stand against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure. It was initiated in 2018 by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak.

NIGHT LESSONS ~ BDSM Theory & Practice ~ 9-14 February 2017

Here’s the description by the organizers, Norbert Pape and Austin Gross:

We are putting together a five-day course on BDSM. Every day there will be workshops and lectures, and every evening discussion and screenings. The workshops will cover a range of practices and the lectures will give a good basic understanding of the history of these practices and of the thought that has been devoted to them.

BDSM practices are first and foremost forms of consensual play hinging on power exchange. Of the techniques we’ll introduce, some operate more on a bodily/sensorial/tactile level (sensory deprivation, flogging, wax-play, rough play, play fight and similar), while others develop scenes, and make complex usages of space, theatricality, costumes, props, rules, and scripts (role play, dominance and submission, bondage, strip-tease). Putting these techniques and principles into play will mean refining sexual fantasies and characters, exploring the erotic potential of situations based on power relations in agreement, activity, passivity, visibility, invisibility, distance, and proximity.

BDSM practices played a major role in the thought of emancipation during the enlightenment and in the twentieth century, which we want to reactivate. Much of the theoretical work will aim at a kind of time-travel. In particular, we’ll go in depth into the origins of erotic bondage in Japan, and into the debates in 20th century French theory over the work of Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

Our approach to these ideologies, and to the practices themselves, will be one of curiosity, sympathy, and analysis, rather than of straightforward affirmation or personal affinity. The aim is to provide a safe environment in which basic techniques can be (re)investigated and, inebriated by theory, artworks, and historical materials.

We want this workshop to be interesting both to people who already engage in these practices, and to people who have never engaged in them. A desire for knowledge -- not a cold intellect, but lively sympathy and curiosity -- is enough to participate. It could be a very generative question: how is knowledge about an erotic practice relevant to people who don’t practice it in their intimacy? What makes such knowledge desirable? On what hypothesis, in what construction? The theory of natural polymorphousness is possibly the least interesting of such constructions, most of which are still to be invented.

The imagination is paramount for these practices, and for thinking about sexuality in general. Therefore, the site for this course couldn't be better: a former monastery on the edge of the woods near the Champagne region in the north of France. Reimagining the building with its cellars, attics, kitchens, refectory, chapel and surroundings will offer a surface for fantasy.

Rough plan: 5 days, 7 or more hours a day
Accommodation: 18€ per night (to PAF) plus a 12€ one-year PAF membership
Food is not included – there will not be chefs, so the teachers and students will just figure it out collectively (in the case of the BDSM course, part of the shopping will be done in advance.)
Teaching fee: 70€ total to the teachers
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint Erme, France
Places: limited to 20 participants per course. These will simply be the first twenty people to reserve, so if you want to come, reserve as soon as you can.

Make reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com

For questions about the BDSM course, you can get in touch with the instructors at norbertpape111@gmail.com or austing@gmail.com; and for inquiries about “night lessons” generally (if you want to organize one, for example!), email contact@nightlessons.io

~~~

Norbert Pape works in the field of dance, performance and bodywork. Challenging the private/public distinction, curious about the tension between fantasy and the materiality of the body and interrogating power relations implicit in performance and performance-like situations – but also quite simply enjoying himself – he has also engaged in sex work and different sexual practices. His interest lies more in imaginative play and questioning the types of sociality that sexual practice produce than in the mastery of specific techniques.

Austin Gross is an independent researcher who works on psychoanalysis and ontology. He has been trying to reconstruct the question of the realization of desire in the history of libertinism, psychoanalysis, and militant thought.

PAF Winter Update Meeting 2022 * Arrête La Machine * 27/12/22 - 03/01/23

What does it take to stop the machine? And can we stop it, at least for a moment?

Is 2022 just another year marked by omnipresent ecological, political and social crises (as well as personal ones), or have we arrived at a point where we must accept that life – at PAF and everywhere else – means to stumble from one crisis to the next?

Can a self-organised structure like PAF – next to being a fascinating and demanding organism of collective experimentation – also be, at least momentarily, a common relief, a shelter from the constant performances demanded and expected from its protagonists? What would it take to arrête la machine, to stop the wheels of PAF from turning and separate PAF from its constant demands? The question is not how to stop PAF from being but whether we can imagine a lighter, less relentless, more sustainable rhythm for the running of PAF? And what would it take – infra-structurally, emotionally, ecologically and financially – in order to do so?

The Winter Update Meeting once again invites you to think along, share and shape these discussions, which will reflect on and evaluate the ongoing experiment of self-organisation at PAF.

Three days will be dedicated to discussing how PAF self-organises in 2023. These talks are open to all those who would like to actively listen and learn about how PAF is being run, as well as to those who would like to take part in the future self-organisation model. These meetings and ensuing discussions will be steered by current and future contributors to the self-organisation experiment, and while we welcome everybody's input, time to be together is short and we invite everyone present to treat the tasks at hand reverentially.

WUM has always been a moment where the year beyond PAF is in review. No official program of workshops or performances is planned in advance. Therefore it is up to you to fill up the blackboard with ideas, proposals, performances, and sessions of any kind. Let’s update each other on the projects and practices, experiences, relations and ideas that have shaped our year.

Above all, WUM is a time for conviviality, good food, and informal exchange. So pack your bags for extraordinary abundance and the luxury of great (familiar and unexpected) company.

Practicalities

Prices are 18 euros per night for a stay longer than 4 nights (20 euros per night otherwise). Membership (12 euros) is obligatory due to insurance reasons and valid for one year. To come earlier or stay longer is of course possible. The kitchen will be co-organised by some of PAF's finest chefs - all meals will be provided for 15 EUR/day.

In order to allow people with little or no resources to attend the meeting, we open our payment scheme to different financial capacities: if you can pay more than the nightly baseline, it will help someone else to be there with us. If you are able to apply for a grant we are happy to help with invitation letters, and would appreciate very much if you could apply for more than needed for your single participation. If you would like to participate and you do not have the financial conditions to do so, please let us know and we will try to make it possible for you.

The minimum attendance for WUM is 3 nights, with preference given to those who can commit to the entire meeting

To reserve your place, please email contactpaf@gmail.com.
The building is already at capacity so please indicate when booking whom you would like to share a room with.

Schedule:

27/12 Arrival
28/12 SCI Meeting of the shareholders
29/12 Self-Organization 1
30/12 Self-organization 2
31/12 New Years Eve Ceremonies
01/01 Open day
02/01 Self-Organization 3
03/01 Departure

SUMMER UNIVERSITY REBOOT 7th - 30th of August

It’s back… but differently. Really. Summer University has been many different things over the years. It’s been a long time. Now we’re going to do it differently again.

We will do it for three weeks with no assigned themes, but one programme to hold all disciplines, formats and wishes together. There will be a number of things running each day and at any one time and Sundays will be off.

To see what is happening on which days of the SU, view the full programme here:
https://su-reboot-87bea7.webflow.io/

This may change between now and August, so check back.

This wealth of propositions will form the skeleton of our experiment in a fractal university, and all participants are invited to add their interventions on site in a more or less impromptu manner.

Prices to attend the Summer University are as follows:

Stay: For individuals 18€ per night per bed if you stay more than 5 nights; otherwise 20€ per night.
Food: 15€ per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner).
Event fee: 7€, regardless of length of stay.
PAF Membership: 12€ per year.

There will be an excellent team of cooks who have generously offered to coordinate the kitchen, but they will need help from all of us.

We can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so bring it along (there is an ATM in the village).

Write to contactpaf@gmail.com with the dates you would like to attend. PAF is still operating at a reduced capacity, so book early.

Per quest’anno, non cambiare… come to PAF

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The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ** 18-23 July 2022 @ PAF

This will be the fourth edition at PAF, through its iterations, the Sensing Salon has gathered momentum and a core group of interested and involved people. In 2019 when we last gathered, we began to experiment with a slightly new format which allowed us to deepen the study we had entered collectively while still welcoming new participants. Instead of teaching as many tools as we could in the 4 days, each year we share one tool only, every morning for the whole duration of the meeting, while in the afternoons we engage in collective study groups around a shared set of questions.

In the previous iteration, we focused on Reiki, while this year we will focus on Astrology. Artists and students of astrology Constantina Zavitsanos & Amalle Dublon will guide us through 4 sessions which will introduce us to their use of astrology as a practice of speculative planning. In the afternoons, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva will propose 4 study group sessions in which Chiron will guide our study of four cardinal emotions (anger, shame, guilt, fear). We will use reading and healing tools available in the room as we image and discuss in light of contemporary ethical and political questions.

Provisory schedule:

18 July
Arrival day
21:00 Conversation and Introduction

19 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Anger

20 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Fear

21 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Shame

22 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Guilt

23 July
Departure day

The Sensing Salon will take place at PAF Performing Arts Forum from July 18th to 23rd 2022. PAF costs 20€ per person per night (or 18€ if you stay more than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be most probably self-organised (ca 10-12€ pp/pd). We also ask an extra fee of 50€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva

[CANCELLED/POSTPONED]Human Strike / Claire Fontaine – A prelude to Spring Meeting ** 11-13 April 2022

PAF will host a two-day seminar with Claire Fontaine. Originally planned for April 11-13, the seminar will be postponed to a later date this year.

In line with Spring Meeting's focus on desubjectivization in art (Spring Meeting takes place at PAF, April 15-20), the seminar with Claire Fontaine will focus on her investment in the defunctionalization of the function of the single author. CF's insistence on being a “ready-made artist,” her concept of “human strike,” and her historical studies of Italian feminist and workerist struggle pose the problem of the atomized individual, the separation between production and reproduction, and what Ernesto De Martino called the `’crisis of presence.`’ Claire Fontaine is currently working on the concept of parrhesia.

Prices are 18€ per night (20€ if your stay is under 5 nights). The additional fee for collectively organized food (dinner 11/4, three meals 12/4 and brunch 13/4) and an artist fee is 34€. Or: 70€ in total. If you aren't a member yet, there is an additional 12€ membership fee.
You can book by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com.

If the costs prohibit you from coming, please get in touch, and we will try to make it possible.

If you have any questions, you can write to Stefa (stefangovaart@gmail.com).

The Dynamic Model of Nature: Naturphilosophie and Romantic Science Night Lessons @ PAF Feb 28 - March 5

What would it mean to think nature if nature expresses itself through the minds that set out to investigate it? If nature is fundamentally creation both concretely and abstractly understood, nature rapidly turns strange. The growth of crystals become a algebra cut in stone, experience is rendered as visible, tactile chemistry, animal motion generates abstract space, the fecund but lowly polyp is taken as the seed of all life, and even the skull can become the flower bloom of the spine.

In the late-18th and early 19th century Naturphilosophie and Romantic Science confronted the mechanistic and teleological vision of nature as a fine-tuned machine built for human use. These natural philosophers (being neither strictly scientists nor strictly philosophers) attempted to understand what it meant to exist as a part of a dynamic nature—a nature not made of inert physical objects ruled by precise laws, but a nature composed of forces and activities without any rational blueprint nor theological guarantee of a final purpose.

The ideas and experiments of thinkers such as Schelling, Goethe, Novalis, Ritter, Oken, Humboldt, Lamarck and many others were attacked as too reflective, too imprecise, or simply as an abuse of metaphor. Such quick dismissal is not only a clumsy treatment of philosophy, science, and the history of its concepts, but indicates a fear of straying too far from theoretical certainty. For Schelling and others philosophy is then tasked with conceiving of a nature which is properly generative.
This course will also trace how such a dynamic model of nature has persisted for the last 200 hundred years via figures such as Whitehead, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Châtelet.

Rough plan: 5 days (Feb 28 - March 5), 5-6 hours approximately
Places: limited to 20 participants per course. These will simply be the first twenty people to reserve, so if you want to come, reserve as soon as you can.
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint Erme, France
Accommodation: 18€ per night (to PAF) plus a 12€ one-year PAF membership
Food: not included – there will not be chefs, so the teacher and students will just figure it out collectively (part of the shopping will be done in advance.)
Teaching fee: 70€ total to the teacher (exceptions possible)
Make reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com

Ben Woodard is a post-doctoral researcher in philosophy and art theory at Leuphana University, Lüneburg Germany. His research focuses on the relationship between naturalism and idealism across continental and analytic philosophy. His text, Schelling's Naturalism, is forthcoming from Edinburgh Press.

For questions about the Naturphilosophie course, you can get in touch with Ben Woodard. For inquiries about Night Lessons generally (if you want to organize one, for example!), email contact@nightlessons.io

PAF SPRING MEETING 2018: What is the art I would like to see before I can see it? 31/3-8/4

For Spring Meeting 2018, we are inviting artists, art theorists and critics to unfold their poetics through presenting and discussing their work. As we understand it here, poetics entails the ability to imagine a future and entertain the question, “What is the art I would like to see before I can see it?” While regarding art in terms of artistic practice privileges the work of the artist and their subjectivity, thinking art through poetics focuses on the object of work: the making and producing of a work of art. We would like to steal this Easter to work on the genetic power of such thought, feeling, sensing, imagining, feigning and hesitating from which art arises parallel to this world.

The pressure that social and political crises exert on artists, who expect themselves, or are expected, to provide models or solutions, leaves even less space to imagine and project into a future the art that one dreams of seeing, without knowing how to make it, or whether the endeavor would be feasible at all. The problem is temporal: imagination is orientated towards the future. “No future” and no history for long-term projection of alternatives is the bitter message of neoliberal reforms, and presentism is its social mood, an experience of time in which only the present is ‘real’.

What depletes our desire to imagine ‘why art now’? Perhaps the fact that we are less and less often thinking it with other people, as we are left as individuals in our corners to navigate the art market. What must we do and imagine to get closer to the question: and where is the fire? (borrowed from Time Bombs, film by BADco.)

Against the predicament that there is no interest and no time left to engage with art or for critical thinking through the arts, we would like to take a week (March 31st-April 8th) for watching, listening, and talking with artists, theatermakers, choreographers and dancers, poets, art theorists, and critics, across a variety of formats—presentations, showing performances, screenings, listening, discussion, and whatever else is brought to the table. So far we have eight confirmed guests to help us initiate this process, and expect a few more by March.

Diedrich Diederichsen, writer, curator and editor of German music journals like the famous Spex, will unravel his research on the German writer, ethnographer, poet and journalist Hubert Fichte (“The gay critic and non-Western art: the dialectics of travel and discovery – The case of Hubert Fichte and his fellow travelers: Leonore Mau, Jean Genet, Pierre Verger, Maya Deren and many others”). Taking Fichte’s books as a basis for a series of exhibitions in Lisbon, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Dakar and New York, Diederichsen will explore “a kind of self-reflexive, openly sexualized ethnography; a concept of socialism; an idea of African psychiatry; an idea of Afro-American religion; an idea of non-Western art; “aesthetics of poverty” (Glauber Rocha), “gayification of the world” (Fichte), tourism – and other issues through Fichte’s dialectics of travel and discovery.

The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although some of her works explore other media or other formats, such as video, books and writing, her interest is always in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. With a base in Brussels since 1996 she has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects, and develops her own work since 2002. Edvardsen will discuss the ideas and problems in the making of her recent performances (Black, No Title, We to be, Oslo, 2011-17), as well as her long-term project of living books Time Has Fallen Asleep In The Afternoon Sunshine (since 2010).

Tristan Garcia, philosopher, essayist and writer of several novels (La meilleure part des hommes, Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other awarded books) will present his latest novel project Histoire de la Souffrance. This long epic (in three volumes of which he has completed the first one) is set in multiples times, at least 24 different places and eras, as the continuing story of four souls, identified through colors (red, blue, green, yellow) under different names, being sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes human, sometimes non-human, young, old, always dominated and trying to emancipate. Although there is no transmigration of the souls, something is passing through the narrative flux from one character to another, and it will be obvious for the reader that something started by a horse sacrificed in India, under Samudragupta, will be achieved by a young girl in Yamato, two centuries later. Garcia will give a glimpse of this epic of the vanquished, and why he is still struggling with it.

Stephan Geene and Elfe Brandenburger are film makers, artists and writers who will join the meeting as members of the collective performance/theater-project minimal club which they worked on during the 1980s and 1990s. Brandenburger, Geene and Sabeth Buchmann , its founding members, started to re-work the texts, videos, plays, and exhibitions, i.e. to examine its pre-conditions, taking into account the time-lapse between. .e.g. , 1990 und 2018. The 'subject' for PAF is the object in its dimension of obstacle, thing, and its state of being produced, commodity: "den besitz an sich selbst als produkt formulieren" ... "describing the possession of oneself as commodity".

Hannah Hurtzig is a dramaturge and curator who has developed several series of large scale public assemblies and installations in which discourses of experts, activists and amateurs cross paths on vexed problems of modernity. After an extensive career in German theater (director of Kampnagel in Hamburg 1985-89, Theater Der Welt in Dresden 1996, Bonner Bienale 1998, dramaturge in Volksbuehne Berlin 2002-05), Hurtzig started Mobile Academy (since 1999) as a platform of research projects that investigate topics in relation to different cities worldwide and their specific contexts, changing collaborators, and varying formats. These include Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-knowledge (more than a dozen of editions since 2005), Archive of the Undead (2011), and The Milieu of the Dead (since 2013). Hurtzig will address questions and doubts from her current research.

Nikolina Pristaš, dancer, choreographer, co-founding member of the Zagreb-based performing arts collective BADco, will present the principal choreographic and dance propositions of the works she composed with BADco. Her talk will include an analysis and dance demonstrations of the logic of antibodies (Changes 2010), performing choreographic notes, work with the divided attention and montage (Fleshdance 2004), serialization (Semi-Interpretations or how to explain contemporary dance to an undead hare 2007), composite and the choreographic unconscious. Nikolina will also present a dance performance during this week.

Goran Sergej Pristaš, theatermaker, dramaturge and co-founding member of the Zagreb-based performing arts collective BADco, will present his recent research into the poetics of “looking from within the matter.” In place of programming a participatory spectatorship, this poetics focuses on looking from the viewpoint of production and encounter in performance, as it unfolds the exploded view, the view that implies displacements of the spectator’s vantage point, awareness and extension of the situation of looking in the apparatuses and technologies of watching and representation in the performances of BADco. The session will include the screening of Badco’s recent film Time Bombs (2018).

The fees are as usual: 18€ per night for the rooms – assuming a stay of 5 nights or more, 4 nights or less is 20€ per night - and 12€ for yearly membership. We will prepare food collectively, with a hand from all participants, at a cost of 11€ per day, for three meals a day. We can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so please bring one or the other along (there is an ATM in the village).

PAF gets very full these days, sometimes overly so. As such, please book early, and in the event that the building fills up we give preferences to bookings from those who wish to stay for the whole 7 day period. The first session will begin in the evening of the 31st. The 8th will be a day for departure.

Reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2014

4 in 1: MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, DANCE, CONVERSATION

For almost a decade PAF Summer University has engaged artists, activists and scholars in a ten days’ gathering, sharing and comparing, doing and showing. The intention has been to offer a zone of autonomy where experimentation and recreation could mingle and where knowledge production can be practiced with open doors. The mansion in the French countryside has been an ideal context with its almost endless facilities, studios and nature. Housing up to a hundred artists and offering three meals these ten days has created a unique social and artistic situation.

Artists have created works during Summer University that gained international appreciation, uncountable friendships and collaborations have been initiated during the week in August, ideas have been created, discarded and transformed – not least during nightly conversations or brisk walks through the forest.
At PAF a certain equality is practiced: the doer decides, leave no traces and make it possible for others. Three simple guidelines that have the positive effect of giving space for individual needs and solitary practices as well as spontaneous sharing and opportunities to show and discuss work.

