Situating Artistic Practice Today 2011/2012
Framework: Van Abbemuseum Curated & tutored : Steven ten Thije and Ahmet Ögüt
20 April 2012
special guest: Brian Holmes
Brian Holmes is an art and cultural critic, now living in Chicago after some twenty years in Paris. He has a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley, was the English editor of publications for Documenta X in 1997, has worked with art/activist groups such as Ne Pas Plier and Bureau d'Etudes, and has published with many journals in various languages, including Multitudes, Open, Springerin and Brumaría, as well as numerous exhibition catalogues. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fe, Switzerland. His recent books include Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society (2009) and Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering (2008). Text archive at http://brianholmes.wordpress.com.
special guest: Charles Esche
23 March 2012
Location: Van Abbemuseum
In this session the participants to Situating Artistic Practice Today will present the outcome of the second 'assignment' in which they were asked to re-design one of either two exhibitions. The exhibition under discussion are two collection displays of the Van Abbemuseum. The first one is a collection display curated by Charles Esche in 2009 under the title 'Strange and Close', which was recently reinstalled in CAPC in Bordeaux, and, secondy, a collection display made by Rudi Fuchs in the summer of 1983, this collection display has recently been reinstalled in the Van Abbemuseum and was on show parallel with 'Strange and Close'. To get a proper sense of the space, the session will take place in the Van Abbemuseum itself. As special guest to this session, Charles Esche will join us to say a few words about his exhibition and enter into a discussion on curating with the students.
9 February 2012
Situating Artistic Practice Today – A seminar on How Do You Do What You Do / To Me (curating in the Dutch art scene) by Mariette Dölle.
Mariette Dölle has been artistic director of TENT since 2006. TENT is a platform for contemporary art that has its roots in Rotterdam. The monumental exhibition space is housed in a former school building in the Witte de Withstreet, Rotterdam’s cultural hub, with fellow institutions such as Witte de With, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Worm and the Ro Theatre only a stone’s throw away. With its diverse programme of exhibitions, discussions and publications, TENT addresses relevant developments in contemporary art, focused on the topicality of art in Rotterdam. A pivotal aspect of this work is our commitment to supporting artists who generate open and discursive connections between otherwise disparate fields and communities.
Mariette Dölle has organized solo exhibitions by Katarina Zdjelar, Wendelien van Oldenborgh and Lara Almarcegui, among others, and curated group exhibitions including To All Tomorrows Parties, Redefine the Enemy, and Paramaribo Perspectives. She was a member of the jury for the Dolf Henkes Award 2009 (winner Melvin Moti), a scout for the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs 2011, and a member of the International Projects committee for the Mondriaan Foundation. Until 2005 she was responsible for Beyond; a long term public art project for a new neighbourhood for 80,000 residents to the west of Utrecht. She has supervised the building of a museum pavilion designed by Stanley Brouwn, an artist-in-residence pavilion by Bik Van der Pol and an archaeological centre designed by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Prior to this she was co-curator of the platform for experimental art Casco, and jointly responsible for projects by Otto Berchem, Matthieu Laurette and Asier Perez Gonzalez, among others.
www.tentrotterdam.nl
12 January 2012
10.00 - 17.00 Situating Artistic Practice Today Steven ten Thije and Ahmet Ögüt
2 December 2011
guest: Borut Vogelnik IRWIN A Slovenian art collective
10.00 - 17.00 Situating Artistic Practice Today – Matter of Choice. This year the Van Abbemuseum offers a seminar to the first year DAI students, that addresses the current position of art in society. Through a series of ‘experiments’ and readings, the students are invited to develop an expanded understanding of their own practice in relation to a historical and contemporary background of art production and presentation. Special attention thereby will be given to the historical institutionalization of art in modern times in museums, galleries and a professional art history, next to a tour d’ horizon of contemporary practice. A returning issue will be the effect of post-1989 globalisation on the position of art.
The third session of Situating Artistic Practice brings the students from the more speculative, theoretical towards the first of ‘three’ assignments. Throughout the year they will think through artistic practice on three levels: material, institution, society. As Hans Belting has elucidated in the text read for last session the Western idea of a modern and autonomous art is shifting in a global world where the key concepts of ethnicity and history are changing in signification. This doesn’t mean that what used to be art, ceases to be, but more that its might produce different affects or can be used to different aims. Standing with one foot in the old world and one in the new, we will try to de- and reconstruct the artistic practice. Our first stop in this is what is our material.
At 15.30 the DAI & Situating Artistic Practice Today will team up with the ArtEZ studium Generale and open the doors for members of the public joining the: ArtEZ Studium Generale Friends! masterclass 2 December 15.30 – 17.00 pm (Location: DAI Lecture room) IRWIN A Slovenian art collective In this masterclass Borut Vogelnik, one of the artists of the Slovenian art collective IRWIN and students of DAI/MFA ArtEZ, talk about how artists could create spaces, parallel to political and social structures in society. Spaces in which people are able to approach each other in new and different ways. IRWIN The Slovenian art collective IRWIN founded in the early 80s, has responded to the collapse of Yugoslavia with a declaration of independence, forming a new, artist state: NSK State in Time. This monumental and collective artistic act is now already 20 years old and marks one of the most charged and interesting art projects in recent history. It has countered the disintegration of community life by creating new forms of relationships and communal discourse. In a social environment marked by mistrusted and anxiety IRWIN has installed a space where it is possible to encounter each again – as friends. More information Website NSK State in Time
21 October 2011
10.00 - 17.00 Situating Artistic Practice Today – A seminar on where we are, and how we got there Framework: Van Abbemuseum Curated & tutored: Steven ten Thije and Ahmet Ögüt
This year the Van Abbemuseum offers a seminar to the first year DAI students that addresses the current position of art in society. Through a series of ‘experiments’ and readings, the students are invited to develop an expanded understanding of their own practice in relation to a historical and contemporary background of art production and presentation. read more Special attention thereby will be given to the historical institutionalization of art in modern times in museums, galleries and a professional art history, next to a tour d’ horizon of contemporary practice. A returning issue will be the effect of post-1989 globalisation on the position of art.
The second session of Situating Artistic Practice, run by Steven ten Thije, zooms in on the historical juncture at which we find ourselves through Hans Belting's analysis of 'global art'. Building up towards a more practice based part of the seminar, we will spend one more time setting up a shared background concerning the situation today. Questions to discuss in this are: what is the relation to 'modernity', and 'history'; how does globalization affect notions of centre and periphery; and of course, what affects does this have on art.