The Master Institute of Visual Cultures (MIVC) is part of St. Joost School of Fine Art & Design, which is part of Avans University of Applied Sciences.
MASTER INSITUTE OF VISUAL CULTURES GRADUATE STUDENTS ②⓪①⑨ MA IN PHOTOGRAPHY & FINE ARTS Alireza Abbasy, Anđela Vidić, Annemée Dik, Defne Tesal, Donglai Meng, Dorien Scheltens, Elena Chemerska, Murat Yıldız, Raffaella Huizinga, Simon Oosterhuis. MA IN GRAPHIC DESIGN Cerasela Elena Jiga, Dafei Lei, Guodong Zhang, Jiali Gu, Marco Dalle Fratte, Ningli Zhu, Ruolan Xi, Sarah Podestani, Zeynep Gürsel.
How can we create a future that is something else, another kind of world, one that we would like to live in?
This question lies at the heart of our interdisciplinary MA pathways in Art & Design and is reflected in the Graduation show title POSTCOMPOST. Our highly ambitious and versatile institution is currently in a stage of development and growth. The expanded pedagogical scope of the MIVC programmes has created new opportunities for interdisciplinarity and coresearch across our study pathways. We are committed to supporting ambitious and diverse critical and context specific artistic research interests and approaches, to generate new knowledge that is capable of transforming the world we live in. The MIVC provides a transformative education, empowering our students to become the new generation of artists and designers who will contribute in unconventional ways to changing our complex and interconnected world. By creating a unique educational environment, where the tradition of studio practices sit at ease with practices driven by ideas and context, and where artists and designers together, through an interchange of ideas and novel ways of thinking, create new knowledge to tackle
some of the most pressing and challenging societal issues of our time. Emphasis is placed on role of the artist and designer in society and on modes of criticality, to navigate, rethink and transform the complexity of contemporary life. Through dissemination of research and scholarship that highlights the societal ramification of creative work, we see our role and our civic responsibility to be a thought leader, demonstrating the value of creativity to society, so as to contribute to an increased awareness and understanding of the importance of our field of knowledge. The MIVC is a dynamic and locally grounded international community of artists, designers, curators, activists and researchers. As you navigate the final graduation works presented in this catalogue and in the show, you will discover new creative leaders who are responsive to continually changing contexts, technologies and infrastructures. Through coresearch and in dialogue with tutors, fellow students and professional partners, our students have developed their network and collaborated in the professional field boosting
their career paths, ready now to leave the safety of the institute. As we celebrate the achievements of this year’s master graduates and mark the end of their studies, our tutors and support staff are proud to have had the opportunity to work with you in your time as a student here. From my vantage point and in this time of institutional transformation, it’s wonderful to see how individual creative potential has been fostered by offering advanced education to all our students. Through a greater interchange of ideas, knowledge exchange, dialogue and debate, we have built a vibrant sense of community. To our graduating master students, whatever your chosen path we wish you well for the future. We do so in the knowledge that the talents you have developed with us in Den Bosch, the knowledge you have gained and the contacts you have made will stand you in good stead. Your graduation show may feel like the last step in your journey here at the institute, but your connection with us will last a lifetime. We welcome you warmly to our alumni community and look forward to seeing you often in the future.
Finally, I know just how hard you have worked for this moment. Please accept my sincere congratulations on your achievements to date. I have confidence that there will be many more.
Dr. Ăšna Henry Head of the Master Institute of Visual Cultures
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Alireza Abbasy AnĐela VidiĆ Annemée Dik Cerasela Elena Jiga Dafei Lei
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Defne Tesal Donglai Meng Dorien Scheltens Elena Chemerska Guodong Zhang
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Jiali Gu Marco Dalle Fratte Murat Yildiz Ningli Zhu Raffaella Huizinga
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Ruolan Xi Sarah Podestani Simon Oosterhuis Zeynep GĂźrsel
ALIREZA ABBASY Having started from photography and with extensive research and experiments on ‘camera’ as nothing more than a simple optical device, I ended up in total darkness. Writing and performing theater pieces which happen in absolute darkness, I practically explore the possibilities of ‘image making’ beyond the graphic or the ‘literal’ image. Is the domain of visuality and image making limited to what can be “seen” or are there verbal, mental and perceptual dimensions to the works of the image maker? Notions of “otherness” and “whiteness” play a crucial role in developing the content of my pieces. With a theoretical foundation in the fields of Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies, my theater works address the condition of being a “person of color” but not through narrating the lived experience of a person of color but through addressing what “defines” that condition in the first place, aka whiteness.
