DAI-bulletin 2011-2012 number two October 2011
Dear friends and relations of the Dutch Art Institute, the Arnhem based MFA of the ArtEZ Faculty of Art & Design.
After three exceptionally charged days at the unequalled Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven where the Autonomy-project symposium (October 7,8,9) brought together several hundreds of Dutch and international artists, theorists and art and university students for a fluid merger of poetry and theory, of analysis and affect, we will now have to resume ‘bizniz as usual’. Impossible. At the DAI the glowing spirit of “autonomy” will not fail to continue fuelling our discussions in many weeks and months to come (Franco 'Bifo' Berardi: ".... mobilize our bodies.... our intelligences...").
In the attached document you will find the second issue of the monthly DAI-bulletin, informing you about our program for the upcoming DAI-week.
Instead of asking its master students to occupy an institutionalized studio-space on a daily base the DAI organizes an alternative commitment to learning: once per month students, faculty and invited guests participate in an energetic week-long residential program that lasts from early morning until late at night. The week is structured by a dense weaving of curated projects, seminars and other formats of group work, lectures and face to face conversations about individual practices. In-house lunches and diners are important shared moments that mark the communal aspirations of the program.
We kindly invite you to attend one, two or even three of three thought provoking events that we wish to present to a broader audience:
Tuesday October 18 : How to do Theory with Things.
A public lecture by Ruth Noack
20.00 pm at our auditorium at Kortestraat 27
Wednesday October 19: Decolonial Diasporic Aesthetics: Black Europe Body Politics
A public lecture by Alanna Lockward
15.00 pm at the MMKA (museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem)
Thursday October 20:
‘Designers Are From Venus, Editors Are From Mars’
Public lecture & discussion by Sam de Groot moderated by the ‘Generous Structures’ editors Binna Choi and Axel Wieder
at the occasion of the Dutch launch of ‘Casco Issues XII: Generous Structures’
20.00 pm at our auditorium at Kortestraat 27
In the attached document you will read more about their contents and about the projects & classes from which these presentations emerge. There you will also find relevant information on the contributions of the other faculty-members and their guests, all to be present in Arnhem from Monday 17 till Friday 21. Next to Ruth, Alanna, Sam, Axel and Binna we are looking forward to welcome Otobong Nkanga & Jean-Luc Vilmouth, David Weber-Krebs & Jan-Philip Possmann, Alena Alexandrova, Doreen Mende, Tanja Baudoin( If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution )& Ian White, Florian Göttke & Eric Kluitenberg, Renee Ridgway & Simon Ferdinando, Steven ten Thije(Van Abbemuseum), Yolande van der Heide (Casco).
Biographical notes & portraits are to be found on our website under ‘Faculty’.
http://www.dutchartinstitute.nl/
Best wishes,also on behalf of the DAI- staff; Rik Fernhout, Jacq van der Spek, Ricardo Liong-A-Kong, Rebecca Sakoun and Amarasraddha,
Gabriëlle Schleijpen, Head of Program
/////////////// DAI-BULLETIN 2011-2012 NUMBER TWO ///////////////
///////////////////////// OCTOBER 2011 //////////////////////////
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PROGRAM DAI-WEEK OCTOBER 17-21
DAI- Cantina
Lunch will be served daily from 13:00-14:00
Dinner Monday till Thursday from 18:00-19:00
TAKE NOTICE : Biographical notes & portraits are to be found on our website under ‘Faculty’.
October 17: Monday DAI – Presentation
13.00 For a kick-off of today’s two brand new projects we will have lunch with the complete group in the DAI’s canteen.
14.00 - 21:00 (DAI Auditorium) crash-presentations by all students
Today’s 30 student presentations will work as an upbeat to two workshops dealing with the act of ‘presenting/performing your work in public’:
1. When the stage hits you…
Run by Otobong Nkanga and Jean-Luc Vilmouth
When you believe that your hunger is an equivalent to that of a hostage who has been kidnapped by a terrorist or a bank robber, without food or drink then what do you do? This state of urgency creates a platform where intricate, extreme and creative stands are taken resulting in a holdup situation. We will be interested in looking at different forms of performances that can create this state of a holdup situation. When the stage hits you and there is no way out but to face the situation in a radical and extreme way. The idea will be to push the limits of (re) presentation, how one could go beyond just the normal and accepted ways of presentation of their works and engaged the public or spectator in an unusual and unpredicted way.
“Un art ne peut être une fin pour lui-même car, en lui-même, il ne rend personne meilleur” Socrate
Bio’s of Otobong and Jean-Luc to be found at http://www.dutchartinstitute.nl/
2. Presenting Performance/Performing Presentation
A six part workshop on performance art and lecture performance with David Weber-Krebs and Jan-Philipp Possmann.
