Wooloo in the Zone

photo by William Rawlings

As part of "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?" and the 3rd Ghetto Biennial, Danish art collective invited all the participants of the event to display their Apple products in one of the sites the biennial next to the recuperation sculpture that were on show. The project had the ingenious title "ighetto." More info soon.

Four Concerts in the Zone

Dungeon Acid and Jean Claude Saintilus performing in Port-au-Prince

Jean-Louis Huhta/Dungeon Acid have performed four times. First performance was a collaborative improvisation with Per Hüttner where they mixed the sounds of the interviews carried out in "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?" and the sounds of Huttner playing the cage. The second was a collaboration with artist and voodoo drummer Jean Claude Saintilus. The third concert was an MC session with local artist and rapper Adler Pierre and the final concert was a collaboration between Dungeon Acid, Joyce Ip, Nanna Dalunde och Roberto Peyre. The performances lasted as long as 2,5hrs and slowly became street parties where the Haitian audience enjoyed music and life with their foreign guests.

Jean-Louis Huhta and Per Hüttner performing at Rue de Magazin de l'Etat

Interviews

Jean Claude Saintilus listening to his interview.

Interviewing people (artists, visitors and others) in the neighbourhood of the Ghetto Biennale and also the foreign participants forms a central part of "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?" and our work in Haiti. These interviews are going to be mixed into a portrait of the block or "Le collier de voix," like Syndia says in her interview. On this page you will find the interviews unedited and in their entirety. We see this as an important resource for understanding Haitian life and art. Most interviews are performed in French and Creole.

Our New Home

Today we are moving into our new office/home/HQ. Check back for updates.

Arrived in Port-au-Prince

The artists from Wooloo and Vision Forum who work for the 3rd Ghetto Biennale have arrived in Port-au-Prince and have started working on "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood." The first interviews with local artists have been performed and a location, electricity and sound system is being negotiated. For more information about the project click here.

We are looking for a Verb.

The Vision Forum and Wooloo team that go to participate in the 3rd Ghetto Bienniale in Haiti needs your help. We wondering if there is a verb for "non-being" in any known language. If you are aware of any word, verb please write us on info [at] visionforum.eu. Thanks in advance.

Andre the Great

“Well, every perception is a misperception, you might say. Actually, my career has been based on some profound misunderstandings.”

-Carl Andre.

Proceed to gate no... (sorry I didn't understand)

We are all eagerly packing our bags and trying our mosquito-coil-holders. Sandrine is leaving for New York tomorrow, Sara for Italy, the Wooloos for Canada and shortly we will all be in Port-au-Prince (that is of course unless we misunderstand the air hosts and air hostesses). Follow us here, here and here.

Vision Forum wins grant for Haiti project.

Vision Forum is proud to announce that we have received a grant to particpate in the 3rd Ghetto Bienniale, in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti. The project is a collaboration with Danish collective Wooloo and is entitled "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?" The grant was awared from Kulturrådet (Swedish Arts Council). More info about Wooloo here and here and about Vision Forum here.

Sandrine Nicoletta to join "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?"

We are proud to announce that Sandrine Nicoletta will join "Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood?" She is previously a member of Vision Forum project Temporality and Dislocation of Self.

Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood? - Vision Forum with Wooloo at 3rd Ghetto Biennial.

Wooloo (Sixten Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard); Vision Forum (Per Hüttner, Sara Giannini and Jean Louis Huhta.)

Vision Forum, in collaboration with Wooloo, will set up a participatory space focusing on creative potential in misunderstanding at the 3rd Ghetto Biennale. It will be a place for exchange where people together can witness, account, investigate and collect misunderstandings recognized as a valid form for communication and a vehicle for knowledge transformation. The project will open a room for debating the issues raised by this edition of the Ghetto Biennial, reflect on the meeting between different worlds and also draw from the specific forms of knowledge in Haiti and in Haitian culture.

The space will take the form of a TENT, which will be located inside the Biennale. For the whole duration of the exhibition the TENT will be a meeting point, host activities, attract visitors and involve local artists to contribute. It will have a multitude of functions:

•    A meeting point for artists and members of the biennale to meet each other, the local community and to ponder the potential of misunderstanding.

•    A transcription/collection point for past, present and future misunderstandings.

•    A gathering to reflect on the Bienniale and on the misunderstandings that might be generated.

•    A site for musical experimentation.

We focus on misunderstanding in order to consider the interplay between forces of homogeneity and heterogeneity in today's globalized world. In its movement towards inclusiveness and sameness, globality discards binary concepts such as “centre and periphery.” It urges us to discover variety and multiplicity within homogeneity, so that a relation of differences replaces dual thinking and universalism.

We learn from the Martinique-born philosopher Édouard Glissant that sameness and otherness are coexisting because “it is possible to be one and multiple at the same time; you can be yourself and the other.” From these premises our response to outline of the 3rd Ghetto Biennale reflects on misunderstanding as a key element in communication, and knowledge production. The TENT will offer a space for negotiation of the ever-changing (de)formations of identities and human cultures. Especially, we hope that the TENT of misunderstanding will pull us closer to Glissant when he talks about the right to be opaque:

“Everyone likes broccoli, but I hate it. But do I know why? Not at all. I accept my opacity on that level. Why wouldn’t I accept the other’s opacity? Why must I absolutely understand the other in order to live next to him and work with him? (…) A racist is someone who refuses what he doesn’t understand. I can accept what I don’t understand. Opacity is a right we must have.”

When we accept that we do not fully understand ourselves, we are ready to accept the possibility to be surprised both by others as well as by ourselves. It unleashes our power to interact with fellow humans in a ludic and creative manner.

Misunderstanding is that which is lost or unrevealed, that which is invented and supposed. It multiplies the facets and layers of communication and knowledge production. Thanks to the gaps and shifts provoked by misunderstanding, communication is not a single-bond process but an open string in expansion. Misunderstanding is the silent dynamic generating the perception we have of ourselves and what surrounds us. Unspoken and unwritten yet performed in every stage of our relation to the many others both inside and outside us, misunderstanding will be the center of attraction of our intervention for the Ghetto Biennale.

The realization of the project will benefit from different experiences: Vision Forum has a long track record of organizing trans-cultural art events around the world. Wooloo have arranged many socially based projects, especially where they allow people from vastly different backgrounds to live together for shorter periods. Jean-Louis Huhta is a musician with Caribbean roots who will use music's power of bringing people together.

More info about Wooloo here and here and about Vision Forum here.