Open Sandberg 2021

OPE OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN

Sandberg Instituut Master’s Programmes in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design

https://sandberg.nl

Open Sandberg 2021

https://sandberg.nl

SAND BERG SAND BERG SAND BERG

CONTENTS MAIN DEPARTMENTS Critical Studies Design Dirty Art Department Fine Arts Studio for Immediate Spaces

Open for applications Open for applications Open for applications Open for applications Open for applications

6 8 10 12 14

TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES Blacker Blackness Open for Applications 16 Ecologies of Transformation Open for Applications 18 Approaching Language Current 20 Disarming Design Current 22 F for Fact Current 24 Resolution Current 26 29 – 64

https://sandberg.nl

NOTES TO FUTURE STUDENTS FINISHED TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES Challenging Jewellery The Commoners’ Society Master Design of Experiences Radical Cut-Up Shadow Channel Master of Voice Reinventing Daily Life Fashion Matters Materialisation in Art and Design Cure Master Designing Democracy System D Academy Material Utopias School of Missing Studies Vacant NL

2018 – 2020 2018 – 2020 2017 – 2019 2017 – 2019 2017 – 2019 2016 – 2018 2016 – 2018 2015 – 2017 2015 – 2017 2014 – 2016 2014 – 2016 2014 – 2016 2013 – 2015 2013 – 2015 2011 – 2013

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

FLOOR PLAN

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GRADUATION 2020

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This publication maps the scheduled infrastructure at the Sandberg Instituut in 2021 and offers a glimpse of the Graduation 2020 final works. Read into the Main Departments and Temporary Programmes. For news and updates visit www.sandberg.nl Since 7 January 2019 the Sandberg Instituut is located in the Fedlev building & Benthem Crouwel building at Fred. Roeskestraat 98, 1076 ED Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

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SANDBERG INSTITUUT As the postgraduate programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, the Sandberg Instituut offers Master Programmes in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design. The five Main Departments aim to deepen the practices of artists, designers and critics. In addition, the Temporary Programmes reflect on specific urgencies in society and the arts, and the Hosted Programmes focus on collaboration with other institutes.

MAIN DEPARTMENTS Sandberg Instituut’s Main Departments are Critical Studies, Design, The Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts and Studio for Immediate Spaces. An average of only twenty students per programme allows each course to be flexible and open to initiatives from students and third parties. The course directors, who are prominent artists, designers, theorists and curators with international practices, invite tutors and guests who are able to challenge the students to critically reflect on their profession, their work and their progress. https://sandberg.nl

The Sandberg Instituut is open to candidates from many different backgrounds. We require a valid Bachelor degree in a field relevant to the programme you are applying for, as well as proof of proficiency in the English language.

TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES Jurgen Bey, the Sandberg Instituut artistic director since 2010, has sought to find ways to align the institute with the dynamics of contemporary society. Bey introduced two-year Temporary Programmes that are developed according to urgent world issues.

Vacant NL – the first Temporary Programme – was launched in 2011 and explored the vast potential of the thousands of vacant buildings in the Netherlands. In 2013, two additional temporary programmes were introduced: the School of Missing Studies dealt with art and the public space, whereas Material Utopias investigated the shifting boundaries between materials and techniques.

Other finished Temporary Programmes include System D Academy, Cure Master, Designing Democracy, Materialisation in Art and Design, Fashion Matters, Master of Voice, Reinventing Daily Life, Master Design of Experiences, Radical Cut-Up, Shadow Channel, Challenging Jewellery and The Commoners’ Society. Current Temporary Programmes are, Approaching Language, Resolution, Disarming Design and F for Fact. The two new Temporary Programmes starting in 2021 are Blacker Blackness and Ecologies of Transformation.

Director Jurgen Bey Staff Coordinator Marjo van Baar General Coordinator Anke Zedelius Education Advisor Jaap Vinken Administration & Finances Nancy van Vooren Medialab Ineke Bakker Jan Kees van Kampen Brian McKenna Ivo van Stiphout Location Fedlev building & Benthem Crouwel building Fred. Roeskestraat 98 1076 ED Amsterdam Contact T: +31 (0)20 588 24 00 E: info@sandberg.nl W: www.sandberg.nl Application Information There are four steps in the application process: Step 1: Registration You can register online from January 4, 2021 Deadline is April 1, 2021 Step 2: Motivation Upload your motivation letter together with samples of your work.Applications need to be submitted by 1 April 2021 at the latest.

Step 3: Interview Selected candidates will receive an interview invitation.

Step 4: Acceptance If successful you will be asked to submit additional paper work and pay the tuition fee.

We will complete your application and accept you as a student upon receiving the tuition fee.

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RESEARCH

Degrees

Research at Sandberg Instituut is research that opens the possibilities of imagination. This means that questioning dominant paradigms becomes embedded in the way we approach learning, making and creating. Imagination that is not limited to the way things are but rather to the possibilities of what could be. We conceive of the institute as a place for interdisciplinary research and cross-pollination that exceeds the confines of conventional academic disciplines. In our search for new forms of engagement with research we work through de-centering and dislocating the traditional sources of knowledge to give way to what has always been relegated to the periphery.

Knowledge, then, not as a top/down resource that is transmitted through authoritative practices but as part of shared experiences where the emphasis is put in searching together rather than in uncritical dominance. The Research at Sandberg Instituut consists of fellowships, research cafe, publications, lectures and a CrD pilot.

ORGANISATIONS

Sandberg Instituut’s Master’s courses are funded by the Dutch Government and accredited by the Dutch Flemish Accreditation Organisation (see NVAO). As the postgraduate programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, we offer Master’s programmes in the fields of Fine Arts, Design and Interior Architecture.

The institute is licensed to issue Master of Arts degrees: MA in Fine Art and Design for all programmes, with the exception of the SIS programme which leads to MA in Interior Architecture. This exception is made because this degree is required in the Netherlands to register as an interior architect.

Tuition fees

https://sandberg.nl

Through collaborative efforts various independent Organisations (short and long term) are supported by the Sandberg Instituut.

In relation to the two year Master’s education, these Organisations consist of projects, programmes, exhibitions, publications and gatherings for both current students, alumni and staff as well as a professional audience and public with an interest in fine arts, design and architecture. Organisations include The One Minutes (1998), Kunstvlaai (2004), Typeface (2013), Rietveld Pavilion (2015), De School (2017), PS (2017), Sandberg Series (2017), Decolonial Futures (2018), PUB (2018), Sandberg Speakeasy (2018), Unsettling (2018), Englishes MOOC (2019), Hear! Here! (2019), Commissioned Critique (2019), UNDER CONSTRUCTION (2019), and Student Circle (2020).

Fee for EU/EEA students without a Dutch masters degree: € 2.664,00 All students who followed a Master’s programme in The Netherlands and obtained a Dutch masters degree: € 6.456,00 Fee for non-EU/EEA students: € 6.456,00 Non-EU/EEA students can possibly apply for a Holland Scholarship.

OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS From 4 January until 1 April 2021 the Sandberg Instituut is open for applications to the Main Departments and new Temporary Programmes. For more information and to apply to the Sandberg Instituut, visit www.sandberg.nl/apply-now OPEN SANDBERG During Open Sandberg, on 4 February 2021 from 14:00 – 19:00, the public, professional audience and press are invited to virtually visit the Main Departments, Temporary Programmes, organisations and unions at the Sandberg Instituut. A schedule with chats, talks and Q&A will be announced on www.sandberg.nl/open2021

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https://sandberg.nl/main-department-critical-studies

CRIT I CAL STUD IES

CRITICAL STUDIES Main Department Open for Applications Department Director Tom Vandeputte Coordinator Will Pollard Team Flavia Dzodan, Amelia Groom, Aylin Kuryel, Gavin Mueller, Will Pollard, belit sağ, Mikki Stelder, Linda Stupart, Thijs Witty, Mia You, Simone Zeefuik, Quinsy Gario, Lara Mazurski Guests 2020 – 2021 Suzanne Dhaliwal, Françoise Vergès, Asad Haider, Mijke van der Drift, Redi Koobak, Vanessa E. Thompson, Daniel Loick, Adam Elliott-Cooper, among others 2019 – 2020 Jeff Diamanti, Elena Vogman, Oxana Timofeeva, Renisa Mawani, Françoise Vergès, Alberto Toscano and Bram Mellink, among others 2018 – 2019 Cédric Durand, Max Haiven, Maija Timonen, Nadine El-Enany, Sandro Mezzadra, Adam Elliot-Cooper, Anne Boyer, Florian Cramer, Yolande van der Heide, Becket Mingwen, Stephanie Comilang and Femke Herregraven, among others

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ABOUT CRITICAL STUDIES Critical Studies is a two-year Master’s programme in research and theory. The programme offers an open, interdisciplinary environment for the development of an independent research practice, while providing a rigorous grounding in critical theory, research methods and writing techniques. We are especially interested in forms of inquiry and study that are at odds with traditional academic frameworks, including practice-led research and other intersections of research, practice and theoretical inquiry.

