BO D Y/

airartist in residence Krisztina de Châtel

SPACE

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Body/ Space

Krisztina de Châtel, Artist in Residence at the Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam

2Introduction Marijke Hoogenboom

5 Krisztina de Châtel

6 The space as antagonistFrancine van der Wiel

15And… GO! Noël van Dooren

20Colophon

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host’s artistic agenda is always an important factor to be taken into account. The artists are invited to reflect on issues pertaining to their artistic practice, while the school has to have a clear idea of just who they are inviting. It is essential that there is a shared curiosity when it comes to research, developments in the arts and ideas about knowl-edge transfer. Usually, the artist’s approach to conveying information is very different from the education. The AIRs often question the very purpose of schools, and employ in-dividual artistic methods to explore the boundaries of their expertise. Through the resulting confronta-tion of approaches, an open space is created: for the artists, who are provided with an opportunity to test out their positions; and for teachers and students, who can re-evaluate their assumed truths within a given context.

Each AIR project presents us with the challenges inherent to the pro-gramme. Educational structures do not lend themselves to exclusive retreat. In fact, they emphasise the area of tension between autonomy and involvement, raising crucial questions such as: What is expec ted of an Artist in Residence? Can we offer (unconditional) space to new artistic ideas? Does the AIR have an interest in schooling and knowledge transfer? Can the Academy contrib-ute to innovation in a given field? And how can we connect diverse artistic, educational and profes-sional domains? The Academy of Architecture (AvB) chose to have

its AIRs operate in accordance with an special educational formula: the Capita Selecta series of public lectures and the winter workshop. These are the only moments in the academic year when all three design disciplines (landscape architecture, architecture and urban planning) collaborate and the school tempo-rarily receives international guest students. The AvB is also well-known for its desire and willingness to cooperate with its AIR in focus-ing attention on other arts, thereby bringing its own disciplines in direct contact with practices entirely new to it. This has led not only to its hosting of Krisztina de Châtel, but also, in past years, to the residencies of orbanist Luc Deleu, writer/archi-tect Paul Shepheard and advertising art director Erik Kessels.

This booklet provides insights from a variety of perspectives into the collaboration between Krisztina de Châtel and the AvB: from within, through the comments of Noël van Dooren, head of the landscape archi-tecture department; from an obser-vational distance, through the contri-bution by dance critic Francine van der Wiel; and especially through the unique documentary made during the process by Bernie van Velzen.It pleases me greatly that Krisztina de Châtel has concluded her period as AIR with a challenging proposal for a new collaborative project, creating a perspective for making her encounter with the AvB produc-tive for her own artistic develop-ment. Together with her we ask ourselves whether a research project

Introduction Marijke Hoogenboom

Since its inception in 2004, the research group Art Practice and Development has stimulated and produced the Artist in Residence Programme (AIR) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. The ideal model that is its founding principle is to involve influential and innovative artists with international status in providing directors of studies, teachers and students with impulses from contemporary arts practice, and thereby have an enduring effect on the climate and culture of the school. Thus far, fourteen artists have been hosted by the various faculties: the Academy of Architecture, the Dutch Film and Television Academy, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Theatre School; the AIRs have made a valuable contribution to the interaction between art edu-cation and the international ‘state of the art’.

In consultation with the faculties and departments, the research group chose not to impose a blue-print on the AIR programme with regard to content or organisation; the decision was instead made to ensure a rich diversity of styles and approaches, by on each occa-sion reinterpreting the potential relationship between the artist (or ensemble, or office) and the educational structure. This requires dynamic interaction with the AIRs themselves, and from the outset the

Body/ Space

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Krisztina de Châtel

Over the last thirty years Hungarian-born choreographer Krisztina de Châtel has made fifty choreographies and two dance films. Her work is an interplay of dance, music and visual art. An additional characteristic of her choreographies, especially her most recent ones, is that they are often performed beyond the confines of the theatre; the space and art-works used for the choreography are intrinsic to it.

One of De Châtel’s chief aims is to have people experience a singu-lar space in a new way. Examples from recent years include perform-ances in the mediaeval Vleeshal in Middelburg, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the St. Bavo Church (or Great Church) in Haarlem and in the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen. She was Artist in Residence at the Academy of Architecture (AvB) in Amsterdam for the 2007–2008 academic year, and the following year she lectured at the AvB and the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy, also in Amsterdam.

