During the Christmas break, from 23 December up to and including 2 January 2011, the JVE library will be closed. The library is a study area for internal and external researchers and a centre of support for the technical staff members. In addition, the library contributes to the arts and cultural criticism debate at local, Euregional, national and international levels. The JVE library houses a specialised collection of media on fine art, design and theory: books, periodicals, audio-visual material and multimedia. The collection catalogue is accessible online via the PICA system. All media are available to external parties. From Monday 3 January 2011 on you are welcome to visit the JVE library again, during its usual opening times.
Call for Applications
The Jan van Eyck Academie still has positions available in the Fine Art and Design Departments for the next academic year, starting on 1 January 2011. Artists are invited to submit proposals for individual research projects; designers to propose projects for one of the new initiatives started by the department: Forbidden city, *Latent stare*, Neutrality, Open video, and Remote sensing. Deadline for submissions is 1 October 2010.
More information, including the 2010 application form, can be found under the 'applications' button. (photo: Annett Busch)
Churchward International Typefaces by David Bennewith, former Design researcher, is selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs 2009. Accompanied by the other selectees, the publication on the New Zealand alphabet designer Joseph Churchward will travel the world to expositions and book fairs in the upcoming months. The Best Dutch Book Designs 2009 is made possible by Grafisch Papier (per 1 March 2010 Antalis), BNO/Pictoright and Van Heek Scholco International. more info
Caroline Pekle, researcher in the Fine Art department, has installed a new work in the JVE hallways. Pekle was fascinated by the mood of an old photograph, a black-and-white picture showing a woman standing by a riverside. Her exploration into the image has led to Reflections, an installation containing the image itself, a landscape picture by the artist herself, a light box subtly referring to the images and a table garden. Reflections will be on show until the end of the year. Visitors are welcome to come and take a look at the installation.
Although the third issue of S, the open-access journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique (CLiC), has not been released yet, the editors have published a call for papers for the fourth issue. The Resistance of Topology will explore the function of topology in Lacan’s work and in its afterlife with reference to some of its early practitioners. S invites submissions that respond to the question what, if anything, topology has to do with psychoanalysis, read broadly. Guest editor will be Benjamin Bishop. more info
Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year, two-year or variable research period in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. Deadline for submissions is 15 April 2010.
Please check out the recruitment website to watch the video messages to candidate researchers, created by Kim de Groot, researcher in the Design Department and designer of this year's recruitment campaign.
More information, including the 2010 application form, can be found under the 'applications' button.
At the start of the new academic year, the Jan van Eyck Academie welcomes two new advising researchers: Slovenian philosopher and expert in psychoanalysis Mladen Dolar (Theory department) and Italian architect and urbanist John Palmesino (Design department).
In the new academic year 16 researchers begin their research period at the Jan van Eyck. We welcome the following seven artists, three designers and six theoreticians:
Fine Art researchers: Jasper Coppes (NL), Marcel Hiller (DE), Dominique Hurth (FR), Axel Loytved (DE), Adrien Lucca (FR), Bavo Olbrechts (BE), Andros Zins-Browne (US). Design researchers: Luisa Lorenza Corna (IT), Amber Frid-Jimenez (US), Paul Gangloff (FR).
Theory researchers: Nathaniel Boyd (CA), James Furner (GB), Rebecka Thor (SE), Oxana Timofeeva (RU), Anne Van Leeuwen (CA), Ana Zerjav (SI).
Yasuní-ITT. A Post Oil Initiative is an infographic film by Design researcher Santiago del Hierro. The film considers the Ecuadorian carbon credit certificates, which allow the oil in the vulnerable Yasuní rain forest not to be drilled. It is being shown as part of the Yasuní-ITT exhibit at COP 15 in Copenhagen (DK). Animation and art direction, as well as music and sound design, are done by Rogier Wieland, assisted by Dylan Polak; narration by Fine Art researcher Reuben Henry. The film is developed as part of the collective research project ExtraStateCraft and will be part of the project website (under construction). more info
The Jan van Eyck Yearbook 2008, designed by Jayme Yen (former Design researcher) has been recognised by the jury of the Best Designed Annual Reports as one of the winning designs this year. The jury report especially praised the designer’s choice to “print some of the illustrations separately and place them, very cheekily, over the texts and other illustrations, held there by being slotted into photo corners punched into the pages.” The gold triangles on the cover herald this intervention. ‘Clever, beautiful and solid’, the jury concluded. more info
Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry, researchers in the Fine Art Department, have won the first prize in EMERGENCY4, a biennial exhibition in aspex, Portsmouth’s leading contemporary art gallery. Joanne Bushnell, chair of the selection panel said: “(...) Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry’s work (...) stood out as excellent, intelligent and funny.” Kihlberg & Henry make alterations to the established structures that regulate the relationship between subject and object, between subject and cultural experience. EMERGENCY4 will be on show until 17 January 2010. more info
S, the open-access journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique (CLiC), recently published its second issue. S2: Islam and psychoanalysis is an encounter of a theory and a culture that might seem rather incompatible at first glance. Many topics in Islam, however, are worthy of discussion and some will be addressed in this special issue. more info
Black and gold on the cover and an impressive amount of projects on the inside: the Jan van Eyck Yearbook 2008 shows, without any trace of false modesty, an elaborate overview of the work carried out by the artists, designers and theoreticians in the academy in 2008. The new yearbook was designed by Jayme Yen, former researcher in the Design Department. more info
Artists are invited to apply for a research period in the Fine Art department of up to two years, starting in January 2010. The central element of the application is your project proposal, in which you set out the form and content of your research and production plans. The application deadline is 15 September 2009 (post stamp date). more info: go to applications.
On the occasion of his retirement, an exhibition and a party were organised to take leave of Math Cortlever, who worked at the Jan van Eyck Academie for 40 years. The exhibition was set up as a gift for Math; former advising researcher Fine Art and artist Suchan Kinoshita had set up the exhibition with contributions from artists who had worked with Math over the past forty-year period. Math started out at the academy as an expert in welding and forging, and worker with precious metals. His last job description was coordinator materials, dealing with miscellaneous three-dimensional productions (photograph by Frans Vos).
Kristin Posehn wins Hermine van Bers Expressive Art Prize, edition Maastricht
On Thursday 21 May Kristin Posehn, researcher Fine Art, received the Hermine van Bers Expressive Arts Prize from the hands of Alderman for Culture Jean Jacobs.
Quote from the jury report: “The jury commends the winner for her strong and monumental imagery. (...) The work engenders curiosity and possesses intelligence as well as a great degree of quality; as such, it connects with the contemporary international art practise. Kristin Posehn comes to the fore as an artist with a special place in this context and as someone for whom the future holds a lot in store.” According to the jury, projects like these "emphasize the position of artists in productive environments like the Jan van Eyck Academy." more info
JVE nominated for Dutch House Style Prize 2009
The new house style of the Jan van Eyck Academie, designed by former Design researchers Min and Sulki Choi, has been nominated for the Nederlandse Huisstijlprijs 2009 [Dutch House Style Prize]. The biennial Dutch House Style Prize aims to stimulate the application of print work in promoting and strengthening the identities of organisations. This year, a total of eight house styles and one brand have been nominated, in the categories brands, small-scale house styles and large-scale house styles. First prizes were awarded to Coppens Alberts for Piet Paris and Designpolitie for Pictoright.
The Dutch House Style Prize is organised by the Grafische Cultuurstichting, in collaboration with ModoVanGelder, Uitgeverij d'jonge Hond and Flevodruk Harderwijk, and is supported by BNO. The prizes were awarded at VROAAM! on 7 May, at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. more info
Fine Art researcher Kristin Posehn has been nominated for the Hermine van Bers Expressive Art Prize, edition Maastricht. The prize is an initiative of Marres, centre for contemporary culture in Maastricht and the Hermine van Bers Foundation, which aims to support young, promising fine artists. Posehn’s recent work combines architecture, photography and sculpture. As part of the project Reclamation, the artist made a reconstruction of the last standing facade of the ghost town of Metropolis in Nevada, US. The project was shown at Museum De Paviljoens in Almere.
The Hermine van Bers Expressive Art Prize will be awarded during the opening of the KunstTour 2009, at the Timmerfabriek on Thursday 21 May. The other nominees are Martijn Lucas van Erp and Alien Oosting. Work of all three nominees will be on show. more info
Researcher Fine Art Ruth Buchanan has chosen the Jan van Eyck hallways for Open display for particular viewership, an unfolding and changing installation activating in various and particular ways the host forms she has installed: the Gispen lamps flicking on and off in individual rhythms, the display in ‘moonlight blue’ hosting several materials throughout the year and the other small insertions in the architecture. The installation roves the building, starting in the entrance way and moving through the halls to the artist’s studio opposite the library. The changing form comments on the space of the JVE as both long-term and short-term space, a space of work in various different levels of visibility. This installation speaks in various tones, depending on one’s relationship to the space, whether being a guest or a regular inhabitant. The forms become displays, obstructions and surfaces for potential projections.
Visitors are welcome to come and take a look at the installation.
Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year, two-year or variable research period in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory.
Deadline for submissions is 15 April 2009.
More information, including the application form 2009, can be found under the 'applications' button.
Wolfgang Fütterer, researcher Fine Art, has won the first prize in the 19th Bundeswettbewerb des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung, a biennial, national competition for students or recent graduates of German art academies. Fütterer’s work for this competition is a three-part installation combining his ‘love handles’, cast in copper, with two video works. In Wolfgang F. II (2008), Fütterer has eight people describe his naked body. The viewer gets an image of the artist’s body that is entirely based on the subjective descriptions of these eight people, who all have professional ties to the body, including a butcher, a boxer, a plastic surgeon, a prostitute. In a subtle manner, Fütterer thus queries what determines our – sexual – identity. more info
Caroline Pekle, researcher Fine Art, has been nominated for the Young Belgian Painters Award 2009.
As an artist, Caroline is working on a journey through different media (photographs of landscape and images under construction, drawings based on photos) and questioning the construction of an image. She is trying to develop this idea through dispossessing pictures, including impoverishment through ‘decontextualisation’.
The exhibition will take place at the Palaix des Beaux Arts in Brussels, from 25 June to 13 September 2009. more info
With the start of the new academic year, fine artist and writer Hans-Christian Dany, architect and writer Keller Easterling and writer and critic Kobena Mercer take up their new functions as advising researchers in the Jan van Eyck Academie.
Their research projects and CVs are described at this website.
Last month 20 researchers started their residence at the Jan van Eyck. Their research projects are described at this website.
Fine Artists: Rossella Biscotti, Wolfgang Fuetterer, Rueben Henry, Karin Kihlberg, Karl Larsson, Nicholas Matranga, Avigail Moss, Caroline Pekle and Stijn Verhoeff.
Designers: Angelika Burtscher and Jack Fisher.
Theoreticians: Pietro Bianchi, Giuseppe Bianco, Vanessa Costa de Branco, Sara Farris, Myriam Van Imschoot, Fiorenza Iuliano, Eli Noe, Kerstin Stakemeier, Tzuchien Tho, Peter Thomas, Samo Tomsic and Kristien van den Brande.
We welcome back design researcher Tsila Hassine. Two more researchers, Neda Firfova (Design) and Michaela Wünsch (Theory) will start their research period in April.
The first volume of S: Journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique is online. Devoted to aesthetics, this first issue has contributions by Sigi Jöttkandt, Dominiek Hoens, Bernard Baas, Thomas Brockelman, Jonathan Kim-Reuter, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Gérard Wajcman and Lieven Jonckheere.
S publishes peer-reviewed essays on Lacanian and related topics from the fields of art, film and literary criticism, political, philosophical and ideological critique. With permission, S also re-publishes hard to obtain essays and translations from seminal thinkers in Lacanian studies, whose work deserves the worldwide dissemination open-access publishing affords. more info
This month, the Jan van Eyck Academie will act as host to Zicht op Maastricht (Maastricht In-Sight), the cultural biography of Maastricht. The Jan van Eyck Academie celebrated its sixtieth anniversary last year. The present building on the Academieplein, designed by Dutch architect Frits Peutz, is now 50 years old.
On Saturday 14 February, Arie van Rangelrooy from architecten|en|en, based in Eindhoven, will give guided tours (in Dutch) through the building. Characteristic details and style elements used by architect Frits Peutz will be illustrated, as well as the planned restoration to the building. more info
(photograph: RHCL)
On Sunday 11 January 2009 the new year’s reception takes place in collaboration with Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Bonnefantenmuseum, Marres Center for Contemporary Culture, NAi Maastricht and the Edmond Hustinx Foundation. On this occasion, Matt Mullican will give the presentation MATT A & MATT B. The lecture starts at 14:00 hrs and takes place in the auditorium of the Conservatorium. Afterwards, from about 15.00 hrs onwards, drinks will be served at the Jan van Eyck Academie.
Salome Schmuki’s publication Jetmaster, which features in the Idan Hayosh exhibition With or on, at W139, is an experimental extension of her core research into dyslexia. In this book Salome intends to research strategies of visual asymmetry at a layout level, in a so-called ‘Schaubuch’, to find out whether Sullivan’ opinion – form follows function – is true. She has focused on two categories of Hayosh’s image collection as working material: photographs of military planes and football teams, demonstrating order and symmetry. This formal visual strategy gives a clear statement. Schmuki has edited the pictures by using different tracks, thus researching how changes in context, medium and size influence the way we see images and their messages.
John Baldessari (1931), one of the protagonists of minimal art and concept art, is Laureate of the BACA International 2008 award. For years now Baldessari has influenced younger generations of artists. Six young artists, all researchers at the Jan van Eyck Academie, will present work as part of the exhibition that is set up at the Bonnefantenmuseum for the BACA laureate. Prior to the award ceremony and opening Baldessari will enter into dialogue with them about their work. The researchers participating in the Master Class are: Ruth Buchanan & Rachel Koolen, Eleni Kamma, Jean-Baptiste Maitre, Kristin Posehn and Stephane Querrec.
Exhibition at the Bonnefantenmuseum
Photographer Lilo Bauer was invited within the framework of the research project Citygraphy: Between Urban Politics and Urban Aesthetics to develop a topographic interpretation of 21st century Maastricht. Citygraphy - a joint project of the Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, the Hogeschool Sint Lukas Brussel and Efemera - examines city development and representations of the modern urban condition since the 19th century. more info
Yearbook 2007 hot off the press
The JvE Yearbook 2007 is hot off the press. The 302-page full-colour book, designed by Design researcher Raoul Wassenaar in collaboration with M.V., contains detailed information about the institution’s ins and outs, reports of events, personal reflections by researchers, images of productions, upshots of projects, reviews of the JvE books, a foretaste of the academy’s future, and much more.
