ON AIR Skills of the 21st Century (English) by Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAMME AMSTERDAM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

ENG

R I N O A March 2014

S ILL

THE

MARTIJN ENGELBREGT FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN MICHIEL SCHWARZ AUTHENTIC BOYS UGO DEHAES

T 21S

RY U T EN

ON AIR

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE TITEL ARTIKEL PROGRAMME AMSTERDAM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Contents

R I N O A

INTRODUCTION SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Marijke Hoogenboom 3

ENG

THE PROCESS ARTIST Hester van Hasselt in conversation with Martijn Engelbregt 10 SEAS OF STORIES Suzanne Wallinga 22

EMBRACING THE OTHER Maria Hagen in conversation with Joël Bons and Barbara Van Lindt 41 PLAYING WITH CONVENTIONS Jappe Groenendijk 52

E H T F Y O R S U L T L I EN SK C T S 1 2

A MEETING OF TWO COMMUNITIES Hester van Hasselt 62 ONE GREAT BIG CALENDAR FOR THE WHOLE AHK Hester van Hasselt 69 IMAGES I–XV

MARTIJN ENGELBREGT FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN MICHIEL SCHWARZ AUTHENTIC BOYS UGO DEHAES

March 2014

(RE)DESIGN IN THE CULTURE OF SUSTAINISM Michiel Schwarz 30

Atelier Cornelis Hoogenboom

AIR Artist in Residence programma

Skills of the 21st century Marijke Hoogenboom

Marijke Hoogenboom

The Artist in Residence (AIR) programme is run by the Art Practice and Development research group in collaboration with the various faculties making up the Amsterdam School of the Arts. The AIR programme fosters innovation in arts education by initiating confrontations with ongoing artistic developments and offers the school’s programmes and departments the opportunity to introduce outstanding forms of practice and to invite artists and to revitalise and inspire educational and artistic policy in the school. All this is possible on the condition that the guest artist is of proven quality, there is a shared interest in a highly topical issue, and that the residency will encourage exchange with the international state of the art. With each new residency, the AIR programme seeks to create an energising field of tension between the artist’s input as an independent ‘outside’ force and the school’s willingness and capacity to respond to the dynamics of the artistic practice concerned.

The cross-faculty Artist in Residence (AIR) programme is led by Marijke Hoogenboom in her role as head of the Art Practice and Development research group at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. In 2012 she took up the additional position of professor at de Theaterschool, where she runs the Performing Arts in Transition research group. Hoogenboom was previously involved in the founding of DasArts with Ritsaert ten Cate, and was until 2001 part of the artistic team running this international Masters programme for theatre makers. Besides her activities in the school, she is a freelance dramaturge, curator and adviser in the international field of arts and education.

From the interview 'Collaboration is a craft'

AIR

Unemployment in the Netherlands is on the rise, and the number of skilled workers is in decline. The Dutch Social and Economic Council recently highlighted the alarming shortfall in this area of the labour market.1 Cultural economics professor of Arjo Klamer attributes this phenomenon to what he describes as the, ‘gross neglect of craftsmanship,’ in the Netherlands. He is a strong advocate of raising the development of a creative craft culture high on the political agenda.2 Renewed attention for traditional crafts and a reevaluation of working with ‘hand and head’, as Richard Sennett put it, would be good news for the arts given the sector’s keenness for its vocational training to be acknowledged as contemporary craft schools whose didactic cornerstones are social interaction, learning in practice, and an active community of stakeholders. Richard Sennett: ‘We need to work towards a training model through which people can acquire this craftsmanship. So in the future I’d prefer to see fewer people walking around the universities and more at technical colleges.'

These specific characteristics harbour a particular quality, believes sociologist Pascal Gielen. He sees the art academy as being one few places that operate an ‘educational excellence model’ and provide space for nurturing an artisan ethos,3 one that is entirely unconnected with nostalgia or a yearning for a pre-modern world. Labour sociologist Richard Sennett believes 2

Henk Oosterling: ‘In the future we’ll need to shift to a different form of economy. That economy will have to be much more materialoriented. And it will have to be far more deeply rooted in ecological principles, with the effect that we’ll have to increasingly make do with what we have and develop things within that. I believe craftsmanship could well take up a very important position within that larger context.’

qualitatively rather than to survive speculatively.’7 For Oosterling, ‘skills’ are not rigid, unchanging categories. Rather, they represent indispensable and continually updated values that help us to stay on track in what art critic Cornel Bierens describes as ‘this flashing world’, and to take responsibility for the future, be it as an artist, teacher, or other citizen.

From lecture at CBK Amsterdam

Pascal Gielen: ‘The unidentifiable nature of the visual art – coupled with the slump in craftsmanship – is the downside to the boundless freedom of the artist to define his or her own work.’

From De hybride kunstenaar (The hybrid artist)

that craftsmanship and the workplace provides a communal atmosphere and social structure that guide the development of skill, and binds people together as it forms a community of masters and apprentices. Labour sociologist Richard Sennett believes this provided a communal atmosphere and social structure that guided the skill development. The workshop binds people together as it forms a community of masters and apprentices, preserving an, ‘an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.’4 And this intrinsic need to strive for quality is indeed propagated within the arts. In the 21st century, physical materials, the tangible production processes and perfected knowledge are no longer perceived as an obstacle to autonomy and innovation.5 Quite the reverse in fact, because as Cornel Bierens writes, ‘Artists are once again fully recognising the power of the fundamental making process, and their armoury of techniques is bigger than ever.’6

INTRODUCTION

From Platform Ambachtseconomie (Skill economy platform)

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Cornel Bierens: ‘Craftsmanship does not presuppose doing everything oneself from start to finish. What’s important is that, whatever we do and whatever tools media we use, we regain a sense of those fundamental things that we have looked down upon for so long.’

But in other areas of society too, we can observe a resurgent demand for skilled makers, accompanied by the return of specialist trades. When the philosopher Henk Oosterling introduced his Rotterdam Vakmanstad/ SkillCity programme into the educational system in 2007, he championed the development of craftsmanship in parallel with the profound social and economic changes that were necessary. Oosterling sees the notion of ‘skills’ as creating the possibility within just such a period of transition for placing a broad spectrum of skills on the agenda, be they professional, social, cultural or mental: ‘We must learn to live together

This ON AIR publication Skills of the 21st Century takes as its central theme the ongoing re-evaluation of craftsmanship and its associated ethics, asking what its implications are for individual art and design disciplines. How is arts education responding to impulses from society and professional practice, both at home and abroad? What traditional or new skills are necessary for professions undergoing such fundamental upheaval? How do artists and designers view the future of their profession and the role of culture and the arts in a globalised arena? Are we dealing here with a flexible, hybrid artist, a cultural entrepreneur who is equally at

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

ease on any of ‘a thousand stages’?8 And have we at the Amsterdam School of the Arts already embarked on our quest for diversification in the arts and for connection with other sectors? For the institutes making up the Amsterdam School of the Arts, it is particularly their annual guest Artists in Residence that initiate confrontations with shifts in our culture, with our view of the world, and with changes in the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. Rather than using this publication to present portraits of individual AIRs, we have therefore chosen to share stories about the new era now taking shape in the arts, in education and in society. One of the most conspicuous themes running through many of the stories included here is the central importance of dynamism and interaction, coupled with an aversion to closed-mindedness. Processual artist Martijn Engelbregt, for example, demands the freedom to shape his medium in his own way and to lay new connections with sectors beyond the art world. Internationalisation is also a crucial component of arts education nowadays. Joël Bons from the Atlas Academy and Barbara Van Lindt from DasArts see encounters with other cultures as a crucial confront ation that broadens students’ horizons, allowing them to reflect on similarities and differences and to choose a personal and new path. Another recurring subject is the idea that changes in arts and culture are a response to changes in society. Suzanne Wallinga characterises AIR Franz Rodenkirchen’s affinity with ‘slow cinema’ as an act of resistance to our rapid-fire culture and has a passion for its minimalist narrative approach. But how can the audience’s contemplative experience be reflected in a professional film scenario? Wallingfa observes that the 6

INTRODUCTION

t a e h r W ills a r k y fo s r w a e n cess ions s e s n ofe oing pr derg un h l c a u t s n e m ? a l d a n u f pheav u 7

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

time has passed for ‘applying a standard’ within the scenarist’s profession. Is it coincidence, then, that the Theaterschool students and teachers who came into contact with a discipline other than their own during a collaborative project with Ugo Dehaes are now asking for exchange, independence and renewal? And lastly, the most strongly held views relate to the need for arts and culture to be taking a far more powerfully autonomous role in contributing to social processes – initiating them, even. Jappe Groenendijk takes the view that the approach to arts education exemplified by the interdisciplinary practice of artists’ collective Authentic Boys holds the key to skills for students and other citizens in the 21st century. AIR Michiel Schwarz in particular is striving for a ‘true cultural shift’ to place centre stage new qualities such as sharing, connectedness, sustainability and the human scale, saying that this ‘century of transitions’ is demanding new profess ional ethics from the designers and heritage experts who help shape our surroundings.

