@ -172,9 +172,9 @@ I started working and engaging more with different bureaucratic material that my
**Where:** XPUB studio wall
**Who:** myself
Description: Some months ago my classmates and I received an email with a questionnaire aimed at preparing us for the upcoming quality assurance meeting within the school. Ada and I had a meeting, in an empty white room with closed doors, with an external collaborator of the university. The main request was to rate and answer the pre-formulated questions covering issues about performance, different and multiple topics related to the course, the teaching staff, the facilities, the tools provided. The micro linguistic experiment of highlighting, censoring and annotating this document aimed for an understanding of what a quality assurance meeting is within an educational institution.
**Description:** Some months ago my classmates and I received an email with a questionnaire aimed at preparing us for the upcoming quality assurance meeting within the school. Ada and I had a meeting, in an empty white room with closed doors, with an external collaborator of the university. The main request was to rate and answer the pre-formulated questions covering issues about performance, different and multiple topics related to the course, the teaching staff, the facilities, the tools provided. The micro linguistic experiment of highlighting, censoring and annotating this document aimed for an understanding of what a quality assurance meeting is within an educational institution.
Reflections-Thoughts: This experiment was my first attempt to start interrogating and observing the language and the structure of a bureaucratic document. How these “desired” standards propagated through text. What is the role of the student-client in these processes as an esoteric gaze of control over the course and their teachers? My focus was to locate and accumulate all the wording related to measurements, rate, quantity, assessments, statistics. Highlighting the disproportionate amount of metrics-related vocabulary was enough to craft the narrative around this process.
**Reflections-Thoughts:** This experiment was my first attempt to start interrogating and observing the language and the structure of a bureaucratic document. How these “desired” standards propagated through text. What is the role of the student-client in these processes as an esoteric gaze of control over the course and their teachers? My focus was to locate and accumulate all the wording related to measurements, rate, quantity, assessments, statistics. Highlighting the disproportionate amount of metrics-related vocabulary was enough to craft the narrative around this process.
These 'rituals' are components of a larger “culture of evidence”, serving as a tool that blurs the distinction between discourse and reality (Cunningham, 2017). This culture of evidence influences how people perceive and understand information. The primary purposes of these metrics are twofold: they play a role in the marketing sphere, attracting potential students to the university as well as they are utilized in interactions and negotiations with the government, which increasingly cuts budgets allocated to universities.
@ -186,9 +186,9 @@ These 'rituals' are components of a larger “culture of evidence”, serving as
**Where:** Leeszaal<sup><spanclass="margin-note">Community Library in Rotterdam West</span></sup>
**Who:** XPUB peers, tutors, friends, alumni
Description: During the first public moment at Leeszaal, I decided to embody and enact the traditional role of a bureaucrat in a graphic and possibly absurd way performing a small “theatrical play”. I prepared a 3-page and a 1-page document incorporating bureaucratic-form aesthetics and requesting applicants’ fake data and their answers for questions related to educational bureaucracy. People receiving an applicant number at the entrance of Leeszaal, queuing to collect their documents from the administration “office”, filling forms, waiting, receiving stamps, giving fingerprints and signing, waiting again were the main components of this act.
**Description:** During the first public moment at Leeszaal, I decided to embody and enact the traditional role of a bureaucrat in a graphic and possibly absurd way performing a small “theatrical play”. I prepared a 3-page and a 1-page document incorporating bureaucratic-form aesthetics and requesting applicants’ fake data and their answers for questions related to educational bureaucracy. People receiving an applicant number at the entrance of Leeszaal, queuing to collect their documents from the administration “office”, filling forms, waiting, receiving stamps, giving fingerprints and signing, waiting again were the main components of this act.
Reflections-Thoughts: Beyond the information gathered through my bureaucratic-like questionnaires, the most crucial element of this experiment was the understanding and highlighting of the hidden performative elements that entrench these “rituals”. It was amazing seeing the audience becoming instantly actors of the play enacting willingly a administrative ritualistic scene.
**Reflections-Thoughts:** Beyond the information gathered through my bureaucratic-like questionnaires, the most crucial element of this experiment was the understanding and highlighting of the hidden performative elements that entrench these “rituals”. It was amazing seeing the audience becoming instantly actors of the play enacting willingly a administrative ritualistic scene.
The provided context of this “play” was a social library hosting a masters course public event on graduation projects. I am wondering whether this asymphony between the repetitive bureaucratic acts within the space of Leeszaal, where such acts are not expected to be performed, evoked contradictory feelings or thoughts. Over-identifying with a role was being instrumentalized as an “interrogation” of one’s own involvement in the reproduction of social discourses, power, authority, hegemony.