abbasy.alireza@gmail.com www.sarmadmagazine.com
ANĐELA VIDIĆ «How to translate personal experience while playing with the boundaries of an intimate sphere?» As a visual artist I explore personal inner worlds through mixed media, working in the form of a diary. Our human inner worlds are complex constellations of emotions, experiences and perceptions of being. The central focus of my research are those aspects that arise as a result of external influence, subsequently becoming embedded in our personal inner world. Within this, I’m particularly fascinated by the common state of vulnerability: an integral part of the inner world. Focusing on this vulnerability, I research relations between visible and invisible, public and private, hiding and revealing.
vidic.andela@gmail.com @andela_vidic
ANNEMÉE DIK I’m a curious person. My desire to know more about our world has found its form of expression in the fields of documentary and portrait photography. I’m especially interested in investigating social systems and isolation that have manifested themselves in the 21st century that often go unnoticed. The camera feels like a prosthetic; a manufactured replacement for a limb that I had lost or was missing. It makes me more social and gives me the ability to truly focus. Conversating about abstract ‘themes’ like loneliness creates more context for these invisible taboos that I’m trying to break down. My work reveals the loneliness that is experienced by human beings, captured by me and contextualized through my own experiences. Only through a deeply personal point of view I connect myself to the person in front of the camera and eventually relate their problems to others. Ultimately, my work is my camera, myself and my curiosity about life.
hi@annemee.com www.annemee.com
CERASELA ELENA JIGA I am a web prototyper and UI designer interested in how web design is influenced by new interfaces and emerging technologies. My work revolves around envisioning and testing new modes of interface and interaction design in the context of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. It ultimately leads me to question what a website actually is in AR and how this technology impacts the field. My intention is to reveal choices that exist beyond the constraints of existing AR interface approaches, to open up possibilities in the field, that can be discussed, debated and used to collectively define a preferable future for web design and AR. I believe that it is vital to always take into account the context and circumstances of my work, and I should always re-define and contextualize my profession in the evolution of technological changes.
elena.jiga100@gmail.com www.behance.net/jamais_sel7bd2 www.vimeo.com/user93860191
DAFEI LEI Nowadays many people do not like to read books as a habit anymore. In the digital age, we have so many possibilities to design a book and make reading much more attractive. The goal of this project is to use interaction as a tool to find new possibilities in digital book reading. This is a long-term project. I mainly focus on digital non-fiction reading, in which interaction hasn’t been applied a lot yet. I started from biography, a category of nonfiction reading. By decomposing and categorising the information in biographical reading, the design tries to represent the content information from different angles and provide readers with different reading paths. In this way, I try to figure out a new experience of navigation to make digital biography reading much easier and accessible. Meanwhile, I also bring out the discussion about the relationship between the author and the designer in contentbased interactive book publishing.
leidafei@foxmail.com www.behance.net/leidafei096c92
DEFNE TESAL How can I reclaim time, how can I take it back to my own? Back from the systems which determine how we perceive and experience time. In a life governed by power structures instead of nature and one’s own self; I think it is important to pause and resist. My interest lies in creating concentrated states, moments where the experience of time is intensified. Where one can leave the intellect behind to go into the realm in which things don’t have to have a purpose or meaning. Working with methods inspired by the basic human actions such as reacting, repeating and observing; the outcomes vary in drawings, sitespecific installations, video or book formats. In essence, I try to evoke the feeling of the passing time, the sensations that arise and the self within the moment. To forget the time and the self in order to reclaim and fully feel them.
