Studium Generale lecture series 2019-2020 The Parasite (semester 2)

STUDIUM GENERALE

SEMESTER TWO

ARCH. 2

The Parasite

ARCH. 3

The parasitic relation is inter­ subjective. It is the atomic form of our relations. Let us try to face it head-on, like death, like the sun.

We are all attacked, together.

– Michel Serres, in: The Parasite (1980)

THE PARASITE

TROLL, EXPLOITER, THE ENEMY WITHIN

This year’s Studium Generale is a polyphonic e­ xploration of the fuzzy semantic field revolving around the parasite, in which the cultural and biological continuously flip and bleed into each other. Conceived as first and foremost a biological organism, the parasite is increasingly under­ stood as, among others, a complexity enhancing agent, a relational dynamic, performative tactic and interruption in any (‘the’) system. This year’s Studium Generale program consists of eighteen lectures and lecture-performances that oscillate between metaphorical and non-­metaphorical expressions of this polysemous beast that is currently living an important reappraisal in science and art.

Point of departure is Michel Serres’s intriguing ­poetic-philosophical book Le Parasite (1980) that imagines the world as essentially parasitic, that is, infested with primordial, one-way, irre­versible relations between host and guest. No system is without its flaws, losses, errors, accidents and excesses on which the parasite can feed. Therefore every system has its parasite, an interrupt­ ing agent ‘who has the last word, who produces disorder and who generates a different order’. Whenever a para­ sitic agent takes over and overturns a system – creating a cut – more diversity and complexity is created in the act.

In the first semester we explored a first set of p ­ arasitical archetypes: noise, guest and leech. We looked into the genealogy of the parasite as originally an ancient holy figure, a comical character and an (uninvited) dinner guest that was close to the food (para-sitos). In the second semester we continue to ride the back of the beast, visiting new expressions both light and dark, deepening not only our ­understanding of the life cycle of real bio­

logical parasites, but also what the parasite teaches us about our complicated relation towards an intimate but infinitely strange ‘other’.

What thought-feeling-behaviour does this intimate stranger evoke? How does the parasite relate to extinc­ tion, exhaustion and extermination? In what sense could ­decolonisation, cultural (re)appropiation, mimicry and the d ­ iasporic identity be seen as parasitic tactics?

How could we counter the political abuse of the parasite metaphor in both cyberspace and meatspace?

As we search for answers to these questions, and develop an ever more complex image of the beast, we will also continue to explore how it could feed from and feed into our artistic practice. What ‘hosts’ could and should we latch on to, what system disorders and ­complexities could we create? In these times, where simple narratives hold sway, and in which the fear for ‘the enemy within’ looms large, the parasite challenges to flip our worldview once again and ask ourselves: who is the real parasite?

Erika Sprey

6 FEBRUARY MARJOLIJN DIJKMAN & GEORGES SENGA Georges Senga (member of Picha) and Marjo­ lijn Dijkman (co-founder of Enough Room for Space) will introduce ‘On-Trade-Off’, an artistic trajectory initiated by the artists’ initia­ tives Picha (Lubumbashi, DRC) and Enough Room for Space (Brussels, BE) and some of the works they have developed within this project. The starting point for the research project On-Trade-Off is the raw material lithium. A naturally occurring element (number three on the periodic table), lithium is currently considered to be ‘the new black gold’ because of its crucial role in the global transition towards a ‘green and fossil fuel free economy’. Focusing on this one chemical element (Li3) allows the project to zoom in

on particular social, ecological, economic and political phenomena that characterize the production processes currently experiencing rapid growth.These phenomena show striking similarities with production chains as we have known them since the start of triangular trade in the 16th century: inhumane labour in the exploitation and extraction processes; a perpetuated economic imbalance to maintain economic growth; uninformed end consum­ ers who are unaware of both the devastating production chain behind the goods they have purchased and their afterlife in the sense that a recycling scheme is lacking.

