Case’s Studies

Publication, documentary theater piece
a.pass, Brussels, 2023
in “IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES”
edited by Philippine Hoegen

After 15 years of engagement in the collective direction of the post-graduate artistic research platform a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) in Brussels, the team decided to process their experiences, perspectives, and visions and assembled knowledge into a book. a.pass was a unique platform: initiated by the artist and critic Elke van Campenhout as an independent hybrid institution, between educational program and artist residency place, a.pass was not affiliated at a regular university, yet entitled to provide a master’s and pre-PhD degrees. However, the program explicitly focussed on research beyond professionalisation and looked for practices hacking the canon of academic as well as artistic fields. “In these circumstances”, with what there was, after these years, with these people, at that place, we looked at the explosive potential that this environment was able to generate.
In these circumstances, I took the chance to reflect on the collectively collected notes and scribbles on post-its, posters, pads and postcards left behind by the participants of any work sessions. The crate, filled with these notes, made the case for my piece in the book and speaks its prologue:

You might think I am only that little crate you see on stage, but I’m also the stage itself and all that frames and holds it together. 
That’s the case I am: I’m the kind of case that only provides the shell for content around which everything revolves, yet everything depends upon the fact that I decide upon the boundaries for whatever here evolves. 
In this particular case, I am the institutional face of an artistic research place – and therefore, understandably, I store, amongst other things, in such ‘crates’ the leftover traces of its lost and found research cases. Forgotten and outcast, these traces echo the pulse of collective thinking processes, and voice from the institutional peripheries the sound of fragile unfinished knowledges.

I am – just – THE CASE: 
Don’t get me wrong, my duty is known, I only provide a form. Of course, I know the form shapes the content. But the content shakes the form, not that I want it to, but such traces of collective consciousness, which I collect in such crates for future processes, will shape the faces from inside out of such institutional places.

I do not understate: this crate is great. Filled with scribbles, sketches and mappings. Drawn up on scrap paper, notepads and wrappings, posters, post cards, charts, and post-its. In there, there are collective search in processes, experiments’ loose-ends of collected approaches. An archive of artistic left-behinds, garbage, out-cast, things left the minds. Stored there, to be seen through new lenses; for saving them from becoming wasted thoughts.

The following play, the play you read here, is based on these traces, paving a trail into your ear. While writing, the playwright was playing a game: letting his eyes stray through the crate, randomly picking up concepts to his plate. Just following his faith, they were forming new sentences; content that is talking about researching me – THE CASE.

Walking through these notes and his thoughts in his way, three VOICES appeared to resonate in his head. One echoes an artist who doesn’t want to fear failure; the other one roams as a researcher, a critical nature; the third is the curator that claims not to curate here. 
The playwright tried to process all these VOICES. Letting them speak and act his internal contradicting forces. He wants us to read and continue the game, giving shape to me – remaining the same old – CASE.