Tinguely Reloaded

On March 23 at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, former Metamatic Visiting Professor Emily Scott co-chaired the panel “Caught in the Circuits”  at the Metamatic Reloaded Symposium together with VAMA student Angela Bartholomew. Artists Soren Pors, Aparno Rao and Joao Simoes were the other participants. While at the VU as visiting professor last year, Emily taught the seminar “Art-Media Sites in the 1960s,” which Angela attended.

That Summer School Feeling

Now that spring is almost here (we hope), the Dutch national research schools are announcing their annual summer schools for Research MA and PhD students. VAMA students might consider enrolling in one of the following:

On June 17 and 18, the OSK (Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History) will present the Summer School Memory and the Museum.

“What role do museum practices play in encouraging societies to remember or, in some cases, to repress their past? In this two-day interdisciplinary Summer School we will examine museums not just as repositories of collective memory, but as spaces in which memory is made, contested, and re-interpreted. We will begin by examining theories about personal and collective memory and will consider how, if at all, memory differs from history. We will then consider various strategies by which artists and curators make private memories public, shape narratives of the past, and give voice to those whose stories have been omitted from familiar histories. We will examine critical discourses relating to the public presentation of difficult and disturbing knowledge and consider ethical dilemmas that arise in the visual representation of trauma. As a therapeutic engagement with the past or an antagonistic encounter with history, our relationship to museums is examined as a vital component of critical self-awareness. This Summer School is divided into four interactive workshops (with presentations by different guest lecturers) that debate the latest research into memory studies, curatorial practices, museum studies, and the making of contemporary history in painting and photography. We will also examine specific case studies and view collections in Amsterdam.”

From June 10 to June 13, RMeS (Research School for Media Studies) will hold its Summer School 2013 on Audiences and Users.

“The Summer School targets PhD students and Research Master students who are keen to dive into current perspectives, advanced methods, and cutting-edge research in the study of audiences and users. Special attention will be paid to the question how competing approaches and research traditions in the study of audiences, users, consumers, and fans can be fruitfully combined. Classes will focus on key developments in audience characteristics and practices and will cover a variety of media and cultural fields, including art, music, film, cultural heritage, television, print, and the Internet.”

New Opportunities

A whole range of listings have just been added to the Opportunities page, from Kunstlicht‘s call for a digital whizzkid in the Internships section to new Ph.D. positions in architectural history listed in Future Prospects.

In addition, several Call for Papers have been added as well. Among them is a Call for Papers for a one-day symposium entitled Uneasy Alliances, which will be held by the OSK on May 23, 2013 at the University of Amsterdam. The symposium is organized to mark the foundation of the European Society for Nineteenth Century Art, a new working group in nineteenth-century art studies that has been formed under the auspices of the OSK’s Modern and Contemporary Art section. ESNA aims to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas between scholars, graduate students, and museum professionals based in the Netherlands whose research focuses on European art of the long nineteenth century. It also welcomes collaboration on events with similar working groups in other countries, including XIX: Werkgroep 19de-eeuwse Kunst based in Belgium.  

In other news, OSK is organizing several courses for Research Master students and Ph.D. Candidates this summer. In collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA), for instance, they will offer a summer school on Memory and the Museum. More information on this course, worth 4 ects, can be found here. For the complete overview of courses offered by OSK, please visit http://www.onderzoekschoolkunstgeschiedenis.nl/site/index.php?page=edu-researchmaster&lngg=nl

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Signing off for the Holidays…

It’s getting quiet in the hallways and it’s time to sign off for the holidays. But we’re not leaving you empty-handed!

Check out the Call for Papers section for two new and exciting graduate symposia that you can apply to. They are designed especially for young scholars, so they could be the perfect opportunity to get yourself and your research out there.

Be sure to check out the websites from our affiliated Research Schools, they may have some interesting courses and opportunities for you. You can find them at:
http://www.onderzoekschoolkunstgeschiedenis.nl/
http://www.nica-institute.com/
http://www.rmes.nl/

And to top things off: two new students will be joining the group of VAMA first-year students in January. Be sure to give Boris Cukovic and Alexandra Zimnicaru a warm welcome.

Enjoy the holidays, and we’ll see you in 2013, when courses include “Research Design I” and “Imagining the Image,” in addition to a wide range of other seminars to choose from.

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Just Released! Luc Deleu – T.O.P.Office: Orban Space

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More VAMA book news!

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Valiz and Stroom Den Haag kindly invite you to the public book launch of Luc Deleu – T.O.P. Office: Orban Space on Friday November 30th at Stroom Den Haag. The event will start at 17:00 with a lecture by artist and architectural designer Mark Pimlott and an introduction to the book by the editors. If you want to exchange thoughts with Luc Deleu or the editors, be sure to stick around for further discussions and book signings!

Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space, edited by Wouter Davidts (former VAMA coordinator), Guy Châtel (Ghent University) and Stefaan Vervoort (Ghent University, VAMA alumnus), is a comprehensive publication with both visual and written essays on the work and practice of Deleu and T.O.P. office. It brings together, for the first time, an international group of artists and scholars in an effort to chart this intri­cate body of work, and to situate this practice within a broader historical and theoretical framework. Orban Space traces Deleu’s work and practice through a conceptual topography defined by seven terms: architecture, imitation, depiction, sculpture, scale, mobility and manifesto. Each term will be dealt with in a critical text and visual essay by seven authors and seven artists, including Luc Deleu himself, the editors and many others. The book is described as “an unconventional, dazzling and multilayered book on one of the most idiosyncratic architects/artists of the past forty years.”

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Street by Street, Block by Block

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Last year, VAMA-student Roel Griffioen participated in a Research Seminar led by artist Jeremiah Day and took his assignment further than expected. He was offered a residency at Goleb and started collaborating with Taf Hassam. Yesterday, November 25th, Goleb and MaHKU organized an event at INexactlyTHIS to present the book Roel Griffioen and Taf Hassam developed as an outcome of Griffioen’s residency. With the book as a point of departure, Jeremiah Day interviewed the two authors in a wide-ranging dialogue that aimed to consider the meaning of ‘independence’ in cultural practice, touch upon the work of Hannah Arendt, and consider the history and present of Amsterdam as a cultural centre.

Photo: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk

More on the book: Street By Street, Block By Block - a collaboration between Taf Hassam and Roel Griffioen - is a new publication produced by Goleb that reflects upon the current urban strategies and utopian roots of Amsterdam’s New-West. This work of critical realism emerged against the backdrop of Jeremiah Day’s project around Hannah Arendt’s 1961 essay ‘The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance’, co-hosted by Hassam at the independent art space Goleb, and includes Griffioen as a key contributor to the seminar. The book is available at Goleb.

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