European Artistic Research Network

“The Pleasure of Research” Henk Slager Book Launch, Helsinki, 4 Nov 2011

EARN Admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 05:57:48 +0000

Research and visual art have coloured the context of many activities developed by Henk Slager over the last five years. Significant contributions to the debate on the situation of research in visual art resulted from his Professorship in Artistic Research and his position as Dean of the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (MaHKU) leading to productions such as the yearly Dutch Artistic Research Even (DARE) and the publication of the biannual MaHKUzine, Journal of Artistic Research. See www.mahku.nl

In 2006, Henk Slager initiated – together with Jan Kaila and Gertrud Sandqvist – the European Artistic Research Network (EARN), a network investigating the consequences of artistic research for current art education in symposia, expert meetings, and presentations such as A Certain Ma-ness (Amsterdam 2008), Epistemic Encounters (Utrecht 2009), Arts Research: Publics and Purposes (Dublin 2010), Tables of Thought (Helsinki 2010), The Academy Strikes Back (Brussels 2010), and Art as a Thinking Process (Venice 2011).

Departing from a similar focus on artistic research, Henk Slager produced various curatorial projects such as Flashcube (Leeum, Seoul 2007), Shelter 07 (The Freedom of Public Art in the Cover of Urban Space, City of Harderwijk 2007), Translocalmotion (co-curator 7th Shanghai Biennale 2008), Nameless Science (Apexart, New York 2009), Becoming Bologna (Collatoral Project Venice Biennale 2009), Critique of Archival Reason (Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin 2010), Artistic Anthropology (NJP Art Center, Seoul 2010), As the Academy Turns (Collaborative project Manifesta 8, Murcia 2010) and Any-Medium-Whatever (Georgian Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2011).

In The Pleasure of Research, Henk Slager treats the above-mentioned activities and projects as points of inspiration and shows how the discussion on artistic research delving into issues such as knowledge production, artistic thinking, medium-specificity, context-responsiveness, and counter-archival display, has affected the current state of art and education. He concludes that today’s debate on art education and artistic research echoes the semiotics debate in the 1970s, in which a formatting, academic order tried to discipline semiotics into a traditional, academic domain. Therefore, a reconsideration of artistic research is currently required; a reconsideration in line with Roland Barthes’ former response to a semiotics in the process of becoming static. In Henk Slager’s view that requires a stance where artistic research is considered a gaya scienza: a temporary autonomous activity focusing on the intellectual pleasure of an experimental method and an implicated form of artistic thought.

The Pleasure of Research is published in the publication series of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Previous contributors to this series include Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta, Tere Vaden and Jan Svenungsson. For more information: www.kuva.fi/portal/julkaisut or email: henri.wegelius(at)kuva.fi

SHARE Conference Helsinki 4-5/11/2011

EARN Admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:38:40 +0000

Several of the members of EARN are co-organising with the SHARE Network a major conference in Helsinki on the current global contexts for doctoral level studies across the arts.

SHARE #1 Helsinki Conference
04-05 November 2011

Hosted by the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts

SHARE #1 Conference Helsinki will share and discuss outcomes of the first year of the 3 year SHARE project and generate a dialogue with the Artistic Research Community at large (Europe and beyond). This is the first SHARE Annual Conference which examines the development of the doctoral level studies (3rd cycle) across all the creative arts – including design, performing arts, visual arts, architecture and film.

This two day event will provide an overview of:

• issues in growing the doctoral level for the arts across Europe
• perspectives on artistic research from beyond the European context
• progress reports and future directions for artistic research collaboration through SHARE

The conference will include keynote presentations, discussion papers, working group presentations, break-out groups, live music performances and a special reception for conference delegates on the evening of Friday 4th November.

Special guest speakers will include:

Jalal Toufic, “Toufic is one of the most active and ambitious figures in the Arab world who—book by book—has endeavoured to sculpt a critical, theoretical language of the Arab world”

Dr. Francis Ugiomoh, Senior Lecturer in Art History/Head of Fine Art at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
abstract »

A/Prof. Barb Bolt is the Associate Dean (Academic – VCA) at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne, Australia.
abstract »

Prof. Dr. Freddie Rokem, Theatre Arts University of Tel Aviv and Department of Theatre at Helsinki University.
abstract »

Full programme of the event on SHARE Website.

