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< div id = "content" > < h1 id = "talking-documents" > Talking Documents< / h1 >
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< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/wijnhaven.JPG"
alt="WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024- reading of act0 and act1" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > WDKA- Winjhaven Building- February 2024-
reading of act0 and act1< / figcaption >
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< p > This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic
dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part of as a student.
I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by
smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’
experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - my eviction on the
31st of January 2024 - made central my personal struggles which then unfolded
in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidental
auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically reshaped due to
the material constraints of a bureaucratic timeline.< / p >
< p > Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that
intend to create temporal public interventions through performative
readings. I utilised the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story
in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of
bureaucracy as a less material border and as a regulatory mechanism
reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.< / p >
< p > A central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that
constructs my personal paperwork story, unravelling the actual struggles
of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the
“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email
threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality
of Rotterdam that I documented and archived throughout this period. I
preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the
graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the
text into a playable scenario.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/call1.png"
alt="Act 2 “Call with the municipality about the rejection of my application”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Act 2 “Call with the municipality about
the rejection of my application”< / figcaption >
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< p > < img src = "../aglaia/call2.png" / > < / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/dereg1.png"
alt="Act 7 “Confirmation document of my deregistration”" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Act 7 “Confirmation document of my
deregistration”< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../aglaia/dereg2.png" / > < / p >
< p > I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic
interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in public aims to examine these artefacts and highlight the shrouded performative elements of these processes.< / p >
< p > I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant
publishing and as a communal tool for inspecting bureaucratic bordering
infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different
institutional contexts and examine their structures? I organized a
series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in
different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, the Art Meets
Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I
invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theatre.< / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/AMRO_all.jpg"
alt="Art Meets Radical Openness Festival –
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > Art Meets Radical Openness Festival –
Linz, Austria - May 2024 - Reading Act 2 and Act3 in the
tent< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > < img src = "../aglaia/AMRO_kamo.jpg" / > < / p >
< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/gemeente_front.jpg"
alt="City Hall Rotterdam - May 2024 - Reading of Act 5 and Act 6" />
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > City Hall Rotterdam - May 2024 - Reading
of Act 5 and Act 6< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< figure >
< img src = "../aglaia/statue_garden.jpg" alt = "The garden of Gemeente" / >
< figcaption aria-hidden = "true" > The garden of Gemeente< / figcaption >
< / figure >
< p > The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and
enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things
into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of
dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turning individual
administrative cases into public ones. How are the inscribed words in the
documents not descriptive but on the contrary “instrumentalized
in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as
low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the
bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the
school’
of the municipality building.< / p >
< p > I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the
collectively voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of
different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal
archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.< / p >
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