On-Trade-Off: The Weight of Wonders

13 FEBRUARY MARC VAN ELBURG The relation between pre-internet zineculture of the early 1990’s and mainstream culture resembled that of a parasite and its host.

Zineculture as a proto-social network was critical on mainstream culture and operated under the radar, outside of copyright laws and market control, while at the same time it was often dependent on that same mainstream culture for its production and distribution.

Recently the view on parasites in contemporary biology has drastically changed.

Were parasite before seen as evolutionary

degenerates, today parasites are regarded by many biologists as ­essential forces that shape ecosystems and drive evolution. Can this changing view also be applied to the changing position of zine­culture after the internet and its corporate social networks? And what if a state of parasitic dependency is no longer seen as a sign of failure or something to be overcome in favour of autonomy and self determination, but is instead seen a necessary condition for the production of art?

Zineculture as Parasite Culture and the Means and Methods of the Artist/Parasite

20 FEBRUARY

SAMAH HIJAWI

A story that jumps through time and across geographies brings the artist and her grandmother in Palestine, together with two well-known European personalities; Gode­ froid de Bouillon, known as the first king of Jerusalem and the illegitimate son of the famous Arabian poet Antar Bin-Shaddad, and the 16th-century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel. Time collapses as we travel back and forth across millennia—from Jerusalem, to Brussels, to London, and back to Jerusalem.

Following the non-linear hakawati structure

of epic story-telling, personalities and images are playfully displaced and re-­contextualised in a colonialist history. Using different forms of collage in both the narrative and the images, Hijawi tactfully invites us to look with her at how colonialism is deeply embedded in canonised European artworks.

This performance is part of a larger body of work entitled ‘Chicken Scrib­ bles and the Dove that Looks like a Frog’ which explores the aesthetics of representa­ tion in artworks that allude to the political histories of Palestine through various media.

Godefroid of Bouillon: The Bastard Son of Antara Bin-Shaddad

26 MARCH GEORGE WEISS & PETER AERS In the last 60 years, social psychology research has identified a number of tenden­ cies in societies that lived a severe case of genocide not too long ago. These studies agree that insecurity leads people to seek safety in groups. In some particular cases this collective need for security can unleash a process that begins with the dehumanisation of ´the other´ and can lead to extreme collec­ tive violence if left unchecked. For instance, outsiders are easy targets and could come to be seen as parasites: opportunistic vermin that takes away something valuable and therefore deserves no less than total extermi­ nation. Depending on the dominant group’s cultural conditioning, unhealed traumas and understanding of the root causes of its own insecurity, this parasite-metaphor could

perpetuate ever growing cycles of violence.

Researcher Ervin Staub called this: “The Continuum of Violence”. Once this contin­ uum is set in motion, many feel powerless in the face of the nasty feelings it generates – and the influence that peers exert on them who have given in to those feelings. However, there are ways to resist the pull and counter the narrative.

George Weiss will talk about the Continuum of Violence and how a metaphor like “parasite” plays a key role in it.

What feelings and reasonings guide perpetra­ tors, victims and let´s not forget, bystanders in their (non)action? Performance artist Peter Aers will respond to the lecture with a creative exercise. He will use key words of Weiss’ talk, challenge us to use our bodies as a source of knowledge and become partici­ pants to a shared conversation.

The Continuum of Violence and the Parasite as a Trope

9 APRIL SINA SEIFEE Within the legacy of 19th century philosophy of social progress, the parasite was defined outside the law (or metaphysical fantasy) of competition. Parasite, as one of our ways of dealing-with problems, now is completely transvaluated (as heritage of ­deconstruction).

By grounding the work in a research on medieval bestiaries, this lecture performance questions the logic of interference, as a practice of tuning in noise, and it shares some vocabularies on the sound-track of the emerging monsters in contemporary thought.

