DAI-bulletin 2010-2011 number four January 2011

This is the fourth issue of the monthly DAI-bulletin in the academic year 2010-2011, informing you about our program during our so-called 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 Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are open to interested members the public.

Location of the month: Kortestraat 27, Arnhem.

PROGRAM DAI-WEEK JANUARY 10-14

DAI- Cantina

Lunch will be served daily from 13:00-14:00, dinner from 18:30-19:30

January 9 : Sunday DAI – meeting at the VanAbbemuseum

The participants in “Traces of Autonomy: The Economy of Voice and Speech in Global Art” will meet with curator Galit Eilat.
DAI – students Sander Uitdehaag and Jeroen Martinn have prepared an itinerary for this session.

Galit Eilat, who as curator working in often in the Middle-East, has intimate experience of the ‘aesthetics of politics’ and art’s practical possibilities to influence real politics. In dialogue with her, discussing among other things her current exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum ‘The Politics of Collecting, the Collecting of Politics’ and the work of Polish artist Arthur Zmijewski, we hope to put meat on the philosophical bones of Rancière’s suggestion (see Thursday January 14).

January 10: Monday DAI - Presentation

Starting 11:00 (Lecture room)

Artists Talks / Lecture-performances by students
Today in no particular order: Rui Vilela, Jeroen Martinn, Vanja Smiljanic, Lara Morais, Sylwia Galon, Frederik Gruyaert, Kostas Tzimoulis, Witta Tjan, Jort van der Laan, Toeh Meisami and Vittoria Soddu.

Their 20 – minute presentations will be reviewed on the spot by guest advisors Anselm Franke and Suzanne van der Ven.The discussion will be moderated by Gabriëlle Schleijpen.

January 11: Tuesday DAI-Thesis

Starting 10:30
Individual ‘Green Light’ meetings with Gabriëlle Schleijpen

With Eva Olthof, Doris Denekamp and Vittoria Sousa and Emilio Moreno.

Starting 10:30 (Reading Room)
Reading for Writing or How to do things with Theory
Alena Alexandrova & a group of 15 students

For this plenary session Alena chose a constellation of fragments and a text which introduces from different perspective several clusters of issues - the figures of the artist and the ethnographer/cultural theorist, the development of the early moving image and the importance of the figure of the moving animal (the snake dance), and finally another couple man and animal and the unstable distinction between its two members:
- Ph-A Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, Chapter 5 Among the Hopi
- G Agamben, The Open Man and Animal, Chapters 7 Taxonomies, 9 Anthropological Machine, 16 Animalization,17 Anthropogenesis (they are short chapters one or two pages)
- H Foster, The Return of the Real, a fragment (3 pages) of his chapter The Artist as Ethnographer

Starting 13:30 (Lecture Room)
Reading for Writing or How to do things with Theory
Doreen Mende & a group of 15 students

For the plenary session, Doreen Mende selected the texts that connect to the research interests of guest-lecturer, writer and curator Anselm Franke. The session will start with a discussion on Latour's 'Compositionist Manifesto', that was recommended by Franke. It relates in some way to the December reading when we discussed Rogoff's proposal to think 'critique' as something that is not outside of living, but something in which we are implicated. Yet, Latour finds a very different path to go beyond categories such as 'critique'. Donna Haraway's thoughts might be a useful balance to Latour with regard to categorized dichotomies, e.g. between 'nature' and 'culture'; she reflects on 'being critical' and introduces also the aspect of knowledge production from a feminist perspective. We will discuss her text from 14:45 on. From 16:00 on the group will discuss connections and differences between both texts, what can they provide for our practice and which questions remain open.

Also be prepared about the guest lecture and inform yourself about the project Animism by Anselm Franke. You will find some stuff in the internet. 

19:30 – 21:00  (Lecture Room)
The evening lecture for all students
Anselm Franke on Animism

In this talk, Anselm Franke will be presenting the ongoing series of exhibitions (2010 in Antwerp and Bern, 2011 and 2012 in Vienna and Berlin)that take their cue from the ethnological concept "animism". The concept of animism was used to describe what was then referred to as "primitive" or original religion: the belief in the animation of nature and its objects. In the context of this project, the underlying assumptions of the concept are questioned, and used to inquire not the so-called "primitive", but the modern conception and imaginary of boundary between nature and culture. The talk will take a look at several examples from the history of modern media and arts, in which this very distinction is practically put into question, and will attempt a discussion of the role of art and aesthetics in both re-enforcing and transgressing real and imaginary boundaries. 