This year the Summer University will inhabit PAF in a slightly different way, extended to four full weeks where each week will be dedicated to an expression, art-form or urgency. Four teams have been brought together in order to energize, curate, rethink, bring together and shape one week each. The weekdays function as a form of open preparation for the weekends that in turn emphasize activities, become a festival, a series of concerts, seminars, where activities are programmed more or less from early morning until late into the night. The teams have been given free hands to design the seven days as they feel fit, gathering artists and scholars, commissioning works, inviting everybody at PAF to share and produce together weeks and weekends that celebrate our practices, giving them new frames to gain visibility, response and momentum.

For the four weekends, PAF offers three meals per day for a fixed price of 100€ including accommodation, starting at Friday lunch and ending with breakfast on Monday morning. During the weekdays the visitors themselves are responsible for food and PAF offers accommodation for the price of 17€ per night (details below). A yearly membership fee of 12€ applies additionally.

This year, PAF Summer University consists of four weeks of activities, more focused but it also offers opportunities to visit this remarkable place for a weekend of both recreation and in-depth participation. For you who are busy with your own project, PAF is of course available for use and sharing.

The teams have been brought together by PAF but are not attached to the organization. From now on we want to test a model where PAF as a structure is centralized but is distributed as an artistic platform and can hosts a multiplicity of initiatives. For Summer University the intention is to establish new teams each year but we also hope that teams can form that will initiate activities during the rest of the year as well.

Summer University 2014 opens with a week of preparation before the first weekend which will focus on music. The following weeks will repeat this structure in different forms: four to five days of preparation for a weekend that will feature showings, seminars, etc. We start with music, to be followed by philosophy and dance and finishing with a week that focuses on conversation.

PROGRAM

The Summer University opens its doors on the 4th of August and our last weekend together will end on the 31st of August.

8 - 10 August — Swimming in Music

After a few days of sharing – through discussions, band practices, playing together or individually, remixing pop with experimental, inviting lecturers, musicians, singers, machines and, hanging out by the pool, initiating a social frame for new forms of listening – the weekend is estimated to be an unimaginable mélange of sound and music. An emphasize will be placed on sound as material in correlation to contemporary philosophy and object oriented ontologies.

Prepared by Yoann Durant, Perrine en Morceaux, Sunna Ardal Rosengren

15 - 17 August — Philosophy: Time, Intelligence, Acceleration

After several years of organizing lecture series with international philosophers, critical theorists, etc., philosophy has developed into a strong current at PAF. Following seminars with Reza Negarestani, Steven Shaviro, Isabelle Stengers, Ben Woodard, Tristan Garcia and others, a team has crystalized that will prepare seven days of intensive studies, lectures, Skype discussions, and writings, next to all kinds of mind expanding practices. Focus will be somewhere between the techno-voluptuous thinking of Nick Land and Reza Negarestani’s later work driven by an obsession with intelligence, technology, cybernetics and time.

Prepared by Amy Ireland, Diana Khamis, Katrina Burch Joosten

22 - 24 August — Indigo Dance: rethinking forms, practice, expression

Dance oscillates between practice and expression, preparation and representation in unique ways. This week will experiment with tweaked, new and alternative ways of dancing, sharing and practicing dance, showing and talking about and with dance. Unlike other artforms, dance hasn’t experienced its emancipation from modern formats and expressions. Perhaps this is the moment when dance is leaving something behind once and for all, opening for an indigo approach where practice and expression, social and performed dance, body and mind mingle differently – and why stop there… Indigo Dance is also a social experiment where the dance studio is no longer disconnected from the kitchen, the disco from the stage and theory is something we dance and practice is a form of love. Including workshops, classes, score practices, baking, commissioned works, a festival, lectures, happy hours and so much indigo.

Prepared by Linda Blomqvist, Emma Daniel, Anna Gaïotti, Adriano Wilfert Jensen

29 - 31 August — The Chinese Export Association

After three weekends focusing on expression, the final week will emphasize differentiated social frames where forms of conversation is brought to the fore. The entire week will be dedicated to open experimentation with non-linear social exchange. The group will investigate the position of the social in contemporary society, the condition of its co-option, how its recreational character today often turns into work and how it connects with notions such as technologies of the self. What happened with a non-disclosed concept of conversation and its particular address to time two decades after relational aesthetics? Can artistic practices today avoid engaging the social neither as socially engaged or engaging in the social but address certain social configurations as material and productive in themselves? Social configurations that aren’t about what is being said but how bodily proximity, spiritual connections and emotive intermingling open for domains of thought that are indifferent to production, interpretation, consolidation and identity.

Prepared by Jan Ritsema, Zoe Poluch, Mårten Spångberg, Christian Töpfner,

Each of the weeks will, after this general announcement, take on their own forms of distribution. Further information will be available through pa-f.net where different events, special calls, workshops, guests etc. will be announced.

PAF is looking forward to a new edition of the Summer University, to new form of creating, reflecting and discussing and most of all to see you here.

Practical Info: Weekends, Friday lunch - Monday breakfast, 100 euro, including accommodation, food and wine.
Weekdays, Monday lunch - Friday breakfast, 17 euro per night, accommodation, individual cooking.
Membership, 12 euro, valid 12 months.

CONTACT: Jan Ritsema or Valentina Desideri - contactpaf@gmail.com

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2015 - 4 in 1: MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, DANCE, TXT

After last year’s success PAF invites you to the second annual Summer University. The month-long gathering brings together the unique opportunities that PAF can offer with four curatorial teams who will design and animate four different weeklong sections: music, philosophy, dance, text. Where these weeks will bring the participants should remain a mystery, as we consider curation to imply an invitation to a multiplicity of practices, processes, presentations, modes of documenting and sharing, dialoguing, discussing and talking. The motivation is to produce four shared adventures with the support of aesthetic expression and in-depth thought. We understand each week as a preparation leading up to the weekend where the emphasis is presentation, concert, performance, festival, fête, lectures or seminar that we build together.

The teams have been given complete freedom to design the seven days as they feel, gathering artists and scholars, commissioning works, inviting everybody at PAF to share and produce together weeks and weekends that celebrate our practices, giving them new frames to gain visibility, response and momentum.

During the weeks we cook individually or organise together and for the weekend PAF offers three meals per day (weekend price per person 100€ from Friday lunch to Monday breakfast and room). Come for a week+weekend (170€) or several or introduce yourself to PAF with a weekend of your interest. Everybody is welcome to contribute to the respective weeks in whatever way desired from teaching to sharing, to showing and doing.
The Summer University is for you who want to engage with all your resources in your special field of interest, but it is also for you who are curious about PAF and want a taste of what it is. The house will be boiling of practices and people but there will also be room for you who desire to create your own rhythm or just need a few days of recreation.
During the Summer University PAF will naturally function as it normally does. For you who have an individual project don’t hesitate to visit PAF also during August.

The curatorial teams have been brought together by PAF but are not attached to the organization. For Summer University PAF utilize a model where PAF as a structure is centralized but is distributed as an artistic platform and can hosts a multiplicity of initiatives. For Summer University the intention is to establish new teams each year but we also hope that teams can form that will initiate activities during the rest of the year as well.

PAF doesn’t charge for activities but only for accommodation and food. PAF is a non-profit, non-funded organization located in the French countryside north-east of Paris.

PROGRAM

Summer University opens August 4 with four days preparation leading up to the music weekend.

4 - 10 August - Talking Music

With a focus on navigating collectively through music and sound, the music week proposes new practices of listening, thinking, discussing and doing music. How can we use different perceptions of time, space and other parameters of music to mix up with and influence individual and collective practices of playing and thinking? This year emphasizes longer time slots dedicated to lectures and discussions intertwined with a program of experiments ranging from sensing time collectively to building a sound studio and rehearsing in known and new constellations.
The weekend will experience the second edition of POOF - pool of sound festival - transforming PAF to a boiling mixture of concerts, collective symphonies, live experimentation, choir adventures, a house of love or an exploration of the rainbow of room, colours, textures, acoustics and vibes all contaminating and stimulating your making and listening to music and sound.

Prepared by Sunna Ardal, Yoann Durant, Perrine en morceaux, Michael Schmid

11 - 17 August - Philosophy: (In)Formalizing the Outside: Sex, Mathematics, Cybernetics

Taint your horizons and decentralize thought by putting into question where philosophy happens. At PAF, philosophers transit between conceptual practices and situations to embody reason through an abundance of ruses, by amplifying the capacity to think alongside two or more incompatible perspectives at once. With the choice to go against itself and deepen the rifts of eroding neoliberal institutions, Philosophy must discover and explore the dynamics of new conceptual terrain, fractalizing void across a multitude of scales. Following on from last year’s rigorous week, with exceptional thinkers like Reza Negarestani, Nick Land, Lucca Fraser, Amy Ireland, Peter Wolfendale & Mark Fisher, this year's summer university will bring together practitioners and thinkers from contemporary fields of research in sexuality and gender studies, non-classical logic and mathematics, and next-wave cybernetics, in order for new contaminations to occur. The event will orient around two vectors. First, an examination of the conceptual histories of sex and cybernetics, suggesting a new thinking of libidinal politics. Second, a reopening of the questions of formalization and contemporary mathematical philosophy. What is it to think today? To let one field of thought be a virus for another. Our aim is not to prescribe in advance a synthesis of these strands, but rather to create a space of collision, making a ‘solid’ and ‘fixed’ notion of the Outside tremble.

Organized by Katrina Burch, Matt Hare, Alina Popa

18 - 24 August - Indigo Dance 2: Choreographic Practice In Bed With Abundance

Indigo Dance 2 explores the imaginary and potential by mingling domestic practice with aesthetic experience, conviviality with critical thinking and invention with desire and curiosity. With its open source and “peer to peer” structure Indigo Dance is a hawk that seeks new practices, concepts, methods and formats in a sharing, supporting and analytical manner. It provides “guns for dances” by building concepts and discourse around what we do. We believe in the aesthetic experience and the changes it can install and so by showing up, insisting and making things possible for each other we are convinced that we can build the softest army.
The second edition like its predecessor, proposes PAF as the setting for an extra luxurious and highly convivial week of rethinking practice, form and expression in dance and choreography. The week is an unfolding of workshops and activities altogether different that ends with a grand festival.
Indigo Dance welcomes you to share your works, thoughts, concepts, methods and practices. The team will invite guests, commission works, propose collaborations and open the mini-bar. A schedule will be prepared ranging from breakfast in the nest, techno telepathy and inner body dance class over cocktail hangout to concept invention and floorwork interviews to be contributed to, disobeyed or strictly followed.
The hyper fest of i-D 2014 gave a glimpse of the dark deep-sea forest that is the territory to be discovered, invented and forgotten this year. The adolescent has grown up yet stays forever curious and rebellious. Lets keep the daring and allowing attitude, enthusiasm and joy undead while allowing new things to surface.

Prepared by Linda Blomqvist, Emma Daniel, Anna Gaïotti, Adriano Wilfert Jensen

25 - 31 August – MEADOW (it’s all writing) - TXT In Contemporary Aesthetic Practices

Writing and text in all its forms is experiencing a meltdown. A meltdown that appears to fertilize and give birth to new relations to and practices – formats are taking on new costumes and losing them. What is a poem in 2015? Emails, transcription, translation, recitation and reading aloud, storytelling, novels, re- and de-formed conversations, ghost and algorithmic writing, song lyrics, text generating apps, OCR, gaming, learning by heart, inscription, genetics, recipes, poetry, poetry and I have a tattoo. It’s all writing and in this digital environment who knows who owns it, the words, the text, the TXT and the rest. This last week of Summer University focuses on writing and text particularly within aesthetic practices independent of expression or dynamic. We are all writers and we use text, in process or as representation, in choreography or cinema, in poetry or law, tweets or novels, social networks and emoticons, calligraphy and instructions. Let’s get together and we will for sure find out what will happen. The week will be loosely organised, emphasising the social and soft forms of exchange, cooking and having a walk. Yet the week implies the preparation for an event - perhaps a pilot to be practiced other places at other moments - that we together will unfold during last days.

Curated by: Mette Edvardsen, Alexandra Napier, Mårten Spångberg

Participants, lecturers, programs etc will be announced closer to the Summer University. PAF is a self-sustained privately run artist centre initiated 2005, located 150 Km north-east of Paris. PAF does not charge for participation and does not engage in a selection process.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

During the Summer University the weekends imply an intensification and we expect guests to visit PAF over weekends. Therefore, during the weekdays participants cook individually or self-organize. During the weekend PAF and its excellent chefs provide three healthy meals per day.
A full week plus weekend, accommodation and food: 170€
Weekend, accommodation and food: 100€
New visitors will further have to become a member of PAF, 12€

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2017 - PHILOSOPHY, INDIGO DANCE, MUSIC, POETRY - Aug 7th / Sept 4th

7 - 14 August
PHILOSOPHY - Upping the Ex-ante

Once more we try to shake out some dust and find the best neglected pages to ponder in a shared manner and collaborative mode. This week makes a wager on the ability to philosophise through uncertainty, where the minutiae of self-abolition propels thought and initiates its wandering. Always a messy process: the accumulation of philosophical ‘interest’ seems to remain problematically individual. This muddle might be why a kind of neo-existentialism is so evidently on the rise. The spontaneous philosophy of philosophers—elaborated currencies—should be questioned, opening vectors of ludic exchanges. Dialogue finds itself occurring in ancient texts and while washing dishes.

The tension between self-abolition (as an ideal) and individual presentations creates an urgency to realise what a sustained thinking together can do. Collective philosophising requires more than a few dice rolls, oblique strategies, and parlour tricks to get us out from behind our desks, our thoughts from out of our heads: lest we forget that philosophy was once peripatetic.

This year we go sans-speaker, clearing the board. Things will be immanently shaped by those present, so bring something to do, something to speak through or to speak through you, something to think-with—collectively. Or not. There is no obligation to prepare anything ex-ante (in advance). The board will fill with freshly-minted proposals—philosophical, musical, mobile, poetic, filmic. To share one’s work is to test past and future collective memory as much as map the current terrain of thought: we can draw different lines in the dust.

Food will be handled through a combination of collective organisation and nominated helpers. The format will depend on the number of attendees, but we expect it to be between €10-15 per person per day on top of the stay per night. Reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com
Prepared by Ben Woodard, Amy Ireland, Matt Hare, Katrina Burch, Lendl Barcelos.

15 - 21 August
DANCE - Indigo Dance Work

The last three years the dance week during the summer university at PAF was known as Indigo Dance Festival a highly convivial week with an extra luxurious attitude. These have been absolutely fantastical, but sometimes it takes closure to generate opening.

This summer at PAF we leave the festival business to the festivals, and go to work.
Instead of having a huge palette of proposals in a summercamp/work as leisure vibe, we ask what knowledges, dances and conversations can happen, when we work together and next to each other. This year we don’t do Indigo Dance Festival we do Indigo Dance Work.

The week will be organized in three activities: dancing, writing and rehearsing.
Dancing will be like in dance classes, tba.
Writing will be a writing studio/workshop facilitated by Ann-Christin Berg Kongsness and Chloe Chignell.
Rehearsals will be for one big dance piece choreographed by Emma Daniel and Adriano Wilfert Jensen, to be presented at PAF in the end of the week.
Everyone is welcome to invite themselves to join everything.
And for the rest PAF culture: The Do’er decides, Make it possible for others and Don’t leave traces.

Food will be taken care of by extra chefs during the week.
Prices: 18€ per night (+12€ yearly membership)
17€ for 3 meals a day and coffee and tea and wine
For the complete week 210€ including 6 nights in PAF, 3 meals/day incl. coffee & wine and PAF membership valid for one year (12€).
Reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com
More information tba at www.indigodancefestival.tumblr.com
Questions at emmadaniel@live.fr
his week is prepared by Emma Daniel, Linda Blomqvist, Adriano Wilfert Jensen

22 - 28 August
MUSIC - musiking, practicing, playing

Not knowing what to expect but being prepared to expose oneself, leaving our habits at home, contaminating the social, playing political, loving yourself enough to feel the need to betray it, i.e. taking risks individually and collectively is what PAF Music Week 2017 will be about. It concerns our respective practices of music, our ways of collaborating, our parts in the collective mood and organization, and our abilities to describe and discuss music together.
We will favor ideas, experiences, trials, initiatives, games, texts, collaborations, performances, lectures etc where personal habits and collective norms become the #1 materials and terrains of experimentation. We love PAF because it can be a blank score with the capacity to turn overnight into an unheard symphony by means of collective energy, unbound creativity and thorough thinking. The week wants to be this symphony.

We organizers decided not to organize but to foment it by proposing a frame and applying to ourselves exactly what we require from all participants. Therefore we have a plan, but no program. Here are the main orientations so far :
. There is no leader, no dedicated speaker, we all create the week.
. We favor ideas where music is played, displayed and thought in other configurations than the good old concert and where the economy of attention is being redistributed.
. We favor ideas where genres, tools and situations are being shifted, subverted, "détournées" in order to give birth to unexpectable results.
. We tend to favor collective endeavors, but see no dogma here..

Practically:
We will share as much information possible before August so that you know better the context and its ressources (spaces, technical equipment...).
On the first day, will take place a meeting of collective decision making where all ideas will be put on the table and discussed until a program appears.
The meeting will take place in PAF where everybody is hosted, in St-Erme, an hour from Paris.
PAF MUSIC WEEK starts on Aug 22nd for lunch at 2pm and ends on Aug 28th evening. We ask all participants to do their best to be there during the entire time.
For the complete week, price is 210€ including 6 nights in PAF, 3 meals/day incl. coffee & wine and PAF membership valid for one year (12€). Otherwise 18€ per night (+12€ yearly membership) and 17€ per day for 3 meals and coffee and tea and wine.
Reservation at contactpaf@gmail.com
For more questions, write to Ana anaberkenhoff@posteo.de, Perrine antre2deux@gmail.com and/or Fred homnimal@gmail.com
Ana Berkenhoff, Perrine Bailleux and Frédéric Bernier

29 August - 4 Sept
*** PAF POETRY WEEK ***

This year's Summer University at the Performing Arts Forum (Saint Erme, France ––http://www.pa-f.net/) will host a week dedicated to poetry. We invite you –– poets, theorists, activists, and other stranded cognitarians –– to actively participate during a week of presentations, performances, small workshops and interventions that will be scheduled more or less formally from breakfast to rave-time, alongside the lectures of three invited speakers: Peli Grietzer, Ed Luker, and Mia You (more details below).

Following the configuration of the space and the collegial spirit of Summer University and PAF at large, the protocol we suggest is not the one of a poet on a stage reciting in front of a solemn audience (or not only). We’d rather go for a mode of experimentation with the methods that we use to engage with poetry: as performance, text group reading, showing the critical work that we strive to do and more, asking of poetry that it recover or produce singular powers of explicitation of potentially manifold extension, beginning with its own practice. As conversations start more easily when there is an imaginary centre to hold on to, without this setting the boundaries of the exchange, one of the questions we would like to put to the fore is that of the false dilemma between lyrical confession and formalism, shedding light on their relationship to contemporary modes of poetic subjectivation.

This is quite an endeavour, not in the least since there will be many languages at the table. But if we are successful, we will have established a new custom: a week of poetry at PAF!

Invited speakers:

*** Peli Grietzer is completing his PhD in mathematically informed literary theory at Harvard (Comparative Literature) and the HUJI Einstein Institute of Mathematics. His dissertation borrows mathematical forms from deep learning theory to model the ontology of "ambient" phenomena like moods, vibes, styles, sensoria, cultural logics, and structures of feeling, and goes on to deductively derive Modernist poetic practice from this premise. He is an on-and-off contributor to the ambient/archival literature collective Gauss PDF, and working on a feature film with video artist Tzion Hazan.

*** Ed Luker is a poet and a theorist. He is completing his PhD at Northumbria University on the politics of attention in the poetry of Ezra Pound, Charles Olson and J.H. Prynne. His theoretical writing has engaged with issues of lyric poetry, militant poetics, fantasy, labour and the work of Prynne, Olson, Sean Bonney and Connie Scozzaro among others. Ed's poems are published in three chapbooks: /Peak Return/ (Shit Valley Press, 2014), /Headlost/ (Rivet Press, 2014) and /The Sea Together/ (Materials Press, 2016).

