DAI-bulletin 2009-2010 number two October 2009
This is the second issue of the monthly DAI-bulletin in the academic year 2009-2010, informing you about our program and about important dates and events. Eventual alterations can be found on our website under DAI-bulletins.
DAI-week October 5 till October 9
DAI-CANTINA
Lunch will be served Monday from 12:00-13:00, other days from 13:00-14:00, dinner daily from 18:30-19:30.
Monday October 5
11:00–12:00 (project room)
FOR ALL 1st and 2nd YEAR STUDENTS
A welcome to the DAI with Gabrielle Schleijpen, who will introduce the curriculum for the coming year.
Thesis programme 2009-2010
One of the main issues in the second year of the DAI-course is writing a thesis. In order to start and complete this task in a proper way the students have to attend a series of mandatory lectures in which they are prepared in a theoretical as well as a practical way. As far as the theory is concerned, they have to prepare and read relevant theoretical papers and other publications in order to discuss them during the group sessions. As far as the practice is concerned, they have to do for instance a number of writing exercises.
The thesis in question has to be strongly connected to the artistic practice of the student. In order words, the DAI-student has to find answers to compelling questions, not in the artistic, but in another, more theoretical domain. In the thesis the student does not give a survey of an artist's oeuvre or an artistic movement, but he/she tries to dive deeper. This is the difference between a bachelor and a master thesis.
In order to find a subject for a thesis that fits in with the artistic work made or to be made the two DAI-tutors theory will pay studio visits to their group of students. For the current course year Alena Alexandrova will tutor the second year students. John Heymans will tutor the first year students.
13:00–15:30 (space to be announced)
FOR ALL 1st YEAR STUDENTS
Introduction DAI-Theory
with thesis coordinater John Heymans
13:00–17:00 (projectroom)
FOR ALL 2nd YEAR STUDENTS
with thesis mentor Alena Alexandrova
For this plenary session we will read and discuss texts by Rancière and Bourriaud and address issues of art and politics, politically engaged art, relational aesthetics as a follow up of the visit to the Istanbul Biennial.
Jacques Rancière, “Artistic Regimes and the Shortcomings of the Notion of Modernity”; “Politicized Art” In: The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London:Continuum) 2004, pp. 20-31, 60-66. Nicolas Bourriaud, “Relational Form” In: Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Wood (Les presses du reel) 2002, pp. 11-25. There will be one hour for discussion of questions related to the writing of the thesis. I would like to invite four of you (who did not present last time) to introduce the texts. Two people will present briefly (20-30 minutes) Rancière’s text in the first part and two people will do the same for Bourriaud’s text in the second part of the session. The presentations will be followed by a discussion.
For those who are particularly interested in the topic I would recommend as an additional reading: Claire Bishop, ”Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”, October 110, Fall 2004, pp. 51-79. Jacques Rancière, “Problems and Transformations of Critical Art” In: Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. Steven Corcoran (Cambridge: Polity) 2009, pp.45-61. Nicolas Bourriaud, “Precarious Constructions: Answer to Jacques Rancière on Art and Politics”, Open 17, 2009, pp. 20-40.
19:30 (projectroom)
For all students
“Future Research Collections in a Period of Recessional Curating”
Dr Clémentine Deliss, Director, Future Academy, Edinburgh College of Art
Clémentine Deliss looks at the evolving nature of collections as a result of transformed artistic practices and models of cultural production in the 21st century. If previous study collections were built around art works and physical objects of various kinds ranging from ethnographica to paintings how do we imagine a less material-based collection, one that gathers together the off-cuts, conceptual blueprints, and prototypes of research and production? What type of curatorial approach would a future study collection require? Would it necessitate rooms, museological amenities, and an archival procedure, as we know it? Future Research Collections is part of Future Academy, a forecasting laboratory based at Edinburgh College of Art that works in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland.
