DAI-bulletin 2010-2011 number eight May 2011

This is the eight issue of the monthly DAI-bulletin in the academic year 2010-2011, informing you about our program during our DAI-week.

Instead of asking its master students to be present at the institute on a daily base the DAI offers an alternative educational environment: once per month (11 times per year) students, faculty and invited guests come to the DAI for a full week and take part in an intense program (consisting of lectures, artists talks, performances, seminars, face to face conversations, projects, master classes and workshops) that lasts from early morning until late at night.

During the DAI-week, a guest cook prepares the afternoon and evening meals that students, faculty and guests enjoy together. During the DAI-week students spend the night in an accommodation provided by the DAI. In between DAI-weeks all return to their daily practices as artists and researchers - scattered over the Netherlands, or abroad.

Please note that:
- biographical notes on our guests can be found on our website under ‘Faculty’ and ‘Guests’.
- all parts of the curriculum have to be attended by ALL students unless it is mentioned otherwise.
- the evening presentations on Tuesday and Thursday are open to interested members of the public.
- the morning lecture on Tuesday will be live-streamed.

Location: Kortestraat 27, Arnhem.

PROGRAM DAI-WEEK MAY 16 - 20

DAI- Cantina

Lunch will be served daily from 13:00-14:00, dinner Monday from 18:00-19:00, Tuesday and Wednesday from 18.30–19.30, Thursday from 18:00-19:00

May 16: Monday DAI - Presentation

Starting 11.00 – 21:00 (DAI Auditorium) all students
Performing Presentation / Presenting Performance

Intensive workshop (4 meetings in 4 months) by David Weber-Krebs and Jan-Philipp Possmann.

13:00 – 21:00 face to face meetings students with Grant Watson

Grant Watson is Senior Curator and Research Associate at the Institute of International Visual Arts in London (Iniva).
Watson studied Curating and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College London where he is currently a PhD candidate.

 

May 17 : Tuesday DAI – Thesis

Morning lecture and discussion: live-streaming (DAI Auditorium)
Starting 10.00 all students

10.00 – 12.00(DAI Auditorium) For students
'Life as a work of art' lecture by Grant Watson

The idea that life can resemble a work of art was suggested by Foucault in his interview with Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow where he comments - 'I find it surprising in our society that art has become something that only refers to objects and not to individuals and their lives.' Elsewhere Foucault expresses his fascination with the idea that bios itself could become the material from which a work of art is made and identifies a precedent for this conception of the subject, as one who could be engaged in developing an aesthetics of existence, within the textual record of Classical Greece. Here a relationship to oneself, and in particular to those aspects of oneself which are the most intensely pleasurable (but also the most likely to destabilise the self) are organised and played out, not by adhering to a pre given code of conduct or through a deciphering of the self in order purify and gain self knowledge, but according to an aesthetic schema whose beauty would be apparent to 'anyone who has eyes to see.' In the following texts, I want to consider the idea that Foucault hints at in this interview - the idea that subjectivity can be mapped in terms of its aesthetic gesture, and that it constitutes an artistic practice built on techniques of self elaboration.  If this is the case, how would we make a reading of such an artistic practice, and how can we understand them within a notion of the curatorial? Grant Watson

13.00 – 14.00 lunch

Reading for Writing or How to do things with Theory
Alena Alexandrova & Doreen Mende and both groups  

14:00 - 17:00 Plenary sessions both groups

We will read two texts as preparation, which we will discuss in the Reading Group before the lecture. Irit Rogoff’s text on Smuggling will partly connect to our first reading group, where we have discussed the term Criticality as proposed by her in the text "What is a Theorist?". 

