COOP Academy ~ Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life from Month to Month

Seminar 7

This week will be focussed on the upcoming exhibition and on f-2-f about your work for Athens. On Tuesday, Tina will meet with: Clara, Agatha, Teresa, Alaa, Livio. I will meet with Ulufer, Görkem, Sanne, Leeron. Please let us know if the distribution suits. Wednesday and Thursday will be taken up by group work on exhibition preparation. I have not yet received all students's written descriptions of their own work and of their fellow student¹s works. Please update the drop box pronto!

But first, on Monday evening, Ulufer has organised for Sergi to show us his Barcelona. This means that the Dream Chain will move to another day. Other variables are: Agatha¹s film; a meeting some time on Tuesday with Sonia Abian, an artist from Argentina, who has lived in Barcelona for many years; possibly speaking with Alejandra Riera. If Showroom/Pedro G. Romero move their Flamenco session to Wednesday night, we will most definitely join them.

Seminar 6

We will do group f-2-fs. For this purpose, please bring a short written description of your Athens work-to-be and be prepared to talk about your process, your next steps, the stumbling blocks, etc. Please be prepared to discuss the texts I sent via Wetransfer. (And if someone could upload them to our Google drive, please do.) Please bring material from previous weeks, including photos from Instagram/We-Chat into Google drive. Feel free to propose entertainment for Thursday evening and invite whoever wants to from the DAI. I will be screening Celine and Julie vont en bateau Wednesday evening. Please remember that we can interrupt class for sleep and fresh air. 

Monday: Dream Chain

Tuesday: f-2-f

Wednesday: morning: Texts by Haytham El-Wardany, Sharon Sliwinski, Sibhoan Phillips; afternoon: f-2-f

Thursday: Clara's exercises

Seminar 5

General remarks: whereever possible, please try to focus a bit more on the subversion and wishing poles of our sleep-dream axis.

Monday

Regroup and Dream Chain, organised by Alaa

Tuesday

Morning: 9-10 morning walk or exercise?

Afternoon: Mini exhibitions

  • Ulufer/Alaa/Clara prep 10-11:15, showing 11:30-12
  • Teresa/Görkem/Leeron prep 12-13:15, showing 14:30-15
  • Livio/Sanne/Agata prep 15-16:15, showing 16:30-17

F2F with Maria, in 30 min slots
Sanne, Agata 10-11
Livio, Leeron 12-13
Clara, Teresa 15-16

F2F with Ruth
Görkem 10 - 11
Ulufer, Alaa 12 - 13
Teresa 16-17

Peer-2-peer F2Fs
Ulufer, Görkem 15-16

16-17 walk before dinner?

Evening (through the night): Research as Practice: Ulufer’s Slumber Party

Wednesday

Morning: Recovery; practical exercises on demand

F2F with Maria, either in 30 min slots 
Görkem, Alaa, Ulufer 11-13

Afternoon/evening: Working on Athens exhibition

Thursday

Morning: student-led class ON WISHING: Livio, Leeron, Clara

Seminar 4

Monday

Class walk

Tuesday

Morning: Dream chain

Afternoon: Research as practice, organised by Görkem

Evening: Walk 

Wednesday

Day: Exhibiting work in progress in three exhibition groups (Leeron/Alaa/Livio, Agatha/Görkem/Ulufer, Sanne/Clara/Teresa)

Evening: Screening of Nighcleaners, Berwick Street Film Collective, 1970 

Thursday

Day: Individual or group face-to-faces (F2F) while roaming the city

informal work suggestions for all others:

  • Reading groups (Callois, Beradt, Nancy)
  • Peer FTF

Evening: Ruth on some ideas 

Friday

All day: Exhibition talk - on the potentialities of Athens, interspersed with sleep exercises

Saturday

Student-led class by Clara, Livio, Leeron

Seminar 3

Monday

Setting up the class for Tuesday morning / going for a walk. Continue conversation from last session in relation to exhibition format.

Tuesday

Morning: People will be presenting and introducing their work in 3 groups – 45 mins for each group. Lets think of these presentations as mini exhibitions with work or some aspect of the work in space rather than presenting on screen. Exhibition is a broad term and lets approach it as such.

It would be good if the people that are in each group could be in touch with each other (prior to DAI week) regarding what and how they want to present this (ie. individual works or work collectively etc.). Each group should decide together on a format.

Taking into account the nature of the spaces we may be in it may be difficult to conceive this in the way you might ideally intend it – in which case you might introduce aspects of the exhibitions in their imagined states. It might be helpful to think of the proposed exhibition as being itinerant, adaptable or versatile.


Afternoon: Research as practice - Clara is responsible for organising it this time.

Wednesday

Morning: It would be good to use a bit of the time for rethinking the exhibitions from Tuesday morning - for this some of the groups might want to merge or perhaps some material could be reformulated in relation to somebody else’s material. The purpose of this is to focus on the process of stepping back and rethinking, restaging, as being valuable initial stages in the making and setting up of the work.

