Carina Erdmann, a researcher at LUCA, research unit 'Inter-Actions' in Brussels, is the catalyst behind this phenomenal series of online symposia:
"This is an invitation to conspire.
The series of online workshops conjures synergies between the fields of performance, LARP, game design and media theory. The common inquiry will be the phenomenon of 'bleed', wherein the boundaries between fiction and reality, the virtual and physical world dissolve.
The symposium is hosted by the Inter-Actions department of LUCA school of Arts and links to their research on the hybridization of online gaming and performance. What can games teach us about the ways we construct worlds collectively?
We invite you to partake in a series of playful experiments around digital presence, embodiment and relationality. Reflecting on the psychological, social and political implications of distance we will explore virtual commoning practices and 'conspiratorial bleed'."
(Carina Erdmann)
Carina Erdmann, we have become used to magic, 2020.
Schedule
Day 1 March 20 2021
The workshop Hotel Bardo by Omsk Social Club sends you on a journey to explore
reality-making systems and what we can do to control our own narratives. McKenzie Wark talks about Early Transition as LARPing, how being a trans woman can feel like role play through the gaze of others and metaphorical bleed sometimes avoids literal bleeding.
Day 2 - March 28 2021
Magical Materialism: World Factory is a world-building workshop by Trakal that takes its cues from Psychoanalysis and a post-socialist perspective of Andrey Platonov's concept of the "literature factory“.
Day 3 – April 3 2021
The Interactions Group transdisciplinary thought band invites you to The Wonder Machine, an experiment in emergence at the level of collective intuition. Reed Berkowitz gives a workshop on guided apophenia and how to create your own conspiracy theories.
Day 4 – April 10 2021
In the workshop ‘The Dive’ by Nina Essendrop and Rozan van Klaveren we create a collective tale about the dying of nature and a path towards our inner worlds and wilds through LARP methods.
Day 5 - April 7 2021
Francis Patrick Brady and Rilla Khaled let you explore possible futures through the card game DOHL and speculative play methods framed by the worlding of a fictional conference: The Congress of Future Love & Connection
Day 6 – April 23 2021
In her workshop Erotic Sociability, Isabel Lewis shares ideas around sociality and embodiment through the metaphor of the "unambitious stripper". The performative lecture Vaporized, dispersed, made particulate by Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė collages folkloric narratives, landscape -natural or constructed- and molecular entanglements.
Day 7 – May 1, 5, 8 2021
Theatre as Laboratory: Experimentation with Non-Human Partners in Expanding Dramaturgies is a three part workshop developed by Rebecca Rouse and Carl von Winckelmann letting you experiment with technologies and other non-human entities through the frameworks of partnership and play.
Day 8 – May 9 2021
In And what about those who prefer not to appear? Simon Asencio and Martina Leeker explore different modes of presence to reflect on publicness and anonymity as well as hyper-affirmative performing on topics of digital culture as a critique.
Day 9 – May 14 2021
Susan Ploetz and Ju Row-Farr share experiences in building speculative worlds, letting you explore somatic telepathy within the fictional institute PSY-SOMA-TEK and by discussing 2097: We Made Ourselves Over a project that worked with diverse communities to develop a journey into an imagined future.
Day 10 – May 23 2021
In the Prediction Error workshop by Brody Condon we perform as a predictive coding model and simulate delusion formation in the brain introduced by neuroscientist Philip Corlett. With Hito Steyerl we move to predictive neural networks of machines and the hallucinations they create.
Day 11 – May 30 2021
The LARP Accomplices bleed by Carina Erdmann and Nick Koppenhagen is based on the 1909 novella “The Machine Stops” and atmospheres found in cinematic fragments. It lets players view their own situation through the lens of historic visions of the future.
Sometimes we need fiction to show who we truly are.
All sessions are free and open for participation. Places are limited.
Full program
Registration
University page
Download the brochure (PDF)