Extrastatecraft: Hidden Organizations, Spatial Contagions and Activism, a new project of the Design department, initiated by Keller Easterling, researches underexplored territory in the world’s infrastructural and organizational strata. The work focuses on shared protocols, managerial subroutines and financial instruments as they produce and program physical space around the world. Perhaps because these organizations operate in the background, in an active and relational rather than nominative register, their political outcomes are often at once pervasive and mysterious. more info
The conference addresses questions regarding the relationships between research and design, critique and performance, analytical methods and planning techniques by focusing on the theory of the production of space by Henri Lefebvre, and its mobilization and development in contemporary urban research and design. more info
IN-FORM. Vilém Flusser on Design
Symposium at the Jan van Eyck Academie
Philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) is mostly known for his works on New Media and their influence on the consciousness of mankind. For him, the replacement of the alphanumeric code with technical images has had an even stronger impact on society than the industrial revolution of the 19th century and will still bring about substantial changes in aesthetics, politics and the sciences. In addition to his theory of communication, he also wrote several essays about design and art theory as well as three seminal books about design and visual art: Vom Stand der Dinge (The Shape of Things, 1999), Gesten and Vom Subjekt zum Projekt. Yet despite this broad recognition, there is almost no academic discussion on his ideas about design (or processes of formalization in general), which include (but are not limited to) the limitations and possibilities in the act of creating and the political and ethical implications of designed objects. The Jan van Eyck Academie is setting up a symposium that focuses on the following issues:
1. Limitations of the process of designing: The relationship between the designer and the apparatus (Lecturer: Christian Gänshirt, Berlin)
2. Intersubjective objects: Towards an ethical theory of design (Lecturer: Chadwick Truscott Smith, New York)
3. Creativity based on a dialogical network (Lecturer: Marcel René Marburger, Cologne)
4. “Vorurteilsloses Entwerfen”. The use of the phenomenological method for the liberation of the act of designing (Group discussion). more info
Call for Applications
Design Negation. Design, Political Engagement and Populist Politics
This new research project of the Jan van Eyck Design department, initiated by Daniël van der Velden, is about finding new vocabularies and aesthetic possibilities for design to formulate a political negation. It aspires to respond to the current wave of populist public opinion and politics in the Netherlands. more info
Call for Applications
Imaginary Property
Imaginary Property, a new research project of the Jan van Eyck Design department, initiated by Florian Schneider, aspires to explore new potentials for design practices across various registers. The project is set up as a realm of experimentation at the intersections of design-theory and image-production. It is a laboratory where emerging concepts and terminologies are set to a series of tests. What challenges emerge from the paradoxes that research into ‘imaginary property’ has given rise to? How could these potentially generate new rules of production, bearing in mind that property relations are constantly exchanging meanings? Against this background: do we have to rethink and re-evaluate the notion of ‘design’ as such? more info
The Euregional Forum Comes to Meet the Citizens!
During the KunstTour 2008, the latest Euregional Forum will be held at the Jan van Eyck Academie. The assembled public will be asked about its experiences with the Euregion, its frustrations, propositions for change... This will be done, firstly, by means of an extensive opinion poll. Secondly, the Forum will also provide the opportunity for direct interpellation: an in situ Euregional room will be fitted out where people can debate about urgent Euregional issues and where voting rounds will be organised.
The Euregional Forum endorses the dream of the Euregion Meuse-Rhine as the first cross-border state in the new Europe. The Forum aims at giving this kind of democratic Euregional movement a boost.
Traces of Autism: Wander Research in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine
As a closure to the two-year Traces of Autism project, the research group is organising an exhibition for KunstTour 2008, showing the work that was generated in the various stages of the research process. The Euregion Meuse-Rhine was chosen as a research area, as it offers the possibility to relate the presence of national borders to research into the borders of public space. Based on long, uncomfortable walks and cycle tours, the researchers of Traces of Autism made an inventory of public space in the region. This research has generated various maps, photographs, texts and videos. more info
Bus Tour
As part of the KunstTour Maastricht and the exhibition of the Traces of Autism research project, Rachel Koolen is organising a bus tour based on an existing route through the Euregion as published in the guide Gemaal: a culturally active land (2006). "The Gemaal is a fictional, culturally and economically active land where the cities Eupen, Alsdorf, Genk and Maastricht play a leading part."
Call for applications Fine Art, Design and Theory
Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year, two-year or variable research period in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. application details application form
New researchers
This month 20 researchers started their residence at the Jan van Eyck. Their research projects are described at this website.
Fine Artists: Donatella Bernardi, Ruth Buchanan, Theo Cowley, Andjeas Ejiksson, Simon Hempel, Eleni Kamma, Kristin Posehn, Delphine Rigaud
Designers: Ferenc Gróf, Andreas Müller, Jean Baptiste Naudy, Indrek Sirkel
Theoreticians: Emiliano Battista, Saara Hacklin, Gal Kirn, Georgios Papadopoulos, Daria Pyrkina, Adair Rounthwaite, Lukasz Jan Stanek, Michaela Wünsch
New advising researchers
As of this January the Fine Art department welcomes three new advising researchers: Glen Rubsamen and Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi.
Glen Rubsamen is working primarily as a painter but also with drawing and printmaking. In his pictorial investigations he is attempting to isolate the idea of a ‘post-nature’ defined as a place were space is shrinking, were objects in the landscape play no part in any synthesis; they have no memory, they simply bear witness during a journey. Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi are the inititators of Pages, an ongoing project with critical views on art, culture, urbanism and social issues.
Voiceoverhead
Achim Lengerer (researcher Fine Art 2006–2007) and Dani Gal curated the exhibition Voiceoverhead to be seen in SMART Project Space till 1 March. The exhibition is a co-production of the Jan van Eyck Academie and SMART. more info
Forms of inquiry. The architecture of critical graphic design
Several current and former Jan van Eyck design (advising) researchers are participating in the exhibition and lecture series Forms of inquiry (Casco, Utrecht, up to 17 February 2008): Julia Born, Sara De Bondt, Paul Elliman, Will Holder, David Bennewith, Metahaven, Mevis en van Deursen, Manuel Räder and Sulki & Min Choi. Forms of inquiry presents architecture as seen through the practice of graphic design. The exhibition features works that have originated as self-propelled inquiry, either professional or personal, and have been developed into a myriad of media and forms. The works exhibited share a common desire to reframe the circumstances surrounding graphic design practice at the start of the 21st century. On Thursday 24 January Manuel Räder will give a lecture; Metahaven will do so on Wednesday 30 January. more info
In a special feature article IDEA Magazine (no. 316) has selected the project of a hundred designers in order to study the requirements of contemporary graphic design in the post-historical era. By isolating the selected works from their context the editorial board of IDEA hopes to find other potentialities in them through which we may see the possibilities of graphic design from the past. The Jan van Eyck is pleased to learn that in this image of graphic design IDEA included many current and former Design (advising) researchers: Jop van Bennekom, Peter Bilak, Sara de Bondt, Julia Born, Sulki & Min Choi, Paul Elliman, Goodwill, Alon Levin, Christos Lialios, Mevis & Van Deursen, Manuel Räder and Daniël van der Velden.
Marjolijn Dijkman (researcher Fine Art) launched a new website: www.enoughroomforspace.org. The organisation ERforS sets up projects that are based on unexpected relations between official bodies and locations. Starting point of the collaboration is overlapping investigation of the individual participants. As a way of countering life in the fast lane - that makes us hurriedly travel from one curated exhibition to the next -, ERforS intends to establish long-term working relationships based on mutual interests. ERforS works on small-scale and large-scale projects such as a residency and project space at the Jan van Eyck, but also a European project that engages several official bodies from 27 different countries, exchange projects (cf. Georgia here We Come!) and long-term research projects (cf. Los Angeles Works). The recently launched ERforS website (October 2007) is the only constant space that ERforS claims. The 'Collective Construction Site' is an online working space where participants actively pull the strings; some parts are public and can be actively constructed.
An artist’s book by Ines Lechleitner. Through images, sound and text the publication follows Isabelle Oglivie, a mentally handicapped young woman who is engaged in making a film. Lechleitner acts as Isabelle's assistant as well as her chronicler, accompanies her as she discusses her film project with filmmakers, artists and a philosopher, and documents her approaches to image-making and language. In ten chapters, each of which comprises an audio segment, a printed text and a series of photographs, Pièce de Cinéma approaches the absent film medium, as well as photography, drawing, and language, in a protean meditation on representation and image-making. more info
Responsible for internal and external communication, the recruitment of researchers and distribution. more info (in Dutch)
As the outcome of their research at the Jan van Eyck Academie, BAVO (Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels, researchers Theory 2004–2005) have edited two publications Cultural activism today. The art of over-identification (published by episode publishers) and Re-imagining democracy in the neoliberal city (published in the Reflect series of NAi Publishers).
On 1 October, a communal research project was started up by the Jan van Eyck Academie, Marres, NAi Maastricht, Academie Beeldende Kunsten and the Bonnefantenmuseum, about the area around the large Sphinx building in Maastricht and the urban development which is starting to be developed around there (the Belvédère project). Five researchers of the Jan van Eyck Academie, united in the Traces of Autism team, will carry out the research. more info
Karl-Hofer-Award 2007 for Romana Schmalisch
Romana Schmalisch (researcher Fine Art) has won the Karl-Hofer-Award 2007, the interdisciplinary award of the University of the Arts Berlin. Since 1979, this award has been presented annually on the occasion of the birthday of the painter and first post-war director of the university, Karl Hofer, in order to give artists and scientists an incentive and the opportunity to work out contributions to the manifold strained relations between arts and science and to the interrelationship between the art forms themselves. The motto of this year's competition was Existential Luxury.
Researchers are invited to submit proposals for the Panel for the American Comparative Literature Association 2008 Conference
(24-27 April 2008, Long Beach, California). The panel welcomes papers from a variety of disciplines that critically investigate the deployment of correspondence and letters as tools for 'reading into' literature, theory, and other bodies of work (art, religion, the law). Submission deadline: 15 November 2007. The panel is organized by Jillian Saint Jacques (researcher Theory). more info
As part of research project The pensive image, advising researcher Hanneke Grootenboer edited the issue of Image[&]Narrative on 'Thinking pictures'. Now available online at: www.imageandnarrative.be. Among others with contributions by Jan van Eyck (ex) researchers: Anthony Auerbach, Nikolaus Gansterer, Sönke Hallmann, Benda Hofmeyr, Antony Hudek, Ils Huygens, Tom Van Imschoot and Charlotte Moth.
Website on Jef Cornelis TV Works
Now online: jefcornelis.janvaneyck.nl. This website documents the research project on the television work of Jef Cornelis, executor, director and scriptwriter for the VRT, the Dutch-language Belgian public broadcasting corporation. Besides an extensive biography, filmography and bibliography, the site publishes downloadable interviews with Cornelis, conducted by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau. The interviews deal with specific films and subjects, such as Cornelis’ films on literature and major art events, his return to the visual arts, the relation between films and politics. In the near future, the site will be updated with the texts of the discursive programme of lectures and debates that took place with the framework of the project. All in all, the visitor of this website can follow the research process on Jef Cornelis and its output. Updates of the website will be announced in the Jan van Eyck newsletter.
The website is designed by Ingrid Stojnic (Researcher Design 2003-2005) of Rekall Design (www.rekalldesign.com). The research is led by Koen Brams, director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, and Dirk Pültau, editor-in-chief of art magazine De Witte Raaf. The project is facilitated by Argos (Brussels, BE). The films of Jef Cornelis can be viewed in the video rooms at Argos and the Jan van Eyck Academie.
Salon für Kunstbuch
The Vienna-based Salon für Kunstbuch is presenting Dutch art books, including Jan van Eyck publications. For two years now the salon has been organising exhibitions, presentations and discursive programmes with publishers, artists, designers in the field of the art book, on a non-commercial basis. Its aim is to present contemporary art books, each time with a different focus. This time around, the emphasis is on Dutch publishers. more information: www.ostblick.at. All Jan van Eyck publications can also be ordered online.
Publication by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau wins award
The publication Collectie Vlaamse Gemeenschap aanwinsten, written by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, has been granted the Plantin Moretus award for ‘Best Designed Book’ in Flanders, Belgium. The book was published by the Flemish Ministry for Culture and designed by Jurgen Persijn; it gives an overview of the acquisitions (1999-2001) of the Flemish Community, in texts and images. According to the jury, it is “a real inventory book which is attractive and has a user-friendly touch. (…) a treasure of design in honour of our artists.” In the essay ‘De mythologisering van de Belgische Kunst’ [the mythologization of Belgian art], Brams and Pultau analyse the genesis of the cliché concerning Belgian art, that is to say, the cliché that Belgian contemporary artists are all related to Ensor, Magritte and Broodthaers. The topics fleshing out this identity discours include, for instance, a biting or subversive irony, a particular sensitivity to the double layers of language and an inborn sense of independence.
Looking back: The roots of video production at the Jan van Eyck Academie
From the seventies onwards, the Jan van Eyck Academie has played a central role when it comes to applying new technologies to the context of fine art. It was one of the first institutes in the Netherlands where artists began to experiment with video. From the eighties onwards, these activities were structurally organised via the then ‘video workplace’. This year, the Jan van Eyck commissioned art historian Jennifer Steetskamp to research its rich history in video art production in relation to its video collection. The starting point of her project was a series of interviews with artists and facilitators active in and around the academy, including JCJ Vanderheyden, Servie Janssen, Madelon Hooykaas and Berto Ausseums (in chronological order). These interviews, together with the introductory text of Steetskamp, are now published.
Publishing in the arts. Expert meetings
The Jan van Eyck Academie has taken the initiative to organise a number of meetings with experts in the field of art and artist’s books in general, and, more particularly, of their distribution and marketing. The idea of the expert meetings is to come to an exchange of ideas in a small and informal setting that may stimulate and improve the situation of publishing in the arts. Each meeting is dedicated to a specific subject and case study.
At the first meeting (April 2007), Jan Voss of Boekie Woekie elaborated on the history, daily practice, ideals and ambitions of his twenty-year-old bookshop devoted to artists’ books. Boekie Woekie is a shaky business, he concludes, “it is about art, life and friendship. It is life itself…”. In the discussion which followed more practical aspects were tabled, including suggestions on how to be successful as a publisher or maker of artists’ books. Emphasis was paid to the presentation of books, the mediation between maker and buyer and general selling strategies. The text on Boekie Woekie and a report of the meeting including a list of practical tips are now published.
Participating experts were: Sarah Bodman (Research Fellow for Artist’s Books, Centre for Fine Print Research, University of West-England, Bristol), Johan Deumens (Artist’s Books, Heemstede), Wim Drijvers (Boekbeeld, Ghent), Jane Rolo (director and founder member of Book Works, London), Anne Thurmann-Jajes (head Study centre for artists books and Archive for Small Press & Communication, Bremen), Roger Willems (Roma Publications, Amsterdam).
Discussion Pedro Costa, Catherine David, Chris Dercon published online
During the Jan van Eyck Video Weekend (26–28 May 2007) a discussion was organized on the movement of video and film between cinema and the exhibition space. Taking up André Bazin’s question – ‘Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?’ – many find that today it is no longer relevant. Instead, we should ask the question ‘Where is cinema?’ Chris Dercon discusses with Catherine David, among other things, Passage de l’image, the exhibition David produced in 1998, one of the first exhibitions that really questioned the issue of cinema being exhibited – as opposed to the exhibition of cinema. It questioned the tension between the mobility and immobility of the image and the spectator and the tension that came with so many white rooms being darkened. The discussion takes up David’s presentation of Chantal Akerman’s installation D’Est, the presence of documentary film and video at Documenta X, and the presentation of the work of Pedro Costa in Witte de With. Pedro Costa considers his collaboration with David and his work as filmmaker. Having heard Catherine David and Pedro Costa we take up the initial question again and find that the question ‘Where is cinema?’ cannot be disconnected from the question ‘What is cinema?’ complete text
Interviews with Jef Cornelis published online
Two more interviews with Jef Cornelis conducted by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau are published on the Jan van Eyck website.