For accommodation and registration see the SHARE website

Art as a Thinking Process, Venice 2011

EARN Admin — Sun, 29 May 2011 11:45:26 +0000

International Symposium on Visual Forms of Knowledge Production
Sunday 5 June & Monday 6 June 2011

IMAGE: workshop Common Ground: Projects for the Lagoon, 2010, Marjetica Potrc & Marguerite Kahrl Graduate Program in Visual and Performing Arts, Università Iuav di Venezia

Speakers include: Amerigo Restucci, Medardo Chiapponi, Chiara Vecchiarelli, Angela Vettese, Mara Ambrozic, Sarat Maharaj, Hito Steyerl, Henk Slager, Mary Jane Jacob, Lev Kreft, Ute Meta Bauer, Carol Becker, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Marco de Michelis, Paolo Legrenzi, Paolo Garbolino, Hong John Lin, Simon Njami, Cornelia Lauf, Giulio Alessandri, Suzana Milevska, Gertrud Sandqvist, Jan Kaila, Mick Wilson, John Aiken, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Jan Cools, and Baton Sinister

Download schedule as .pdf here

Download Italian text schedule as .pdf here
Download press release here

The year 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the Faculty of Arts & Design at Iuav University of Venice, which offers the only public Undergraduate & Graduate Programme in Visual and Performing Arts in Italy.

On this occasion, under the directorship of Angela Vettese (who has run the graduate programme since it was founded), the International Symposium Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production will be held. The symposium will be curated by Mara Ambrozic, and will feature the presentation of Visual Arts at Iuav, Venice 2001-2011 – What an Art School Should Be?, a publication edited by Chiara Vecchiarelli with Angela Vettese.

Held on Sunday 5th and Monday 6th June 2011 in the Aula Magna in Tolentini, the main Iuav University venue, the meeting will aim to investigate the role of art in the context of knowledge production. Within the two-day symposium a series of papers will be presented by a number of prominent thinkers — be them theoreticians, curators, scientists, writers or artists — variously involved in both the teaching of art and the reflection on the relationship, overlapping and intertwining between art and thought.

The goal of the symposium is to discuss the logic and methods involved in this specific yet open form of knowledge production and dissemination from which arises the idea that art is to be conceived as lying within the thinking process itself. Art as a Thinking Process: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production follows the increasing interest in art schools, the prominence gained by their joint exhibition places, the evidence of art practices and, accordingly, the diffusion of an extensive literature discussing art schools as a resource and potential alternative to the merely commercial dynamics that are presently shaping the system of contemporary art. The meeting will also address the current crisis and shifts in the practices of knowledge production within the general educational sphere.

The symposium proceedings will be published shortly afterwards.
The two-day symposium will be open to the public.
Please register by 1st June 2011 with sending an email to thinksart@gmail.com

This event is organised by Università Iuav di Venezia, the Faculty of Arts and Design Graduate Programme in Visual and Performing arts in collaboration with EARN. 5-6 June 2011 at the Aula Magna, Tolentini, Santa Croce 191, Venezia.

Dublin Meeting 25/2/2011

EARN Admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:04:37 +0000

EARN members will meet in Dublin later this month (Friday 25th February) to review the work-programme of EARN 2005-2010. During the meeting in Dublin the group will also finalise plans for its work programme in 2011 and 2012. This meeting in Dublin will co-incide with the first meeting of a new working-group on “Graduate School Structures for the Arts” that includes several EARN members.

The schedule of the Dublin meeting will be posted shortly.

New Study Opportunities

EARN Admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:25:30 +0000

As part of the development of the EARN website, we are now providing information about study opportunities provided by the EARN partners. The first call to be announced comes from the Finnish Academy of Fine Art, Helsinki. This call is open until 28 February 2011. Further calls will be announced for 2011.

Please check regularly for updates.
See the study-opportunities (also provided as a new link in the main menu).

SHARE Step-change in Higher Arts Research & Education

EARN Admin — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:36:37 +0000

Several EARN partners – Helsinki, Vienna, Utrecht, Gothenburg, Dublin, Brussels, and Venice – have initiated a new collaboration with ELIA, EUFRAD and other higher arts education institutions across Europe to explore the development of the “3rd Cycle” – doctoral level – creative arts research and education. The “Step-change for Higher Arts and Research Education” (SHARE) project brings together established and emergent doctoral programmes across the arts.