defne.tesal@yahoo.com www.defnetesal.com
DONGLAI MENG When we close our eyes, what do we see? For me, a dream is the reality that I see after closing eyes, and countless latent content within dreams reflect our real inner mental state that we cannot see. Taking this as the starting point, I combine psychoanalytic theories with painting, text, video, etc, to capture and re-organize those mental wandering moments in real life. In my reconstructed dreamy worlds, hidden expressions, subtle emotions and suppressed desires are captured and amplified. At the same time, by collaborating with people who have similar psychological motivations but behave in different ways, I interpret and depict the complex psychological experiences in contemporary human daily life from an artist’s perspective, gradually moving towards minority groups in contemporary society and related subcultures. With closed eyes, we see our own hidden awareness, from the individual to the society and can eventually arouse the resonance and re-recognition of this phenomenon to the audience.
martameng@outlook.com www.mengdonglai.com
DORIEN SCHELTENS How to unbelieve: [B = 9 – 1/5c – 1/10r – 1/10g – 1/10sb + 1/5a + 1/10t] «I grew up, and I learned that dinosaurs had never existed.» This quote, coming from a conversation I had about growing up in a Christian family, was the starting point of a research into why we believe what we believe. For a year I tried to no longer believe in dinosaurs. I tried finding gaps in existing evidence and talked to people with different views on dinosaurs. I then went to Dinosaur [USA] with a good friend who had lost the Christian belief we once shared. Why had she let go of that belief, and what did that mean for my own faith? How to unbelieve tries to give insight into what it means to doubt and to potentially lose a belief, using media we’ve turned to for both evidence and storytelling.
dorienscheltens@gmail.com www.dorienscheltens.com
ELENA CHEMERSKA It is often said that history is written by the winners. Cultural knots migrate with the passing of time, but in the shadow of history’s colossi, there is a whole multiplicity of worlds on the periphery carrying the weight of the collective struggles of humanity, often clearly testifying for its universal condition. In my practice, I combine and feed painting with various other forms of communication, using video and writing as well as collaborations with groups and individuals that at times result with symbolic events that intend to last long in the memory of the people they address. Conversing with the modernist tradition, I find interest in narratives regarding the relationship between history and visions for the future, between the universal and the particular, and the space that opens in their interweaving. I am deeply interested in historical narratives that run against the prevailing currents and in culture as a platform for emancipation towards compassion and collective awareness. I work by combining visual impulses and analytical approach in my work to outline the state of ambivalence and to provoke defiance and vitality over apathy.
ecemerska@yahoo.com www.spomeniknaslobodata.mk
GUODONG ZHANG I design for the future. I am a designer who focuses on blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction using different design fiction strategies. The aim of my work is to open up a space upon which researchers and designers can build and criticise when developing future design techniques and evaluation methods that at the same time are required for design. My work is not about making predictions, it is about creating tools, tools that help to connect our present and future selves so that we can be active participants in creating a future that we want. We are not waiting for the future, we are in the future.
goodongzhang@gmail.com www.behance.net/GuodongZhang
JIALI GU «You cannot understand good design if you don’t understand people» I am fascinated by interactive design, by designing a product or a website related to people’s daily life, because I feel grounded when my work comes from people’s needs. I believe design means creating ways of communication between human-human or human-product. Different ways of communication are the most attractive topic in my work. I believe keeping communication with my users is vital in order to keep the process relevant and far from assumptions. When I am doing design, I let questions lead my road and through that I feel I am getting closer to my users. For instance, my graduation project is a web application designed for couples to communicate their online chat relationship. This web application guides a face to face conversation that is conducive to alleviate negative emotions stemming from online chatting. My research combines interactive design and psychological expertise by doing user tests to help create empathy.