Tuesday October 6
9:00-16:00
Face to face
Meetings with Alena Alexandrova
10:00–17:00 (projectroom)
For all students
Artist presentations
by DAI-students Taf Hassam, Lauren Alexander, Omar Koubaa, Chiara Fumai, Jimini Hignett, Patricia Sousa and Gregory Grozos.
Their 20 – minute presentations will be reviewed and discussed AS PRESENTATIONS by guest advisor Clémentine Deliss and Gabrielle Schleijpen.
19:30 (projectroom)
For all students
DAI students Lado Darakhvelidze and Veridiana Zurita will tell about their participation in respectively the 11th Istanbul Biennial and the REAL PRESENCE project that was held this year in Belgrade and Venice.
Wednesday October 7
Today we will introduce three of the projects that are programmed at the DAI this year: GOODTRIPBADTRIP.reloaded (Mark Kremer), If I Can’t Dance and Platform for (Un)Solicited Research and Advice (Manifesta) and Affect (If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution)
11:00-13:00 (projectroom)
For all students
GOODTRIPBADTRIP.reloaded
Curated by Mark Kremer with contributions by John Heymans
This research & workshop project started last year with at its core various reflections on the idea of the trip in and as art and goes on this year focusing at the era of the trip: the sixties. The sixties are understood as a key in the formation of what we call contemporary art yet in this process many of the inherent contradictions or paradoxes in the art of the era have been discarded. I invite students to a complex field where psychedelic projections can turn out to have rational underpinnings whereas conceptual works project mystical trajectories.
15:00-17:00 (projectroom)
For all students
‘Affect’
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
With Phil Collins, Hito Steyerl
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution was founded in 2005 by curators Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher. Inspired by the quote of the anarchist Emma Goldman, the curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance… explores the critical and celebratory implications of this statement in artists’ work, curatorial and theoretical practice.
If I Can’t Dance… works along the systematic of collaboration. It doesn’t have a ‘house’, but instead produces and develops projects and programmes that have different manifestations in different institutions within the Netherlands and abroad. Each edition, defined by a certain field of investigation, engages a set of partners and unfolds along a travelling trajectory. Previous editions examined theatricality (Edition I) feminism (Edition II) in contemporary visual art and masquerade (Edition III).
The theme for the upcoming Edition will circle around the notion of affect. This thematic can be read in the light of If I Can’t Dance...'s continuing exploration, since its inception, of certain intellectual paradigms such as feminism and performativity.
What interests us in this notion is well articulated by Brian Massumi who says:“By ‘affect’ I don’t mean ‘emotion’ in the everyday sense. The way I use it comes primarily from Spinoza. He talks of the body in terms of its capacity for affecting or being affected. These are not two different capacities — they always go together. When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to being affected in turn, and in a slightly different way than you might have been the moment before. You have made a transition, however slight. You have stepped over a threshold. Affect is this passing of a threshold.”
The workshops tutors will be the artists Phil Collins and Hito Steyerl.
The workshop will be coordinated by Tanja Baudoin.
The workshops public moment will take place in the Polish art centre Wyspa that is located in the grounds of Gdańsk’s Shipyard in the building of the former Basic Shipbuilding School. Wyspa, founded in 2004, is an innovative artistic organisation combining the presentation of contemporary art with deliberations on the shape of social culture.
19:30-21:30 (projectroom)
For all students
PLATFORM FOR (UN)SOLICITED RESEARCH AND ADVICE
Organised by Manifesta
A project by the Manifesta Education Department of International Foundation Manifesta (IFM), Amsterdam in collaboration with Dutch Art Institute (DAI), coordinated by Yoeri Meessen (Manifesta), Saskia van der Kroef (Manifesta) and Florian Göttke (DAI).
