Contingent Weirdness

A two-day training/hanging-out/sharing practice for artists/researchers focusing on the variational aspects of the genre of horror. In this setting, one can get introduced to the historical elements of the genre, such as zombies, gore and tortured ghostly demons, vicious animals and cannibal witches, as well as medieval serial killer monsters, unnatural disasters and Frankenstein projects. Parallelly foregrounding different scales and registers of horror for reconsideration, ranging from speculative fiction, and sci-fi cinema, to medieval bestiaries, inducing “bad feelings” such as fear, uncanny, awe, mania, panic, loss, tension and anxiety. 

The participants will start by reimagining a positive aspect of their practices, locating the value system, and deciding, with the help of the others, what can be turned into horror. Different from critical reflection on horror, to practice horror is to enter a symbolic realm of expressiveness at the vicinity of horror, where another kind of relation to the articulation of values becomes possible. In this turn, parts of an artistic practice can get a chance of being thought of as “fucked-up”. It is a sharing environment, where we present to each other: to what extent what we do can become a disaster, cause damage, torture, or simply be horrific? 

This workshop is developed in the crossline between Sina’s interest in medieval bestiaries and Adrijana’s preoccupation with artistic anxieties within their own artistic work. The workshop is open for registering and is addressed to artists/researchers interested in sharing, horror, fabulous writing and humor, and are prepared to devote two afternoons to the workshop.  
If you are interested, please register at tickets@kaai.be and add a short paragraph or sentence about yourself/your practice/your expectations from the workshop. 

The setting of the workshop is also imagined as an installation, a playful ambience with horror accessories and references, which will be open to the public after 18:00 on both days. On Friday at 18:30, they will do a public presentation of the workshop. 

PROGRAMME
Workshop for the participants: Friday & Saturday, 14:00 > 18:00  
Open for public: Friday & Saturday from 18:00 
Public presentation: Friday 18:30 > 19:30

• Adrijana Gvozdenović is interested in the motivation of artists and ways of resisting (self-)institutionalized structures. Taking context as a partner, she responds to established structures in the visual arts, pushing the boundaries between making, mediation and production.  

• Sina Seifee is an artist based between Tehran, Brussels and Cologne. He explores experimental cartographies and modes of subjectivity, using radical poetry and perverted etymology. He received his master’s in media arts from KHM (Cologne) in 2014 and graduated from a.pass (Brussels) in 2017.