INTRODUCTION

1 SER preliminary recommendations (2013). Handmade in Holland: skills and entrepreneurship in a craft-based economy. The Hague. 2 Klamer, R. (2013) Creatief vakmanschap in internationaal perspectief (An international perspective on creative skills) and Herwaardering ambachtscultuur hoofdzaak (Prioritising the reappraisal of craft culture). Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam, Stichting Economie en Cultuur. 3 Gielen, P. (2012) Artistieke praxis en de neoliberalisering van de onderwijsruimte (Artistic praxis and the neo-liberalisation of the educational domain). Denken in kunst (Art thinking) (p. 97). Leiden: Leiden University Press. 4 Sennett, R. (2008) De ambachtsman (The Craftsman) (p. 63 and 167). Amsterdam: Meulenhoff. 5 Vanhaesebrouck, K. (2011). Ambacht en traagheid (Craft and slowness). In: Rekto: verso (nr 47). Gent. 6 Bierens, C. (2010). Liederlijk geklodder (Brutish daubing) in: De Groene Amsterdammer (7 April). See also: Bierens, C. (2013) the essay Handgezaagde ziel (Hand-sawn soul). Amsterdam: Mondriaan Fund. 7 Velsen, van, V. (2013). Rotterdam Vakmanstad (p. 82) in: Metropolis M, (No.1, February-March). See also: Oosterling, H. (2009). Woorden als daden (Words as deeds). Rotterdam: Japsam Books. 8 Dijkgraaf Commissions recommendations. (2010) Onderscheiden, verbinden, vernieuwen: de toekomst van het kunstonderwijs, in opdracht van de HBO-raad (Differentiate, connect and innovate: the future of art education’s for a sector plan for arts education, commissioned by the council for HBO vocational colleges (p.4). The Hague.

I see arts education as the ideal arena for negotiating changing demands from the professional field and the significance of a new cultural awareness. In this context, the AIR-programme has an almost seismographic function, offering to various departments of the AHK the opportunity to update themselves, initiate new collaborations, and engage with developments that will define the future for young professionals. The title says it all, because I believe the Skills of the 21st Century hold the key to the innovative forces that question the world and come together to build a sustainable society.

IMAGES see p. I–III

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT De Theaterschool 2013 – 2014

The Process Artist

About the project

Martijn Engelbregt

Artist and collector Martijn Engelbregt worked with Production and Stage Management (OPP) students at de Theaterschool exploring the theme of health as it relates to the individual’s body. The results of this work were incorporated in workshops on costumes, set design, video and sound, which generated individual theatrical installations and a concluding group presentation. Production and Stage Management (OPP) students are trained as production managers, stage managers and creative producers. The department took advantage of this AIR programme to explore the relationship between professional practice and passionate artists. Martijn Engelbregt’s period as AIR concludes the department’s four-year research programme examining the work of artists in a variety of disciplines. It enabled the OPP to develop a training programme through which students learn to work side-by-side with artists drawing on their own strengths, vision and position.

Martijn Engelbregt is a researcher, processual artist, collector and statistician. He is also the founder and managing director of Circus Engelbregt. Engelbregt uses relatively simple tools and methods to expose bureaucratic structures, putting forward a positive message that transforms observers into participants and encourages people to feel comfortable taking a different and creative look at assumed truths. Engelbregt designs installations, institutions, organisations and business enterprises, providing each with their own forms, surveys, reports and procedures inspired by existing structures and situations. The blurring of the line between fact and fiction in Engelbregt’s work makes it a frequent subject for discussion. In 2014, Engelbregt is taking charge of the new Cure Master programme at the Sandberg Institute.

It only takes a glance at Martijn Engelbregt’s website to understand that what we’re dealing with here is an artist who has defined his craft in an entirely personal way. He uses the name Circus Engelbregt to release his many and varied projects into the world at large. They range from stand-up meditations to daylong hikes, and from civic dis-integration programmes to huge advertising hoardings emblazoned with the words ‘Do Not Disturb‘. Read that, ‘Circus Engelbregt is an organisation that makes creative projects aimed at increasing social sustainability in the world. […] We’re not afraid to rub people up the wrong way and we often actively seek confrontation because we don’t believe in the entrenched approaches of our parochial society.’ High time for a talk. NIET STOREN in the Kromme Rijn area of the province of Utrecht

Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde

Hester van Hasselt in conversation with Martijn Engelbregt

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT

THE PROCESS ARTIST

Hester van Hasselt: Why do you describe yourself as a ‘creative project organisation?’ Martijn Engelbregt: Circus Engelbregt is the new name of the umbrella organisation EGBG. And I also set up new organisations for specific projects. There’s the Burenwinkel (CommunityShop) a mobile outlet with gifts for neighbours, especially angry ones; Restaurant Rest [‘Rest’ here is a pun combining the English meaning and the Dutch word meaning ‘leftover’] a quiet restaurant serving meals of leftovers and weeds; the Space Hopper Pit; and the Medicine Factory. They each have their own logo, their own house style, and totally separate websites. In an art project for the lower house of parliament, I set up The Department, which I used to explore ways of combining art and democracy. The Department let people indicate online whatever it was that they wanted to confront their elected representatives with. What’s behind creating all these different entities?

Logos for various Circus Engelbregt projects

It’s a sort of theatre, the creation of a facade. But it also helps in setting things up as if it’s real. I’ve come found out that this increases the chances of it actually becoming a real thing, because the form something takes affects people’s receptivity to it. I set up the Beter Consortium for my project BETER (BETTER), which looked at the influence of art on health. BETER was a collaborative venture with Delft University and Haaglanden Hospital. If you want to get firmly established in all those fields you need to establish yourself properly, and form and language help achieve this.

e h T s is s y e l c l o a pr hatic p em a t n e n o p m e o h c of t k r o w 14

THE PROCESS ARTIST

So how did you go about exploring the influence of art on health? My main aim was to ask, ‘Just what is health anyway, and what is art?’ I wanted to get people to really look at this in a different way. In my work, the viewers are always participants. So in this case, they got to assess which works in the corridors of the hospital they considered to be ‘art’ and which were ‘art placebos’. Our BETER laboratory was housed on the mezzanine above the hospital restaurant, and there we’d push them in a wheelchair past art works and placebo artworks, with them wearing all sorts of sensors to measure their brain and heart responses.

Research at the BETTER laboratory in Haaglanden Hospital

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT

What do you mean by ‘placebo art’? For the study to have scientific value, we needed placebo artworks as well as real ones, and I set up the Behring Institute for Medical Research for the purpose. This institute issued an international appeal to artists: ‘Wanted: Art Placebos.’ This appeal generated 201 placebos from 24 countries. We used the submitted works and the discussions they triggered to arrive at a definition of the art placebo: something that poses as art but is not art.

THE PROCESS ARTIST

a pre-requisite for good health, and that art has a contribution to make in this area. Life is often about ultimate objectives, and we forget to look at where we actually are. I describe myself as a ‘researcher’ or ‘processual artist’. The process is emphatically a component of the work, and thereby of the space of not knowing, of research, and of prematurely drawing conclusions. I find it important to step into limbo, and to invite the audience to join me.

And what were the findings? Does art have a beneficial effect on health? The Medicine Factory in Amsterdam’s Amstel Park

The results can be found in the publication Om in te nemen (To be taken). It was the final phase of the project. Once the book was finished I wrote a foreword for it and, strangely enough, it was only then that I figured out exactly what I’d been doing – I’d been working on it for three years by that time. What had you been doing, then? Our health care system appears to be focused entirely on regaining the previous state of health, and there’s barely any opportunity to think about what the illness has done to you or how it invites you or forces you to re-examine the patterns of your own life. This means that part of the malaise is not consciously experienced, and its transformative potential is entirely overlooked. I’ve struggled with Lyme’s disease, and it was only when I stopped focusing on the illness and my struggle against it – and focused instead on my health – that I relaxed. I believe that relaxation is 16

My most recent project is the Medicijnfabriek (Medicine Factory), where people get to make their own medicines under the supervision of a botanical specialist. It was in Amsterdam’s Amstelpark last summer and will shortly be moving on to Arnhem. Food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies are increasingly staking a claim on the word ‘health’. The Medicijnfabriek invites people to make their own medicine from plants they find in the park. We invite them to go off the beaten track – literally.

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT

THE PROCESS ARTIST

And what have been the outcomes in this case?

Prescription from the Medicine Factory

We’ve had positive reactions, with people saying they’ve had real benefits from their intuitively selected and self-manufactured medication. It’s funny that you’ve managed to get something across to people that might otherwise be branded as very hazily defined and alternative. Perhaps that’s because the instruction card is so schematic – it looks like an official publication, which in some strange way engenders trust.

What form does the Medicijnfabriek take? There are three parts. The first is like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where you sit in a circle and share your health problems. People normally only share this kind of information with their family doctor. It seems that in the case of vague symptoms, the doctor or nurse’s listening ear accounts for 50 percent of the cure. Sharing concerns relaxes you, it turns out. It allows us to be present with what is there, instead of running away from the pain and desperately seeking a solution. In the second part of Medicijnfabriek, people go out into the park under the supervision of a plant expert, and are introduced to the ‘intuitive plant approach method’, which involves finding out to which plant you feel drawn. If this plant is neither poisonous nor protected, you can pluck it and use it – make your own pills or ointments in the laboratory.

