OPEN CALL:
Looking for artists who want to do a performative work in the north of Groningen, reacting and/or interacting with the direct surroundings on the chosen spot.

On the 28th of August there will be a collective wandering in the north of Groningen. The walk starts at the Bierumer School, an artist space in Bierum. Bierum is on of the oldest villages in Groningen where around 800 people live. From Bierum the walk goes to the beach, over the dike to Nieuwstad, a village of around 10 houses. From Nieuwstad through the fields back to Bierum. This is around 7 kilometers. You decide where you would like to be, you can also be moving around.

We are looking for artists who are interested in working with these surroundings, reacting to what is there, the nature and/or the people and the wandering.

The concept of this collective wandering is based on psychogeography, a term by Guy Debord from the Situationists, which is about looking without any preconceptions. It is as well based on the idea of the enchantment of our surroundings by encountering unexpected situations, which are creating new perspectives and memories. By wandering and not exactly knowing what to look for and where to go, your way of seeing, moving and listening will change.

You or your work will have to be present all day, as people are wandering around and can encounter it anytime. We are looking for ideas that play with and react to the wandering and the place and create a pinch of enchantment. The five villages are all very small and in the countryside, between them there is a lot of open space and land. You will decide the spot where you would like to be.

We are very excited to hear your ideas. Please send them in to vrijplaatsvoorverbeelding@gmail.com before the 12th of July. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to send us an email. There will be compensation for your time and travelling costs.

CONCEPT:
With the Collective Wandering we want to create a re-enchantment the Groningen landscape within the framework of psychogeography as developed by Guy Debord. Psychogeography looks at breaking through the existing landscape concepts (which largely determine how we interact with this landscape) and reforming them. A well-known literary work on the subject (written before the development of the term itself) is Daniel Defoe's The Journal of The Plague Year, in which the protagonist takes a walk through plague-stricken London and his usual impressions and ideas are completely turned upside down. This creates a completely different kind of emotional London, while broadly speaking the underlying architecture has not changed. It is important that the psychogeographer in question walks through the landscape without a preconceived goal and without preconceived concepts of what is to be encountered. This ensures that the familialized landscape generates a renewed and renewed sense of place. The collective wandering is a day in which the psychogeographers must independently search for the performances. This only gives a rough indication of where something can be found.

Also part of this framework is Max Weber's theory about the 'disenchantment' of Western society. Since the Enlightenment in the 18th century (with roots going back to the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance), there has been an ever-growing rationalization of society, with science as the foundation for culture and society. This results in a devaluation of religion and magical thinking. However, there is debate whether this analysis by Weber is valid and whether it is not purely a devaluation of only mainstream religious and magical thinking (think of the popularity of magical secret societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the popularity of elements in popular culture that are essentially mythological). There is also a movement that talks about re-enchanting Western society and a growing need in Western people to have a magical view in addition to a rational view of the environment, assuming that both views are not mutually exclusive.

The Collective Wandering aims to perform a re-enchantment of the Groningen landscape through the use of a form of psychogeographical technique. We introduce elements within the landscape that are alienating and the performances offer new perspectives, experiences and memories of places. This breaks through the way people usually view the surrounding landscape and forces the participant to make different associations and feelings. It breaks the banality of your everyday environment and feeds it with a form of magical thinking that re-creates meaning and value. The landscape is no longer a background for the performative life, but an essential part and must therefore be approached in a certain way.