In Krisztina de Châtel’s perform-ances, two worlds always collide. Fragile human frames confront the forces of nature: wind, earth and water. And conflicts rage within the body itself, it seems, as passion and control battle it out for ascend-ancy. Even De Châtel’s choice of mentors, Kurt Jooss and Koert Stuyf,

suggests an early focus on contrast – whether conscious or unconscious; she developed her own style on the foundations of Jooss’ expressionism and Van Stuyf’s postmodernism.

Awards for specific work by Châtel include the Sonja Gaskell prize and the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Boards’ Choreography prize. In October 2000 De Châtel was awarded the Dutch Dance Days award for her entire oeuvre and in 2001 she was made a Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion for her services to dance in the Netherlands. In 2002 Krisztina de Châtel received the critics’ award from the Dutch Critics Circle. Pulse (2007) was nominated for a VSCD Swan award in the Best Dance Production category (2006–2007).

Autumn 2008 saw the thirtieth anni-versary of Krisztina de Châtel Dance Group, and this was celebrated with the jubilee production Giubileo and an accompanying retrospective exhibition. After this, from 1 January 2009 onwards Krisztina de Châtel will work together with Itzik Galili as their new company Amsterdam Dance Group.

combining dance and architecture could result in a choreography. Can architecture generate conditions that inspire choreographers to arrive at new, even innovative, works? Can architects, landscape architects and urban planners use spatial design to create objects or places with a high degree of ‘danceability’? And, finally, is it possible to train the body to the same degree that the mind can be trained, and use it to experience, explore and manipulate space?

It is my great privilege as professor to be able to offer the opportunity for such exceptional (and, for inno-vation within education, vital) coproductions at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. But without the enthusiastic efforts made by Krisztina and her dance group – dancers and staff alike – and the teaching staff at the AvB, Body/Space would never have been possi-ble. My sincere thanks to all of them!They are my motivation to ensure that in the future, the Amsterdam School of the Arts’ Artist in Resi den-ce programme will confirm its posi-tion even more emphatically as the place where inventiveness, flexibil-ity and the compelling force of the artistic impulse are brought to the fore.

Marijke Hoogenboom became Professor of Art

Practice and Development at the Amsterdam School

of the Arts in 2003. She was previously involved in

the founding of DasArts, a workspace for the various

theatre disciplines. Hoogenboom is a member of the

Grants Committee of the Prince Bernard Cultural

Fund, and shares responsibility for international

policy at the Dutch Council for Culture. She is an

in-demand speaker, moderator and consultant

in the fields of the arts and art education, in the

Netherlands and abroad. In September 2008 she

received the Marie-Kleine Gartman Pen for artists

and theatre commentators from the Dutch Stage

Association.

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always emphasises the connection between the body and the ground, the earth. In the 1970s she did this with the precision of a surveyor: she had her dancers (predominantly female in this period) explore and crisscross the performance area in carefully laid out lines and patterns, their feet rarely breaking free from the ground. The main ingredients of Lines (1979) and Light (1980) – both featuring light designs by Jan van Munster – were direction, rhythm, line and light. These works can be safely considered the foundation of De Châtel’s oeuvre. The construction site was surveyed, leveled and pre-pared for the building of a movement construction.

These first works also clearly fea-ture several elements that were to define her choreographic style. One of De Châtel’s fundamental inspira-tions was the movement analysis by dance theorist Rudolf von Laban. Laban saw movement not only as

the physical translation of emotions and moods, but also (from a more objective viewpoint) as a succession of changes in the spatial position-ing of a part of the body. As a stu-dent at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany – the cradle of European expressionist dance, or Ausdruckstanz – De Châtel became acquainted with his ideas about the theatrical significance of vari-ous movements, most particularly oppositions such as perpendicular and diagonal, hard and soft, organic and geometric, and central and peripheral.

