"PhD in One Night" spreads its wings, for sharing and translating the sensible

   
  

“PhD in One Night” is starting to “mingle” more and more with others. After sucefull workshops on Vis (Croatia) last summer, month of December (or to be more precise from December 8th until 19th 2014) welcomed two platforms of our project: Post-Conference and Workshops. During this two weeks of workshops in ArBA-EsA (Brussels), the leading thought of the two weeks work, “the spotlight” if I may, was on movement - with Marta Coronado and Ivana Momcilovic. But as “PhD in One Night“ is all about sharing, exchange, exploration, emancipation of thought and expression- interruptions and “workshoping” the ideas, with different sources of information into performances, were made with sound and film workshops (with Dejana Sekulic, Nina de Vroom and Pauline Fancy).
And of course, all of the People Coming From Nowhere joined into participating, sharing and performance of the Post-Conference, the first of this kind of performances within the “PhD in One Night” on the evening of Tuesday 16th.

Knowledge is everywhere. It is in everything. Education is a way, a process through which we learn how to discern, extract and arrogate knowledge. And it is only natural that this changes in time. The system, the process evolves through what and where the society goes.
And every once a while we get to the moment of saturation, to a moment where “the system” becomes merely a mass-production of diploma holders, without sufficient capability to offer them respected positions, to practice, elaborate and expand what they have been preparing with patience and dedication. The moment when we seek and search for something different. For something that can compliment the life, and offer it a way to continue towards more quality existence.

This is exactly where the core of the “PhD in One Night” draws its inspiration - searching for ways to learn, apprehend and expand knowledge, and with it, our being. The project is based on the poetics and thoughts or Jacques Ranciere, his “prophetian” approach in dealing with the character, life and work of Joseph Jacotot. It is in this simple example of Jacotot, the thinker (and “doer”) on intellectual emancipation in 1800, who gets re-introduced by Ranciere in 1987’s through his work “Le Maître ignorant: Cinq leçons sur l'émancipation intellectuelle” and then gets a “third” life through the book and these methods being vastly explored and researched from late 1990 and 2000, that we not only conclude the importance of constant search and research, but also the change of time flow. Something that could take 100 years to grow and reach its moment of saturation, in our time and life style can happen in as little as 5 to 10 years.

During the first years of work, we embarked on our own journeys of rethinking and emancipation - search, research, observe, repeat.. What led to an obvious component of including workshops - share and translate. What this idea is about is that that there is not just one way. It is not about following just one way. Listening to one person. It is about trying all the possible ways, to find your own way.

It might seem at a first glance that too many different topics in two weeks can be burdening. And… maybe they could be. But…

In the initial concept of making a workshop the plan was to have more then just two weeks, but the presented situation actually was the ideal situation of summarising what happens in real life. So in a way, this two week workshop was not just workshop in emancipation of thought, knowledge and expression, in a well organised controlled environment. It became more an introduction for one to deal and succeed in life, with finding ways to apprehend multitude of information, from different sources, use it and distribute it to their best - at than moment. Collect these experiences, the tools they came up with, get inspired and store them. Accumulating informations, especially in intensive two weeks work, can be overwhelming. But they don’t have to. It is up to each and every one of us to learn and teach our own self, through research and tries, with critical, but open mind and with this overcome the personal limits and boundaries.
I personally like to think that we are all forever students, but also - teachers since our birth. The sharing of knowledge can come from most different fields and from most unexpected people and places. Thus, having a sound related workshop, even if at a first look might have seemed a far step from movement related performance, was a intentional step. Which we hope was as well something that students got from it.

The sound based art is always a time based art. Sound, and music in particular, gives us a feeling, a parameter of time passing. Playing with this parameter becomes more possible once we go into researching the sound and music itself. What and how can we use it. Understanding that we can, in fact, even manipulate the sense of time passing by adequately using everything as our source of sound, as our tool of composing our piece - our work. Understanding that the absence of sound, the silence, is equally important element. And that every movement makes a sound, and with it becomes a tool for composition, a tool for determining time and space.

These were the thoughts with which the workshop on Thursday December, 11th was conceived and build upon.

Being part of this whole event and sharing with the students made me believe in this even more. Almost every student responded to the task on hand. And the task was - to express your view, your feelings and translate and express through movement and sound a written composed music piece.

And why a contemporary music score? Sometimes even confusing for those trained for years in music - this seemed as a perfect tool to show that any information, text, drawing, writing, thought is a message from the author left to grow through its performer. If approached with open minded sincerity, one can understand, apprehend and translate the true meaning of a thought. Of an idea. Through ones own language. Successfully.

The workshop was set to last 3 hours. It was divided in four segments. A short introduction and personal experience sharing. Introduction of the task, followed by “free” time for students to imagine, conceive and create their interpretation. The presentation of the work and finally a short moment to have conversation and “after-thoughts” on the experience.

Of course, in the ideal situation, having as much time needed is better. But, as it happens in life and work-life, we don’t always have all the time we think would be necessary to “conquer” a task. And sometimes it is exactly good to find yourself in a situation where you do realise that “yes, it is possible”. Te more “yes, it is possible” situations one finds it self in - the more challenging and liberating their pursuit will be. To every time bravely move the boundary further. Because even in a stressful situation - you can do it. And this is, what i feel, we did altogether accomplish. Even as the initial reaction of some was that it is a short time, they all came up with interesting ideas and performed after. Presented beautiful interpretation of something that initially they didn’t think it is understandable. Knowing the score, the piece, the composer - knowing the intentions behind it - it was a pleasure and also a lesson from them to me, and also to all of us watching, that inspiration can be in everything, everywhere and that the meaning comes out through the way we translate the information and knowledge. Very simple really, and quite obvious. But we tend to often undermine the obvious, and for that it is always good to remember it. They used every aspect of the space we were in, every object that occupied it, and with that created short, often impressive, interpretations of how movement and sound create a world within a world, a space within a space, a time of its own passing and speed.

To follow “PhD in One Night”, read, participate, share… for the moment yo can visit the project description here, but you will soon also be able to follow us via the official website of this project.

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  Full description and information on this project will be soon updated.

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  Creation in progress. More information coming soon.

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