iangu990@126.com www.ianiangu.com
MARCO DALLE FRATTE I’M NOT HAPPY WITH THIS is a workshop where to play with words, materials and ideas in order to design a protest sign on challenging themes, often far from reality. The scenario of the protest is brought to its paradox and loses its social and political implications. On the other hand, the process in the workshop is designed to experiment with the essential elements of the protest sign and use them as a platform to rethink language and creation of meaning. Materiality can be expressed in different ways: the use of different and unusual materials, the physical interaction with the user or manual intervention, especially in contrast with a digital environment. Typography is important because it combines the verbal and the visual meanings of written communication. Words, more than all the other visual symbols, have the power to completely describe the invisible realm of senses and emotions.
hello@marcodallefratte.com www.marcodallefratte.com @marcodallefratte
MURAT YILDIZ I research and make works on the relations between subjects* and the forming effects in between. I focus on how subjects take form by their domain and how a subject gives shape to the other, unintentionally and intentionally; physically and mentally. I elaborate on the sensorial, physical, cognitive forming relations from the stances of language, domination, physics and plants. The power of relations and the power relations are my main focuses. The motivation is to invite people to experience and question these relations around the matters of; how much one can form the other, evolving alone/together, mass communication-perception management, physical appearance of the forming relations, collaborating with the power which forms and authorship. The works consist of books of written documentations of sensorial recordings, sitespecific interventions where I amplify past physical traces people leave behind, and site-specific sculptures that take shape by their environment. I also make eyes closed drawings in which I realize all the suggestions received regarding the development of the work from others. *Subject meaning everything including humans
muratayildiza@gmail.com www.muratyildiz.net @muratayildiza, @hahkolektif
NINGLI ZHU As a visual designer interested in storytelling, I often use my personal experience or emotion as strong inputs to make narratives, discussing cultural identity and social relationship. I like to integrate theoretical research with visual practice into fictional or speculative essay film. I experience that people spend more and more time on digital devices. ÂŤWhat shaped the intimacy between us and our device? How to understand the algorithm system as a class of being?Âť To open up discussions, I develop my own story to communicate about my social anxieties in real life, while at the same time, portraying my fascination for the digital heterotopia. I work and compose with different narrative elements, including scripts, monologue, visual metaphors, shooting, to build the video installation. Also, I apply real-time facial responsive interactions (facial sensors) in work to engage my audience. While experimenting with different digital techniques and visual composing, I offer a personal reflection on humanness in relationships to machines in this technology-driven age.
zhuningli001@163.com www.cargocollective.com/ou-momo @momooooooooomx2/
RAFFAELLA HUIZINGA Since I started with photography in 2008, my focus has been on individuals or groups of people who have prejudices about them. By coming into close contact with them, I developed my own view about these people, photograph them as to so create a possible nuance. During my Masters in Photography I came across myself as the instigator of this problem; by fighting against prejudice, I participated in it myself. I had too many questions that blocked me and made me very aware of my role as a photographer. By analyzing and criticizing my old work and method, I became aware of my own position, what photography can do induce and how you can involve the participant in the process. From this I developed the manual: “How to act ethically when I make photo work about and with people.” I use photography, film and sound to explain what it means to be a “minority”, and think about authorship, position and the impact of a photo. As a result of the process, I take into account that all points in the manual can be changed, removed or extended, in order to find an ethical form for the project together with the participant.
raffaellahuizinga@hotmail.com www.raffaellahuizinga.nl
RUOLAN XI «I am dissatisfied with the mirror that the machine gives me, but I cannot find myself other than mirroring.» Our digital-self seems always trying to ‘help’ us. They seems know us better than ourselves from what we want, what we like to define who we are. But unfortunately, we have little visibility into who are they truly are. We don’t know what they are doing or to whom they really belong to. Thanks to all the convenience from them , but at the same time we will always live in the filter bubble we created by ourselves, while in this bubble we can never see ourselves. If time as a unit of measurement, we spend most of our life online, how can we define the relationship between ourselves and the digitalselves? Or are they getting too close to each other that created the role confusion, we are not able to define them anymore? I want to create a paradox, and confusion environment triggers the audience to think about the initiative and passive, physical and virtual environment, self and digital-self. During the research i found that the reCAPTCHA is a perfect agent of the paradox between human, technology and consumption.