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-critical-studies

Participants have the possibility to pursue a self-initiated research project with great autonomy, working individually or collectively with supervisors of their choice. Research projects are presented in a series of regular colloquia, which function as spaces for collective discussion and exchange. In addition to this, participants are provided with the support and resources for the development of collaborative projects related to their research, such as publications, exhibitions, screenings or symposia.

Alongside the research trajectory, participants take part in a programme of seminars, lectures and workshops. This programme provides a thorough introduction to key concepts in critical theory and continental philosophy, explores research methodologies in relation to cultural practices and supports participants in the development of a writing practice. In addition to this general programme, each month specific themes are addressed in depth during lectures and seminars given by visiting speakers. Participants take an active part in shaping the educational programme and have the opportunity to organise workshops, seminars and excursions in parallel with it.

Critical Studies welcomes applicants from a range of backgrounds, including writers, editors, theorists, artists, curators, educators and other cultural practitioners interested in exploring points of convergence between research, practice and writing. Critical Studies explicitly welcomes applicants who want to diverge from a trajectory that they have previously embarked on, seeking an environment that offers space for further development and experimentation.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sandbergcriticalstudies

Participants 1st Year 2020– 2022 Johanna Ekenhorst Alec Mateo Anastasija Kiake Anastasia Simoni Stergioula Jasper Westhaus Abhay Aullen Mistry 2nd Year 2019 – 2021 Violeta Paez Armando Jeanine van Berkel Sina Egger Al Primrose Benjamin Schoonenberg Romy Day Winkel Alumni Graduates 2020 Nicholas Reilly-McVittie Patrycja Rozwora Luca Soudant Aimée Theriot Ben Tupper Graduates 2019 Mohamad Deeb Vita Evangelista Lucie Fortuin Harriet Foyster Silke Xenia Juul Nemo Koning Sekai Makoni Maria Muuk Filippo Tocchi Aidan Wall Graduates 2018 Lucie Berjoan Callum Copley François Girard-Meunier Özgür Kar Asja Novak Willem van Weelden

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https://sandberg.nl/main-department-design

DE SIGN

DESIGN Main Department Open for Applications Department Director Anja Groten Coordinator Zhenia Sveshchinskaya Team Tina Bastajian, Flavia Dzodan, Silvio Lorusso, Taylor Le Melle, Christian Nyampeta, Luiza Prado, Daniel van der Velden, Amy Suo Wu Guests 2020 – 2021 Hamja Ahsan, Salim Bayri, Lucie de Bréchard, Rowena Buur, Joshua Citarella, Cultural Workers Unite, Jesse Darling, Roberto Perez Gayo, Selby Gildemacher, Miquel Hervás Gómez, Gabriel Fontana, Anastasia Kubrak, Simon Wald Lasowski, Juliette Lizotte, Ott Metusala, Nat Muller, Gabriel .A. Maher, Sekai Makoni, Harriet Morley, Margarita Osipian, Will Pollard, PUB, Marnie Slater, Vivien Tauchmann, Julien Thomas, Varia 2019 – 2020 Fiep Bogedom, Petra Van Brabandt, Jesse Darling, Anja Kaiser, Jan-Kees van Kampen, Anastasia Kubrak, Annette Krauss, Klaar van der Lippe, Juliette Lizotte, Gabriel A. Maher, Sekai Makoni, Tessa Meeus, Nirit Peled, Will Pollard, PUB, Tina Reden, Rob Schröder, Marco Segato, Carolyn Smith (We Are Here Venice), Rebecca Stephanie, Bart Stuart, Julien Thomas, Varia, Alex Walker, Agustina Woodgate, Mawani, Françoise Vergès, Alberto Toscano, Bram Mellink

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ABOUT DESIGN

Participants

The Design Department is a two-year Master’s programme that provides a collaborative environment for students to develop their projects and practices. Due to the open structure of the curriculum, we are able to reflect on, and respond to urgent topics, current discourses, and the interests of our students and tutors.

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-design

The students and tutors of the Design Department work through the complexities and contradictions of our current time. Their modes of expression range from print work, digital interfaces, films and videos, network infrastructures, games, performances, writing, educational platforms, audio tours, and more. The students at the Design Department share the necessity to communicate through their work, may it be through informative, lyrical, dialogical, discursive, or confrontational modes of expression. Considering design as a practice of ‘making things public’, we aim to analyse the politics inherent in design, through actively opening up, sharing and reviewing design in progress.

The Design Department welcomes students that are underrepresented in the field of design, art, education, and beyond. We are looking for students from a variety of backgrounds who like to embark upon self-initiated projects, engage in collaboration with fellow students, start new coalitions, design new forms for working side by side, learning and unlearning together. Students of the Design Department want to challenge their existing practices, embrace their vulnerabilities, sincerely deal with their own dilemmas, and will put those up for discussion.

1st year 2020 – 2022 Leïth Benkhedda Insa Deist Jan Egbers Lukas Engelhardt Ladipo Famodu Tal Goldstein Thi Hoai Le Yannesh Meijman Katharina Nejdl Jochem Ruarus Alix Stria Sheona Turnbull Micaela Terk 2nd year 2019 – 2021 Anna Bierler Toni Brell Zgjim Elshani Ghenwa Abou Fayad Stelios Markou Ilchuk Pernilla Manjula Philip Marisa Torres Rodriguez Alumni Graduates 2020 Emirhan Akin Carmen Dusmet Carrasco Levi van Gelder Andrea González Francisca Khamis Giacoman Tali Liberman Heleen Mineur Nicolò Pellarin Charlotte Rohde Wouter Stroet Fabian Tombers Hanna Valle Graduates 2019 Lucie de Bréchard Rowena Buur Miquel Hervás Gómez Sascha Krischock Tessa Meeus Samuli Saarinen Andreas Trenker Alex Walker Karina Zavidova Graduates 2018 Mateo Broillet Jùlia Carvalho de Aguiar Asja Keema Anastasia Kubrak Sherida Kuffour Heikki Lotvonen Stefanie Luchtenberg Juan Pablo Mejia Tereza Rullerova

Website: www.sandberg.nl/main-department-design Instagram: @sandbergdesigndepartment

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DIRT Y ART DE PART MENT

DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT Main Department Open for Applications Department Director Jerszy Seymour Co-Director Florence Parot Coordinator Helena Lambrechts Team Saâdane Afif, Daniel Dewar, Ioannis Mouravas, Anna Reutinger

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-dirty-art-department

Thesis Supervisor Catherine Somzé Guests

2020 – 2021 Mary Maggic, Mehraneh Atashi, Clara Balaguer, Charl Landvreugd, Typhoon Angels, Vava Dudu, La Chatte, Radio Orsimanirana, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Yunjoo Kwak, Unsettling (Judith Leysner & Tracian Meikle), The Black Archives 2019 – 2020 Amica Dall (Assemble), Emanuele Braga (M^C^O), Anna Reutinger, Tom Kemp, Giovanni Bozzoli, Nagaré Willemsen, Sonia Kacem, Mehraneh Atashi, Gaëlle Choisne, Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, Kitty Maria, Taka Taka, Eurico Sá Fernandez, DVTK, Invernomuto, Aurélien Lepetit 2018 – 2019 Matthijs De Bruijn and Cecilia Vellejos, Leopold Bianchini, Deborah Bowmann, Scott Evans and Wolfgang Gantner (Gelitin), Charl Landvreugd, Matteo Lucchetti, Anna Reutinger, Jonas Staal, Pilvi Takala, Zoe Gray and Jeremy Shaw, Xenia Kalpaksoglou, Fabian Schöneich, Alban Karsten

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ABOUT DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT The Dirty Art Department offers itself as an open space for all possible thought, creation, and action. It sees itself as a dynamic paradox, flowing between the pure and the applied, the existential and the deterministic, and the holy and the profane. It is concerned with individuality, collectivity, and our navigation of the complex relationship between the built world and the natural world, and other people and ourselves. It’s a place to build objects or totems, religions or websites, revolutions or business models, paintings, or galaxies.

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-dirty-art-department

The Dirty Art Department comes from a common background of design and applied art, it seeks however to reject the Kantian division between the pure and the applied. Since ‘god is dead’ and ‘the spectacle’ is omnipresent, it sees the creation of alternative and new realities as the way to reconsider our life situation on this planet.

The aim of the Dirty Art Department is to develop singular individual and collective practices, regardless of medium or subject, and to give an insight into how to place these practices into the existing contexts of art, design, performance, writing, pizza making, etc.

The final challenge is to create a new context that is, the transformation of reality. The Dirty Art Department promotes a strong theoretical and philosophical agenda and is open to dangerous attempts and spectacular failures. It sees itself as a journey, and wherever it stops off, it remembers that ‘Any Space is the Place.’”

Milestones: In collaboration with the Macao Collective, with which DAD has been collaborating for five years, the department was nominated for the inaugural Milan Design Prize in 2016 with the project the Wandering School, a collective living and social sculpture. In 2018 the department continued its trip with the Wandering School Part 2: Revolution or Bust!, a dérive that included meeting the oracle of Delphi, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, walking through the wilderness to Athens, clashes with Titans, a peace offering to the Gods, helping to rebuild a refugee centre, regular encounters with tear gas, and just simply being there. The collective film Revolution or Bust! was presented at the third Youth Biennale of Bolzano in 2018, curated by Christian Jankowski.