One can also detect her affinity with the principles of Bauhaus. The art of dance, which also occu-pied Bauhaus artists, was viewed by this movement as a phenomenon primarily characterised by shifts in time and space. One of the most renowned Bauhaus dances was the Raumtanz, or space dance, which consisted mainly of completing a

The space as antagonistFrancine van der Wiel

‘A piece of bravery’, is how land­scape architect Noël van Dooren described the decision of the Amsterdam Academy of Archi tec­ture to invite Krisztina de Châtel’s to become its Artist in Residence. A courageous act? Was Châtel not in fact a n obvious choice? Among the spatial artists that choreogra­phers (and architects) are, she is, after all, a thoroughbred ‘builder’, whose compositions so often seem to resist the fleeting nature of dance, a nature that distinguishes this art form so fundamentally from architecture.

On a windy day in January, next to the railway embankment between Amsterdam’s Central Station and Sloterdijk station, a rollcall is being held. While some dawdlers are still traipsing in, the names of students from Amsterdam, Hamburg, Vaduz and Carmel are being called off. One name is followed by some-one nonchalantly shouting out, ‘No, he won’t be coming. He never comes.’ The look on the face of the choreo grapher – notoriously intoler-ant of clutter, disorder and lack of discip line – is priceless. This is the place – where a pathway meanders between the railway embankment and the straight ditch that borders an allotment complex – where the students participating in the winter workshop are to examine the lay

of the land; describing dimensions and proportions, and emphasising particular characteristics and pecu-liarities. Their tools will be neither pencil and paper, nor computer and camera: they will instead use their bodies. Their uncomprehending eyes are cast towards the horizon, where the lines of the embankment, over-head wires and ditch flow into one another. After a short while, the par-ticipants start to move. It is the start of a journey of discovery. Although the students may need a little time to get used to their assignment, for those more familiar with Krisztina de Châtel’s body of work, this is ‘merely’ a new variation on a theme already well-established in her oeu-vre: the relationship between the body and its environment, whether natural or designed, finite or infi-nite. In the thirty years spanned by her career as a choreographer, this has resulted in fascinating works. By participating in the winter work-shop, students experienced a practi-cal initiation into some of the ways De Châtel has shaped her relation-ship with (dance) space over that period.

Measuring the spaceTraditionally, the most obvious space for a choreographer is either the studio or the stage. Both are clearly delimited by vertical and horizon-tal surfaces. The floor is, of course, indispensable: it is the foundation, the springboard and the safety net for each movement. De Châtel, autodidact in modern dance tech-niques and familiar with ‘earthy’ folk dances from her Hungarian youth,

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by piece and literally raze to the ground in an exhausting, repeti-tious, cyclic dance.

The repetitive character of much of De Châtel’s early choreography shares much with works emanating from the minimal art movement in the United Statesin the 1970s. The most important representative of minimal dance within this movement was Lucinda Childs. Her choreogra-phies are intoxicating constructions employing hopping steps that con-stantly change direction, spinning a fine network of geometric shapes in the space. Although several of De Châtel’s pieces also feature rep-etition and basic geometric shapes, there is an important difference between the choreographies of the American and the Dutch-Hungarian: while Child’s minimal dances achieve an intoxicating effect with their light, springy energy flow, De Châtel’s repetitive work is evidently not intended to daze

the viewer. The innumerably repeat-ed rigid, tight rhythms and forceful movements are rarely fluid, peripher-al and light, as Child’s are. They are always bound, centred and ‘heavy’, as if De Châtel seeks to carve them into the space, or into the viewer’s memory, at least. They are build-ing bricks, patiently connected and stacked up, with which she slowly but surely realises a spatial concept that seems to resist the ephemeral nature of dance.

Working in the organised spaceAt the winter workshop, De Châtel did not emphasise the character-istic element of repetition. But she did have students work with some objects from her more repetitive or minimal pieces. One group of stu-dents, for example, worked in the Krisztina de Châtel Dance Group’s studio with the two-metre high plexiglas cylinder from Paletta (1992, designed by Peter Vermeulen), the wheeled walls from Rooms

predetermined route through the space, with varying investment of energy.

At the winter workshop in the Machine building of the converted gas factory the Westergasfabriek, students of architecture could ex-perience for themselves this very concrete approach. The great space itself most resembles a studio or stage space: a floor, four walls and ceiling. In dialogue with the delega-tion from the Krisztina de Châtel Dance Group, the students con-ceived a short choreography which amounted to a physical exploration of the empty space. The floor, the foundation for all movement, was emphatically ‘named’ as an element in the space by means of rhythmic combinations of steps. Likewise, the material and functional quali-ties of the walls were emphasised using the human frame: they are hard boundaries to the movement space that offer protection as well

as support and push-off points. At varying speeds, the participants surveyed the space and subsequent-ly dynamically filled them in the straight lines, diagonals and simple geometric shapes such as semicir-cles – typical of Bauhaus.