The text ‘A reflexive attitude towards television: that’s very difficult’ deals with the films of Cornelis about literature. Though Cornelis was never part of the literary scene, he knew many writers, with some of whom he would collaborate on scripts. Cornelis produced films on Oscar de Wit, Jacq Vogelaar, Daniël Robberechts and Hans ten Berge. The interview deals with Cornelis’ interest in these writers, the case history and production of the films, the structure of the films in relation to the books and many more aspects.
The second interview ‘No question that television equals politics’, focuses on the television programme Container. Container was a talk show, first broadcast in 1989, featuring three to four intellectuals discussing a various range of subjects.
New researchers
This fall several designers and researchers will start their research periods at the Jan van Eyck.
David James Bennewith (researcher Design) is especially interested in the work of New Zealand type designer Joseph Churchward. Bennewith will question the biographical conventions of a typeface. He attempts to make the scope of Churchward’s material part of the larger context of graphic design and will research how practicing design can ‘give form’ to content, and can also serve as a reflection on itself.
Nina Støttrup Larsen (researcher Design) is fascinated by the experience she gets from an unexplored book, and how its form and content create a relation between the reader and the book. What makes a book so special compared to online publications? How can a book’s form affect the reading experience? How does a designer take responsibility for the extra layer of content that the form produces? Does the designer become an author?
Jayme Yen (researcher Design) is planning to read the city of Maastricht, get familiar with it and produce a book about it. Key questions in his research are: How does a person become familiar with a new city? How does one locate oneself in relation to unfamiliar environments? Do people maintain a kind of ‘ur-city’ in their heads, which helps them situate themselves in whatever city they visit? What kinds of knowledge appear first? What only appears after an extended stay? What information (or misinformation) changes over time? Can the book become a metaphor for a city? Apart from her Maastricht project Jayme Yen will be involved in the Traces of autism project.
Thomas Brockelman (researcher Theory) is finishing a book (Heidegger and Zizek: The Question Concerning Techno-Capitalism) on the work of Slavoj Zizek, a text which interprets his work as a response to Martin Heidegger. While in residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie, he will be researching Zizek’s debt to Jacques Lacan and considering the possibilities and limits of Zizek’s theory of revolution.
Jillian Saint Jacques (researcher Theory) is exploring an interdisciplinary theory of adaptation in the visual arts, literature, film and digital media. The theoretical lens for his project will take up, but not be limited to, poststructuralist theory (Butler, Bhabha, Silverman), psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Lacan, Miller), film theory (Deleuze, Mulvey, DeLauretis), emergence theory (Corning, Fromm) and linguistic theory (Bal, Barthes, Benveniste). Specifically, he will examine the ways in which theories and artistic works reflexively interact, overlap and readapt; the way in which Freud’s reading of Hoffman’s short story The Sandman becomes the basis for developing a psychoanalytic theory of the uncanny.
List of publications
All recent publications of the Jan van Eyck, including a backlist, are listed in a brochure. The presented publications are heterogeneous in form and kind. The academy does not state thematic or disciplinary guidelines nor does its publishing policy contain official recommendations with respect to content. Consequently, the books range from autonomous artists’ books, experimental publications in the field of design, theoretical volumes of essays, exhibition catalogues and magazines. The publications reflect what the Jan van Eyck Academie, post-academic institute for research and production, is all about. The list of publications is designed by Kasper Andreasen (ex-researcher Design) and can be ordered via bookshop@janvaneyck.nl. The publications are also listed at http://bookshop.janvaneyck.nl.
— book tickets with Anne Vangronsveld.
Call for applications Fine Art department
Artists, individuals as well as collaborative groups, are invited to apply for a research period at the Fine Art department of the Jan van Eyck. The research period, which will start in January 2008, can last up to two years. The Fine Art department offers a unique space for experimentation, production, reflection and debate. The researchers in the department conduct high-quality research in an environment that encourages the questioning of the assumptions, forms, meanings and contexts that are tied in with the practice of making art today. We welcome artists, individuals and groups, without stipulating conditions regarding form, content and media. more info
Yearbook 2006 online
The annual report 2006 is accessible online in Dutch (PDF 3.8MB) and English (PDF 4.7 MB). The book comprises texts of individual research projects of the (advising) researchers, collective research projects, as well as descriptions of productions realised last year (publications, exhibitions, conferences, ...) and institutional information. The basic concept of the book is a diary: it shows from day to day what happened at the Jan van Eyck in 2006. Similar to a daily newspaper, it is cold set rotation offset printed by the Media Groep Limburg. The book’s design is by the Tomorrow Book Studio, a Jan van Eyck design research team. The photographs of the studios are made by Jean-Baptiste Maitre (researcher Fine Art).
If you wish to receive a version in print of the Dutch or English book please send an email stating your coordinates to bookshop@janvaneyck.nl.
Collaboration Jan van Eyck Academie and Frans Masereel Centrum
The Jan van Eyck Academie and the Frans Masereel Centrum (Kasterlee, BE) have established an agreement of cooperation. The institutes will exchange know-how concerning the realisation of printing and graphics, editing, publishing and distributing and facilitating graphic productions. The institutes will also gear to each other as far as annual investment plans are concerned. Previously, the Jan van Eyck established a similar cooperation with FLACC (Genk, BE) to generate cross-border dynamics among residing artists/researchers. The Jan van Eyck Academie and FLACC aim at expanding the cooperation on a Euregional level.
Swiss Art Awards for Jan van Eyck artists
Raphaël Cuomo and Maria Iorio (researchers Fine Art) are laureates of the Swiss Art Award 2007. Their contributing film Sudeuropa, about mobility on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa and its surrounding area, focuses on two migratory movements: north-south — due to tourism — and south-north — due to (illegal) migration. Both phenomena are visible in the infrastructure of the island. On the one hand, there are touristy areas — holiday centres, for instance, with their functional architecture and seasonal occupation — that signify some kind of oriental exoticism. On the other, there are closed camps in which illegal immigrants are held and isolated upon arrival. The tourist economy, with the ‘help’ of the migration policies of Italy, Europe, Tunisia and Libya, has created a unilateral regime of visibility: migrants are kept out of sight lest they spoil the paradisiacal image of Lampedusa. In Sudeuropa (38 min.) Cuomo and Iorio show and criticise the power of images and the impact of cultural codes. The film was produced with the support of the Maghreb Connection, the Jan van Eyck Academie, FMAC Genève and Le souvenir du present.
Cuomo and Iorio were selected among 604 contenders. Former researcher Robert Estermann (researcher Fine Art 1999–2001) was also laureate of the Swiss Art Award 2007. In his drawings and photographs Estermann investigates social phenomena and the issue of difference within cultural traditions. Estermann takes a performative approach, makes installations, and transfers his subject matter to spatial structures that challenge the viewer directly and physically. more info
Call for papers: S
S is the new open-access journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique. S publishes peer-reviewed essays on Lacanian and related topics from the fields of art, film and literary criticism, political, philosophical and ideological critique. With permission, S also re-publishes hard-to-obtain essays and translations from seminal thinkers in Lacanian studies, whose work deserves the worldwide dissemination that free online publishing affords.
The inaugural issue, S1, will present texts that deal with the Imaginary in the Lacanian sense of the word, as well as essays from the broader field of (psychoanalysis and) aesthetics. Topics include: the return of the Imaginary in the later Lacan; lesser-known writers in Lacan’s work (i.e. other than Sophocles, Shakespeare, Claudel, Gide and Joyce): Blanchot, Bataille, Plautus, etc.; the unconditioned Name of the Father; beauty beyond the phallus; spaces of conceptual and linguistic impossibility: topology and tropology; aesthetics and ethics are one? (Wittgenstein); the scansion of interpretation (Milner); the gaze, the look and the ‘other eye’: the tableau in Lacan and Foucault; the site or non-site of the Imaginary in Badiou; politics and aesthetics (Rancière, Balibar, Adorno, others).
Submissions in MLA format can be sent before 30 June to lineofbeauty@telenet.be.
Two interviews with Jef Cornelis published
In the framework of the research project on the television work of Jef Cornelis, two interviews, held by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, have been published - in English. They focus on the content of several films as well as on the historical and technical settings in which these were produced.
The first interview emphasizes Cornelis’ projects on architecture and urban planning. The film Mens en agglomeratie (1966) is about the new ideal city, taking Dubrovnik and Stockholm as examples. Waarover men niet spreekt (1968) also deals with the state of urban planning in Europe and a number of urban planning situations in Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Besides it discusses illusions about individual housing. De straat (1972), however, does not talk “about what had been built, but about what had not – the empty tube formed by the street”. The film is about the non-physical public domain, with an emphasis on the impact of motor traffic on urban planning. The interview is available. The interview previously was published in Dutch and English in Open/Cahier over kunst en het publieke domein, nr. 11, 2006.
The second interview ‘I was too curious to hand everything over to the artists’, deals with the film Sonsbeek buiten de perken (1971) and other films on major art events. Although “there really wasn’t very much to see at Sonsbeek” – the pieces looked lost and the exhibition fell apart –, Cornelis states that he “tried to reproduce the events, as far as they were discernable, in a detached manner”. He sees the film as a commentary, a report that fairly accurately reflects what was happening there. The interview is available. The interview previously was published in Dutch (with an English summary) in Jong Holland, volume 22, number 3, 2006.
Karolin Meunier (researcher Fine Art 2007–2008) recently published the article ‘The act of responding. The letter as a form of communication’ in Ik ben Artis, a publication by the artist’s initiative Artis. In this text Meunier elaborates on different aspects of the letter: the fear of failing to reach the other, the failure of writing, the hope that the reading implies an understanding, the hope that its meaning is conveyed. Referring to the correspondence between Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenskás and the political dimension of visualizing the human face by Giorgio Agamben, Meunier concludes that the structure of a letter is “essential to any form of communication, if the other is understood in relative absence of oneself”.
— screenings, presentations, discussions with among others Chantal Akerman, Cel Crabeels, Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Johan Grimonprez, Mark Nash, Pedro Costa, Catherine David, Chris Dercon, Corinne Castel, Dirk de Wit, Pavel Braila, Knut Asdam, Rein Wolfs, Jennifer Steetskamp, Isa Rosenberger
The website of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique is renewed. Its new design offers clear information on all current and past CLiC events. The site is made by Rekall Design, Bert Balcaen and Ingrid Stojinic (researchers Design 2003–2005).
Robrecht Vanderbeeken (researcher Theory 2004–2005) edited the proceedings of the symposium Kritische Metafysica: Gilles Deleuze (29 May 2006). The publication also contains articles by Marc De Kesel and Dominiek Hoens, former and current advising researcher of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique. more
The phantom of liberty: psychoanalysis as a philosophy of freedom?
— conference organized by Aaron Schuster with
Ed Pluth, Mladen Dolar, Lorenzo Chiesa, Marc De Kesel, Russell Grigg
Call for applications: deadline Friday 13 April 2007
Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit research and production proposals to become a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Candidates can either apply with a topic of their own or for a collective project formulated by the institute itself. Candidates can apply for a one-year, two-year or variable research period, starting 1 January 2008.
Collective research project to which candidates can apply are:
– Logo Parc. Challenging the aesthetics of economy
– Traces of autism. Wander-research in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine
– After 1968. What is the political?
– Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique
more info or contact: leon.westenberg@janvaneyck.nl
Mathematicians, chemists, other scientists, legal experts, sound artists, theatre producers or cultural producers are welcome to apply to the research project Traces of autism. This project concerns the making of an inventory of public space in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine, based on journeys made through the area and following a number of strict parameters. The current team consists of two public space designers, one architect and one cultural theorist. To complete the team, candidates from different disciplines and backgrounds are invited to submit a proposal. Application deadline: Friday 13 April 2007. more info
Logo Parc presents ts research at the conference Playing the urban
Listening to the Archive I: mémoires de sourd. A workshop around 'Les immatériaux'
— workshop organised by Antony Hudek
— conference at Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam, NL
— conference
Over the last months, the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht) and FLACC have been working together in the area of research and the support of projects developed within the programmes of both institutes. Henceforth, their workshop facilities and technical expertise will be used collectively for the realisation of productions. Moreover, the Jan van Eyck Academie offers free access to the library and the documentation centre. The institutes have drawn up a communal inventory of all facilities and know-how present and will exchange annual facilitary investment plans. The institutions are also working on a communal database of external expertise useful in the realisation of productions. FLACC and the Jan van Eyck Academie intend to be complementary vis-à-vis facilities and expertise as well as create a cross-border dynamics of residing artists/researchers. Both institutes want this collaboration to be extended, preferably at a Euregional level.
More information on FLACC
Bruno Besana (current researcher Theory) and Oliver Feltham (researcher Theory 2005) edited the book Ecrits autour de la pensée d’Alain Badiou, published recently by LHarmattan (Paris).
Multiplicity, event, situation. Crossing these three concepts in a strongly articulated system, Alain Badiou shows how an identity (an object, a human being or a work of art) is not defined by an inner principle or an essence, but is rather the gathering of an infinity of elements; and an event is then exactly the turning point of a given situation, in which a new principle of construction renders possible the rising of some radically new identities.
This book tries to size up the articulations of this system, it tries to size up the points in which such thought is shaped, with the help of some extra-philosophical materials (mathematics for the thought of being; art, psychoanalysis and politics for the thought of the event). In other words, it tries to question the genetic point of a philosophical system on its border. Borders whose center is engendered, borders enabling us to see the interference of some new elements and thus think the unthought of our present situation.
The book displays articles from four present and former Jan van Eyck Academie Theory researchers. Oliver Feltham couples the concept of “unthought of a situation” with the Aboriginal Australian movement; Dominiek Hoens (advising researcher Theory) investigates the senses of the word ‘love’ as sized up in the confrontation with Lacanian psychoanalysis; Barbara Formis puts back-to-back Duchamp’s idea of ready-made and Badiou’s concept of event; and Bruno Besana links Deleuze’s and Badiou’s concepts of multiplicity via their crossed readings of Plato’s idea of the relation between the one and the many.
The book can be borrowed from the Jan van Eyck library.
Jan van Eyck Bookshop online
This month the Jan van Eyck Bookshop went online. All publications made by our artists, designers and theoreticians can now be browsed easily (by date, title and name), and ordered on-line. Those who would first want to view a book in reality can visit one of the bookshops listed on the site.
The Jan van Eyck publications on offer are quite heterogeneous in nature. The academy does not have an editorial board dictating thematic or disciplinary guidelines to establish a publisher’s list, nor does its publishing policy contain official recommendations about content. Consequently, our online bookshop contains autonomous artists’ books, experimental publications in the field of design, theoretical volumes of essays, exhibition catalogues and magazines. The publications have either been initiated by the (advising) researchers – artists, designers and theoreticians – or by the institute itself. The Jan van Eyck also handles the production and distribution of its books.
New research project: Quaero: Searching for searching
On the initiative of Meta Haven: Design Research, the Design department is starting a new research project this month. This brief project, running to September 2007, will investigate the French search engine Quaero. The project aims to merge design research with a discussion on internet, politics, public domain and cultural heritage. Moreover, it will attempt to outline some possible features for Quaero’s identity, emphasising its being a distinctly public medium which simultaneously transgresses the culture of the grand projet into the digital realm. The programme will involve at least one public conference and one research conference. Results will be published in the 2007 book Uncorporate identity.