What does it mean to put the thought in

direct relation with forces of the outside (as Deleuze and Guattari would suggest)? What kind of other dormant, inert, ambient sonic layers are offering themselves, or coughing in (our structures of obligation)? The signifi­ cance of monsters, as potent and parasitic, characterized by missing transhumanist body parts, can it allow us to consider where we speak from? This lecture peruses those ques­ tions, and not so much looking for novelty in something that is impossible to systematize, nor to promise getting off the leash of con­ trolled names.

To Cough with Monsters – Seeking a Host for Morethan-human Histories

16 APRIL AMAL ALHAAG This talk looks, feels and listens through the lens of science-fiction, music (videos) and poetry to the ways we can be in the wake and work towards the urgent project of simultane­ ously interrogating systems of dispossessions and negation and actively listen to colonized, marginalized and repressed subjects in the archive of the everyday? What does it mean

to be sent by histories? How can the praxis of shape-shifting offer tools to heal, dismantle or undo the horrors and systems that repro­ duce colonial residue? Together, we work through the ways existing in minor keys has brought forward radical and rascal thoughts, practices, movements and riots.

Stranger from the Sky – emergent strategies for ordinary shape-shifters

23 APRIL PETER D. OLSON Public perceptions of parasitism rarely if ever reflect the true biology of the diversity of orga­nisms we refer to collectively as ‘para­ sites’. Peter Olson, a zoologist and parasitol­ ogist with 30 years of experience, will explain how parasitism has evolved in effectively every major group of organisms and why it is likely to be the most common mode of life on the planet. Despite this, even parasitologists have struggled to find a common definition for what a parasite is, their most universal characteristic being how they are distributed

among the host population. Thus although we tend to think of them under the common umbrella of ‘parasitism’, each type of parasite will be far more similar to its nearest free-liv­ ing relative than to other types of parasites.

Expanding on the latter point, the second half of the lecture will discuss how ­parasitism and other forms of symbiosis evolved repeat­ edly in flatworms and was underpinned by their extraordinary regenerative abilities, ­ultimately giving rise to flukes, tapeworms and related groups.

Real Lives of Parasites

7 MAY SARAH VANHEE For the past seven years of my life I was an intruder. Unasked and uninvited, I walked into meeting-rooms, and started to speak about how we live together as human beings, about society as a co-creation by every-one. One could see my intervention as a bomb or as a gift. People were surprised, shocked, moved, angry. With my guerilla-­ speech I tried to transform any meeting into a political moment. I surprised more than 10.000 people this way, interrupting their daily routines by asking big and small questions about life. I always said the same

words, I called it Lecture For Every One. It spread over twelve different countries but remained largely invisible. Like a virus. This is not fiction, this really happened. Now I want to share this story about words, love, violence and connection. About people alone and together. It’s a story about what it means to speak up, today. About the (im)possibility to address every-one. And about how we are always before. Before the war starts, before you kiss, before you really decide. How today also, we are before.

We Are Before (stories of an intruder)

14 MAY CLARA BALAGUER A lecture delivered in fragments. On the extended simile of making public as a form of bloodletting. Research or content or cultural capital as bodily humour, signaling vigor, nourishment, the imperative to circulate, and embodied practice. The independent researcher-publisher as convalescent, afflicted with all manner of precarious ills or, on the contrary, engorged with access to cultural capital and institutional resources, bound by duty to redistribute to limbs furthest away

from the source, from the center of the body of knowledge. Books as leeches on the body public. Circulation as a physical act—books do not move themselves. The act of (indepen­ dent, unsanctioned) publishing as a creation of value that is located in the body, because implication of the body is needed to circulate in networks.

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Publishing as Bloodletting: On the Circulation of Public Humours

28 MAY KATJA NOVITSKOVA Katja Novitskova’s talk will look into the topic of ecological frontiers through the lens of her work as a contemporary artist.

On a planetary scale humanity’s expansion of the last centuries can be seen as having passed the threshold from ‘simply being social animals’ towards parasitic in relation to the rest of the species and Earth itself.

