Syllabus 2018-2019

SYLLABUS 

The two-year curriculum of DAI Art Praxis is a permaculture, a balanced, finely tuned blend of consistency and contingency that allows for a thoughtful integration of state-of-the-art research with the required competencies and learning objectives that come with our status as a fully accredited and top-rated MA

During the introduction week in October 2018  director and lead-tutors present workshops, seminars and study groups with their corresponding methods of 'working together', to our student body. DAI explicitly asks its tutors to work with a model based on reciprocity. Tutors fuel and underpin a ‘curated class’ with their research, while the students  are invited to contribute to it with their artistic and /or theoretical research. All those involved are expected to be open to new insights and ideas – tutors take on leading roles, but can occasionally delegate this duty. Tutors, just like students, use their position within the DAI context to further their own research or study. DAI considers this to be a crucial aspect of its mission.

In addition to collective sessions within the framework of HTDTWT, the COOP Academy and the Planetary Campus face to face advisory meetings will be organized, geared towards individualized, tailor made support for the student.

Please find the descriptions to the curriculum components below. First and second year students will work together in all 3 mandatory modules. 

Note: A student's workload is measured in ECTS credits. ECTS stands for European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System and is a standard across the European Union. One credit represents 28 hours of work and 60 credits represent one year of full-time study. DAI students must 'earn' 120 EC credits before obtaining their MA certificate.

CURRICULUM COMPONENT A: COOP study groups

~ compulsory - 20 EC per year 

 

Seven COOP study groups are at the heart of the DAI's curriculum. The COOPs ask for active participation in & productive contributions to, curated, cooperative, un-disciplined, art research trajectories. The COOPs bring makers, researchers, writers, activists and curators together around well-defined and relevant questions and topics.

In the academic year 2018-2019 each DAI-student will join one out of seven study groups. This year's study groups are guided by tutorial teams which came into being in response to a commission from the part of DAI: a curator ( independent or related to a partnering institution or organisation) was invited to bring together a tutorial team which consists of a practising artist, a scholar/researcher and a curator (acknowledging the hybrid nature of current praxis wherein these roles can easily co-exist in one person or be swapped among the members of a collective or otherwise). 

The 2018-2019 study groups gather for several days during each DAI Week + 4 days more (the so-called "extension") to share research and to develop a group work. Ideally this group work comes into being as an entirely collaborative endeavour, but it may also be the umbrella for more or less individually produced works, carefully brought together by the study group. 

A study group operates under an overarching research question or topic to which the lead tutors as well as the students can contribute with aural, visual, tactile, performative, digital, cinematographic, choreographic, architectural, curatorial, textual, theatrical, theoretical and practical musings and findings (according to the tutorial team's guidelines). Input to the gatherings will have to come from all involved.  Students can be asked to prepare presentations and to lead specific sessions. Students should invest generous time, in-and outside DAI Weeks, as well as practical skills and knowledge (building, documenting, reporting, communicating, administrating etcetera) in realizing “the group work” and making it public (in one way or another). 

Gatherings can take the form of, for example, a seminar, presentation (group or individual), reading group, walk, site visit, boot camp, laboratory, screening, interview, exhibition, examination, meditation, party, work out, exercise. Individual tutorials will be organized on a monthly basis, in order to provide broad advice in regard to a student's praxis as well as (if needed) helping the student to connect to specific field of interest of the study group.

Lead tutors will take care of guiding the group towards the public presentation of a group work during COOP SUMMIT 2019 in Cagliari. The final group work can be an action, a book, a website, an exhibition, a film, an opera, a play, a (group) performance, a combination of all these or otherwise. 

Mid-term and final assessments: research output will be defined and assessed by the tutorial team and will consist of a group work, underpinned by strong individual efforts.

The seven study groups:

1. Curating Positions: Logics of Montage. In Between the Cinematic Apparatus and the Exhibition.

Tutor team: Marwa Arsanios, Leon Filter,  Leire Vergara. Partner: Bulegoa z/b

 2. Unmapping Eurasia. Tutor Team: Binna Choi, Mi You, Payam Sharifi / Slavs and Tatars. Partner: Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons

3. The Immemorial Body: Betraying Carmelo Bene in Nine Acts. Tutor Team: Sara Giannini, Arnisa Zeqo, Geo Wyeth. Partner: If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. 

4.AGENCY - Everyday practice and global power. Tutor team: Nick Aikens / Annie Fletcher, James Bridle, Navine G.Khan-Dossos. Partner: Van Abbemuseum

5. Making Nothing Out of Something: Improvising writing and publishing in relation to practices of resistance. Tutor Team: Jorinde Seijdel, Florian Göttke, Werker Collective (Rogier Delfos & Marc Roig Blesa). Partner: Open!

6. Peekaboo - Looking Askance At Issues Of Childhood Connected To Nation. Tutor team: María Berríos, Tina Gverović, Ruth Noack.