*** Mia You is a poet, critic, translator and theorist, completing a doctoral dissertation on the influence of Gertrude Stein on contemporary poetry at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016 her first collection of poetry, /I, Too, Dislike It/, was released by 1913 Press. Her poems also have appeared as a chapbook, /Objective Practice/ (Achiote Press, 2007), and an artist’s book, /YOU/ (created by Thorsten Kiefer, 2004). She is collaborating on a book of hours and movements with Lyn Hejinian, writes essays and book reviews. You was born in Seoul, South Korea, grew up in Northern California, and now lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Practicalities:

PAF Poetry Week starts with a welcome dinner at 9pm on August 29 and ends on September 4 with a lunch. Preferably, participants stay for the whole event, but it's up to you. You can always stay longer.

We estimate the total costs for the full week to be between 180 and 210 euros. [PAF asks a fee of 18 euro per night when staying for five nights or longer, 20 euro/night for short stays. Besides this, you will need a PAF membership of 12 euros, valid for one year. Food (3 meals per day, coffee/tea and wine) will be organized collectively and, depending on the number of participants, we aim to spend between 10 and 15 euros per day.]

Organizing group: Persis Bekkering, Silvia Mollicchi, Olivier Surel, Thea Porter.

PAF Winter Update Meeting 2019 | 27/12/2019 - 3/1/2020

Be welcome at PAF for the WUM 2019: an informal week of meeting, showing, discussing and updating each other about projects and practices, experiences, ideas and knowledge, and of sharing works and ideas of others you found most striking in 2019.

WUM 2019 will also be a space where discussions can coincide with ways of embodying and transmitting the spirit and needs of PAF, such as: passing on practical knowledge, performing activities, improve facillities in the building, trying out modes of attention and methods of caring for the space and each other, etc.

WUM this year coincides with two General Assemblies of the legal entities PAF is structured by

1. The General Assembly of the Association PAF to which all members who paid for their membership in the last 12 months are formally invited,

2. The yearly meeting of the shareholders/owners of SCI-The Building,

The meeting of the SCI-The Building will be held on December 28th ; the meeting of the Association PAF on the 29th and 30th.

About PAF GA.
Since we would need to have all actual members -about 1100- present or represented to make legal decisions and since this is logistically almost impossible, we imagine this first General Assembly more as a way to:

1. prepare the transition from Jan slowly retreating to a transparent self organization

2. have a moment to share with a larger group of users the various thoughts and feelings about how paf is running, as well as ideas and imaginations on how it could go on, what is missing or what is exciting, and how PAF can perpetually reinvent itself etc. We imagine the assembly more as a space of conversation, feedback and imagination to develop reasonings, rather than as a moment where we make collective decisions.

Items and subjects for the agenda (also from those who can not attend), can be sent to contactpaf and a final agenda will be sent to those who booked for the meeting (let us know when you also want to receive it despite not being physically present).

General Assembly of SCI-The Building.

We will send within some weeks the agenda of the meeting to the 50 owners of the building.

Practicalities:

Accommodation is 18€ per night (if staying 5 or more nights - less is 20€) + 12€ membership mandatory due to legal and insurance reasons and valid for one year.

To keep the price for the food as low as possible the kitchen will be collectively organized. If you feel inspired to head a kitchen team and cook a specific meal for 100+ people, please let us know in your reservation so we can coordinate in advance.

The price for food and drinks will be 10€ for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Please tell us if you follow a special diet or if you have allergies.

You can stay longer or shorter than the official dates of the WUM, BUT we want to avoid reservations for the year transition only ; therefore a reservation from 30/1-2/1 only or even shorter is not possible.

WUM is often busy and full so please book ASAP and tell us who you would prefer to share your room with.

Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

Call for SELF-EDUCATION at PAF, april 1- october 1 2007

SELF-EDUCATION AT PAF
PAF | PerformingArtsForum, St. Erme, France
www.pa-f.net | self-education@pa-f.net
Acall for not yet professionals and young artists
Period 1 April – 30 September 2007

SELF-EDUCATION AT PAF offers the opportunity for a non-hierarchical, self-motorized learning process. In contrast to other educational programmes based on instruction, SELF-EDUCATION AT PAF focuses on:
– learning how to identify your own interests, and how to set up the means to develop your own curriculum of study
– encountering other young professionals from different backgrounds
– sharing your work with other artists, theoreticians and cultural practitioners in residence at PAF.

Activities are structured in various formats determined by students, guests and other PAF residents: presentations of work and feedback sessions, discussions and debates, film screenings and lectures, classes and workshops. PAF provides a large amount of working space, studios of various sizes, spaces for communal activities and a mediatheque. The peaceful surroundings support full concentration on work.

In a double structure of both self-motorized, self-guided individual/group study, and intensive exchange with other artists, students can expand their knowledge and learning process. The particular emphasis of the research practice at PAF is on investigating artistic methodology, creating tools to design working
processes, and developing skills beyond those already established.
Briefly, learning at PAF means engaging in a dialogue that may challenge your artistic goals, methods, and visions of art in contemporary society.

SELF-EDUCATION ATPAF is six months long (1 April – 30 September 2007)
and includes Summer University (10 days in July/August 2007) and students exchange period (21 May – 1 June 2007). For more information about PAF and its program see www.pa-f.net.

SELF-EDUCATION AT PAF : CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS IS OPEN NOW!
Period 1 April – 30 September 2007 | Fee: €250,– per month for accom-
modation and working space | For participation please send a project
description and a CV to: janritsema@mac.com
Initiated and run by
Carla Bottiglieri, Elke Van Campenhout, Alice Chauchat, Bojana Cvejiç, Annie Dorsen, DD Dorvillier, Thomas Greil, Sandra Iché, Mette Ingvartsen, Krõõt Juurak, Florian Malzacher, Xavier Le Roy, Berno Odo Polzer, Marta Popivoda, Nikolina Pristas, Sergej Pristas, Jan Ritsema, Petra Sabisch, Eszter Salamon, Ana Vujanoviç.

PAF | PerformingArtsForum
Contact & Information
Jan Ritsema / PAF
15, rue Haute
F-02820 St Erme Outre et Ramecourt
T/F +33323801846 | mobile: +33637031645
email: janritsema@mac.com
skype: janritsema
www.pa-f.net

PerformingArtsForum (PAF)
Basic information

AMission Statement
PAF is a place for the professionals and not-yet-professionals in the field of performing arts, visual art, music, film, literature, new media, theory and cultural production, who seek to research and determine their own conditions of work.

PAF is for people who can motorize their own artistic and knowledge production, not only responding to the opportunities given by the institutional market. Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians, practitioners and activists themselves, PAF is a user-created informal institution. It is a platform for anyone who wants to expand possibilities and interests in his/her own working practice.

PAF is located in a former convent school (6.400 m2), in a 1.2 hectare garden in the village of St. Erme, France, approximately 130km northeast of Paris.

PAF is
– a forum for producing knowledge in critical exchange and ongoing
discursive practice
– a place for temporary autonomy and full focus on work
– atool-machine where one can work on developing methods and procedures, not necessarily driven toward a product
– a place for experimenting with other than known modes of production
and organization of work, e.g. open source production
– a place for distraction, retreat and conviviality

PAF is not a venue which has the budget to produce, promote and distribute projects, but it is a house offering generous space and unlimited time, a possibility to shape your own conditions of work, as well as contact and exchange of content and other modes of production with the artists and theoreticians working at PAF.

PAF is an institution which continues to develop on the basis of what each person brings through his/her engagement. It has no other aim but to operate on the principles of self-organization, whereby one assumes the responsibility for creating and organizing his/her own work and activity in PAF. One can be working alone in PAF. But PAF also offers spontaneous ways to interact with others, without forcing collaboration.

Who can come to PAF?
You don’t need an invitation to come to PAF. PAF isn’t a closed group. It’s enough that you write an email explaining what you would like to do in PAF, and then you will negotiate the time of your stay and all other practical matters.

What can I do in PAF?
You can come to work on whatever you choose to. This entails a wide range of activities: personal projects, but also projects you would like to initiate, organize and involve more people, such as conferences and all other kinds of meetings.
If you don’t have a concrete project, purpose or intention, you can also come and visit PAF. In PAF you will probably find a number of artists, theoreticians and other practitioners – the information about the persons and activities is updated monthly on the website. There is a growing mediatheque with technical equipment where you can view videos. The whole place is covered by WIFI. There is a lot of studios, working spaces and other communal places, including a park.

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Mobilis in Mobili: On Space, Time, Motion, and Forces | 01-07 Sept 2019

Workshop piloted by Gabriel Catren

In this workshop addressed to non-scientists, we shall propose a philosophically oriented introduction to the epic history that led from the first axiomatic formulation of geometry in Euclid's Elements around 300 BC – passing by key figures such as Galilei, Leibniz, Newton, Maxwell, and Mach – to Einstein's theory of (special and general) relativity developed during the first two decades of the XXth century. By addressing the problem of deciding about the absolute or relative nature of physical motion, this narrative turns around what we could consider the most fundamental notions of physics: the notions of space, time, motion and forces. By sanctioning the marriage of space and time and describing gravity as a manifestation of the curvature of space-time induced by the presence of matter, Einstein’s theory completely subverted the inherited ideas about all these notions.

By doing so, Einstein’s work also opened the field of contemporary astrophysics and cosmology. In this theoretical framework, new physical objects such as black holes and new physical phenomena such as gravitational waves and gravitational lensing were theoretically predicted and subsequently observed. Moreover, Einstein’s theory of general relativity made possible the current comprehension of the evolution of our expanding Universe in the framework of the so-called Big Bang theory.
In this workshop we shall address these subjects from a purely conceptual standpoint. By doing so, we intend to share one of the most fundamental, vertiginous and still gravid with surprises trends of thought in the history of physics with persons lacking any previous high-level background in physics or mathematics.

The workshop will take place during four days (starting on September 1st in the morning and ending on September 7th in the afternoon) interspersed by three “free” days in which the participants will have the time to rest and/or work through the new material.

The workshop will be free (besides the accommodation and meals expenses).

Dates: September 1st– September 7th, 2019.
Location: Performing Arts Forum in Saint Erme, France
Accommodation: 18€ per night (to PAF) plus a 12€ one-year PAF membership.
Meal expenses: yet to be confirmed.
Teaching fee: None

The maximum number of participants is of 40 persons. Persons who attend the whole workshop will have priority. Reservations – by writing to contactpaf@gmail.com – are mandatory. For questions about this Workshop, you can get in touch with Gabriel Catren (gabrielcatren@gmail.com).

Gabriel Catren is a philosopher and a physicist working at the Institut SPHERE - Science, Philosophie, Histoire (Université Paris Diderot – CNRS, Paris). This workshop takes place in the framework of the Laboratoire International Associé (LIA) Identities, Forces, Quanta (CNRS).

PS V (a darktongues, kunning (poetics (& the occult))) ~ with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh & Rebekah Sheldon ~ 9-14 March 2017

To devise an impenetrable expression, one need not compose an entirely new word. It can suffice to alter those already present in the language.
— Daniel Heller-Roazen

There are many conceptual corridors beneath the question of secrecy (those of delirium, cruelty, hallucination, whispering, doom), just as there are many shapes that secretive formations can assume (underground societies, forbidden aristocracies, rebel cadres, cult gatherings, urban gangs, martial arts orders, avant-garde movements, mystical or magical circles), just as there are many expert practitioners of the secret (the visionary, the liar, the sorcerer, the thief, the seducer, the assassin). All are instrumental to the larger cipher; all are necessary.
—Jason Mohaghegh

The most temporary membranes serve as shelter.
—Lisa Robertson

This PS, philosophy goes dark. It is time to explore a stubbornness of a different kind. Poetics and philosophy both hold pacts with secrecy but each has a different way of biting its tongue. Philosophy as project, poetry as form, and language as a constitutive constraint perpetually in tension with worlds, are wracked by ‘problems’ of obfuscation, ellipsis, encryption and ambiguity. With no desire to solve the puzzles of writing’s occultation, we propose a drift into the entanglements of poetics with techniques of camouflage, dissimulation, decryption, secretion, compression, and alliance. Over the four days of the event we will flirt with the prospect of losing ourselves in a sustained, headless excursion into a ,kataphysical nightside of thought.

9-14th March 2017 Thursday eve to Tuesday morn

Things begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end with breakfast Tuesday morning. We propose to gather together to think-with poems, aphorisms, sexts, txts, paratexts, code, recipes, scores, spells, numograms, indexes, etcetera. The event will be partially facilitated by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh & Rebekah Sheldon who will help catalyze our thought throughout the weekend and feed the broader dialogue. On Monday, we will connect the occurrences of the previous three days with an open discussion. Let us see where a weekend-long conversation takes us...

Practical Information:
Staying up to 4 nights: €20 per night Staying more than 4 nights: €18 per night Plus €12 for yearlong membership
Food will be collectively organized at €10 per full day, so €50 if you join for the entire event.
Email PAF (contactpaf@gmail.com) with the dates you would like to attend.
Anyone who cannot come for the full event or would like to stay longer is welcome to do so.

We hope you can join us in March at PAF for these discussions.
&, as always, you are welcome to spontaneously add things to the program.

\\|//
Amy Ireland, Lendl Barcelos, Ben Woodard, Matt Hare, Katrina Burch

More information about PAF: http://www.pa-f.net/basics

PS VI: Of Changes and Returns - Questions of the transcendental ** 8-12 March 2018

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
- The Tempest I,2.

After a year of hibernation, PS pokes its head out again. In our slumber, many a morphed image of the transcendental sneaked into our dreams. With a glance back to previous PS events, that insisted upon the Stubbornness of the Empirical, we consider these dream-images to be symptomatic: while the empirical remains stubborn, the transcendental, as the underpinnings of aesthetics or of the sciences, equally remains in question.

We propose to address this head on, in a return to a historical moment that slips out of obscurity mostly by function of its place as an object of critique in the best known philosophical streams of thought of the XX century. Instead of a ‘return to Kant’, we will immerse ourselves in the work of some of those who, in the late XIX century, called for such a return: the Neo-Kantians.

Remote enough to constitute an open field of exploration for our endeavours, Neo-kantianism represents the face of philosophy in German academia in the last quarter of the XIX century, as expressed in the standards of the Marburg and the Southwest (Freiburg and Heidelberg) schools. With Herman Cohen, Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer as the most prominent scholars on one side and Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrick Rickert on the other, a perhaps brutal simplification gathers all of them under the project of rethinking transcendental philosophy in opposition to a prevalent penchant for Hegelian speculation.

We suspect that thinking through some of the Neo-kantian debates will help us both continue the previous PS discussions and begin new ones, with those of you who want to join in for the first time.

The articulation of transcendentals as the conditions of possible experience (whether as categories, forms of intuitions or principles of perception) will inevitably also bring to the fore experience as such. Is it scientific or lived and how is reason configured between these poles? Especially in Cohen’s Neo-Kantianism, the re-reading of Kant’s Critiques focused on the idea of a transcendental method (‘transcendental analysis’), to be applied in virtually any philosophical inquiry: setting off from the ‘factum’ of science, this method would

trace its way back to a dynamic and ever evolving system of categories, the justificatory background to scientific claims.

Even this basic input raises a plethora of questions and curiosities, the matters of which extend from the nature of the ‘factum’ of science, to the relation between philosophy and the sciences. What position does philosophy assume vis-a-vis science and is there any implicit necessity to locate this position? Perhaps most pressingly, what happens to philosophy when the accent is on method? With further insistence, we will also have to consider what becomes of the transcendental, in a philosophy centered on ‘transcendental analysis’. And as this term is of two facets, it equally poses questions regarding ‘analysis’: what does it denote here, exactly?

Then down in the specifics, but also grounding some of these questions in the historical moment we want to study, how are we to read, for instance, both Cohen’s metaphysics and epistemology?

To consciously or unconsciously side with more familiar, XX century orientations that found in Neo- kantianism a target or an ally may be tempting, but, before we do that, we want to ask: what were the hopes and what the promises held in this return to the beginning of transcendental philosophy?

For the occasion, we have invited Howard Caygill and Marco Giovanelli to each present on parts of their research. Surely one of the most curious Kantians of today, Howard Caygill has continually worked on questions of experience, philosophies and histories of culture as well as most recently on resistance and defiance. Among much else, Marco Giovanelli has written brilliantly on Neo-Kantian philosophers and especially on the promising debate over the possibility of measuring in science and on Cohen’s publishing quasi-failure of the Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and Its History.

Thursday's dinner will mark the beginning of the event, the two lectures by our invited speakers will take place on Friday and Saturday afternoon, with Sunday devoted entirely to a general discussion before the farewell breakfast on Monday. Our imaginary for this weekend is largely made up of morning reading groups to establish a common pace and the preliminaries for a shared language, afternoon lectures to sharpen and frame our thoughts and continually branched discussions. Alongside conceptual concerns, the gambit is once again that the effort to think together and to remain attentive to the mode of discussions might help us not to reproduce the patterns that instantiate the worst of academia. In this spirit, arguments will be recomposed and stripped of shorthands to leave them open to perusing. As always, you are welcome to spontaneously add readings, presentations and whatever else to the programme.

Practicalities:

Thursday (March 8th) will be the arrival day, departure on Monday (March 12th) morning. Staying up to 4 nights costs €20 per night, €18 per night, if you stay longer. There is a mandatory membership fee for PAF itself which is €12 and lasts for one year.
Food-wise, we will collectively organize on site, and from past experience it has come to around €10 per day, which means approximately €40 for the whole event. Email PAF (contactpaf@gmail.com) with the dates you’d like to attend. Anyone who would like to stay longer is, of course, welcome to do so.

This PS event is prepared by Marie Louise Krogh, Mikkel Ibsen and Silvia Mollicchi.

PS: Stubbornness of the Empirical 2 — Space & Time — 3-7/3/2016

It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. Such an assertion involves a far greater departure from the natural position of mankind than is involved in the assertion of the unreality of Space or of the unreality of Matter. So decisive a breach with that natural position is not to be lightly accepted. And yet in all ages the belief in the unreality of time has proved singularly attractive.
—J. E. McTaggart

We are happy to announce the second installment of “The Stubbornness of the Empirical” at PAF, in collaboration with Anna Longo, which will take place 3rd-7th March 2015. These events continue to build an inclusive philosophically-oriented community at PAF, investigating the co-creation of concepts and giving time-space for us to think & work collectively. Building off this past October's event which had Gabriel Catren and Dorothée Legrand as speakers, this second event will focus on the relationship between space, time, and the empirical.

Dates:
3rd-7th March 2015

Programme:
Things will begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end with an open discussion on Monday. We propose to have a weekend-long conversation together, around the blackboard, and see where this takes us. This will be facilitated by one talk of 2-3 hours each day on the three ‘main’ days (Friday/Saturday/Sunday), which can feed into the broader dialogue. Our three speakers for this event are Norman Sieroka, Francesa Biagioli, and Pierre Cassou-Nougès. The final day, Monday, we will connect the three days with a discussion turning towards the future of the project.

But anyway, here is a write-up as a thematic introduction for this installment:

Why space, time and the empirical? Whether space and time exist outside of human thought, and how they are accessed has been an ongoing debate in philosophical, artistic, scientific, and theological practice. Are space and time transcendental, physical, or constructed largely from human minds? If space and time are not absolute (Newton), nor purely dependent upon objects (Leibniz), does relativity (Einstein) properly account for spatio-temporal complexity and our access to it? Is Kant's transcendental account of space and time disqualified because of its reliance on Euclidean geometry (Carnap, Cassirer), or does this overestimate the unity of mathematics? Does naturalism upset any transcendental account of space and time since perception is species-specific (Longo), or is space and time unveiled only via a 'purer' form of intuition (Bergson)? Can it be argued that time does not exist at all (McTaggart, Barbour)? How does the purported fundamentality of physics relate to the need to support its concepts with representations (artistic, technological, conceptual) which lie in other domains of inquiry? To what extent are space and time always empirically mediated, and on what scale can we be sure of its universality or particularity?