The Dirty Art Department is open to students from all backgrounds, including designers, artists, bankers, sceptics, optimists, economists, philosophers, sociologists, independent thinkers, poets, urban planners, farmers, anarchists and the curious. Please enjoy the trip.

Website: www.dirtyartdepartment.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/dirtyartdepartment Instagram: @dirtyartdepartment

Participants 1st year 2020 – 2022 Camille Bree Noah Cohen Ludovic Hadjeras Ida Jonsson Ana Lipps Francesca Miazzi Benoit Gilles Michel Ciara O’Kelly Elisabeth Prehn Liane Rosenthal Simon Saarinen Noemie Tshisumpa Finn Wagner Wei Yang 2nd year 2019 – 2021 Eloy Cruz del Prado Negiste Yesside Johnson Margaux Koch Marvin Ogger Mariana Jurado Rico Lucie Sahner Jan Vahl Jeanne Vrastor Alumni Graduates 2020 Veronika Babayan Constantin Dichtl Janina Fritz Natalia Jordanova Sara Santana López Cóilín O’Connell Octave Rimbert-Rivière Sophia Simensky Linda Stauffer Graduates 2019 Sun Chang Sara Daniel Walter Gotsch Jason Harvey Selma Koran Jeroen Kortekaas Christopher Lawrence David Haack Monberg Rachele Monti Daniel Munoz Ordonez Jean-Francois Peschot Leo Ravy Thomasz Skibicki Graduates 2018 Andrea Lopez Bernal Giovanni Bozzoli Quintin Dupuy Andrés García Lotte Hardeman Tom Kemp Anna Laederach Nagare Willemsen

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https://sandberg.nl/main-department-fine-arts

FINE ARTS

FINE ARTS Main Department Open for Applications Department Director Maxine Kopsa Coordinator Judith Leysner Tutors & Thesis Mentors Jeroen Boomgaard, Gintaras Didziapetris, Lucy Skaer, Mark Turner, Yolande van der Heide Guests 2020 – 2021 Ama Josephine Budge, CA Conrad, Michael Tedja, Melissa Gorden, Isabel Lewis, Jason Dodge, Alexis Mitchell, Nora Turato, Falke Pisano, Marijus Aleksa, Monica Szewczyk, James Beckett, Philip Coyne, Timo Demolin, Fiona Connor, Rachel Dagnall, Tomislav Feller, Sara Rose, Charlotte Prodger, Rosalind Nashashibi, Chiara Chiovando, Katja Novitskova 2019 – 2020 Ama Josephine Budge, CA Conrad, Precious Okoyomon, Gabriel Lester, Elena Narbutaitė, Monika Szewcyzk, Melvin Moti, Ellen de Bruijne, Angie Keefer, Jason Dodge, Suzanne v/d Ven, Willehad Eilers, Nora Baron, Arnisa Zeqo, Philip Coyne, Falke Pisano, Clare Butcher, Isabel Lewis, Egle Budvytyte, Sofia Hernandez, Chong Cuy, Nina Canell 2017 – 2018 Tarek Atoui, Maria Barnas, Mor Bashan, James Beckett, Saskia Bos, CA Conrad, Jeremiah Day, Jason Dodge, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Nicoline van Harskamp, Ishion Hutchinson, Sam Keogh, Isabel Lewis, Sarah de Meuse, Valzhyna Mort, Benjamin Moser, Hans Schnitzler, Dror Shoval, Grace Schwindt, Robert Wilhite, Suzanne van de Ven

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ABOUT FINE ARTS The Fine Arts Department retains a focus on autonomy and making, while addressing the social and economic roles of art production.

During the Fine Arts Master’s, our students become more of themselves, stronger in who they are and what position they intend to take on in society. They reflect on their own practice, and what it might mean on a grander scale, especially in relation to understanding one’s position in the world. The department helps to create and test a student’s individual parameters helping them to gauge the effect their work, and challenging them to be able to critically support a piece in the context of its exhibition.

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-fine-arts

At the core of the programme are the consistent conversations held with the main tutors throughout the two-year period. Alongside these regular dialogues, guest tutors are invited for seminars and tutorials both in first and second year. Studio time thus alternates with an extensive series of workshops, seminars, and one-off events, that also steer the student to less familiar areas within their practice. In addition to these guests and activities, an annual group exhibition is held early on in the year and research excursions abroad take place twice annually. These trips are subdivided in focus and aim: for second-year students, an intense winter thesis writing & reflection period is organised abroad (in the past to the Arctic Circle, The Isle of Lewis and Delphi), while the first years partake in a shorter programmed excursion outside of The Netherlands. All students join in a department-wide spring research trip (in the past to Glasgow, Athens, Naples and Sharjah).

Several times a year, students come together with staff and tutors to discuss common interests that have emerged and can be addressed with the help of experts who, following these sessions, are invited accordingly. Student-led activities, such as group crits, film nights and Monday lunches are encouraged, while internal platforms are in place to promote small-scale try-outs and experimentation in presentation. In short, the Sandberg Instituut functions as a base for the Fine Arts students, while encouraging participants to develop and test their practice both within and beyond the school.

Candidates should be motivated to question their existing practice.

An extreme curiosity is essential, as well as a willingness to enter into deep conversation with tutors and peers. Perhaps most crucially, students need to be able to work and think independently – and not be afraid to critically reflect on their work. Prospective students will be evaluated on their motivation, previous experience and portfolio. The admissions committee will focus on the authenticity, artistry and autonomous visual quality of the work presented.

Participants 1st year 2020 – 2022 Sarafina van Ast Atefeh Alaeddin Isabelle DuBois Sean Henry Smith Zwaantje Kurpershoek Rene Mcbrearty Agnese Smaldone Balázs Varju Tóth 2nd year 2019 – 2021 Maja Chiara Faber Christian Herren Kaspar de Jong Helena Keskküla Ji Hye Lee Boyan Montero Alice Slyngstad Tao Yang Alumni Graduates 2020 Anouk Asselineau Anna Maria Balint Jesper Henningsson Miriam Kongstad Alexander Kuusik Pedro Matias Yara Said Sasha Sergienko Dimitris Theocharis Lieselot Versteeg Myrto Vratsanou Klara Waara Graduates 2019 Mariah Blue Mark Buckeridge Kathrin Graf Lana Murdochy Wyatt Niehaus Julie Pusztai Tina Reden YounWon Sohn Amy Winstanley Graduates 2018 Johanna Arco Loidys Carnero Philip Coyne Timo Demollin Philip Ortelli Alice dos Reis Mai Spring Tatsuhiko Togashi Mong-Hsuan Tsai

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STU DI DI ATE O SPA FOR CES IM ME STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES Main Department Open for Applications Department Directors Julian Schubert Ludwig Engel Coordinator Arie de Fijter

Team Paolo Patelli, Florence Jung, Rebekka ​Kiesewetter, María Mazzanti, Leonard ​Streich, Elena ​Schütz, Johanna Seelemann

2020 – 2021 Ana Teixeira Pinto, Ana María Gómez López, Artor Jesus Inkerö, Danielle Alhasid, Dina Mohamed, Gabriel Maher, Independent School for the City (Mike Emmerik, Michelle Provoost), Irma Abasi Okon, James Beckett, Kristoffer Zeiner, Léopold Lambert, Lua Vollaard, Martin Herbert, Max Hart Nibbig, Olaf Grawert, René Boer (Failed Architecture),

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-studio-for-immediate-spaces

Guests

Tomo Savic Gecan, Touche Touche (Carolin Gieszner, Theo Demans), Yana Foqué (Kunstverein)

Research fellow 2020 – 2021 Marjan van Aubel

2019 – 2020 Amica Dall (Assemble), Studio, Anh-Linh Ngo (ARCH+), Art Ashram, Bojana Mladenovic, Fabian Knecht, Formafantasma, Gareth Bell-Jones (Flat Time House), Joanna Kamm, Lorenzo Pezzani & Susan Schuppli (Forensic Architecture / Goldsmith College), Matthias Wermke, Oskar Kohnen, raumlabor berlin, Rene Boer (Failed Architecture), Studio Olafur Eliasson, Tobias Becker

Research fellow 2019 – 2020 Rebekka Kiesewetter

2018 – 2019 Leopold Banchini, Elise van Mourik, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Julian Schubert, Laure Jaffuel, Marie-Avril Berthet, Tom Vandeputte, Mediengruppe Bitnik, Andrea Zavala, Boudewijn van den Breemer, Celine Talens, Claire Manent, Elena Schütz, Femke Dekker, Hector Zamora, Jija Sohn, Katinka de Jonge, Ludovic Balland, Ludwig Engel, Marina Otero, Mark Minkjan, Mark Redele, Neeltje ten Westend, Paolo Patelli, Paul Chatterton, Petra Noordkamp, Stephane Damsin, Sofia Mourato, Tom Dillon, Yana Foqué 14

ABOUT STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES Studio for Immediate Spaces is a two-year Master’s programme on space-related practices. Questions of politics, ecology, society, technology, economy manifest in space. How they play out in reality also defines different possibilities of how to come together, how to manage work, leisure, resources and commons in a time of ecological collapse and social divide. Through site-specific works, location-based installations, situated research and context-driven scenography the course participants explore spatially engaging strategies beyond disciplinary boundaries.

https://sandberg.nl/main-department-studio-for-immediate-spaces

Space is both, a theoretical entity and a real thing – continuously informing one another. Thus the aim of the program is to explore possibilities to work in space and to find means to act on in. Therefore the Studio looks for ways to deepen the understanding of and knowledge about space and guide the course participants towards positions that positively and productively engage with the world around them.

