Print into booklet

From 15.00 to 18.00 We Are The Time presents the World Question Center Redux. In 1969 the artist James Lee Byars collected a list of questions through conversations with 100 artists, scientists, philosophers, and other prominent thinkers and practitioners.The artist’s World Question Center became a critical document of his time. For Byars, the perfect thought takes the form of a question. He believed that answers and explanations are not the way forward. For the performative conference kick-off the Rietveld Academie’s World Question Center Redux will merge an artwork past, with questions from the present for the future. Connections are produced live on stage. With lecture, presentation and performance by respectively Koen Brams, Maria Hlavajova and Jonathan Dronsfield, an interview with Adjiedj Bakas  and sweeping interventions by R. Radhakrishnan, Chto Delat’s Dmitry Vilenski, Ann Demeester, Ben Zegers, Tai Shani, Fay Nicholson, Sam de Groot and the Black Swan Collective. Moderators:Arnisa Zeqo and Laurie Cluitmans.

Conference

WE ARE THE TIME: Do You Have a Question?

There are 3 ways to bring in YOUR question:
— IF you want to present it LIVE during today’s event: contact annahoetjes@gmail.com
— OR send us your question through Twitter with #wqcr
— OR bring your question to the World Question Center Redux  counter in the central hall of the Rietveld Academie where your question will be registered and processed.

The World Question Center Redux staff will process questions all through the week.

The most thought-provoking and beautiful questions will be published in the We Are The Time – book.

Conference

15.00 Lecture

Do questions require more energy than other sentences?

Koen Brams

Koen Brams will offer an inside in the historical performance that inspired this day. The World Question Center was a live broadcast (realized by Jef Cornelis) of a performance initiated by the American artist James Lee Byars which took place in a studio of the Belgian public broadcasting corporation in Brussels in 1969. During this performance more than twenty personalities – artists (like Joseph Beuys, John Cage and Marcel Broodthaers), scientists and media figures – were given the opportunity to ask what they considered the most relevant question. Questions were posed, no answers given. In his lecture, Brams will elaborate on this exceptional experiment.

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Shadow Cabinets

16.00
The Metaphysics of Youth

Location: Gym – ( as part of World Question Center Redux)

Adjiedj Bakas, acclaimed economic and social trendwatcher will join us for a consultancy session during the World Question Center Redux, and perhaps offer us an insight to the mechanisms of the business of seeing ones time.

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Conference

16.45 Presentation

World Question Center (Reloaded)

Maria Hlavajova

Maria Hlavajova will speak about the World Question Center Reloaded as it took place at BAK in Utrecht in 2003.

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Conference

16.45 Lecture / Performance

Art as Question as Prequel to Art and its Freedoms as Response

Jonathan Dronsfield

A reading from the book The Swerve of Freedom After Spinoza.

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Shadow Cabinets

15.00—
Library

Location: Downstairs behind the stairs

For those who like to read more on the topics related to WE ARE THE TIME the library sets up a reading corner each day near the gym next to the staircase. Quick snappers will get an overview of the relevant publications the library holds, slow flowers will have an opportunity to sit down and read.

Book of the day
IM FULL OF BYARS
James Lee Byars – Eine Hommage / A Hommage

Exhibition Catalogue: James Lee Byars was not just an artist, he was a magician, a visionary and a dandy. He knew how to put his audience under his spell. Byars bombarded his friends and acquaintances with letters of all kinds, thus demanding constant attention, sometimes without ever having got an answer. These writings testify to an incredible virtuosity and creativity.”Im full of Byars” will facilitate a survey of the work of an artist who was constantly searching for perfection (The Perfect), who equated the ephemeral and immaterial with the material and permanent, and whose work has forfeited nothing of its mystery and poetry to this very day.

+ www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

Shadow Cabinets

Broadcast
F.I.R.E.I.N.C.A.I.R.O.

Location: Radiostation in the textile classroom

Throughout the week, different radio programs will take place with a variety of guests and a range of live musical acts (4 hours broadcasting every day).

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