We look forward to engaging these questions via our speakers’ work: Sieroka’s investigations into the relation of the continuous and the discrete across phenomenological and physical lines (both neuroscientifically and mathematically coded), Biagioli’s analysis of Ernst Cassier’s influence on the sciences and, in particular, the relation of 19th and 20th century empiricism to abstract geometry and the function of symbols between reason and unreason, as well as Cassou-Nougès theoretical and anthropological reflections on the sea-side as a unique spatio-temporal zone of phenomenal constitution.

The 3rd Installment of the Stubbornness of the Empirical will take place on the 2nd-6th June and focus on Sound.
Our programme culminates with Summer University philosophy week on the 8th-15th August.
More information will be sent in the coming months.

Practical Information:
Rates are as standard:
Staying up to 4 nights: 20 Euros per night
Staying more than 4 nights: 18 Euros per night
Plus 12 Euros for yearlong membership

Food we will collectively organise on site, and from past experience has come to around 10 euro per ‘full’ day with a little excess from that, so in the area of 30 for the extended weekend.

Email PAF with the dates you’d like to attend and bring whatever you’d like to the table (contactpaf@gmail.com). Anyone who would like to stay the Monday night or longer is, of course, welcome to do so, allowing an organic ‘tail’ to the event.
We hope very much you can join us this March at PAF for these discussions.

Anna Longo, Matt Hare, Amy Ireland, Katrina Burch, Ben Woodard, Lendl Barcelos
\\|//

More information about PAF: http://www.pa-f.net/basics

PS: Stubbornness of the Empirical 3 — Sound & Philosophy — 2-7/6/2016

PS: We are happy to announce the third installment of “The Stubbornness of the Empirical” at PAF which will take place 2nd-7th June 2016. These events continue to forge an inclusive philosophically-oriented community at PAF, investigating collective conceptual trajectories and giving us a board to sound off. Building off the two past events which explored phenoumenology, ethics, space(, )time, and more, this third event will focus on the relationship between sound & philosophy.

Programme: Things will begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end Tuesday morning. We propose to have a weekend-long conversation together, around the blackboard, & see where this takes us. This will be facilitated by a talk of 2-3 hours each day on the three ‘main’ days (Friday/Saturday/Sunday), which can feed into the broader dialogue. Our speakers will be Kodwo Eshun, Agnès Gayraud & Will Schrimshaw. On Monday, we will connect the three days with an open discussion.

Whether explored as a specific sensory modality; a real (or virtual) physical phenomenon; a region of the vibratory (dis)continuum modulating the social somatic; an inherently temporal experience guiding thot thru sciencefictional universes; an articulated tongue twisting ineffables into puns; a possibility-space initiated by inferential gestural circuitries; an audial xenotechnology engendering post-humanesis; an anadumbratable object of varied pareidolic interpretation; &or the affective politics of the (in)audible, the sonic poses specific contours for philosophy to trace.

We look forward to investigating the stubbornness of the sonic via our speakers’ work: Eshun’s poetic soniconceptronics, Gayraud’s ethics of aural aesthetics, & Scrimshaw’s real materialist infraesthetics.

Our yearly programme culminates with Summer University philosophy week on the 9th-15th August.

`~!‡ º ‡!~’

Practical Information
Staying up to 4 nights: €20 per night
Staying more than 4 nights: €18 per night
Plus €12 for yearlong membership

Food we will collectively organize on site, and from past experience has come to around €10 per ‘full’ day with a little excess from that, so in the area of €30 for the extended weekend.
Email PAF (contactpaf@gmail.com) with the dates you’d like to attend. Anyone who would like to stay longer is, of course, welcome to do so, affording a longer decay.

We hope very much you can join us this June at PAF for these discussions &, as always, you’re welcome to spontaneously add things to the program.

⧹⧹I⧸⧸
Lendl Barcelos, Katrina Burch, Matt Hare, Amy Ireland, Ben Woodard

PS: Surrogat(IV)e Autonomy, November 3rd-8th 2016

That is said to express a thing in which there are relations which correspond to the relations of the thing expressed... Hence it is clearly not necessary for that which expresses to be similar to the thing expressed, if only a certain analogy is maintained between the relations.’ - Leibniz, ‘What is an Idea?’

‘The great proximity between the ‘scientific’ metaphor and the ‘philosophical’ metaphor gives rise to the thought that each of the fields expresses two different, yet capable of being articulated, modes of intervention of allusive stratagems’ - Châtelet, ‘Interlacing the singularity, the diagram and the metaphor’

Year two. Where are we? Given that the empirical is still stubborn, it might be time to employ an allusive stratagem to dodge such truculence, and so we encounter the idea of surrogat(iv)e autonomy. Warning: this is a provisional chimera. The first notion is that of ‘surrogate’ or ‘surrogative’ reasoning (the conflation is already telling). In the literature (Barwise & Shimojima, Swoyer), this refers to the use of external supports in reasoning, or, generally, letting one thing stand (however partially) for another. This encompasses many phenomena, from the use of scale models, to projective geometry, to the fact that we use pens to write things (yes, that’s a genuine example). The notion has older roots, in Leibniz’s conception of ‘expression’: “the model of a machine expresses the machine itself, the projective delineation on a plane expresses a solid, speech expresses thoughts and truth”, and on.

One could ask whether such diverse cases can be subsumed under a structural concept. To point to one obvious (potential) division, is the process whereby one, say, uses a model of an airplane to model a real case of flight strictly analogous to the one whereby we use numbers to reason about measurements? Beyond, that is, the fact that both are, in the loosest of senses, processes of analogy? We touch then upon the problem of modelization, wherein we have to reason not only about the, so to speak, ‘problem at hand’, but recursively about the nature of the very tools we use to approach that problem. Such conceptual acrobatics can be both stymying and productive: it is no accident that surrogate reasoning is sometimes called ‘constraint projection’, and we hope to tackle both the positive and negative valences of the latter formulation. So there’s some thoughts on this broad sense of ‘surrogacy’, we’ll see where that goes.

The second head of our chimera turns to face us: that of ‘autonomy’ as such, particularly with regards to the formal. Insofar as the impasses of formalization concern the dialectic of sufficiency and inadequacy with regards to the material formalized, we could say that the problem of ‘the autonomy of forms’ is the necessary double of the previous year’s considerations on ‘the stubbornness of the empirical’. But our question is not simply limited to the formal taken as an index of the mathematical, logical or symbolic. Rather, we wish to open up consideration of the purchase of a critical concept of autonomy with regards to forms and practices in an expanded sense: aesthetic, political, artistic, philosophical.

So, as a first point of purchase, beyond looking at the tension between formalization and the content formalized, we seek means of addressing how the ‘life’ of the concept, or the behaviour of the abstract, points to the non-intentional activity of the formal. As a second, we are asking whether autonomy is even possible, in what senses it might be, and, indeed - another question lurking in the background - autonomy from what? Might these two investigations have something to say to each other? And could ‘surrogacy’ be a useful notion in making this bridge?

With regards to our plan for this stew, the weekend will be, as before, a combination of talks, readings and discussion. Moving into the second year of doing this, we would like to focus on PS as a research platform, inviting active collaboration from all participants, new or returning. As such, this time we will experiment with providing some more - non-mandatory - readings in advance to focus the discussion. Alongside these will be two invited speakers, Elie Ayache & Anne-Françoise Schmid, who will feed into all of this. For Ayache, the very notion of writing, particularly understood as the writing of price, is an imperfect capture of the contingent behaviour of the market, a market divorced from the structure of possibility. For Schmid, a generic epistemology that cuts across fields as diverse as design, philosophy, and science, accounts for the generation of an object of inquiry that has no one-to-one correspondence in the world, but is the manifestation of a research program. Both then articulate complex epistemologies and ontologies that open onto the contingent and the generic, and in doing so place an emphasis on models, be they as self-generating structures or tools of partial bridging and construction.

Practicalities:

Thursday (the 3rd) will be the arrival day, departure on Tuesday (the 8th) morning.
Staying up to 4 nights: €20 per night; staying more than 4 nights: €18 per night. €12 for membership
Food we will collectively organize on site, and from past experience has come to around €10 per day. Email PAF (contactpaf@gmail.com) with the dates you’d like to attend.
Anyone who would like to stay longer is, of course, welcome to do so.
We invite all to come and participate in whatever this triggered for you. See you in November. Amazing.
\\|//

Philosophy Salo(o)n: The Stubbornness of the Empirical *** Oct 29th - Nov 2nd 2015

We’re very excited to be announcing a new philosophy initiative at PAF. Over the past years, PAF has increasingly become an important space where philosophy can move outside of the academy, both materially and in terms of the kind of thinking that can flourish here. In an effort to extend that, we’re going to supplement the two existing ‘big’ philosophical events (Spring Meeting and the Philosophy Week during summer university), with a program of more intimate, conversation orientated meetings over the course of 2015/16, to bring together both those who already have taken an interest in philosophy at PAF and some new bodies and minds.

We’re taking as a rough thematic for the year ‘The Stubbornness of the Empirical’, which will serve as an orientating pole for invited speakers and discussion, but should be viewed more as an inducement than an insistence. In general, we are interested in new ways to investigate the practice of philosophy, the possibilities for collective philosophical production, and in simply taking the opportunity to move at the speed of thought a little, and do so together, over an extended period.

We’re working out a lot of this as we go, as we want those who attend the events to feed in and help develop this project. For now however, this is the basic idea for the first of these events:

Dates: Thursday the 29th October - Monday the 2nd November. Things will begin with dinner on the Thursday evening and end with breakfast on Monday morning. The main ‘meat’ of the program will be the three full days (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) in between then. Two further events will follow in February/March and May/June respectively, with details to be announced at a later date.

Format/Content: We propose to essentially have a weekend long conversation, together, around the blackboard, and see where this takes us. This will be facilitated by one ‘programmed’ talk each day of 2-3 hours, which can feed into the broader dialogue. As things stands, we can confirm our first two speakers as Gabriel Catren and Dorothée Legrand both of whom we are immensely glad to be hosting. A third speaker will be confirmed later. Following an impromptu workshop period at the end of this summer, a few of us produced the following conceptual write up as an indication of what we’re orientating around with the theme. There is no reason that discussion has to be limited by this frame, but perhaps it can function as a useful ‘attractor’:

In many philosophical circles, the term ‘empiricism’ immediately brings to mind a naive or outdated way of approaching the world. While empiricism may have common sense use and applications, it fails to adequately ground or propel the rational, experimental or speculative enquiries required for philosophydefined as the boundless adventure of thought. Despite this, the conceptual bite of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) remains palpable in both discussions of the sciences and thephilosophical attempt to situate the reach of those sciences, and human knowledge, in general.
Given the fact that numerous strains of recent continental philosophy have broken away from linguistic, phenomenological or other purportedly anthropocentric moorings, a turn toward the empirical may seem a backward step. Many, if not all, of the basic tenets of empiricism tend to run against the grain of new forms of philosophy invested in the great outdoors (Meillassoux), the outside, or in returning to the more ‘adventurous’ spirit of philosophy. These speculative endeavors, which set the wet blanket of Kantianism aflame, too quickly equate empirical access with unreflective common knowledge, and epistemology with modernist vanity.

If recent moves towards new rationalisms, materialisms and realisms have made anything clear, it would seem that either the rash abolition or staunch reification of epistemological constraints leaves open a space between which empiricism would seem to have broad appeal and functionality. Given the sheer complexity of the world, regardless of the perspective taken, empiricism is not reductive or myopic but the proper articulation of where and how our conceptual capacities arise in a way already imbricated by the worlds in which we find ourselves. In addition, empiricism allows for pluralisms to be formed in an augmentative fashion rather than as merely a multiplication of solipsistic frames. Empiricism, in this regard, should not be taken as a naive filter, but as a practiced, yet headlong, dive in the depths of the pulpy world (Merleau-Ponty).

Further, the old opposition between rationalism and empiricism ought not to be seen as absolute. Indeed, a fractured genealogy spanning the transcendental empiricism of Maimon and Deleuze, the maximal naturalism of Schelling, Badiou’s welding of formal and phenomenal analysis into an ‘objective phenomenology’, and recent developments such as Catren’s ‘transcendental phenomenology’, can be seen to effectuate a problematisation of such a division on multiple fronts: bending ‘rational’ methods to gain new purchase on the empirical, tackling head-on the empirical and material grounds of consciousness itself, and extending the conception of the empirical itself across novel, even ‘impossible’, horizons.

Taken in this context, empiricism is not merely a taking for granted that which is self-evidently apparent, but a productive way of interlacing local methodologies with farther reaching rational and speculative concerns.

Other/Practical information: simply email PAF with the dates you’d like to be here and bring whatever you’d like to the table (contactpaf@gmail.com). Rates are as standard (20 euro per night + 12 euro membership if needed). For the full weekend 80 euro +membership). Food we will collectively organise on site, and from past experience has come to around 10 euro per ‘full’ day with a little excess from that, so in the area of 30 for the extended weekend.

Looking very much forward to having you, and get in touch with any questions that you have about the proposal,

Amy Ireland, Ben Woodard, Katrina Burch, Lendl Barcelos, Matt Hare

SCHOOL FOR STUDY: 6-10 May 2013

'Organisation Studies: the 2013 residential seminars'
Hosted at the Performing Arts Forum
St Erme, France

May 6-10, 2013

The School for Study is a project originating with a collective of scholars and teachers at the Queen Mary School of Business and Management, at the University of London in the UK. The collective developed 'within and against' the university, within and against the disciplines, and within and against institutional pedagogy and research. At the same time our collective developed 'with and for' study, with and for collectivity, and with and for 'becoming student.' The School operates not just as a collective but as a pedagogical troupe, developing, rehearsing, and presenting ensemble forms of teaching that lead to forms of study.

The weeklong programme of teaching at the Performance Arts Forum, in St Erme, France (http://www.pa-f.net/) will be structured into two, two-day blocks with Wednesday devoted to the organisation of a publication based on the week, led by PAF's Marten Spanberg. Each teaching day will be collectively led by School members and based around a series of theoretical themes and thinkers. Participants must signup for the full five days. The cost per day is 32 euros for room and board. There is no tuition fee. Registration is by email to: The deadline for registration is December 31st.

Participating Members of the School:

Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva is Chair in Ethics, Dr. Amit Rai is Senior Lecturer in New Media, Professor Gerard Hanlon is Chair in Organisational Sociology, Dr Brenna Bhendar is Lecturer in Law, all at Queen Mary, University of London. Valeria Graziano and Tim Edkins are researchers at Queen Mary. Professor Avery Gordon teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Professor Stefano Harney teaches at Singapore Management University.

More information: www.schoolforstudy.org

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SPRING MEETING - 29 March – 7 April, 2014 - Reza Negarestani | Stephen Zepke | Isabelle Stengers

Three of our times' most exciting thinkers visit PAF this Spring Meeting to engage in three related yet not connected adventures. As much as these thinkers have coinciding interests they are at the same time intensely different in approach, modes of argument and notions of political theory, philosophy and aesthetics.

29 – 31 March Reza Negarestani

The nine days of seminar introduce the first longer seminar with the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani, known for his often dark, speculative approach. Reza will be present in person for this thorough introduction to his current work.

1 – 3 April Stephen Zepke

Stephen Zepke has written a number of books on Deleuze and Guattari’s engagement and relations to aesthetics. Zepke working and living in Vienna has in- depth researched relations between Deleuze and Lyotard’s interest in the sublime in relation to contemporary theories on beauty.

4 – 6 April Isabelle Stengers

The Spring Meeting will end with three days with the Belgian philosopher Isabel Stengers, one of our times most influential minds that through her work has widened the scope of philosophy into a wilder mode of conceptual thought. Stengers will this time focus on Whitehead and her 2011 book 'Thinking with Whitehead'.

Reza Negarestani has since the publication of his debut “Cyclonopedia” caused turbulence in the field of philosophy and critical theory. His philosophical writing can be said to be a tornado of thought where fiction overlaps fiction, becomes philosophy falling through an underlying archeology of politics or perhaps rather a politics of archeology. Reza Negarestani does not just reinvent philosophy but the practice of philosophizing itself as a comprehensive search for alternative modes of thinking and synthesis of knowledge.

Stephan Zepke is an independent thinker active in Vienna. He has published a number of books on Deleuze and Guattari’s aesthetics. Among his publications are “Art as Abstract Machine” from 2011 that open all together new doors to Deleuze understanding of the sublime in relation to ontology. Upcoming is “Towards An Aesthetics of the Future”, 2015.

Isabelle Stengers teaches philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her interests centre around both the constructive adventure of modern sciences and the problems born from the association of this adventure with power and claims to rational authority. She is working on the crucial challenge, both political and cultural, of an active ecology embedding our many diverging scientific practices in a democratic and demanding environment - against both the ideal of their sovereign autonomy and their submission to social demands.

Practicalities

The seminar format engages each lecturer three days in a row, five hour per day with the intention to approach knowledge in ways specific to PAF, neither academic or artistic, didactic or democratic but as a shared journey into specific yet porous territories to explore modes of understanding and thinking together.
Apart from the seminar it is up to the participants to together engage and cross- fertilize activities, interests, process and production from yoga practices to reading groups, from individual rehearsals to communal dance practices and showings, and to produce the Spring Meeting we want. PAF is open to the widest range of proposals and it is up to us to produce a curriculum, a daily routine and a politics of life.

During Spring Meeting our chefs will provide meals three times per day, habitually, as you all know, as much as they produce magic it’s all an adventure [as usually the kitchen is open for informal collaborations, individual initiatives and help].

During Spring Meeting participation in meals are binding. The total costs per participant is 34€ per day (17€ per bed/room and 17€ for three meals including wine and coffee). PAF membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons and is valid for one year.

So the total fee for the Spring Meeting is 318€.

Note, that thereis a limited number of participants so reserve as soon as possible. Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com

PAF is only able to accept reservations for the entire 9 days.
In case the meeting very well attended guests will share room. If you travel with a potential roommate, please let us know.

Please don’t hesitate to ask further questions contactpaf@gmail.com !

SPRING MEETING 20-29 APRIL 2019 - It is hard to be art

It is hard to be art

On the Advantages and Disavantages of Art for Life

In 2019, it might be easier to agree about the problems we have with art than to band together under a common cause or passion. Adorno’s oft-cited predicament from 1970 that “nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist,” echoes in the diagnosis of art’s multifaceted crisis today, at least as it concerns the global outreach of art’s Western legacy and market economy. Reeling from budget cuts, closures of production sites and venues where nothing will be seen, next door a blockbuster attraction inflates popular participation and we ask: What should we do when society loses interest for the experiments, speculative thought, useless imaginaries and problems, which art poses? What is art capable of – in distinction from political activism, social practice or philosophy - now? If the artist and the political activist-entrepreneur use the same speech to different ends, what is the work of the artist and why should we care? What is the work of the researcher and activist that the artist should care about?

For SpringMeeting 2019, we have invited researchers and activists, living and dead artists, whose fields of engagement include poetry, writing and orature, visual arts, performance and dance, research architecture, decolonial and queer activism. We situate their work on the spectrum between two opposite views regarding the question of advantages or disadvantages of art for our concerns today.

On the one hand, making an artwork is about creating an object, something literally thrown into or put against this world, which enjoys a relative autonomy from all other purposes. It isn’t there to mend social relations, inform and resolve political conflicts, psychologically reassure troubled souls, or morally absolve people from guilt. Yet, despite its indifference to social and political concerns, the work of art can be an object from which we can imagine another world in aesthetic terms. A test for every work of art: what would society be like after this choreography, film, exhibition (and so on)?