Stacking bricksFrom the outset, De Châtel has sought to collaborate with visual artists. It may be something of an overstatement, but one could say that she sought sabotage. Particularly the fame she garnered in the 1980s was a result of her will-ingness to be creatively stimulated by visual artists, who forced her to find solutions for the spatial infor-mation they presented her with. The most well-known choreography from this period is undoubtedly Föld (Earth, 1985), for which Conrad van de Ven (De Châtel’s creative antago-nist on several occasions) designed a circu lar earthen wall that the dancers proceded to demolish piece

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effects an organised space can have on movement and choreo graphy – and thus on the body. De Châtel experienced similar insights while working on choreographies involving the performance area being influen-ced by the presence of spatial objects or obstacles (including the aforemen-tioned earthen wall, plexiglas cylin-der and ‘contracting space’) and on location projects such as those in var-ious Dutch museums and churches.

There she encountered staircases and linking chambers that forced her to make choices; how did she want to re-late to the specific spaces, placing her con struction, the choreography, into it in an appropriate way? It is no great stretch of the imagination to com pare this with the manner in which many architects seek to organically adapt a design to make it suitable for an existing organised space, and simu-ltaneously add a new element to it.

Human and space – a dramaThe solutions arrived at by the students and their leader at Sloter-dijk may well have been a little on the frivolous side when compared to De Châtel’s austerity, but cogent connections can nonetheless be made between them and the choreo-grapher’s oeuvre. It is striking, for example, that in this environment a role is played by the distinction between group and individual.

One of the students ran a few times past a block of fellow stu-dents (solid-looking, but pliant as reeds), before ultimately resolving to bore through the group. This ‘impact’ caused the group to burst apart. This individual against group, against power and mass, just like body against space, is a determinant motif in De Châtel’s work – a motif made explicit by dynamic means. Elements of play, conflict and ritual

(2002, designed by Mike van de Lagemaat) and the ‘glass boxes’ from the performance about Egon Schiele in the Van Gogh Museum (2005). The cylinder and the glass boxes were circled and surrounded; knocked and climbed upon; crawled in and out of; while the mobile walls were used to create ‘areas’ that were subsequently burst open; and walls were erected and collapsed. A direct relationship with these

objects seemed inevitable and, almost as a matter of course, this led to physical responses, serving to confirm one of De Châtel’s artistic convictions, namely that spatial limi-tations force one to find solutions. Less ‘obtrusive’, but equally tantaliz-ing, was the area of land which had undergone an extreme redisign by Rotterdam-based landscape archi-tectecture bureau West 8. In this no man’s land connecting station

and business premises a movement composition was created in which the spatial elements in this artificial landscape were both emphasised and processed logically. There were many such elements for such a small area: a monumental staircase, a studded walkway, a double row of flyover columns, and a strip of green-ery, with castings of tree trunks. And so this winter workshop location project provided insights into the

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were demonstrated at varying tempos by the students, as were the variances in height. The lateral stone bulwarks functioned not only as markers in the landscape, but also as bases for movements and as shelters. The dimensions of the landscape were captured in straight lines, but the winding course of the path was also walked. The group mostly moved as one body or in small subgroups. The image of the group bravely attempting to get to grips with its surroundings evokes comparisons with other location projects, especially De Châtel’s film Stalen Neuzen (Steel Toecaps, 1996, directed by Erik van Zuylen) which was her first outdoor project. One of the locations in which she places her dancers in this film is a desolate Hungarian landscape bearing clear signs of human intervention. The dancers create their own space in this emptiness, as if they are ex-pressing a need underscore their insignificant existence in this vast

volume, to gain their right to exist. The choreography comes across, as is often the case, as a battle, as a struggle for life that is at once abstract and gripping; although there is neither enemy nor imme-diate threat in view. It is a drama played out between humans and space. In other words, this is the drama of human existence.