17.00 – 17.15 break 

17.15 – 18.00 Writing workshop  - group Alena

16.00 - 18.00 face to face meetings individual students with Grant Watson

 
Evening lecture

Practical information: The lecture is open for the public. Please note that the evening lecture takes place in Arnhem where the Dutch Art Institute recently found their new home: Kortestraat 27, 6811 EP, Arnhem. For more information about our guest, please visit: www.dutchartinstitute.nl

20.00 – 22.00 (DAI Auditorium) For students & general public
'The Where of Now' public lecture by Irit Rogoff    

This discussion posits contemporary concerns about whether it is possible, and of how one may be able to locate or situate oneself, one’s speaking position in the ever increasing processes of globalisation. Within the art world at the level of both the curatorial and that of artistic practice there has been an obvious movement towards a certain global form of fluid circulation. At the same time this circulation has not taken on a simple-minded formula that everything is in motion in relation to everything else. Instead there has been in evidence a process which complicates all of those old questions regarding local contexts, places and positions from which we speak, site specific references. What tools do we have at present to understand the place we speak from as both rooted and widely circulating? This discussion tries to formulate a vocabulary for such a subjective co-inhabitation within us.

 

May 18: Wednesday DAI – Publication

10:00 – 16:00 (Dai location) Green Light Session
For all 2st year students
Pressing Issues – coordinator Rebecca Sakoun

16.00 – 18.00 Results Green Light Session

10.00 – 18.00 Face to face meetings (mainly) second year students: Irit Rogoff, Alena, Doreen, Grant Watson.

10.30 – 18.00 (Lecture Room)
For all 1st year students
Publishing Class
Framework: Binna Choi (Casco)
Support editor and coordinator: Chris Lee (Casco)
Today’s guests: Can Altay and Zak Kyes

10.30 - 13.00 Workshop w/Can Altay and Zak Kyes
13.00 - 14.00 Lunch
14.00 - 18.00 Continue w/ workshop 

19.30 (DAI Auditorium) For all students
Publishing in Practice, or Parallel Inquiry
Today’s guest: Can Altay

An evening program with Can Altay

More information will follow.

 

May 19: Thursday DAI - Private

10.00 – 18.00 Face to Face meetings between individual DAI-students and individual guest advisors Tanja Baudoin, Phil Collins, Florian Göttke, Steven ten Thije, Charles Esche (until 3 pm), Renee Ridgway, Nishant Shah and Geoff Cox   

10.00 - 15.00 (Reading Room or DAI Auditorium)
Exclusively for participants in the project
TRACES OF AUTONOMY – The Economy of Speech and Voice in Global Art
Project curated by the VAN ABBEMUSEUM.
With Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije

Today’s session of Traces of Autonomy: information will follow.
http://theautonomyproject.ning.com/

17.45 leave by train to Utrecht, Huis a/d Werf
Exclusively for participants in the project If I can’t Dance:
With Phil Collins and Tanja Boudoin

19.00 – 21.00 The evening we will attend the premiere of Sanja Mitrovic's new work 'Daydream House', which she made in collaboration with Laurant Liefooghe and is part of the Festival a/d Werf in Utrecht. She is also presenting another piece, 'Will you ever be happy again?' in the same festival. In January 2011 Sanja Mitrović was our a guest in the Affect / Production project. Sanja Mitrović is a theatre director and performer based in Amsterdam. She is a founder and artistic director of Stand Up Tall Productions.

Daydream House uses documentary material from the 20th and 21st centuries as well as extracts from Chekov’s Cherry Orchard to talk about living through stories about leaving. The position of the audience is constantly shifting: from watching to being watched, from taking a distance to being involved, from a visitor in a gallery space to an audience member in a theatrical environment. Daydream House is the result of an encounter between theatre maker/performer Sanja Mitrović and architect Laurent Liefooghe. Their work uses the glass house from Liefooghe’s audio-spatial installation Woonmachine. Daydream House is based on the docu-tale format which Mitrović has explored in her previous work, such as Will You Ever Be Happy Again? which you can also see at the Festival a/d Werf.

The evening lecture for all students & general public
(except IICD group)
PUBLIC LECTURE : Nishant Shah
Negotiating Equity
One of Negotiating Equity's guests this week is Nishant Shah, a n.e.w.s. contributor and head of research from CIS (Centre for Internet and Society).

