Accreditation 2019
The film "Study, Bodies and the Spaceship: Movements in a Minor Key" premiered on July 3rd, 2019 at WALTER books in Arnhem, at the occasion of a site-visit, as part of the so-called accreditation, a governmental quality standard inquiry. In higher education, if an institution or programme is "accredited", this means that the quality of the education that it offers has been positively assessed by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO). This in fact is required for official registration and state funding and has to be renewed after a certain number of years. The site-visit or "visitation" is an important part of the accreditation trajectory.
An independent panel of experts was called to assess four programs at the Graduate School of ArtEZ, among them the DAI (our last accreditation took place in 2013, read more about DAI's status as Degree Program here). DAI commisioned Krista Jantowski and Silvia Ulloa to make a documentary based on interviews with our students and alumni. Study, Bodies and the Spaceship: Movements in a Minor Key was shot on location, for the largest part during our DAI Weeks in Cagliari (South Italy) and Epen (South Netherlands) in January and February 2019 and aims to offer a glimpse of DAI's modus operandi as Planetary Campus during a "normal, regular" DAI-Week. On top of that, a student-collective consisting of Joannie Baumgärtner, Vinita Gatne, Gayatri Kodikal and Anastasia McCammon collectively wrote a Meditation ("Eleven Standards, Four Students, One Art Institute") on DAI in relation to the standards given by the Ministry of Education. This text has been added to the portfolio with information compiled and prepared by the staff of the Graduate School that the panel of experts was given to ground their inquiry in the overriding structure that holds the four programmes.
In addition to the screening of the film, at DAI we were both thrilled and honoured to have Ayesha Hameed on board as our so called "domain-specific referent", invited to attend our AEROPONIC ACTS in Berlin as well as our COOP SUMMIT 2019 in Cagliari where she met with our students and tutorial teams and shared the DAI's quotidian on location. Ayesha Hameed contributed as a guest-lecturer to two of our Roaming Assemblies: Roaming Assembly#13 ~ THE NAVIGATION PRINCIPLE as well as Roaming Assembly#24 ~ Opaque Justice: A Dialectics of Rerouting and she furthermore attended Roaming Assembly#25 ~ RADIO MUTINY which took place in Cagliari on the 30th of June. Thus, she acquired a broad overview of the DAI's three defining curriculum constitutents in 2019: HowToDoThingsWithTheory, the COOP study groups and finally, the Planetary Campus and was thus perfectly equipped to share her observations.
On the 3th of July, the following people were present at WALTERbooks in Arnhem to engage in a conversation with the NVAO's panel of experts:
Dr. S. Ayesha Hameed
Artist and researcher, Programme Leader for the MA in Contemporary Art Theory in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London and present in Arnhem as "domain-specific referent".
Nick Aikens (via skype)
PHD Candidate Valand Art Academy, University of Gothenburg; curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, longstanding partnering institution of the DAI, as well as COOP study group tutor.
Binna Choi
Director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (Utrecht) (another longstanding working partner of the DAI) as well as COOP study group tutor.
Krista Jantowski
Film director of Study, Bodies and the Spaceship and the initiator and owner of WALTER books in Arnhem as well as the "Dream", a joint venture between WALTER and DAI.
Silvia Ulloa
Director of Photography Study, Bodies and the Spaceship and DAI's regular video-documentalist. After earning her Bachelor's degree in Law in Madrid, Silvia Ulloa redefined herself as a visual artist. She obtained her MFA from the DAI in 2013. Next to her practice as artist/filmmaker, Silvia Ulloa is also a bookseller at the EYE Filmmuseum, where she aims for a range of books that display cinema in its splendid diversity.
Pitchaya Ngamcharoen
is an artist (originally from Thailand), researching how olfactory sense investigates smells through the act of orientation/ disorientation, marking territory and being de-territorialized through shifting smells. Since her graduation from the DAI in 2018, Pitchaya continues to be involved as a chef & sous-chef for DAI Roaming Academy.
Isabelle Sully
Practitioner across art-making, curating, editing and writing. She received a Master of Arts (Art Praxis) from the Dutch Art Institute in 2017. "Through treating administration as material, recent works and projects have adopted techniques and measurements of performance—the monologue, the stand-in, the cameo and the understudy, or, the evaluation form, the audit report, the signature and the keyboard—to understand the limits of visibility from the vantage point of the public eye". Originally from Melbourne, she now lives in Rotterdam where she is managing editor at Extra Extra and editor-in-chief at Publication Studio.
Baha Görkem Yalim
is a visual artist, originally from Izmir, now based in Amsterdam. They completed a Honours Degree in Art and Research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the University of Amsterdam and received their MA in Art Praxis from the DAI in 2018. Their video, sculpture, installation and performance work is often accompanied with texts that are in the crossing of poetry, fiction and academic reflection.
Gabriëlle Schleijpen
DAI's Head of Program and artistic director.
Program at WALTER books
Looierstraat 43, 6811 AV Arnhem
12:30 -13:30 lunch meeting DAI community
13:45 arrival expert-panel: Rene Kloosterman (chair), Paul Goodwin (member), Wayne Modest (member), Vera van der Burg(student-member) and Mrs. Buising (secretary).
13:55 Introduction Gabriëlle Schleijpen
14:10 Screening Study, Bodies and the Spaceship: Movements in a Minor Key
14:46 Spoken reflection by the domain specific referent, Dr. Ayesha Hameed
15:06 Q & A panel and DAI community.
15:45 Panel walks to the ArtEZ Headquarters, (Rietveld building Room M3.09) for the final part of the accreditation.
16:15 -17:15 Closing Note in the presence of representatives of the board of ArtEZ and the director of the Joint Master programs, the Education & Quality dept of ArtEZ as well as representatives of the DAI, Werkplaats Typography, Fashion Held in Common, and Fashion Strategy communities.
17:15 - 17:45 Panel Retreat
17:45 - 18:30 Closing note by the chair of the Panel. All stakeholder communities were welcome to attend.
19:00 @ WALTER books: DAI dinner & DAI drinks for DAI's stakeholder community.
After the session the Panel of Experts issued a positive advice, adorned with useful recommendations. For the coming 7 years the master status of our program has been guaranteed.
A year after the official accreditation of 2019 an interesting, definitely noteworthy so-called Development Interview with esteemed external examiner Paul Goodwin took place in Arnhem. Read the report here.