Yes, it’s like when you read the safety instructions in an aeroplane. I always search for a form, a language, that people feel comfortable with, that invites them to participate. Humour is a good entry point for communication. If people start giggling, something relaxes. Relaxation is important if you want to communicate. Humour has some kind of effect on fixed patterns in our head; it triggers a short circuit. I reckon that you need little short circuits in our own head to bring them about on a bigger scale: in society. Short circuits and motion. You mean thinking out of the box? That’s what all my work is about. It’s about making new connections and opening people’s eyes to the unity of things. I like to work with a wide variety of people and organisations. The best ever moment in my own work was when I took a peek into the research room at Haaglanden Hospital. That’s when I suddenly realised that this place had become what I’d had in mind three years earlier – perhaps even more. Some patients came in every day and brought their visitors along with 19

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r u o m d u o H go a is y r t n e t for n i i po mun m o c ation c 20

THE PROCESS ARTIST

them, while others came to the hospital especially for the project. Doctors and nurses joined them as well. A place had come into being that was neither museum nor hospital, neither public nor private. It was an ambivalent and remarkable place where rules seemed to have just fallen away; somewhere people simply enjoyed visiting; somewhere that offered calm. And I also realised that for the first time I could totally relax in my own artwork and not be preoccupied with what improvements could be made. It meant that I could be completely present in my own work. It was a magical moment.

Hester van Hasselt is a performer and writer.

IMAGES see p. IV–VI

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN Netherlands Film Academy 2013 – 2014

Seas of Stories

Photo: Thomas Lenden

Contemporary experiments in scriptwriting Suzanne Wallinga

About the project

Franz Rodenkirchen

The Netherlands Film Academy invited script consultant Franz Rodenkirchen to be its Artist in Residence and explore recently emerging challenges in the world of the professional screenwriter. When it comes to valuation and finance traditional ideas are still being applied to film projects, but increasing numbers of filmmakers want to expand the notion of the narrative. Franz Rodenkirchen formed a research group with a select band of students, supervised Master students developing alternative cinematic narrative forms, and completed an installation based on his own research entitled Lasting Moments for the EYE film museum. Lasting Moments brought together scenarios by twelve filmmakers and screenwriters from various countries for the film Vive L’Amour.

Franz Rodenkirchen is a writer and independent script adviser working for Binger Filmlab and various film festivals. He is the former head of dramaturgy at the Script House in Berlin, and currently responsible for the TorinoFilmLab selection programme and coaching at Script&Pitch and the Berlinale Talent Campus. Rodenkirchen is also the script adviser at CineLink, the co-production market of the Sarajevo Film Festival, as well as a member of the Script Station selection committee. His films are shown at major film festivals worldwide (Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance), often receiving nominations and awards, including for Best Intentions (Adrian Sitaru, 2011), Code Blue (Urszula Antoniak, 2011), Leones (Jazmín Lopez, 2012) and Salvo (Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, 2013).

On a bench in the park, a woman is crying. She tries to control herself – maybe she sought out the solitude of this spacious park to escape prying eyes – and draws in her breath sharply between heart-breaking sobs. A few benches away, a man is reading the paper, seemingly oblivious to her presence. After about five minutes, the woman lights a white filter cigarette. We see her smoke the cigarette down to the butt as she stares out ahead of her. Drawing on his background as a script consultant for international arthouse films, Franz Rodenkirchen studies the way film scripts are written and evaluated. In the commercial film industry it’s standard practice, before a film is made, to try to assess how entertaining it will be and to what extent potential viewers will identify with the characters and be moved by the story. For this purpose, and as a guideline for the people involved in making the film, a written description is used of how the film’s story will unfold: the script.

concept of scriptwriting that growing numbers of filmmakers are finding inadequate. A script is usually evaluated on the basis of the plot and the interactions between characters. One well-known standard in scriptwriting is the rough correspondence between one page of the script and one minute of the film. But how do you write ten pages about a situation in which very little seems to happen? What if there is little or no dialogue in the film? To answer these questions, Rodenkirchen is investigating the construction and experience of a film’s narrative structure in relation to the individual experience of time. The goal of this research is to change the film industry and the role of market forces within it.

Rodenkirchen’s research is prompted by current methods of writing, evaluating, and financing film projects, which he believes rely too heavily on a traditional

SEAS OF STORIES Final scene Vive l’amour. Tsai Ming-Liang, 1994

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN

Consider the italicized opening paragraph of this essay. This is my own description of the final scene of the film Vive l’amour by Taiwanese director Tsai MingLiang. The scene lasts ten minutes and is a textbook example of a filmmaking method known as slow cinema or contemplative cinema, which has gained tremendously in popularity over the past fifteen years. Although the filmmakers who use this method have widely varying intentions, one element they share is their formal approach: a rigorous, minimalistic style that devotes special attention to ordinary, everyday situations and de-emphasizes action and plot. Extremely long shots with few shifts from one camera to another and simple editing underscore the evocation of atmosphere and a heightened sense of time. Besides Tsai Ming-Liang, other filmmakers associated with this style include Carlos Reygadas (Mexico), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Pedro Costa (Portugal), Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), and Urszula Antoniak, who lives and works in the Netherlands.

In 2013, Rodenkirchen supervised a select group of master’s students as AIR at the Netherlands Film Academy who are developing alternative forms of filmic storytelling. He had them write about the final scene of Vive l’amour, so that the group could compare and discuss their different styles of writing and interpretation. One of the students actually did fill ten pages. For an installation in the Amsterdam film museum EYE, Rodenkirchen had filmmakers and scriptwriters of various ages and backgrounds each write a script based on the same scene. He asked them not only to provide a general description of how they perceived the film, but also to incorporate their experience of time, atmosphere, and the narrative sequence of the plot. Visitors could then view the scene on any of several screens while listening to the contributors reading out their writing at the pace they felt most adequate. Their own observations and those of the filmmakers thus coincided in real time, creating a multi-layered sea of storylines.

Rodenkirchen’s practice-based research is situated at the heart of developments in film that express new categories of experience. Through his ideas and his work as an educator, he promotes collaboration between filmmakers from different backgrounds and challenges producers to engage intellectually with filmmakers in new ways. For this purpose, he adopts a distinction between two conceptions of experience that is made by Walter Benjamin in his essay ‘Der Erzähler’ (‘The Storyteller’; 1936), which examines the work of the Russian author Nikolai Leskov. In the context of the social consequences of emerging industrial society and in the light of the First World War, Benjamin inquires how much our cultural capital is worth when it becomes divorced from experience. According to Benjamin, experience extends from individual perception to a collective consciousness. In this connection, the ways in which individuals relate to shared experience are critically important. Benjamin defines Erfahrung (which is derived from fahren and implies motion) as an experience of long duration in which tradition and repetition

play a role. Erlebnis, in contrast, refers to fleeting moments of lived experience. These two conceptions of experience are increasingly relied on in the interpretation of film in recent film theory, for instance by Thomas Elsaesser and Matthew Flanagan. This development is linked to a renewed interest in the bodily sensation of film. Thomas Elsaesser describes a growing interest in investigating emotion and affect in connection with the evaluation of cinema.1 Somatic responses to the experience of moving images are studied through the lens of experimental theories of the body, time, and agency. This research makes less use of the conventional, psychoanalytic approach centred on processes of identification and draws more heavily on our understanding of the workings of embodied perception (a phenomenological approach) and on theories of how our brain processes information (a cognitivist approach). Walter Benjamin’s ideas about modernity and experience have earned him an important role in the debate on contemporary cinema. In his thinking, place, narration, and

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN

perception combine to create an experience (Erlebnis) that is comparable to trauma. Elsaesser argues that the experience of the contemporary media has degenerated to the point that Erlebnis, in Benjamin’s sense, is now definitive of the media event.

resistance to an age in which information and stimuli have reached saturation point.2 But on their own, phenomenology and cognitivism cannot adequately describe the dynamism and depth of the interaction between consciousness and the imagined narrative space of film. We will have to devote more attention to the scientific study of the narrative imagination, which Rodenkirchen highlights in his work. For a long time, the narrative imagination has been wrongly belittled as the domain of fiction and entertainment, and as an artefact of idle human consciousness. But it is precisely by assigning a narrative structure to reality that we give meaning to our existence and our experience of time. The most prominent thinkers who examine the construction, expression, and operation of the narrative imagination are Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Mikhail Bakhtin. They describe narrative as a cultural artefact and narrativity as the fundamental mode of human consciousness, and they attempt to express in words the relationship between narrative as a product and narrativity as a mode of consciousness. In my opinion, this last idea is most relevant to an understanding of Rodenkirchen’s work. It touches on the relationship between an author (in this case, a filmmaker) and individual spectators, and ultimately, it also touches on our understanding of

Franz Rodenkirchen seeks ways of putting into words a state somewhere between Erfahrung and Erlebnis. During a talk at the Netherlands Film Festival, he reflected on the Austrian director Michael Haneke, who is known for his slow-paced, emotionally charged films: ‘One shot lasting a minute is radically different from the typical, much shorter shot lasting a couple of seconds. It creates a film experience that goes beyond information.’ Matthew Flanagan believes that the rise of ‘slow cinema’ is a logical consequence of a culture in which speed is omnipresent, influencing our expectations of film. When films employ a minimalistic narrative style, we can allow our eyes to wander over the screen, attending to every detail. This mode of storytelling moves beyond the traditional hegemony of drama, assigning equal significance to content, action, and rhythm. A renewed interest in realism, materiality, and temporality is emerging at a point in time when new digital possibilities appear to be severing the direct relationship between film and physical reality. The new preference for a pareddown style may also express

SEAS OF STORIES

w o h e t t i Bu u wr s o e y g o a d np te a t u n o i b a tion y a r u e t v i s ich ms wh le see n? t e t p i l hap to 27

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SEAS OF STORIES

the connection between different works and of the experiences of different audiences. According to Ricoeur, ‘Narrative is not completed in the text but in the reader . . . [or] more precisely; the sense or the significance of a narrative stems from the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the reader.’3 The woman on the bench lets out a puff of smoke and again tries to draw a deep breath.

