ELKE VAN CAMPENHOUT

Elke Van Campenhout is an artistic researcher, and coordinator of the international research center a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies).

Formerly she worked as a free lance dramaturg and researcher on artistic research projects in nadine brussels, paf (performing arts forum) reims, TQW (tanzquartierwien), kunstenfestivaldesarts brussels, gasthuis amsterdam and many other places.
She was a critic for the newspaper De Standaard, the classical radio station Klara, and head editor of the performance magazine etcetera.
As research coordinator of a.pass elke van campenhout is in charge of long-term artistic research projects in the a.pass research center and for the public communication of research methodologies and results.

“Bureau d’Espoir”

In the last 3 years Elke Van Campenhout initiated the research project ‘Bureau d’Espoir’, a collective brainstorming cell for the development, production, distribution and therapeutic redefinition of ‘critical’ hope in confusing times. in the first stages hope was analyzed and put into practice as a dynamic exercise in the political redistribution of sensual perception, agency, and voice. In a second stage ‘Bureau d’Espoir’ produced a series of experimental settings dealing with the choreography of the social body in transformation. this set-up led to the development of a movement of Hunger Artists, later redefined as Anorexic Practices for Society. in 2013 Bureau d’Espoir opens up its scope of interest to physical spiritual practices, embodying change in a spiritual rethinking of the relation between the ‘I’ and the ‘All’. combining ontologies, politics and social ethics, Bureau d’Espoir aims at liberating discourse from its confined space of authority, only ably to speak to the already-initiated and under constant threat of (self-)censorship.

Artists in residence in the frame of THEMATICS: “Author / Authority”