On the other hand, the site of art can be hijacked and its competences deployed as instruments to show, prove and speak truth to those places that ignore or prohibit it. Some contemporary art proclaims to use the space of art, however compromised it might be, to do work which can no longer be accommodated by classical sites of power. In such cases, art’s means turn out to be useful beyond its autonomy and aesthetic indifference.

Is art something we can think and act upon together? This presupposes we exert a power on the thing discussed in order to be constructive or destructive. Which registers of ‘we’ can we imagine? How to use our power and not to fear responsibility? How to not reproduce the modes of domination which to a large extent determine what is recognised as valid subjectivity, art or habitus? How to (re)produce and distribute non-dominative subjectivity without abolishing the position of the subject?

We would like to spend eight and a half days studying and working with the invited artists, but also with a few invited artworks (minus their authors), while experimenting with modes of collaboration with all participants.

Houria Bouteldja is a founding member of decolonial political organisation Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR), based in France. She has written numerous theoretical and strategic articles on decolonial feminism, racism, autonomy and political alliances, as well as articles on Zionism and state philosemitism. She is the author of Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love (Semiotext2017) and of Nous Sommes les Indigènes de la République (Éditions Amsterdam 2012), with Sadri Khiari. For SpringMeeting, Bouteldja will present her work as writer and activist. She elaborates her process through the writing and activism of three French writers (Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet), as well as that of the American James Baldwin. In Whites, Jews, and Us the Frenchmen of letters are used to exemplify three variations of French colonialism (and, in the case of Genet, decolonialism) and its consequences for the white intellectual left. Baldwin’s writing on love and duty, decolonial forces, is used to exemplify what Bouteldja understands as “revolutionary love”, which in this presentation comes to parallel her own writing and activism. [In French with English translation.]

Jerusalem-born and London-based artist Ariel Caine is a researcher and project coordinator at the Forensic Architecture research agency. He holds a BFA and MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Israel and is currently a PhD candidate of Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom. Caine’s practice focuses on the intersection between spatial (three-dimensional) photography, modelling and survey technologies and their role in the production of cultural memory and national narratives. The central concern of his recent work has been the construction of a collaborative practice of photography as an act of aesthetic-political resistance on behalf of civil society. Caine’s contribution to SpringMeeting will be twofold. First, through a series of working examples, he will discuss research methodologies, technical developments, collaborations and the thinking processes behind Forensic Architecture (FA). As a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, FA doesn’t define itself as an artists’ collective. The way FA approaches aesthetic media differs within the art world and when they produce evidence for legal, journalistic or academic forums. What is significant in FA’s quest for “what can art do” are art histories and contemporary discourses, rather than “what, when or where art is.” Second, Caine will conduct a workshop about the use of Photogrammetry and Structure through Motion 3D photographic scanning, in two ongoing investigations: Ground Truth, since 2015, and the project documenting The Destruction of Yazidi Heritage, since 2018.

Dora García is a visual artist, who draws on interactivity and performance. Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, her work often implicates the audience as protagonists, either in the construction of a collective fiction or questioning of empirical constructions - sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. She has always been interested in anti-heroic and marginal personas as a prototype to study the status of the artist, as well as in narratives of resistance and counterculture. Her real-time theatre project in public space The Beggar’s Opera (2007), the TV-show Die Klau Mich Show(2012) and the film The Joycean Society (2013), amongst many other projects, have been invited to Münster Sculpture Projects, Documenta and Biennale of Sydney. García will talk about Red Love, the work she is developing based on a book of the same title by the Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai. She will also hold collective reading sessions of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) and a text by Jeff Wall.

The recent work of Alex Martinis Roe (born Melbourne 1982, lives and works Berlin and Canberra) stems from her ongoing engagement with international feminist communities and their political practices. Her current projects focus on feminist genealogies and seek to foster specific and productive relations between different generations as a way of participating in the construction of feminist histories and futures. This involves developing research and storytelling methodologies, which employ non-linear understandings of time, respond to the specific practices of different communities, experiment with the dispositives of discursive encounter, and imagine how these entanglements can inform new political practices. Across six films, the project To Become Two traces the story of six different, yet connected, histories of feminist groups from the 1970s to the present who have built communities in Europe and Australia. The feature length film Our Future Network uses the knowledge gathered and produced through this research since 2014. It involved the staging of a four-day meeting in a country house outside Berlin. Twenty-two contributors, from different communities in Europe, were involved in the enactment of twenty “propositions for feminist collective practice”. These propositions were developed by Martinis Roe and each contributor in the months leading up to the meeting. The central questions addressed to this new network are: What can we learn from the political, theoretical and aesthetic practices developed within and among the historical feminist collectives in the To Become Two project, and how can we adapt these practices to our own needs, desires and contexts? The film also acts as a toolbox to be used as a resource during workshops and events such as SpringMeeting. Martinis Roe’s films will be presented, along with an aftertalk with the artist via digital video call.

Dana Michel is a choreographer and performance artist based in Montreal. In 2005, in her late twenties, she graduated from the BFA program in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University, Montreal. Prior to this, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner and football player. Her two solos, Yellow Towel (2014) and Mercurial George (2016) have earned her several awards in North America and Europe. In June 2017, Venice Biennale awarded Dana Michel the Silver Lion for innovation in Dance. For this SpringMeeting, Dana chooses conversation as a porous medium for improvised thoughts on her poetics and examples of her previous work:

I work with notions of performative alchemy and lucid dreaming – using personal history, current preoccupations, future desires and live moments to create an empathetic centrifuge of experience between myself and witnesses. […] It is a metaphor of humans as mathematical proofs that helps me understand the world around me. I consider myself, and others, to be like proofs – complex entities made up of billions of equations. The topics that I explore in my work, such as intersectionality and marginalised existences, are intimate parts of my personal equation.

Dana will also perform something she refers to as “a wrangling”. She is in the wrestling ring with all of the roles she plays in life and she is trying to retrieve a one-body-one-person:

so if i want to truly truly have full access to all of myself and this potential sexual self? i gotta learn to swim, swim to the middle of the ocean, dive down deep, get the rocks off of my body, and haul myself on a boat. dry myself out in some sun. see if i can get some kind of celestial pulse that i can alchemically turn into a real-blood-body-sensation pulse.

Ogutu Muraya is a writer and theatre-maker whose work is embedded in the practice of orature. He engages the sociopolitical with the belief that art is an important catalyst for advocacy, for questioning our certainties, and for preserving stories often mistold or suppressed in the mainstream. His storytelling and performances, amongst which Fractured Memory (2016) and Because I Always Feel Like Running (2017), have featured in theatres and festivals including La Mama (NYC), The Hay Festival (Wales), HIFA (Harare), NuVo Arts Festival (Kampala), Spoken Wor:l:ds (Berlin), Globe to Globe Festival (London), Ranga Shankara (Bangalore), Afrovibes Festival (Amsterdam), Art in Resistance: Spielart (Munich) and within East Africa. He recently exchanged Amsterdam for Nairobi as his base. Muraya will present the book he is working on, reflecting on his personal experiences moving back and forth between continents. He will also propose a collective reading and analysis of a story by science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The dilemma with which the story confronts the reader will serve as the basis for a series of group discussions.

Lisa Robertson is a poet and essayist. She began writing in Vancouver in the early 90s, publishing and collaborating in a community of artists and poets that included Artspeak Gallery, The Western Front and The Kootenay School of Writing. She has continued these activities for 30 years, most recently in France, publishing books, leaflets and posters, translating poetry and linguistics from French, lecturing and teaching internationally (including Cambridge University, Piet Zwart, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics), and diversifying her ongoing study into the political constitution of lyric voice. In 2018, the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in NY awarded her the inaugural CD Wright Award in Poetry. Books of poetry include 3 Summers (2016), Cinema of the Present(2014) and Debbie: An Epic (1997). The collection of essays Nilling: Prosewas published in 2011. Robertson will read from her own work in progress and will present the talk “The Preparation of the Poem” in which she will approach the question – What does a poem do in the world? – by means of other forms or media (film (Pedro Costa); prose (Roland Barthes); linguistics (Emile Benveniste); and translation (Kate Briggs)).

Terre Thaemlitz is a musician, public speaker, and owner of the record label Comatonse Recordings. Thaemlitz works on the audio-visual deconstruction of identity politics: including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race – with an ongoing critique of the socio-economics of commercial media production. Thaemlitz’s production styles include electroacoustic computer music, club-oriented deep house, digital jazz, ambient, and computer-composed neo-expressionist piano solos. In addition to those media, Thaemlitz’s work combines graphic design, photography, illustration, text and video. We will show Thaemlitz’s film SOULNESSLESS (neologism, distinct from soullessness or an absence of soul) – an attempted deconstruction of soul music, that is, of notions of spirituality, meditation, superstition, and religiosity perpetuated through audio marketplaces that insist upon judging audio in relation to ‘authenticity’ and ‘soul’. Gender, electronic audio production and spirituality form the various parts’ tenuous points of connection. The artist will not be present.

***

The fees are as usual: 18€ per night for accommodation and 12€ for yearly membership.

Two chefs will guide the kitchen with a hand from participants, at a cost of 12€ per day, for three meals a day.

We can only accept payments in cash or French cheques, so please bring one or the other along (there is an ATM in the village).

PAF gets very full these days, sometimes overly so. As such, please book early, and in the event that the building fills up we give preferences to bookings from those who wish to stay for the whole 8.5 day period. The first session will begin on the 20th at 6pm. The 29th will be a day for departure.

Reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com

This year’s edition has been prepared by Bojana Cvejić, Stefan Govaart, Sébastien Hendrickx, Nicolas Siepen and Eleanor Ivory Weber.

SPRING MEETING 2015 (31 March – 9 April) Katerina Kolozova | Eleni Ikoniadou | Ray Brassier

For the 5th edition of Spring Meeting PAF invites you as one of the up to 100 participants. As usually PAF has invited three speakers that are asked to talk for five hours three days consecutively. This is a format that has shown equally challenging for the speaker and the audience, as it is both in- and outside of conventional seminar structure. Speakers have developed very different approach to the format and it is inspiring to experience how the format seem to emancipate knowledge as the amount and diversity of information tend to transgress the possibility to say “Do you understand?”.

Over the years Spring Meeting has been visited by a number of contemporary thinkers with a focus on speculative thinking, object oriented and materialist philosophy next to addressing Deleuze, Whitehead and in general aesthetics. The 2014 e.g. edition included Reza Negarestani, Stephen Zepke and Isabelle Stengers, an amazing experiencing where Negarestani’s neo-rationalism made surprising connections to Zepke’s engagement with Kantian aesthetics together creating a generous entry point to Stengers’ three days on Whitehead spoken over a long and exciting life in philosophy.

Previous Spring Meetings and other sessions at PAF has featured by among others Tristan Garcia, Steven Shaviro, Ben Woodard, Nina Power, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Pete Wolfendale, Luciana Parisi, Sadie Plant, Red Vaughan Tremmel, Stefano Harney, Randy Martin next to curators and art critics such as Aaron Schuster, Raimundas Maulasauskas, Simon Sheikh.

The situation at PAF is fairly simple. 15 hours that the speaker can prepare as they desire. 15.00 - 20.00 is our timetable and we most of all want these sessions to be as exciting for the speaker as it is for us. Can we all be, so to say on thin ice and try something out together? The speaker starts from where their thinking is today or perhaps a survey over their time in philosophy, an introduction to, or a question that takes 15 hours to answer, or maybe the speaker experiences PAF as a permission to talk about things not otherwise “allowed”, or why not think through association rather than structure. It’s all up to the speaker.

The only restrictions we have are; no images or video, no tasks and certainly no working groups. It is important for us to engage in exchange through listening and talking, and we are very good in asking questions that require very long answers.

For Spring Meeting PAF wish to apply a classical sense of academy and dwell in knowledge through a frontal asymmetrical format. This is possible, not only because the seminar is offered for free but more so because of the special context spending nine full days with up to a 100 participants sharing meals, endless discussion in the garden and long nightly sessions.

This year PAF presents three extremely exciting thinkers with rather different background yet connected through their philosophical rigor and fearless approach.

Katerina Kolozova is professor in philosophy at Skopje University specializing in among other things relations between identity and materialism, e.g. engaging in Francois Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy in order to re-envision Judith Butler’s non-unitary subject. Her recent book “Cut Of The Real” remixes strata in contemporary philosophy and critical theory that has previously been kept apart, approaching specific questions around universalism. Katerina Kolozova’s contribution will also introduce the foundations of Francois Laruelle’s philosophy.

Ray Brassier, who also have engaged with Laruelle’s non-philosophy is professor at the American University Beirut Brassier is one of our times most radical philosophers and he has been a defining thinker for the recent materialist tradition not least through his remorseless “Nihil Unbound” (2007), the Anglo-Saxon showdown with correlationism and meaningfulness. Brassier’s work pushes nihilism to its ultimate conclusion and there is where we will take off, hopefully gaining insight into his upcoming publication “That Which Is Not”. He has further taken strong positions, not seldom directly skeptical, in relation to e.g. speculative realism and accelerationism.

Eleni Ikoniadou is a Senior Lecturer in Media in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University and has a PhD from University of East London. Her research is situated in the intersection between sonic theory and philosophy with a particular interest in time. Ikoniadou’s approach is rooted in Deleuze’s philosophy but is also affiliated with e.g. Brian Massumi’s work on affect. In her recent book The Rhythmic Event she furthers her investigations on hypersonic sensation and the non-human in human perception. The Rhythmic Even has been described as a deep plunge into an aesthetics of experience expanded into pattern, perception and time, and onwards into an abstract viscerality. Her research in rhythm implies forms of explaining networked societies. Rhythm becoming an interface between humans and machines, between distributed minds and overlapping mediascapes where the expanded universe of digital rhythm invites mutations across networks. Ikoniadou is a crucial guide to the dark chambers of contemporary experience.

Apart from the seminar it is up to the participants to together engage and cross- fertilize activities, interests, process and production from yoga practices to reading groups, from individual rehearsals to communal dance practices and showings, and to produce the Spring Meeting we want. PAF is open to the widest range of proposals and it is up to us to produce a curriculum, a daily routine and a politics of life.
During Spring Meeting our chefs will provide meals three times per day, habitually, as you all know, as much as they produce magic it’s all an adventure (as usually the kitchen is open for informal collaborations, individual initiatives and help).
During Spring Meeting participation in meals are binding. The total costs per participant is 35€ per day (18€ per bed/room and 17€ for three meals including wine and coffee). PAF membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons and is valid for one year. The total fee for the 9 days Spring Meeting is 327€ including membership.
PAF has a limited capacity, it is therefore advisable to reserve early. The last two years the Spring Meeting has been very well attended, PAF therefore democratically accommodate participants in shared rooms. Couples and friendship is naturally respected. Reservations: contactpaf@gmail.com
For Spring Meeting PAF can only accept reservations for the entire period.

Please don’t hesitate to ask further questions contactpaf@gmail.com

SPRING MEETING 2020, 11 - 19 April: Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self

For SpringMeeting 2020 we would like to approach what is singular as already multiple, to reimagine the individual through mediation. We would like to question origin, identity and ownership in the act of directing attention instead to intercesseurs, mediators and intermediaries, to true and falsifying personae and to collective or common agencies.

An example. “Intercesseurs” (mediators) was the word Gilles Deleuze used to portray his collaboration with Félix Guattari:

The problems posed here seem ill-suited to individual inquiry. The world is neither neat nor kind. One’s interiority cannot present an innocent starting point or refuge of the beautiful soul. For SpringMeeting 2020 we do not want to think only about single author-artists, but also to dedicate time to those who make the work possible but remain in the shadow: performers, assistants, translators, and so on. The author has long been declared dead, but shared authorship remains rare. Theaters, museums and other institutions demand unequivocally delineated individuals who guarantee for their products.

For SM2020, we want to devote time to the dependent, non-sovereign, subjected forms of making art and thought. We are specifically interested in working methods that say no to “working alone”. And we are also interested in artists speaking about the work of others in which they recognize something they themselves could not do. This is not about denying individual responsibility: one’s individual actions matter as they materialize the world. So, we ask: What can we learn from art’s investment in the divestment of the self?

PAF gets very full these days, sometimes overly, so book early, we’d like you to be there.

From the organizers,

Bojana Cvejić, Eleanor Ivory Weber, Nikhil Vettukattil, Stefan Govaart

Reservations at: contactpaf@gmail.com.

Guests:

The Abounaddara collective brings together filmmakers who make their films anonymously. Founded in 2010 in Damascus, Syria, the collective has produced numerous films, mainly short documentaries, celebrating the daily lives of the nameless. At the same time, Abounaddara has led a critical reflection on the right to the image, calling for it to be refounded on the principle of human dignity, and not exclusively on the property rights or the right to privacy, which has been the case since the inception of photography. Abounaddara's work has been presented in film festivals such as Sundance Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival, amongst others; as well as in contemporary art exhibitions, including the 56th Venice Biennale and documenta 14.

Eszter Salamon is an artist, choreographer and performer who lives between Berlin and Paris. Since 2014, she has been working on a series that seeks to rethink the idea of monument and engage in speculative history-making. In these works, presented in theatres and museum spaces, memory is created to counter phantasms of identity, authenticity and origin. By exploring how bodies are vectors of the circulation and transformation of meaning, these performative monuments invest in creating trans-national, trans-historical and trans-generational narrations. They are practice-based and develop empirical methodologies for producing knowledge away from dominant narratives.

Jackie Karuti is an artist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her practice is largely experimental and employs the use of new media through drawings, video, installations and performance art. Her work is founded on ideas around knowledge production and accessibility, as well as the depths of possibility enabled by radical imagination. Karuti is an alumnus of Àsìkò, a roaming Pan-African art school established by the late Bisi Silva, designed to redress the frequently outdated or non-existent artistic and curatorial curricula at tertiary institutions across Africa. Karuti’s work has been exhibited widely, most recently at Lofoten International Art Festival (2019) in Svolvær, Norway, and at the Dak’Art Biennial (2018) in Dakar, Senegal. Other projects that respond to her practice include programming the Out Film Festival in Nairobi (2016-2018) and her online workspace I’ve been working on some MAGIC.

Soprano Juliet Fraser has a repertoire dominated by the very old and the very new. She regularly appears as a guest soloist with contemporary music ensembles Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Plus-Minus and Talea. She is also a core member of EXAUDI vocal ensemble, which she co-founded with composer/conductor James Weeks in 2002. Juliet is an active commissioner of new music and has worked particularly closely with composers Rebecca Saunders, Matthew Shlomowitz, Cassandra Miller and Michael Finnissy. Increasingly in demand as a speaker, she has written several papers reflecting particularly on issues around agency and authorship in collaborative partnerships. Her discography includes Morton Feldman’s Three Voices, Bernhard Lang’s The Cold Trip, part 2, a binaural recording of Milton Babbitt’s Philomel, portrait discs of Cassandra Miller and Frank Denyer, and Gesualdo madrigals with EXAUDI. A new CD of solo works written for her by Lisa Illean, Sivan Eldar, Nomi Epstein and Lawrence Dunn has just been released on the HCR label. Juliet is co-director with Mark Knoop and Newton Armstrong of all that dust, a new label for new music, and founder and artistic director of the eavesdropping series in London.

Oxana Timofeeva is a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Philosophy at the European University at Saint Petersburg, member of the artistic collective Chto Delat? (What is to be done?), a deputy editor of the journal Stasis, and the author of the books The History of Animals (Maastricht: Jan van Eyck, 2012; Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2017; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) and Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2009).

