DAI-bulletin 2007-2008 number two October 2007

This is the second issue of the monthly DAI-bulletin in the academic year 2007-2008, informing you about our program, about important dates and events.

Students: please keep it with you as an extension to your diary. Alterations and additions to the program will be e-mailed to you. SO PLEASE READ YOUR E-MAILS EVERY DAY.


DAI PROGRAMME October 2007

WEEK 43
Monday October 22

First year students:
11.00 - 17.30 project room
Students of the first year will meet with Willem van Weelden for the first of four one-day meetings that his seminar MEDIATHEORY will consist of. Today’s special guest is Arjen Mulder, biologist, theorist and writer of (amongst much more) the book Understanding Mediatheory.

Second year students:
11.00 - 12.00 tutors room
Meeting between the course director and second year students to discus upcoming projects and the process towards graduation.

12.00-17.30 AKI classroom
Second year students will engage in a meeting with Public Space With a Roof (PSWAR), an artist’s initiative founded in 2003 in Amsterdam whose projects were until now designed for their own space in the former film academy in Amsterdam (www.pswar.org). PSWAR is a collaboration of the artists Tamuna Chabashvili (Georgia, 1978), Adi Hollander (Belgium, 1976) and theoretician Vesna Madzoski (Serbia, 1976) whose activities go beyond the usual notions of artists-as-social-activists, artists-as-producers, and artists-as-curators, blurring the borders between many roles assumed to be taken by the present-day artists. What differentiates this space from the other artists’ initiatives is the specific extension of the art practice visible in their every project. In the period 2004-2007 PSWAR has produced four large-scale projects and for each they created installations as a grid or a framework for the other elements of the project.

PSWAR projects are based on research and include several levels: examination of collaboration and collective action, the possibility of using existing artworks as ready-mades, questioning the existing exhibition formats, creating platforms for intimate and individual experience of the artworks and changing perception of the space.

This meeting will be an inspiring upbeat to the Publication Project run by Emily Pethick that will start on Monday November 19.

All students:
20.00 – 22.00 project room
Willem van Weelden on Mediatheory

Willem van Weelden has a background in social philosophy and visual art. He is committed to new media from 1990 onwards. He has published on this topic in various magazines and catalogues ad was involved in numerous new media projects as a creative director and coach. Currently he focuses on writing and teaching.

Lunch: 12.30 – 13.00
Dinner: 18.00 - 19.30

Tuesday October 23

First year students:
9.30 - 10.30 Project room
Plenary meeting with the course director.

All students:
11.00 - 17.00
Ronald van Tienhoven: Leaving the Cocoon, Facing the World.

The first of four seminars that will introduce you to all sorts of strategies that artists, architects and designers have employed in order to bring their body of thoughts and works to the attention of peers as well as audiences, clients and other professional relations.

Ronald van Tienhoven (Den Haag 1956) is an artist and designer since 1982. From 1993 onward he has worked mainly in the public domain with projects and commissions both in the Netherlands and abroad. Through the wide focus and context of his work he has cooperated intensively with architects, urban designers, landscape designers, engineers and filmmakers. Between 1993 and 1997 he worked as freelance advisor for art in the Public Realm at the Mondriaan Foundation in Amsterdam, and advised and curated projects and exhibitions for Stroom Den Haag. He has taught and lectured in a multitude of art and design institutes. At this moment he is Domain Manager for Domain Play in the Bachelors and Masters Coach at the TU/e Industrial Design department.

All students:
20.00 Project room
The Edward Said-lecture:
Yinka Shonibare & postcoloniality
By Jesper Buursink

Art historian Jesper Buursink will talk about the artist Yinka Shonibare & the issue of postcolonial identity and diasporan artists. Buursink recently graduated in art history with a specialization in contemporary art. His interest lies in the contemporary art from Africa and the debates around this theme. He is currently working at W139, an exhibition space and artist platform located in the centre of Amsterdam.

Wednesday October 24

Mentor group DAI public
11.00 – 17.00 AKI classroom
Florian Göttke: Mentor program DAI public

Mentor group DAI private
11.00 – 17.00 Project room
Rik Fernhout: Mentor program DAI private

All students: 20:30 Project room The DAI public lecture
From content to context and back: thinking about public art works and artists working in public.
By Eva Fotiadi

The lecture will look into artists’ interventions and practices in public spaces, in order to reflect on the question of how far can the artistic intention reach, and where do the public and/or the production context (eg. audiences or communities, commissioning institutions, cultural policies…) take over. Or could it be all just part of the art?