This workshop is aimed at artists interested in developing or sharpening their own artistic language in the live mediums performance art and lecture performance. Together we will discuss and experiment on basic parameters of the performative situation and assist each other in developing performances. An interest but not necessarily an experience in performance art or lecture performance is required of all participants.
Since 2004 Weber-Krebs and Possmann have been working together as dramaturg and director/performer in developing live art works for theaters and galery spaces. From 2008 on we have engaged as artistic researchers in a research project on aesthetics of reception at the University of the Arts in Amsterdam. In our joint work we have been investigating and reflecting the basic conditions of live art – the space, the human presence, the assembly, the collectively spent time. The works that have developed out of this are playing with the very essential elements of an aesthetic situations and try to manipulate and make apparent the modes of encounter between audience, space, text and performer.
As artistic researchers we have been investigating aesthetic experiences and developing strategies to communicate our experiences in the format of lecture performances or installations. Part of this work has been an intense correspondence, which is documented on our Internet platform. Through these activities we aim to not only communicate experiences but to create new deep spaces of encounter and reflexivity for others.
Bio’s of all four workshopleaders are to be found at http://www.dutchartinstitute.nl/
October 18: Tuesday DAI – Thesis
Morning workshops will continue with Jean-Luc Vilmouth, David Weber Krebbs and Jan-Philip Possmann.
Starting 10.00 – 13.00 for all students
13.00 – 14.00 lunch
Reading for Writing or How to do things with Theory
Alena Alexandrova & Doreen Mende and their two respective groups
of students
During the first year the focus is on developing research skills and a central question for the thesis, formally submitted as a thesis project. During the second year the students engage in further research and writing the thesis.
Plenary sessions:
14.30 – 17.30 PM Alena Alexandrova’s reading group
will tackle political theorist Chantal Mouffe’s book Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces. Can artistic practices still play a critical role in a society where the difference between art and advertizing have become blurred and where artists and cultural workers have become a necessary part of capitalist production? Scrutinizing the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello1 have shown how the demands for autonomy of the new movements of the 1960's had been harnessed in the development of the post-Fordist networked economy and transformed in new forms of control. The aesthetic strategies of the counter-culture: the search for authenticity, the ideal of self-management, the anti-hierarchical exigency, are now used in order to promote the conditions required by the current mode of capitalist regulation, replacing the disciplinary framework characteristic of the Fordist period. Nowadays artistic and cultural production play a central role in the process of capital valorization and, through ‘neo-management’, artistic critique has become an important element of capitalist productivity.
14.30 – 17.30 PM
Doreen Mende’s reading group will focus on the notion of archive from two different perspectives: Allan Sekula's approach is informed by his practice as an artist, critic and writer; his seminal text Reading the Archive (first published in 1983) tackles the process of the accumulation of capital when artists are imbedded in the means of production of an "imaginery economy" through the use of archival material. The psychoanalyst, curator and writer Suely Rolnik recently published the text Archivemania, which reads as a reponse to the surplus of archival projects (by artists, curators and in institutions as in books) in the international art world of most recent decades and, by that, thinks about the entanglement of the poetic and the political along the body delivering crucial instruments for art as different to culture.
Allan Sekula's approach is informed by his practice as an artist, critic and writer; his seminal text Reading an Archive (first published in 1983) Suely Rolnik: Archive Mania / Archivemanie, in: dOCUMENTA (13) (Ed.), 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken, No. 022, Hatje Cantz 2011.
20.00 – 22.00 Public evening lecture by Ruth Noack
DAI Auditorium
How to do theory with things
Is it possible to think of language and image, discourse and art works as equally valent? This question might not even address itself to practitioners of theory or art, many of whom have, in the past decades, transgressed the boundaries of genre and medium. I am, however, socialised as art historian and practised as curator. Both professions have particular relations to text and image discourse and art work, theory and things. How to integrate these two professional attitues, or shall we say: experiences, continues to be of considerable interest to me. The lecture will not theorise on this point but give an example of ‘doing’, focussing on Nasreen Mohamedi’s work.
October 19: Wednesday DAI – Private / Shift
10:00 – 13:00 (DAI location)
For all students
Co-ordinator Rik Fernhout
Face to face meetings with: Alanna Lockward, Ruth Noack, Alena Alexandrova, Doreen Mende, Florian Gottke, Jorinde Seijdel, Simon Ferdinando, Ian White, Tanja Baudoin.
13.00 – 14.00 lunch
15.00 – 17.00 Lecture at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem
The Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ in collaboration with the MMKA (Museum for Modern Art Arnhem) and curatorial collective Suze May Sho presents a series of 6 lectures, taking place at the MMKA on the following Wednesdays; October 19, November 30, January 11, February 8, March 21, April 18.