This process has been driven by the logic of frontier colonialism, according to which any mineral or living thing is seen as a potential resource to be industrially extracted and exploited in disregard to their innate purpose and place, and to the suffering of people on its way. The scale of this expansion has resulted in exponential growth of human-­

occupied territories that has lead to cata­ strophic collapse of overall biodiversity and whole ecosystems. By today, overwhelming majority of peoples and lands have been colonised, natural resources are depleting and it’s clear that the Earth as a host is becoming too injured for business to continue as usual.

In this somewhat self-aware moment of crisis, new frontiers have emerged that promise the continuation of unlimited growth beyond the limits of geography and biology: space minerals and genetic engineering. Parasite not lost!?

Parasite Lost: in Search of New Frontiers

LIBRARY TABLE

In an attempt to expand our knowledge beyond the limited spatial and temporal confines of the Studium Generale, we have asked every lecturer to recommend five ‘things’ to read, listen, view, experience, etc that have inspired their work in general and ­especially their lecture for the SG. They offer these titles for further self-education and enjoyment. Please direct yourself to the library where these titles will be on view at the designated Studium Generale table.

BIOGRAPHIES 6 FEBRUARY — MARJOLIJN DIJKMAN (Groningen, 1978) is an artist and co-founder of Enough Room for Space since 2005, based in Brussels, Belgium. Her works can be seen as a form of science – fiction; partly based on facts and research but often brought into the realm of fiction, abstraction and specu­ lation. Solo shows include: HIAP, FI (2019); OSL Contemporary, NO (2019); NOME, DE (2018); Munch Museum, NO (2018); Fig. 2 at Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), UK (2015); West Space, AU (2015); IKON Gallery & Spike Island, UK (2011); Berkeley Art Museum, US (2008). Group shows include: 4th Screen City Biennale, NO (2019); 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, DRC (2019); 9th Contour Biennale, BE (2019); 1st Fiskars Biennale, FI (2019); Tendencies ’19, BE (2019); ARTEFACT 2019, BE (2019); 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU (2018); Performatik Biennale 2017, BE (2017); 11th Shanghai Biennale, CN (2016); 4th Marrakech Biennale (2012); 7th Mercosul Biennale, BR (2009); 8th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2007).

GEORGES SENGA (Lumbumbashi, DRC, 1983) is a member of the artist organisation Picha in Lubumbashi (DRC) since its foun­ dation in 2008. He has had a solo exhibition at A-Foundation in Brussels (2019) and has been presented in group exhibitions such as Multiple Transmissions: Art in the Afropoli­ tan Age, Wiels, Brussels (2019); Kampala Art Biennale and in Muzee to Ostand in 2014; at Rencontres Picha Biennale de Lubumbashi in 2013 & 2009. In 2015 he was a fellow at WIELS Contemporary art centre, Brussels, Belgium, as well as part of the project African Odyssey at the arts center BRASS in Brussels, BE and presented work at the Bamako

Biennale, where he received the price Leo the African RAM, and was in residence in Stutt­ gart Akademi solitude. He was a researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, NL (2018 - 2019). He received the Thami Mnyele Award in Amsterdam in 2019.

13 FEBRUARY — ­ MARC VAN ELBURG (Ommen, 1968) is a Dutch artist and zinester. He was the founder of DIY noise-theatre and zine-library de Honden­ koekjesfabriek (2000-2007) and a curator for Planetart (1999-2001). Marc has recently published zines about an instruction based collective drawing program and a series about the relation between so-called Grawlixes in comics and early Modernism. Currently he is looking after the Zinedepo zine-library in Motel Spatie in Arnhem Presikhaaf. The latest project coming out of the zine-li­ brary involves the parasitic as a conceptual metaphor and meme. It positions the parasitic against typical western concepts of self-de­ termination and autonomy. This concept has become a vehicle to illustrate and develop a variety of ideas regarding self-organization, collectivity and diy ethics. Parallel to this, a ‘parasite academy’ was established within Motel Spatie. This is an ongoing series of get-togethers that focus on projects and exchanging ideas on the parasite concept and the possibility of the parasite as a vehicle for self-education.