1 Elsaesser, T. (2009). Between Erlebnis and Erfahrung: cinema experience with Benjamin (p. 292-312). In: Paragraph (Vol. 32). 2 Flanagan, M. (2008) Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema. In: 16:9 (Vol. 6, no. 29). 3 Rankin, J. (2002) What is narrative? Ricoeur, Bakhtin, and process approaches (p. 1-12). In: Concresence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought (Vol. 3).

Installation Lasting Moments in EYE, photos: Thomas Lenden

Suzanne Wallinga is a curator and researcher and a guest lecturer in the Master of Film programme at the Netherlands Film Academy.

IMAGES see p. VII–X

Photo: Stefan Wieland (Etsy)

AIR – MICHIEL SCHWARZ Reinwardt Academy and the Academy of Architecture 2013 – 2014

(Re)Design in the culture of sustainism Michiel Schwarz

1. ENTER NEW CULTURE

About the project

Michiel Schwarz

Artist in Residence Michiel Schwarz at the Reinwardt Academy and the Academy of Architecture challenged students and teaching staff to transform complex society-based assignments into ecological and socially sustainable proposals, while examining what the sustainist perspective might yield for design and the cultural heritage. Michiel Schwarz’s residency is the first result of a collaboration between these two faculties of the Amsterdam School of the Arts that are joining forces with Hogeschool van Amsterdam and Inholland under the auspices of the Amsterdam Creative Industries Centre of Expertise in the creative industry field.

Michiel Schwarz is a cultural sociologist and future thinker. Together with Joost Elffers he introduced the term ‘sustainism’ to give a name to our current cultural era. Michiel Schwarz studied Sociology of Science and Technology at Sussex University and gained his doctorate at the University of London. In 2011 he published Sustainism is the New Modernism. A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era (with graphic designer Joost Elffers, DAP, New York) and Sustainist Design Guide: How Sharing, Localism, Connectedness and Proportionality Are Creating a New Agenda for Social Design (with Diana Krabbendam, BIS, Amsterdam). He is a former crown-appointed member of the Dutch Council of Culture, and has worked with and for a variety of cultural and educational organisations.

You can sense the new zeitgeist. Just take a look at how we are ‘designing’ our living environments nowadays. In neighbourhoods around the world we are witnessing a wave of bottom-up social initiatives such as urban farms, local sharing schemes, community gardens, repair cafes and creative cooperatives. And there’s a growing number of self-built housing schemes, pop-up use of empty properties, and citizenled initiatives to re-use derelict buildings. A new generation of architects are starting to reactivate the city by experimenting with new approaches to open-source building, upcycled design strategies and crowdfunded architecture. The old ways of urban design are being challenged by new forms of ‘city making.’ In short, we are seeing the beginnings of a new type of design practice. What is happening in our cities goes well beyond the field of design or architecture, however, because it is a manifestation of a much broader shift throughout society towards more sustainable ways of living. Witness the rise of the food movement and the proliferation of farmers’ markets, or the growing numbers of neighbourhood energy schemes. Equally there is a worldwide growth in locally based social entrepreneurships and a resurgence of handmade and local crafts. 31

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At the same time an open source spirit of sharing and co-creation is gaining ground, new social media platforms are developing rapidly, and there is much debate about smart cities and smart citizens. Where once the terms ‘green’ and ‘high-tech’ represented opposing points of view, today they have come together in a new social and ecological movement.

a cultural map of where we are, and where we might want to be going. My activities as Artist in Residence at Amsterdam’s Academy of Architecture and Reinwardt Academy are rooted in the idea of sustainism as a framework for recasting old issues and bringing new ones into focus, as a lens for looking at the changing landscape for design and heritage, and the agendas for the future.

Sustainism: a new era The transformation we are experiencing is a shift in culture, that is a change in our collective perceptions and in the ideas and values we live by. We are seeing the emergence of a new era after last century’s modernism, which Joost Elffers and I have called ‘sustainism.’ By defining it as a new culture, we make explicit that while world itself is changing, so too is our way of looking at that world. Sustainism involves new ways of seeing and doing. Sustainism is the new modernism, as the title of our 2010 manifesto has it. Whereas much of 20th century life was shaped by modernist ideas and values, we see this century being defined by a different mind-set, a new ethos. Sustainism means creating a collective culture that is more connected, more localist, and more ecologically and socially sustainable. Sustainist culture is already here, if we care to see it. It is visible, for example, in the worldwide movement of over one million grassroots organisations, in which at least 200 million people are actively engaged around a social-sustainable agenda, focusing on healthier, socially just, and ecological modes of living. American environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken describes it as, ‘the largest movement the world has ever seen.’

Design through a sustainist lens Sustainist culture is still in the making, but we can already identify its contours and begin to chart the defining features of this new cultural landscape. The core values propagating sustainist life will change how we design our relationships to the natural and built environment. In an attempt to tease out some underlying drivers of social change, in the recently published Sustainist Design Guide, Diana Krabbendam and I focus on a set of four defining qualities of sustainist culture: connectedness, localism, sharing and proportionality. Capturing some of the fundamental value shifts, they become design criteria for the new era. – In a world of social and technological networks, to be connected becomes a value in itself. Relationships are the core attributes for designing for connectedness, focusing on building connections between communities, with our living environment, nature and the process of making. Everyone and everything is connected and interdependent, but as design pioneers Ray and Charles Eames said, ‘the quality of our connections is the key to quality.’ – Localism is a value giving meaning to local connections, relations, and rootedness. In our globalised networked world, we are finding new forms of local connection and seeking a new sense of place. At the heart of designing for localism is the idea that local is a quality, rather than a geographical marker.

Sustainist culture The sustainist outlook is sustainable, networked, collaborative, and concerned with the human scale. It recasts our relationships to our living environment, our sense of place as well as time, and it provides us with 32

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– Shareability is increasingly being seen as creating social value and community: We are what we share. Design for sharing assumes that we value sharing not just for its economic and environmental benefits, but also for what it brings us socially and as a society. It connects to a collaborative, open-source mentality. – Designing for proportionality resists the modernist idea that big and fast is always better than small and slow. Shifting from scale to proportionality questions the need for speed and the unbridled upscaling of all that we design. Although not an exhaustive list, these qualities give us some lines of sight for examining design in and for the new cultural context. What, for example, would it mean to incorporate connectedness, localism, sharing and proportionality into our design briefs?

Sustainism symbols, Michiel Schwarz and Joost Elffers

2. INTO THE NEW LANDSCAPE: DESIGN AND HERITAGE RECAST As Artist in Residence I sought to introduce a sustainist perspective at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. The first step was to position and define design and heritage in this new context; to reframe the issues, to redraw the map, and then assess how the newly emerging cultural qualities might be developed into a new agenda for design and heritage practices, as well as the challenges for education. Below are some initial thoughts. Place-making and engagement One of the key concepts taking on new meaning and importance is that of ‘place-making’. In both heritage and urban design we are seeing a shift from topdown planning and (re)use of buildings and places to their engagement and (re)programming. This is being 34

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accompanied by a move away from distinct objects and physical environments and towards local narratives and a sense of place (a point that was underscored in various ‘Sustainist (Re)Design’ lectures for Capita Selecta, for instance by Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency leader Frank Strolenberg and transformation architect Paul Meurs). The idea of ‘place’ rather than ‘space’ also reflects the sustainist concern with social meaning rather than functionality in design. It implies a shift in perspective from the idea of public space to that of common places, or as Indian designer and AIR workshop leader Jogi Panghaal puts it, ‘from house to home’. The changing focus in heritage – from conservation to adaptive re-use, and from historical value to social value – transforms heritage-related issues into redesign and reprogramming challenges. In sustainist terms this means making culture as much as maintaining culture, and design and redesign becoming collective, inclusive challenges in an ongoing dialogue with their contexts. In the sustainist era, social engagement becomes a key issue in design and heritage, as communities become co-designers of the environment they inhabit, and professional designers are challenged to take on an explicit role as social designers or ‘design activists’, to use Alastair Fuad-Luke’s term. Sustainist designers will need to reposition themselves in the civic economy, as Joost Beunderman of London-based 00:/architects argues, and engage with civic platforms that are deeply collaborative and open, using global tools such as the Wiki House in local contexts. Local and slow The concepts of engagement and sense of place both highlight the need to recast and redefine what we mean by local design and local heritage. From a sustainist perspective, a local approach means designing 36

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t a h l l W wi s t d f e a cr need a e b ape t h s s i o n t i a t s ? u e s tur fu 37

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and redesigning not just the physical surroundings but also local, nearby relationships. This infers a fundamental shift in what we take as being ‘the design question.’ Simply raising the issue of what we wish to mean by locality is shifting the agenda. Is local heritage different from universal heritage? In our globalised world, in what ways are local designs inherently different from global designs? Similar questions can be asked about scale and speed. The notion of slowness as understood among slow-food advocates reflects a particular mind-set and practice that connects and integrates social and ecological concerns. So what might it mean to design ‘slow heritage’ or ‘slow environments’? Such questions challenge us to fundamentally rethink the socio-cultural meaning and importance of what we do as designers and re-designers of the natural and built environment. The craft of connecting, co-design and engagement Creating a world that is more ecologically and socially sustainable calls for a shift in both thinking and doing. So it is no coincidence that in these times of social and economic transitions, craftsmanship – Richard Sennett’s ‘connection between head and hand’ – is once again becoming a valued quality. Looking through the lens of sustainism prompts us to rethink how we can connect (or reconnect), craftsmanship with social and cultural change. So what crafts will be needed to shape a sustainist future? Let me round off by proposing three lines of thought relating to the sustainist design agenda. They are not so much conclusions as openings for reflection. Firstly, working in an interconnected networked world may require us to develop a ‘craft of connecting’. How might we refocus our creative processes on relationships and crossovers? What new skills do we need to reconnect with the community and the environment at the very heart of our designs? Secondly, if we are 39

