The artfestival Scheltema Beweegt in Leiden is a weekend filled with music, theatre, poetic dance and art. Two of our students, Laura Sicouri and Luis Soldevilla, will be participating in this festival.

Laura has created an animation ‘The curious fate of Humankind’. The animation has the set of a strange factory where man is dehumanised and replaced by machines. This work is about how humanity tries to make life manageable and simplicity, but often the opposite is reached; it gets more complicated all the time.

Luis made a video for multiple screens,  that shows movements of people alongside the movement of various machines and mechanisms.

Artfestival Scheltema Beweegt
Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 November 2011
Marktsteeg 1, Leiden

Lecture Mark Terkessidis – open to all the Piet Zwart Institute students

Date: November 01 2011
Time: 10:00  – 11:30 hrs including Q&A
Location: Piet Zwart Institute – Large project room
Address: Karel Doormanhof 45, Rotterdam

Continental Europe never developed an original idea of cultural diversity. Diversity was introduced as a purely negative token, as rupture in the concept of the national. Diversity within societies was recognised either in terms of absence (post-holocaust) or as re-appearance (post-colonial).

But how can diversity be thought of as “post-migrational”? Cities have always been shaped by mobility and migration. So-called globalisation, however, has renewed and accelerated this process. Cities are no longer defined by dwelling but by movement. The city has hence become a vague entity, a “Parapolis”. What is the state of culture in the Parapolis? What is its position in space and time, its ethics and aesthetics, its legitimation and policies? Culture has become part of an urban environment that is defined a forced-upon, sometimes spooky historicity, coincidences and juxtapositions, arbitrariness of references and longing for new coherence.

For an ethics of culture in Parapolis, one may go back to founding texts of Western civilisation. In Homer’s Ulysses is typically seen as the bearer of the Western idea of individual freedom. But he is on a quest for home, which makes him a free human being and a citizen at the same time. The Ulysses of the “Ilias”, “at home” with his fellow Greeks and ready to expand their territory, is a brutal slaughterer. When he returns home at the end of the epic, he commits a massacre in order to be “at home” again and homogenise this territory. The quest for home therefore is the true state of civility.

In Parapolis, dwellers live a “Phililhellenism” of the kind described by Greek writer Mimika Cranaki during his emigration in Paris. The nation no longer works as a homeland, but is still there as an imaginary place. The search for home should therefore be no longer considered transitional, but the essence of civility. Culture has the potential of being the location for negotiating this search. Traditionally, aesthetics has close ties to the concept of emancipation – and its underbelly, the desire of nations and educated middle classes to set themselves apart from others. The aesthetics of culture in Parapolis needs to be more “conversational” and participatory along the lines of, for example, Grant H. Kester. In the aftermath of boding, there seems to be a need for more “banding”. It could therefore make sense to consider any utterance – whether art or not – culture, and focus on “atmospheres” rather than meaning. The culture of Parapolis is not just about diversity, but abundance.

On the basis of these considerations, this lecture will propose a programme of interculture, focusing on the individual with his/her diverse backgrounds and qualifications, and with the potential to open up a new space for negotiating community.

Mark Terkessidis is currently a guest researcher in the lectoraat Cultural Diversity within the research centre Creating 010 of the Rotterdam University.

From 1992 to 1994, he was an editor of the German pop culture magazine “Spex”. From 2003 to 2011 he worked as a host for the intercultural radio programme “Funkhaus Europa” of the West German public broadcasting service. Mark wrote numerous essays on youth and pop culture, migration and racism for German newspapers, magazines and public radio. Together with Tom Holert, he is the co-founder of the Cologne-based Institute for Studies in Visual Culture (isvc.org).

The Dutch/British film ‘Shock Head Soul’ by course director Simon Pummell has been selected for the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Pummell’s film will take part in the Orizzonti competition. The prestigious festival, part of the Biënnale, will take place from August 31 until September 10 2011.

The film paints a picture of succesful German lawyer Daniel Paul Schreber, who claimed in 1893 that he received messages from God through a ‘type writer’ that spanned the kosmos. Schreber then spent nine years in an institution, where he suffered from delusions of cosmic control and the idea that he was slowly changing into a woman. During his confinement, Schreber wrote his now famous  ‘Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken‘, in which he claims that his faith is a matter of religious freedom and that he was mentally able enough to return to society.

