2008-2009: GoodTripBadTrip 1 / curated and tutored by Mark Kremer

What, How, Why?

The artwork as a trip, contemporary art in relation to the notion of the trip: that is the subject of a research & workshop project which is organised in two phases in the academic years 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. Conceptually, this project reflects on one of the spearheads of the curriculum of the Dutch Art Institute: the many travels and trips to socially/culturally interesting cities and regions - often on the periphery of Europe. As a notion, and in this project, the trip is considered as an interesting idea per se, a concept with artistic significance..

One of the aims of GoodTripBadTrip is to relate the notion of the trip to effects of art: sensorial impulses, thought inducers. The project investigates legacies of Psychedelia and Conceptualism, it revisits the historical era of the 1960s when Psychedelia and Conceptualism were possibly more intertwined than what is today mostly assumed. Confronted with the liquid projections at music concerts of The Soft Machine, spectators in the 1960s made their inner trips. The physical movement of this art was extended to the realm of the psyche; people went on psychological journeys. Conceptualism however also knows many examples of artworks that propelled viewers to embark on sometimes surprising mind trips.

The workshop 2008-2009 takes form as a monthly series of intense one-day-meetings with discussions, presentations, enquiries and viewings. Each month a guest speaker, an artist or theoretician, sheds light on the workshop thematics in a lecture/presentation. In face to face encounters, the curator connects with individual students to discuss their understanding of the workshop thematics and the development of their work. The final part of the workshop is a journey to ‘a forsaken island’ close to Greece in April/May 2009. There the students will realize a series of Exhibitions of a Day. These events are dedicated to the idea of the trip. Thus, students participate in presentations, publications, exhibitions.

GoodTripBadTrip is curated by Mark Kremer in collaboration with John Heymans. Mark Kremer is an independant art curator who is based in Amsterdam and has much experience in developing large thematic exhibitions in close collaboration with artists. John Heymans is a philosopher of technology who is currently writing his PhD on the intersections of arts and sciences; he is also regular DAI-mentor/tutor, in particular on theoretical matters.

One important reason for starting this project, is the observation that a certain type of historical material, once an integral part of the artfield of the sixties, has almost completely vanished from the current main stream art discourse. GoodTripBadTrip is an attempt to rescue this material and bring it back to the present. In the contemporary cultural perspective and today’s almost endless possibilities to travel, the notion of another kind of traveling, traveling without moving, is gaining importance. Hence the notion of the trip in, and as art, is of interest for today.

Link: GoodTripBadTrip