Vanessa Place was the first poet to perform in the Whitney Biennial; a content advisory was posted. Performance venues include The Getty Villa (Los Angeles); European Parliament (Brussels); Museum of Modern Art (New York); Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles); Garage Museum (Moscow); and Whitechapel Gallery (London). Place also works as a criminal defense attorney representing indigent sex offenders on appeal. Her work frequently uses law as an aesthetic medium and criminality as poetry to sometimes uncomfortably revolve around representations of American ideologies of subjectivity, including those of gender, race and class.

SPRINGMEETING 2013, 28 March - 7 April

For the forth year PAF invites to a Spring Meeting that next to individual and group re- search and practices, process and production, classes, experimentation and hard work also offer a series of three seminars over nine consecutive days.

Nine days seminar with Tristan Garcia, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Ben Woodard.

This year the focus is on objects, slime and radical subjectivity, voodoo and speculation, passing from a processing of things and objects, to a deep survey of radical subjectivity in relation to our contemporary political reality probing the transformative and political potentiality of spiritual practices, and we end with three days devoted to an inquiry into the slippery territories between life and non-life, animate and inanimate and a philosophy against the human being – both the “human” and the “being” part.

The seminar format engage each lecturer three days in a row five hour per day with the intention to approach knowledge in ways specific to PAF, neither academic or artistic, di- dactic or democratic but as a shared journey into specific yet weak territories, in order to explore modes of understanding and thinking together, as well as to make it possible for a wide variety of individuals to engage on their own premises and simultaneously make the journey a challenge for the lecturer [everything is open except power point presentations, exercises, working groups and evaluation].

Apart from the seminar it is up to the participants to together engage and cross fertilize activities, interests, process and production from yoga practices to reading groups, from individual rehearsals to communal dance practices and showings, and to produce the Spring Meeting we want. As long as you don’t intend to set the place on fire PAF is open to the widest range of proposals and it is up to us to produce a curriculum, a daily routine and a politics of life.

During Spring Meeting our royal chefs Christian and Siri will provide meals three times per day, habitually, as you all know, as much as they produce magic it’s all an adventure [as usually the kitchen is open for informal collaborations and individual initiatives].

Spring Meeting Seminars are realized in collaboration with MA Choreography and Perfor- mance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies (University of Gießen), Sandberg Insti- tute, and in association with Univ. of Dance Stockholm and The Swedish Research Council.

During Spring Meeting participation in meals are binding. Total costs per participant is 32€ per day (15€ per bed/room and 17€ for three meals including wine, coffee). Mem- bership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons, valid for one year.

Limited number of participants. Reservations: Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

Biographies

Tristan Garcia (28–30 March) is a philosopher and novelist living and working in Paris. After publishing two novels next to studies in philosophy with Alain Badiou at École Normal Supérieure, he published a major philo- sophical work “Forme et Objet. Un Traité des choses”, that has stirred unusually strong reactions in the field. Or as Graham Harman proposes in his overwhelmingly positive review: “Tristan Garcia is most likely a name that we will all be pronouncing hundreds or thousands of times in the decades to come.”

Denise Ferreira da Silva (31 March – 2 April) is involved in several practices - writing, teaching, healing, painting - through which she hopes to help the project of expanding views of thinking and existing beyond the confines of modern western representation. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After living and teaching in the United States for almost two decades, she moved to the East End of London in 2012. Presently, she is a Professor of Ethics and Director of the Centre for Ethics and Politics, at Queen Mary, University of London.

Ben Woodard (4 – 6 April) is a 2nd year PhD student in Theory and Criticism at Western University. His work focuses on Naturphilosophie (esp. that of FWJ von Schelling) and its connections to contemporary continental thought, analytic thought, the sciences, and popular media. He serves as editor for Helvete: The Journal of Black Metal Studies, Thinking Nature, and Prosthesis: A Journal of Theory and Criticism. His first b

SUMMER PROGRAM 2008

Here under, you can download the program for the summer 2008 in PDF.

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SUMMER UNIVERSITY, august 3-12 2007

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2007 3/8/2007 – 12/8/2007 | PerformingArtsForum, St. Erme, France www.pa-f.net

The «Universities» at PAF are a project initiated in the year 2005 by a number of artists, theoreticians and practitioners during the initial meeting in PAF. The «Summer University» [SU] in August 2007 is the third «University» project organized in the building in St. Erme.

The main interest of SU07 is to experiment with and to test the practices PAF is developing and will develop in future: areas of research, modes (methods, proce- dures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, types of projects, discur- sive engagement by all interested participants. In a few words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

«University» and participation «University» is the term that replaces «Academy» referring to the Renaissance prin- ciple of combining research and education in one location. Secondly, it is called «University» because PAF will be open to all areas of knowledge, even though art is the starting point.

SU07 isn’t another international summer academy, offering workshops, lectures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. The participants of SU07 are at the same time its organizers, in that they are proposing, organizing, and taking part in different projects and activities during SU07.

In contrast to existing academies SU07 isn’t based on the principle of «pay to learn and teach to earn». Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part, no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer.

The access to SU07 is open, but more specifically determined by each project/activity. (See the programme on the website) The aim behind the open access and self-organization is to enable parallel hetero- geneous research platforms, to experiment with configurations, extensions, transformations, interferences, mergings and forkings of projects/activities.

Preparation & Program

Everyone is invited to propose the project or activity he/she would like to organize within SU07. The only limit of choice is the capacity of the house. The proposals for the SU07 will be announced on the PAF-website: www.pa-f.net

How to become a participant?

It’s as easy as sending an email with or without a proposal to Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

Report/«press conferences»

Aproposed format for sharing knowledge and information is the so called «press conference». Somewhat old-fashioned and too official for the informality of these meetings, «press conferences» can be used as a format for reports made by a group or individual to the others, either on regular basis or by special appointment.

Do you need to make a proposal to take part in the SU07?

No, you can take part without making a proposal. Expenses The participation fee is 10 EUR per person per night plus 15 EUR per day for food (three meals a day). Period 3–12 August 2007 is the core period of SU07, but it is possible to come earlier or stay longer or to join SU07 only some days within this main perdion.

Contact & Information

Jan Ritsema / PAF | 15, rue Haute | F-02820 St Erme Outre et Ramecourt T/F +33323801846 | mobile: +33637031645 email: janritsema@mac.com | skype: janritsema www.pa-f.net

PROPOSITIONS so far: MANUELA ZECHNER At PAF Summer Unviersity, there will be a presentation of the future archive project (see below) and an ongoing series of future conversations taking place.

future archive

a topology towards futurity

www.futurearchive.org

The future archive is a project that issues a series of responses to the problem of how to perform futures. It engages interview- conversations that are set in possible times and spaces to come, which two or more people performatively inhabit as proposed versions of futurity. From there, contemporary society is remembered. Upon every conversation, a different future is at stake.

Aiming to offer spaces for carefully developing vocabularies and gestures which might point towards potential ways of thinking, acting and existing, the project encourages articulations of hopes and desires for future ways of co/existing, negotiating the space between a remembered present and a potential future, as well as facing up to the problematics of the proposals and imaginaries at hand. With the questions of transformation and the social as its starting point, the future archive generates a map of divergent scenarios and tactics, focusing on connections as well as points of disagreement between interlocutors.

While there is an interviewing party and an interviewed, what is engaged is working together to make a movement towards what could be/ go beyond contemporary language, problems, politics, etc- never a great success, but more of a negotiation-play with imagination and responseabilities. Conversations are video recorded and become part of an online platform that acts as archive as well as space for exchange and discussion, offering all material as open content.

At futurearchive.org, all material (audio/video/text etc) generated in the framework of the project becomes available for download, commentary and non-commercial use.

In 2007, the future archive brings forth a series of collaboratively curated activities, pertaining to thematic strands within the project, that take the form of discussions, performances, screenings, and so forth. In a relevant institution or open space, collective transformation of a present space into a site of futurity is attempted.

to get in touch, email manuela@thisappearance.org

Proposal for contributions to PAF SU07 of Joannes Vandermeulen (computer-specialist)

Joannes Vandermeulen jv@namahn.com +32 476 62 62 46

Workshop – The user-centered design of digital products A run-down of industrial practice in designing user interfaces for interactive software applications in order to make them appropriate to the intended users • Practical - Nine participants at most (because of interactivity) - Six hours

Seminar – Mental models: how people shape their understanding of how things work People are profligate interpreters of their environment. What are the cognitive processes involved and how can an understanding of these processes be useful in product design. • Practical - One-hour lecture with discussion

Seminar – Navigation: how people navigate real and virtual spaces Animals move about in space with great ease; it is fundamental to their survival. How can designers help people move through software spaces (and not just Second Life) with equal skill? Which navigational mechanisms are fit for human consumption? • Practical - One-hour lecture with discussion

Seminar – Where technology will take the great apes As our mastery of physics (the very small, the very fast) grows, technologies can continue to profoundly change the way we inhabit our world, for the better, probably.

Discussion – ‘Forget about it’: technological utopias and dystopias Technological utopias are equally numerous as technological dystopias. What makes technology so controversial? Because it is important? • Practical - Half-hour lecture with hour-long discussion

FLORIAN MALZSACHER: i will bring the movies of alexander kluge, especially the early ones (they have english & french subs i think) and maybe someone wants to join watching them. i also would like to have a look at his books, but i tried to find something in english, but didn't manage so far. and i have his interviews with heiner müller which are really amazing. i always wanted to get deeper in this, but didnt manage so far: so i don't really know a lot about it but if people want to join in finding out, it would be nice.

ALICE CHAUCHAT: EVERYBODYS/ OPEN SOURCE GROUP

One of the basic motivations for Everybodys is to consider Open Source as an artistic strategy for the Performing Arts, to develop ways of sharing knowledge and producing specific discourses on the Performing Arts in order to refine the conditions of work in general, the parameters of exchange (collaboration/ process-product-usage-share-audience), to produce heterogeneous works, to escape the restricted accessibility to work, to deviate traditional conceptions of authorship etc.

One line of work is the development a Workshop Kit, encompassing tools and interview-games, which enables discussion on our work. This Kit is meant to be developed by the "integral feedback" of usage, in order to enhance its possibilities.

As an input for everybodys' research on the implementation of open-source methodologies into performance practices, we propose to those who are interested to take over and share the development of générique. A basic concept and toolbox for its realisation already exist, and it is a perfect moment for the project to take several forms, so that the 1st finalisation already is more than one. We would like to work in the same time on an internet platform for its spreading and the possibility for feedbacking, i.e. reworking the toolbox along its use.

Générique is an offer to reconsider the theatrical frame as a place for sharing and complicity. Traces and absent parts give space for a common discourse and imagination to arise, tangling levels of reality and fiction through multiple possible interpretations. Each performance is a specific combination of generic items. These items address issues such as quotation, adaptation, signature, everydayness and virtuosity.It is made up from the scraps that survive. In the creation process, the body simultaneously becomes a receptacle, a vessel, a processor and a generator.Thanks to the use it makes of incorporation in the creation process, it is also a true metaphor of memory.Through complicity the performers produce an informal unison."

Everybodys” also continues to discuss modes of sharing, formats of distribution and exchange and stategies for development of the field of performance on a more general level. Discussions around publications and alternative formats (magazine, book, dvd, cd) understood as venues will take place during the PAF summer university.

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SUMMER UNIVERSITY, august 1-10 2008

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2008 1/8/2008 – 10/8/2008 | PerformingArtsForum, St. Erme, France www.pa-f.net

The «Universities» at PAF are a project initiated in the year 2005 by a number of artists, theoreticians and practitioners during the initial meeting in PAF. The «Summer University» [SU] in August 2008 is the fourth «University» project organized in the building in St Erme.

The main interest of SU08 is to experiment with and to test the practices PAF is developing and will develop in future: areas of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, types of projects, discursive engagement by all interested participants. In a few words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

«University» and participation «University» is the term that replaces «Academy» referring to the Renaissance principle of combining research and education in one location. Secondly, it is called «University» because PAF will be open to all areas of knowledge, even though art is the starting point. SU08 isn’t another international summer academy, offering workshops, lec- tures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. The participants of SU08 are at the same time its organizers, in that they are proposing, organizing, and taking part in different projects and activities during SU08. In contrast to existing academies SU08 isn’t based on the principle of «pay to learn and teach to earn». Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part, no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer. The access to SU08 is open, but more specifically determined by each project/activity. (See the programme on the website) The aim behind the open access and self-organization is to enable parallel heterogeneous research platforms, to experiment with configurations, extensions, transformations, interferences, mergings and forkings of projects/activities. Preparation & Programme Everyone is invited to propose the project or activity he/she would like to organize within SU08. The only limit of choice is the capacity of the house. The proposals for the SU08 will be announced on the PAF-website: www.pa-f.net

How to become a participant? It’s as easy as sending an email with or without a proposal to Jan Ritsema: janritsema@mac.com

Report/«press conferences» A proposed format for sharing knowledge and information is the so called «press conference». Somewhat old-fashioned and too official for the informality of these meetings, «press conferences» can be used as a format for reports made by a group or individual to the others, either on regular basis or by special appointment. Do you need to make a proposal to take part in the SU08? No, you can take part without making a proposal. Expenses The participation fee is 11 EUR per person per night plus 15 EUR per day for food (three meals a day). Period 1–10 August 2008 is the core period of SU08, but it is possible to come earlier or stay longer or to join SU08 only some days within this main perdion.

PROPOSITIONS so far: -

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Spring Seminar Now Running, note schedule changes

Aaron Schuster started up this years Spring Meeting on the 2 April with an extra ordinary talk where Delueze and Lacan seemed to run hand in hand towards the future leaving Badiou, Zizek and Hallward behind. Schuster's opened the session with a recollection of Kleist's writing on talking as a mode of thinking and the necessity of an address, opening a path where Kleist somehow function as a symptom for Freud. In short it was a great opener in the now famous Peakcock studio that this time collected some forty people. Out here at PAF the sun is shining and the community are up with the sun.
We are now looking forward to follow Aaron deeper into the turmoil where Gilles meets Jacques remixing them with levitation, squids and the curious life of W.R Bion, before we move on together with Randy Martin direct from New York.

Unfortunately we have to announce a late rearrangement of the schedule which is that Reza Negarestani will talk on the 5 and 7 April (instead of 4 - 5 April). We hope this will not create enormous inconvenience but that we can meet up with Reza at 11.00 on Thursday and Saturday. On the 8 April Luciana Parisi coming in from London will attack us with computation aesthetics and algorithmic neo-liberalism.

Summer University 2018 * 30/07 - 02/09 *

The Summer University at PAF was initiated in the year 2005 by a number of artists, thinkers and practitioners during the initial meeting in St. Erme. One of the initial motivations behind the summer university was to replace the notion «Academy» referring to the Renaissance-style combination of research and education in one location. While Summer University initially grew out from an artistic origin, it has followed diverse paths in other fields theoretical and practical. While SU began by differentiating itself from other international summer academies (offering workshops, lectures, panels etc) requiring participants to apply, it rapidly solidified its own take on disciplines and approaches via collective self-organization.

However, all structures and organisms risk becoming obsolete without movement and self-reflective and self-experimental revision. Thus just as SU once divided itself from ‘proper’ academies, and experimented over the last four years with self-curation by young professionals (who knew the building inside and out), now PAF must also separate what it has been from what it can still be. So, as always, the main interest of SU is to experiment with and to test the practices developing at PAF: fields of knowledge, archives of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, exchange and presentation, schemes of collaboration, types of projects, politics of care, discursive and dialogical engagement by all participants.

For these reasons Summer University 2018, 30/7-2/9, is with no curators, no prepared schedule, no central organization this year, but open weeks, to be filled in by the participants; each separate week loosely focuses on a body part.
You can reserve for as many weeks as you feel like. All participants are free to take part and propose activities for or with others (lecturing, reading, watching, showing, discussing, producing, practicing...), or to work on one's own work. The silly “faculties” hereunder are broadly interpreted and cover all bodies of knowledge ; they are welcome to experimentation, reshaping, betrayal and distortion.

Head (thinking/philosophy), 30/7-5/8
Eyes (film/video/photography), 6-12/8
Legs (dance/movement), 13-19/8
Ears (music/sound), 20-26/8
Tongue (poetry/writing/theater), 27/8-2/9

Practicalities.

The stay per night is 18/20€ per night, depending on if you stay more or less than 5 nights. 12€ membership, valuable 12 months. Food will be paid and handled individually or through self-organised collective organisation.

Reservations at contactpaf@gmail.com

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 27/7-1/8 2020 @ PAF

This will be the fourth edition at PAF, through its iterations, the Sensing Salon has gathered a momentum and a core group of interested and involved people. Last year we begun to experiment with a slightly new format which allowed us to deepen the study we have entered collectively while still welcoming new participants. Instead of teaching as many tools as we can in the 4 days, each year we share one tool only, every morning for the whole duration of the meeting, while in the afternoons we

Last year we had focused on Reiki, while this year we will focus on Astrology. Artists and students of astrology Constantina Zavitsanos & Amalle Dublon will guide us through 4 sessions which will introduce us to their use of astrology as a practice of speculative planning. In the afternoons, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva will propose 4 study group sessions which will engage all the reading and healing tools available in the room to image and discuss political questions.

Provisory schedule:

27 July
Arrival day
21:00 Conversation and Introduction

28 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

29 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

30 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

31 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group

01 August
Departure day

The Sensing Salon will take place at PAF Performing Arts Forum from July 27th to August 1st 2020. PAF costs 20€ per person per night (or 18€ if you stay more than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be most probably self-organized (ca 10-12€ pp/pd) or if the number of participants requires it, we will arrange a coordinating cook (17€ pp/pd). We also ask an extra fee of 40€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ^^ with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva ~~~ 24-28 July 2017 @ PAF

Healing, as much as art, is a praxis. It is something to do and it does something: it restores. In our collaborative work, we explore healing as an art form, a praxis of sensing and making sense that includes studying, thinking, and restoring experiments that reach for the deepest level of our entangled existence.

For a few years, we have been performing Poethical Readings at several art venues. Drawing from our practices, we hosted a Sensing Salon – a studio for the practice of healing arts – at the Showroom in London. We would like to set it up as a permanent studio, where we will hold a more concentrated and perhaps regular meeting with people interested in learning those practices, experimenting with new ones, and engaging in study with us.

The first iteration will be a 4-day event held at PAF (Performing Arts Forum) in St Erme, France, from July 24th to July 28th, 2017. It includes experiments with practices, such as Reiki, Tarot, Herbal Medicine, Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, as well as private sessions on Poethical Readings *.

PAF costs 20€ per person per night (or 18€ if you stay more than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be most probably self-organized (ca 10€ pp/pd) or if the number of participants requires it, we will arrange a coordinating cook (17€ pp/pd). We also ask an extra fee of 40€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

Provisory schedule

24 July:
Arrival day
Evening Conversation: Poethical Reading Performance (How to Image an Ethics With/out the Subject)

25 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Reiki & Fake Therapy
14:00 - 18:00 - Tarot Workshop

26 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Reiki
14:00 - 18:00 - Tarot Workshop

27 July
10:00 – 12:00 Study Group on entangled existence
14:00 – 20:00 Poethical Readings (Private Sessions - Individuals and Groups)

28 July
10:00 – 14:00 Poethical Readings (Private Sessions - Individuals and Groups)
Departure day

___

(*) If you are interested in a Private Session, please contact valedesideri@gmail.com for booking a 60 minute-session

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The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ^^ with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva ~~~ 7-12 July 2018

The Sensing Salon expands exiting ideas of art by recalling the healing arts; it is a studio for the practice of healing arts. Through formats that include studying and experimenting with different practices of reading (e.g. Tarot and Astrology) and healing (e.g. Reiki and Political Therapy) it hosts a practice of sociality that attends to our deeply implicated existence. As an aesthetic praxis, it rehearses a mode of existing that does not separate knowing from doing, intelligibility from sensibility, healing from becoming.

