Seminar 7

Course Tutors: Nick Aikens, Annie Fletcher

Guest Tutor: Nuria Guell

The seminar in Barcelona will be divided in two parts. On Tuesday I am delighted we will be joined by artist Nuria Guell. Nuria, who lives just outside Barcelona and who has worked in and with the city for many years will present her work which she describes as ‘an analysis of how power devices affect our subjectivity, subjecting it to law and hegemonic morals.’ Nuria’s work is explicitly context specific, often non-image or object based, responding to a given set of social, political structures and engaging themes such as migration and gender. In the afternoon we will visit the city with Nuria where she will describe her practice via people and places in Barcelona. Texts by Edi Muka and Marina Garces, amongst others are on the dropbox.

On Wednesday Annie and I will hold face-to-face meetings about your work for the Athens show. We expect quite detailed discussions of specific work and projects. Please come with material to show us. On Wednesday evening and Thursday morning we will discuss the exhibition in Athens together. This will follow on from conversations with Navine in Arnhem, mapping the spaces, budget discussions, title etc. The floor plan of Hot Wheels is on the drop box, as is a working budget. Please come with titles in mind for books you would like to contribute to the library. Lastly, Zoe will be presenting / introducing some workshop ideas to the group.

Seminar 6

Course tutors: Annie Fletcher, Navine G. Khan-Dossos

Guest tutors: Suze May Sho

This month’s Articulating Practice, Practicing Articulation will be focussed on ideas of experimentation and failure. The DAI week will be formed around a close reading of Jack Halbertsam’s The Queer Art of Failure but also working closely with our guest tutors Suze May Sho, an Arnhem-based curatorial collective who, among many other activities, run PROBE; an important site for artists to test out ideas on a monumental scale. Alongside these two core encounters, the group will continue presenting their progress and work with each other, as well as looking forward to how a group exhibition in Athens will activate individual practice but also a group dynamic. Ahead of Athens, now feels like a good time to do and fail, experiment and learn through careful process or leaps of faith! 

Monday evening: screening

Tuesday day: out with guest tutors 

Tuesday evening: text discussion

Wednesday day:  one-to-one meetings with Navine and Annie

Wednesday evening: student presentations

Thursday: group meeting 

Seminar 5

NEVERTHELESS, FAITH IS IN THE AIR

Course tutor: Nick Aikens

Guest tutor: Pádraic E. Moore

For our seminar in Epen we are delighted to welcome Pádraic E. Moore.

Pádraic is a writer , curator and art historian. His research interests focus on the influence of esoteric philosophies upon literary and visual arts. Recent study considers how occult organisations, such as the Theosophical Society, offered a vital catalyst for change in late 19th and early 20th century art. Moore’s projects often explore how contemporary culture has embraced aesthetics and ideals informed by such
esoteric traditions; chronicling the work of artists who refer to or follow in this tradition is an integral aspect of his practice. Moore’s seminar will be multifaceted, including screenings, readings and onetoone conversations. The seminar will also include a field trip to the magnificent EbenEzer Tower in Eastern Belgium. The tower was constructed by polymath Robert Garcet (19122001) as a means of demonstrating his cosmological theories.

Monday, 19 February

Evening: Screening of several works by artist Shana Moulton.

Tuesday, 20 February

Morning:

Pádraic E. Moore to introduce his practice/research via recent exhibitions/publications.
Introductory lecture will include presentation of works/material by artists/thinkers who have
influenced his practice. Note that students should have read One Could Almost Call it Holiness,
on pages 109 to 131 of The Egyptian Postures in advance of this presentation, this has already
been provided as a PDF. The lecture will also introduce the Musee du Silex and provide rationale for the site visit.