The film, which took five years to make, is a combination of documentary interviews, fictional reconstructions and animation. The story explores the boundaries between religious visions, misleading fanaticism and the intimate connection between family secrets, psychiatric diagnoses and our society’s image of psychiatric diseases.

Pummell became known internationally when he received a British Academy Award (BAFTA ) for his transmedia project ‘Bodysong‘ in 2003. He’s not only a writer and director of documentary, animation and fiction, but also a researcher, tutor and course director the Lens-Based master programme.
Barend Onneweer, one of the tutors of the Lens-Based programme, was the visual effects supervisor on Shock Head Soul.

Shock Head Soul is produced by Submarine and Hot Property Films, in collaboration with Keith Griffiths Illuminations Films and in co-production with Serious Film. This production is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Netherlands Film Fund and the Rotterdam Media Fund, with support from The Film Study Center at Harvard University. Besides a film, Shock Head Soul is also a research project affiliated to the Research Programme of the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University.

TO-PO will be performing at the TodaysArt festival in The Hague. To-Po was founded in 2010 by Vincenzo Onnembo [IT] and Yuko Uesu [JP], as a synthetic audio-visual band.

Vincenzo is a graphic designer/ film maker, innovating on the existing VJ flair, with digital and analogue lens-based tools. Yuko is a harpist with a movie camera, and has performed as an improvisor / experimental musician in Tokyo, Beijing, and Rotterdam since 2005. Whether in Chamber music, improvisatory, experimental or post-electronica pop, her work explores the faculty of perception through various creative processes.

Besides perfroming at the Todays Art festival, you also have the opportunity to see TO-PO perform at the Camera Japan Festival in Rotterdam.

The diploma ceremony and opening ceremony of the Lens-Based Graduation Show 2011 were held on Thursday July 14.

Below you will find an impression of these events. The graduation show will be open until August 21 2011.

Graduation Show 2011: WITH ONE EYE ON THE HORIZON

Dates: July 15 – August 21 2011
Opening: Thursday July 14 2011, 20:00 hrs
Location: TENT. Rotterdam
Address: Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam
Open: Tuesday – Sunday, 11:00 – 18.00 hrs

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Mike Smith)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Aad Hoogendoorn)

(Photograph by Mike Smith)

Our student Lena Müller has been nominated for the Prague Quadrennial 2011, worldwide exposition for design and scenography. Together with the designers Roos van Geffen, Theun Mosk en Marloeke van der Vlugt she has created the Dutch contribution to the exhibition.

An empty wooden box created by four designers from the Netherlands: Lena Mueller, Theun Mosk, Marloeke van der Vlugt and Roos van Geffen. They didn’t bring models or photographs of their stage designs. Instead, they created a mobile phone walk through Prague.

The walk is based on the locations depicted on the old photographs found behind the former PQ exhibition building. By taking the tour, the audience will be guided to the locations where the photographs dating around 1968 were taken.

During the route the designers share their thoughts about framing reality.

As a response the visitors take their own photographs, which are printed during the walk and on arrival the visitors can display them in the wooden box.

These pictures form the starting point for a discussion about different ways of looking and about creating (theatrical) images.

To find out more about the route, go to www.7scenes.com, click find and fill in ‘looking for…’

Prague Quadrennial 2011
National Gallery Prague
16 June 2011 – 26 June 2011

From acts of resistance in the form of sculpture and hacking, to video works, cardboard boats and data. Twelve speakers get 5 minutes each to present their work.

Ignite is run by locals, for locals. Founded in Seattle, the events are held around the world. Ignite is fast-paced and merciless, but most of all they’re fun, thought-provoking nights, full of fresh ideas and clever insights. Speakers get five minutes to present their idea. They make twenty slides that auto-advance every fifteen seconds.

Our graduating students Tanja Deman and Zafer Topaloglu have been invited by Ignite to give a talk about their work.

The event will take place on May 25 2011
Time: 20:30 hours
Location: Mediamatic Bank, Vijzelstraat 68, Amsterdam

Our first year student Lena Müller works regularly with the theatre group the Nationaal Toneel. This season she has designed the set of ‘Het Verjaardagsfeest’ (the birthday party ). The decor is being made in the backdrop of the Nationaal Toneel studio.

In a special interview, Lena Müller talks about her way of working, her sources of inspiration and idea behind the stage design of the show.