@ -201,9 +201,9 @@ The provided context of this “play” was a social library hosting a masters c
**Where:** XML – XPUB studio
**Who:** Ada, Aglaia, Stephen, Joseph
Description: This prototype is a collective passport reading session. I asked my classmates to bring their passports or IDs and sitting in a circular set up we attempted to “scan” our documents. Every contributor took some time to browse, annotate verbally, interpret, understand, analyze, vocalize their thoughts on these artifacts, approaching them from various perspectives. The three passports and one ID card were all coming from European countries.
**Description:** This prototype is a collective passport reading session. I asked my classmates to bring their passports or IDs and sitting in a circular set up we attempted to “scan” our documents. Every contributor took some time to browse, annotate verbally, interpret, understand, analyze, vocalize their thoughts on these artifacts, approaching them from various perspectives. The three passports and one ID card were all coming from European countries.
Reflections-Thoughts: For the first time I observed this object so closely. The documentation medium was a recording device, Ada’s mobile phone. The recording was transcribed by vosk<sup><spanclass="margin-note">Vosk is an offline open-source speech recognition toolkit.</span></sup> and myself and a small booklet of our passport readings was created.
**Reflections-Thoughts:** For the first time I observed this object so closely. The documentation medium was a recording device, Ada’s mobile phone. The recording was transcribed by vosk<sup><spanclass="margin-note">Vosk is an offline open-source speech recognition toolkit.</span></sup> and myself and a small booklet of our passport readings was created.
>“So the object here is like not by random it comes from the history of nation-states and how nation-states and nationalities created like a form of identity. So nation-state is actually a recent invention that came into existence over the last two hundred fifty years in the form as we know it nowadays, in the form of democratic capitalism, before like monarchies and so on and each citizen of such a nation-state got also kind of a particular identity”,
> Joseph says about his ID card.
@ -220,11 +220,11 @@ We read the embedded signs, symbols, categories, texts, magical numbers in our p
**Where:** Room in Wijnhaven Building, 4th floor
**Who:** XPUB 1,2,3, tutors, Leslie
Description: This scenario is the first part of a series of small episodes that construct a bureaucratic story unfolding the processes of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the “theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents as well as recordings of the conversation I had with the municipality throughout this process. I preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the graphic design of the initial form, I structured and repurposed the text into a scenario. The main actors were two bureaucrats vocalizing the questions addressed in the form, in turns and sometimes speaking simultaneously like a choir, three applicants answering the questions similarly while a narrator mainly provided the audience with the context and the storyline constructing the scenery of the different scenes.
**Description:** This scenario is the first part of a series of small episodes that construct a bureaucratic story unfolding the processes of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the “theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents as well as recordings of the conversation I had with the municipality throughout this process. I preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the graphic design of the initial form, I structured and repurposed the text into a scenario. The main actors were two bureaucrats vocalizing the questions addressed in the form, in turns and sometimes speaking simultaneously like a choir, three applicants answering the questions similarly while a narrator mainly provided the audience with the context and the storyline constructing the scenery of the different scenes.
The first and the last moment of the performance was during a semi-public tryout moment where XPUB peers performed the distributed scenario in a white room on the 4th floor of the Winjhaven building. They were seated having as a border a black long-table. A border furniture between the bureaucrats and the applicants. The narrator was standing still behind them while they were surrounded by the audience. The main documentation media of the act were a camera on a tripod, a recorder in the middle of the table and myself reconstructing the memory of the re-enactement at that present - 6 days later.
Reflections-Thoughts: Vocalizing and embodying the bureaucratic questions was quite useful in acknowledging the government’s voice and presence as something tangible rather than a floating, arbitrary entity. It was interesting observing the bureaucrats performing their role with confidence and entitlement, contrasting with the applicants who appeared to be more stressed to respond convincingly and promptly. There is a notable distinction between performativity and performance. Performing consciously and theatrically amplifying real bureaucratic texts by occupying roles and overidentifying with them can constitute a diffractive moment, a tool itself. From bureaucratic text to performative text scenarios to speech. The embedded (but rather unconscious) performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. These theatrical moments attempt to highlight the shrouded performative elements of these processes.
**Reflections-Thoughts:** Vocalizing and embodying the bureaucratic questions was quite useful in acknowledging the government’s voice and presence as something tangible rather than a floating, arbitrary entity. It was interesting observing the bureaucrats performing their role with confidence and entitlement, contrasting with the applicants who appeared to be more stressed to respond convincingly and promptly. There is a notable distinction between performativity and performance. Performing consciously and theatrically amplifying real bureaucratic texts by occupying roles and overidentifying with them can constitute a diffractive moment, a tool itself. From bureaucratic text to performative text scenarios to speech. The embedded (but rather unconscious) performativity of “real” bureaucratic rituals establishes and empowers (bureaucratic) institutions through repetitive acts. These theatrical moments attempt to highlight the shrouded performative elements of these processes.