The Studio is set up as a post-disciplinary laboratory testing ideas that have relevance for how we live today and how we could live tomorrow beyond the disciplines of art, design and architecture that continue failing to bring about change as they stay trapped in their inherent logics and economic systems. The question „How to live together?“ serves as a guiding principle for the course’s approach. The practices developed during the course are informed by contemporary discourse on space, yet they foster independence and criticality and push for an execution on the scale of 1:1 to directly engage with a given context. As artistic positions they inform the discourse of spatial practices, as design positions they propose alternative solutions with artistic means.

The Studio for Immediate Spaces invites ‘undisciplinary spatialists,’ who prefer the collective effort of making space to an alleged genius gesture of the individual master. It aims to develop practices that are informed by an uncompromised and autonomous perspective in a time when spatial experts are so direly needed to proactively and productively shape the world.

Website: www.immediatespaces.nl Facebook: www.facebook.com/immediatespaces Instagram: @immediatespaces

Participants 1st year 2020 – 2022 Virada Banjurtrungkajorn Emilie Bordes Jon González De Matauko Natasha Linde Krebs Luis Lecea Ella Mathys Stefan Meyer Stefania Rigoni Matteo Viviano Aleksandra Zawistowska 2nd year 2019 – 2021 Johan Devigo Daphné Keraudren Valentine Langeard George Mazari Eleni Papadimitriou Sabrina Schlosser Maria van der Togt Diego Virgen Mathias Vincent Hannah Whittle Mariel Williams Zane Zeivate Jun Zhang Alumni Graduates 2020 Beatriz Conefrey Kyulim Kim Goytung (Wei Tung Kuo) María Mazzanti Spazio Cura Roman Tkachenko Michael Weber Andoni Zamora Chacartegui Graduates 2019 Andrea Belosi Elia Castino Antoine Guay Mathilde Helbo Stubmark Francesca Lucchitta Christelle Davide Sanvee Maike Statz Elizaveta Strakhova Graduates 2018 Niels Albers Malissa Anne Canez Sabus Gauthier Chambry Naomi Credé Samuel Kuhfuss Gustavsen Liene Pavlovska Mirko Podkowik Rein Verhoef

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-blacker-blackness

BLACK ER BLACK NESS

BLACKER BLACKNESS New Temporary Programme (2021 – 2023) Open for Applications Programme Director Simone Zeefuik Coordinator Elif Ozbay Team Ola Hassanain, Zawdie Sandvliet Guests Books&Rhymes (Sarah OzoIrabor), Charl Landvreugd, Guno Jones, Mark Ponte

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ABOUT BLACKER BLACKNESS Blacker Blackness, a new Temporary Programme at Sandberg Instituut, focuses on imagination as a method to decolonize, uncode and liberate representations of Blackness in art and design. What are the questions you ask, your way of archiving, your use of existing archives and/or your selection of art when you center the interior lives, memories, connecting identities and lived experiences of Black people?

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-blacker-blackness

The gap between the number of exhibitions and art shows in WesternEurope that center Blackness and those that center decolonial Black audiences is telling. What’s missing from these so-called ground breaking projects is a collective refusal of the idea that one must always approach Blackness from a variation of the question: “How does this relate to whiteness?” Unlearning this reflex creates room to center questions that take artists beyond the point of constantly having to explain oneself. What freedoms come with that and how do the various artistic landscapes benefit from these artistic and intellectual liberations?

The Blacker Blackness course will analyze and develop research and artistic practices rooted in Black-centered imaginations. We’ll study and create artistic representations of Afro-European communities whose presence can be traced from the 15th century until today.

While focusing on the interior lives, joys, refusals and everydayness of these Afrodiasporic communities, we’ll use imagination as a (re) centering tool.

The Blacker Blackness course requires a two year investment in decolonial, anti-racist, hype-free artistic representations of Blackness. The Temporary Programme welcomes students interested in literature and visual art by decolonial Afro-European, AfroCaribbean and Africontinental writers, as well as those in dire need to picture and discuss Blackness in ways that aren’t solely linked to trauma, injustice or so-called street culture.

Website: www.blackerblackness.com Instagram: @blackerblackness

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ECOLO GIES OF TRANS FORMA TION

ECOLOGIES OF TRANSFORMATION New Temporary Programme (2021 – 2023) Open for Applications

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-ecologies-of-transformation

Programme Director Camille Barton Coordinator Nagare Willemsen

Tutors and guests to be announced.

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ABOUT ECOLOGIES OF TRANSFORMATION “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

— Toni Cade Bambara In this period of political uncertainty, Sandberg Instituut’s new Temporary Programme: Ecologies of Transformation will research how we can integrate art and embodiment to develop paths towards social change. The course will research and develop artistic practices rooted in care and pleasure as an antidote to the burn out that is common to activism cultures.

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-ecologies-of-transformation

Ecologies of Transformation is underpinned by the idea that learning about the past allows us to vision and grow new futures. Aspects of postcolonial theory, intersectional feminism and disability justice will be explored, alongside core texts including Rae Johnson’s Embodied Social Justice, Mary Watkins & Helene Schulman’s Towards Psychologies of Liberation, as well as adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy series. The intention is to spend more time growing solutions than dismantling problems, while maintaining a generative critical lens to create work which facilitates community change.

Ecologies of Transformation will support participants to confront the self, live the lessons and research their own embodied journeys.

The first year will explore body-based practices to manage stress in order to sustain social change work. Interdisciplinary research will be analyzed to understand the political moment and how to create bridges across difference. In addition to the writing of the thesis and developing of final works, the second year is focused on partnering with Netherlands based organisations to bring trauma informed research and artistic practice into community contexts. Throughout the programme transformational theatre tools, such as Theatre of the Oppressed, will be used to hold multiple narratives and move beyond the victim - perpetrator binary, to acknowledge ways we can be harmed and simultaneously be a source of harm in a variety of roles, including bystander or witness.

The programme consists of lectures, embodiment workshops, co-created content and reflective group discussion. International guests from the intersections of art and activism will share practices that are helpful in creating transformation, such as Pleasure Activism. Independent work will be encouraged, alongside collaborative projects within the course group and wider school.

Participants will present new work at the end of each semester.

Performance or movement artists, experience designers, curators, art therapists, filmmakers, visual artists, interdisciplinary practitioners with curious minds and compassionate presence, are warmly invited to apply. We encourage applicants from the global south or those with ancestry from outside of Europe.

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APP ROACH ING

APPROACHING LANGUAGE Current Temporary Programme (2019 – 2021) Programme Directors Maria Barnas, Ilse van Rijn

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-approaching-language

Coordinator Antoinette Vonder Mühll

Tutors & Guests

2020 – 2021 Sara Giannini, Amelia Groom, Phil Baber, Riet Wijnen, Becket MWN, Giulia Damiani, Rosemarie Buikema, Ian Page & Ozgur Atlagan, Sands Murray-Wassink, Alfred Schaffer, and more to be announced 2019 – 2020 Ilse van Rijn, Maria Barnas, Maria Fusco, Mia Lerm Hayes, Ola Vasiljeva, Josse Pyl, Nora Turato, Jungmyung Lee, Dina Danish, Mia You, Alfred Schaffer, Carlos Amorales, Felix Salut, Dora Garcia, The One Minutes/ Ceel Mogami de Haas, W.G. Sebald

LAN GUAGE

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ABOUT APPROACHING LANGUAGE A L is a two year temporary master programme for experiments and projects with language in the context of visual art. Texts are assembled, written, rewritten, read, read out, performed, printed, published or can serve as the basis for projects in for example poetry, sculpture, soundpieces, (graphic) design or film.

Participants Manon Bachelier Manola Buonincontri Constanza Castagnet Teun Grondman Megan Hadfield Raphael Jacobs Calli Layton Anna-Bella Papp Maria Paris Eun Jae Pil

A L asks what forms language can take in art and literature and where these can be situated. Even though most artists see writing as a natural part of their practise, it is not clear where their texts end up. They often seem to fall in between exhibition and publication material. What other options can be created? How to exhibit an essay? How to install a poem? https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-approaching-language

A L investigates language as malleable matter that shapes and determines ways of thinking, ruling our everyday life, from the personal to intricate socio-political and ethical structures.

Is there a language for existing in between languages, silences, realities, bodies? Can language be physical matter, to an extent that it becomes solid or fluid matter?

A lot of questions remain on how language mechanisms influence what we see, and what we think we understand; how we can even begin with thinking we can express ourselves.

