“How to Be Lost” by Pieter Ampe

“How to Read” by Christine De Smedt

“How to Rest at a Working Place” by Lilia Mestre

“How to Do Something You’ve Never Done Before” by Vladimir Miller

“How to Enjoy a Moment Outside” by Sergio Cruz

More on www.deemeetree.com/lifeskills/

SI is a two week Summer Intensive produced by Les ballets C de la B, initiated by Christine De Smedt and co-curated by Myriam Van Imschoot. Christine De Smedt is a choreographer who has been a member of the collective Les Ballets C de la B since 1991. Les Ballets C de la B is now housed in the Bijloke Site in Ghent, with a big studio at their disposition. The Bijloke Site is a former hospital that is being transformed into a cultural site with various venues. Christine has an interest in developing initiatives that propose alternative research and production formats within this context. Christine and Myriam develop this initiative together with the aim to host artists from various backgrounds to meet for exchange and develop (a part of) a project in a brief amount of time. Christine is interested in rethinking ‘coaching’. Instead of thinking of the coaching process as a one to one help, artists can facilitate one another when creating possibilities for meeting, exchanging, developing in a group dynamic.

“Where are you in your trajectory as makers, thinkers, etc, and with what needs and issues are you grappling? What would you like to bring to SI. as a proposal to work on, or if this is already too definite: what sphere of interests do you like to bring to our gathering? Through these discussions we also like to find out how we can practically organize the right conditions.”

Dmitry Paranyushkin is a performer and digital media artist –DeeMeeTree.Com. Dmitry developed ThisIsLike.Com, an online mapping initiative where the knowledge is realized not through a fixed concept, but through a relationship, an active event. In SI he wants to use the structure of This is Like to explore associative narratives as the basis for a performance piece (instead of working with a script).

Lenio Kaklea is a choreographer and performer based in Paris. In “matter-of-act”, the project she proposes for SI, she attempts to create a “live documentation” of SI by its spectators and investigate the various impacts of the artistic works by actually performing them! SI and the project “matter-of-act” search for 5 participants of all practices and ages, in order to create a group of spectators who will investigate the interactive relationship between an art work and it’s audience.The dispositive is simple: the participants will assist together to various experimental works developed by the invited artists during SI, investigate the different ways of watching, perceiving and receiving the works and create together a piece out of what they saw. Participants will work on a voluntary basis and should be available from august 16th till august 28th. Rehearsals are planned from 12u till 18u (also Weekend), at the Bijloke Site, Bijlokekaai Gent. There will be a final presentation on the 28th of august.

Vladimir Miller is a visual artist of Russian descent, based in Berlin. He has developed a model of working with people in situ by way of using the city as a model to engender and structure activities, projects, events and encounters. His interested in different knowledges, how to map them and activitate them through spatializations. For Si he likes to implement this practice and share it with the members of SI. Another desire that he has is to discuss the making of a website through which artists can communicate their ideas in view of finding people who can support them.

Nikolaus Gansterer is an artist interested in the links between drawing, thinking and action. While having had an ongoing interest in practices of mapping, in more recent years he has come to focus on the diagram as a figure. In SI. he likes to experiment with a series of diagrams and their potential to score (group) actions. He would also like to present his forthcoming publication with diagrams in view of feedback and discussions.Gansterer.Org 

Lizi Estaras is choreographer and dancer. She is currently seeking for different ways of producing movement and choreography. Improvisation as a choreographic machine and eating soup as time keeper for the actions is one of her ideas she would like to explore. Lisi will be part of SI. during two short periods of time but wants to elaborate further on “Food that is made by combining ingredients” lisi: “In short, I have been working with les ballets C de la B since 1997 as a dancer and choreographer. For SI I proposed “SOUP”, an event I am preparing for the month of December, in Gent. Today 3th of August, I have been in Argentina for two months and I must confess that they are quite a lot of other experiments I will like to try as well for SI. 
“ A distancia” is a project where the construction happens in the distance, with people living in Belgium and Argentina. Once a month we send tasks to each other by SMS or facebook, the tasks have two weeks to be realized, filmed and sent back. Then they will be published on line for people to follow the process, eventually we will meet to put the material together and make a piece out of this. On the 18 of August I will send and receive my first tasks and since I will be in SI I will like to use that day to work on it.”

Sergio Cruz is a Portuguese filmmaker, based in London. His chief topic is the human body in motion. This interest led into a series of dance films, documentaries, film works. During SI. Sergio would like to show his recent work and discuss it in view of the transitions that are happening in his work towards more cinematic approaches, grounded in more spontaneous film making methods.

Pieter Ampe is a dancer and choreographer. He works and lives in Belgium, is an artist in residency in the theatre and productionhouse CAMPO where he ‘s searching and developing work: “I try to find ways to devellop work with people, in an open and collaborative way, which deals with our urgencies and questions of that moment. I gave up my fear for being lost, and whish to embrace my doubtfull, unclear nature of thinking in order to be able to search more joyfully.

He also dances in the ROSAS production The Song.

Pieter is involved in the informal network Sweet&Tender collaborations. For SI. he wants to elaborate further his thinking and writing on a project within the Sweet&Tender collaborations idea.

Lilia Mestre is a performing artist creating her own pieces and working in collaboration with other artists. She created the company Random Scream with Davis Freeman in 1999 to expose the eclectic elements of everyday culture with proposed lines of flight for dance, theatre, and visual arts. For SI., Lilia wants to continue the research started in “Moving you”, a recent project in which the relation between, objects, movement and sound is worked upon. “If an affective body is a place of constant negotiation with one’s own rhythms, stories, perceptions and contexts, I’m interested to look into the body as a body that co-habitats, exchanges and produces “meaning” in the inter relation with the outside, (which is always) and how to make this visible and playful.
“My last piece,”Moving you” displays and plays with a range of possible relations one can have with “others” and “things”. The idea was to work with different layers of existance like people, objects, knowledge, dreams, time, etc and to play with these thoughts and attributes in their relationality. The basic medium for this choregraphic game was objects, sound and movement.” www.mokum.be  ”

Myriam Van Imschoot is involved in what she calls ‘expanded publication’. Rather than restricting herself to the ‘page’ and the book she engages with multiple media to publish her work, making use of the sensorial range of these media as an intrinsic value. Over the past two years she uses interview archives as the main vector for expanded publications such as Fax Film, Pick up Voices (a performance in collaboration with Christine De Smedt) and sound installations. For Si she likes to develop ideas in the framework of a solo-work in which she investigates the link between voice, her own extensive interview archive accumulated over the past twenty years and autobiography.

Christine De Smedt will work on models for ‘conversation’, the translation and composition for performative structures. Appropriation and display are part of the focus. She is currently working on the project ‘Untitled Four’, a series of portraits made on the basis of interviews. She would like to present raw materials from this project and set up different forms of conversations as part of the process of SI. and as a daily practice.