The Curious Loop

With:
Bill Fontana (composer & media artist)
Hans Peter Kuhn (visual & sound artist)
Sebastian Mullaert a.k.a Minilogue (DJ & producer)
Hans Rösenström (sound artist)
Ove Holmqvist (sound artist)
Steffi Weismann (sound artist)
Dr. Ursula Koch (neurophysiologist)
Ji Woo & Sun Woo (Zen Masters)

* FIELD KITCHEN ACADEMY is an interdisciplinary educational residency program, that aims at transcending the existing borders between research and practice; beyond forms and formats with innovative experimental tools and experiences on holistic knowing and thinking.

16 participants are accepted through applications to work with interdisciplinary artists and experts around the topic of LOOP. Loops represent a time that is suspended, which is a compressed source of the past, present and the future: The past (as it is looping the material produced in the past), the future (as it will also take place in the future) and the present (as it is experienced in the now). And all these will soon become a history… and the history, eating its own tail, will probably repeat itself again. The Curious Loop takes Ouroboros as a conceptual cue, an adopted symbol of alchemy originating in Egyptian iconography. The term derives from Ancient Greek: Oura (tail), Bora (food) and Bibrōskō (I eat). The ouroboros is often referred to as a symbol of eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth, in addition to perpetuity and infinity.

There is a section at the beginning of a loop when the audience is simply introduced to “sentences” of the format. The loop then builds upon itself by repetitive sequences, and a new phase occurs. The repetitions combine on top of each other, one after another, a certain state of being frozen or being suspended in time is created. Like an alchemy, the loop -although it is the same ‘sentence’- transforms the state from becoming accustomed-to, through suspension, and then the mere impression of infinity. Then within this infinity, one might crack the door open to find the new things opening up the new experiences.

The loop also oscillates between the known and the unknown; as for the viewer and listener it could unfold to a future of known (as it repeats the same material over and over again), but also it may unfold to an unknown (as surprises are always welcome), and one never knows if the loop will be broken with an unknown sound or visual component - no matter how well defined and repeated the loop has developed in the past. If one cannot step into the same river twice, and if one opens to perception with all senses, what differences can we find in each loop? Additionally the loop creates a safe space in which one can experiment and search for other new elements that can be incorporated into the ‘system,’ thus feeds the curiosity. Therefore, loop can be considered as the perfect system to be safe but also curious for new modifications. Or, in the case of interrupted system, content can be alchemised into an enriched loop.

www.fieldkitchen-academy.org