unax1994@gmail.com www.una-x.com @unax.127
SARAH PODESTANI The power of graphic design to challenge the status quo and the society we are living in, is underestimated. In my work, I always try to have a tangible sparkle of “that attitude�. What interests me are practices that operates in between grey space, that cultivate social impact but at the same time offer alternatives in terms of creating, distributing and producing work to the contemporary design scenario. Since young, I started ripping off magazines to cut out things I liked and placed them on the walls of my bedroom. To that, I added flyers, posters, CDs, handwritten songs, comic strips printed from Internet. This approach I incorporated in my current design projects,as I like to use elements from different contexts and reposition them, in order to create coherent and new narrative within a specific framework. I don’t think my work will change the world, but it could contribute to develop opportunities from the existing design realm conditions.
sarahpodestani@gmail.com @sah.psd
SIMON OOSTERHUIS Life is a sad affair. The installations I create with my paintings, sculptures and stories offer the viewer a world in which he can forget his daily sorrows and enjoy interpreting the work in his own way, using his imagination. In order to give room for interpretation I try to keep my work as open as possible. At the same time I attempt to avoid the trap of creating work that is so open that it doesn’t trigger the imagination anymore – the visual equivalent of white noise. My practice is defined by walking the line between the maximum of possible interpretations, and utter chaos.
s.j.oosterhuis@gmail.com www.simonoosterhuis.nl
ZEYNEP GĂœRSEL I am a graphic designer and a visual researcher who is inspired by the society and ways of communication through physical and digital platforms. The platforms we use trigger me to question the infrastructures created to serve these communications and their hidden interactions within society. What else it might be doing, and who actually benefits from its being? My work aims to create a social intervention or a relation with the society itself by starting a conversation on issues that, in the end, shape us and our daily life. My research focuses on the networked digital information technologies, and its most popular type of application: social media. What is its relation to pre-digital ways of self representation where it broadens to different sub-topics like private and public, self and the represented self, materialised and dematerialised consumption?
zgursel@gmail.com @zepzey
NAME
Anđela Vidić NAME
Alireza Abbasy
NAME
Cerasela Elena Jiga NAME
AnnemĂŠe Dik
NAME
Defne Tesal NAME
Dafei Lei
NAME
Dorien Scheltens NAME
Donglai Meng
NAME
Guodong Zhang NAME
Elena Chemerska
NAME
Marco Dalle Fratte NAME
Jiali Gu
NAME
Ningli Zhu NAME
Murat Yıldız
NAME
Ruolan Xi NAME
Raffaella Huizinga
NAME
Simon Oosterhuis NAME
Sarah Podestani
NAME
Postcompost NAME
Zeynep Gürsel
FACULTY TUTORS IN FINE ARTS & PHOTOGRAPHY Thomas Bakker, Mariska van den Berg, Erik Hagoort, Bas van den Hurk, George Korsmit, Marga Rotteveel, Martine Stig. TUTORS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN Petr van Blokland, Joris Landman, Marnix de Nijs, Annemarie Quispel, Arthur Roeloffzen. RESEARCH PROFESSORS Michel van Dartel, Sebastian Olma HEAD OF THE MASTERS Úna Henry MARKETING COORDINATION Anne-Marije van den Bersselaar PRODUCER Iris Hofland
A publication by the Master Institute of Visual Cultures, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, published on the occasion of POSTCOMPOST MA GRADUATION SHOW ②⓪①⑨. CURATOR Florian Weigl TEXTS Úna Henry and the graduates TEXT EDITING Dorien Scheltens DESIGN Guodong Zhang, Marco Dalle Fratte, Sarah Podestani CONCEPT BY The graduates EDITION OF 350 copies PRINTED BY Canon Nederland N.V. SPECIAL THANKS TO Thomas Rutgers, Balt van Rijn, Eefje van Hoof, Het Vijfde Seizoen, Derive Berlin, Mihai Gui, Corine Aalvanger and 1st years students.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise distributed, without the written permission of the students.