ERASMUS+ Programme 2022 - 2024
Burren College of Art – in partnership with La Cambre (Belgium), LE 75 (Belgium) and UA Poznań (Poland) – has been awarded a prestigious ERASMUS+ Partnership For Cooperation Award in 2022.
This was a fully funded grant to allow students and faculty from each participating institution to travel and work together for a unique educational project. Partnerships for cooperation are transnational projects designed to develop and share innovative practices and promote cooperation, peer learning and exchanges of experiences in the fields of education, training and youth.
Performing identity
Partners in the project:
Institutions involved:
- École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre, (ENSAV) Brussels (BE)
- École Supérieure des Arts de l’Image Le 75, Brussels, (BE)
- University of Fine Arts in Poznań (Uniwersytet Artystyczny) Poland
- Burren College of Art, Ireland
Three festivals are also involved:
- Verão Azul (Lagos, Portugal)
- New Performance (Turku, Finland)
- (Pas si) Fragile! (Brussels, Belgium)
Performing Identity was the title of the two year programme which took place from 2022 – 2024.
The programme was delivered in the form of a series of week-long performance art workshops and festivals over two years. The workshops and festival events happened at locations in Brussels (Belgium), Lagos (Portugal), Turku (Finland), Poznan (Poland) and here at Burren College of Art in the Burren.
20 students from the partnership institutions travelled with their faculty mentors to the different locations to participate in workshops, seminars, symposia, screenings and performance festivals.
The focus of the programme is exploring identity and the ways it manifests in contemporary culture, society and in relation to the environment.
Burren College of Art participants
Six BCA students have been granted a place on the Erasmus+ programe:Fadwa Bouziane, PhD candidate
Joe Hendel, PhD candidate
Kat Cope PhD candidate (Year 1) / Roisin Byrne, MFA student (Year 2)
Phoebe Tohl, MFA student
Erin Besch, MFA student
Dr Áine Phillips was the BCA faculty member leading the project and Julia Long handled the adminitration and logistical side.
Performing Identity: Performance art facing contemporary social challenges
Performing Identity was a nomadic programme of learning and practice in Performance Art taking place over two academic years (2022 – 2023 and 2023 – 2024). The programme was offered to a total of 15 students from the partner institutions who had a Performance or Live Art practice and 5 students with a documentation and media practice.
Addressing questions of identity and its relation to contemporary societal challenges, the programme offered a series of workshops at the partner institutions and festivals, including performance practice, professional and theoretical encounters and the creation of performances in varied public frameworks.
A living archive was built during the whole duration of the project. This was published in April 2024 and can be accessed at perform-id.eu.
Schedule of activities
- Workshop “Identity and intersectionality”, La Cambre/Brussels, 14-19 November 2022 (6 days)- Workshop “Collective identities” and attending of the festival Verão Azul/Lagos, Portugal 5-9 April 2023 (5 days)
- Workshop “Identity and ecology”, Burren College of Art/Ballyvaughan, Ireland, 14-19 August 2023 (6 days)
- Attending of the festival New Performance/Turku, Finland 6-9 September 2023 (4 days)
- Workshop “Identity and censorship”, UAP, Poznan, Poland, November 2023 (8 days)
- Creation of performances in the framework of the festival (Pas si) Fragile!/Studio Thor, Brussels, April 2024 (4 days)
Each of the workshops included the creation of performances, presented publicly in different ways.
In parallel, a group of students and teachers of ESA LE 75, in dialogue with the participants, created the live archive of the project: perform-id.eu.
The programme was aimed at students with a practice / strong interest in live art and performance art (third year of Bachelor, Masters MFA or PhD) enrolled at La Cambre, UAP or Burren College. The participation in the Live Archive/ documentation dimension was reserved for the students of ESA LE 75.
Students received travel and accommodation scholarships and production support for their final performances. Students enrolled on the programme were required to commit to the entire 2 year duration of the project.
FURTHER INFORMATION
The two year project developed over four immersive workshops of artistic research and practice. The students encountered many art works and research at the intersection between art and knowledge, to develop and create their own performative response. They presented their final works at (Pas Si) Fragile, a biennial performance art festival in Brussels.
The festival supports emerging artists. The Performing Identity participants were a central part of the intensive festival programme and their works were presented to public audiences and professionals in the field. The whole process was documented by their peers from LE 75 in an engaged and collaborative relationship, and shared with the public on the original digital platform perform-id.eu.
The encounter with a plurality of pedagogies and with different cultural criteria activated what Performance Art does best, while in dynamic response to the context where it is created. The theme of identity made this journey coherent and anchored it in contemporary issues. These experiences, along with the opportunity to create new work while being supported by a team of experienced artists and teachers, delivered the necessary tools for student performers to assert real artistic singularity and originality.