The project is guided by advising researchers Daniël van der Velden, Vinca Kruk
Researchers are Tsila Hassine, Gon Zifroni
The Logo of Bucharest
On 11 January the symposium Regimes of representation. Art and Politics beyond the House of People took place at the Palatul Parlamentului in Bucharest, organised by Meta Haven: Design Research (Vinca Kruk and Daniël van der Velden). The conference wanted to present various ideas on art, power and politics, as a direct response to the House of People and its use. During one day of lectures and discussions, Chantal Mouffe, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jonathan Dronsfield, Marcus Steinweg and the collective 4Space considered the relationship between power and architecture, the museum and politics.
In their online diaries the organisers reflect on the meaning of the House of People, having been warned that the subject of the conference was a sensitive issue for the national museum for contemporary art (MNAC) housed in the House of People. After all, the discussion about this institute, its political embedment, its name and its location, which had raged from the moment of its inception, could flare up again at any moment. Kruk and Van der Velden doubt whether the rhetorical methods used to change the House of People from a perverse symbol of power into an acceptable ‘democratic’ building actually work. “Nobody who claps eyes on the palace sees a valuable gem symbolising democracy. The fact is that an extraordinarily powerful symbol has been created. The question is: what does it mean?”
The diary can be viewed on: http://www.archined.nl.
The Romanian paper Observator cultural introduced the topic of the conference and voiced some reflections by Ruxandra Balaci and Ciprina Mihali. The event was also announced in national newspaper Romania libera.
more info (in Dutch)
The Jan van Eyck is recruiting a webmaster and coordinator of on-line and off-line productions, and a financial an administrative employee. more info (in Dutch)
— exhibition
— STUK, Leuven, BE; Artis, Den Bosch, NL
— symposium organized by Meta Haven; with Vinca Kruk, Chantal Mouffe, Nicolas Bourriaud, Jonathan Dronsfield, Marcus Steinweg, 4Space (Augustin Ioan & Ciprian Mihali)
— MNAC, Bucharest, RO
New advising researchers: Imogen Stidworthy, Katja Diefenbach, Dominiek Hoens
This month fine artist Imogen Stidworthy and theoreticians Katja Diefenbach and Dominiek Hoens take up their new functions as advising researchers in the Jan van Eyck Academie.
New researchers
In the new academic year, starting this January, 21 researchers begin their research period at the Jan van Eyck. Their project plans and CVs are published on this website (button researchers) and in the Jan van Eyck programme brochure designed by Matthijs van Leeuwen. We welcome the following eight artists, five designers and eight theoreticians:
Fine Art researchers: Thibaut Jacquerie (BE), Rachel Koolen (NL), Ines Lechleitner (AT), Jean-Baptiste Maitre (FR), Kobe Matthys (BE), Karolin Meunier (DE), Peter Müller (DE), Stephane Querrec (FR). Design researchers: Eva Moulaert (BE), Julie Peeters (BE), Jens Schildt (SE), Salome Schmuki (CH), Raoul Wassenaar (NL). Theory researchers: Anthony Auerbach (GB), Bruno Besana (IT), Jan Hein Hoogstad (NL), Sigi Jöttkandt (AU), Roland Meyer (DE), Ozren Pupovac (YU), Marina Vishmidt (UA), Tanja Widmann (AT).
Thinking through affect
On 8 and 9 September 2006 the symposium Thinking through affect took place in the Jan van Eyck Academie. The research project bearing the same title assumes an intrinsic link between image, affect, movement and emotion. The symposium intended to bring together theoreticians who have worked along similar conceptual lines to develop thinking about affect and formulate a conceptual framework to do so. Many of the lectures dealt with these connections from various perspectives. The lectures did not exclusively focus on film and media theory; interesting references were made to gender theory, theatre and dance studies as well as the fields of the visual arts, philosophy and aesthetics. Thinking through affect was organized by Ils Huygens (researcher Theory 2005–2006). A report of the symposium is now published.
Thinking through the body
On 4 November 2006, the workshop Thinking through the body took place at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Thinking through the body was an international encounter between philosophers, art critics, artists and body practitioners. Six guests were invited: Richard Shusterman, Jacinto Lageira, Erica Ando, Agnès Lontrade, Aline Caillet and Emmanuel Alloa. Thinking through the body was an initiative of Barbara Formis (researcher Theory 2006). The main purpose of the day was to investigate new ways of dealing with the body, either as a living experience or as an aesthetical concept. The workshop consisted of three presentations (each followed by a response) and a Feldenkrais technique workshop. A report of the workshop is now published.
Citygraphy. Between Urban Politics and Urban Aesthetics
Recently, the research contents of the Citygraphy project were published on a special project website: www.citygraphy.com. Citygraphy examines the role of 19th-century photography in the consciousness and perception of the European city as a historic focal point – a fulcrum subject to the powers of modernization. Contrasts between urban centres and expanding suburbs, between handicraft and industrial production, between transport by water and over land, between conservation and redevelopment, between restoration as a form of protection and of rebuilding, between the interests of residents and those of visitors all determine the overall politics of life. What role did the visual image play in all of this, and in particular, what was the role of photography?
To date, the following cities have been under investigation: Bruges (BE), Bologna (IT) and Maastricht (NL). The research has been essentially interdisciplinary. It is about reconstructing the context within which the images were made. It is self-evident that local politics, social conditions, restoration policies, architectural concepts, the rise of tourism, 'print culture', the history of photography as a technique, its practice and its exploitation all play a part. Citygraphy takes the role of photography as a fully-fledged cultural component seriously. Its visual statements about cities and architecture, their history and relevance deserve the same attention as do contemporary prints or paintings of urban landscapes, or 19th-century novels in which the city is so often depicted as both décor and protagonist. The paradoxical essence of the new versus the old city was the cornerstone of a major part of 19th-century culture; it was questioned in novels, poetry and paintings. Photography must also have been sensitive to this atmosphere. What forms did photography take in order to play an active role in the overall picture? Are these forms aesthetically identifiable? In photography, the intentions of the content cannot be separated from aesthetic objectives. Insight into the aesthetics of these images is as important as insight into their politics.
The website comprises articles and an extensive image database. Artistic coordinator of Citygraphy is Dirk Lauwaert, Jan van Eyck researcher is Lilo Bauer.
In March and April, Dirk Lauwaert will present the lecture series Namiddagen van de topografie in the Beursschouwburg in Brussels. On Friday 9 March the photographical and literary representation of New York is being discussed by Lilo Bauer (researcher Citygraphy), Steven Humlet, Bart Eeckhout and Yves Schoonjans. The following Friday, 16 March, Fredie Floré, Ad De Jong and Andrea Stultiens will concentrate on open air villages, museological interiors and model houses. Subsequently, Marjolijn Dijkman (researcher Fine Art), Martijn Hendriks and Maarten Vanden Eynde will elaborate on the remapping of Los Angeles, on Friday 23 March. Then, on Friday 30 March, Simon Ditchfield and Luc Duerloo will talk about rituals, history and topography in the religious world view of the early modern period. More info: www.beursschouwburg.be.
Interview Astrid Wege
On behalf of the Jan van Eyck Academie, Astrid Wege was interviewed about her curation of the exhibition Resonance: how one reality can be understood through another. The exhibition was held in two spaces: Artis in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and STUK in Leuven, featuring works by all Fine Art researchers at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2006, as well as a number of former researchers from the past seven years. Interviewer Antony Hudek (researcher Theory department) had the transcript published as part of MOCA MAAS’s (Museum of Contemporary Art, Maastricht www.mocamaas.org) contribution to Groothertogdom Brabant – a two-week project beginning on 13 January 2007, which brings together regional Belgian and Dutch artists’ initiatives under one roof at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. By publicizing issues raised specifically by Resonance – such as the curatorial challenges posed by a predetermined set of artists; the possibility of conceiving a ‘critical’ exhibition; the institution’s role in commissioning such an exhibition – in a museum occupied by art organisations, the interview re-performs Astrid Wege’s reflection on the transference between institutional spaces. Moreover, as the interview transcends from commissioned piece by and for one institution (Jan van Eyck Academie) to a text reclaimed by a self-displacing organism (MOCA MAAS) for an established museum (Van Abbemuseum), the dangers of excessive resonance are brought into relief: in whose names – either institutional or personal – are the different actors in this expanding dialogue speaking? And how many orders of space enter here in (potential contra)diction, between the regional and the national, the ‘alternative’ and the institutional, the historical and the symbolic/mythical? These and other questions will structure the round-table discussion organised by MOCA MAAS at the Van Abbemuseum on 21 January 2007.
Daniël van der Velden (advising researcher Design department) and Maureen Mooren have won the fifteenth TheaterAffichePrijs with their poster for Holland Festival 2006 (Melancholia & Hysteria). The winning posters (comprising a series) have been chosen out of 542 entries. In September the jury nominated eleven entries, including three series. Benien van Berkel, head communication and marketing of the Holland Festival, says the design duo are ‘innovators’. “They are designers and creators of art objects.” The Theater Instituut introduced the prize for the best designed poster in 1992 - among other things, to draw attention to its collection of more than 22,000 posters. The professional jury was headed by designer Joost Swarte.
In the framework of the research project On the television work of Jef Cornelis, Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, published two interviews with Cornelis, one on changes in the urban public space in Open, and one on his literature films in De Witte Raaf.
The interview in Open elaborates on three films Jef Cornelis made on public space and environmental planning: Mens en agglomeratie (1966), Waarover men niet spreekt (1968) and De Straat (1972). Special attention is paid to the circumstances surrounding the production of the films, the way these could be presented on television (as a documentary or commercial) and their culturally pessimistic, propagandistic outlook on architecture. All in all, the films were not pedagogical; they intended to start a debate on urbanism which did not exist in Belgium in the late sixties. More information on Open: http://www.skor.nl/article-2883-en.html
In the eighties Cornelis focused on literature. Though he was never part of the literary scene, he knew many writers, with some of whom he would collaborate on scripts. Cornelis produced films on Oscar de Wit, Jacq Vogelaar, Daniël Robberechts and Hans ten Berge. The interview deals with Cornelis’ interest in these writers, the case history and production of the films, the structure of the films in relation to the books and many more aspects. More information on De Witte Raaf: www.dewitteraaf.be
The researchers of the Jan van Eyck project Logo Parc - Daniël van der Velden, Katja Gretzinger, Matthijs van Leeuwen, Matteo Poli and Gon Zifroni - published an essay on the hybridity of the post-public space in Open. Logo Parc looks into the value of the public space of the Zuidas business district in Amsterdam as a ‘symbol’. In addition, proposals are being developed for a conception of the public space as a new type of space. Landscape, communication, social life and virtuality “are essential ingredients for a 21st century post-public space, where a surplus of digital technologies and networks is developing parallel to an increasing physical distance to historic city centres. This creates different forms of public behaviour. Public space has the power to represent the symbolic dimension of this behaviour.” The now published essay, along with its accompanying pictorial material, is one of the results of the Logo Parc project.
— symposium on rethinking ethical agency in Levinas
Ms M. de Bontridder, widow of artist Gilbert de Bontridder (1944-1996), has donated the collection of art books belonging to her late husband to the Jan van Eyck Academie, to be included in the library. The donation comprises about 200 titles on post-Second-World-War modern art, exhibition catalogues and books on art theory. Ms de Bontridder has also included 20 years of publication of the literary and art-historical magazine Kreatief in this gift. Gilbert de Bontridder was a member of staff for this periodical. All titles have meanwhile been entered in the online Jan van Eyck catalogue. Every library user can come look at the books, or borrow them.
In collaboration with De Geuzen, Tsila Hassine (researcher Design) has published the first version of her project Image Tracer online. The project evolved from the way the significance and presence of images fluctuate in the ecology of the world wide web. Currently, in its beta phase, the Tracer is a research tool that archives Google image searches for the purposes of tracking their URL, appearance, disappearance and rank.
Operating from a local hard disk, when an image search is performed, a python script structures the query results and saves them in a file, which is then uploaded into a database and converted into html or viewable pages. These html pages function like a snapshot of a given moment. When you re-perform the operation, another snapshot is layered over the previous capture, creating an archeology of data.
This research project takes place in the framework of Ubiscribe (www.ubiscribe.net).
The work Of Marriages and Mortgages, by Iratxe Jaio (researcher Fine art 2003–2004) and Klaas van Gorkum, has been nominated for the Basque prize Gure Artea. The work is a documentary storyboard, made up of about 150 drawings. It uses the large-scale expansion of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of Basque Country, as the context for a narrative which plots the uneasy relationship between models and reality, between urban planning and concepts of life, family and reproduction. It will be shown from 19 October 2006 until 5 January 2007 in Koldo Mitxelena Kulturgunea, in San Sebastian, Basque Country.
The work of Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum is an investigation into the conflict between individual and collective identity, using documentary methods to visualize the relation between people and their social, cultural and physical contexts.
Ryan Gander (researcher Fine art 1999-2000) has been awarded the ABN AMRO Kunstprijs 2006. The ABN AMRO Kunstprijs is a prize of encouragement, annually awarded to an artist who is either of non-Dutch origin or has double nationality - living or working in the Netherlands. The jury report about the winner said: "Ryan Gander is unanimously praised by the jury for his extraordinary work, which varies from installations and sculpture to texts and lectures which are really performances".
It is the third time that the ABN AMRO bank awards the ABN AMRO Kunstprijs. The prize comprises an amount of money of € 10,000. Moreover, the ABN AMRO Art Foundation will organise a solo exhibition of works by the winner, from which one work will be bought for the collection of the bank. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication.
Ryan Gander’s work can now be seen at the head office of the bank, and at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Research on Research
On 10 October a discussion meeting regarding Research on research took place, with guests Mika Hannula (Professor of Art in the Public Space, Academy of Fine Arts of Helsinki) and Suchan Kinoshita (artist). The discussion was moderated and initiated by Koen Brams and Daniël van der Velden. Tom Van Imschoot (researcher Theory) reported on the event. According to him, both Hannula and Kinoshita “seemed to be aiming at expanding our suspicion that theoretical discourse and artistic practice are not on speaking terms at all vis-à-vis today’s institutionally decreed necessity to talk about art in terms of research and (alternative) knowledge production. Hannula’s lecture, for instance, a poorly prepared and therefore highly implicit paraphrase of his book on Artistic Research – theories, methods and practices (2005, with Juha Suoranta & Tere Vadén), provided us with an excellent example (in my opinion) of the dogmatic deafness theoretical activism can lead to if it listens too closely to the promise of legitimacy that art in all times seems to be guaranteed upon joining the language game of policymakers and their very invention: the politically correct. Suchan Kinoshita, conversely, did not seem to try and halt this monological discourse, however. Her statement was a non-statement, I think. This is not a time, though, for art to remain silent.”
Read the complete article by Tom Van Imschoot is published .