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genuinely interested in opening up professional practices in design and heritage, we need to take seriously ‘the craft of co-designing’. In the current era, with users and citizens increasingly becoming co-designers, we need to develop tools and skills to make our design processes truly open and collaborative. And thirdly, we need to think about ‘crafts of social engagement’: designing within, rather than for, society. What is the toolbox we need to become embedded professionals and engage meaningfully with communities, as part of our heritage and design practices? Acquiring the capacity to be engaged as designers also involves an ethical dimension, a sense of responsibility for where you stand in relation to the social and ecological issues of our time. Our culture is changing. It’s time to redesign design – and our design education. REFERENCES – Beunderman, J.(2013) Platform Futures: Reflections from Practice, Capita Selecta lecture, Sustainist (Re)Design #4: Bottom up – New localism and sustainable change. Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture, 3 Oct. – Fuad-Luke, A. (2013) Design Activism: Social engagement and sustainable change or Co-futuring by open co-designing…, Capita Selecta lecture, Sustainist (Re)Design #2: Design Activism. Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture, 19 September. – Hawken, P. (2007) Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Penguin. – Meurs, P. (2013) Heritage and Place Making, Capita Selecta lecture. Sustainist (Re)Design #3: Place making. Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture, 26 September. – Sennett, R. (2009) The Craftsman. London: Penguin. – Schwarz, M. and Elffers, J. (2010) Sustainism is the New Modernism: A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era. New York: DAP/Distributed Art Publishers. – Schwarz, M. and Krabbendam, D. (2013) Sustainist Design Guide: How Sharing, Localism, Connectedness and Proportionality are Creating a New Agenda for Social Design. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers. – Strolenberg, F. (2013) Redesigning Cultural Heritage, Capita Selecta lecture. Sustainist (Re) Design #3: Place making. Amsterdam: Academy of Architecture, 26 September.

Developing talent in an international context Maria Hagen in conversation with Joël Bons and Barbara Van Lindt Racine, Brecht, Sweelinck, Verdi, Bausch, Balanchine, Mondriaan, Newman… art is international. It’s plain for all to see that art is produced and presented in an international context. And as the Dijkgraaf Commission noted, correctly, higher education in the arts is a prime example of this internationality.1 In her letter to the Dutch parliament’s lower house in summer 2013,2 the Minister of Education Jet Bussemaker emphasised the importance of international competencies for artistic talents. She also noted that talent development relating to artistic and cultural expression should, as in other areas, be viewed from beyond a Western perspective. What is the current state of affairs at the Amsterdam School of the Arts? Why is internationalisation important and what how can our students best be equipped for an international professional practice? On Air met up with Barbara Van Lindt, artistic director of de Theaterschool’s Master of Theatre DasArts, and composer Joël Bons, artistic director of the Atlas Ensemble and composition tutor at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, to talk about practice and necessity in the international orientation of education. They represent two real-world examples of an international approach within the AHK. 41

‘We find it in all great artists, whether it’s Picasso and his interest in African masks, or Mozart immersing himself in Turkish Janissary music’, explains Joël Bons. ‘Whether it was Stockhausen, Ligeti, Bartók Cage, or Reich, all great composers of the 20th century have had a great interest in other cultures. The world is far larger than our own Western culture. If you’re a chef, you nowadays couldn’t get away with only studying French cuisine. If you want to achieve excellence in your craft, then you need to have a grasp of the world around you. You can see diversity already developing back in the Dutch Golden Age; Amsterdam has always been a very welcoming to artists and thinkers. Cultural exchange is as old as humanity itself. Our skills are rooted in a Western tradition with plenty of overlaps with other cultures. You can vastly expand your artistic palette by studying similarities and differences between the crafts encountered in different cultures.’ ‘Crossovers come into being spontaneously. Most young people have a totally eclectic taste in music. They’ll be listening to Bach, reggae, hiphop and Stockhausen. If you’re true to yourself and discerning, then you’ll be selecting from an enormous reservoir, and all of it can happily coexist. Of course it’s good to focus on your chosen field and master it, but tradition’s never static. If you’re receptive to all kinds of related phenomena, you can enrich your work and gain a deeper understanding. It makes things more interesting. At the Conservatorium composition department we don’t view music history as linear. For example, we explore subjects such as what sound actually is and what the substance is of music. That leads to modern composers and others cultures becoming relevant at a very early stage.’

e es n a iw ch h n a T ze kis frica C ur h A T out Korean S uth So edish Sw Swiss Albanian American Ar A gentin Beustrali ian an B lg B ra ian Bu rit zilia lg ish n ar ia n

As old as humankind

EMBRACING THE OTHER

Tradition’s never static

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

r de an al Ze gian ew e n N orwainia an N kr kist U e Uzbstrian Au Polish Portuguese Rumanian Rus Se sian S rbian S inga S lov po Sp lov enia rean a ak n n is h

an ri ga ic un H rish and I l Ice dian sian In one Indnian Ira Israeli Italian Japanese Cr La oatian L tvia L ith n M ux uan D ex em ian ut ic bo c h an urge r

Nationalities of new students in 2013

n ia d na an Ca hile ese n C hin bia C olom C ban Cu rian Conservatorium CDaypnish rman van Amsterdam EGe cu Estoadorian nia F Frinnish n e G G eornch re g ek ian

n ia Bu

th u So

British

n ea r Ko rb

Nationalities of new students in 2013

ian

Ital

ian

Mental mutation

Se Isr

Germa

DasArts

Dut

‘It’s a grand journey of discovery. First you see astonishment and fascination, and that’s followed by the emergence of understanding and then assimilation. You witness a process through which the stranger and the other are gradually understood and, by and by, internalised. Ton de Leeuw defined it beautifully as ‘acculturation’, and if you do it right, then a mental mutation occurs. It is not a superficial process – you’re not just placing attractive items in proximity to one another – and it ‘marinates’: a kind of chemical process takes place through which you truly assimilate. This is actually what happens whenever you learn something in life, and the process can be very stimulating and fruitful – in any academic subject you care to think of. And it’s central to any creative subject. Ultimately, as an artist

Africa

‘2014 will see the fifth edition of the Atlas Academy, an international meeting of composers and musicians which I organise every two years at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam,’ explains Bons. ‘The Academy is like an explosion, you spend two weeks together – a retreat somewhere – to make music together, get to understand one another, and form a real team. We plant the seed. Everyone makes their own contribution, and brings along their own expertise. Students have to decide for themselves what they do with it. It’s a stimulus. We try to work with as much integrity as possible and conduct a detailed examination of the differences and similarities between each other’s music and our opinions about it. Atlas has a creative approach, and we discard the Western concept of a strict division between composer and interpreter, because the interpreter also needs to take an active role in the creative process, as is already common in pop and jazz, and in many other cultures. We’ve lost that to a degree.’

EMBRACING THE OTHER

South

Atlas Academy

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

EMBRACING THE OTHER

Atlas Academy, photo’s: Thomas Lenden

International encounters

Global and local

you make a synthesis of everything you encounter. Stravinsky absorbed Bach, Pergolesi and folk music and processed it in such a way that what came out was always recognisably Stravinsky. You hear the vestiges, but it’s all entirely new. This process of ‘intoxication’ can be set in motion in all manner of ways: through coming into contact with other forms of musical expression such as music theatre or opera, or with another medium, such as film. And Stravinsky was also inspired by Eisenstein’s montage techniques. Inspiration is everywhere: in nature, in technology, in the culinary arts…’

‘We’re not looking to attain uniformity – that greatest of threats posed by globalisation. At Atlas we explore similarities and differences. You’ve got to include the other, not exclude it. Value and cherish the differences, seek out what is common to all, and then you’ll be able to create something – it’s a goldmine if you’re an artist. Local traditions nourish global culture and that bounces back to the local. Differences will remain, and that’s of incalculable value.’ ‘The differences come into sharp focus when everybody’s working on the same subject, and that puts one’s own cultural assumptions on shaky ground.’ Barbara Van Lindt believes that artists develop their own universe and their own language: both a theatrical language and a language for discussing their work. ‘The artist creates an identity by making choices. You arrive at DasArts with your self-constructed universe and meet people of all sorts, with all kinds of backgrounds. You’ll encounter fellow students who approach things in a very different way, and it can provoke strong responses. Ideally, you should reflect on this to ensure that this disturbance affects some aspect of in your 47

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EMBRACING THE OTHER

Barbara Van Lindt: ‘When you come here, you’re posing a question related to your practice. You’re wanting to break a pattern, to deepen or expand your working method. What motivates students is linked to their work, and they arrive at DasArts in order to take the next step. You’d be amazed what a candidate from Argentina, Kenya or Iran can bring with them from the Western canon. Brecht and Boal, for example, have travelled the globe and been influential wherever they went. Their work has gone global. DasArts doesn’t operate according to a specific aesthetic norm defined by the Western contemporary performing arts canon. If you – accompanied by your artistic and cultural context – are able to enter into the discussion with us, then this is the right place for you. Anyone from some far-off land who applies to DasArts is clearly seeking to engage with other contemporary and overseas traditions. That’s the basis.’

