Working group: unsinging linear time

The collective residency ‘Unsinging linear time’ brings together eight artists: Ingrid Vranken, Gosie Vervloessem, Mathieu Charles, Rodrigo Batista, Nahuel Cano, Mihaela Brebenel, Rasa Alksnyte and mayfield brooks. Over a three-week period, they will share practices that allow time to be experienced differently. How do artistic practices change when we perceive time as non-linear? What kind of work will we produce if we declare the deadline dead? How does it change the relationship between artists and institutions. 

Our daily experience of time is linear, as if we are on an unstoppable train, riding through the past into the future. Many cultures and thinkers, however, describe time as thick and layered, circular, branching off into parallel timelines. We perceive linear time as a colonial psychological violence. Is decolonisation of the mind possible by unsinging ourselves from linear time?

Ingrid Vranken works as an independent dramaturg, curator and artist and is a member of FoAM, a transdisciplinary laboratory at the interstices of art, science, nature and everyday life. Her curatorial and artistic practice focuses on enabling a systemic ecofeminist transition in the arts, through engaging with the knowledge and labour of other-than-human beings and in particular plants.

Mihaela Brebenel is a screen and visual studies researcher. Their work is informed by feminist and queer practices, as well as the aesthetics and politics of screen (and other) technologies. They work as Lecturer in Digital Cultures at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and are part of Archaeologies of Media and Technology Research group. Their long-term and expanding explorations are focused on the histories of Internationalism and solidarity, as well as historical and current intersections with gender, herbalism and critical plant studies, law and social and healing justice.

Nahuel Cano was born in 1982 in Neuquén, Wallmapu, today known as Argentina’s Patagonia. He lives and works between Buenos Aires and Amsterdam. He is an actor, theatre maker and researcher. His field of artistic action is mobile, exploring the possibilities of performance, installation, cinema and theatre. Nahuel is a founding member of Escena Política (www.escenapolitica.org), an artistic and political collective that has organised actions, forums, performances and political-artistic protests.

mayfield brooks is currently improvising while black in Brooklyn, New York. mayfield is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, teacher and writer. They have studied contemporary dance with ‘The School for New Dance’ (SNDO) in Amsterdam, as well as the ‘Moving On Center’ in Oakland, CA and holds a MFA in ‘Interdisciplinary Performance’ from UC Davis, and a Masters in 'Performance Studies' from Northwestern University. In 2018, mayfield was a wow/uny artist-in-residence at Governors Island NYC. In 2019, they were a dance and process (dap) artist at The Kitchen, NYC and is currently the artist-in-residence at ‘Movement Research NYC’.

Rodrigo Batista is a Brazilian theatre maker and educator based in Amsterdam. At the core of his recent works is the importance of performing political statements, direct and explicit messages addressed to the current world politics, focusing on the rise of the Alt-right Neo Fascism and the never ending European colonialism (and its obvious relationship). Latest, he developed a collection of pieces, in the frame of the Master Program of DAS Theatre, that have the ambition of bringing insurrection-revolt-vandalization within the performance space.

Mathieu Charles (1984) is a writer and performance artist. He debuted the performance lecture/monologue Fanon Mixtape in 2018. He is currently working on Akomfrahdio, a   performance inspired by John Akomfrah's The Last Angel of History . He also released Tzara, a Hip Hop album under the moniker IslaSoul in 2012.

Gosie Vervloessem is an artistic researcher and performer, living and working in Brussels. Her work focuses on the relation between the vegetal kingdom and Homo sapiens. Through the genre of horror, she investigates the ideas underpinning different perceptions of nature.

Rasa Alksnyte is a transdisciplinary artist, photographer, teacher and mentor based in Belgium. Through her background in performing arts, she has an ability to take you by surprise. Her mind is filled with rarities and working practices that extends beyond expected frameworks and boxes. She often surrounds herself with energy that inspires others to play, experiment, cook and garden. Rasa Alksnyte works with everything that grows and grows and grows…