With contributions of: Alaa Abu Asad, Anastasija Pandilovska, Doe Maar Niet, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Elke Uitentuis, Fani Konstantinidou, Femke Ravensbergen, Ivana Vaseva, Lianne van Roekel and Mint Park, Margit Säde, Marjoca de Greef, Mohamed Alnoor Hedjaab, Natalia Papaeva, Stefano Harney, Sojung Jun, Viktorija Ilioska, and We Sell Reality.




More context to the images

1 - 38.
"The notion of a rehearsal – being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory – there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it ‘study’ is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present".²
2.
The Friday Reading Group focused on fragments of Don Mee Choi's DMZ Colony (2020) and fragments of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands / La Frontera : The New Mestiza (1987).
3 - 4.
Workshop by Lianne van Roekel and Mint Park: “People who Ferment Together, Stay Together!” Tactile sensations, smells, and sounds – produced by the microorganisms’ natural tendency to forge transformation – are the incentives for gentleness and slowness. The workshop draws gratefully on the queer food activist and King of Fermentation, Sandor Katz who states that microbial structures will guide us “far from absolute boundaries and rigid categories. They force us to reconceptualize. They make us ferment.”³
5.
The Sunday Reading Group focused on fragments of Let’s Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts (2023) by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez and fragments of The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. (2015) by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.
6, 18 - 20.
Mohamed Alnoor Hedjaab has been part of the art collective ‘We Sell Reality’ for several years and he is now a member of GROND as well. For GROND, he is focusing on setting up a canteen. During the symposium, Sudanese meals were served according to the ideas of Langar tradition. Mohamed was the cook and guide. Langars or communal kitchens have existed since the sixteenth century. The free meals served in Sikh temples or gurdwaras for visitors regardless of background, identity, gender or income symbolize equality.⁴ What sets Langar apart from food banks or soup kitchens is that the practice of giving and the practice of receiving is open to all. So anyone who wants to contribute to preparing and serving the meals as well as anyone who wants to eat is welcome. This idea of shared giving-and-receiving offers an opportunity to explore a form of ‘communal being’ that does not accept one-sided dependency (often unintentionally caused by charity), but rather provokes and acknowledges our interdependency and vulnerability. Langar nurtures and reinforces ‘We don't want to be stars (but parts of constellations)’.
7 - 9 and 12.
Construction workshop by Femke Ravensbergen: How To Use a Plunge Saw, a workshop for people who, as a rule, would step back if something needs to be built.
9 - 11.
The Saturday Reading Group focused on fragments of Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (1997), chapter “Of Opacity”. And fragments of Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons : Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013).
13 -14.
A group conversation with (online present) Stefano Harney – A talk about the idea of ‘study as sociality’ in relation to Édouard Glissant’s writings on ‘difference’ and ‘multiplicity’.
What drew us to the idea to appraise the symposium as ‘study’ was that it enables a kind of engagement in which a process of ‘becoming-in-common’ is open to difference. And perhaps, by being together in what we do, we can learn to understand “that it is possible to be one and multiple at the same time; that you can be yourself and the Other; that you can be the Same and the Different”.⁵ We are looking for alliances that ruffle the barriers of the notion of identity, counteracting the myth of cultural purity. Maybe we can become familiar with the thought that “with the Other, you can change with the Other while being yourself, you are not one, you are multiple, and you are yourself. You are not lost, because you are multiple. You are not broken apart, because you are multiple”.⁶
Acknowledging the breath we draw from The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study while working on the symposium and Stefano’s long engagement with the notion of study, Suns and Stars invited him to join us in conversation that will navigate across the above mentioned points of departure. Stefano Harney is an activist, teacher, and writer who works collaboratively and collectively in the classroom, in research, and in social practice. He is a Black Studies (and a Black Study) scholar who has taught in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, art criticism, American Studies, and business & management. Stefano is co-author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: fugitive planning and black study (2013) and of All Incomplete (2021).
15 - 17.