Eva Fotiadi is an art historian working mainly in the field of contemporary art. She has studied archaeology and art history (BA, Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki, Greece) and museum studies (MA, University of Leicester, U.K.). She is currently writing her Ph.D at the University of Amsterdam. In her research she looks into public, process-based and participatory practices of socio-politically engaged artists. Recent activities include: (2007) Werkgroep ‘The Art(ist) as an institution and the changing culture of contemporary art institutions’ co-teaching with Prof. Jeroen Boomgaard, BA Honors’ program, Gerrit Rietveld Academie/UvA; (2007) symposium ‘Transformations of Public Space’, co-organised with the Professorship for Art and Public Spaces, Rietveld Academie/UvA Stedelijk Museum CS, 16-17/2; (2007) Exhibition ‘Connecting Cultures – Greek artistic presence in the Netherlands’, curator and catalogue editor, WTC Art Gallery Rotterdam, organised by the General Greek Consulate in Rotterdam; (2006) teaching ‘Archaeology in Greece’ (NYU summer school in Athens)

Thursday October 25
All students
9.30–17.30 Project room
Presentations by Barbara Philip, Rana Hamadeh, Philip Tonda Heide, Marina Tomic, Yen Yitsu, Seda Manavoglu, Renaldi Zelfi, Meiyu Tao

Moderator: John Heijmans – mentor Theory
With: Rik Fernhout - mentor DAI private and Florian Göttke – mentor DAI public

Today’s Guest:
Jeroen van Westen lives and works in Enschede, the Netherlands. His work is presented in the form of temporary installations, performances, books, permanent structures, or a combination of these. Rather than placing a sculpture in the public space, the public space offers the material to construct a (visual) tale. His philosophy is that all landscape is readable – any landscape tells how the culture which created it was or is related to the land and to nature. Public commissions, artist-in-residencies and lectures have taken van Westen throughout Europe and the United States.
www.jeroenvanwesten.nl

All students:
19.00 - Project room
The DAI private lecture:
The Artist as a Researcher
by Albert van der Schoot

Albert van der Schoot studied musicology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, and music pedagogy at the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest. He is a professor in ‘Art and Reflection’ at the ArtEZ Academy of Arts, and teaches Aesthetic, Philosophy of Culture and Philosophy of Music at the University of Amsterdam. His book on the history of the golden section was recently translated into German: Die Geschichte des goldenen Schnitts - Aufstieg und Fall der göttlichen Proportion, Stuttgart 2005.

Lunch: 12.30 – 13.00
Dinner: 18.00 – 19.00

Friday October 26

9.30 – 17.30
Studio visits and private conversations with:
John Heijmans (meetings with 2nd year students on their thesis in the tutors room), Florian Göttke, Rik Fernhout, Gabriëlle Schleijpen.
Guests: Tomo Savic-Gecan, Hans van Houwelingen, Kostana Banovic, Delphine Bedel and Suzanne van der Ven.

Tomo Savic-Gecan is an artist who almost as rule exhibits „nothing”. Conceived in the manner of tabula rasa, the author's projects function as empty sites filled with various charges, concealed tensions, references and interlinkings. By intervening in space, the basic "material" of his work, the artist initiates marginal, uncommon interactions between the space, viewer and the non-existent object of exhibition. Dematerialization, absence and emptiness are the consequences of the specific treatment of gallery space. Overall, artist's works can be seen as an ongoing tactical positioning vis-à-vis and within the space of the gallery white cube the "archetypal space of modern art". It seems that the artist's interest in the perception of architecture and the process of movement derives precisely from his persistent opposition to the museum's white cube seen as a timeless and neutral framework meant for the production of „autonomous art objects”. By abolishing the object of exhibition and impinging on the physical and symbolic dimension of space of art, the artist indirectly interrogates the ways artistic institutions function. (Part of the text "Tomo Savic-Gecan" by Ana Devic)

Hans van Houwelingen is known for his versatile and critical look at art in public space, public life, and cultural politics. The monograph Stiff (Edited by Max Bruinsma. ~Essays by Bram Kempers, Sjoukje van der Meulen and Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen) documents more than 20 of his works for the public domain, and provides a careful analysis of the contexts from which they were derived. A selection of critical texts by the artist summarizes his decade-long provocative and inquisitive practice.’