SHARE creates a European-wide exchange framework for the widely different experiences, practices and ideas that make up the lively domain of artistic and cultural research. The network works across a wide spectrum of creative cultural practices including visual and performing arts, music, design, architecture and media.

SHARE is co-funded by the EU through the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency through the ERASMUS Lifelong Learning Programme. This key European network brings together arts graduate schools, arts research centres, arts educators, supervisors, researchers and cultural practitioners. It also acts as a network of networks including participation from ERAN and larger networks such as ELIA, as well as important new forums as EUFRAD, to name only some of the many networks active in European arts research.

For more information see:

ELIA website: www.elia-artschools.org/

GradCAM website: www.gradcam.ie

EARN @ Manifesta 8 Schedule

EARN Admin — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:13:07 +0000

AS THE ACADEMY TURNS

December 2-4 2010 Murcia
Collaborative Programma, Manifesta 8 & EARN

DECEMBER 2

10.15. OFFICIAL OPENING- Manifesta and EARN

1030. Matts Leiderstam (Malmo). Supervisor Sarat Maharaj. Critical opponent: Juergen Bock (Lisboa)
www.mattsleiderstam.com

13. Irene Kopelman (Utrecht). Opponent: Jan Svenungson (Berlin).
http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/kopelman1.html

14-16 Lunch

16. Maija Timonen (London). Supervisor: John Aiken. Critical opponent: Hito Steyerl (Berlin)
www.balticartcenter.com/maija-timonen/

17. Screening Tiong Ang: As the Academy Turns

DINNER PARTY –
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DECEMBER 3

Morning:

10. Denise Ziegler. (Helsinki). Supervisor: Tuomas Nevanlinna. Critical opponent: Sarat Maharaj
www.kuva.fi/attachments/the_artists_knowledge_2.pdf

13. Frans Jacobi. (Malmo). critical opponent: Jan Kaila (Helsinki)
www.fransjacobi.net

Lunch 14-16

16.Georgina Jackson. (Dublin). Critical opponent: Alvaro de los Angeles (Valencia)
http://www.gradcam.ie/people/georgina_jackson.php

17. Giulio Squillacciotti (Venice). Critical opponent: Mika Hannula (Gothenburg).

—————————————————————————-

DECEMBER 4

Morning:

10. Magnus Bartas (Gothenburg). Supervisor Mika Hannula. Critical opponent: Tom Holert. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/22325
http://www.magnusbartas.se

13 . Dolores Piqueras. (Valencia). Critical Opponent: Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmo)

Lunch 14-16

16.Katja Tukiainen. (Helsinki). Critical opponent: Marquard Smith (London).
http://www.katjat.net/

17.Janis Rafailidou (Leeds) . Critical opponent Mick Wilson (Dublin)/ Final Remarks.
http://www.janisrafailidou.co.uk

For more information see the press release here.

BOOKINGS

Booking a place is through the Manifesta 8 office.
See here http://www.manifesta8.com/manifesta/manifesta8.events_and_activities
email: mediacion@manifesta8.es

EARN @ Manifesta 8 – ‘As The Academy Turns’ 2-4/12/10

EARN Admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:56:27 +0000

‘As the Academy Turns’ – the EARN Winter School during Manifesta 8 Murcia December 2010 – is a unique experiment at the intersection of artistic research, contemporary art, and the new art academy practices that have emerged across Europe in the last decade. ‘As the Academy Turns’ is a multilayered project exploring the potentials and the tensions in the growth of artistic research and the current ‘academization’ of art education. This ‘academicisation’ of art is increasingly marked by the strong expectation of research trajectories and how these will be shaped within the changing institutional framework of art education. In that context, the present possibilities of PhD research within visual art are particularly at the center of attention and debate.

What do those challenges mean for the art academy as such? Will novel forms of academic elitism pop up or will research induce a novel form of intellectual conscience in the art academy? How will research and artistic practice be intertwined? Will they produce redefinitions in both domains or is research rather doomed to be a fringe phenomenon at the art academy? And the ultimate question, how will research be conducted within art academies? These themes will be tackled in three different dissemination platforms: a three day international symposium, an infolab presentation and an artwork in the form of a soap opera set in an art academy.