‘Doe Maar Niet’, initiated by Elke Uitentuis, is an experimental choir of migrants and non-migrants, singing politically charged songs from different language areas during their exploratory rehearsals. Their first experiment is the song De Bom by the Dutch pop group ‘Doe Maar’. The choir ‘Doe Maar Niet’ invites people, who have fled places where the bombs are falling right now, to relate to this Cold War song about the threat of a speculative bomb and the love for a stranger. The choir is exploring how to learn a song in an unfamiliar language, how to employ ‘the act of translation’ while probing the boundaries of cultural appropriation. Choir members include (so far!) Mohamed, Huda, Majde, Wafa, Marc, Leyley, Mazen, Jasna, Mahmoud, Marjoca, Hamo, Aziza, Anastasija, Teferi, Elke …
21.
(sur) le terrain is the result of the Marineterrein walks in Amsterdam, which Eléonore de Montesquiou conducted during her residency organized by Suns and Stars in the beginning of this year. Sketching and grabbing human traces of the surfaces.
22 - 26.
Hope for the Best - Prepare for the Worst is a performative training by Viktorija Ilioska, for imagined and imminent futures, exploring themes of co-existence and adaptability. In a collective choreography, Viktorija initiates haptic thinking through (hand)gestures, meditative exercises, and collective movement, inviting the audience to slowly engage and envision possible ways of being together.
27 - 29.
Elke’s workshop illustrates how solidarity and care is tied to activism and how these matters of concern affect children too. The workshop is a free space for children and their parents to express their ideas in language and color.
30.
In Things Go in Two, In Pair, an experimental film, Eleonore and Viktorija explore the nature of connection. The film meditates on pairs, touch, movement, and the space between ‘me’ and ‘you’. As it questions why things seldom come in fives and what it means to move forward, it delves into themes of intimacy and separation. The dialogue reflects on the perpetual search for connection, often in pairs, sometimes in fours, but almost never in fives, pondering:
"We, we, things go in two, in pair.
Many things go together, many things do.
Sometimes four, or more, but almost never five.
We wonder why, why never five?"
31 - 34.
Natalia Papaeva is a visual/time-based artist born and raised in Buryatia (Eastern Siberia) and based in the Netherlands. Her artistic process is set in motion by text – read or written – which then translates into movements, images, sounds. Often, her endangered birth language materializes in her practice. It brings the Buryat language from the domestic sphere into the public realm and by doing so she resists the notion of endangerment.
35 - 36.
In the absence of the invasive: Can we finally look at the Japanese knotweed as a green future companion? A performative reading in three acts, 30 minutes by Alaa Abu Asad, from ‘The dog chased its tail to bite it off,’ (2018–) an ongoing research on unwanted species, mainly known as invasive species. This performative reading traces the history of the Japanese knotweed plant (Fallopia japonica), actual policies, national campaigns of combat and control, social / economic / political effects, the conflation between natural and national history, and most importantly the language (whether verbal or visual) used when talking about the plant and other invasive species. The reading also imagines alternative ways of living with these species via raising questions about mass production ethics, exploitative forms of economy, and a common future.
37.
In Sojung Jun’s Green Screen (2021), the term ‘green screen’ connotes a two-fold meaning. It is a reference to the chroma key video technique in which the ‘green screen’ is a temporary background. Simultaneously, it is a reference to the rich green hues that fill up the screen while following the border landscape of the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula. A zone where entry and exit of people has long been restricted. The music for this video is 북한 가야금과 하프를 위한 〈칠석〉(Seventh Night for Harp and North Korean Gayageum). The theme is composed by 김지영 (Jiyoung Kim ) en 신수정(Soo Jung Shin) for an earlier work of Sojung titled Eclipse II (2020). Inspired by the life and music of the composer 윤이상 (Isang Yun), who likened 칠석 (Chilseok, Seventh Evening), the folktale of the separated lovers 견우와 직녀 (Gyeonu en Jiknyeo, who could only meet one evening a year) to inter-Korean relations, the composition primarily focuses on two separate(d) entities and rhythms. The sound transmitted from the almost virtual and vigilantly guarded landscape brings about an affective temporality. With Green Screen, employing montage as an image poem and the deliberate introduction of deterioration (glitch) during the transmission and circulation of digital images, Sojung expands the contemplation on boundaries by forging joints and connections that reject a singular perspective.