THE POST COLLECTIVE: COLLABORATIVE SPECULATIONS
The Post Collective is a young collective striving to establish an autonomous platform of co-creation, co-learning and cultural activism created by and for refugees, asylum seekers, sans-papiers and accomplices. It seeks to introduce a range of artistic, cultural and employment opportunities, as well as provide an overall collaborative environment for the participants regardless of their legal status. The collective arose from the ‘Open Design Course for Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ 2018 at KASK school of arts, Ghent (BE) when some alumni and teachers decided to continue working together.
Generative modes of dialogue and storytelling form the basis to our speculative and experiential approaches to art+design. We aim to develop creative alternatives beyond the dominate systems of control and exclusion we are facing. This means facilitating the position where we do not struggle to be assimilated but instead rethink and re-conceptualise critically a future together as community.
WORK PERIODS AT KUNSTHAL GENT:
01.02.2020 - 13.03.2020
01.08.2020 - 20.12.2020
The only thing that is radical is space that we don’t know how to inhabit. This means space where we have to invent the ways to act and to live. Lebbeus Woods, architect
The Post Collective was offered a work period in the Development Programme from February 2020 to May 2020. Due to the lockdown everything was put on hold, and a second work period was added for the second half of 2020.
The collective aims to build up artistic practices that transcend language and cultural barriers and address to a broad audience. The Post Collective is researching its own modes and conditions of sustainability, as a group of people who do not only struggle with exclusions of race, class and sex but also legal exclusions, citizenship, human rights. The group will work on the fields of speculative design, self-publishing, graphic design, performance/sound art, collective reading, viewing and writing , storytelling, cooking and other artistic and critical practices.
Find the full programme here, on facebook or on the collective's website.
Supported by KUNSTHAL GENT, Stad Gent, Refu-Interim, The Arts in Society Award and KASK school of Arts
The Post Collective are Mirra Markhaëva, Marcus Bergner, Elli Vassalou, Sawsan Maher, Mohammed Tawfiq, Hooman Jalidi and Kinda Ghannoum.
Mirra Markhaëva (1992° Buryatia) is a visual artist. The range of her skills includes illustration, graphic design, lettering, painting and sculpting, but mostly she’s passionate by creation of murals. She has started her studies in ESA 75 (Brussels) in Graphic Design department but couldn’t graduate due to the fact that she’s stuck in paperless status. Searching for the ways to educate herself anyways she joined Open Design Course and then continued with the Post Collective.
Marcus Bergner is an Australian artist based in Brussels. He is a member of the Australian sound poetry group Arf Arf. He has made over 25 experimental films that have been screened extensively worldwide. Recently with the Belgian artist, Myriam van Imschoot, he presented a series of workshops on sound poetry in institutions in Belgium, France and Portugal. He was awarded a PhD degree in art history in 2009 from Melbourne University.
Elli Vassalou (1983° Greece) is a multimedia artist, activist, researcher and performer. She has studied Architecture and Urbanism in Patras, Greece and Autonomous design at KASK School of Arts, Ghent. She designs participatory platforms, actions and socially engaged projects. She works hybridicly with film-making, photography, movement, sound, discursive and multi-sensorial tools, site specific and archival art. She is seeking for new ways of polyphonic narrating, assembling bodies, spaces and objects in a critical and creative dialogue.
Sawsan Maher is a Syrian researcher, activist, philosopher and designer. She studied Philosophy and social science and specialized in political science. Her passion to find communicative tools to connect academic humanities and activism activated her great interest in design and methodology.
Mohammed Tawfiq (Iraq) studied graphic designs at Arteveldehogeschool. He is working with drawing, painting, photography, animation, graphic work, performance.
Hooman Jalidi (1990° Iran) began to study visual arts and music in 2004 in Shiraz city. During this period he devoted himself in drawing, painting, collage, illustration, pattern design, digital design, fabric manipulation and textile design. In 2015 he came to Belgium.
Kinda Ghannoum was born in 1991 in Poland, she is a Syrian/Polish graphic designer coming from Damascus. She graduated from the faculty of Architecture in Damascus University. She found her passion in graphic design, decided to follow it and learned by herself.
CONTACT:
post.opendesigncourse.be
odc.postcollective@gmail.com
+32 489378481