The Sensing Salon @ PAF focuses on learning and experimenting with practices and tools, such as Reiki, Tarot, Astrology and Political Therapy. In this year iteration we will be joined by Constantina Zavitsanos & Amalle Dublon who will give an introductory workshop on the speculative planning practice of astrology. They will explain some of the basic structures and elements that compose an astrological chart, focusing on the vocabulary they employ for reading and introducing their approach to Astrology as alternative time keeping (and time spending) device.

Provisory Schedule

7 July:
Arrival day
Evening: Introduction & Conversation

8 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Fake Therapy & Reiki
14:00 - 18:00 - Tarot Workshop

9 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Reiki
14:00 - 18:00 - Tarot Workshop
10 July

10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Political Therapy

11 July
10:00 - 12:00 - Astrology
14:00 - 18:00 - Study Group on Entangled Existence

12 July
Departure day

PAF costs 18€ per person per night (or 20€ if you stay for less than 5 nights) plus a 12€ membership fee valid for one year. Food will be self-organized (10€ pp/pd). We also ask an extra fee of 40€ to contribute to the buying of materials and our expenses.

To reserve your place please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

WINTER UPDATE MEETING 2017: Imagining PAF future * 27/12/2017 - 02/01/2018 *

**!*!*!* A google drive is available as a collective and remote working space for the preparation of WUM and thinking about the future of PAF **!*!*!*

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6sqD5LkUOz7LThEd2NtUHV3aXM?usp=...

~
PAF warmly invites you to the 12th Winter Update Meeting (WUM), for a time of fundamental questioning of PAF and a collective imagination of its future. We invite people to propose situations, modes of being together, meeting and imaging together.

We would like to especially dedicate this 12th Winter Update Meeting to collectively question the ways in which PAF is functioning and further imagine its future possibilities. In the WUM number 0, the meeting that Bojana Cvejic and Jan Ritsema organised in 2005 with about 30 colleagues, we addressed the question: what to do with the building?

After 12 years we feel the need to reflect on the experience and experiments done, to see what kinds of changes and further experimentation PAF may be able to host. PAF always wanted to be under permanent reconstruction. Questioning, reinventing and adapting itself constantly according to the given opportunities and its shifting context, in permanent discussion with its users. PAF, as an ongoing experiment with self-organisation and liquid property, has opened up positive spaces of freedom and cooperation, while also showing the limits of such experimentation if the systemic violence implicit in its structure stays invisible and unaddressed. If we want to further experiment with the possibility of self-organised non-hierarchical cooperation, we have to address the implicit misogyny, chauvinism, racism, class prejudice and ableism already in place.

In recent years, PAF has been involved in a process of working on these crucial impasses. Yet they are, as we know, all too resistant. With this WUM, we would like to more formally initiate a critical and creative process of self-reflection on the hidden (and not so hidden) structures of power within the building. In particular, we would like to focus on the question of gendered violence, and to renew our commitment to combating this, with all the difficulties that this entails. We imagine that this could also be a way of opening conversation, and a place from which the rules, practices, and organisational modalities of PAF can be discussed and re-imagined.

To this end, a group of PAF users has already been working on a proposal for new rules, which will be discussed during the meeting. Alongside these, we invite you to share any further reflections, resources, available practices, possible organisational models and related work, as well as to create situations and experiments that might enable this conversation.

We want to imagine PAF as a place that acknowledges and welcomes a heterogeneous group of very different people, who think and do things differently while maintaining an almost absence of management and policing behavior, towards the collective creation of a platform, a forum, that easily and lightly offers and maintains a mentally healthy and safe place for each individual while encouraging radical and collective experimentation.

The WUM will be from 27/12/2017- 02/01/2018, to come earlier or stay longer is of course possible. We intend to dedicate a daily meeting to the future of PAF, which it is of course not obligatory to take part in. For those who want to take part intensively in this process or will propose situations and working methods to experiment with, we can offer a free stay. For others who want to work and exchange, update and create their work and interests, we count on the normal prices (18 euro per night for a stay longer than 4 nights otherwise 20 euro per night).

We plan not to have a cooking team, but instead to continue the successful experiments with collective self-cooking as we tried it out during other events in June and August. The prices for the food and drinks will be set at 10€ per day. Membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons, valid for one year.

For those who reserve for the last night of the year 31st Dec, we ask a reservation and payment for minimal three nights. The WUM will coincide with the yearly meeting of the 50 owners, The SCI The Building shareholders, which will be on the afternoon of the 30th of December.

Limited number of participants.
Reservations: Valentina Desideri - Jan Ritsema contactpaf@gmail.com

WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 24th 2007 - january 4th 2008

WINTER UPDATE MEETING AT PAF
24/12/2007-4/1/2008

At the “Summer University” of 2007, at which 70 people took part, we decided to rebaptize the “Winter University” into a “Winter Update Meeting” (WUM).

What is in the name? We will see what is in the name. But the Winter University of 2006 contained less (workshop) proposals and functioned more as an updating and exchange of each others artistic and/or scientific activities. So we decided to call it accordingly.
Still proposals for collective activities/projects are welcome.

“Winter Update Meeting” [=WUM] is a project initiated by the participants of the Summer University held in PAF in August 2007. A number of practitioners (artists, theoreticians, cultural workers, informationtechnologists etc.) who gathered for this Summer University in the house in St. Erme.

The main interest in organizing WUM is to exchange, experiment and test the practices participants of PAF are developing and/or will develop in future: types of projects, areas of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, discursive engagement by all interested participants. In other words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

WUM isn’t another international gathering, offering workshops, lectures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. WUM isn’t based on the principle 'pay to learn and teach to earn'. Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer.
WUM can act as a minimodel of PAF: an intensification, a furthering, a confrontation and an intereference-plus-cumulative-effect of all projects, activities, concepts and initiatives, which are either in progress, or about to take off in future, or subsist in potentiality.

Practical information.
- you can come as many days as you want in the foreseen period of the Winter Update Meeting or stay longer, before or after.
- participation in the costs: per person 10 euros a night (unless one stays less than 5 nights, then the price is 15 euros per night).
- food is organised (only during WUM) and costs 15 euros a day (tell us when you are a vegetarian or fish-vegetarian)
- total sum per day: either 25 or 30 euros per person
- reserve by email: janritsema@mac.com
- no application is needed, but make a reservation soon, as the interest seems to be quite big and PAF can only host 50 people
- general information about PAF and how to arrive there on
www.pa-f.net

The highly appreciated autonomy can only be maintained when everybody takes part in the every day maintenance organisation.
In other words: -Don’t leave traces and put things back where you found them.
To be more concrete: - clean up the personal and general dirt you left behind you. - do not colonize space nor information (books, dvd’s etc.), - and keep information, materials, apparatuses and spaces available and moveable.
To say it differently: Make it possible for others, not by retreating, not by withdrawel, or by being modest, on the contrary, making it possible for others is thought as active participation. Through action one offers and opens spaces in which others can take part. One proposes participation in an open rehearsal, a lecture, a conversation, a film or documentairy showing and/or by cleaning up and maintening general space.
In other words: one does. This makes that the doer decides at PAF

Jan Ritsema

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Winter University 26 december 2006 - 4 january 2007

“Winter University” [=WU] is a project initiated by the participants of the Summer University held in PAF in August 17-27/2006. A number of practitioners (artists, theoreticians, cultural workers etc.) who gathered for the first Summer University in the house in St. Erme.

The main interest in organizing WU is to experiment and test the practices PAF is developing and/or will develop in future: types of projects, areas of research, modes (methods, procedures, techniques) of production, frames of collaboration, discursive engagement by all interested participants. In a few words: all activities that make up knowledge production in the arts, theory and cultural practice, open and specific.

University and participation
“University” is the term that replaces “academy” here referring to the Renaissance principle of combining research and education in one location. Secondly, it is called “university” rather than “academy” because PAF will be open to all areas of knowledge, even if art is or remains the starting point.
So, WU isn’t another international winter academy, offering workshops, lectures, panels etc. under a representative topic for which participants apply. The participants of WU are its organizers, in that they are proposing, organizing, and taking part in different projects and activities during WU. In contrast to existing academies WU isn’t based on the principle 'pay to learn and teach to earn'. Every participant pays the same fee (the equivalent of food, lodging and technical organization) to take part no matter what competence or specific knowledge he/she can offer. The access to SU is open, but more specifically determined by each project/activity. (See the programme further)

Preparation
The preparation of WU has already begun from the moment the project was discussed. Only by organizing preparation as process, rather than by planning a representative programme, can WU act as a minimodel of PAF: an intensification, a furthering, a confrontation and an intereference-plus-cumulative-effect of all projects, activities, concepts and initiatives, which are either in progress, or about to take off in future, or subsist in potentiality.

A proposed format for sharing knowledge and information is press conference. Somewhat old-fashioned and too official for the informality of these meetings, press conferences are optional, not obligatory reports made by each group to the others either on regular basis or by special appointment.
Everyone is invited to propose the project or activity they would like to organize within SU. Or to propose a discussion about a project you are working on. To make a presentation when you want to have it discussed, etc.
The only limit of choice is the capacity of the house.
The aim behind the open access and self-organization is to make possible parallel heterogeneous research platforms. To experiment with configurations, extensions, transformations, interferences, mergings and forkings of projects/activities.

Documentation
A special attention will be given to the issue of documentation. How can we make sure that the different research, projects and events are documented and published in a way that enables others to use them for further investigation? Projects/activities are encouraged to automatically reflect their own documentation. Naturally, information will also circulate wider than SU, in ways that PAF won’t be responsible for.

How to become a participant?
It’s as easy as sending an email to jan.ritsema@pa-f.net and wait for a confirmation.
No appplication is needed.
Neither is a proposal obligatory.

You can also stay shorter or longer than the Winter University period.

Expenses
The participation fee is 250 euro for the 10 days, consisting of 100 euro for a room, 150 euro for food (three meals a day, incl. wine). When you stay less days you pay accordingly. So a 4 nights stay would cost 100 euros

For more information about PAF go to www.pa-f.net where you can also find the information about how to get there (http://pa-f.net/node/10).

Programme (the program at PAF is always flexible and optional)
For now the programme is an open list of proposals:

*works asking for more feedback and more discussion – those people who are looking for more feedback discussion on their work are invited to organize such a session.

* ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, VIENNA
COMING TO PAF WINTER UNIVERSITY 26.12 2006 (until 31.12. 2006)
Post Conceptual Art Practices
Students of the Class and professor Marina Grzinic and assistant Gerhard Gleich
with guests from Vienna Manoa Free University, Vienna, Theory that Walks, Belgrade, Kontekst Gallery, Belgrade, among others

The research trip to PAF by the Post Conceptual Art Practices, AKBILD, Vienna is connected with the 2006/2007 school year project: PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE. This project researches the system of contemporary education, with an emphasis on open source and (self) organizing models of knowledge and activities. A special focus is given to the question of construction of history of art and connection of art practices and activist theory. The class already went for a trip to Prishtina, Kosova in November 2006.

One of the educational goals of the Post Conceptual Art Practice is taking part in research and exchange trips. In such trips students actively present their work and activate a platform of debates with other students and the general public. Post Conceptual Art Practices from The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna has accomplished several research trips in the last three years: Ljubljana (Slovenia), Bratislava (Slovakia), Split (Croatia), Belgrade (Serbia), Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic) and Dresden (Germany). In all these cities we had a program of lectures, performances, screenings, happenings and presentations. The exchange is established between the Class and other Academies or cultural centers in connection with artistic and cultural projects.

THE PROGRAMM of the Vienna Fine Arts Academy:

AKBILD/Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
POST CONCEPTUAL ART PRACTICES
Prof. Dr. Marina Grzinic

http://t4.antville.org/

RESEARCH TRIP TO PAF PerformingArtsForum
St. ERME, FRANCE //

PAF Winter University Program
25. DECEMBER to 31. DECEMBER 2006
Visit Paris: 28.12.2006

PROGRAM/OUR INTERVENTIONS:
Presentations, discussions, reading, cooking…….
Self education, self organization, democratization of knowledge

Students Akbild/PCAP and the Belgrade branch: Theory that Walks, Kontekst Gallery

Lina Dokuzovic; Kevin Dooley; Eduard Freudmann; Can Guelcue;
Ana Hoffner; Chaim Jackler; Ivan Jurica; Koloman Kann; David Kellner;
Christoph Kolar; Lisbeth Kovacic; Martina Lunzer Brem; Katharina Morawek;
Michael Poetschko; Lillo Reissert; Henning Schorn; Lukas Tagwerker;
Christina Trachta; Tilman Wagner; Ruth Weismann; Tina Wimmer;
Stephanie Winter; Regina Wuzella; Ivana Marjanovic; Miljana Peric
Marta Popivoda; Ana Vujanovic

Gerhard Gleich
Marina Grzinic

PROGRAM PAF prepared with the Belgrade Branch
VISIT TO PARIS a program proposed by Natasa Petresin, Ljubljana, curator, writer and Ph.D. candidate at EHESS in Paris (www.ehess.fr), co-organizer of the seminar "Something You Should Know: Artistes et producteurs aujourd'hui" at EHESS (http://www.ehess.fr/ue/2006-2007/ue1250.html)

26 DECEMBER 2006/Tuesday
PAF: Jan Ritsema guide through the house, its history and current formation of
paf; self-introductions of all of us, presentations, points of
researches in the fields of education, learning, knowledge
(production) etc

27 DECEMBER 2006/Wednesday
Discussing the work similarities and differences:
COOKING EVENT with presentations of the works: screenings,
performances, lectures from Vienna, from Belgrade group
with talks about problematical, critical, unusual, specific, unknown,
differential points in others' works; the points could be recognized
better by the people outside than by those who are in; also
discussing concepts such as - difference, other, particularity,
normativity, communication, disagreement

28 DECEMBER 2006/Thursday
PARIS

PROGRAM proposed by Natasa Petresin, Ljubljana, curator, writer and Ph.D. candidate at EHESS in Paris (www.ehess.fr), co-organizer of the seminar "Something You Should Know: Artistes et producteurs aujourd'hui" at EHESS (http://www.ehess.fr/ue/2006-2007/ue1250.html)

At 9.00 departure St. Erme to Paris

*At 11.00 - 12.30
Le Plateau, Paris
Address: Le Plateau, Place Hannah Arendt, 19. Department (intersection between Rue des Alouettes and Rue Carducci)
Website: http://www.fracidf-leplateau.com/

Presentation of the Le Plateau, meeting Gilles Baume, organizer of pedagogical activities at Le Plateau, with Natasa Petresin, Thomas Boutoux (Métronome Press) and Francois Piron (Work Method)

PRESENTATION of the project Société Anonyme (to be realized in March 2007).

Meeting Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki
http://perso.orange.fr/astarti/artsite.htm
Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki are media artists of Greek origin based in Paris since 1975. They produce films, videos, multi-media installations, performances, photographic pieces, sound and texts.

*At 13.00 to 14.00 LUNCH at PALAIS DE TOKYO

*At 14.00 -15.00
PALAIS DE TOKYO
Address: 13, Avenue du Président Wilson, 16. department
website: http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/
Meeting Benjamin Bardinet, responsible for public programme; visiting the exhibition program Palais de Tokyo

*At 15.30 - 16.00
gb agency, Paris
Address: 20 rue Louise Weiss, 13. department
website: http://www.gbagency.fr/

Meeting Dominique Petitgand, artist, at his show at gb agency.

*At 16.00 - 16.30
in situ Fabienne Leclerc
Address: 10, rue duchefdelaville, 13. department
website: http://www.insituparis.fr/accueil.asp

Visit of the exhibition "Ah, les belles images" with Walid Raad, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil. Meeting with Hélène Chouteau.

see this link for the info on exhibition: http://www.paris-art.com/event_detail-7793.html

*At 16.30 LATEST departure for Brétigny

*At 17.00 - 18.00
CAC Brétigny
Address: Espace Jules Verne, Rue Henri Douard, 91220 Brétigny s/Orge
telephone: +33 1 60 85 20 76

website: http://www.cacbretigny.com/

Meeting the director of CAC Brétigny, Pierre Bal-Blanc

see the attached document for the plan of the trip from Paris to CAC Brétigny, Brétigny s/Orge

At 18.00 departure to St. Erme
At 20.00 Dinner at St. Erme

29 DECEMBER 2006/Friday

First resume of the exchange events, works, discussing the
Vienna program in diether theater and reading of two texts; a full day on
discussing ideas, theses, references, political and theoretical
points in our works/ researches; also talking about their socio-
political conditions and "causes" in different social contexts and
institutions; also discussing concepts such as - common, collective,
multitude, community, general intellect, agreement.

Text proposed by Belgrade branch: Bojana Cvejic THEORY, POLICE AND DISAGREEMENT

30 DECEMBER 2006/Saturday

FINAL RESUME of the whole event, program that will document the
events: book, fanzines, DVD and the Bg meeting and summer academy.
Deadline to get money for the book and other things in Vienna is on 12.1.2007.

Departure to Vienna early afternoon.

For more visit the Post Conceptual Art Practices/ Akbild, Vienna BLOG http://t4.antville.org/

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Winter Update Meeting: 26/12/2015 - 4/1/2016

PAF warmly invites you to the 10th anniversary Winter Update Meeting, bringing an open conviviality together to form an exclusive community during nine days of recreation, conversation, cooking, sharing, togetherness and social activities.

Conviviality without content is this years devise. Instead of working towards something WUM emphasizes what can develop out of aimlessness, shared contemplation, engagement for no particular reason, specifics ways of being together without any other motive than the necessity to continue. This is not a matter of just having fun but rather an opportunity to explore the boundaries of artistic, social and political production in a society whose foundations are changing and where being together without aspirations is becoming more and more rare.

PAF acknowledge the importance of ending a year with a moment of reflection, evaluation, inner calm and unbounded contemplation. This years WUM wish to function as a few days of finishing a chapter, coming to an end and a recharging

WUM is a saloon rather than a theatre exercise, a good book rather than application hysteria, conversation rather than “Publikumsbeschimpfung”, ordinary rather than spectacular, coming along rather than critique, together rather than yoga class, a winterly promenade rather than dance class, somebody offering a short-story rather than reading group, I’ll put on extra jumper instead of showing muscle, a stay in bed instead of going jogging.

Still it is of course up to each and everyone what’s important. PAF don’t judge but make it possible for activation in all thinkable ways. Our time together implies an attempt at different kinds of progressive self-organization with no smaller ambitions than to ask questions that require new words. Individual and collective proposals can take place next to showing, screenings, listening or why not bring people together for a shared tête-à-tête about something curious.

As usually our chefs will electrify the kitchen, underlining also the social qualities of cooking, eating and doing the dishes.

The kitchen is one of those places where we don’t need to but can.

PAF is currently in a process of transformation. After ten years it is time to rethink what PAF can be, how the house and the community is maintained and how its people are made happy. A healthy moment of transformation that started a year ago this year’s WUM will continue with further discussions. Everybody is invited to be part of forming the future of PAF which is in our hands, the hands that use and care for PAF.

During the WinterUpdateMeeting participation in meals is binding. Total costs per participant are 35€ per day (18€ per bed/room and 17€ for three meals including wine, coffee). Membership (12€) is obligatory due to insurance reasons, valid for one year. You can stay for a longer or shorter period.

It is with great happiness and warmth that PAF welcomes you to WUM, a moment of being together in order to change what we can do.

Limited number of participants.

Reservations: Valentina Desideri - Jan Ritsema at contactpaf@gmail.com

^ ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 7 ^ Holding Space With/Out Time | 02-12/07/2020

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 7: HOLDING SPACE WITH/OUT TIME
***all bodies are possible and welcome***

For it’s 7th edition ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE continues in its commitment to hold space, to stay present to the ways in which we come together, to the HOW and the WHAT of our sharing, learning and living together.

