FORUM: The Vantage Body

[figure the_vantage_body]

Join us for a FORUM hosting The Vantage Body, a meatspace broadcast organized by the Willem Kooning Academy's Social Practices department.

The day brings together local and international conversation partners. Guest speakers Ece Canli, Rolando Vázquez, Fossil Free Culture, Grace Samboh will be in conversation with teachers Charissa Granger, Clara Balaguer, Selçuk Balamir, and Teana Boston-Mammah. They will be joined by students and friends of the WdKA Social Practices.

This FORUM experiments with forms of on and offline assembly, as well as with how to connect theory and practice in pedagogy. Speakers have been asked to present their work in light of a theoretical text they have either read or written that has been influential to their practice. (Students and teachers have been asked to pre-read these texts.) Teachers will then interview the speakers in order to flesh out how the texts assigned relate to the speakers' practices, in a pedagogical demo of sorts. After this, the floor will open to questions from students and vantage bodies.

BACKGROUND

The vantage loaf is the thirteenth loaf in a baker's dozen, a term first recorded in the 17th century. This extra loaf was added to the wholesale purchase of twelve pieces of bread as a way to create value, redistribute profit, and increase circulation. Aside from the vantage loaf being a way of circulating baked goods leftover from previous days, its most important function was to allow resellers, or hucksters, to make a profit on the dozen. The price of bread was strictly controlled by governing bodies, so without the vantage loaf, value could not be created. Similarly, the thirteenth vantage body to this event, outside of the dozen people we are allowed to seat in the room—a collective public composed of WdKA Social Practices' student body and its extended network through Melly—gives this broadcast purpose, value, and a circuit for ideas to spread.

PROGRAM

10:00 – 11:00 am ECE CANLI
In conversation with Teana Boston-Mammah about haunting as counterhegemonic design research and counterfactual artistic practice.

11:30 am – 12:30 pm ROLANDO VÁZQUEZ
In conversation with Charissa Granger about decoloniality, time, and the end of the contemporary.

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm FOSSIL FREE CULTURE
In conversation with Selçuk Balamir about art and activism in the age of the Anthropocene.

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm GRACE SAMBOH
In conversation with Clara Balaguer about taking and giving and friendship in the curatorial, or why do we do what we do, how, and for whom?

LOCATIONS

ONLINE STREAM https://youtu.be/MZDpTAPBQWo
This stream is open to the general public. No sign up required.

LIMITED LIVE AUDIENCE https://etherpad.nl/p/WdKASocialPracticesTheoryProgramGUESTLIST
There is room for 12 bodies at FKAWDW, in compliance with COVID regulations. If you would like to attend as live audience of this broadcast, you must RSVP by adding your name to etherpad list above. Bring your laptop and headphones to participate fully in the conversation. Facemasks are mandatory, we will be providing some at the entrance in case you forget.

PEDAGOGIC COLLABORATION

During the partial lock-down, the FKA WdW program of events undertakes experiments in social gathering online and offline, seeking new ways of maintaining connection and care through physical distance. For the next event in this pedagogic collaboration with the WdKA Social Practices department, tune into the KEYNOTE by Maria Theresa Alves on November 6, moderated by Clara Balaguer and with the SPIN Willem de Kooning Academy student group.

COLOPHON

The Vantage Body flier was designed on REDACTED BIG TECH COLLECTIVE DRAWING SOFTWARE as decolonial and demodernist experiment by Hardworking Goodlooking. The design was peer-reviewed by 88 mob_ring, a loose undergroundish cell of designers and educators who meet monthly.