20 FEBRUARY — ­ SAMAH HIJAWI (Kuwait, 1976) is an artist and researcher currently completing her PhD in Art Practice at ULB and the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, in Belgium.

In her multi-media works, she explores the aesthetics of representation in artworks that

allude to the histories of Palestine. Her works have been shown at The Hayward Gallery in London, BOZAR and Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Bureau Europa Maastricht, MoMa and Apex Art in New York and Darat al Funun in Amman, among others. She previously collaborated with Ola El-Khalidi and Diala Khasawneh in directing Makan Art Space (2003-2015), an independent space for contemporary art in Amman. Together with Shuruq Harb and Toleen Touq, she co-cu­ rated the platform The River has Two Banks (2012-2017), which was initiated to address the growing distance between Jordan and Palestine through a program of artistic and reflective events presented in different cities.

Credits — Concept and performance: Samah Hijawi | Dramaturgy: Reem Shilleh | Technique: Gregor Van Mulders | Producer: Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek | Co-producers: BOZAR, Chaire Mahmoud Darwich, Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek, Moussem, A. M. Qattan Foundation, KAAP | Coaches: Frederik Le Roy, Sana Ghobbeh and Einat Tuchman. With the support of Vlaamse Gemeenschap, MMAG Foundation, Nadine and De School van Gaasbeek.

26 MARCH ­— GEORGE WEISS (Vienna, 1955) is the founder and director of a Humanitarian Media Intervention NGO, Radio La Benevolencija HTF, dedicated to broadcast work to prevent identity-based violence. The organization runs a large action-research project, that started in 2003 - the “Great Lakes Reconciliation Media Project” Three long-running National Media Campaigns in Rwanda, the DR Congo and Burundi to create populations that are resilient to Hate incitement. In each of these countries, one long running radio soap opera, inter-connected TV debate programs and outreach discussions teach the population to both recognise and resist the continuum of violence. This has helped inter-communal reconciliation and has shown remarkable impact. In the face of ever more resistance to immigration and foreigners in Europe, the organization currently develops new media-, online gaming and TV formats to bring its methodology to potential extremist audiences in EU countries.

PETER AERS (Ghent, 1973) is a perfor­ mance artist. He obtained a M.A. in Philos­ ophy at Ghent University and Geneva, and studied the Jacques Lecoq method of acting in Brussels. He has developed ‘Everything

Depends on How a Thing is Thought’, a series of conversational performances which deal with pain, the future, and crime and punishment. Central to the creation-process and the performances are the participants; how they choose to communicate, and the relationship between these individuals and the community they are part of. Peter is part of Building Conversation. Inspired by conver­ sation techniques from all over the world they execute and perform different conversation formats together with participants in cities all over Europe. He has collaborated on several projects with artist Dora García for the Sculpture Project in Münster, the Venice and Liverpool Biennial.

9 APRIL — ­ SINA SEIFEE (Tehran, 1982) researches as an artist in the fields of narra­ tive, performance and knowledge production.

He has been working on the question of technology and storytelling in the arts and sciences of the middle ages and the past-pres­ ent of material reading practices in collective life. He studied Applied Mathematics in Tehran, received his master in Media Arts in KHM Cologne and in 2017 finished an advanced research program in performance studies in a.pass.

Credits — image cropped and masked from Albrecht Dürer’s The Apocalyptic Woman

16 APRIL — AMAL ALHAAG is an Amsterdam-based independent curator, dj and researcher who develops ongoing experimental and collaborative research practice, public programs and projects on global spatial politics, archives, colonialism, counter-culture, oral histories and popular culture. Her projects and collaborations with people, initiatives and institutions invite, stage, question and play with ‘uncomfortable’ issues that riddle, rewrite, remix, share and compose narratives in impermanent settings.