Workshop with DasArts students on Amsterdam’s Dapper Market

International classroom

Relating to overseas traditions

thinking and practice. This ‘significant collision’, as we call it, isn’t necessarily most impactful when the origins of the students concerned are most geographically distant, and this cannot be viewed as analogous to artistic distance.’ As far as Van Lindt concerned, there’s no need for the department to become overly fixated on the international aspect. ‘There are enough fundamentally alternative opinions and stylistic differences among people with the similar backgrounds. However, it is true that your cultural horizon will be broadened by a group of people from different continents.’

‘If, for example, a group is given an assignment involving the creation of a performance in a public space, it can be hugely emotionally charged for some students, because in some countries dance in the streets is simply unknown. So it has 48

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EMBRACING THE OTHER

‘We take the students out of their comfort zone and confront them with something they don’t understand. Our students attend workshops where they’re exposed to other ways of life. It can even trigger a culture shock. They see what’s going outside the artistic cocoon and it’s through experiences such as these that they step out into the world in a different way. You need to be pretty daring to immerse yourself in the unknown and the unexpected, to be open and to not stay on the beaten track. When they first arrive in Amsterdam, many foreign students have a “Lost in Translation experience”. And since the Dutch students are part of this multi-continental group, they go through the same thing.’ ‘No matter how open-minded an artist might be, they’re just as likely as anyone else to be judgemental about people who are “different” or people they perceive as being “on the other side”, such as police officers, businesspeople, managers, etc. For the most recent DasArts ‘block’ [thematic study programme], the basic premise was for students to think about the desired impact of their own work. Artistic processes often depart from the question of what you want to make – what you get out of yourself. Here the proposal was to examine what they wanted to achieve, and where, for whom, on 50

what scale, and using what medium? This served as a framework for carrying out a variety of assignments. One was to observe the Dappermarkt [local street market] for its potential for theatre. Our students entered into conversations and relationships outside the theatre world and set up projects in the public space. It was a real eye opener for them. A policeman might turn out to be quite pleasant after all, you can have a very reasonable conversation with businesspeople working in the Zuidas [financial district], and the man running the fruit and veg stall on the market might have a remarkable story to tell. It was a breakthrough. It’s absolutely crucial that students open themselves up and engage with the other, with another culture, and with other opinions. That’s where the added value lies. And the phrase “another culture” should be interpreted in the broadest sense here.’

Intercontinental courses

Judge mental

Lost in translation experience

a completely different significance for these students. Their fellow students see that and in realise that in the Netherlands, one of the most tolerant nations in the world, there are almost no boundaries. So what kind of impact can it have if you go out and dance on the street? If it’s not such a big deal anyway, what sort of artistic gesture is it if a group of dancers in bright clothing stops traffic? This kind of experience fosters reflection.’

‘I describe DasArts as “intercontinental” because “international” or “global” generally boils down to a truly shared culture: Monty Python, Hennes & Mauritz, Starbucks, and so on. Intercontinental encounters require that you work harder to map similarities and differences – and literally broaden that horizon. It sometimes produces such surprises that it affects more than just your professional life.’ Maria Hagen is head of communications at the Amsterdam School of the Arts.

1 Dijkgraaf Commissions recommendations. (2010) Onderscheiden, verbinden, vernieuwen: de toekomst van het kunstonderwijs, in opdracht van de HBO-raad (Differentiate, connect and innovate: the future of art education’s for a sector plan for arts education, commissioned by the council for HBO vocational colleges (p.4). The Hague. 2 Bussemaker, J. (2013) Cultuur beweegt, De betekenis van cultuur in een veranderende samenleving (Culture moves: the meaning of culture in a changing society).

IMAGES see p. XI–XIII

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS Master of Education in Arts / AHK 2013–2014

Playing with conventions

Photo: Thomas Lenden

Values and skills with artists’ collective the Authentic Boys Jappe Groenendijk

Abou the project

Authentic Boys

The residency of the international artists’ collective the Authentic Boys gave Master of Education in Arts students the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the group’s innovatory artistic practice and gain an understanding of interdisciplinary creative processes. The Authentic Boys combine several art forms in their exploration of the boundaries between film, visual art and theatre. Their specific working method inspired students to develop their own educational programmes in an entirely personal way. The main focus of their work was on diversity in arts education and cultural entrepreneurship. The Authentic Boys’ socially relevant art projects are perfectly suited to the altermodern approach to arts education, which is highly topical research area for the Art Education research group that is allied to the Master of Education in Arts.

Authentic Boys is an international collective of artists. Its members are performers Gregory Stauffer and Johannes Dullin from Geneva and Berlin, respectively, and the filmmakers Boris van Hoof and Aaike Stuart from Rotterdam and Berlin, respectively. The group has an interdisciplinary approach and is engaged in an ongoing search for ways of interacting with the immediate surroundings intuitively and reflectively. Humour is an important tool for them in their efforts to view the everyday from a different perspective and to set audiences on a different track. Their very wide-ranging work includes performances (Natural Fiction Circus), videos and installations (Tribal Man), and photo series (Rehearsing Revolution), which appear variously at theatres, arts centres and film festivals.

Artists in Residence the Authentic Boys joined the school’s Master of Education in Arts from September 2013 to March 2014, and held workshops, lectures and master classes that introduced students to interdisciplinary processes and their innovative approach. The question underlying this portrait is this: What skills should arts education be teaching in the 21st century?

Prologue: Arts education and democratic citizenship Educational institutions in the Netherlands are keen to excel and are increasingly being judged by their output. Arts departments in higher education are no exception to this tendency towards corporate culture. In addition to their standard courses, many colleges are setting up programmes for excellence in order to gain a reputation for delivering distinctive quality. Rather than producing the hoped-for performance improvements, however, this league table mentality among universities has led to depreciation and uniformity. What’s more, the push for excellence is in stark conflict with the ideals of an education system accessible to all. Cultural philosopher René Boomkens warns that the value of good academic education cannot be adequately expressed in figures and graphs.1 He believes 53

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that universities should resist professional disciplinary techniques and focus on its critical, public role in society. The central focus needs to shift from quantity and image to quality and substance. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum even suggests in her treatise Not for Profit that economic thinking and the competitive struggle form a danger for democracy. She is waging a battle of resistance against the global tendency to raise young people to become ‘useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves’.2 This short-term focus on profits and application threatens to obscure what education should be all about: developing skills such as imagination, empathy and critical thinking. Since time immemorial, art, culture and education have played central roles in emancipation and the fostering of an articulate, compassionate and democratic citizenry. Furthermore, there is a growing recognition that arts education can deliver crucial competences for the 21st century – because the young generation needs to be able to do more than only reading, writing and mathematics. They need to be facilitated in finding new ways to communicate, experiment and solve problems. Arts education is uniquely placed to take on an important part in developing creativity, information literacy, and the potential for collaboration and improvisation. Does this mean that the arts are the key to generating a society with articulate and engaged citizens? And can practice-oriented arts education form a viable alternative to the bleak goings-on elsewhere in the education sector? The Authentic Boys are in any case an example of contemporary artists who have embraced not only education, but also the renewal of teaching and making processes. The encounter Arts Education master students’ had with this international artists’ collective offered a rare and outstanding opportunity to attune their teaching 54

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skills to international practice, while also developing new strategies for arts education through a playful interaction with skills of the 21st century.

1: The Authentic Boys They Authentic Boys are the performers Gregory Stauffer and Johannes Dullin (from Geneva and Berlin, respectively) and the filmmakers Boris van Hoof and Aaike Stuart (from Rotterdam and Berlin, respectively). Their work takes in a wide range of media and forms including photography, film and video art, theatre, performance and installations, and they exhibit internationally in art centres, theatres and film festivals. The group got their name in 2007 during a stay in Siberia. It is derived from a pun about what it means to be ‘authentically Russian’, and it inspired them to make a short film about an authentic Russian that became a playful dialogue with reality – something that has since become something of a signature for the group. One of the recurring themes of their work is the relationship between the individual and its surroundings and the group to which it belongs. Their debut exhibition Hanging Out in Time and Space explored the collective’s own group identity. The exhibition’s title is an apt one, because that is exactly what boys do: they hang out and have fun. The Authentic Boys playfully explore ways of engaging with

time and space in order to create new playgrounds and experiences. To promote the exhibition the group was photographed in several Ikea stores, and the resulting series of picture postcards showing four serious looking young men in clinical prefab interiors is a playful take on boy band photography. These images call into question the possibility of an authentic experience in a largely pre-constructed environment. They are asking how it is possible to be yourself in a world in which personal identities are ready-made marketing strategies. Surprisingly, they seek out authenticity in precisely those places where you would least expect it, be it at a camping site, mini-golf course, or holiday chalet park. Their work is triggered by the potential friction between the defining character of such places and the fundamental human need for freedom and self-fulfilment. Their short film Threesome, for example, frustrates preconceived notions about sexual role patterns while simultaneously expanding the erotic cinema idiom. And in the powerfully atmospheric Super 8 film Bad Luck City an urban cowboy asserts control over a ream of clichés about the blues

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authority-based teaching and nothing was condemned, and this led to the gradual evaporation of any internalised distinction between good and bad, and between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. The sense of trust built up in this way formed the basis for refreshingly openhearted exchanges and wonderful, personal creative moments in which the pupils gained the courage to think differently, break habits or rebel against their own limitations. Rehearsing Revolution

Short film Threesome

on the wave of revolutions in the Arab world being unleashed at the time. Rather than attempting to inspire political upheaval, however, Rehearsing Revolution sought to bring about personal transformation through a powerful experience of art. The workshop saw discussions about dreams of the future alternating with performance assignments that raised the participants’ awareness of their own body and invited them to explore new ways of moving. There was no

and in doing so transforms their meaning. The Authentic Boys’ world is populated by individuals and groups interacting playfully

with the world to create continually unpredictable situations and remarkable experiences.