Post Porn Politics
On 14 and 15 October Tim Stüttgen (researcher Theory) organized the symposium Post Porn Politics at the Volksbühne in Berlin. The symposium, which featured theorists, performers, filmmakers, artists and musicians, understood itself as a political intervention into both the heteronormative landscape of commercial porn production and the discourses of the mainstream public, which make it impossible to think and practice criticism and pleasure at the same time. The conference was characterized by meaningful heterogeneity: sophisticated theoretical lectures were followed by pragmatic or playful accounts of practitioners, followed by (post-) pornographic performances. According to Stephan Geene, one of the speakers and advising researcher at the Jan van Eyck, this meant that “the conference was not – as it is often the case with cultural studies approaches – marked by the gap that separates cultural production, political activists and theory. When Annie Sprinkle, the acclaimed legend of Postporn, was characterizing the conference as something of a historical moment, it could be true to the extent, that the conference ‘sutured’ theoretical positions with activists out of the field.”
The conference was widely attended and received lots of media attention. Several reviews were published at: Berliner Zeitung, Die Welt, Taz 1, Taz 2, Netzzeitung, Spiegel, Die Zeit online, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio.
In the coming months the Jan van Eyck will publish its own report on the Post Porn Politics conference.
Interview Jef Cornelis in Jong Holland
In its most recent issue, Dutch magazine Jong Holland published an interview – “I’m too curious to just hand everything over to the artist” – with Jef Cornelis on the 1971 television film Sonsbeek buiten de perken and other TV films on art manifestations around 1970. The interview was held by Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, in the framework of the Jan van Eyck research project The Televison Work of Jef Cornelis. The television film Sonsbeek buiten de perken (literally: Sonsbeek beyond its boundaries) starts with images of the opening, which were part of a news item on Dutch TV. “I was there on the day of the opening in Arnhem and I saw the news item. People were sitting in a tent watching the TV. I found that unbelievable. I set up a camera on top of the television screen. You can tell by the way the images flicker. I had no form of technology at hand. I had to do it that way.” When asked how he assessed Sonsbeek 71, Cornelis replies: “There wasn’t all that much to see in Sonsbeek. The works looked a bit forlorn. The exhibition more or less collapsed. As soon as you left Sonsbeek, the exhibition was over.” The film may be seen as “the account of a disillusionment”. Cornelis allows all the critical voices to have their say in front of the camera: local politicians who have their doubts about the expected broad public support, protesting artists who denounce Sonsbeek 71 as an elitist affaire, and even two of the participating artists: Robert Morris, who is openly critical of the fixation on communication by the organizers, and Daniel Buren, who questions the possibility of going beyond the boundaries of the museum. In 1972, one year after Sonsbeek 71, Cornelis took leave of the world of art. Between then and 1985 he did not devote a single film to the visual arts. In his words: “Watching the film about Sonsbeek 71, you get the impression that I’m starting to give up on it – the world of art. For me the fifth edition of the Documenta was decisive. It was there that the commercialization of art and the way everything is ‘spectualized’ reached its first high point.”
The interview is published in Dutch and has an English summary.
Brakin in Domus
In its October issue, Italian magazine Domus published a text by Wim Cuyvers (advising researcher Design) on the public space of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, including an extensive photo essay, text and images on the Mobile phone project in these cities, developed by SMAQ. The occasion of this editorial attention is the book BraKin. Brazzaville – Kinshasa. Visualizing the Visible, published by the Jan van Eyck Academie and Lars Müller Publishers.
According to Wim Cuyvers, BraKin (the capital cities Brazzaville and Kinshasa) is “absolutely a present-day city; it is a laboratory due to its acute need. It is a city that no longer takes the borders of nation-state into account. Just like the waves of the mobile phone mast serve both sides of the rivers and this both countries, the city-as-one is a reality.” Cuyvers concludes that the real confrontation with BraKin is its boundless, almost unbearable uniformity, the totally overwhelming desire for consumption. A world in which you can only buy or sell has nothing to offer artists or intellectuals. “They could only wander around nostalgically or cling to mirages and illusions, and make themselves ridiculous, because their ideas and their work are false and have degenerated into consumer goods.”
BraKin is available for 25,90 euros. More info
Interview with typographer and designer Filiep Tacq
Filiep Tacq (advising researcher Design department) is the initiator and artistic advisor of the research project The Tomorrow Book. Within this framework and within the scope of his independent practice as a graphic designer, he focuses on different views on books by artists, architects, curators, writers, designers, editors, historians… He intends to re-question ‘the Book’ and test the limits and potential of today’s book. Dirk Pültau (editor-in-chief De Witte Raaf) interviewed Filiep Tacq about his practice of bookmaking. Topics under discussion included Tacq’s preference for making purely typographical book covers, the use of classical book elements to fine-tune the navigation of a book and typographical punctuation. The interview was first published in Dutch in De Witte Raaf and is now also available in English.
A book friction in De Leeswolf
In its October issue, Belgium magazine De Leeswolf published a review on the exhibition and accompanying publication A Book Friction. Concrete Poetry, Fluxus and Conceptual Art. This exhibition was curated by Marc Goethals in the framework of the Jan van Eyck Bookish Weekend (May 2006) and showed artist’s books by Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Filliou, George Brecht, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Stanley Brouwn and many more. According to the reviewer, Erik de Smedt, Marc Goethals had done pioneering work with the annotated catalogue, in which the shown works were illustrated and described and in which cross-links between the three art movements were elucidated. “It is a sober but informative catalogue, on books you rarely get to see and which, each and every one of them, have become expensive collectors’ items.”
Design catalogue: Filiep Tacq. Dutch, 112 pp, 105 x 230 mm, bl&w. 5 euros. Order form
— symposium on resisting neo-liberalist power through art, design and theory
— workshop on somaesthetics, body experience, art and philosophy
The Cut
During his research period at the Fine Art department (2004-2005) Geoffrey Garrisson wrote and directed the video The Cut. This film may now be viewed online, in its entirety. The Cut is a short (20-minute) video based on the history of the John Huston film Freud the Secret Passion (1961) about the life of Sigmund Freud. It is a non-linear impression of the history, not a documentary or exact reenactment. The film presents several fragments in which Huston argues with main actor Montgomery Clift during the filming of Freud; Clift discusses his insomnia problems with Marilyn Monroe during the filming of the Misfits; Huston is interrogated by the FBI during the investigation of Hollywood communists; and Huston discusses the censorship of the film on Freud with a Catholic priest and with a producer.
Thinking Through Affect
On 8 and 9 September Ils Huygens (researcher Theory department) organized the symposium Thinking Through Affect at the Jan van Eyck Academie. This research project is concerned with developing the notion of affect as a productive tool of analysis for art, media and film studies. How can we think, theorize and write about affect? Read more
The Museum of Conflict. Art as Political Strategy in Post-Communist Europe
On 12 September Meta Haven, in collaboration with Jonathan Dronsfield, organized the conference The Museum of Conflict at the Jan van Eyck. The conference was organized to discuss the question whether “art can ever really take over the location of power, being a symbol of openness and democracy’’, with special regard to the position of the museum and the artistic event, as well as the presence of artists and the art system. Meta Haven had proposed the famous Casa Poporului (People’s House) in Bucharest as their main case study. This totalitarian icon, designed by Nicolae Ceausescu, houses the Romanian parliament as well as a National Museum for Contemporary Art (MNAC). Meta Haven wrote a first short review. Read more
Traces of Autism
On Wednesday 27 September the researchers of the project Traces of Autism presented their first results. Traces of Autism intends to draw up an inventory of public space in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, based on journeys made through the area and following a number of strict parameters. As a first introduction to the Euregio, the researchers made an inventory of its internal national borders and walked 250 kilometres on the borderline. Read more
Euregional Forum Heerlen and Genk
In June 2006 the first two Euregional Forums took place in the Glaspaleis in Heerlen and in FLACC in Genk. The Euregional Forum is an initiative of the Jan van Eyck Academie and consists of a series of debates set up by research bureau BAVO. Point of departure of the Euregional Forum is that, in terms of culture, language, materials, politics or nationality, there is more that unites the people from the Euregio Meuse Rhine than divides them.
At the debate in Heerlen it was investigated what strategies could be developed for a Euregio that collaborates efficiently. Debaters were Jaap Modder (chairman of the board of City Region Arnhem-Nijmegen), Henk van Houtum (researcher and tutor at the Centre for Border Research and Radboud University, Nijmegen) and Rob Jansen (member of the SP in the Provincial Council of Limburg).
At the debate in Genk it was investigated how cities and citizens can profit from the cross-border qualities of the Euregio. Debaters were Lowie Steenwegen (regional planner at O2 Consult and council member for Groen! in Glabbeek), Peter Cabus (professor of economic geography at the Catholic University of Louvain) and Harrie de Witte (GP in Genk). Both evenings were kicked off with an introduction by BAVO.
Reports of both forums are now published on this website (Dutch-Heerlen, English-Heerlen, Dutch-Genk, English-Genk).
In November the Euregional Forum will be organizing workshops and debates in Liège and Aachen. More information
From 29 September until 1 October and on 3 October Megan Sullivan (researcher Fine Art department) organized the FN-Hunterklasse, a seminar and riding competition in Wenddoche (DE), together with Wolfgang Wernicke, who owns and operates a training and sales barn in Wenddoche. The purpose of the seminar was to introduce the FN-Hunterklasse, a riding discipline introduced by the German Riding Federation (FN) in 2005, using examples of the discipline of US Show Hunters as a starting point. Both versions of 'Hunter riding' are predominantly for amateur adult riders with a disposable income, who wish to compete in a pleasant environment against similar competitors. In contrast to show jumping, where the aim is to get over a series of jumps without faults in the quickest possible time, Hunter classes involve a course of straight lines, over low fences, in a rhythmic and stylish manner.
While the FN-Hunterklasse uses the American discipline as inspiration, it has marked differences. The German riding style is based on dressage, and even in 'Stilspringen', where riders are judged on how well a course is jumped, a deep seat and a stronger use of aids is the norm. The seminar hopes to use training exercises popular in the United Stated, to give participants a feel for the riding style of US Hunters, and the technique of the 'light seat'.
The riding competition appropriated a Show Hunter class in the USA, including the height and plan of the course. Some jumps were created out of natural materials, with white or natural poles, garnished with flowers.
The project took place in the framework of Megan Sullivan’s research into social or institutional demarcations of culture and the position of the artist as a filter or activator for a process of cultural production. More info
— symposium on queer feminist perspectives on the politics of porn performance and sex as culture production.
— SecondLife users are invited to gather, chat and party in their avatar appearances to the live streaming sounds of DJ Donlondi in the specifically developed virtual copy of the Jan van Eyck
The Jan van Eyck Academie is recruting a coordinator of artistic productions and a documentalist. More information (in Dutch).
New section: reviews
As of now, this news section of the website and our monthly newsletter will contain a ‘Reviews’ section. Besides looking forward to the upcoming programme, the news items will also look back to past events. The Jan van Eyck website will publish reports on lectures and symposia in text, image and sound. In doing so, the Jan van Eyck wants to open up its programme for those members of the public that could not attend the actual event. If you wish to receive the monthly newsletter, please send an email to brief@janvaneyck.nl (subject newsletter).
Bookish Weekend
Last May the Jan van Eyck organized a weekend with a range of activities related to art and artist’s books. Many people visited the exhibition, participated in workshops, attended lectures, entered in discussions, enjoyed a variety show and rummaged around the successful book market. The Bookish Weekend is now documented on the Jan van Eyck website with pictures, texts and a sound registrations. More information
Interview with Brakin researchers published in Die Zeit
The publication Brakin. Brazzaville – Kinshasa. Visualizing the Visible was presented at B-Books in Berlin on 17 July, on the occasion of the elections in Congo and the presence of German soldiers to guard the process. In this framework the German newspaper Die Zeit interviewed Tina Clausmeyer and Sabine Müller, two researchers who participated in the Brakin project. In the interview Clausmeyer and Müller elaborate on their personal experiences of Brakin, on the way communication works in this city, on their research methods and on the image of Germans in Congo. Read the complete interview. More information on Brakin.
Interview with Wim Cuyvers published in Mosaiek
An interview with advising researcher Wim Cuyvers was published in the latest issue - on desire - of Mosaiek, an interdisciplinary magazine published by students of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at the University Maastricht. In their article ‘Homo sex in Maastricht’, Jantine Claus and Mieke Prinse elaborate on several of Cuyver’s projects concerning the use of public space and the function of architecture. Making inventories of metropolitan areas like Paris, Tirana, Manhattan, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, but also of meeting places for homosexual men along the motorways in Belgium and in a park in Eindhoven, Cuyvers discovered that the real public space is the space were the needy reside, the homeless, drug addicts, gypsies, children, homosexuals... From time to time, everybody needs a place to be naughty, to refuse social control and to let one’s hair down, Cuyvers concludes from his research. Read the complete interview (in Dutch). More information on Mosaiek (in Dutch).
Research project Mapping Conspiratorial Spaces by Tina Clausmeyer
The first preliminary results of Tina Clausmeyer’s research into the conspiratorial meeting places of the Stasi have been published in Geheime Trefforte des Mfs in Erfurt (2006, TLSTU-Verlag, Erfurt, DE). During her stay at the Jan van Eyck, Tina Clausmeyer located and analysed a decade’s worth of visual evidence of Stasi operative surveillance methods. She did so by documenting the 500 secret meeting places listed in a copy of a lost Stasi file, discovered at the Central Archive for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR in Berlin (2004). The research aimed to reveal the inconceivable and diverse secret service surveillance architecture in an ordinary city of the former GDR; all of it essential in order to organize the fanatic and gruesome control apparatus from within their own people. The resulting counter-cartography of contemporary and original material intends to display how an entire city was used by the Stasi in order to communicate to its various unofficial collaborators in an implied network of secret locations. In this publication Tina Clausmeyer demonstrates examples of fieldwork through text, inventory and photos (visual documentation and mapping of one secret-meeting place per street according to the different suburbs of the city). More information.
— symposium on art as political strategy in post-communist Europe
— exhibition of printed matter produced in the Jan van Eyck graphic workshop under the guidance of photographer and printer Frans Vos over the last 25 years
— symposium on body, affect, emotion and moving images
The Yearbook 2005, designed by researchers Marijke Cobbenhagen and Chantal Hendriksen is published online: Dutch (12MB), English (12MB). The book comprises an extensive portfolio of all Jan van Eyck research projects on avant-garde; air, art, architecture; film and television; game design; identity; publishing; theory, music and noise; and visual culture. It also contains biographies of all (advising) researchers, a list of the 2005 programme and an outline of the Jan van Eyck institutional policy. Details of printed matter, documentary pictures of events and images related to the projects visualize the Jan van Eyck in the past year. However, do not read the yearbook merely to find out what the institute did in 2005, but also as a way to acquaint yourself with the things the Jan van Eyck will do in 2006 and in the future.
We are looking for an enthusiastic and creative student in communication(management) or marketing who is willing to carry out web research and chart a distribution network, make direct contact with possible buyers of our publications as well as take part in book fairs and book presentations. more info
Lilo Bauer (1976, Germany) has been selected as a researcher/photographer for the Citygraphy project. Citygraphy examines the role of 19th century photography in the consciousness and perception of the European city as a historic focal point – a fulcrum subject to the powers of modernization. On the basis of photo-technical, photo-theoretical, semiotic and cultural-historical research and taking the 19th century city images of Maastricht as a starting point, Lilo will develop a contemporary topographic interpretation of 21st century Maastricht. Her contemporary photographs may raise questions driving the theoretical/cultural-historical research. The research results will be presented at a location yet to be determined. Lilo will be advised by Dirk Lauwaert and a team of external experts.