20:00 – 21:00(DAI Auditorium) For students & general public
'We, The Cyborgs…' public lecture by Nishant Shah

With the emergence of pervasive and ubiquitous technologies of computation and communication, cyborgs, once the objects of futuristic writing and academic theorization, have become a part of our everyday life. We live in technology mediated societies. We have intimate relationships with tools and interfaces as a part of the crucial mechanics of urban survival. We form relationships and belong to communities designed and shaped by the digital. From prosthetic implants to virtual appropriations, different models of understanding the cyborgs are now available to us. What does this cyborgification of life, labour and language do to our existing notions of being human? What are the ways in which we reconstitute as cyborg beings? What are the implications of cyborg emergence on questions of body, self and society?  Drawing from contemporary and historical debates in Social Sciences, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Cybercultures, the talk looks at the models and processes of cyborgification to understand new ways by which human-technology interactions and relationships can be explored.

May 20: Friday DAI-Project

Today students split up to participate in 3 different ongoing projects

Starting 10:00 (space to be announced)
Affect/Production
Curated by If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, tutored by Phil Collins and co-ordinated by Tanja Baudoin
Evaluation

During our session on Friday, we will be evaluating the course of this past year, our recent trip to Bilbao and the performance presented on the last night of our trip at Bulegoa z/b. We will also work more on the performance and will speak about the moment in July when each project presents itself to the other DAI students and the participants of the summer school.

In addition, we will discuss two essays by Jan Verwoert from his collection ‘Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want’ (2010). These essays are 'Exhaustion and Exuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform' and 'You Make Me Feel Mighty Real: On the Risk of Bearing Witness and the Art of Affective Labour'.
We will also spend some time on evaluating the course of this past year, our time in Bilbao and the performance presented on the last night of our trip. Finally, we will also work more on the performance and will speak about the moment in July when each project presents itself to the other DAI students and the participants of the summer school. 

Starting 10:00 – 17.00 (space to be announced)
Negotiating Equity
Today’s special guest: Geoff Cox
Today’s guest via skype:  Joasia Krysa

Geoff Cox from a.o. Arnolfini and Joasia Krysa (kurator.org and one of Documenta 13's curators) via Skype will be our guests.

Strategies for the antisocial web

A range of projects will be presented that present critical strategies in response to the paradoxes of social media, its promises and its shortcomings. Although these platforms facilitate unprecedented levels of sharing, the social relation is arguably produced in restrictive form, as personal and collective exchanges are further commodified. The presentation will be split into three broad areas of concern: related to (anti-)social media, curatorial systems and changing notions of publicness. First we will introduce a number of online projects developed for Arnolfini (www.arnolfini.org.uk) such as "Antisocial Networking," a repository of projects that have developed critical responses to social networking, and "Repetition" by Les Liens Invisibles, a petition platform that generates fake signatures. These projects will be contextualised in relation to the various articles (most recently "Virtual Suicide as Decisive Political Act") and other publishing activities (the Arnolfini journal "Concept Store" and the book series "DATA browser"). These initiatives also relate closely to the work of KURATOR, a research and curatorial platform (www.kurator.org), that has a special interest in the parallels between the ways that objects are assembled in technical systems and in curatorial practices (and at some point we will be joined by Joasia Krysa to explain some of the projects in more detail). Finally, we will draw attention to how new cultural forms that emerge from coding cultures allow for a reappraisal of the concept of the 'public', making it open for further modification and re-use.

Starting 10:00 (Space to be announced)
Re-reading Public Images
Project leader Florian Göttke
Today’s special guests: Merijn Oudenampsen and Luisa Lorenza Corna

Visible Divergence

The relationship between the visual experience of images and the linguistic means to describe their meaning has always been a point of contention. In this workshop we will discuss some classical texts on the meaning of imagery and try to find some points of divergence in our own visual practice.
We will read and discuss parts of Roland Barthes: Myth Today, Stuart Hall: On Representation, the paragraph on Foucault's analysis of Velasquez' Las Meninas, John Berger, Ways of Seeing and Georges Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images.

END OF PROGRAM DAI WEEK

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Please note Friday evening:
DUTCH DOC AWARD
Exhibition
Opening - 20 May 17:00
Centraal Museum Studio / Catharijneconvent Utrecht

nominated:
Florian Göttke 
Henk Wildschut
Raoul Kramer
Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen
WassinkLundgren
Willem Popelier