As part of the programme, in the final year, A L hosts the lecture series Who’s There *, investigating the role of the first person in visual art, literature and life. Invited speakers give workshops based on their insights and questions.

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-disarming-design

DIS ARM ING DE SIGN

DISARMING DESIGN Current Temporary Programme (2020 – 2022) Programme Director Annelys de Vet Coordinator Francisca Khamis Team PING (collective), Rana Ghavami, Lara Khaldi, Yazan Khalili, Huda SmitshuijzenAbiFarès , Jonas Staal Guests Salim Bayri, Flavia Dzodan, Foundland (Lauren Alexander & Ghalia Elsrakbi), Pascal Gielen, Anja Groten, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Juliette Lizotte, Nat Mulller, Marina Otero, Bahia Shehab, SulSalSol (Hannes Bernard, Guido Giglio), Julien Thomas, Petra Van Brabandt

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ABOUT DISARMING DESIGN Disarming Design is a two-year Master programme at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam committed to design practices that deal with conditions of conflict, oppressive forces and entangled histories.

Operating at the intersection of design, crafts, community and politics, the programme derives from the long-term collaboration between the Design Department and the design platform ‘Disarming Design from Palestine’.

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-disarming-design

Disarming Design aims to question, challenge and locate the social, political and emancipatory potential of design practices and other organisational art forms. Building upon the relations and involvements of the students and faculty, we will explore how and to what extent artistic practices can counteract oppression and injustice through the act of design. We are interested in what ways designpositions are able to inform strategies for sustainable positions in politically and geographically violated societies. In parallel, we want to experiment with educational models that stimulate such practices, and set up alternative platforms that can reinforce the artistic, political and economic independence.

Participants Lama Aloul Saja Amro Julina Vanille Bezold Rasha Dakkak Farah Fayyad Mohamed Gaber Anna Garcia GĂłmez Ayman Hassan Siwar Kraitem Ott Metusala Naira Nigrelli Karmel Sabri Qusai Al Saify Sarah Saleh Mohammed Tatour Jara van Teeffelen Samira Vogel

The programme focuses on the artistic work of the participants in finding their own methods for resilience, collaboration and sustainability. The course provides a fostering environment for study, practice and research, and makes space for selflessness, vulnerability and unpredictability. It is set up as a studio-space led programme where students work on both collective and individual projects, and get feedback by the tutors on their practice. The curriculum evolves on the initiatives, collaborations and developments of the students; they are actively involved in organising and leading different parts.

Together we are shaping collective methods of mutual learning and exchange, developing context specific vocabularies, ideas and common projects. Over time we will explore how to expand and change practices in design for political resistance, solidarity and social transformation. We will research and experiment with tools, networks and conditions for community driven platforms on design learning. The participants will exchange with new communities, engage creative actors and cultural institutes, and invest in longterm collaborations that help to establish new spaces for design.

Website: www.disarmingdesign.com

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-f-for-fact

F FOR FACT

F FOR FACT Current Temporary Programme (2020 – 2022) Programme Director Barbara Visser Coordinator Sjoerd ter Borg Team Bart Haensel, Arnoud Holleman, Flora Lysen, Matthew C. Wilson Guests

Pieter Paul Pothoven, Matthijs van Boxel, Tal Erez, Marcus Lindeen, Yeb Wiersma, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Flora Lysen, Inez Piso, Mark Dion, Mila Turajlić & Boris Mitić, Robert Glas, Alan Berliner, Oscar Santillán Coralie Vogelaar, Foundland and Bill Wei, Vibeke Mascini, Matt Wolf, Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia

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ABOUT F FOR FACT At a time when facts are increasingly framed as fantasy, and fiction is often presented as truth, F for Fact aims to develop narratives for the present by looking at past and future representations of reality through an artistic lens.

At this School of Second Thoughts we investigate the nature of knowledge as we perceive, document and share it. Through social and natural history, archives, fundamental science, literature and popular media we explore physical and intellectual knowledge kept in the vaults of our collective memory.

Participants EloĂŻse AlliguiĂŠ Elki Boerdam Mariana Fernandez Mora Jonathan Hielkema Pia Jacques de Dixmude Anouk Klaveren Olga Korsun Puck Kroon Bernice Nauta Furkat Polvon-Zoda June (Juntong) Yu Juliana Zepka

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-f-for-fact

F for Fact connects the individual artistic practice to knowledge produced and stored at various institutions and collections, mostly situated in The Netherlands. The program supports in-depth collaborations with a selection of renowned knowledge institutes and archives related to art, science and society.

F for Fact translates what we think we know, what we have forgotten and what we can imagine into an elegant attempt to observe, question and describe the world from a personal perspective. The work can be articulated in any medium of choice: film, audio, speech, writing, drawing, performance, tool, object. The question is how to translate different forms of knowledge into new forms of storytelling.

The programme consists of lectures and interactions with international guests from the edges of art and science and excursions to unexpected places, where participants and mentors share their experiences on an equal basis. Conceptual designers, visual artists, writers, filmmakers and other unconventional thinkers with a curious mind and a proactive nature have been selected to participate.

Truth has always been stranger than fiction. It still is.

Website: www.fforfact.net

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Programme Director Juha van ‘t Zelfde Coordinator Elif Özbay Tutors Ash Sarkar, Daniel van der Velden, Rob Schröder, Beri Shalmashi, Kate Cooper, Vinca Kruk Guests David Blandy & Larry Achiampong, Emilia Tapprest, Juan Arturo Garcia, Kani Marouf, Lexie Smith, Lotic, Michele Rizzo, Nicolas Jaar, Rana Hamadeh

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-resolution

RES O LU TION

RESOLUTION Current Temporary Programme (2019 – 2021)

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ABOUT RESOLUTION “No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”

– Ursula K. Le Guin Resolution is a two-year master programme committed to the future of the moving image. It is the sequel to finished Temporary Programme Shadow Channel (2017 – 2019).

In a period of two years, students will meet a multitude of artists, academics and activists, working at the intersection of film, music, art, video games and direct action. Building on its predecessor Shadow Channel, the Resolution programme takes place both at the Sandberg Instituut, and in collaboration with partner organisations around Amsterdam.

Participants Zuzana Banasinska Marian Rosa van Bodegraven Siomara van Bochove Eva Bosveld Lila Bullen-Smith Noé Cottencin Johan Delétang Jeroen Exterkate Allison Heniquez Hida Kasaei Rene Francis McBrearty Michelle Mildenberg Cesar Morajana Mylou Oord Catalina Reyes Sigrún Sveinsdóttir Mateo Vega

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-resolution

When studying at Resolution, students work on three projects: their individual moving image work, their thesis, and a collective end-of-year presentation. The curriculum has been created to help students develop their conceptual and technical ability through practical workshops and tutorials, their critical thinking through seminars focussing on research and writing, and their sense of solidarity through collaboration and communal activities.

Resolution is for students who want to develop new forms of moving images, whether they make films, or design video games, make music, write stories or create art online. The programme does not expect students to already be professionals cinematographers, to know everything about exhibiting multiscreen installations, or have a game available on Steam or in the PlayStation Store. “What matters is not to know the world,” as Frantz Fanon quoted Karl Marx, “but to change it.”

Resolution especially welcomed applicants who are underrepresented in education, at work and on screen. In addition to new developments in moving image, our programme will focus on radical imagination, solidarity and collective joy. When we say radical, we speak with Barbara Smith, co-founder of the Combahee River Collective: we don’t mean in your face, lobbing verbal grenades—radical means having a deep understanding of structural oppression and being willing to eradicate that.

Resolution is an MA that combines fantasy with vigour, and that projects revolution in high definition. We firmly believe art is necessary to understand and change our world. But art is also necessary to catch our breath and take care of ourselves and each other, to feel free, even if it is only for the duration of a film.

Another world is possible. No darkness lasts forever.

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https://sandberg.nl/writings

Interview Series 2019 & 2020

Notes to Future Students

ANNEE GRØTTE VIKEN CHRIS RIJKSEN CLARE BUTCHER FEMKE HERREGRAVEN JOOST CONIJN PAULIEN BREMMER ROGIER ROETERS SANDER PLUG TJALLING MULDER WILLEM VAN WEELDEN IVAN CHENG YURI VEERMAN ANNA REUTINGER SMÁRI RÚNAR RÓBERTSSON REIN VERHOEF TING GONG WILLEM SCHENK ELIF ÖZBAY FABIAN REICHLE JUHEE HAHM

20 different students and alumni from the Sandberg Instituut community reflect on their studies, go over their ideas about artistic education and consider the development of their practice right up to their current work and future plans.

Notes to Future Students is based on a series of interviews which are not informed by any topic, event or reference other than the personal history of the artist in question. As the students and alumni look back, this reflection ultimately reads as advice to future students: how to navigate the sea of art under the flag of a school.

Notes to Future Students is a project

by PS (Public Sandberg) curator Jules van den Langenberg, and critic and curator Laurens Otto.

We thank all interviewees, UvA Talen and Sandberg Instituut’s policy and research advisor Jaap Vinken.

