So I'll be heading over to Amsterdam to meet up with
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fd_midori for a quick and dirty visit!
(in the evening of the 16th and out by noon on the 18th of November)
She is teaching as a guest lecturer for this semester's block.
We'll be performing our Elements of Suffering show at
DasArts on the evening of November 17th.
Interested in coming? We'll be able to invite a personal guest or two.
Block 27 is
The Glamour of Violence.
- What is DasArts? Well, here:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The DasArts Foundation (Advanced Studies in the Performing Arts) was created in 1994 under the aegis of Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and operates in association with the Amsterdam School of the Arts (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten). Approximately 25 artists from different artistic backgrounds study at DasArts.
DasArts does not have a fixed curriculum. Each semester one or two mentors curate a so-called Block: a programme centred around one theme to be explored in depth by the participants. The mentor, a prominent artist or group of artists, works at DasArts for a period of four months, shaping the theme of the Block and selecting guest lecturers in consultation with the artistic staff of DasArts. Each Block is unique and relates art practice to current developments in society.--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mentor to the Block 27 participants
Boris Gerrets (NL) visual artist, filmmaker, editor
In evolutionary prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language.
Today it is a by-product of the media. John Gray
Violence confronts us with death, death confronts us with life, and life in turn confronts us with the idea of our own being, what it means to be human. That is the core question of this artistic adventure we are about to engage in.
As a phenomenon, the glamour of violence exploits the hidden instincts, fantasies, dreams and nightmares that reside in the substrata of our consciousness – deep existential feelings, many of which are too monstrous in their cruelty to be openly expressed. Perhaps they are remnants of an earlier time in our evolutionary process, like a kind of mental appendix to our consciousness. Perhaps they are inherently part of our survival and reproductive instincts – I don’t know. I am neither a psychologist nor a behavioural scientist. But what I do know is that the only time we can even remotely try to understand this repressed world of dark feelings is when we project them into the space of art, which – I would argue – is in itself a gesture of compassion.
However, it would be far too simple to see art as merely a parallel mental ‘fantasy’ world, a safe area for the sublimation of negative psychic energy into more positive channels. Art, too, is of this world, existing right in the midst of the turbulence of ideological and religious interpretations of what constitutes reality – and what is admissible to it. I am not even talking about outright censorship. I am talking about what we allow ourselves to conceive, inside our minds.
In this block we shall try to push back the limits, just like some of the films that are featured here. Among them will be films that are masterpieces of world cinema. Others may be ethically questionable, in bad taste or extremely cruel. But keep in mind that they are hardly as questionable, in bad taste or cruel as life itself can be. Emerging from the many perspectives on violence and the many ethical, philosophical and behavioural concerns is one quintessential question, it is a question we dread to ask: is violence the thing that makes us human?
Boris Gerrets, mentor of Block 27
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More info and what each week of the current semester has featured here:
http://www.dasarts.nl/html/index.php?pageid=24
