Call For Applications

*** The call for applications is now closed. ***

Research Week: Thinking Through Circus

10-17/01/2020, KASK School of Arts (Ghent, BE)

THE CIRCUS DIALOGUES IS LOOKING FOR YOU!

Hi there,

The Circus Dialogues is a two-year artistic research project committed to defending circus as a field in which experimental thinking is already happening and can continue to happen, along multiple lines and across multiple idioms. In January 2020 The Circus Dialogues will organise a paid research week at KASK School of Arts (Ghent, BE) for 8 circus artists and makers. During this week, we invite artists/makers to take up the challenge of framing how their circus practices are also thinking practices. Are you interested in articulating how your circus (research) practice acts as a form of thinking? Then you might be the person we’re looking for!

The Circus Dialogues is an artistic research project funded by KASK School of Arts that investigates experimental encounters and exchanges between circus practice and theory. The project is led by Bauke Lievens, Quintijn Ketels, Sebastian Kann and accompanied by Vincent Focquet. Currently, we’re working on a book titled Thinking Through Circus: a heterogeneous collection of commissioned texts, written by people working in and around circus today. The book will be launched at the three-day symposium Smells like Dialogue: A Circus Symposium at Vooruit (Ghent, BE) in January 2020. At the symposium we invite circus artists, theoreticians and a wider audience to engage in exciting conversations about theory, politics and practice in the contemporary circus field. It is in the week that leads up to the symposium that the Thinking Through Circus research week will happen at KASK School of Arts. With our actions we hope to give space to a plurality of intersecting and contradictory voices. What we hope will emerge from these encounters is a notion of circus as irreducible to one definition or essence. Rather, we imagine circus as a shifting and possibly empowering field of diverse practices, whose borders are and should remain undecidable.

For the research week leading up to the symposium, we are looking for 8 circus artists/makers who want to dive into the following questions: How do you work? How does the way you work deal with different kinds of normativities? How does re-framing your practice as a way of thinking actually shift your practice? How does this effect how your work ‘works’? How does your work (try to) think beyond the norm, and into experimentation? And finally: how can you share your tentative answers to these questions with a small audience in a simple form of max. 30 minutes?

We are looking for circus artists/makers who have got a minimum of 5 years of professional experience in the field of creating circus. We will provide food and lodging, cover your travel costs to Ghent (BE) up to a max. of 180€, and will provide a fee of 500€ per artist/maker for the research week.

Interested? Please send us your proposal for the research week (max. 1 page), together with your CV, motivation letter and basic technical rider to circusdialogue@gmail.com

Please note that the space in which you will work is only equipped for basic rigging. If you have any questions about the technical possibilities of the space, please contact Quintijn Ketels at quintijn@side-show.be prior to your application.

Symposium dates: 15-17/01/2020 @ Vooruit & KASK School of Arts (Ghent, BE)

Research week dates: 10-17/01/2020 @ KASK School of Arts (Ghent, BE), with arrival 9/1, build-up 10/1, break down 17/1 (late evening) and departure 18/1. The participants will share their findings with the audience of the symposium on 17/1. Please note that we only accept applicants who are available for the full period.

Deadline for applications: 08/07/2019.

Both the research week and the symposium take place during Smells like Circus, a cross-disciplinary festival at several locations in Ghent, testing the boundaries between circus, dance, theatre and performance and co-organised by Vooruit and Circuscentrum. Click here for the programme.

The Circus Dialogues is a two-year artistic research project (2018-2020) initiated by Bauke Lievens, who is an affiliated researcher and professor at School of Arts KASK/Conservatorium. Quintijn Ketels and Sebastian Kann are the associated researchers. The Circus Dialogues is financed by the Arts Research Fund of University College Ghent (BE). The book and the symposium are co-funded with the support of the Flemish Government (Department Youth, Culture, Sports and Media). Vooruit, UGent (S:PAM) and Circuscentrum are financially supporting the symposium and research week.