7.Banquet X: Climate Change and Speculative Gastronomy. Tutor Team: Bassam El Baroni, Diakron (Aslak Aamot Kjaerulff, Bjarke Hvass Kure)
 

CURRICULUM COMPONENT B: How To Do Things With Theory 

 ~ compulsory - 20 EC per year 

How To Do Things With Theory is the space at DAI where in a variety of ways, theoretical research is fostered. It includes a two year trajectory oriented towards the writing of a master thesis. This path is designed to help students to develop skills to formulate relevant questions which strengthen their praxes and allow them to position themselves and their work in broader contexts. Students receive personal guidance from a theory tutor, in principle assigned to them for the duration of the student's two-year trajectory.  The HTDTWT thesis advisors also thematically steer and lead monthly plenary seminar sessions. In preparation for these gatherings the students read and discuss a variety of carefully selected theoretical texts. Cinematic and aural works can be presented for collective analysis as well.

While during the first year the focus is on developing reading and writing skills and a central question for the thesis, the second year focuses on further research and the actual writing of a text consisting of 10.000 - 15.000 words (absolute minimum 8.000, absolute maximum 17.000 words) which presents an authentic argument and is carefully documented from primary and secondary sources (with a minimum of 6 titles).
The thesis must be presented in English and will be evaluated by a tutor who is part of the How To Do Things With Theory team, supported by a review written by an invited external respondent (selected by the tutor in consultation with the head of program). Exceptionally the given format of the thesis can be adapted to specific needs or abilities, always only after written permission from the mentoring tutor and the head of program. It is not allowed to hand in an older thesis, written in a different (educational) context, nor is it allowed to re-use texts produced in the context of another DAI Art Praxis course component.

HTDTWT tutors and their seminars:

1.Hypatia Vourloumis - Xenogenesis: Critical Theory and Science Fiction

2.Ana Texeira Pinto - Feedback Forms

3.Ghalya Saadawi - Contemporary Art and Discontent

4.Rachel O'Reilly: At the Limits of the Writerly: Queer Theory and the Critique of Energy

5. Antonia Majaca - Incomputable Subjects

6. Anselm Franke - Frontiers and Mediality: The S/O Function

CURRICULUM COMPONENT C: PLANETARY CAMPUS 

 ~ compulsory - 20 EC per year

The Planetary Campus is an innovative conceptual space (without walls) where the MA curriculum "DAI Art Praxis" meets with a wide variety of external parties. A welcoming space where we host a fleeting, "affective community", where we generously share art and research, where complexity can be embraced and intellectual intra-actions are fostered, aiming to endow our praxes, wherever they are operational. The Planetary Campus constitutes a productive interface between academia and the world, between academic and artistic researchers, practitioners, activists, intellectuals, institutions and organizations. An interface from where new perspectives on co-production and co-creation, ethics and aesthetics, on orality and performance, research and publicness, can be explored through a variety of formats in which DAI-students take up different roles: presenter, reporter, researcher, publisher, participant, listener. As an infrastructure Planetary Campus is the container for several activities initiated by the DAI.

Planetary Campus Activities on offer to master students as part of the compulsory curriculum:

The Factory  

workshops leading up to a Roaming Assembly, curated by Pedro G. Romero and Leire Vergara, Rana Hamadeh, iLiana Fokianaki, David Maroto

The Roaming Assembly  

public symposium curated by Pedro G. Romero and Leire Vergara, Tirdad Zolghadr, Rana Hamadeh, iLiana Fokianaki,

The Kitchen 

student presentations in the presence of guest respondents, as well as two individual advisory meetings per student per year. 

Website

Towards the end of the two year trajectory the DAI links the name of a graduating student to a brand new or a re-newed and updated website representative of the student's praxis at the moment of graduation. As long as this website is alive and kicking it will be visible on the DAI's website. 

Additional:  Free Space

Free Space honours extra curricular activities, initiated  by students themselves or by third parties or, occasionally by DAI.

In their studios at home, at temporary residencies or wherever they travel, students are expected to continue developing their own independent (collaborative or individual) research while simultaneously engaging with the DAI's 'homework' and discursive input as provided during the monthly DAI-week, taking place at a variety of locations.

A student may receive credits, up to a maximum of 4 points annually for activities in the public realm, outside of the DAI's syllabus. It is conditional to publish an announcement (linked to the platform(s) involved) in regard to the public outcome of these activities at the WORLD-section of the DAI's home page

Education and Examination Regulations

Education and Examination Regulations are part and parcel of the Student Statutes of the ArtEZ University of the Arts. A specific DAI-document 2018-2019 to be established by the ArtEZ Board of Governors has been made available to all DAI-students as well as to the tutorial team, at the beginning of the academic year. It contains details about the assessments and the awarding of credit points. Questions about examination regulations, credit points and competencies per project or course should be directed to Rik Fernhout, the DAI's senior Learning co-ordinator.