Elke Van Campenhout
Elke Van Campenhout is an artistic researcher and dramaturg. She worked for six years as a theatre, dance and cultural critic for the newspaper De Standaard and the national radio station Klara in Belgium. For four of these years she also was the head editor of the performance magazine Etcetera, that in this period mainly focussed on transdisciplinary practices and theory. Since 2003 she works as a free-lance dramaturg and curator on several projects (Reflection group of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Expedition in Gasthuis (Amsterdam), Acting out Technology (Brussels), ART/WORK in PAF (Reims), IETM (Informal European Theatre Meeting), Self-Education at TanzQuartierWien (Vienna), reflection groep of APAP (Advanced Performing Arts Platform) and different small-scale workspaces (Nadine (Brussels).
Since 2005, she teaches Art Critique at the UA (University of Antwerp), at the Theatre Sciences Deparment.
In 2006, she started up the experimental post-graduate program APT (Advanced Performance Training), a self-educational project, based on the individual research projects of the participants. The curriculum of the program is based on the exchange of knowledge within the group, and constructed out of the questions and demands posed by the participants themselves.
Presentation Overview
In the practice of running a post-graduate program for performers and theoreticians, called APT (Advanced Performance Training), we focus on two main principles: self-education and collaboration. Which means that we try to build up an environment in which knowledge is not constructed out of the hierarchical structure of 'what needs to be known' in order to fit into the pre-set criteria for 'functional knowledge' in society, but that we follow the idea that emancipation can only be constructed on the basis of the assumption of equality, as a basis for developing confrontation, conflict and discussion.
The interest of Elke Van Campenhout in developing APT, is an interest in hospitality, in the opening up of the personal space, the intimate body, the culturally nursed realm of thoughts and knowledge, to the invasion of another way of looking, experiencing and constructing reality, especially through artistic practices.
APT has been running as a self-organized education program with a group of artists and theoreticians since January 2008, and in this period the experiences and research work on self-education and collaboration in artistic research have been developed.