ANNEE GRØTTE VIKEN Studio for Immediate Spaces (2012 – 2014) What effect did the Sandberg Instituut have on your practice?

Studying at the Sandberg propelled me into a world I did not know beforehand, giving me space to create autonomous work. I had been making work like that before, but it had always felt like a compromise. At the Sandberg, I found the freedom I had been looking for. Where I come from, art is not something you do, so it took me some time to trust myself and realise that that the space was there to be used.

One of my main reasons for going to the Sandberg was to find out why I was interested in space. Language was a natural tool for reflection and so I started to incorporate writing in my practice, making little texts and playing with the format, but didn’t consider writing a part of my work until much later. My tutors were not necessarily convinced that a text could be a work, and I didn’t know where it might be going either. Only in the second semester of the second year, when I started to work on the thesis, did it become clear what role it could play.

As I could not see how writing an academic text would be very interesting for my work, I decided to take on a different approach and started collecting fragments from books and include them in my writing – a method I still use today. Coming from a deep admiration of literature and playfulness; it didn’t occur to me that cutting up canonical texts might be seen as a violent act. With only one week left and with a text that had slowly morphed into fiction I decided to write a screenplay on concepts of space, ranging from the pre-historic cave to the dystopian future. It took a while to find the right direction, but this was also the first time that I took my writing seriously. The final book plays a dual role: one should be able to read it as a screenplay that evokes sensations of different spaces, and at the same time as a tool for approaching space as an architect or artist.

I chose the format of the screenplay for its inherent purpose to be visualised. It was essential to make it into a work in itself, not

just an essay on the page. In the end, the thesis became a book, It Had Something To Do With The Telling Of Time, published in association with Onamatopee in Eindhoven.

How can literature open up the way we understand architecture?

I have always been interested in space, and moving around a lot has made me even more curious about the influence it has on us; giving me an urge to crawl under its skin. Literature has the ability to take us into completely new worlds and show us what they are or help us understand what we should be making – or, for the future, what we should not be making.

There is a lot of building, but there is not a lot of reflection – or rather, not a lot of understanding.

The format of the book is helpful, because it can cross a line into a world that doesn’t interact with art. To the community that I’m from, I can say that I made a book and everyone will understand what that means; it can potentially be read by anyone.

In that regard teaching ‘creative writing’ is inspiring. Together with students from the MA in Interior Architecture known as ‘Corporeal’ at ArtEZ I explore creative writing as a tool to develop a deeper understanding of the student’s practice and to help them understand who they are and where they come from, and to be able to communicate this in their work.

What have you done since Sandberg?

During my studies at the Sandberg, I started a collaborative practice known as Albergo Rosa with a friend and fellow student, the architect and artist Maximiliaan Royakkers.

We had a lot of fun and continued to work together after the Sandberg. Among other things, we did a residency at the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, combining fiction and material research. It can be difficult to navigate the world after school as one can quickly become isolated as an autonomous artist, and even more so as a writer, collaborations has been a nice way for me to deal with this. Since graduating I have tried to keep a balance between working on my own projects and collaborating with others, combining teaching, writing and making.

For my own research I recently finished a six months intensive study at the Institut Supérieur de Peinture Van Der Kelen-Logelain in Brussels, which prides itself on being the only school in the world that teaches traditional decorative painting techniques.

The structure of the school hasn’t changed in a hundred years; its way of teaching is completely unique. One part of me enjoys such conditions, while another part simply isn’t able to relate to the traditions and power structures of such a school. There’s a stark contrast between focusing on something that is very manual and the Sandberg Instituut, with its more conceptual approach to thinking about your practice.

But growing up on a farm I’ve always been surrounded by crafts and interacting directly with my environment and I started to miss these aspects. Finding them increasingly important to preserve, I became interested in learning a traditional craft and including that in my practice. Many of these aspects come together in my next project, where I will research the identity of the village I come from and its future narrative through Persian miniature drawings and storytelling.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

Be true to yourself and have the courage to explore your own interests, without comparing yourself to others. It is such an inspiring and unique environment, so take the opportunity to engage with it and learn from the people that you have around you.

—————————————— CHRIS RIJKSEN Dirty Art Department (2013 – 2015) Why did you enter the Dirty Art Department at the Sandberg Instituut?

After I graduated from the Photography department of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, I faced the problem that it is impossible to control the context on which photography depends. As an artist, you cannot determine

the conditions in which your art is exhibited.

Having fallen out of love with photography, the interdisciplinary approach of the Dirty Art Department at the Sandberg Instituut appealed to me. The department’s manifesto and most of the work I had seen by graduates were precisely about engaging with the context that I hadn’t previously been able to control. I wanted to be able to design the experience of receiving an artwork, and the Dirty Art Department gave me the tools to shape the context of the work and influence how the work was received.

What effect did engaging with an interdisciplinary context have on your practice?

I didn’t touch my camera for the first year, but by experimenting with other media, I found out that photography could work for me again.

While studying, I was finding my own bases as I struggled with the question of whether my work was art, and whether the context of a fine art institution was right for my practice.

At some point, I felt confident that as long as I considered the work to be important, the question of whether it was art was irrelevant.

The new problem became the need to find new ways and probably new contexts in which to show my work. I didn’t think that I would find my audience in the fine art world.

The turning point was a school trip to Morocco, when I realised that a good presentation just needs to contain a good story. As I knew that I already had a good story, this realisation gave me the liberty simply to do what I wanted. Sandberg also taught me the hard lesson that you can use anything you want to get your message across; you can use a theatre play or a cooking session, there are no limitations regarding form. As an artist, you are the only one to set the constraints.

At the Sandberg, I learned that I had been making work out of frustration, which was not a sustainable approach and had a negative effect on my mood. During my studies at the Sandberg, I was in the process of transitioning, which also made my daily frustration with gender and being perceived as someone I wasn’t fade away. I had to rediscover what could drive me as much to make work.

At the ‘Transketeers’, the filmmaking and advocacy collective for gender diversity that I co-founded, the philosophy is that we should at least have fun in the making process – even if it’s about a matter as serious as suicide. During my studies, I was sometimes sucked into a general discontent with the world, which didn’t help my mental situation. In my department, there was a group of students who were frustrated with capitalist society, but not frustrated enough to take this up as a project in its own right (however difficult this might be); the question just constantly hovered while we were doing our work, while I need a certain positivity to keep returning to my work.

What I did learn from the Dirty Art Department is that working together is a great way to counter depression. In such a close group, you learn to have faith in group projects and to trust each person’s specific skills.

What did you do after graduating?

In 2015, I set up the Transketeers with two other transmen. We produce films, workshops and theatre, and use these moments as educational programmes. Our initiative aims to bridge the gap between the passive act of just showing a film and the creation of a setting where the audience can react to our material.

The view of transgenders is still incredibly one-dimensional, and that’s something we want to change. Even within organisations such as the COC, which formally claim to advocate for transgenders, it can’t be taken for granted that transgenders are automatically included. This is slowly changing, but our mission will only end at the point when the gender discussion has become obsolete.

Your work seems to have a solid foundation in business; did the Sandberg prepare you for those aspects?

The practical aspects of tax and marketing didn’t get enough attention at the Sandberg.

How can you to organise your finances and manage your own marketing so that you can continue to achieve things also once graduated? These topics shouldn’t be addressed because they are fun, but because they’re

necessary. Being able to sustain yourself is a critical part of the work.

How would you define your current position?

I am a storyteller who aims to broaden the image that people have of the world. I create films, educational material and workshops, and use images and the imagination to broach social issues. My primary role is to question, to ask what’s the context, what’s the perspective, within which boundaries are we thinking and why do these boundaries exist? Beyond the question of gender alone, I’m also interested in stories of resilience. I don’t know how this will evolve further, because it is still open whether I will work in TV, do consulting or continue as a freelancer, as I am now. I’m not really sure if this could be considered art, but I know it has an audience.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

It’s easy to give tips in retrospect. I understand this question as: what would you have done differently? I would have given myself the following tips: have fun, find students and teachers that you connect with throughout all departments, and make sure you work with them. Second, as Sandberg is a well-known name – especially in the Netherlands – make use of this name if you want to get something done. Lastly, Sandberg’s education can teach you a lot about yourself and the things you find most important in your artistic practice. If you manage to survive yourself, you’ll be able to survive pretty much everything else, too.

—————————————— CLARE BUTCHER School of Missing Studies (2013 – 2015) How are you currently involved in the Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut?

I’m working at the Fine Arts department and I work as a tutor on the ‘Linking Bodies’ (formerly Jewellery) department, both at the Rietveld Academie. I’m also involved in the Sandberg’s Fine Arts department.

Together with Judith Leysner, we have established the extra-curricular programme known as Unsettling Rietveld Sandberg, which bridges the Rietveld and the Sandberg. The programme was initiated last year by the Supervisory Board in response to issues of diversity and inclusion in the school. The aim is to become more inclusive as a space, but also to set up protocols to deal with questions around the political positions we might take in the world as artists and designers. For many people, it’s a first step to setting up an environment in which we learn to deal with difference, because we often mistakenly think that we are already progressive and radical. We get a lot of vague explanations about what is supposedly the ‘Rietveld way’ for instance, but the baseline remains unclear as to what ‘radical,’ ‘progressive’ and ‘open-minded’ actually mean in daily practice, in a shifting cultural and political context. I think that it’s time to interrogate some of the foundational notions of this educational institution’s ideology across the Master’s and Bachelor’s.