Tsila Hassine (1971, Israel) has been accepted as a researcher for the Ubiscribe project. Her research focuses on the digital image and its networked existence. The existence of online images continually fluctuates as they are distributed across a networked medium in which they are copied, manipulated, re-contextualized and re-named. By spying on a set of images Tsial hopes to capture these fluctuations. This implies a daily recording of all data (URLs, etc.) related to the images. However, the project is not merely about mapping. It is also about reflecting on the implications of tracing images online. What does it mean when an image appears, or if it moves from being on the 15th to the 1st result page. How can a fluctuating set of images be presented and connected to the broader socio-political context in which they are generated? What new discoveries can be made from the image’s traces on the Internet?
Sara De Bondt (researcher Design department 1999–2001) won the closed competition to design the visual identity of Wiels, a new contemporary art centre in Brussels located in a former brewery to be opened in December of this year. She is planning to design a simple but strong identity, that is at the same time playful, contemporary and functional, paying respect to the building and the art exhibited. Sara was selected out of 13 designers and design offices, including Vinca Kruk and Adriaan Mellegers (researchers Design department 2003–2005).
For more information about Sara’s work visit www.saradebondt.com.
For the first time, an inventory of all publications realised at the Jan van Eyck has been compiled. This has given the academy a unique opportunity to single out the artists’ publications and discuss them with the actual artists and technical advisors involved. Interviews with the artists are published on a new website. More info
On 1 June three researchers started their participation in the project Traces of Autism. Wander-Research in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine; they are designers Maartje Dros (Texel, NL, 1980) and Jozua Zaagman (Emmen, NL, 1981) and cultural theorist Jacqueline Schoemaker (Antwerp, BE, 1969). Together with advising researcher Wim Cuyvers they will make an inventory of public space in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, based on journeys made through the area and following a number of strict parameters. During the entire research period, the French pedagogue Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) will be considered a supporter, someone who walks in the footsteps of the researchers, as he did for thirty years: following autistic patients and registering without intervention. More info
Two collections donated to Jan van Eyck library
The next of kin of art historian and former mayor M.J.A.R. (René) Dittrich (1920–1994) have donated his collection of art books to the Jan van Eyck Academie, for inclusion in the library. The collection comprises about 2600 books (= 40 metres), mainly on painting and art in general. The donation also includes catalogues of museums, exhibitions and of important art auctions. All in all, the collection is a magnificent addition to the library collection of the academy. Over the next months, all titles will be checked to see if they are already included in the library collection or not; afterwards they will be processed in the catalogue. Once this is done, every library user can see or borrow the books.
Furthermore, R. Hugo Bloksma has recently donated sixteen volumes of the Reclame (Advertising) Year Books (1977 – 1999) to the Jan van Eyck library. The Year Books, published by Art Directors Club Nederland (ADCN), give an overview of the advertising campaigns awarded by the ADCN in those years. The books are very suitable for historic research in the field of advertising and graphic art. The Year Books can be viewed in the library and can also be borrowed.
Symposium with Marijke Martin, Steven Humblet, Ingrid Evers, Marc De Blieck, Dirk Lauwaert. More info
Call for applications: Citygraphy. 19th century and 21st century topographic photography in Maastricht
Citygraphy examines examines the role of 19th century photography in the consciousness and perception of the European city as a historic focal point – a fulcrum subject to the powers of modernization. What role did the visual image play in the modernization process, and in particular, what was the role of photography? The research project Citygraphy is a commission for a photographer/researcher. Deadline for submissions is 6 June 2006. More info
Saturday 20 – Sunday 21 May
10:00 – 18:00
— exhibitions, lectures, workshops, variety night, book market,...
Tuesday 25 April
14:00
Lecture by Alexander Negrelli: Kommando Otl Aicher
Vacancy coordinator of projects and the public programme
More info (in dutch)
Falke Pisano wins Hiscox Art Award
Fine Art researcher Falke Pisano has won the Hiscox Art Award (5,000 euros). Together with other Fine Art researchers Lucia Macari and Marjolijn Dijkman, and two participants of the Rijksakademie, she was nominated for this recently founded art award. The objective of the prize is to encourage the different art disciplines of young artists living and working in the Netherlands. A group of five young curators visited important art academies and other institutions in the Netherlands in order to make a shortlist of five young artists, whose work they considered to be relevant and inspiring.
The Hiscox Art Award is the initiative of the Benelux branch of Hiscox Insurance company; it is organised in collaboration with the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut. An exhibition at Art et Amicitiae showed work of the nominees until 19 March.
Wim Cuyvers awarded Flemish Culture Prize
On 6 February the Flemish Culture Prize for Architecture was awarded to Wim Cuyvers, advising researcher Design at the Jan van Eyck. These official culture prizes of the Flemish Community celebrate personalities or organisations who, through their artistic activities or special services, have made a remarkable contribution to Flemish cultural life over the past year. The jury praised Wim Cuyvers for "his work as designer and architect over the years. Time after time he succeeded in turning a – sometimes - apparently banal commission into an interesting project, which would play with different options for association and, as it were, explore the primary meanings of architecture. The architecture of Wim Cuyvers gets strength from the way it handles triviality and gives life spatial shape. Furthermore, Wim Cuyvers deserves recognition for the way he has closely interconnected his architectural work with an equally consistent theoretical reflective framework."
At the Jan van Eyck Academie Wim Cuyvers is setting up the research project Traces of autism. Those interested are welcome to apply as researcher for this project. More info
Ex-researcher Yolande Harris at Academy of Media Arts in Cologne
Yolande Harris, ex-researcher Theory (2003–2005), has been given a Fellowship at the Academy of Media Arts (HKM) in Cologne, for a six-month research residency (starting March). She will work on a new project about sound and landscape. This is in line with the research project she did at the Jan van Eyck, entitled Score spaces. This project investigated our understandings of the relations between sound, place and image in a technologically extended environment.
More info
Call for applications: Fine Art, Design, Theory
Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals for individual or collective research projects for a one-year or two-year research period in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. Deadline for submissions is 15 April 2006.
It is also possible to apply for the following collective research projects: Traces of autism. Wander-research in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, Logo Parc, The tomorrow book, UbiScribe, The pensive image, Circle for Lacanian ideology Critique, Citygraphy.
More info on application details and form. For an information brochure please send an email to leon.westenberg@janvaneyck.nl
Call for applications: Traces of autism. Wander-research in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine
This research project concerns the making of an inventory of public space in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, based on journeys made through the area and following a number of strict parameters (the inner borders of the Euregio, the 'subaltern', existing and new maps,...). Artists, designers and theoreticians are invited to submit proposals to participate as researchers in this project. Deadline for submissions is 15 April 2006. More info
Call for applications: The pensive image
The pensive image is a research project on thinking images. This project studies the extent to which images (painting, photography, cinema etc.) are able to philosophize on the status of their own representation, and on the nature of vision. Art historians and cultural theoreticians are invited to submit proposals to participate as researchers in this project. Deadline for submissions is 15 April 2006. More info
Image: Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrecht, The Reverse Side of a Painting (c. 1670, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen)
Vacancy allround technical employee
More info (in dutch)
Interview with Olivier Foulon, laureate of the 2005 Young Belgian Painters Award
In 2005, former Fine Art researcher Olivier Foulon (1976, Brussels, BE) received the Young Belgian Painters Award, the most prestigious biennial prize for fine art in Belgium. An interview with the laureate was conducted by Filiep Tacq (advising researcher Design department), a graphic designer and initiator / artistic advisor of the research project The tomorrow book; John Murphy (advising researcher Fine Art department), whose work is a mediation on what might be the work of an exhibition, and Jean Matthee, artist and psychoanalyst, who has published and lectured extensively on the conjuncture of art and psychoanalysis. The interview touches upon such matters as the energy and desire artists deploy in interpreting their creations; the fiction of loss; the notion of not knowing; the acts of retelling; reinterpreting; opening up existing art works to new readings and meanings. Text of the interview
New researchers
On Wednesday 8 February three new design researchers start their participation in the project Logo Parc: Katja Gretzinger (1972, DE), Matthijs van Leeuwen (1997, NL) and Gon Zifroni (1980, BE). Under the guidance of Daniël van der Velden they will research the design for public space at the Zuidas (South Axis) in Amsterdam.
Logo Parc starts by asking why, to what end and how design fulfills the role it currently plays with regard to economic and corporate interests in this prestigious area of high rise office blocks and residential and cultural facilities. The project assumes that an interest in the representation of economy could trigger the development of symbolic and critical design strategies other than those used now. The design strategy of Logo Parc therefore necessarily unites architecture, communication design and three-dimensional design.
Designers who are interested in participating in Logo Parc can apply to join the project until 15 April 2006.
Logo Parc is a joint project of the Jan van Eyck Academie, Lectoraat Kunst en Publieke Ruimte, Gerrit Rietveld Academy / Amsterdam University and Premsela Dutch Design Foundation.
More information on Logo Parc
Jan van Eyck receives gift from Galerie Bärwaldt
On 29 January the Jan van Eyck Academie received a donation of € 7,800 from Maastricht art gallery Galerie K.H. Bärwaldt. A year ago, Carla and Karl-Heinz Bärwaldt decided to set up an anniversary action on the occasion of the forty-year anniversary of their art gallery. The Jan van Eyck Academie, more specifically the Residency project of the Jan van Eyck Academie, was chosen as the beneficiary of the anniversary action. The donation was awarded by Mayor Gerd Leers, who conveyed his appreciation of the outstanding social function which Galerie K.H. Bärwaldt has been fulfilling for decades. Koen Brams, director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, expressed his gratitude thus: ‘It is a mark of great altruism to link the anniversary of your activities as an art dealer to an institute such as the Jan van Eyck Academie. It is both surprising and positive that a long-standing gallery reaches out to young artists, designers and theoreticians, who make art which is different from the art shown in your gallery, and which is made from a different perspective. The gift from Galerie K.H. Bärwaldt will go to the Residency project of the Jan van Eyck Academie. With this project the Jan van Eyck Academie wants to offer optimal accommodation conditions to young artists, designers and theoreticians, who – for a maximum of two years - come to the academy, to Maastricht, to experiment, research and produce’. As a token of gratitude, the Jan van Eyck Academie presented Carla and Karl-Heinz Bärwaldt with a specially designed small bookcase containing all publications realised at the academy over the last five years.
Geometry in free space
Presentation of a research project by Natascha Hagenbeek, with Anna Carlisle, Maja Moser and Norman Bryson in Het Gebouw van Stanley Brouwn, Leidsche Rijn Utrecht. More info
CD-Rom Museum in ¿Motion?
This publication (CD-Rom) contains the proceedings of the conference Museum in ¿Motion?, which took place on 12 & 13 November 2004 at Museum Het Domein and at the Jan van Eyck Academie. The conference meant to trace and re-assess the history of the critical correlation between contemporary art and the museum, to chart the various institutional responses, and to frame them within the broader context of socio-political changes. More info
The symposium Cultural activism today: strategies of over-identification tackles the new wave of cultural activism that has occurred through anti-populist or anti-globalist struggles. Speakers: BAVO, Alexei Monroe, Dieter Lesage, Aernout Mik, Jens Haaning, Boris Groys, Joep van Lieshout.
— Stedelijk Museum CS on 11
As part of the Opening week 2006 six (advising) researchers from the Fine Art department present some of their films.
— Filmhuis Lumière, Maastricht, NL
New advising researcher Hanneke Grootenboer
Hanneke Grootenboer will set up a research project in the Theory department on the pensive image. The research deals with reciprocal models of vision and concerns instances of ‘being seen’ rather than ‘seeing’. Starting from the notion of the gaze as object, her project attempts to answer the question where exactly our gaze is located, if not residing in the eye. Topics that will be addressed include: images or objects that look back at us; the visible and the articulable (Foucault/ Deleuze); intimacy of vision (Wajcman); (miniature) portraiture; the look of animals; the difference between the painted and the photographed gaze; monocular vision in portraits of single-eyed sitters; key-hole peeping; the monocle; blindfolding; panorama painting and photorealism.
More info
New advising researcher Will Holder
Will Holder will be involved in the research project The tomorrow book. From a personal perspective, as a book designer, publisher, editor and writer, he approaches books as a reader, aiming to translate content from the inside out. Coupled with an emphasis on language being at the root of any design decision or problem, he hopes to approach The tomorrow book from a estimation of what will be conveyed tomorrow, before considering futurist appearances. In a series of workshops and in apparent contradiction, he will methodically place the emphasis on ‘thinking while making’ in physical terms, or adaptive content in relation to physical, technical limitations as well as conceptual ones.
More info
New researchers
In January of this new academic year 22 researchers will start their research period at the Jan van Eyck. Their backgrounds are heterogeneous and their research subjects and working methods vary from discipline to discipline. Their project plans and CVs are published on this website (button researchers) and in the Jan van Eyck programme brochure.
Invitation to apply for the Logo Parc research project
Logo Parc is a new Jan van Eyck research project concerned with communication design, corporate identity and public space. The project’s main focus is the South Axis (Zuidas) in Amsterdam, a prestigious mix of high-rise offices, cultural facilities and mobility hubs located near the ring road.
Logo Parc’s key assumption is that a site such as the Zuidas demands symbolic languages, both in form and content, to express the many political/economical interests gathered there – and Logo Parc claims that contemporary design and architecture have not yet developed this language.
Logo Parc’s advising researcher is graphic designer Daniël van der Velden, who previously initiated the Meta Haven: Sealand Identity Project.
Departing from a wide array of sources, from Learning from Las Vegas to Mastercard via Versailles and graffiti, Logo Parc intends to trace future roads towards an architecture of messages – or a message for architecture.
Logo Parc is a collaboration between the Jan van Eyck Academie, the Premsela Foundation, the Lectoraat Kunst en Publieke Ruimte (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) and Universiteit Amsterdam and is supported by SKOR and Virtueel Museum Zuidas.
Candidates can apply for a one-year research position at the Jan van Eyck Academie and submit research proposals within the scope of the Logo Parc themes – starting January, 2006. Research proposals should be received no later than 1 December 2005. The Jan van Eyck Academie expressly invites graphic designers, 3D designers, (ex-)advertising professionals / students as well as architects to apply for Logo Parc.
Update research project on Jef Cornelis
The coming issue of fine art magazine De Witte Raaf is partly dedicated to the research project on the television work of Jef Cornelis. The interview titled Le double secret - het dubbele geheim discusses three films on René Magritte: The Music Box (1994), Les Vacances de Monsieur Mag (1995) and Een Weekend met Meneer Magritte (Zaterdag & Zondag) (1997).
Besides Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, the researchers of the project will address the films De straat (1972) and Landschap van kerken (1989) at the University of Ghent on Thursday 8 December.