During the three-day symposium a series of exemplary research projects from prominent European art academies will be presented and discussed. The researchers involved include practitioners based in MaHKU, KUVA, Malmo, Gothenburg, CePRA, GradCAM and other academies across Europe (full list posted shortly). Their presentations will be critically addressed by a number of invited respondents including Sarat Maharaj, Tom Holert, Hito Steyerl, Mick Wilson, Marquard Smith, and Jan Kaila.

In addition, a special infolab presentation in Cendeac including research statements provided by the twelve researchers will delve further into their research trajectories and practices.

The presentation of the soap ‘As the Academy Turns’, a commissioned project developed and realized by artist Tiong Ang, will also take place in CENDEAC. The setting of the soap is the contemporary art academy where the characters – the art academy population of teaching staff and students – act within a situation of transformation where the current master-pupil oriented educational system moves towards a seminar-based form of education with artists as scholars and researchers in an academic community.

The soap ‘As the Academy Turns’ brings together two diverging poles. On the one hand, it addresses contemporary artistic practice, and autonomous artistic research and production as outcomes of art education. On the other hand, it presents the art academy “remodeled” as a product of the entertainment industry in the context of popular daytime television serving a mainstream, hedonistic, neo-liberal, consumerist ideology. Elements of critique and of hoax are brought together through the soap opera form so that the genre’s exaggerated dramatic style subverts and deconstructs popular views on higher art education.

Locations:
Artistic Research Statements and presentation soap As the Academy Turns: CENDEAC, basement. During the duration of Manifesta 8.
International Symposium: CENDEAC. December 2-4, 2010.

‘As the Academy Turns’ is developed by EARN (European Artistic Research Network) in collaboration with Manifesta 8, Murcia University and CENDEAC.

‘As the Academy Turns’ is also made possible by the financial support of Fonds BKVB, Amsterdam.
Tiong Ang’s soap production is generously supported by SMART Project Space, Amsterdam.

The public programme will be posted here on www.artresearch.eu during the opening of Manifesta 8 in October 2010.

The Academy Strikes Back Brussels 4 – 5/6/10

EARN Admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:14:43 +0000

exhibition and conference june 2010, brussels

renee green, irit rogoff, hans ulrich obrist, dieter lesage & centrifugal

EARN (European Artistic Research Network) presents The Academy Strikes Back, Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design. [4-5/6/10]. The Academy Strikes Back is the concluding presentation of a two-year project exploring the current academization of art education. The project takes place within the context of the European Artistic Research Network and was developed by Jan Cools (Sint-Lukas, Brussels) and Henk Slager (maHKU, Utrecht). The project’s starting point is the importance of artistic research for formulating competencies, leaning outcomes and didactic strategies in art education. Previous events within this project include ‘A Certain Ma-Ness’, (Amsterdam in March 2008) with a.o. Simon Sheikh, Jan Verwoert, Clementine Deliss, Mick Wilson, Bart Verschaffel, and ‘Becoming Bologna’, (IUAV, June 2009) with a keynote by Daniel Birnbaum, that took place within the framework of the 53rd Venice Biennale.

During ‘The Academy Strikes Back’ the specificity of the Academy as a research environment is at the forefront of our enquiry and debate. How can artistic (doctoral) research contribute to the overall research environment at the Academy? To investigate this, three doctoral researchers (Jeremiah Day, Clodagh Emoe, Paul Landon) have been invited to do workshops, based on their own research projects, for the Brussels master students. Documentation of the various ways that (doctoral) research can be embedded in the structure of the Graduate School is on display in the Sint-Lukas Gallery, June 5 – 20, 2010.

As a consequence of the institutionalization of the artistic research environment, it is inevitable that the debate about the specificity of the Academy is being brought back into the Academy where it most urgently belongs. The symposium will elaborate on this by asking four specialists the following sub-questions:

Can the academicized Art Academy still offer a viable space and platform for the experimental development of a critical art practice?

Is there an affirmative relationship between institutionalized artistic research and the art scene?

How transparent is ‘peer reviewing’ in the art world and what role can it play in academized art education?