The Platform for (un)Solicited Research and Advice seeks to actively involve art students in the discourse of Manifesta and the development of the Manifesta Biennials, by providing a forum to further research into key themes surrounding Manifesta’s projects and to provoke contextualization of topical issues. The primary modus operandi of the platform is based on the so-called ‘brief’, presented each month by an artist, curator, academic or other professional connected to Manifesta. This brief basically functions as a open invitation to each of the platform’s participants, soliciting a response in the form of a concise research. The brief, then, constitutes a basis upon which one could generate “what if’s” and “why not’s”, and - whilst doing so - letting no assumption go unchallenged.
The project and its contents will continuously be made accessible via an online source, and in a later stage perhaps through (public) meetings by the participants. This allows the whole to develop into a network of research, ideas and advices, which is also to be read as such. The open format of the project is geared towards the possibility of actively establishing connections to other international projects.
Manifesta is the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, taking place in different cities and regions every two years. After Rotterdam (1996), Luxembourg (1998), Ljubljana (2000), Frankfurt (2002), San Sebastian (2004), Nicosia (2006 - cancelled), Trentino-South Tyrol (2008), the next Manifesta will take place in the Spanish region of Murcia-Cartagena in dialogue with Northern Africa (2010). Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography. This includes innovations in curatorial practices, exhibition models and education. The biennial and its related projects are initiated by International Foundation Manifesta in Amsterdam.
9:00-16:00
Face to face
meetings with Clementine Deliss
Thursday October 8
9:00-17:00
Face to Face
meetings between individual DAI-students and individual guest advisors Renée Ridgway, Binna Choi, Ade Darmawan and Reza Afisina, André Kruysen, Iberia Pérez, Florian Göttke, Mark Kremer, Avigail Moss, Gabriel Lester and Phill Collins, Frédérique Bergholtz and Tanja Boudoin.
19:30 (project room)
For all students
Presentation by Ade Darmawan and Reza Afisina from ruangrupa, artist initiative in Jakarta, on their practice and the project 'ruangrupa Huis' in Utrecht.
Friday October 9
Today, two of the projects that are open for 1st year students will be introduced: ‘User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution’, organised by Binna Choi and Casco, and Negotiating Equity, organised by Renée Ridgway and contributors to n.e.w.s.
10:00 (project room)
For 1st year students
‘User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution’
with Binna Choi
‘User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution’ is an ongoing group project developed by Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory in the framework of Utrecht Manifest 2009. The project takes place over a year starting from October 2009 to October 2010 and deals with the evolutionary process of exploring and constructing a social space in the domestic realm. This includes an investigation into the relationship between the private and the public with the intention of forming a (political) community, while taking a small apartment in the vicinity of Casco as a headquarter for living research and experimenting. This project will be introduced in order to seek a group of participants who would become “users-residents-researcher” for “the grand domestic revolution.”
14:00 (project room)
For 1st year students
Negotiating Equity
Organised by Renée Ridgway and contributors to n.e.w.s. (http://northeastwestsouth.net)
Keys words: self-organisation, transformation, expansive practice, mediation, space, repossession
Negotiating Equity aims to offer a participatory platform to address the ethics and practice of curatorship as a mode of art production. The nature and format of this project favours cooperative endeavour, the position of the artist as curator- investigating experimental and conceptual art practices under physical as well as virtual conditions- while considering the implications of self-curation.
11:30 (space to be announced)
For 2nd year students
Publications Project
With Delphine Bedel
The Publications Project is a collection of artists publications issued by the DAI and designed in collaboration with the designers from Werkplaats Typografie. The 2009-10 edition is directed by artist/curator Delphine Bedel. The Publications Project is an experimental research and production platform that aims to address the specific process of artist books production, from concept and design to distribution. Designers and artists are invited to team up in couples to develop one project, in close collaboration with an author. The format of this diverse collection can varies from magazine, essays, books, and artist editions to performance artefacts. Through very diverse perspectives the artists and designers reflect on publishing as a versatile medium. The limited editions are distributed through artist's performances, bookshops and artist book fairs.