Orbital
Yolande Harris presents a video and sound installation in her open studio 219
by appointment +31.43.3503737
Annual report 2004
The Annual report 2004, designed by Design researcher Adriaan Mellegers, is now available in print. The report, which is designed as a novel, comprises an extensive portfolio of all Jan van Eyck research projects, lectures, seminars, publications,…; biographies of all (advising) researchers; a list of the 2004 programme as well as an outline of the Jan van Eyck institutional policy. More info
Annual report 2003
The Annual report 2003, designed by Sulki and Min Choi (Design researchers 2003-2005), has been selected for the exhibition Traces at St. Bride Library, the world’s foremost printing and graphic arts library in London. Traces explores how typographic remnants create their own visual language, a language rich with snapshots of other stories and memories. In the Jan van Eyck Annual report Sulki and Min Choi published a list of all documents which had been removed from the computers in the workshops. More info
Research project on Jef Cornelis published in ‘De Witte Raaf’
In 2003 a research project on the television work of Jef Cornelis was started at the Jan van Eyck Academie, in collaboration with Argos. Over the past years several events were organized with invited speakers lecturing on films by Cornelis, followed by discussions. Furthermore, Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau, the initiators of the project, interviewed Jef Cornelis several times. The first results of these activities are now published in a special edition of Belgian bi-monthly art magazine De Witte Raaf, which, for the occasion, is completely dedicated to Cornelis’ work. The special issue will comprise two interviews with Jef Cornelis on his education at the Dutch film academy, on his first films Het Kasteel van Alden Biesen (1964) and Abdij van het Park (1964), and on films like Biënnale van Parijs (1985) and Little Sparta, et in arcadia ego (on Ian Hamilton Finlay) (1988). It will contain essays published by Stefan Germer on Documenta 5 (1972), Jack Post on IJsbreker (1983-1984), Geert Bekaert on OMA-Rem Koolhaas (1985) and Dirk Pültau on Landschap van kerken (1989). Moreover, in this issue, Bart Verschaffel and Jef Cornelis publish the script for a film on Rem Koolhaas which was never actually made and, in conclusion, there is an interview by Bert Bultinck with Ward Weiss and George De Decker, on the sound recording of The Music Box (1994) and Les Vacances de Mr. Magritte (1997). The various contributions will be illustrated with film stills and texts from the personal archive of Jef Cornelis. Finally, a biography, bibliography and filmography will outline the oeuvre of Jef Cornelis.
De Witte Raaf will be avalaible, for free, at cultural crossroads in The Netherlands and Belgium, from 15 September. The research project at the Jan van Eyck will continue with lectures and discussions in the coming months.
Looking back on ‘Micropolis’: an interview
‘This is reasonably explosive stuff’ – a thought that struck Steven Dusoleil (culture coordinator, City of Louvain) immediately after the final presentation of the project proposals of Micropolis researchers, on 27 April 2004. The project plans for a new cultural communication strategy in Louvain needed to be proposed to Louvain’s city council with a certain level of solicitude.
A little over a year later, an interview took place with Steven Dusoleil, Koen Brams (director Jan van Eyck Academie), Linda van Deursen and Armand Mevis (advising researchers Micropolis) to evaluate the research project on Louvain’s contemporary cultural identity. How were the proposals of the researchers received in Louvain? Are they being realized, or have they been rejected? What did Micropolis bring about? The interview shows the importance of political strategies, it negotiates the role of research within a communal and commercial commission and, finally, it discusses the new house style of Louvain.
The interview is published in Dutch and English on the Micropolis website.
Ex-researchers ‘Authoring the city’: Min Choi, Tamara Maletic, Dan Michaelson
Three of the four Design researchers recruited for the Charles Nypels research project Authoring the city have finished their research period at the Jan van Eyck.
Min Choi has been appointed as full-time lecturer at the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Seoul. He will be teaching graphic design and typography at both undergraduate and graduate level. With Sulki Choi he will keep working as a duo. They will participate in the exhibition Parallel life at the Frankfurt Kunstverein from 5 October to 27 November. Recently, Perspecta 36, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture, designed by Min and Sulki Choi, was selected in the 50 Books / 50 Covers competition held by the AIGA.
Together with Tamara Maletic and Dan Michaelson, Sulki and Min Choi form the Team Science Fiction, which designed the exhibition Welcome to Fusedspace Database at Stroom in The Hague. Tamara will continue her work as designer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, designing exhibitions, catalogues and other publications, as well as educational and outreach materials. In addition, the museum's design department plans to produce more new media work, and she will be helping with that effort.
Dan will be a full-time teacher in the graphic design programme at Yale University, New Haven. He will be teaching several classes to graduate and undergraduate students, some of which focusing on the implications of new technology, and others on traditional design skills. In addition, Tamara and Dan will be continuing their practice together, as Linked by Air, looking for interesting projects and clients.
Ex-researcher Lieven De Boeck: resident at ISCP, New York
The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York City's largest and leading visual arts residency, awarded Lieven De Boeck a residency for 2006. Lieven De Boeck was a researcher in the Fine Art department of the Jan van Eyck in 2002 and 2003. Since his stay at the Jan van Eyck, Lieven has been developing the research project The dictionary of space, which is aimed at realising a visual dictionary for the different types of physical space that constitute our spatial environment. The dictionary consists of four parts: Housing, Public Space, City and Methods. The first part, Housing, has resulted in a publication published by the Jan van Eyck, in which housing is considered as storage space for personal belongings, as a kind of camouflage of the inhabitant vis-à-vis his environment, and as a domicile. At the ISCP Lieven will concentrate on the realisation of the second part of the dictionary: Public Space. Located in Manhattan and offering the possibility of a constant open dialogue and co-authorship, the ISCP is the ideal residency for Lieven to further develop The dictionary of space.
New researchers: Sarah Infanger, Joël Vermot and Richard Vijgen, Christopher Gemerchak
In September three designers will start their research in the framework of the project The tomorrow book: Sarah Infanger, Joël Vermot and Richard Vijgen.
The Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique has also recruited a new researcher: Christopher Gemerchak.
Meta Haven website on-line
The Meta Haven design team has designed a project web presence at www.metahaven.net, helped by friend and cutting-edge web designer / programmer Maurits de Bruijn. Meta Haven’s website is conceived as an ‘arch’ of three web windows, surrounding an empty centre through which the user looks at his own desk top. Whereas the arch, uploaded with a ‘rainfall’ of visual projects, functions as a developing visual narrative, the website’s information and text windows are in plain, grey HTML.
Annual report 2004: the visit
The Jan van Eyck Annual report 2004, designed by Adriaan Mellegers (researcher Design department), is published on this website. The printed version of the report is expected in July.
New researchers ‘Trichtlinnburg’: Marijke Cobbenhagen and Chantal Hendriksen
This summer researchers Marijke Cobbenhagen and Chantal Hendriksen designed the publication Trichtlinnburg. An urban affair. They were especially recruited for this commission. Trichtlinnburg was a collaboration project between the Jan van Eyck Academie, Salzburger Kunstverein (Austria) and the Centre for Contemporary Art Tallinn (Estonia), which culminated in manifestations in these three cities, in May of this year. Trichtlinnburg analysed urban dynamics and politics and it investigated the logics of allocation of public space. This book brings together essays by Michael Hauffen, Andres Kurg and Dieter Lesage; image essays by Bertien van Manen, Johanna and Helmut Kandl; and an index that gathers all the data on the events and projects realised in Maastricht, Tallinn and Salzburg. Expected to be launched in September.
Olivier Foulon wins Jonge Belgische Schilderkunst award
Former Fine art researcher Olivier Foulon was awarded the Prijs Jonge Belgische Schilderkunst on 22 June. This is one of the most prestigious prizes for contemporary art in Belgium, amounting to € 25,000.
The international jury consisted of Hendrik Driessen (director De Pont Tilburg), Enrico Lunghi (artistic director Casino Luxembourg), Bartomeu Mari (chief curator MACBA Barcelona), Jean-Hubert Martin (director MuseumKunstPalast, Düsseldorf) and Anda Rottenberg (former director of the Zacheta Gallery of Contemporary Art in Warsaw). The jury selected six artists from 200 dossiers: Carlos Aires, Olivier Foulon, Ivo Provoost & Simona Denicolai, Sébastien Reuzé, Kris Vleeschouwer and Cindy Wright. During six months these artists created new work, which is currently on show in the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels until 4 September.
Olivier Foulon (1976, Anderlecht BE) made an installation with reproductions of paintings and their frames. His conceptual work is a comment on existing works of art and their presentation in museums. Foulon reproduces famous paintings and displays sketches, book covers and a photographs of an auction of ‘degenerate art’ from Nazi-Germany. During his research period at Jan van Eyck Academie (2001-2002) Foulon also dealt with this problem. Thus, he produced the artist’s book En coulisses, parfois, les artistes changent de costumes. Actualités with drawings based on or inspired by original 18th, 19th and 20th-century art works. Some drawings are abstract compositions drawn with the merest of lines; others show recognizable characters in great detail. An appended book contains reflective contributions by Michel Assenmaker and Eran Schaerf. Both volumes are bound by a black cover. Order the book.
In August an in-depth interview with Olivier Foulon, by Filiep Tacq and John Murphy, will be published on the Jan van Eyck website.
Closing Maasboulevard
Citizens of Maastricht are invited on Saturday July 2 to pave their own Maasboulevard. A public event in the center of Maastricht by researcher Zuzana Lapitková. more info
Laurent Liefooghe accepted for Kunstfort Vijfhuizen
Laurent Liefooghe (researcher Theory 2004) has been accepted as one of the occupants for project studios at the Kunstfort Vijfhuizen. The Fort near Vijfhuizen lies at the western edge of the Haarlemmermeer, between Haarlem and Hoofddorp. It is part of the ‘Stelling van Amsterdam’, which was built as a circle of defensive works around the capital city between 1880 and 1920. From March 2000 the Kunstfort Vijfhuizen Foundation has exerted itself to restore the Fort, which had been abandoned for years, and turn it into an ‘Art Fort’: a centre for contemporary art and culture.
The Foundation has four project studios with sleeping facilities. The idea is that artists, researchers, curators from the Netherlands and abroad work and live at the Fort for a three-month period. The working period runs from June-July to August-September, and concludes with a communal exhibition.
Apart from Laurent Liefooghe, three artists have been accepted: Guh Bahir (1970, IL); Antonis Pittas (1973, GR); Loes Heebink (1955, NL). At the Fort Laurent will continue to work on projects he initiated at the Jan van Eyck, that is to say, three video installations based on three stories about possible European monuments.
More info: www.kunstfort.nl
Giant Jeanne granted citizenship by mayor of Maastricht
On Sunday 5 June Gerd Leers, Mayor of Maastricht, officially granted citizenship to Jeanne van Eyck, the giant of the Jan van Eyck Academie. Having arrived at the Jan van Eyck to practice her artistic skills, Jeanne van Eyck, the first ever female giant and consisting of a head only, decided to stay in Maastricht. Having heard that Jeanne, like Maxima, has successfully passed her naturalisation course, fancies a beer from time to time and displays a southern joie de vivre, Mayor Leers welcomed Jeanne to Maastricht. The new citizen was then advised how to become a real ‘Maastrichtenaar’. First and foremost, Jeanne was to celebrate life, but she was also advised to learn the Maastricht dialect and regularly visit the Vrijthof, in order to get a feel of the Maastricht ambience. After these inspiring suggestions, the official registration took place in the presence of the witnesses: Koen Brams, director of the Jan van Eyck Academie, and Maria van der Hoeven, Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences. In their speeches, both witnesses emphasized the mutual wish of the city of Maastricht and the Jan van Eyck Academie to become more involved in each other’s cultural practices. Jeanne is the perfect symbol of this desired relationship. In future, Jeanne will participate in Giant parades, to represent both the city of Maastricht and the Jan van Eyck Academie.
The Jeanne van Eyck ceremony was part of the Trichtlinnburg project (www.tricht-linn-burg.org)
New website: Authoring the city
The Jan van Eyck Academie launched a new website: http://authoringthecity.janvaneyck.nl. This site, designed by Annelys de Vet, covers all events that take place in the framework of Authoring the city - a research project about urban space as a communication platform and communication device. Articles, descriptions of individual and collective projects, authors’ biographies and a list of works to be consulted will make up an extensive platform on multi-disciplinary topics related to urban communication and identity. The weblog aims to create a dynamic virtual environment for everyone who is authoring the city. In real time interested parties are welcome to attend the events on specific themes that are regularly being organised.
Authoring the city at ABKM
The Jan van Eyck Academie and the Academie Beeldende Kunsten Maastricht (ABKM) are organising a series of lectures in the framework of Authoring the city. As of 12 May artists, designers, theoreticians and architects will give presentations on Thursday evenings at 19:30 at the ABKM.
Trichtlinnburg. An urban affair
Trichtlinnburg is a 10-day manifestation (27 May–5 June) with communicative and performative art projects, a lecture series and a film programme in the centre of Maastricht. The manifestation analyses urban dynamics and politics, it investigates the logics of allocation of space and takes a hands-on approach to (the use of) public space. The visual and spatial productions incite the inhabitant and the tourist to take an unaccustomed look at the urban landscape. more info
Within the framework of the Trichtlinnburg project bolwerK Interrational explores new territories. Its research queries the use of art and culture for city marketing ends by contemplating tourism and consider it as an art project. bolwerK Interrational functions both as a travel collective and art(istic)company. You are invited to be a guest at the parks and campsites ‘Bungaslow’, ‘St. Kwintessen’ and ‘vanEyck’ or to sign up for one of the special trips. more info
A community of scoundrels
On Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 May an international conference takes place at Huize Heyendaal in Nijmegen. The aim of the conference is to reflect on Lars von Trier's film Dogville from a range of disciplines and to question whether the notion of the ‘gift' is able to shed a critical light on the impasses of our contemporary freedom-based society.
Interlude: the reader’s traces
‘Interlude: the reader’s traces’, an artist’s book by Mariana Castillo Deball, will be launched at the Stedelijk Museum CS in Amsterdam on Thursday 21 April at 20.00 hours. For this occasion Paul Elliman, Ian Monk, Steve Rushton, K. Schippers will give a comment on the book. Mariana Castillo Deball and the designer of the book, Manuel Räder, will be present. In co-production with Stedelijk Museum CS. More info
International conference approaching post-classical and post-avant-garde film work from a biopolitical viewpoint. This approach queries any conception of life and death as a-historical moments of the human condition, and connects them to modern and contemporary modes of production - economical and social - and as such raises the crucial issues of representation and history. more info
Druksel book fair
Druksel, a fair for private and small publishers, is taking place in Ghent, on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 April. The Jan van Eyck Academie will present its books which have been published since 1993.
The Jan van Eyck publications on offer are heterogeneous in nature. The academy does not have an editorial board which states thematic or disciplinary guidelines for establishing a publisher’s list, nor does the academy’s publishing policy contain official recommendations with respect to content. Consequently, the books on offer comprise autonomous artist’s books, experimental publications in the field of design, theoretical volumes of essays, exhibition catalogues and magazines.
For the occasion of the fair, researchers Kasper Andreasen and Ralph Bauer designed a booklet with an overview of all Jan van Eyck publications.
For more information on the fair see: www.druksel.be.
Steve Rushton: distribution ‘The Milgram re-eneactment’
The Jan van Eyck Academie and Steve Rushton (researcher Theory 2001-2002) set up an agreement to distribute Rushton’s DVD ‘The Milgram re-enactment’. This 90-minute film shows a reconstruction of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiment, first conducted at Yale University in Connecticut from 1960. During the original experiment subjects were asked to give seemingly real electric shocks to another individual. The experiment was designed to test the limit to which subjects were prepared to follow the orders of a scientist.
The Milgram re-enactment, initiated by artist Rod Dickinson, took place at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, in 2002. The re-enactment followed the same procedure as the original experiment in every respect, with one significant difference: actors were used for the re-enactment and no one was fooled into thinking that they were administering real electric shocks.