In 2011 the exhibition space TENT in Rotterdam commissioned Authentic Boys to produce Rehearsing Revolution, for which they worked for two months with around 600 secondary school pupils aged 13 to 18 from a variety of backgrounds. Arts education

Rehearsing Revolution workshop

2: Rehearsing Revolution has played an important role in their work ever since. From the very moment the young people entered, they found themselves in a dramatic space where their revolutionary potential was tested in a theatricalised route whose visual vocabulary drew

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS

also yielded several autonomous works by the four artists, including an exhibition and a

publication featuring portrait photos of the school pupils wearing self-made revolutionary masks.

From the publication Rehearsing Revolution

t s o m t e n h T orta e p r ’ e m i ll w r is i o f k s ing k o d lo n i k , n i y t a i t r v i e t c i a sens en of an op de u t i t t a

PLAYING WITH CONVENTIONS

3: One dialogue; four concepts Authenticity

interface between the microcosm and the macrocosm. That’s our arena of intervention.’

‘Our public space is profoundly pre-structured, which is to say that everywhere from McDonald’s to Centre Parcs our actions and practices are being directed. We need to play with these conventions to arrive at a new and useful sense of meaningfulness. Those things that on a societal level may be considered clichéd can be experienced as authentic by an individual. By taking clichés seriously it is possible to make them poignant. What we’re interested in is the individual search for basic human forms of expression in a world consisting largely of precooked experiences. What we find particularly interesting is the

Interdisciplinarity

‘We got to know one another and we clicked so we decided to work together, but we didn’t have any preconceived idea about doing interdisciplinary work. What we do comes out of an idea we’re looking to shape. Sometimes it shifts while you’re developing it, like planning an exhibition and ending up making a film. That’s not always the easiest route to take, it must be said, because every discipline has its own infrastructure and institutions that you need to learn to navigate.

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS

Revolution

‘But thinking in terms of distinct disciplines barely plays a role in our work. For us, interdisciplinarity is more an attitude, a sense of open-mindedness. And we’re sceptical about the idea of obligatory interdisciplinary collaboration, because that makes the method a new authority, a new discipline. What we do believe in is that it’s possible to communicate that sense of openness to other people, and that’s what we try to do in our workshops.’

‘In Rehearsing Revolution we approached the subject of revolution using symbols we’re all familiar with, flags, smoke and chaos. As in all our work we played with these collective images. We recycled them and made them our own to prepare for a personal revolution, a revolution of free spirits who dare to dream. ‘We aim to create the right circumstances for school pupils to become receptive. Although we use a rigid form – a training camp – within that there’s no preconceived plan, no hierarchy, no judging. They play the main role from start to finish. Anything goes, and they don’t have to do anything they feel uncomfortable about. It’s all about playing, and everything gets encouragement. ‘Teenagers have a specific kind of energy. You could choose to suppress it or manipulate it, you can also teach them how to use it and become aware of their power and sensitivity. That’s our strategy for arriving at an authentic outcome. Adolescence is one of the most revolutionary phases of life: your body is changing and searching for who you are. It’s that attitude and predisposition that we’re trying to capture in our photos.’

Craftsmanship

‘Although you can detect our backgrounds in our work – whether in the acting techniques or the video editing – our roles within the collective are always dynamic. The group itself is an experiment. The most important skill we’re looking for is a certain kind of sensitivity, an open attitude towards our self, each other and our surroundings. ‘Music is the primary medium for achieving that openness – even though none of us have studied music. Jamming together for nights on end gets you into a state of mind where you forget time and place – and then rediscover it. Music connects very instinctively and it’s an important and defining component of our work.’

PLAYING WITH CONVENTIONS

1 Boomkens, R. (2009). Topkitsch en slow science. Kritiek van de academische rede (Slow science and the excellence fetish: a critique of academic reason). Amsterdam: Van Gennep. 2 Nussbaum, M. (2010) Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press. See also, Nussbaum, M. (1997) Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Jappe Groenendijk teaches Art Philosophy at the Master of Education in Arts and is also a freelance editor and writer.

IMAGES see p. XIV–XV

Photo: Jesse Vrielynck

AIR – UGO DEHAES De Theaterschool 2012 – 2013

A meeting of two communities Hester van Hasselt

About the project

Ugo Dehaes

Choreographer Ugo Dehaes worked with students from de Theaterschool’s departments of Modern Theatre Dance (MTD) and Production and Stage Management (OPP) on a collective site-specific project devoted to protest. Over a period of four months, he gave students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the choreographer’s world of the imagination, his sources of inspiration and all that they brought forth. Within this context, the OPP focused on their personal relationship with the subject matter, while MTD students concentrated on the choreography. The students followed each other’s working processes as they developed their vision and exchanged ideas in workshops, lectures and discussions. The public presentation in Amsterdam’s Floshal was both a performance and an exhibition.

Flemish choreographer Ugo Dehaes made his mark as a performer with the likes of Meg Stuart and Arco Renz. His own work is notable for its high intensity and the absolute presence of the performers, who seek out extremes. Dehaes calmly takes his time when creating new work – a unique phenomenon in this era of overproduction and haste. He does everything himself for his own productions, including production and technical duties and publicity. Ugo Dehaes is also active as a dancer for various choreographers and as a performer and actor in numerous films, performances and plays.

De Theaterschool is home to fifteen departments. And although they share the same building, the distance between them – and their need to get to know each other better – can be great. Artist in Residence Ugo Dehaes gave form to this need through his project, a joint stage production involving students from the departments of Modern Theatre Dance (MTD) and Performing Arts Production (OPP). One AIR; two departments. It meant the coming together of two communities that seldom find the time to engage with one another. What would it bring about? What questions would this collaboration trigger about disparate visions on education? Marijke Hoogenboom chaired the following discussion between dramaturgy teacher Judith Wendel (OPP), scenography teacher Bart Visser (OPP) and dance teacher John Taylor (MTD). Judith: At the OPP we pose an explicit question: What’s your place in the world? Being a production manager producer means you’ll be working in theatre, and theatre has a place in the world and reflects that world. What is that world, how should you relate to it, and what role can you choose to play in it? You could view the producer as having a purely

AIR – UGO DEHAES

executive role, but that’s not how we see things in the OPP because we believe the producer needs to take the initiative, take defining decisions, and be able to reflect. This is the kind of awareness that we try to develop in students, and in our department. It’s what the entire AIR project is focused on. John: At the MTD, the students reflect primarily on their own physical process. The students are so preoccupied with their own physical development that everything else is subordinated to it. You need to be able to dance at a very high level technically or else you simply won’t get any work. In addition, in recent years we’ve noticed that students have felt an increased need for intellectual and social development. An AIR project such as this gives us the opportunity to think about how we can open up the course: the workshops on sound, video and scenery could be of interest to our students, too.

A MEETING OF TWO COMMUNITIES

there’s an increasing need for personal reflection – and for an ability to write, too. Marijke: Where does that need come from? John: The students feel it, and so do we. We want to produce intelligent dancers: dancers who can do more than simply move. Their knowledge and consciousness are part of their creativity. It’s important to know about history, to be able to apply that knowledge, and be able to set that out clearly in the written word. As well as developing their physical creative craft, we hope our dancers will also develop real insight into their craft. It’s the sort of thing that could give them the edge. Marijke: Does that apply to all graduating students? Bart: That’s a good question. What makes us different from other arts courses?

Bart: Do you think there’s space for this at the MTD?

John: It would be great if graduates from our academy were aware and confident of their place in the world.

John: That’s exactly the same sort of thing as we encounter. The timetable is completely packed, and if you want to add anything in you’ve got to leave something else out. But what? Huge demands are placed on skilled dancers, and there’s a limit to what you can offer if you want to maintain the level. So my question is this: can you change the programme without making it tougher? You might be able to do it by using a thematic structure, or through an AIR programme, or by working with other departments. And

Marijke: I find it fascinating that even just at de Theaterschool so many teaching methods coexist. At the School for New Dance Development [SNDO] students are educated as makers. They recently worked with the Japanese choreographer who comes from a culture where the notion that as an artist in education you reflect on what you’re doing simply doesn’t exist: it’s all about discipline, repetition and imitation. That’s quite a shock for our students, because it’s so diametrically opposed to the Western idea of the

AIR – UGO DEHAES

emancipated artist. In many Eastern traditions they say, ‘Just follow, and when you’re 45 you’ll understand what it’s about.’ It’s a completely different route to emancipation. Bart: That’s right, because you can also find answers through the body itself. The production students asked for a dance lesson with Ugo Dehaes, and they got one. It’s a pity we didn’t completely reverse the roles in this AIR project for a change. I wish they could have had more of it and got properly involved with dance for once. It’s the main goal of the AIR project to get students stepping outside their normal boundaries. Marijke: P erhaps they could adopt some of that selfdiscipline on an everyday level – like the dance students who start each day with exercises. Bart: That discipline plus the realisation that doing can automatically lead to reflection. After their AIR project the OPP students make their own installations, and they’re completely free to choose what they do and what themes and disciplines they do. It always causes a panic, which is brilliant. Then I try to bring them back down: Stop thinking. Start doing. Trust your intuition. Judith: What I like is that the students are left to their own devices. As an educational establishment, it’s important for us to seek out approaches that diverge from just offering. We have to be on the lookout for signs of our own paternalism, for saying, ‘These are the models, this is what we are offering and if you just follow it you’ll get your certificate.’ 66

A MEETING OF TWO COMMUNITIES

John: That’s a very familiar scenario. Students often start with the idea that if they just dutifully follow all the modules then they’ll magically turn into a dancer. It can be difficult to convey the awareness that ultimately they’ve got to do it themselves and need to do more than only master the technique. Bart: That’s why the installation project was so crucial for us. When it’s all left up to you and you alone, you’re faced with a crucial question: What am I doing here? Someone crashes out each year – sometimes they come back later; sometimes they don’t. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that students have to take ownership of their own studies – not just in the project selection, but also in their approach to it. John: Exactly, you need to shake the students up, ask them what their goal is in the coming period. You need to tell them to communicate that to their teachers: get their feedback, take the reins, try to connect study materials yourself. It’s better to take a little step of your own than to have to conclude that although you’ve done plenty, you’re not quite sure what you’ve learned. Steer your own path through what is, to an extent, a static supply of material. Marijke: Is it possible, or permissible, to select students based on this ability? Judith: To put it in very general terms, students need to be curious and want to evolve. The last thing we want here is docile obedience.