De Châtel the master builderIt is doubtful that the students participating in the winter work-shop attached such significances to their activities. Considering the commitment and enthusiasm on show, what can be safely assumed is that they experienced a variety of spaces in an entirely new way. And if they were to further investigate De Châtel’s oeuvre they might well detect the correspondences between her work and various aspects of the building process. This analogy could probably be applied to other

can be discerned in the game of ‘musical chairs’ that took place on the small field with tree trunks. Spatially, the fragments on the steps and between the columns were the most arresting. At a steady pace, the shape of the monumental double flight of steps (its basic form similar to, among others, the central stair-case at the Palais Garnier in Paris) was sketched out by following, or not following, its lines: by ascending

and descending it or by accentuat-ing the horizontal aspect of the steps by moving sideways along them, either individually or in a cluster, in an orderly or unstruc tured fashion, quickly or slowly. It is precisely these spatial, temporal and compositional contrasts that repeatedly feature in De Châtel’s work. Between the two pillars, a game of hide-and-seek is played out, seemingly naturally drawing one’s attention to depth

and distance, to the verticality of this section of Carrasco Square, and to human insignificance.

This last quality was placed even more firmly in the foreground in the choreography made for the small plot near the railway embankment. Here, as at the double row of col-umns at Carrasco Square, one can speak of being drawn towards a vanishing point. Distance and depth

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And… GO!Noel van Dooren

The Artist in Residence programme gives the Academy of Architecture the opportunity each year to invite a famous person from a different discipline. The work and method are intended to lead to a stimu­lating confrontation with the courses offered by the Academy: edifying for the Academy and for the artist. As Artist in Residence in the academic year 2006­2007, the choreographer Krisztina de Châtel (with her dance company) presen ted six lectures in the Capita Selecta programme under the title Body/Space and coordinated the winter workshop.

There is an evident point of con tact between the choreographies of De Châtel and the work of architects. The title Body/Space is an attempt

to sum up that point of contact in a one-liner, but in fact it is too simplis-tic. De Châtel’s choreographies are a search for the core of relations be tween people (the body) and space. She intensifies those relations: the lonely person in immeasurable space; the person in an extremely narrow space; ritual movements in the (urban) landscape like a funeral procession; mass meetings in which orderly alter-nates with disorderly movement.

artists (including other dance art-ists) but what sets De Châtel apart is that to her it is more than mere metaphor. Like no other, De Châtel has surveyed spaces, recorded them in plans, leveled floors and erected her constructions with solid building blocks. And when the ‘house’ has been made habitable, she gets to grips with the external space. But no matter how focused she may be on the spatiality of her dance architec-ture, ultimately it is all about people. About the small, powerful, vulner-able, courageous human being, the human relating to the collective (which can be both ‘home’ and op-ponent), and about the relationship between people and their environ-ment. Because space, like the group, has an explicitly dramatic function: it is both partner and adversary, and in De Châtel’s work it can often be considered a full member of the dramatis personae.

Francine van der Wiel studied Theatre Studies at

the University of Amsterdam. Under the guidance

of Luuk Utrecht MA, she specialised in dance studies

at Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht. In 1990 she graduated

from her studies with distinction. Her dissertation

‘Leve de Arabieren!’ (Hurrah for the Arabs!)

examined the introduction of postmodern dance

into the Netherlands. As a member of the edito-

rial staff at the daily NRC Handelsblad she writes

reviews, interviews and background articles about

dance, something she previously did for many years

for Het Parool. She has also been part of various

juries and advisory organs over the years, including

the Amsterdam Arts Council, the Amsterdam Fund

for the Arts (Sonia Gaskell Award and the Choro-

graphy Assignments Commission) and the Philip

Morris Art Awards.

