Syntrofi “An Invitation to Dine on Privilege”

Participatory lunch performance produced with the School of Love for the “Exercises in Awareness” program, “Women and Children First” festival, Vooruit, Ghent | January – February 2019.

Syntrofi [σύντροφοι] is a Greek compound word – coming from feed [trofi] and together [syn] – which translates to: “companions, comrades, lovers…”

Syntrofi takes on a perspective of a vulnerable observer, who looks into art and education institutions from within the position of the marginal and the excluded. Around the lunch table, the audience and performers will become Syntrofi. Personal stories on privilege will be served, chewed on, and digested through the conversations and engaged togetherness that acknowledges the complexity of contradicting desires.

This project was first initiated in 2017 by Elli Vassalou and developed within the School of Love [SOL]. In this iteration, Syntrofi will be co-created and performed by the School of love and The Post Collective members: Yared Yilma, Elli Vassalou, Hazal Arda, Weronika Zalewska, Adva Zakai, Martina Petrovic, Marcus Bergner, and Sawsan Maher.

Klabatarite!

Sound poetry by Marcus Bergner

Performance and texts by Yared Yilma, Fatma Osman. Mohammed Tawfiq, Sawsan Maher, Elli Vassalou, Samer Alagha, Marcus Bergner, Kelechi Johnbosco

Exhibition Open Design Course for Refugees and Asylum Seekers | 23-25 November 2018 @ KIOSK | KASK & Conservatorium | HOGENT | Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Gent

Open Design Course 2018

24.11.18 – 25.11.18
 

Open Design Course for refugees and asylum seekers https://opendesigncourse.be/

The Open Design Course began in 2016 by the initiatives of Bram Crevits, trying to formulate an answer to some urgent needs, but mainly as a way to offer support for an unseen influx of people fleeing war and seeking refuge in Europe. Due to regulations of higher education, it is almost impossible for most of the newcomers to start or to continue their studies as ‘regular students’ within the Belgian education system.

The Open Design Course initiative is intended to create a space within KASK, where it is possible to bypass the technical/administrative restrictions, to welcome refugees and asylum seekers, and provide them with a high-quality learning context.  The course also reflects on the broader context of rethinking higher art education. The perspectives and motives that were behind the setting up of the Open Design Course are closely intertwined forms of dissatisfaction with education / or higher education. For it was felt that higher education is mainly organized to further sustain and reproduce this system, by mainly focusing on ‘innovation’; in order to further support a logic of endless economic growth. This is not only about pedagogy and content, but also the way higher education is governed and financed. In the same way, art education (and even art in general) is not immune to this logic of reproducing a failing system.

A text about the expo by Peter Westenberg [in Dutch]
http://www.kioskgallery.be/media/kiosk/Designing_Openings-def.pdf

odc

Photos from the exhibition and the course. September to November 2018