January 12: Wednesday DAI - Publication

Starting 9:30
Reading for Writing or How to do things with Theory

Face to face meetings with Alena Alexandrova

Starting 10:30 (Reading Room)
For all 2nd year students
Pressing Issues – coordinator Rebecca Sakoun
Today’s Guest:

10:30–17:30 (Lecture Room)
For all 1st year students
Publishing Class
Framework: Binna Choi (Casco)
Support editor and coordinator: Chris Lee (Casco)
Today’s guest: Mounira Al Solh

Starting at 10:30 the group will have its monthly journal review & editorial meeting with Chris Lee, followed by the L(a)unch at 12:30

13.30–17.00
Workshop with Mounira Al Solh
(www.mouniraalsolh.com)

Mounira Al Solh will walk the Publishing Class through the process of conceiving, producing and presenting NOA (Not Only Arabic) Magazine, a periodical made in "limited editions with limited viewings."

Starting 19:30 (lecture room)
For all students and for students of Werkplaats Typografie
Publishing Class
Tonight’s guests: Mounira Al Solh and Mirene Arsanios of 98 Weeks (98weeks.blogspot.com)

The programme will feature complementary presentations by artist Mounira Al Solh speaking about the significance of the appearance and disappearance of artistic/cultural publications in Beirut, and critic/curator Mirene Arsanios (of 98 Weeks) thinks through the intimate yet abstract relationship between the publication and the reader which renegotiates an idea of the "public."

January 13: Thursday DAI - Autonomy

Starting 9:30

Face to Face meetings between individual DAI-students and individual guest advisors Doreen Mende, Sanja Mitrovic & Tanja Baudoin, Phil Collins, Florian Göttke, Ni Haifeng, Renée Ridgway, Steven ten Thije, Yoeri Meessen en Mounira Al Solh

Starting 10:00
Green Lightmeetings between Rebecca Sakoun, Gabriëlle Schleijpen and second year students Jeroen Marttin, Jort van der Laan, Petra Vaçova, Eelco Wagenaar, Patricia Sousa, Witta Tjan, Barbara Wagner, Charlotte Rooyackers, Kostas Tsimoulis, Yunjoo Kwak, Frederik Gruyaert and(through Skype) Gonçalo Sena

The purpose of the GREEN LIGHT is to confirm that the DAI is in agreement with and can support the scope of your project and your approach; essentially that the treatment fits the material, and that the timeline is workable, and that you are capable to develop the work, have the motivation to drive it forward to completion, and to shape it into engaging reading material and strong visual works.

Depending on other activities/commitments, fellow students are welcome to sit in.

10:30 - 14:30 (Lecture Room)
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 Steven ten Thije

The third chapter of  ‘Traces of Autonomy’ is comprised out of a discussion with curator Galit Eilat in the Van Abbemuseum (see Sunday January 9) and a seminar dedicated to reading Rancière’s ‘Aesthetics as Politics’. With this we turn from the relativist, critique of autonomy from Latour to one of autonomy’s last defenders Jacques Rancière. Where Latour consider ‘autonomy’ a typical modernist purist delusion, Rancière reposition autonomy as a structural node in modern political practice. In the session we will have to further diversify and specify our understanding of the term autonomy. On the one hand we are costumed to understand autonomy as a quality of artobject (Latour’s critique of the term), but Rancière suggests that we might also see autonomy as quality of a type of encounter between people which can be facilitated by art. This complex theoretical conundrum has been put to the test by Galit Eilat
on Sunday.

After the session there will be space for face-to-face meetings.
http://theautonomyproject.ning.com/

Starting 17:00
For all students from the DAI, Fashion Masters, Werkplaats Typografie and many invited guests from ArtEZ.
New Years Drink with Temporary Art Souvenirshop and DJ Jairzinho and (BRING YOUR DANCING SHOES!)

The Dutch Art Institute, Werkplaats Typografie and the ArtEZ Fashion masters invite all our ArtEZ colleagues for a New Year’s drink at the new ArtEZ building in the Kortestraat in Arhnem.

DJ Jairzinho (aka Jaïr Tchong), dj and world music journalist was born in 1973 of an Aruban-Chinese father and a Dutch mother. At age fifteen he began his musical career, diving in punk, new wave, soul, jazz, funk, African and Brazilian salsa/latin. In 2000 he began his career as a freelance journalist for a large number of Dutch papers and magazines and as a dj. Jairzinho plays Afrolatin: all black dance music has his interest. In addition he plays increasingly Balkan, eastern European and oriental music in his eclectic mix. In recent years Jairzinho has played at a large number of Dutch musical events. 

The Temporary Art Souvenirshop
TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS is an artist run shop which was open from the 7th until the 17th of October 2010 during Manifesta 8 Art Biennial in Murcia and Cartagena, Spain.

TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS sells specially tailored art souvenirs to as wide an audience as possible, translating high art into low, low art into high, and making it all available for everyone to buy as a souvenir of this special, one-off art event that is Manifesta 8. 

TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS forms an engaging commentary on the double nature of art as symbolic object and as commodity. The effects, problematics and possibilities of a temporal art event are explored in this unpredictable mobile shop, selling art as souvenirs and souvenirs as art. The shop’s mobility allows it to transverse the boundaries between different social spaces, enabling art and ideas to reach a wide range of audiences. 

TEMPORARY ART SOUVENIRS popped up at a different venue each day, including the Manifesta art venues, local squares, shopping malls,  migrant neighborhoods and tourist centres.

January 14: Friday DAI - Project

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
Today’s special guest: Sanja Mitrovic
 
Sanja Mitrović is interested in the notion of documentary in theatre, and its relation to the social, political and cultural realities of our times. Her performances are composed with a principle of montage, combining theatre, performance, dance and visual art. Permeated with a subtle humor and sharp analysis, her works are marked by an urgency to explore the influence of the collective processes on the private life of the individual. As documentary material she often uses personal stories and testimonies, which she contrasts with official historical accounts. The form produced from such a combination she calls “docu-tale”. The main intention of Mitrović’s work is to use creative agency to articulate an understanding of the important political and social issues, which shape our lives.

Since 2007 she has worked as an advisor and mentor for the students of the Department of Mime (Theaterschool, AHK, Amsterdam) where she teaches the subject of Actual Theatre as a guest teacher.

Friday’s session consists out of a theoretical component concentrated on “affect” in the afternoon, and a “production” component in the morning. In preparation for this session we are reading a chapter from Judith Butler's book "Precarious Life: the Power of Mourning and Violence" (2004), as well as Brian Massumi’s article Fear: the Spectrum Said" (2005), in which he relates affect to power and describes how affect can be employed to establish a culture of fear.

Starting 10:00 (space to be announced)
Negotiating Equity
Organised by Renée Ridgway and contributors to n.e.w.s (http://northeastwestsouth.net)
Today’s special guest: Ni Haifeng

10:00-13:00  ‘Para-Production’ lecture and seminar with Ni Haifeng
‘I am particularly interested in manufacturing, which is, in a proper Marxist perspective, pivotal in the chain of social production. This specific type of production is now disappearing in more advanced countries and economic systems, and its social and economic significance diminishing. As a result, there occurred a global re-configuration of labor division and hence a new set of political economic relationships. China, among other developing countries, thus virtually becomes the collective working-class of global capitalism. These issues brought my attention to the inner mechanism of global production and consumption.

This whole project is centered on the notion of labor, which is a knotting point in the ‘para-production’ of social relations. Here, I intend to place labor outside the economic law of equivalence, in other words, outside the gravitational field of capitalist system. The workers here are not commissioned laborers, but active makers, participants and contributors. The old question from Marx – ‘who is the real worker, the piano maker or the piano player’ still rings aloud; I want the laborers and the artist in this project to be equal makers of ‘Para-Products’. Also the work environment is not that of industrial production-line, but that of traditional individual-based type of production. The choice of old manual-sewing machines attests to this. They serve as witness to, at once, a particular process of para-production, and the absence or loss of individual-based ‘making and doing’ in our everyday life. It is interesting to see how weaving, sewing and tailoring, the oldest forms of production of basic human needs, have evolved into an exorbitant culture of high-consumerism. In this light, the project envisages an alternative value system and an alternative mode of social relations. That might sound a bit utopian.’
14:00-17:00 ‘Performative Archive’, Renée Ridgway
This afternoon we will discuss archives and screen selected video works that use archives not only as a field of reference as documents. Rather the ‘performative archive’ places doubt in history on the veracity of the information, referring to these techniques in order to reconstruct them. It creates an in-between space- the performative gesture or act of putting it together- of its reassembly, whether this takes form online, in video installations, ‘documentaries’ or in other spaces of presentation.

Starting 10:30 (Space to be announced)
Re-reading Public Images
Project leader Florian Göttke
Today’s special guest: Tony Chakar

In the morning, Tony Chakar will talk about his work in general. In the Afternoon, he will perform his lecture ‘The Eighth Day. [God Created the World in Seven Days. This is the Eighth Day.]’

The Eighth Day is an ongoing investigation, currently taking the form of a lecture-performance series, that began in the aftermath of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in July 2006, however not directly related to these attacks. During and after the Israeli military operation, images from Lebanon’s recent past (the civil wars of 1975-1990) inundated public realms (space and psyche) as well as discourse – becoming, at times, very difficult to endure – proving that the Lebanese wars (regarded as Catastrophic) are still cast in the unspoken. The Eighth day weaves a collection of elements – texts, images, songs, videos, publicity spots, etc.– that are metaphorical manifestations of the space and time of the Catastrophe, and attempts to identify the necessary strategies for redeeming the past-as-image

On Saturday January 15 (starting time to be confirmed) the Re-reading Public Images Project will start with a ‘show and tell’, where the group will walk the town under the students guidance. In the afternoon Tony will talk about his city-related work and we will have a first outline of the Beirut trip.