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unexpected conflict with a design-er’s approach because work started immediately. There is no plan; the plan arises in practice by converting a familiar pattern of behaviour into action. These internalised patterns of behaviour yielded an interesting confrontation. If you convert it into the language of architecture, urban design or landscape architecture, it would mean that you can start sketching a new design situation just like that on the basis of a fami-liar vocabulary, and that that will automatically touch the specificities of the specific situation. This calls for nothing more than the alertness to literally or metaphorically stop the process when this happens, and to record it as a useful discovery. Some designers will say that this is exactly how they work. All the same, I have never seen that taken to such extremes as in the case of Krisztina. The underlying technique for representing an idea – in dance, the technical control of body and motion and in design, the capacity to sketch – calls for continuous, spe-cialised training: one or more hours of practice every day. It is a stimu-lating idea that we designers should practice a couple of hours of draw-ing skills every day! Freezing the process where a situation-specific discovery is made calls for a sensi-ti vity that can only be acquired through good intuition and/or years of practice. That was one of the reasons why the Capita Selecta lecture by Herman Hertzberger was so exciting. It was no random choice: Hertzberger has a

lot in common with De Châtel. The fascinating thing about the lecture was how Hertzberger analysed his own work, with which the audience was familiar, from this new perspective. He almost danced on stage, but apart from that he de monstrated the same acuteness, shaped over the years, in going straight to the heart of the matter regarding space in general and a plan in particular. Hertzberger illustrated this primarily on the basis of all kinds of forms of staircases and ramps. That is a char-acteristic aspect of his work, and also an architectural repertoire with a large choreographical potential. If architecture students take part in a choreography, should they regard themselves as amateur dancers? That was a question that we asked ourselves, and so did many of the students who looked forward to or dreaded the prospect of being allowed to or having to dance. Krisztina did not beat about the bush: amateurs must not try to be dancers. The students are material for the choreographer. The choreo-grapher puts a simple question to the group (walk among yourselves, as you choose and without behaving any differently from usual, from wall to wall). The choreographer watch-es what happens and notes the moment when the walking leads to an interesting picture that is related to the space. The proviso ‘without behaving any differently from usual’ is important. Krisztina indignantly intervened when one of the choreo-graphies started to become too much like dance.

In general, architects describe the relations between people and space as a condition of their work, but they do so in a much more pragmatic form. De Châtel’s approach forces architec-ture to confine itself to the simplicity of I and the building, of we and the landscape.

How can a meeting of that kind be organised in the course? Only taking part in a real choreography would

genuinely confront the students with Krisztina’s view of body and space. In itself that is a rupture with architecture teaching as that essen-tially takes place in the Academy and elsewhere. It is usually about actively creating, while in a choreo-graphy those involved make a passive contribution to a creation.The idea of a choreography was leading to in a two-day happening on four locations in Amsterdam.

Krisztina chose the locations on the basis of spatial characteristics that had immediate choreographi-cal potential within her approach. Four dancers, who are thoroughly acquainted with Krisztina’s idiom, worked with groups of 30 students.Krisztina has such a crystallised dance idiom that just selecting the location took time. Afterwards it was possibly to work immediately on the basis of the existing vocabulary.

Even without Krisztina her expe-rienced dancers can get down to work right away, not so much with isolated dance steps, but rather the reverse: the dancers work with internalised patterns to investigate (the) space. The role of the choreo-grapher in its most simplified form is that of freezing and arranging successful moments. The students were subjected to the same proce-dure. For some of them that led to an

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alternative paths, as one would hope for in connection with an Artist in Residence. The presentation of the results, however, had a remark-able effect: the workshop seemed to have returned to normal design categories. Suddenly there was that familiar atmosphere of gazes concen-trated on monitors and the violence of megabytes. The connection with the dramatic quality of a dance pres-entation with a clear beginning and end was lost.

The open character of the project meant that by the end of the work-shop a question was raised: is this also the end of the project? As I write this essay, at the end of 2007, the project has at any rate had two tangible results. First, spatial exploration through dance has become a permanent ingredient of the regular Form Study on Friday mornings. Second, Krisztina has thought of elaborating a perform-ance to be presented in 2009. That production should be a joint project of the Academy of Architecture and the dancecompany. Students would develop the sketches for the production in collaboration with the dancers. Two experiences from the workshop will be deployed: students intervene and make objects that continually change the space in which the dancers dance – and the dancers react to those interventions à la minute. The second experience is the audience: it is literally in the performance, not on the outside, and will thus also have to react to the changing space. Although this was not thought up in advance,

Krisztina has perhaps thereby made the purest use of the post of Artist in Residence: the application of new experiences in a new work.