Always from 3-5 pm
SHIFT IN MY THINKING
By inviting 6 eminent speakers, each with an outspoken position in the current postcolonial or decolonial discours, we wish to rethink past, present and future entanglements between Africa and Europe(and beyond),through theory and art.
SHIFT IN MY THINKING (* title inspired by http://www.bombasticelement.org/)emerged from the shared need for a theoretical underpinning of two initially unrelated projects by Arnhem based MMKA /Suze May Sho and DAI/ArtEZ.
MMKA : from January 28 till May 6 the exhibition Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design curated by Suze May Sho will pay homage to Vlisco fabrics. More then a hundred years old, born in Indonesia, designed in The Netherlands, loved in Africa and desired in the West these colourful fabrics find their way to the catwalks of Paris, the markets of Ghana and the galleries of London and New York. The exhibition Six Yards focuses on all relevant angels, from it’s presence and meaning in the work of Yinka Shonibare to the oral tradition of the tales the fabrics evoke.
DAI : in 2012, from May 3 till May 18, master students and professors from the DAI will commit to a working period in Dakar where they will not only engage in practical collaborations but also attend the opening of the African Contemporary Art Biennial Dak’Art 2012. Thus they will be introduced to lively aspects of Africa’s contemporary art & urban culture scenes and invited to reflect on what 'here' and 'elsewhere' mean to artists working in what is called the globalized world.
Lecture 1
Decolonial Diasporic Aesthetics: Black Europe Body Politics
by Alanna Lockward
The Decolonial Option questions the very notion of “universality” and “civilization”, or rather “the universality of civilization”. This rhetoric of modernity and progress always carries a secret weapon which is articulated through dispossession, exploitation and ultimately, genocide: coloniality. By exposing this notion of inseparability between modernity and coloniality, decolonial thinking states that there is no such thing as an “autonomous European Sonderweg” of modernity. The colonial and its exploited, dispossessed, enslaved and exterminated subjects have always played a crucial role in creating, defining and literally “feeding” modernity. As the Decolonial Aesthetics Manifesto states: “...(this concept) seeks to recognize and open options for liberating the senses. This is the terrain where artists around the world are contesting the legacies of modernity and its re-incarnations in post-modern and altermodern aesthetics.” The time-based positions( video-art pieces of Teresa María Díaz Nerio and Jeannette Ehlers a.o. ) that will be discussed at this meeting have been selected because they contest (racialized) fantasies on European citizenship.
Please note that entrance to the museum for the public is under the standard termsand conditions
19.30 – 21.00 Continuation face to face meetings with: Alena Alexandrova, Doreen Mende, Florian Gottke, Jorinde Seijdel, Simon Ferdinando, Ian White, Tanja Baudoin.
October 20: Thursday DAI – Project
Today students split up to participate in 3 different ongoing projects
Starting 10:00 – 17.00 (location: morning DAI 1st floor; afternoon: ArtEZ dance studio)
‘practice-theatre’
Curated by If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, tutored by Ian White and co-ordinated by Tanja Baudoin
‘practice-theatre’ is a project tutored by Ian White in collaboration with Emma Hedditch and Jimmy Robert, and curated by If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. Coordinated by Tanja Baudoin.
‘practice-theatre’ is a cumulative project that seeks to explore and question, through performance, the various aspects of what the place of theatre means to us and how we might want to use it in our work. Each month the project will expand and enact ideas around a different aspect of theatre - with what’s done one month mapping onto the next - to consider the positions from which we speak, how we act, and what, through different frames, speaking and action might be.
DAI week October
In October tutor Ian White is present with Tanja Baudoin. During this first session, we begin exploring ideas about the positions from which we speak, the relationship between speech and silence, reception and (critical) production and how such positions are literally defined by the occupation of different kinds of physical space - the theatrical auditorium and/or its antechambers. We aim to establish some co-ordinates by reading and discussing a fragment from Roland Barthes' On Racine, as it relates to Aristotle's Poetics and Augusto Boal’s description of Aristotle's Coercive System of Tragedy in Theatre of the Oppressed and by visits to the City hall and City theatre in Arnhem. In the afternoon we will begin to develop a physical vocabulary derived from and aiming to enact and describe our experiences and thoughts.
In addition, on 28 October at 20:30 hrs the students of ‘practice-theatre’ are attending Five Sisters at Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam, presented by If I Can't Dance. This performance presents the story of five sisters, who busy themselves with the problems and pleasures of modern life on a Sunday afternoon. The California sun provokes their reactions, emotions and moods. French-born artist Guy de Cointet (1934-1983) was an influential member of the Los Angeles art scene from the 1960s onward.