Unsettling consists of two tracks: one where we work programmatically and one that operates at the level of infrastructure. The infrastructural stream looks at policy development and reflects on the curriculum. Policy development relates to staffing, communication, evaluation and the ways in which we approach new students. Who are we reaching out to as a school? How do people perceive this space from the outside? If the teaching body and the student body change over time, then the curriculum and the climate of the school will change with them. The programmatic aspect touches on some of these questions by bringing in different voices that are currently missing from our curriculum.

What will it take for Unsettling to be a success?

We are currently constructing a policy draft through roundtable meetings, which all staff (also freelancers) and students are invited to join. All staff members who take part in these meetings can charge us for their hours, if they’re not already part of a representative council. For many, their own precarity and

the fact that they hold multiple jobs means that they often don’t have the time or means to participate in these kinds of structural proceedings.

For myself, I think this would be a “success” if we can learn from this process and concretise a policy draft this year for implementation in the coming years. We will already see a great shift in the culture of the school if we are able to create a context in which students and staff feel that their voices and concerns are heard and that things are organised openly and transparently.

Why did you join the School of Missing Studies programme at the Sandberg Instituut?

The School of Missing Studies, initiated by Bik van der Pol, was a bit of an experiment for me; I wanted to understand what the temporary programme experience would be. I don’t know if this model exists elsewhere, I haven’t been able to find anything that’s quite the same. Compared to more established university Master’s, there is much more of a process of being in formation with the programme.

There’s a lot of fluidity, which has worked well for some and has been quite frustrating for others – as is generally the case for learning programmes. The idea behind the School of Missing Studies was to be responsive to our questions and needs as students while bringing in amazing artists and guests, for which I’m very grateful. But I also feel that the Sandberg is missing out, because there seems to be a lack of common evaluation, feedback, and archiving methods in place, and the institute does not always have access to the possible learnings from these different programmes over time.

In an age of late capitalism, we need to be highly aware of our methods, because strategies of going-with-the-flow and it-is-what-it-is are often used to demonstrate a lack of precision and commitment to educational values. It would be interesting to find ways of reflecting on the processes and questions which arise which are not only about defending that space of experimentation but also about making it more robust.

How did the programme function?

The School of Missing Studies was a project that had already been running for some years outside the Sandberg. I saw this programme as an attempt to work within another educational framework, to create an alternative curriculum for activists, architects, urbanists, historians, and artists. In terms of the makeup of the students, the School of Missing Studies drew in people who were searching for something that was missing in their own personal curricula. We came from very different geographical regions, and our disciplines ranged from architecture to art, editing, writing, performance and architecture. We had a common interest in questions of space, publicness, history and narrative.

The programme was based on a case study of the village of Nagele in the Noord Oost Polder. Nagele was an important example of modernist planning that was put together by Rietveld, Aldo van Eyck, Van Eesteren ... all the stars of the Dutch architecture and design world at the time it was developed. We didn’t have to respond to the site in a prescribed way, but we gained a lot of insight by being introduced to various people who had a vested interest in that space, its histories and presents.

and the increasingly distant dream that many young art school graduates have of working full-time as an artist. We initiated the ‘Avocado on Toast’ brunch for Fine Art students across different years of study and it clearly touched on something important in terms of the internal conversation it opened up within the department. During these sessions we want to address different aspects of life after graduation using the rather tongue-in-cheek image of avocado on toast: an emblem of millennial culture as delicious aesthetics combined with a completely unsustainable lifestyle.

We wanted to address these questions without making this a formal part of the curriculum. Staff members of different generations have varying ideas about preparing students for their work/life practices, and with this some approaches around professional practice are often left off the “menu” so to speak. But if we think about professional practice as field which also comprises questions of ethics, being responsible, taking a position and contributing to a community – all of this needs to be supported with material resources, money, residencies or funding. Our aim with this programme was to start examining with students how we think about sustainable post-graduate practices in a way that is critical, mindful and reflective.

How would you describe your practice?

Ah, the question of ‘the bio’! In the past, I would have put ‘curator’ first and then ‘educator’ second, but in the last years I’ve found that education is my medium and learning is my space. One can be curatorial even within these ways, so I think of curating as a method rather than as an identity position. Although curating is a much broader field than most people realise, it carries a lot of baggage relating to exhibition-making and authorship for me. I’m more interested in questions of how to live and learn together. And this can involve reading, listening, cooking and walking – I place these exercises on the same level as curating.

Out of personal interest, are there any books on radical pedagogy that you would recommend?

As a start, I would recommend Annette Krauss’ research around ‘Site for Unlearning’, which deals with how to respond to learning and education within a critical, embodied and empathetic process. The book of poetry ‘Whereas’

by Layli Long Soldier is a constant inspiration for working through questions of history, narrative and relationships to language.

From the older school, I often come back to bell hooks as a feminist counterpart to Paulo Freire and the other more male-authored work around critical pedagogy.

What is the ‘Avocado on Toast’ programme that you are running?

Together with Alina Lupu, we have been reflecting on the current economic situation

Last question: what are you up to next?

I have been offered a position with the Toronto Biennial as their curator for Public Programming & Learning. I’m sad to leave this space,

where the process of unsettling is getting underway so dynamically, but I’m totally convinced that it continues beyond any one individual.

—————————————— FEMKE HERREGRAVEN Design (2008 – 2010) What prompted your decision to enrol at the Sandberg Instituut?

I went to the Sandberg because I knew that there was an open curriculum at the Design department. Classes were only held one day a week, and the rest of the week you were free to develop your own projects. As students, we had the space to initiate our own research projects outside the realm of graphic design. As a group, we asked ourselves: if design is about information and information is no longer confined to print, but affects everything from your screen to your DNA, then shouldn’t a designer also go beyond the limited frameworks of design? In that case, the book was no longer the natural site of graphic design.

How did your work evolve after graduating?

After graduating, I was invited to do a residency at the Zuidas district in Amsterdam and engage with the local community. As a financial district, it is a dead and homogenous neighbourhood. Since my ‘neighbours’ were mailbox companies, I spent the months indexing them on the 33 streets in that neighbourhood. Some addresses housed more than 3,000 companies, which were evidently registered as mailbox companies to avoid paying tax.

The question arose as to why the Zuidas – and the Netherlands in general – participates so actively in the international rooting of capital.

This was back in 2011, when tax avoidance was not yet on the political agenda. Later on, I continued this research and proposed the idea for the online game Taxodus (2013) during the Sandberg@Mediafonds masterclass. The game was developed in just a couple of months and in a parallel trajectory Tegenlicht developed a documentary on the subject. The premise of the

game is to try to avoid as much tax as possible.

On 1 April, when every Dutch person has to file their tax declaration, the game was launched on the Dutch documentary television programme Tegenlicht. It provoked an explosive debate on corporate tax avoidance, prompting parliamentary questions. This is an example of how the context of a designer’s work only emerges after its creation.

In 2011 I started teaching at ArtEZ, and since 2015 I have also been teaching virtual design at the Graphic Design department of the Rietveld Academy. From 2015 on, my self-initiated projects increased so much that I stopped with commissioned design projects.

Your more recent work seems to look at pressure points where natural realities meet financial constructions, such as in your work on the financialisation of catastrophes. How did this tension enter your work?

When I started mapping the routes of Internet cables and how they superpose colonial routes of early telegraph cables, the question arose: what is the reality above ground? I started filming remote shorelines where these undersea cables land. Finance is often depicted as traders shouting at each other in the trading pit, but a more realistic image is perhaps that of data centres and cables embedded in remote landscapes, as nearly 80% of global trading is done by computational processes and algorithms.

As the infrastructure (the cables relaying information) is also essential for finance, I started wondering why most tax havens are located in former British colonies. It was important to touch on the remote ecologies around these infrastructures, as there is a heavy material backbone to our illusion of an immaterial financial market. This is why the relation between immaterial financial flows, natural resources, landscapes, and geology entered my work.

The relationship between natural phenomena and finance also comes back in other works: the prediction, calculation and financial hedging against of potential natural disasters for example. This predictive modelling lacks representations while it’s an imaginative force. Finance (for want of a better word) is a

lens through which to look at the world. It is complex because it stands, first and foremost, outside the realm of the visible. In a sense, finance is a post-aesthetic phenomenon – it evades representation.

That brings me to the aesthetic of your work: how do you give form to structures that resist representation?

In my work as an artist, you can see my background as a graphic designer. Its style hasn’t changed much in the past ten years. I’ve always sketched using digital software; it’s a language I developed during my Graphic Design Bachelor’s on information and data.

My work could be seen as a middle ground between two persistent dogmas. The first is that authentic work equals manual artisanal labour, that a work should be expressive.