Noël van Dooren Noël van Dooren has been head

of the Landscape Architecture department at the

Academy of Architecture since 2003. He is esta-

blished in Utrecht as an independent landscape

architect. Following graduation from Wageningen

University he worked at landscape architects

H+N+S for five years. While there, he developed a

preference for projects involving wind, water and

traffic – high points being a 20km river embankment

and a long-term involvement in the surrounds for

the river Emscher in the German Ruhr area. Noël

van Dooren is also a member of the editorial staff

of Blauwe Kamer (Blue Room) magazine, where he

established a framework for serious criticism and

appreciation of landscape architecture. In 1997 he

started up his independent landscape architecture

bureau. Besides his own studies and designs he

publishes articles in professional periodicals and

co-authored a book on landscape architecture with

Alle Hosper. Depending on the assignment, his

one-man bureau collaborates with others, including

One Architecture, Tauw and La4Sale.

The title of this essay sums up an essential experience of the project: a form of action that, like music, theatre and sport, starts at a well-defined moment. The choreographer asks people to perform an action and simply calls out: And… go! These words embody a self-assuming authority to initiate the action that spatial designers do not possess. Architecture students and profes-sionals usually begin in an explora-tory way. The design develops afterwards in a mixed form of oral exchange (discussion, think-tank – what are we going to do?) and the collecting of material.

No matter how clear the starting point may have been, the final result was not predetermined. There was no plan. As the project progressed, we regularly asked one another: What next? Maximal success was achieved when the project developed ‘in the moment’. A spontaneous choreo-graphy arose in the Machinehal on Saturday afternoon. Krisztina needed to make a design inter-vention because the spectators took up so much space that only a tradi-tional stage would be left. However, Krisztina’s work prefers to abandon the conventional setting of stage and audience. She therefore put the audience in the middle of the room so that the walls would be free, and asked everyone to keep moving. This combined the practical advantage that everyone could see the danc-ers ‘exploring the wall’ with a new idea: the public became a part of the choreography. At the end of the

workshop the opportunity arose to use the Gashouder (former gas tank in Culture Park Wester-gasfabriek) for a short while. For Krisztina a brief glance inside that impressive space was sufficient to create an instant choreo-graphy with 150 participants. That is an action for which direction is essential, as only then can the choreo-graphy be seen from a distan ce.

It had been decided beforehand that the different parts of the workshop (studios) would present a final re-sult. That turned out not to be such a productive idea. Most of the studi-os carried out intense and surprising research during the workshop. For example, in a number of groups an appeal was made to the dancers of Krisztina. That resulted in wonder-ful moments, as in the group of Paul Roncken. The question facing them was how to tap the energy of the mass of people moving about in the city. A dancer was asked to repro-duce proposed energetic movements à la minute. Dance thereby changed from being an aim in itself to show the public something to a research tool. In another studio an object was constructed; during the construction the idea arose that the object could be a stimulus to dance – a hypoth-esis that could be immediately put to the test by a dancer. A third studio used white and black slats in an almost blacked out hall with a single bright lamp to achieve ‘per-spectival trompe-l’oeil’. The dancer present was given a sort of advisory role to clarify the result. These are examples which illustrate that the research was authentic and followed

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Let’s suppose the Academy is a place for artists.....The Amsterdam School of the Arts’ Artist in

Residence programme stimulates innovation and

facilitates encounters with contemporary art

practice. It provides host faculties with the oppor-

tunity to benefit from the experience of respected

artists, breathing new life into the educational and

artistic structures of the Academy. The focus is

on current interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary

developments, and on interaction with the inter-

national ‘state of the art’.

The research group provides active support to

faculties and individual departments in the reali-

sation of their Artist in Residence programmes.

Combining our energies, embryonic ideas mature

into substantive plans, a tailored organisation and

ultimately a fully fledged coproduction. The format

of the programme is flexible, and it is accessible

faculty-wide.

Colophon

Publisher: Research group Art Practice and

Development

Editing: Communication AHK

Translation: Steve Green, Helen Reid

(essay And… Go!)

Stills: dvd Body/Space

Graphic Design: Thonik

Design dvd: Typography and other Serious Matters

Print: Hub. Tonnaer BV

© Research group Art Practice and Development,

Amsterdam School of the Arts, 2008

P.O. Box 15079, NL – 1001 MB Amsterdam

www.air.ahk.nl