‘The Milgram re-enactment’ can be purchased at the Jan van Eyck Academie for the amount of € 60, for research and educational purposes. The publication, with essays about the re-enactment and the original experiment, is available for € 10.
Lene Markusen — Bundeswettbewerb 2005
Lene Markusen (researcher Fine Art 2005) won the sixth German Bundeswettbewerb award. Every two years the ministry of ‘Bildung und Forschung’ awards the work of promising young artists studying at German academies. The work of the price winners will be exhibited at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn. more info
Javier Marchán — distribution SoftSoftSoft
The digital film ‘SoftSoftSoft’ by visual artist Javier Marchán (researcher Fine art 1999-2001) is being distributed by Videoart.ch – Office for
(Switzerland) from 15 March 2005. Videoart.ch / Office for Videoart licenses the digital film ‘SoftSoftSoft’ for performance to selective worldwide museums and institutions with the approval of the artist. In addition, an unlimited edition of DVDs is made available to the general public, without public performance rights.
Javier Marchán’s film ‘SoftSoftSoft’ is the outcome of an international research project on people’s relationship with the world of objects. The work has been produced with the participation of Jan van Eyck Academie and the processes of a cell of sixty-nine individuals from around the world. In ‘SoftSoftSoft’ Simone, Juliet and Mimosa have to combat a carnivorous plant which grows at a monstrous speed, two orange juice squeezers and a ‘Save The Turkey’ Campaign in order to set themselves apart. Will they make it through the next 18.50 minutes? more info
David Küenzi: collection Bonnefanten museum
The Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht has acquired the video ‘I just saved your life’ by David Küenzi (researcher Fine Art 2003-2004) and Eleonora Meier for their collection. This film was produced at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2004 and will be shown at the Bonnefanten exhibition ‘Verzamelen!Collecting!’ (opening: 13 March).
‘I just saved your life’ is a slightly surreal spectacle of 49 teenagers performing neutral, yet distorted dialogues from existing movies. The adolescent quest for one’s own identity, an answer to the question ‘Who am I?’, is thus subtly mirrored in this artistic production.
More info
Ronald Van de Sompel: curator of Baltic
Ronald Van de Sompel, researcher Theory (2004), has recently been appointed as curator at Baltic, an international centre for contemporary art in Gateshead (northern England). Baltic presents a constantly changing programme of exhibitions and events. Not having a permanent collection, it places a heavy emphasis on commissions and invitations to artists as well as the work of artists-in-residence.
More info
— symposium
more info
The tomorrow book: call for applications
The Jan van Eyck Academie and the Charles Nypels Foundation invite designers, book critics, book theoreticians and book makers to submit project proposals in the context of the research project ‘The tomorrow book. Navigating to, within and beyond the book’. The tomorrow book intends to query the future of the book from a multi-disciplinary standpoint. In doing so, the following aspects will be treated: editing, typography, book design, publishing and distribution. The umbrella theme of the project is navigation towards, inside and outside of the book. Research candidates can submit project proposals for The tomorrow book up to 15 April 2005. more info
Artists, designers and theorists are invited to submit proposals for new individual or collective research and production projects for a one-year or two-year research period in the departments of Fine Art, Design and Theory. Deadline for submissions is 15th April 2005. Selections and interviews are held in the month of May.
In December 2004 a new research project was formulated by advising researcher Wim Cuyvers: ‘Visualizing the Visual. Reading, writing and mapping the environment of the Congo river at Brazzaville and Kinshasa’. For this project six new researchers have been recruited: Kristien Van den Brande, Tina Clausmeyer, Sebastien Maniglier, Kobe Matthys, Sabine Muller & Andreas Quednau and Dirk Pauwels. more info
The Jan van Eyck Academie was among the prize winners for the 2004 Best Annual Reports. The Annual Report 2003, designed by Min Choi and Sulki Choi, was selected out of 99 other reports.
The report was praised because of its 'sound typography, interesting choice of paper and nice illustrations. However, one could not call the Jan van Eyck Report very inviting: not to put too fine a point on it: it is boring - purely reporting - but it is very beautifully boring. A bit more could have been done, or perhaps even somewhat less. For those who love austerity, it is bang on target'.
Furthermore, the jury was of the opinion that the nine selected annual reports indicated that 'it is only a small group of clients, writers, designers and other professionals and experts who deliver good results.' It turns out that the best annual reports are from organisations who have had their reports awarded in previous years, too. This is also the case with the Jan van Eyck: the 2001 Annual Report, designed by Christos Lialios, also received the designation 'Best Annual Report' in 2002.
The Design department is recruting researchers with backgrounds and training in architecture, urbanism, theory, visual arts or design for the research project ‘Visualizing the visual. Reading, writing and mapping the environment of the river Congo at Brazzaville-Kinshasa’. Application deadline: 22 November 2004. more info
The new website of the Jan van Eyck Academie has been launched, with emphasis on more timely and effective presentation of the activities of the academy. The new site is designed by Min Choi and Sulki Choi, researchers at the Design department. The approach has been ‘rather than the Western-style 3-course meal, but the Korean-style all-the-dishes-at-once-on-the-table presentation’. Thus, the information is organised in such a way that it does not require many number of pages to browse the content.
Zafer Aracagok has been accepted as researcher in the Theory department, from 1 October. Aracagok (1960, TR) has a PhD in Comparative Literature (University of Oslo, 1993) and is a lecturer in Continental Philosophy for the MA and PhD programmes of Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University (TR). At the Jan van Eyck Zafer Aracagok will concern himself with the question of the immediate, more specifically on resonance and event in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
If, since Kant, philosophy in general has been determined by the question of the immediate, those who thought about it in the nineteenth century, especially Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, had a hard time devising new ways to relocate the immediate with respect to a philosophy of music. Nietzsche’s approach to the question of the immediate assumed a certain model-copy relationship, which gave rise to further questions, such as whether the immediate can be theorised as such without yielding to noise. In this context, the emergence of Deleuzian philosophy can be seen as a new attempt to theorise the immediate after Nietzsche, where the immediate still remains a problematic concept. After tracing the question of the immediate in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Aracagok will endeavour to develop an approach to this problem in Deleuzian philosophy. more info
Johan Schokker has been accepted as researcher in the Theory department, from 1 August. Schokker (1964) studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam and has worked in different fields of social research, being mainly active in the field of educational policy in recent years. In collaboration with Tim Schokker he published a book on Lacanian psychoanalysis into Dutch (Extimiteit. Jacques Lacans terugkeer naar Freud, awarded by the Foundation for Psychiatrie en filosofie).
At the Jan van Eyck Johan Schokker will research the raise of global capitalism in Lacanian terms and the effects of this ideology on modern subjectivity. The decline of what is designated in Lacanian theory as the Name-of-the-father is undeniable; such master-signifiers as ‘family’, ‘religion’, ‘class’ and ‘gender’, which used to give the identity of the subject a firm ground, are adrift. The consequences of this drift are manifold: one no longer has a job for life, but a career and several employers, sometimes even at the same time. This also goes for relationships: the constitution of families change easily in time; faith in a religion is not given at birth, but is found after a process of discovery, and life itself is experienced as a search for identity and ‘inner growth’ and not as a mission to earn Eternal Life afterwards. But it is clear that the freedom to mould our lives also has a negative side. Besides the fact that our identities have become difficult to sustain, reality itself is becoming frail. To counter this, a key feature of modern life is the attempt to get rid of the false layers of ‘deceptive’ reality and to aim for ‘the Thing itself’. The urge for adventure and the masochistic celebration of pain are examples of this ‘passion of the Real’. In his project Johan Schokker wants to analyse the new manifestations of modern subjectivity and try to discover their logic with Lacanian theory as a dissecting tool.
Marthe van Dessel has been accepted as researcher in the Design department, from 1 September. Van Dessel (1976, BE) studied communication sciences at the University of Antwerp and graphic design at St-Lukas, also in Antwerp. During her research period at the Jan van Eyck she will be involved in the project Trichtlinnburg. The theme of Trichtlinnburg is the balance of tensions between city preservation / restoration and city development, a balance of tensions which is strained because of phenomena such as mass tourism and mass migration. Trichtlinnburg is set up by Hinrich Sachs (advising researcher at the Fine art department) in collaboration with the Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg, AT) and the Centre for Contemporary Arts (Tallinn, EE). Marthe van Dessel will be active in the field of the further conceptualisation of Trichtlinnburg, the mediation of the project, interim events (including a DJ–VJ project which will take place in the middle of November 2004), the design of the website and other means of communication (including a publication).
At the moment, the Jan van Eyck Academie has a number of positions available for student placements. Students on a Cultural Studies course (or similar courses) are offered the possibility to gain work experience as a project worker in an institute for fine art, design and theory, which has an international orientation. Candidates can apply for the following projects:
Symposium on the future of the (text) book, from different disciplines: typography, design, editing, publication, distribution. more info
Research project and series of lectures on the documentaries of Belgian film maker Cornelis, looking at the problem of representation of art on television and television as a ‘public medium’. more info
Research platform which uses Lacanian theory as an instrument to consider our culture from an ideology-critical point of view. more info
Research project on the relationship between urbanism, tourism, preservation, patrimony and photography in the 19th century. more info
Research into the balance of tension between city preservation/ restoration and city development, a balance of tensions which is strained due to phenomena such as mass tourism and mass migration. more info
The activities for all projects concern organising programme activities, editing a project website and setting up and carrying out publicity campaigns. Start and duration in mutual consultation.
Apart from these project-linked placements, there is a practical placement available at the departmental secretariat. The departmental secretariat is responsible for the coordination of the weekly programme, in which all Jan van Eyck events and productions, internal and external, are brought together. The secretariat also looks after the practical organisation of internal and external productions (studio visits, lectures, symposiums). more info
The recruitment of candidates for a research period starting in January 2005 has successfully been completed over the past weeks. The recruitment was a success in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. A total of 257 candidates applied. The level of project proposals was outstanding. Based on interviews held in May and June 16 researchers have been accepted. Their project proposals and CVs will soon be available on this website.
Kasper Andreasen has been accepted as researcher in the Design department, from 1 June. Prior to this, he was involved in the research project Micropolis. During his research period Kasper will focus on map-making and the idea of conceptualizing space. His project will centre around the structure of printed matter and the paper medium. Under the heading ‘Multiple ephemera with multiple meanings’ he will set up a series of short-term projects which deal with the act of documenting different experiences of space by means of essays, photography, diagrams and maps. more info
From 15 August 2004 Petra Van der Jeught will fill the vacancy of editor at the academy. Petra studied English at Ghent University. In 2003 she got her PhD with a thesis on the literature of Salman Rushdie. The central concept in her thesis is ekphrasis: the description and interpretation of works of art; in a wider sense, the amalgamation of the visual, the tactile, the olfactory, the auditive and the verbal. For the past seven years Petra was assistant in the English department at Ghent University. As such, she gained experience in providing editorial advice to students. As an editor at the Jan van Eyck she will edit analogue and digital publications of researchers, departments and the institute as well as coordinate the external editing of publications.
In the context of the research project Publications and resonances, which looked at the why’s and how’s of artist’s books made at the Jan van Eyck, the first transcribed interview and biography, with Mariana Castillo Deball (researcher Fine Art 2002-2003), winner of the 2004 Prix de Rome, is now available.
In the interview Johan Deumens, project leader, delves into the rationale behind Mariana’s book Penser/Classer, her liking for playfulness in information dissemination, including interventions in newspapers, making interrupted books and wanting to make “an edition of an accident” (referring to her project ‘Interview’). Her chosen method of publication and relationship (or not) with her audience are also addressed.
The research project Micropolis, a collaboration between the Jan van Eyck Academie and the City of Leuven, was carried out between October 2003 and end of April 2004. Six researchers, advised by designers Linda van Deursen and Armand Mevis, were commissioned to research the cultural identity and communication of Leuven.
On 27 April the researchers – Kasper Andreasen, Julia Born, Min Choi, Sulki Choi, Alon Levin and Anne-Sofie Thomsen – presented their final results. Three important books which were published in Leuven form the point of departure for the final concept proposal: ‘Utopia’ by Thomas Moore, Mercator’s ‘Atlas’ and the ’Index’, the list of forbidden works issued by the Catholic church. The ‘Micropolis’ team has advised Leuven to use these three concepts for their cultural communication. In doing so, the concepts are regarded as containers in which specific and topical information on culture in Leuven can be stored. The City of Leuven is currently studying whether this concept can be worked out further.
On Monday 19 April the Culture Board (Raad voor Cultuur) communicated its advice relating to the arts plan period 2005-2008. In its advice the Board is positive about the new orientation of the Jan van Eyck Academie and states that the academy should be given the opportunity to carry out its plans and to continue working on its desired transformation. The Jan van Eyck Policy Plan 2005-2008 is a further articulation of the new orientation of the academy, implemented since 2001. Core issue is that the academy provides opportunities for individuals and institutions to submit research or production proposals. The academy offers made-to-measure artistic and technical preconditions and facilities. For the realization of research projects or productions contacts are also developed with external partners. The Jan van Eyck also initiates research projects itself, carried out either by internal researchers or by especially recruited researchers, possibly in collaboration with external partners. Advice from the board Policy plan 2005"`2008
Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico, 1975; researcher Fine Art 2002-2003) has won the first prize of the Prix de Rome 2004 for Drawing and Graphics. Apart from the prize money of € 20,000 Mariana will be given an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. On 17 June 2004 between 16.00 and 17.00 the prize will be awarded by Medy van der Laan, State Secretary of Culture and Media, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After the official award ceremony the exhibition showing the work of the four winners of the Prix de Rome in the Stedelijk Museum will be open to the public. Other prize winners are Derk Thijs, Anant Joshi and Marijn van Kreij. This is the second time in a row an ex-researcher of the Jan van Eyck Academie has won the Prix de Rome. In 2003 Ryan Gander (researcher Fine Art 1999-2000) also won the Prix de Rome.
As of 5 April 2004 Sabeth Buchmann (art historian, Berlin DE) has been appointed as advising researcher at the Theory department. Together with Helmut Draxler (art theorist, Berlin DE) and Stephan Geene (b_books, Berlin DE) she will carry out a project on film and biopolitics. Point of departure of the project Film and biopolitics is a re-evaluation of the idea that abolishing the institutional and aesthetic-ideological barrier between art and life implies a fundamental attack on capitalist society. On the basis of films (by, among others, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Mike Figgis, Yvonne Rainer, Harmony Korine and John Cassavetes) and biopolitical categories (referring to Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Donna Haraway) the team will research, theoretically and historically, the similarities and differences between popular and avant-gardist films and the relationship between film, art and life.
Wim Cuyvers (architect, Chatillon FR) has been appointed as advising researcher at the Design department, in the context of the research project Authoring the city.
Ronald van de Sompel (author, curator, Antwerp BE) has been appointed as researcher of the Theory department for the period 1 March to 15 December 2004. His research project focuses on the positioning of fine art in Asia. The exhibition Under Construction. New Dimensions of Asian Art (Japan Foundation Asia Centre, Tokyo) features as a case study.
Tina Clausmeyer (artist, Berlin DE) has been appointed as Design researcher on the Meta haven. Sealand identity project for the period 1 May to 31 October 2004. She is interested in reformulating existing concepts for nation states and national identities and in developing different forms of visual representation. The Internet, cyberspace and interactivity play important roles in this. Can an interactive web representation of Sealand challenge existing concepts of the nation state?