23 APRIL — PETER D. OLSON (California, 1969) is a research biologist who specialises on the evolution, development and genomics of parasitic flatworms. He received BSc and MSc degrees in Biological Sciences from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a PhD in Zoology from the University of Connecticut before relocating to the UK as a Marshall-Sherfield Fellow in 1998. Since that time he has been based at the Natural History Museum in London, becoming a perma­

nent member of staff in 2005 and Research Leader in 2011. He conducts and supervises research, guest lectures at leading UK insti­ tutions, and is an active member of learned societies and editorial boards in the fields of Parasitology, Development and Systematics, recently taking on the role of Editor in Chief of Systematics & Biodiversity. He also serves on the board of the NHM member’s magazine Evolve which engages the public with Museum science and other behind-the-scene activities, and is a founding member of the Museum’s Arts and Sciences Interest Group.

More about his research and laboratory can be found via www.olsonlab.com.

7 MEI — SARAH VANHEE (Oostende, BE, 1980) is an artist, performer and author. Her interdisciplinary work travels in between civil space and institutional art field. She worked in open fields, prisons, private living rooms, theatres, on public canvases, in corporate meeting rooms, etc. From September 2018 on, she is a doctoral student at the Antwerp School of Arts, in collaboration with the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts.

Credits: Performance, text: Sarah Vanhee | Produced by: Manyone | Co-produced by: CAMPO, Vooruit, kunstencentrum BUDA, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, STUK, BIT Teatergarasjen, Skogen.

14 MEI — CLARA BALAGUER (Manila, 1980) is a cultural worker. From 2010 to 2018, she articulated cultural programming with rural and underserved communities in the Philippines through the Office of Culture and Design, a residency space and social practice platform. In 2015, she co-founded Hardworking Goodlooking, a cottage industry publishing hauz interested in horror vacui, thickening research on the post-(or de-) colonial vernacular, collectivizing authorship, and the value of the error. Currently, she coor­ dinates the Social Practices course at Willem de Kooning Academy and teaches Experi­ mental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Frequently, she operates under collective or individual aliases that intimate her service in a given project, the latest of which is To Be Determined.

TO BE DETERMINED is an undocumented organization that has recently migrated to the Netherlands from the Philip­ pines and other places, assuming a new name and identity. It is curious about models of collectivizing authorship (be it credited, anon­

ymous, or divested), underground railroads (in plain sight) to institutional access, terri­ tory constructed between repose and transit (including languages spoken by any inhab­ itants), and the decolonization of cultural work through the lens of the contemporary (post-colonial) vernacular. It is currently molting or in the process of determining how it must operate within a foreign landscape.

But what is clear, at this point in time, is that TBD is (still) comprised of sleeper cells and yet-to-be-determined networks that activate and deactivate in response to external factors: abundance to be distributed, urgencies to be addressed, or leisure to be. When prompted, TBD identifies as a social practice ­performance.

28 MEI — KATJA NOVITSKOVA (Tallinn, EE, 1984) is a visual artist working in a variety of media, from books to installations.

She lives in Amsterdam and Berlin. In her work she creates ecological narratives using visual material found online related to various technologies of seeing and modelling reality: from attention economies to machine vision and biotechnological research. She studied semiotics at the University of Tartu in Estonia and graphic design at Sandberg Instituut, Netherlands. In 2011, she published her first artist book and curatorial project ‘Post Internet Survival Guide’. Since then her work has been exhibited globally.

STUDIUM GENERALE

Studium Generale is a programme that hovers, as it were, over the departments: it addresses themes that may not have an immediate practical use, but are potentially relevant to each and every student. It aims to introduce students to fields that aren’t directly addressed within their own course such as theatre, philosophy, poetry, film, sociology, invention, science, or a combina­ tion of these disciplines.

