August 20th 2021

Research group meets KASK staff:

Introduction of the project and involved people.

Perticipants:

KASK

Katrien Vuylsteke Vanfleteren (head of the research Department )

Frederik Le Roy (head of the department of photography and drama)

Shila Hadji Heydari Anaraki (coördinator peformance department)

Bardia Mohammad (head of production/lightdesigner)

Heike Langsdorf - via zoom (performance department)

Research group

Geert Belpaeme (coordinator)

Bram Coeman (Buda)

Kristof Jonckheere (Buda)

Mathilde Villeneuve (Buda)

Emese Csornai (LD, project)

Henri Emmanuel DOUBLIER (LD, project)

Jan Fedinger (LD, project)

Jan Maertens (LD, project)

Tomi Humalisto (Uniarts Helsinki, LD)

Friedle De Meyere (KASK performance student)

KASK: The commission asked to look at the music department and media art.

BUDA: We already have some clear ideas what we tend to do within the curriculum of the drama and performance program. So, this year we will really take the time to go talk with different coordinators, from different programs to see how this would also fit in with the way they work.

This year our first contact with student will be through the project week. Which will be open to all student, from different programs. We really intend to build this up in different ways by having initial conversation with first year students, about broad concept such as what light and lighting design could be. To also on the other side of the spectrum do more elaborate master classes and following master student withing their master projects.

In a way this has goals in two different directions. In the sense that part of what we intend to do with this project is to find ways in which light and lighting can be more integrated, within art education. Teaching and interacting with different ways, as to create ways of speaking that can be helpful and keep on going after this project is finished.

But also, the other way around, that also all these directions are really for use to learn from.

Interacting with many different people that are in other places within the light and lighting design field. Will help us allot to find ways to speak about light and in different relations.

A reflective base, our intention is to start writing and publishing from the beginning and not write everything down at the end. We would make our own little fanzine.

KASK: I am very excited that you want to work with first years because I think it can open up room for experimentation, more than with older students who work on their end products. Also that it goes to different disciplines, for the same reason. So I’m wondering your practices if they are all stage practices, does it always have to be on stage? The other question, what do you need technically?

BUDA:  In the beginning, we plan on talking about light design and work on the development of a vocabulary. We’d have a talk with the student about where they stand and maybe watch a theater piece. So, for this we don’t need as much.

Afterwards for the workshop and to work on a project we would need material and a theater or a place to work with the lights.

BUDA: We see it as a positive asset that the school has limited abilities, because a very important aspect of the research is to not go as quickly to the technical part and work with the lamps. Because light design often becomes limited to these practical technicalities. We want the interaction with the students to start before that. Starting without technical possibilities and begin with speaking on light and lighting design. How you think about it, how you prepare it without having to have a whole technical ability.

BUDA: That’s an important thing in our research, because from practice we found out that a lot of also ex-KASK students don’t find a way to explain what they want from the light design. This happens before you enter the stage, so we really want to focus on this before stage moment. There for it is liberating not to be stuck to a studio for me.

KASK: And to think of light more than this.

BUDA: This is also something you don’t find in writing, when you go to a bookstore you find shelfs of books on scenography but there are only two books about light. Because it’s a subject that’s hardly written about, it’s very difficult to talk about and that’s something that we try to address as well. So that it becomes something that’s formulated.

KASK: And in terms of the first question, your practices are they mainly stage based?

BUDA: In my case they are, the stage is mainly the working ground but of course there’s always been a project that looks into the periphery of what the stage can be. Sometimes you quickly get into evoking the possibilities of the stage somewhere else. It’s been fashionable to have the performing art shows in the museum for instance and not very often you see a real new dialogue with space. But of course, they exist. But in my case, it’s more the periphery of my practice that is happening of stage.

BUDA: There is also this specification of different art forms, that of course determents what it can become from a stage practice, from a practice of stage lighting. So many of us are reaching out or coming from or going into fine arts. So, addressing light in a different medium is a question of how it gets received whether it gets space or not. So it is something that has to do with the stage, but it’s absolutely not only operating on the stage.

KASK:  Is the aim or the goal of the research also to emancipate light of the performance production or theater production or music production or not at all?

BUDA: It could be but it’s not a goal.

BUDA:  It’s more like stepping out of the background, it’s more about showing a presence.

BUDA: The emancipation can also be seen within the performance art, I think that’s more the aim. It’s the emancipation within the performance art rather than to step out of the performance art environment and see it through the eyes of fine arts or whatever.

BUDA: Our basis I guess for all of us is in performing arts but that doesn’t mean it stays there.

BUDA: And someone like Ezra for example who isn’t here, her practice plays both in visual arts and within performing arts. She also graduated as a painter here at KASK and is still working as a painter.

And to add to this emancipation or stepping out, it is needed to understand and to verbalize and to gain knowledge about the thing which has been a little bit invisible. So that’s why the focus is now moving to something which has been previously invisible and now coming to the front.

BUDA: There is a search or a desire to research how light can be a starting initiator within a project or a main signifier within a work of art.  So, to really research that extreme. But at the same time this idea of elaborating the discourse on light and lighting design. It’s not only about how you need to work extremely with light or that your only focus should be there.

But also, in general when students start making their work in the performing arts but also next it, light always plays a super important roll. But a lot of the time people are not conscious of that and hardly have any sensibility to what is happening there and what could happen there. When someone says there has to be light and nothing more, the question is what do you mean there has to be light?

KASK: To develop a discourse is the main task in that, if it’s drawings or if it’s codes or is it text or is it a combination of all of that together. This gives a language to the students and to others.

BUDA: Yesterday we made the remark that there is no basic lexicon on light. We want to start with this.

KASK: It’s like having a conversation on wine, it’s the same thing you can taste wine and the more discourse you have about somethings, the more you taste in that wine.

BUDA: The moment you start formulating or give names to things you start seeing these things in future wine tastings.

KASK: I’m curious about the interdisciplinary aspect of it because the moment you start to collaborate with students from different disciplines, the question is raised how you bring students from different backgrounds together rather than working with light. These are very different dynamics, so I’m curious how this will work, because sometimes it can be productive but other times it can also shift the focus to something else.

BUDA: So that’s why we are taking this first year to be as present as possible and to try and involve ourselves.

BUDA: I think it is very good that it’s taken broader than just a very tiring way of looking what’s on stage and drama. Because you can really develop new ways of dealing with light and confronting it with new media. For instance, music or contemporary music can be filled up nicely with the visual maybe light as a dynamic partner to present something in a performative way. This kind of encounters can be very interesting to develop these new directions.