AIR – UGO DEHAES

John: It takes some students two years before they’ve learned that. Marijke: Might it be possible to make space in the teaching strategy for students to explore their own questions? Not on an individual level, as you’d find in the Masters, but within the group? The same applies to teachers of course. But are there opportunities in the department for teachers to conduct research and implement it in its educational approach, as one commonly sees in universities? Bart: I feel there is a need for that, but there’s no space for it as yet. John: I overhauled a series of technique lessons recently, because I wanted to try out a new approach. It caused confusion, because I hadn’t explained to the students what my intended purpose was. If I’d have been able to involve them in my research, I could have drawn the students into the process. And ultimately, it’s important for my development as a teacher. After a 90-minute conversation the curriculum was calling once more and it was time to get back to work. But that certainly doesn’t mean an end to the exchange – quite the reverse in fact, because this was just the beginning.

Hester van Hasselt is a performer and writer.

One great big calendar for the whole AHK Hester van Hasselt Modern Theatre Dance students Moreno Perna and Lisa Marie Hennig Olsen talk with Performing Arts Production students Dyan Jakupovic and Job Rietvelt about working collaboratively within the AHK. ‘There are so many people here, so many departments in a single building,’ observed Lisa Marie Hennig Olsen from Modern Theatre Dance, ‘I recently got to know a girl I’d never even met before even though she’s in the second year and I’m in the third. There are so many things happening here all the same time that I don’t get to hear about – performances, presentations, lectures – let alone what’s going on at the Conservatorium, the Academy of Architecture or the Film Academy. The only thing all of us at the school do together once a year is the VERS party!’ Some students do take the initiative to seek each another out. Lisa Marie, for example, has worked a number of times with people from the Conservatorium, and she hears what’s going on there through them. Everyone agreed that more exchange between them would be a good thing. But the problem is how best to achieve that, what with everyone being so busy all the time. During the conversation they came up with the idea of offering evening courses and lectures open to all. Lisa Marie pointed out that the Conservatorium 69

AIR – UGO DEHAES

p u n e Op sons f s o e l d a e ing t s in erat p e , f s f o l a e r a e g k n i i l k r o n o w ati u t i s 70

ONE GREAT BIG CALENDAR FOR THE WHOLE AHK

has a big auditorium there would be perfectly suited for this purpose. Evenings would be the best time for it,’ said Moreno Perna, ‘because we usually stay around and hang out anyway. But these extra events shouldn’t be packed into the timetable; it would be nice to be able to choose for yourself.’ Another interesting idea might be to open up presentations to students from other departments. Lisa Marie explained that, ‘Right now you present your work in a little classroom to your fellow students. I’d be curious to get feedback from another perspective,’ with Dyan responding that, ‘There should be a big message board, a great big online calendar for the whole of the AHK.’ All the students in the discussion expressed a keenness to get involved in a new AIR project, and they were full of ideas for future collaborations: more closely follow each other’s working process, swap the roles of dancer and production manager, act on stage together, or make an installation or play that takes as its departure point the costumes, props and sets made by the Performing Arts Production students, rather than the other way round. The dance students said they regretted not having had the chance to step outside their own discipline, as Lisa Marie explained: ‘I think it’s important for dancers to get to know about other facets of theatre. Sound, light, video and so on are all part of it – even more so now with all the cuts,’ with Job adding that, ‘We could combine them and open up the lessons instead of separating off. I reckon it would be more like a real working situation. It’s all about changing the culture within the building, and this AIR was an attempt in that direction.’

ON AIR – SKILLS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

CREDITS ON AIR Issue March 2014

Graphic design Meeusontwerpt Printing Lecturis

Publisher Art Practice and Development research group Amsterdam School of the Arts T +31 (0)20-5277707 E air@ahk.nl www.air.ahk.nl

UGO DEHAES p. XIV–XV

Coordination Sanne Kersten

AUTHENTIC BOYS p. XI–XIII

AIR – IMAGES

Translation and English editing Steve Green

FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN p. IV–VI

Editors Marijke Hoogenboom, Maria Hagen, Sanne Kersten

MARTIJN ENGELBREGT p. I–III

MICHIEL SCHWARZ p. VII–X

ON AIR is a publication of the Amsterdam school of the Arts exploring the wide-ranging collaborations between guest artists and institutes, and examining the school’s role as a host.

Foto / Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde

ENG p. 10–21

ENG – Presentation of the results of the set design workshop with OPP-students led by Martijn Engelbregt.

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT

NL – Presentatie resultaten decorworkshop OPP-studenten onder leiding van Martijn Engelbregt.

NL p. 10–21

Foto’s / Photos: Coco Duivenvoorde

NL p. 10–21

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT ENG p. 10–21

Foto’s / Photos: Coco Duivenvoorde

NL p. 10–21

III

AIR – MARTIJN ENGELBREGT ENG p. 10–21

Tekening/Drawing: Guyot Duquesnoy Foto/Photo: Thomas Lenden

ENG p. 22–29

ENG – Photographer Thomas Lenden reflects on Rodenkirchen’s work as a script consultant. Which skills are used during the process?

1. LISTENING TO THE INITIAL STORY

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN

NL – Fotograaf Thomas Lenden reflecteert op Rodenkirchen’s werk als scriptconsulent. Welke skills komen in het proces aan bod?

NL p. 22–29

Tekening/Drawing: Guyot Duquesnoy Foto/Photo: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 22–29

2. ESTABLISHING A DIALOGUE

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN ENG p. 22–29

Tekening/Drawing: Guyot Duquesnoy Foto/Photo: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 22–29

3. PROPOSING SOLUTIONS

AIR – FRANZ RODENKIRCHEN ENG p. 22–29

Foto/Photo: Thomas Lenden

ENG p. 30–40

VII

ENG – What happens if we look at the society and direct environment through the lens of ‘sustainism’? How will it affect our view? And our profession?

ENTER THE SUSTAINIST ERA

AIR – MICHIEL SCHWARZ

NL – Wat gebeurt er als we de samenleving en de directe omgeving proberen te zien door de lens van het ‘sustainisme’? Hoe verandert onze blik? En hoe onze professie?

NL p. 30–40

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 30–40

VIII

A SHIFT IN CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

AIR – MICHIEL SCHWARZ ENG p. 30–40

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 30–40

FROM MODERNISM TO SUSTAINISM: From space to place, object to relationship, scale to proportionality, global to local, public domain to commons, time to experience.

AIR – MICHIEL SCHWARZ ENG p. 30–40

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 30–40

FROM HOUSE TO HOME

AIR – MICHIEL SCHWARZ ENG p. 30–40

Foto/Photo: Thomas Lenden

ENG p. 52–61

ENG –From left: Gregory Stauffer, Johannes Dullin, Boris van Hoof and Aaike Stuart, photographed by Thomas Lenden in various public spaces in Amsterdam. How do you make contact and keep connected?

Portugese Synagoge Amsterdam

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS

NL – v.l.n.r. Gregory Stauffer, Johannes Dullin, Boris van Hoof en Aaike Stuart geportretteerd door Thomas Lenden op verschillende plekken in de openbare ruimte van Amsterdam. Hoe maak je contact en blijf je verbonden met de wereld?

NL p. 52–61

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 52–61

XII

Rembrandtplein Amsterdam

Muntplein Amsterdam

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS ENG p. 52–61

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

NL p. 52–61

Muntplein Amsterdam

Johan Daniël Meijerplein

XIII

AIR – AUTHENTIC BOYS

Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam

ENG p. 52–61

Foto / Photo: Coco Duivenvoorde

ENG p. 62–71

XIV

ENG – ‘Protest can take the form of thinking, knowing and looking at the world. But it can also take the form of moving, standing and taking a postion.’ Thirty-three dance students, eleven OPP students, one site-specific performance and eleven installations.

AIR – UGO DEHAES

NL – ‘Protest zit in denken, in weten, in naar de wereld kijken. Maar protest zit ook in bewegen, staan en een positie innemen.’ Drieëndertig dansstudenten, elf OPP studenten, één locatievoorstelling en elf installaties.

NL p. 62–71

Foto’s/Photos: Thomas Lenden

ENG p. 62–71

ENG – Protest, a site-specific performance at the Floshal in Amsterdam.

AIR – UGO DEHAES

NL – Voorstelling Protest op locatie in de Floshal Amsterdam.

NL p. 62–71