Photocollage by EricandMarie
This 100-level AH190 course introduces students to art & design practice by investigating the intricate relation between our intentions and the world: how do we visually articulate, anchor, and transmit an idea? We will work from inspiring practical assignments, in which you learn to make unexpected and meaningful connections between yourself, things, people and situations, and to create objects and interventions based on these connections. We will go on adventurous field trips and visit the studio of a contemporary designer / artist. The course functions as a pilot for the Art and Design Practice track which will officially be launched in January 2016 – students who take part thus help pioneer this unique program. The course is open to collaborative and experimental minds from all fields. Prospective students are asked to imagine a plan for “an exciting intervention in a vacant space, that will make it into an LAS space of learning”.
First classmate in an empty classroom, 2015
Mapping Space, Dyonna Kuipers, 2015
What are the qualities of a stripped down space? Can we visually map them?
Where are you? There. Installation in flux by Anna Ziya Geerling & Nele Bartsch
Making THERE with bacteria culture in the UCR Life Science lab, Nele Bartsch, 2015
The pioneer class of 2015 sharing their project "Room 11" during the monthly local Arts & Culture Route (Kunst en Cultuur Route). Video editing by Ivar Troost
A sad note. Fellow student Pepijn Suurmeijer unfortunately passed away in † 2020. Pepijn contributed with his characteristic enthusiasm to the course through acoustic action research, and the construction of a mobile video projector. We wish his family and friends all the best.
Project 1: Mapping Space In order to “make room”, in other words to articulate a territory, you first need to know where you are, and on which latent qualities you can build. The course therefore starts off with a 3-week exercise entitled Mapping Space, during which you will map and visualise the qualities of Room 11, the A&DP working space. In this project, you are detectives of specific qualities in search of clues. Your evidence will take the form of drawings and scale models. Project 2: Mapping Resources The question “where are we” becomes more interesting, and more difficult, when extended to the area of Middelburg > Walcheren > Zeeland: in this second project, Mapping Resources, you will portrait who produces what in Zeeland, and analyse what kind of (material and immaterial) value these artisans and experts generate. You will undertake fieldwork and make imaginative portraits in different media. Project 3: Making a Community Learning Tool The last weeks of the semester will be spend working on the third exercise, Making a Community Learning Tool. We will start by exploring your ideas about ways to turn a vacant space into an LAS space of learning. Which ideas are applicable to Room 11? Through test interventions, we will collectively give shape, and content, to this room. In addition, each of you will imagine and realise a Liberal Arts & Sciences inspired learning tool, in collaboration with a ressource from Zeeland mapped in project 2.
Components and build up of final grade
Class readings & screenings
Guided visit to the “University” show by artist Ola Vasiljeva at the Vleeshal (week 1).
RANCIÈRE Jacques, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Paris: Fayard 1987/1991 (week 2-3)