Ritual is a recurrent element in the work of Kostana Banovic (born in Sarajevo). Her drawings register the constant repetition of the same action: the drawing of tiny pencil lines. The lines rarely touch and together form a more or less regular, rhythmical pattern of lines and spaces. Yet these are not typical drawings. Sometimes, if the beginning or the end of the line is marked by a small hole in the paper, it looks as though someone has set about the drawing with needle and thread. Clearly, the emphasis here is not on the image itself but on the action, its repetition and the state of mind it evoked. The drawings are the product of intense concentration, bordering on a ‘trance’ state. In her most recent work, comprising among other two short video films and a documentary essay, Banovic also continues to explore her fascination with rituals. The artist seems driven by the urge to reduce the distance between herself and another by including the Other in her ritual, a ritual that Banovic considers an inextricable aspect of her own identity. (www.kostanabanovic.com)

Delphine Bedel is a visual artist and free-lance curator based in Amsterdam. Her recent solo and group exhibitions include: ‘Nederland 1’ MuseumGouda, Gouda, ‘Non Places’ 66 East, Amsterdam, ‘Disobedience’ Play Gallery/Bethanien, Berlin, ‘Playtime’ Cargo, Almere, ‘OK Video’ National Galerie, Jakarta, ‘Das Experiment’ Secession, Vienna and ‘Imaginary.nl/Scripted Spaces’ Witte de With, Rotterdam. Since 1994, she curated various exhibitions and film screenings. Bedel is one of the founding and board member of Etablissement d'en Face in Brussels (1994-98), and Agentur in Amsterdam (2004-06). Her recent curatorial projects include the exhibition and Video Lounge Shared History/Decolonising the image with Sophie Berrebi, at W139 and Arti & Amicitiae in Amsterdam. Shared History/Decolonising the image is a four-part project on the visual representation of decolonization and includes an exhibition, a video lounge, an international academic conference and a film programme. Her current projects are the ongoing film screenings On architecture and other stories in Amsterdam, on ideology and architecture, and an exhibition project in collaboration with Ayako Yoshimura Beyond Paradise, on art and tourism.

Suzanne van de Ven (Netherlands) is a freelance curator and writer. Work experience (selection): Curator of Cargo Series, Loods 6, Amsterdam / BAK (Basis voor Actuele Kunst) / Trigger (pub.), Utrecht / Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam / University of Amsterdam / Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam / Articles for a.o. Metropolis M / Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam.

Lunch: 12.30 – 13.00
Afterdrinks: 17.00 -18.00

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News on alumni and/or current students and/or lecturers (You are all most welcome to send in your announcements).

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October 1 – 31

DAI staff member Ricardo Liong-A-Kong is participating in ‘All Different, All Equal’, a banner project in Hengelo. More information on: www.bukistan.nl/alldifferent.

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From October 8

Current DAI student Nikos Doulos presents his work “75” in Filmtheater ‘t Hoogt in Utrecht. Based on a poem by Marc Robbemond, "75" is an animation investigating the obscurity in the movement of airplanes. It's an attempt to define poetry in the unexpected and almost unreal scenery of a plane route in the sky. A close resemblance between "75" and airline adds and posters can be detected. The exhibition will start on the 8th October and the opening will take place on Friday 12th October from 17.30 till 20.00. Filmtheater 't Hoogt, Hoogt 4, 3512 GW Utrecht, tel: 030-2328388 (www.hoogt.nl)

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October 6 – November 17

‘It is there, it is all there’ a show by current DAI-student Hidenori Mitsue.
Yoshiko Matsumoto Gallery, Weteringschans 37, 1017 RV Amsterdam (www.yoshikomatsumoto.com)

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November 8 – December 21

Together with the other winners of the ArtOlive Jong Talent ’07 prize, Hidenori Mitsue will also show work in the exhibition OFFLINE # 6 Art Olive, Westergasfabriekterrein, Polonceaukade 17, 1014 DA Amsterdam tel: 020-6758504, www.artolive.com

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November 10 - January 13

Playground Theatre is an exhibition by DAI alumnus Sara Pessoa in Galerie De Zwarte Panter (Hoogstraat 70-72-74, Antwerp, www.artsite.be/zwartepanter).
Vernissage on November 10 with, at 20.00, an introduction by the writer Douglas Park.

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November 3, 4 and 5

Felix Kubin, who on various occasions was a guest teacher at DAI, and DAI alumnus Julian H. Scaff, will present ‘Ich will aufwärts Ich will aubwärts (I want to go up I want to go down)’ in the Tanzquartier Vienna in Austria. music, concept and direction: Felix Kubin / video art: Julian H. Scaff / choreography: Camilla Milena Fehér / costume: Cläre Casper / dance: Milena Fehér, Peter Fengler, Veronika Zott, Oleg Soulimenko / circuit bending: Jörg Piringer / dramaturgic mentoring: Judith Helmer / production direction: Isabella Kresse

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October 12 - December 9

Current DAI student Yota Ioannidou participates in AGORAFOLLY outside / Public art walk at La centrale électrique, De Elektriciteitscentrale / Sint-Katelijneplein 44 / Brussel / 1000

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October 6 and 7

Current DAI student Suzanne van Rest participates in the presentation ‘De wet van Pope’ at Landgoed Velder, Velderseweg 14, 5298 LE Liempde.

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