During this morning session Maria would like to follow up on dream logs.

Afternoon: Tina & Maria F-2-F in a group or individually.

Thursday 

Student-led class by Sanne, Livio and Alaa 

Seminar 2

This week, you will get to know Tina, our third tutor. She will be teaching with me on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Monday evening, we will be taking another walk. This time without a guide - if anyone can scout the nicest path, they are welcome to take over. Otherwise we’ll just go wherever a path takes us.

Tuesday, we will be using morning and afternoon session to deal with the Laplanche/Pontallis essay, so come prepared.

Wednesday, Tina will lead the morning and afternoon sessions. For this, she writes: “It would be good if people could think about several small items, things, or objects which they can easily bring with them. These could come from their immediate surrounding or could be found elsewhere. When choosing these you could think about material qualities which could be sensed - touch, smell, taste - apart from their visual qualities. --- In addition to things, also bring several surfaces that could be used for drawing - paper or other type of material and the materials to draw with. When choosing these you could also think about material qualities which could be sensed - touch, smell, taste - apart from their visual qualities.”

As in October, the evening sessions will be devoted for materialising your reflections on what we were working on and what you have been researching or thinking about (or simply for documentation). I would like to see some concerted effort here. For November, the task is to produce to editions of an evening newspaper (Tue, Wed). This does not preclude feeding our archive with reflections in between DAI classes. As no one has put their name forward for taking responsibility for the documentation, I hereby put Livio on charge.

Parallel to the group evening work, we will have 30 minute f-2-f meetings. Tina will see to Agatha, Teresa, Livio, Ulufer, Clara. I will see Görkem, Alaa, Sanne, Leeron (Leeron will do 40 min with me). This time, I’d like you to present your first thoughts on what you would like to produce for the exhibition in May. IF you do plan to to present something in the exhibition.

Thursday, we will start at 9 am (!). The student lead class “On wishing” will be conducted by Agata, Ulufer and Alaa and will be 3 hours. We then have an hour for summing up.


By popular demand, we will intersperse sessions with sleep exercises (in particular afternoons of Tue/Wed). Suggestions of which ones to do are welcome.

Seminar 1: 23-26 October 2017

Dear Clara, Alaa, Livio, Ulufer, Agata, Teresa, Sanne, Leeron, Görkem!

On behalf of Maria, Tina and myself: Welcome to our class! We are very excited to have you join and look forward to working together in the next nine months!

We will have our first meeting on Monday 23rd (19:00-21:00). Maria will join us on Tuesday. Please prepare: Your own take on why you are here, what you hope to do, how your practice might relate to the research, no more than 15 minutes each, what questions seem most important at this point. The evening session will be one-to-one meetings, each 40 minutes long. Wednesday, artist and scholar Mi You from Cologne's Academy of Media Arts will be our guest tutor, responsible for the day. Royce Ng, artist and researcher from Hong Kong, has graciously agreed to travel up from the Netherlands to present his research on the Opium wars and I will be present as well. Maria will do more one-to-one meetings after lunch. Thursday morning, we will have our first student-led class “On wishing”. In the afternoon, we will make a studio visit to Jürgen Stollhans. In the evening, I will do one-to-one meetings. Friday, we will visit Museum Ludwig and finish with a short summing up/outlook session. During the week, we might be joined intermittently by Lia Cunha, last year's Salvador da Bahia tutor and by Sonja Hempel, curator living in Cologne.

A few general remarks:

- Please, everyone have read Jonathan Crary's 24/7 by beginning of class. I do not think it needs to be discussed, but serves as background info.

- The student-led class “On wishing”, scheduled for Thursday morning sessions (09:00-13:00), will be the full responsibility of changing groups of three students. As the first class is rather soon, be sure to contact each other quickly, so that you can prepare this well.

In October (Cologne) the class will be lead by Görkem, Teresa and Clara. (Sorry there is so little time left, but you can pull it off!)

In November, the class will be lead by Alaa, Ulufer, Agata.

In December, the class will be lead by Sanne, Livio, Leeron.

Beginning now, students can volunteer to lead the January - April classes in their own group constellation. If no groups have volunteered before December class, tutors and students will discuss in December what needs to be changed in order to make this class viable.

- Classes are to start documenting their research on a regular basis, including photos, sketches, etc. Unless someone comes up with a better model, I suggest everyone helps in gathering material of each session and one person per month is responsible for pulling this together. Leeron will be responsible for the October meetings. Feel free to put your name in the hat for November.

-  Maria will meet with Alaa, Görkem, Teresa, Leeron and Sanne for the October one-to-one meetings. I will meet with Livio, Ulufer, Agata and Clara. We will most probably change the format of the one-to-one meetings from month to month, also meeting in small groups. In October, be prepared to talk to us more generally about your practice.

- I suggest we start compiling a list of literature and resources on our topic. Any suggestions on how to go about this?