rasmus knud & Søren Andreasen / Session Work

116 pages / colour / 1000 ex. / text in English / 2005 / Euro 18,-

Published by Pork Salad Press / ISBN 87-91409-20-9

SESSION WORK is a book representing the collaborative art practice of rasmus knud & Søren Andreasen. In sixteen richly illustrated essays they write about the drifting and discursive potential of collaborative work, inspired by the productive processes of free jazz and dub sessions, leisure time spending and cinematic imagination. SESSION WORK is at the same time a presentation of specific ideas and projects, and a general discussion of contemporary art practice as part of a political everyday.

The book presents the work in a mix of interpretations of specific historical works (like Jacques Tati’s Playtime), a collaborative improvised practice and representations of current states of negotiations. This book is the product of an ongoing discussion, and exposes the ideas and facts of what they do. Or rather, what they have done until now.

rasmus knud & Søren Andreasen is a collaborative art project, working together since 1999 in the constellation of Sebastian Schiørring, Johannes Christoffersen (rasmus knud) and Søren Andreasen. The project has been presented at Manifesta III (Ljubljana 2000), The Yokohama Triennial (2001), Esplanaden (Copenhagen 2002) and The Echo Show (Glasgow 2003).

From the book:

… we came together with a load of experience from working collaboratively elsewhere and we had a variety of corresponding ideas about the ways in which a collaborative situation can represent and discuss the formation of social space. Talking together was, and still is, the basis of what we do, and the collaborative ambition became to find ways of transforming open discussions into productive ones. Our aim became the development of a working space that could materialize a discursive blend of mutual ideas, interests and ambitions.

The collaborative situation is what we practice and what we want to talk about. The production of social space, in other words. How we are all taking part in a continuous reorganization of space, always, already filled with organisation and activity and conflict. And how no one can claim the authority to legitimize, survey or see through productions of social space.

This pursuit of a collaborative working space, open to communication and continually revocable, is inspired by improvisation work in collaborated sessions of "Free Form": group improvisation involving patience and a willingness to wait for things to happen.