This year we want to further the experiment started last year in which, through the absence of a schedule, we were invited to follow our own rhythm and explore things alone, together and in different constellations. The undertaking allowed for a certain expansion of time and deepening of relations, yet it also revealed how the unconscious reproduction of social life carries its own exclusions and is likely to reproduce violence. Rather than shying away from what arises in the absence of the go-to tools for structuring time and reproductive tasks, we want to deepen the experiment by proposing a clearly formulated shared intention and exploration for the time of our living together: HOLDING SPACE WITH/OUT TIME.

When we hold space for someone/something we bring our entire presence to it. We attend to what it needs, allowing it without judging or trying to fix it, supporting it without wanting to shape the outcome, we are in service. Can we alter our go-to narratives if our common commitment and intention is to hold space for each other, for what we want to share, for the dynamics that happen when we remove time & task management from the centre of our exchanges? How does it influence our language to describe what is happening? What kind of attention and sensibility do we need to develop in order to attend to each other’s needs, desires and asymmetries? And how does that affect what and how we share?

E&O 7 will again be structured spatially rather than temporally. We invite participants to think and propose spaces, physical or psychical that they may want to hold or help hold. We are proposing to keep the spatial set-up slightly more compact and connected than last year; The gravitational fields of the meeting are the kitchens with the reproductive labour and tasks they already hold, a Herbal Pool and multi-purpose outdoor gathering space in the inner courtyard, a Healing Pool in the peacock room and the Kids Station/COMO CLUBINHO in the external courtyard.

We are also specifically calling in the E&O community to help develop the COMO CLUBINHO and its activities in a more collective, less segregating way. With the experience of last year it turns out we need a group of +- 5 grown ups, ideally not the parents or caregivers, that will guide the CLUBINHO (10:00-14:00 / 15:00 - 20:00) from beginning to end, spending each 2-3h per day even during activities guided by other people, as kids need time to build trust and to be surrounded at all time by familiar faces. If you have ideas for activities that can be shared with kids, please propose them and indicate if they are also open for grown-ups to participate. Keep in mind that the kids participating in the activities are mainly the 4-7 year olds as the older kids are mostly self-organized and the younger kids are mostly bound to their caregivers. We want the little humans to be part of the collective learning processes of E&O as a whole so we wish for proposals and activities in, for and around the CLUBINHO as well as for all of E&O 7 that will seek connections and find a good balance between kids-only, grown-ups only and shared spaces.

HOLDING SPACE WITH/OUT TIME invites all the participants to bring in their practices and knowledge and make collectively the kind of space that is needed to hold them, in their spontaneous emergence as well as in their formal manifestations. Some proposals already on the table are a study group on the” History of Patriarchy", a masculinity table, a Studio Practice on hapticality, a writing workshop as well as the continuation of experiments around Herbs and Plant knowledge, expanding the capacity of the erotic (in theory and practice) and sharing the healing tools we practice and find useful.

On the evening of July 2nd we will welcome everyone with a snack/drink at 18:00 and a dinner at 20:00, this is an informal way to say hello and meet. We will hold an initial meeting on the first day, July 3rd at 10:00, in order to set a common intention and to define and share some tools we need in order to make and navigate such a complex space. If you want to help set-up and hold a physical space or take part in helping with the general organization of E&O 7 please let us know and come a few days early if you can. We ask people to commit to the entire meeting; if this is not possible for you please let us know and we can see if we can still make your participation possible.

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 7 - HOLDING SPACE WITH/OUT TIME will take place from July 2-12, 2020 at PAF (Performing Arts Forum). As every year we try to make it possible for people with little/no funds to attend the meeting. This year we will experiment with a formalized sliding scale in order to do so. Keep in mind that the evaluation for the sliding scale is not how much money you have, but how much money you have access to. The meeting including food and accommodation for 10 days costs between 280 - 400 EUR per person. Even if you can pay 20 EUR more it helps someone else.

For parents and primary caregivers who consider coming with their children please read the info below.

To reserve please email: contactpaf@gmail.com

For any other question/doubt/idea/proposal, please email: valedesideri@gmail.com & daniela.bershan@gmail.com

Daniela Bershan & Valentina Desideri

_____________________

Considerations for parents and care givers before coming to ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE with kid(s)

It is important for us to include little humans and a activities for and with them into ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE and it is important to us to find collective, integrative ways of doing so. In an experimental way we have taken baby steps since years into this direction and we are far from "being there" and at the same time happy that it is now possible. However, to avoid frustrations we think it is useful that you know what you sign up for namely an experiment NOT an institutionalized day care. PAF is - in accordance with security norms in most European homes and public spaces - not a child-safe building. The humans running and taking care of the CLUBINHO are not "trained professionals“ and we don‘t want them to be. All this is to say that kids at E&O are part of a relational system and experiment of self-organization that needs to be and is in constant negotiation. So you don't "drop- off" your kid at the CLUBINHO at 10:00 and then you pick them up for lunch or dinner. Some days it might turn out that way and others it really won't.

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE is - next to many other things - also an intense and challenging space, and it’s not uncommon even for grown-ups to have a crisis moment at some point during the meeting. Crisis is often a moment of transformation so we don't avoid but embrace it as part of the process and try to provide spaces and tools to hold it. As a parent or primary care-giver, especially if you come as a single parent this can be extra challenging as your kid(s) will relentlessly follow their own needs and rhythm while you and them are confronted with a whole new set-up that you will (also with help) only partially be able to immerse yourself into. We recommend that you try to build up an additional support system for you and your kid(s) before hand. For example ask one or two friends that are coming with you to split the time of care-giving for 24h each, so every other day or third day you can have a "day/night off". If you come with 2/3 parents/care-giver this is a system that seems to work quite well for some; If you plan to come alone with your kid(s) and don't know anyone at E&O let us know in advance so we can try to put you in touch with some people before hand; In the evenings a "rotational child-checking system" works very well; You organize 6 people that check the rooms once an hour each (10 past, 20 past, 30 past, etc.). Like this you only have to check on your kid once an hour and know that they are checked on every 10 minutes by someone.

Lastly we need ALL custody holders to sign a legal disclaimer before hand, that we will send you as soon as you reserve. It is not enough for one custody holder to sign this. All caregivers with legal custody MUST sign this beforehand.

^^ ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE >> 31 May - 7 June 2014 ^^ SADIE PLANT | RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL

From particle scientists at CERN and shamans in the Peruvian Amazon to sexual practices and bio-activism, off the grids of dominant epistemology other forms of living and knowing are emerging and re-emerging.

Is there a way to develop precise strategies for sharing and disseminating other forms of knowledge that outgrow traditional academic parameters and disciplines? ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE, with Sadie Plant and Red Vaughan Tremmel at PAF - PERFORMING ARTS FORUM (France), is an opportunity for us to explore alternate systems of reason and new ways, forms and methods to engineer our relationship to knowledge.

Often seminars reproduce the same power-structures they speak against, never allowing time for something else to happen, for participants and speakers to meet, for ideas to be put into practice or practice into ideas or let alone study.
If study is "what you do with other people”, as Stefano Harney and Fred Moten put it in THIS interview, then the whole meeting has to be considered as an instance of study: from the meals to how we encounter each other, to the modalities of presentations and their before and after.

Just like any form of information, knowledge is constantly being engineered, it is by nature always shared. It travels on transversal, diagonal and queer routes through times and spaces, bodies and minds, materialities and forms. Knowledge is not exclusively a capacity of the intellect, it is matter itself: permeable, liquid, always and already in relation with other matter, our bodies being the collective location through which knowledge circulates.

During ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE Sadie Plant (techno-theorist/writer/translator) and Red Vaughan Tremmel (historian/gender and sexuality scholar/artist) will hold daily sessions to share their research, GGcooks will provide us with mood altering aromatic cuisine, a daily dose of meditation will be provided by Stéphanie and this is just the basic infrastructure to take us ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE.

The meeting will take place in PAF where all of the participants and speakers will be hosted.

Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians, practitioners, and activists themselves, PAF is a user-created informal institution. It is a platform for anyone who wants to expand possibilities and interests in his/her own working practice.

PAF is located in a former convent school (6.400 m2), in a 1.2 hectare garden in the village of St. Erme, France, approximately 130km northeast of Paris.
The price is 350 EUR per person including seminar fee, accommodation, and all meals including coffee and wine during the whole meeting, 1 year PAF membership, usage of all facilities and Wi-Fi.

The maximum number of participants is 45 people. So please reserve as soon as possible.

PAF can assist you with invitation letters in case you plan to come with a grant. People who attend with a grant are kindly asked to pay 50 EUR more for E&O so the price for the others can stay as low as possible. PAF finances E&O (as everything else) without subsidies or grants.

SADIE PLANT
Sadie Plant is a British techno-theorist, writer and translator and lives in Biel, Switzerland. She has published several books in the 90's including the influential "Zeros + Ones - Digital Woman and the new Technoculture". She has a wide range of interests in the arts, philosophy, literature, communications technologies, urbanism, and cultural theory. In 1995 she set up the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick and until recently she was teaching at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. Over the years she has written for newspapers and magazines as varied as the Independent, the Financial Times, Wired, Adbusters, and the New Statesman, as well as more specialised journals, books, and catalogues in the fields of architecture, the arts, and new technology. She has also made many appearances on radio and TV, including BBC programs such as Newsnight, The Late Show, and In Our Time, and has spoken at a wide variety of conferences, festivals, and symposia in the UK and around the world.

RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL
Red Vaughan Tremmel is a professor, filmmaker, performance curator, and installation artist who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Tremmel's work explores spaces of play and pleasure, including the body, as historically significant sites of social struggle where people negotiate complex constellations of power. He is particularly interested in the ways marginal erotic bodies (transgender, queer, stripper, etc.) and cultures function as sites of alternative and oppositional knowledge production, re/membering, and healing. He is the director and co-producer of the documentary film Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival (2012), the curator and producer of the Sissy Butch Brothers' live Gurlesque Burlesque shows (2001-08), and co-creator of Subjects of Desire: Objects of Resistance, a multimedia installation commissioned for dOCUMENTA(13). Tremmel earned his doctorate in American History from the University of Chicago. He is current fellow at the Newcomb College Institute and a past fellow of the Social Science Research Council; Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media Program; the University of Chicago’s Center for Gender Studies Program; and the James Hormel Sexuality Program. In 2012, he founded the Office for Gender and Sexual Diversity at Tulane University, where he teaches history and gender and sexuality studies.

JOIN US AT PAF - ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE
E&O is organized by Daniela Bershan and Valentina Desideri for PAF 2014

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^~ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 2015 | CA CONRAD & RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL ~~~~~~~~26/07 -01/08/2015

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE is continuing its quest to develop precise strategies for sharing and disseminating other forms of knowledge that outgrow the parameters of traditional academic disciplines.

For its second edition ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE invites historian, sexuality scholar and artist RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL to carry forward his proposal from last year: the elaboration of different techniques to enhance our awareness of the material erotic dimension and its political implications. By shifting historical categories of private and public around - and by stimulating both our conscious and unconscious experimentation with the erotic - a promising collective practice of queer knowing started to appear during E&O’s first edition that asks for in-depth continuation.

Hooking into that is poet CA CONRAD's (Soma)tics: ritualized structures for writing where being anything but present is next to impossible. Geared to reveal the creative viability of everything around, CA’s poems and practice expose and explode integrated categories of thought, gender and language, turning poetry into a queering force of spiritual activism calling for the future wilderness.

And we’re ready for it:

The meeting will take place in PAF - PERFORMING ARTS FORUM where all of the participants and speakers will be hosted.

PAF is located in a former convent school (6.400 m2), in a 1.2 hectare garden in the village of St. Erme, France, approximately 130km northeast of Paris.

The price is 350 EUR per person including seminar fee, accommodation, and all meals including coffee and wine during the whole meeting, 1 year PAF membership, usage of all facilities and Wi-Fi.

The maximum number of participants is 50 people. So please reserve as soon as possible.

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CA CONRAD
Born on January 1, 1966, poet CA Conrad describes himself as “the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.” He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014); Philip Seymour Hoffman (were you high when you said this?) (Worms Press, 2014); A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics (Wave Books, 2012); The City Real & Imagined (Factory School Press, 2010), with the poet Frank Sherlock; and The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009), recipient of the Gil Ott Book Award. He has also authored a book of nonfiction essays, Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009). A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics: “Ultimately, I want my (Soma)tic poetry and poetics to help us realize at least two things. That everything around us has a creative viability with the potential to spur new thinking and imaginative output and that the most necessary ingredient to bringing the sustainable, humane changes we need and want for our world requires creativity in all lives, every single day.”

CHILDREN your bliss is at stake
CHILDREN listen carefully for the
lies your parents tell you
CHILDREN prepare for joy in ways
none of them will ever imagine
prepare to live with no regrets

From: Act Like Polka Dot on Minnie Mouse's Skirt
CA CONRAD, Albion Book Series 5, Volume 2

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Special Program Proposals

PAF Repair Week, 7-14 May 2023

PAF's sister residency MASSIA calls for participation in FO.R.E.ST - Forum for Radical Ecology Studies

Repair Week 3, 15th - 21st May

…It is Pathetic. I love it. May 5th - 12th

SPRING MEETING 2021, 28 September – 3 October: Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self

WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 26th 2013 - january 2nd 2014

SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2013, august 5 - august 15

Winter Update Meeting (WUM) 2023 December 27th - January 3rd: “The Present of PAF”

An exchange of knowledge in the SUMMERUNIVERSITY 2011 5-14 of August and AGORA SEMINARS 10-20/8 2011

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 29/7-3/8 2019 @ PAF

**ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 24/6 - 1/7/2016 **

<<**Elsewhere&Otherwise V**>> 13-22 July 2018 @ Performing Arts Forum

>> Elsewhere&Otherwise IV ** 23/6-1/7/2017 ** @ Performing Arts Forum <<

ASYMMETRY STUDY GROUP – BIWEEKLY ONLINE SESSIONS

Categories for the Hard-Working Non-Mathematician - June 24th - July 1st, 2018 - Night Lessons with Gabriel Catren

Deeply Organized Chaos: Getting into the swing of Simplicity and Complexity | Workshop led by Manuel Eguia | 22-26/06/2020

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 6 | 11-21 July 2019 @ PAF ***QUEERING TIMES***

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 10: PLAYING MULTITUDES guts / metabolising / futures (1-10 July 2023)

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 11 Liquid solidarities : the magnetics of Grief, Erosion & Courage (July 2nd-12th 2024)

Hacking and Philosophy at Pa-f | Oct 31st to Nov 4th 2019

Hot Identities and Vicious Abstractions in the (Homotopic) Foundations of Mathematics 21-29 October 2023

Reading with Echo *** 24-29 July 2024*** @ PAF

SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2024 ** Aug 11th - Sept 2nd **

Summer University 2023 — 6th-28th August 2023

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 11-16 June 2023

spring* meeting 2023: WE WORK WITH THE MATERIAL THAT RESISTS US, 17–22 May 2023

spring* meeting 2024: We Work with the Material that Resists Us, Part II, 29th March - 4th April

** As Below So Beyond ** Elsewhere & Otherwise 9 ** June 24 - July 03, 2022

Deeply Organized Chaos ** Workshop piloted by Manuel Eguia ** 07-13/07/2022

Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self *** SpringMeeting 2021 continued *** Part 2: April 15 - 20, 2022

NIGHT LESSONS ~ BDSM Theory & Practice ~ 9-14 February 2017

PAF Winter Update Meeting 2022 * Arrête La Machine * 27/12/22 - 03/01/23

SUMMER UNIVERSITY REBOOT 7th - 30th of August

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ** 18-23 July 2022 @ PAF

[CANCELLED/POSTPONED]Human Strike / Claire Fontaine – A prelude to Spring Meeting ** 11-13 April 2022

The Dynamic Model of Nature: Naturphilosophie and Romantic Science ** Night Lessons @ PAF ** Feb 28 - March 5

PAF SPRING MEETING 2018: What is the art I would like to see before I can see it? ** 31/3-8/4 **

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2014

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2015 - 4 in 1: MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, DANCE, TXT

PAF SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2017 - PHILOSOPHY, INDIGO DANCE, MUSIC, POETRY - Aug 7th / Sept 4th

PAF Winter Update Meeting 2019 | 27/12/2019 - 3/1/2020

Call for SELF-EDUCATION at PAF, april 1- october 1 2007

Mobilis in Mobili: On Space, Time, Motion, and Forces | 01-07 Sept 2019

PS V (a darktongues, kunning (poetics (& the occult))) ~ with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh & Rebekah Sheldon ~ 9-14 March 2017

PS VI: Of Changes and Returns - Questions of the transcendental ** 8-12 March 2018

PS: Stubbornness of the Empirical 2 — Space & Time — 3-7/3/2016

PS: Stubbornness of the Empirical 3 — Sound & Philosophy — 2-7/6/2016

PS: Surrogat(IV)e Autonomy, November 3rd-8th 2016

Philosophy Salo(o)n: The Stubbornness of the Empirical *** Oct 29th - Nov 2nd 2015

SCHOOL FOR STUDY: 6-10 May 2013

SPRING MEETING - 29 March – 7 April, 2014 - Reza Negarestani | Stephen Zepke | Isabelle Stengers

SPRING MEETING 20-29 APRIL 2019 - It is hard to be art

SPRING MEETING 2015 (31 March – 9 April) Katerina Kolozova | Eleni Ikoniadou | Ray Brassier

SPRING MEETING 2020, 11 - 19 April: Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self

SPRINGMEETING 2013, 28 March - 7 April

SUMMER PROGRAM 2008

SUMMER UNIVERSITY, august 3-12 2007

SUMMER UNIVERSITY, august 1-10 2008

Spring Seminar Now Running, note schedule changes

Summer University 2018 * 30/07 - 02/09 *

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence *** 27/7-1/8 2020 @ PAF

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ^^ with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva ~~~ 24-28 July 2017 @ PAF

The Sensing Salon: Experiments in Entangled Existence ^^ with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva ~~~ 7-12 July 2018

WINTER UPDATE MEETING 2017: Imagining PAF future * 27/12/2017 - 02/01/2018 *

WINTER UPDATE MEETING, december 24th 2007 - january 4th 2008

Winter University 26 december 2006 - 4 january 2007

Winter Update Meeting: 26/12/2015 - 4/1/2016

^** ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 7 **^ Holding Space With/Out Time | 02-12/07/2020

^^ ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE >> 31 May - 7 June 2014 ^^ SADIE PLANT | RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL

^~~~~~~~ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 2015 | CA CONRAD & RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~26/07 -01/08/2015

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 24/6 - 1/7/2016

<<Elsewhere&Otherwise V>> 13-22 July 2018 @ Performing Arts Forum

>> Elsewhere&Otherwise IV 23/6-1/7/2017 @ Performing Arts Forum <<

ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 6 | 11-21 July 2019 @ PAF QUEERING TIMES

Reading with Echo * 24-29 July 2024* @ PAF

SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2024 Aug 11th - Sept 2nd

As Below So Beyond Elsewhere & Otherwise 9 ** June 24 - July 03, 2022

Deeply Organized Chaos Workshop piloted by Manuel Eguia 07-13/07/2022

Intercessors, ventriloquists, thieves, anon. On Art’s Divestment of the Self * SpringMeeting 2021 continued * Part 2: April 15 - 20, 2022

The Dynamic Model of Nature: Naturphilosophie and Romantic Science Night Lessons @ PAF Feb 28 - March 5

PAF SPRING MEETING 2018: What is the art I would like to see before I can see it? 31/3-8/4

^ ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 7 ^ Holding Space With/Out Time | 02-12/07/2020

^~ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE 2015 | CA CONRAD & RED VAUGHAN TREMMEL ~~~~~~~~26/07 -01/08/2015