Afternoon:

Excursion to Musee du Silex

Evening:

Students to present their projects (15 minutes to present and 15 mins discussion)

Wednesday, 21 February
Morning and afternoon:

One to one discussions

Evening:

Students to present their projects

Thursday, 22 February

tbc

Seminar 4

In January Articulating Practice, Practicing Articulation will begin in Thessaloniki and make their way by train to Athens for a four day extension. In Thessaloniki the group will focus on several sites in the city that speak of the complex layers of its history, including buildings that tell the story of religious and secular change such as the Yeni Camii Mosque, the remnants of the Ottoman past and the Turkish present at the Ataturk Museum, and with regard to current modes of Greek identity, a visit to the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle . The group will then decamp to Athens where their own research suggestions will be the building blocks of our exploration of the city on foot, with sites including the Pnix, the National Gardens, several artist-led project spaces, and abandoned Olympic sites. We will be welcoming Kyriaki Goni to share her practice with us and conduct a workshop, as well as an artist talk by James Bridle, also a resident of Athens. 

Seminar 3

Course tutors: Nick Aikens
Guests / collaborators: Marwa Asanios, Leire Vergara / Showroom

Monday:
Screenings: Hito Steyerl Trilogy - November (2004), Lovely Andrea (2007) and Abstract (2012)

Tuesday:
Face to face meetings with Nick to discuss research questions. (group to continue work on research question and planning for Athens throughout the day).

Your research question should be the frame through which you will work over the remainder of the year and will be the guide for the final project in Athens. The research question is not a title for a work. Rather, the Athens project will be one outcome of your research period over the next months. Please think: What do I want to investigate over the next six months? What is my field off interest and how do I want to frame my practice?

Evening: Present research questions to the group (a strict 15 minutes each)

Wednesday:
Marwa Asanios (teaming up with Showroom) on her artist’s practice (morning) and 98 weeks (evening)

Reading:
Steyerl, Hito: ‘The Terror of Total Dasein: Economies of Presence in the Art Field’ in dismagazine:

Power, Nina: ‘The Wound Work’ lecture at Liverpool Biennial 2010.

Evening: Reading group: Karen Barad ‘What is the Measure of Nothingness’ (text is on the drop box.)

Thursday morning:
Group meeting to discuss Athens, content and logistics. Navine will join us on skype. 

Seminar 2

The November session of Practicing Articulation, Articulating Practice will be exploring political memory, and how as artists and thinkers, these experiences shape our output. A screening of Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness will begin our session by looking back to the first Gulf War, its historical relevance as the first war to be live-streamed, and the implications of this experience of war watched from the living room. We will explore Slavoj Zizek’s Welcome To The Desert of the Real to parallel our screening, and begin a process of determining our own formative experiences of war, political change and personal upheaval, be those first hand or through media coverage. We are very excited to be joined by our guest tutor, Monira Al Qadiri, who will be exploring her experiences of growing up in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, but also the impact of the Arab Spring on her own life and practice.

Seminar 1

We will all be in Cologne as we thought it was important to start the year together.

Schedule:

Monday evening: Intro with Annie Fletcher and Navine Khan-Dossos followed by screening

Tuesday: Mapping the year and study group presentations (Navine, Nick Aikens and Annie will be present)

Wednesday: Face to face meetings with Annie and Nick

Thursday: TBC with Nick  

For the Tuesday session we will be spending time introducing each other’s practice. With this in mind please can you prepare some images / film / texts / publications / stories that will provide a way in to discuss your work. We will each (tutors included) present their work very informally for 20 - 30 mins or so and then discuss it in the group. We think it is really important to first learn about each other's work and understand where we are all speaking from .

Please find attached two readings for the seminar by Jennifer Daryl Slack and Edward Said. The Slack text gives a very good overview/ introduction into theories of articulation and the Said piece feels timely and important in terms of thinking about what we are doing as intellectuals. I shall also set up a drop box where we will upload the readings for each of the sessions. There will also be a folder in there where you can upload any material you want to share with the group. This could be a portfolio or a text you might think is interesting for us to look at.

Readings:

- Jennifer Daryl Slack, ‘The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies’ in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. pp. 112-127

- Edward W. Said, ‘Representations of the Intellectual’ in Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. pp. 3-25