How can the outcomes of artistic research be disseminated?

programme

June 4: 14-18

Jan Cools (Sint Lukas Brussels), Henk Slager
(maHKU, Utrecht): Introductions

Renee Green (Dean Graduate School San Francisco Art Institute): Hail the invisible College or What Can Matter Now?
Jeremiah Day Researcher maHKU, Utrecht
Moderator: Gertrud Sandqvist (Professor Malmo Art Academy)

Irit Rogoff (Professor Goldsmith’s College, London): Practicing Research/Singularising Knowledge
Susan Kelly, Taru Elving (Centrifugal) The Centrifugal Book of Europe
Moderator: Mick Wilson (Dean GradCAM, Dublin)

June 4: 19-21

Opening Parallel Exhibition: Sint-Lukasgalerie, Haachtsesteenweg 138, Brussels www.sintlukas.be

June 5: 10-13

Hans Ulrich Obrist (Co-Director Exhibtions Serpentine
Gallery, London): Peer Reviewed Art
Paul Landon: Researcher Finnish Academy of Fine Art,
Helsinki
Moderator: Hans de Wolf, Free University Brussels

June 5: 14-17

Dieter Lesage (Professor Erasmus University College
Brussels): Supplementality
Clodagh Emoe: Researcher GradCAM, Dublin
Moderator: John Aiken, Director Slade School of Fine
Art, London
Location Symposium: Auditorium Sint-Lukas, Address: Groenstraat 162-184, Brussels

More information: www.artresearch.eu

Reservations: theacademystrikesback@sintlukas.be

The Academy Strikes Back is part of an ongoing and unique trans-European experiment in arts research organised by EARN in association with Centrifugal and led by GradCAM, Ireland. This third phase of the project builds upon, and extends, the examination and critical contestation of the archival paradigm in artistic research and curatorial practice initiated at the exhibitions ‘Critique of Archival Reason’ (curated Henk Slager, RHA Gallery, Dublin, 2010) and ‘Re : Public’ (curated Daniel Jewesbury, TBG, Dublin, 2010) which were held in conjunction with the conference ‘Arts Research: Publics and Purposes’ (Dublin, 2010). The second phaze of this project took place in Helsinki in April 2010 with ‘Tables of Thought’ (curated by Jan Kaila and Henk Slager, Kuva, Helsinki) and the accompanying symposium.

The Brussels events also constitute a phase of the ‘Artist as Citizen’ project is co-organised by Sint-Lukas in collaboration with EARN (European Artistic Research Network) and associated partners including: The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Helsinki), GradCAM (Dublin), maHKU (Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design), Malmo Art Academy (Malmo), Slade School of Fine Art (London), Sint-Lukas Brussels University College of Art and Design, IUAV (Venice), Academy of Fine Arts (Vienna), University of Gothenburg and The School of Fine Art (Leeds). Further phases of the project will take place in Zagreb (Centrifugal) in summer 2010.

EARN was established in 2004 and exists to share and exchange knowledge and experience in artistic research; foster mobility, exchange and dialogue among art researchers; promote wider dissemination of art research; and enable global connectivity and exchange for art research. ‘The Academy Strikes Back’ will also see the lexpansion of EARN’s new website resource for artistic research www.artresearch.eu

Phase 4 of The Artist as Citizen will take place in Zagreb in June 2010 under the auspices of Centrifugal.

This project is in part funded by the EC-EACEA Culture 2000–2007: ‘Artist as Citizen’ project co-ordinated by GradCAM.

Researcher led Workshops – ‘The Academy Strikes Back’ 2010

Sint-Lukas — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:26:33 +0000

As a prequel to the conference ‘The Academy Strikes Back’ the Sint-Lukas Transmedia programme collaborated in three workshops, led by doctoral researchers Clodagh Emoe (GradCAM), Paul Landon (KUVA) and Jeremiah Day (MaHKU). During the conference the doctoral resaerchers presented reports on how their workshops operated and on the relationship between their own research and the workshop formats and themse. Material from the workshops was also included in a visual presentation at the Sint-Lukas Gallery (in its brand new space in Paleizenstraat 70.)

Participants included:

Milena Galli
Nemanja Ladjic
Gunther Truijen
Stéfan Piat
Filip Daniels
Maud Lefever
Wouter Huis
Sven Goyvaerts