Starting 10:00 – 17.00
Negotiating Equity
Special guest: Simon Ferdinando
via skype: Renee Ridgway
Negotiating Equity: Archive, Database, Research investigates curation as artistic practice, investigating experimental and conceptual art practices under physical as well as virtual conditions. Negotiating Equity draws upon theories of fairness in questioning divergent value systems and asserts that these terms of engagement imply rethinking the political, economic and social conditions of art, drawing upon a wide range of artistic and art-related practices, some off the radar, undocumented and under-theorized, others representative of art historical paradigms.
Starting 10:00 -17.00
Re-reading Public Images
Project leader Florian Göttke
Special guest: Eric Kluitenberg
Images are part of our vocabulary that we use to communicate with. We show our position and our identity, not just as individuals but also as groups. With images we take part in the debate about our society. In this DAI project we will investigate images that take part in this public debate. We will critically read the images and trace their hidden personal, ideological and political messages.
10.00 Introduction to the Re-reading Public Images by Florian Göttke
Presentation and discussion by our guest Eric Kluitenberg
Evening lecture
20.00 – 21.30 The evening lecture for all students & general public
is curated by Casco and part of the Publishing Class, framework: Binna Choi, coordinator: Yolande van der Heide.
‘Designers Are From Venus, Editors Are From Mars’
Public lecture by Sam de Groot & discussion moderated by the ‘Generous Structures’ editors Binna Choi and Axel Wieder
at the occasion of the Dutch launch of ‘Casco Issues XII: Generous Structures’
20.00 pm at our auditorium at Kortestraat 27
This evening opens up the retrospective dialogue between editor and designer often taking place behind doors and invites designer Sam de Groot, who collaborated with Julia Born and Laurenz Brunner for the design of ‘Generous Structures’, to speak about their design considerations and engage in dialogue with co-editors Axel Wieder and Binna Choi with his other design examples.
Sam de Groot says: “As designers I think we're often shooting a bit in the dark. We think that certain formal decisions have specific implications/effects on the content but there is a lot of guessing and assuming involved and in the end there is usually not too much time for critical dissection of this during or after the process.”
For more information about ‘Casco Issues XII: Generous Structures’ please check www.cascoprojects.org.
October 21: Friday DAI - Public
10.00 - 17.00 Situating Artistic Practice Today – A seminar on where we are, and how we got there
Framework: Van Abbemuseum
Curated & tutored : Steven ten Thije and Ahmet Ögüt
This year the Van Abbemuseum offers a seminar to the first year DAI students that addresses the current position of art in society. Through a series of ‘experiments’ and readings, the students are invited to develop an expanded understanding of their own practice in relation to a historical and contemporary background of art production and presentation. read more Special attention thereby will be given to the historical institutionalization of art in modern times in museums, galleries and a professional art history, next to a tour d’horizon of contemporary practice. A returning issue will be the effect of post-1989 globalisation on the position of art.
The second session of Situating Artistic Practice, run by Steven ten Thije, zooms in on the historical juncture at which we find ourselves through Hans Belting's analysis of 'global art'. Building up towards a more practice based part of the seminar, we will spend one more time setting up a shared background concerning the situation today. Questions to discuss in this are: what is the relation to 'modernity', and 'history'; how does globalization affect notions of centre and periphery; and of course, what affects does this have on art.
10.00 – 17.00 Publishing Class (space to be announced)
For the students in their second year of studies.
Framework: Casco
‘Publishing Class’ is curated by Binna Choi and coordinated by Yolande van der Heide
Today’s guest supervisor: Axel Wieder
‘Publishing Class’ is a two year programme designed for the Dutch Art Institute MFA ArTEZ by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, delving into the act of publishing in critical art practice, both as a way to make things public – forming the publicness – and as a form of dissemination beyond time and space constraints. The first year of the programme was facilitated by monthly guests and explored diverse aspects of publishing and its social and political urgency whilst exercising them through a collective monthly artistic journal ‘Spencer’s Island’ made by the students themselves.
The second phase of ‘Publishing Class’ shifts into individual publishing, as yet implementing different forms of collaboration. The “class” is divided into three groups to operate as small editorial cooperatives. Each group is guided by and works closely with artists, Mattin, Falke Pisano and Wendelien van Oldenborgh, respectively. Students from the Werkplaats Typografie will also collaborate, further developing the “art and design” relationship beyond any established manner. Three public lectures are scheduled on Thursdays: 20 Oct 2011, 12 January 2012 and 22 March 2011. These dates will also serve as “book launch” occasions. The class will conclude with its own launching event in July 2012 and travel to the coming NY Art Book Fair. ‘Publishing Class’ is curated by Binna Choi and coordinated by Yolande van der Heide.
END OF PROGRAM DAI WEEK