OPEN ATELIER
Hosted by: Architect and Creative Practice Researcher: Dr. Ir. Renske Maria van Dam
Explorations with Katerina Bakatsaki:
9 October | 14.00-17.00
Collective explorations with See Lab
17 October | 16.00 - 18.00 h
Finissage | 21 October | 18.00 -21.00 h With a presentation by Renske Maria at 19.00.
Short description:
"Between the new moons of September and October 2022, between September 26th and October 24th, Renske Maria will host an Open Atelier for Biotopological Craftsmanship at artist incubator See Lab in The Hague. The open atelier is conceived both as exhibition, and as space for collective experimentation. You are invited for a shared practice." - Renske Maria
Description: To contribute to the exploration of alternative visions and variant rhythms to existing ideologies, she has introduced biotopological craftsmanship as an architecture which approaches space not in terms of the architectural object, but shifts its focus to life by emphasizing the reciprocal relationships between organisms and environments. This approach to architecture has emerged in the context of her PhD research. With a focus on moving bodies, she has reformulated Japanese spatial tactics as ways; to become an attuned architect guided by tiny perceptions; to construct vital architecture motivated by un/balancing procedurals; and to engage in a sited design process informed by aware play. If you are curious, you can read more in the essay Time By Windows is Time Well Spent as published in the Slow Spatial Reader.
The Open Atelier for Biotopological Craftsmanship is initiated, to open-up to new insights and collaboration. At See Lab, Renske Maria will work in the project space and garden. Each day, she will adjust, rewrite, move through, and reorganize the space in collaboration with colleagues, spontaneous visitors and the weather. Together we explore, critically question, and experience, if and how this practice can fuel collaboration, plant seeds of renewal, and intensify the aliveness of our (built) environment.
Sunday October 9th 14.00-17.00: Collective explorations with Katerina Bakatsaki
On Sunday October 9th, choreographer, teacher and researcher Katerina Bakatsaki will host a collective session in which we critically and physically explore the boundaries of biotopological craftsmanship. Katerina has choreographed and performed an extensive body of work and has been involved with interdisciplinary activities throughout Europe, Chile, Iran, Japan and Taiwan. She was a member of Japanese dancer Min Tanaka´s performance company Maijuku from 1986 until 1993, where she was trained in Body Weather. Body Weather is a a comprehensive training and performance practice that investigates the intersections of bodies and their environments. Since 1996, she has led Body Weather-Amsterdam, a platform for training and performance research together with Frank van de Ven.
In this collective session Katerina will offer her movement practice as a starting point for a critical reflection. Together we question: What if human bodies are not self-contained entities? And what if physical experience and its meaning for us never evolve in isolation but rather through intricate webs of connectedness? Just like the weather? How would that affect the hierarchies between bodies and other bodies, textures, instruments, tools, surfaces, spaces, buildings, landscapes, and so on?
Interested to join? Please send a message to info@renskemaria.com to confirm your participation.
Monday October 17th 16.00-18.00: Collective explorations with See Lab
On Monday October 17th, you can participate in a collective peer-review session with the artist of See Lab. See Lab is an artist-run cultural incubator founded in 2016. Located near the beach in Scheveningen in an old school building that hosts 22 affordable workspaces for artists. See Lab provides space and opportunity to develop, share and showcase artistic activity. By means of peer-review session they support the visiting artist to develop their work. In this collective peer-review session, the See Lab community will reflect upon potentials of biotopological craftsmanship.
Finissage October 21st 18.00-21.00: With a presentation by Renske Maria at 19.00.
On Friday October 21st, you are welcome to celebrate the closure of the Open Atelier for Biotopological Craftsmanship. Biotopological craftsmanship, a craftsmanship not of wood, but of bio-topo-logical entrainment. A biotopological craftsman explores, informs and expresses interrelationships between biological, environmental and celestial bodies in movement by means of architectural interventions.
Between 18.00 and 21.00 you are welcome to visit the exhibition. At 19.00 Renske Maria will give a presentation.
Bio: Renske Maria van Dam
Renske Maria van Dam is an architect and researcher whose work exploits tiny perceptions to open-up alternative worlds of experience and action. She calls for a fundamental shift in the way we conceive and construct the built environment, from an architecture of objects to an architecture of reciprocity. She promotes an empathic, animistic and life-affirmative approach to architectural practice, research and pedagogy. The cross-pollination between Asian and Western practices, from architecture and philosophy to intuitive bodywork, deeply shape her work and thinking. In her atelier, creative practice research coincides with the careful construction of architectural life. Slow projects run over multiple years and generate outcomes across diverse media and milieus. www.renskemaria.com
Photography: Renske van Dam
Financially supported by / Met dank aan :
Gemeente Den Haag
Stroom Den Haag