It is, more or less, a semi-theoretical programme to help you assess your own work from a different perspective and to draw inspiration from other fields of knowl­ edge. The Studium Generale is a gift to the students: especially for them, famous actors, photographers, scientists, and many others will visit the academy to deliver a lecture on their professional field, ending in a discus­ sion open to all.

Each student’s work is fuelled by the impulses surrounding him or her by the society they live in, and it’s important to gain an understanding of this environment from which you can distillate your own unique interests and determine your own position. Especially for artists, it’s imper­ ative to see beyond the borders of your specific professional field, to open yourself up to the grand and unorthodox thoughts of others and to integrate these with your own ideas.

Studium Generale hopes to break down barriers between departments and initiate collaborations to pave the way for groundbreaking new ideas. To do so, Studium Generale works closely with each department to complement and broaden their existing programmes.

STUDY CREDITS

The Studium Generale programme is a mandatory part of the curriculum. For some departments, these mandatory credits are to be taken in second year, for others in third year. The department in question will determine in which year students can follow Studium Generale as part of their studies.

In the academic year of 2019 – 2020 there will be 18 lectures of Studium Generale KABK, 8 in the first semester, 10 in the second semester. Per semester 1 study credit will be allocated. Every student must attend 80% of the lectures, which means you can only miss 2 lectures per semester.

Attendance to the lectures will be monitored by a stampcard, which has to be presented at the collective assessment at the end of each semester. The credits earned for Studium Generale will be part of the general assessments and cannot be replaced.

COLOPHON

Head of Studium Generale Erika Sprey Coordinator of Studium Generale Janne van Gilst Design Dayna Casey Copyright 2019 – 2020 KABK Royal Academy of Art Thanks to all the participants, the studio, all ­coordinators and heads of departments.

“The parasite is destroying the host.

The alien has invaded the house, perhaps to kill the father of the family, in an act which does not look like parracide, but is. ...

May it not be already that uncanny alien which is so close that it cannot be seen as strange, as host in the sense of enemy rather than host in the sense of open-handed dispenser of hospitality?”

From J. Hillis Miller “The Critic as Host” (1977)

SEMESTER TWO All lectures are on Thursdays from 16:00 — 17:30 in the ­Auditorium, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

6 February On-Trade-Off: The Weight of Wonders Marjolijn Dijkman & Georges Senga 13 February Zineculture as parasite culture and the means and methods of the ­artist/parasite Marc van Elburg

20 February Lecture-Performance: Godefroid of Bouillon: The Bastard Son of Antara Bin-Shaddad Samah Hijawi 26 March The Continuum of Violence and the Parasite as a trope George Weiss & Peter Aers 9 April To Cough with Monsters – seeking a Host for More-­ than-human Histories Sina Seifee

23 April Real Lives of Parasites Peter D. Olson 7 May We Are Before (stories of an intruder) Sarah Vanhee 14 May Publishing as ­Bloodletting: On the Circulation of Public Humours Clara Balaguer 28 May Parasite Lost: in Search of New Frontiers Katja Novitskova

16 April Stranger from the Sky Amal Alhaag

ARCH. 1

Archetype 1 TROLL — A specific kind of cyber deviant that wears a white, grey, black or multicolored hat, living in dark vaults of the digital, usually wearing the cloak of invisibility just like its mythical counter­ part. Uses the inter­net to cause so-called anti-systemic disruption for its own amusement and/or as a form of critical self-expression.

Archetype 2 EXPLOITER — A self-entitled guest that behaves like a host, rationally instrumentalizing and objecti­ fying the actual host in order to extract and deplete it from (material, spiritual) resources, creating gross imbalances and ultimately (ecological, systemic) ­devastation.

Archetype 3 THE ENEMY WITHIN — An imaginary threat that exists within a community, a nation and/or the self, as distinct from a clearly localized external enemy. If left unchecked, the infiltration could lead to debilitation, mind control, total takeover and/or an untimely (metaphorical or actual) death.