Instead, as a designer, the work is inherently not about you; you are a mediator between the sender and the receiver of a message. During the past two years, when I did a residency at the Rijksakademie, people sometimes asked me: ‘Where are you in the work?’ To me, this question is not so relevant. Why should you become the poster child of your own work?

I believe works are always official or unofficial collaborations wether we want to or not.

Everything I know, I learned from other people during my life, there is nothing original in me by default, and it would be strange to single out one ego that created the work.

The second dogma revolves around use of the minimalistic bureaucratic language of conceptual art. Interestingly, conceptual art and finance have a shared history, as the dematerialisation of the artwork in the 1960s ran parallel to the disconnection of money from the gold standard. The establishment of the dematerialised art object coincided with the dematerialisation of money. The language of conceptual art and finance are also similar: it is about language, indexes and describing something that isn’t there. It’s all about the circulation of information rather than its physical materialisation. It involves an enormous amount of imagination to create value out of nothing. As disturbing as it might sound, the financial world

is an important producer of imagination. Even in literal terms, traders describe their work as ‘looking at the world, dissecting it, moulding it, creating new things ...’ It’s the same language the artist uses in their studio. In that sense, I like to think of finance as the evil twin of art.

I’m thus experimenting with forms that are neither expressive nor employ the bureaucratic language of conceptual art.

The word ‘research’ is often overused outside academia, but for you it appears to have a specific use.

My work is research-based; I use the process of making work to learn about things I don’t know or understand. Consequently, while making the work there is an element of revealing and opening up things. In these contexts, it doesn’t work if the designer or artist is ‘dropped in’ just to develop a small project. Only by instigating your own research do you make it possible to start a conversation yourself, instead of running the risk of being instrumentalised by entering into a conversation that already exists. In my case, that meant for instance creating my own datasets during the five years that I worked on tax avoidance.

What advice would you give to future students?

Only when you take risks and when there is something at stake will you go beyond your comfort zone. Desktop research will only take you so far, so you need to contact people who you would not normally dare to approach. Step out of the world of art and design and then bring those elements back into your practice.

As a designer or artist, you can get away with more things than academics or journalists because you are not perceived as a threat.

—————————————— JOOST CONIJN Fine Arts (1995 – 1997) What is your background?

After finishing high school, I travelled for a year and cycled to India on a recumbent

bicycle. I then attended the Rietveld Academy, which happened to be located right next to my primary school (the Waldorf School that is still next door). I had always built things, and saw the academy as an extension of this and as an opportunity to shape my life as I saw fit. The art academy presented itself as a vacuum cut off from the outside world, where you’d unlearn everything that you had been taught before.

I felt the urge to realise something, to arrive at a higher goal. Art has this potential.

Why did you enrol at the Sandberg Instituut?

Jos Houweling left the Rietveld to set up the Sandberg Instituut and I followed him, because the graduation year at the Rietveld did not seem interesting to me. The students had previously been doing a hundred things at the same time, and suddenly in their final year they were cursed with having to do a single ‘project’; that was not an exciting environment.

When Houweling told me that there would be no space for me inside the Sandberg building, I suggested that I work on the balcony. My welding work sparked so many complaints that I was soon offered an entire classroom. There was no equipment at the time, so we were allowed to purchase the material we needed.

For 6,000 guilders I bought a Sony 1000 digital camera, which had just been just released.

What did you do at the Sandberg Instituut?

Before our year, the Sandberg existed without a location; we were the first class that had a building in Generaal Vetterstraat. The Sandberg consisted of big atelier spaces and no classes, and tutors would only occasionally pass by to discuss. The school was still undefined in an institutional sense; the students were the school.

For me, the relationship with the director, Jos Houweling, was more one of father and son than of teacher and student. You can’t have the entire world against you; someone should always be there to watch your back, and Houweling represented this figure to me. He would stand up for his students and allowed quite a lot of space for conflict. For instance, I was allowed to drop every single class after he had initially proposed that I drop just one.

We only realised how anarchic the Sandberg was when we were asked to make a movie for the Open Day. As students, we decided to film all the other art schools in the Netherlands. We then realised that we were the only school where students were allowed to drill holes and paint anywhere we wanted. I even secretly held a master key, so we could access the building day and night and could also cook and sleep at school if we wanted to.

There wasn’t really an ending to the Sandberg period. There were computers and cameras, so I had no reason to leave – I just came back after the summer. It ended when Houweling suddenly gave me two pieces of paper: diplomas from the Rietveld and the Sandberg, without having done a final presentation or anything of the sort.

What is the relationship between your practice and its registration on film?

A movie is not always the end result. For instance, filming was impossible during the flights I made in my self-built plane. Technically, it is too hard to film and navigate a plane at the same time, and I couldn’t film on the ground, as I was mostly landing at military airports in conflict zones. Instead, each week I would email a piece to the NRC newspaper, and these were made into a book, Piloot van goed en kwaad (Pilot of Good and Evil ).

The everyday outside world can also be too disturbing for a film, so I shot my first films in the seclusion of a roof, or a desert, when I filmed the self-opening fence in Morocco (C’est une hek, 1997). I want the film to be the work and to have an autonomous force, not just to be a recording or a derivative. Registration would just be setting up a camera on a tripod without giving much attention to what was going on.

I see myself as a persona in these movies, I have to be part of it. An artwork is the sum of all these different parts: the story, the interaction with the people you meet, the exhibition. A teacher once advised me to single out the moment when I constructed the fence in the desert by taking out the voyage that led to it.

From the start, I was opposed to those purifying ideas that want to make it into art!

I was opposed to the snobbery and prestige of the art that happened between white walls.

I thought that it would be more interesting if art were to play a role in the real world; the confrontation between art and the outside world should not be played out within an exhibition space. For instance, when I travelled in my wooden car through Eastern Europe, I wanted it to remain unclear where the art began and where it ended. Likewise, in my first book, Iron and Video, I did not want to include any critics or art historians, but rather feature short stories by the author A.L. Snijders.

unsolicited advice is even more horrible.

I think it’s good to rebel against advice, it has a manipulative aspect. I am always eager for advice, but I rarely follow up on it. That’s why it’s so important for students to oppose their teachers’ views: they need to be provoked right up to the point that they are about to leave the classroom, because then you’d lose them.

You shouldn’t want to be liked as a teacher, because it is not important whether the students like you, as long as they work hard.

How do you see your role as a teacher?

Students should use teachers as stepping stones and should rebel against them. I personally never appreciated any of my teachers, and always thought that their ideas and work were bad. I want my current students to formulate their own assignments. I try to find out what is blocking their development, and try to delve into those issues. It’s almost at the level of psychology, trying to catch any inconsequentialities that they themselves might have missed.

I try to push the students into a mindset where they lose themselves completely in the development of the work; those are the moments where things emerge and things fall your way.

Students are often too scared to commit to something fully, and so busy that the work stays on a superficial level.

PAULIEN BREMMER Fine Arts (2004 – 2006)

What are you currently up to?

I just came back from Afghanistan, where I was following the journalist Bette Dam, who is proposing a different perspective on the Taliban.

At this stage, I’m not sure what the trip will ultimately lead to.

I’m also building my own house at the moment on a 3,000-m 2 plot in Oosterwold. It’s quite a famous experiment; you can buy a plot, build your own house and even collectively construct your own street.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

It would be a shame to answer certain questions.

Giving advice is quite suspect, and offering

——————————————

What was your background before enrolling at the Sandberg Instituut?

I studied architecture at TU Delft for six years.

Having graduated from Delft, I started working at Wiel Arets Architects in Maastricht. After four years, when I had finished one building and had taken another project to an advanced phase, I decided that it was the right moment to move on. After I’d quit in 1999, I took a break.

I listened to a certain longing I’d always had for the sea and sailed as a shipmate to Ushuaia, the southernmost point of South America. To me, it’s strange that it isn’t standard procedure for an architect to spend time at sea, as I think experiencing endless space is a pivotal experience for any architect.

As I was interested in broadening my views on architecture, I decided that I would not engage solely with architecture once I was back. I went to Amsterdam to study film at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, because I wanted to explore aspects of time and scenography.

I enrolled in the DOGtime evening programme at the Rietveld, as it wasn’t possible to manage the full-time programme at the Film Academy.

After a year, I made the switch to the timebased VAV department, which I could by then combine with both my teaching at TU Delft and my own practice. It was a rather schizophrenic situation to be both teacher and student at the same time.

I didn’t plan this career path in advance; the decisions arrived organically, out of curiosity. Even though I always saw artistic practice as an addition to my work as an architect, my engineering training in thinking conceptually and coming up with ideas quickly proved to be very useful at the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg, where I went afterwards.

What were your intentions when you entered the Sandberg Instituut?

After the Rietveld, I wanted to have time to focus purely on the creation of autonomous work. The Sandberg facilitated very little at the time, providing only a small studio and a network of visiting critics. There were no teachers, so it was more like a residency programme akin to the Rijksakademie.

What was the result of your time at the Sandberg?

I graduated with the film ‘Arkadi’, which is set on an island that emerges in the Volga when the water level drops during summer. People from the city of Samara, which is opposite the Volga, who cannot afford a ‘dacha’ build their summer huts and stay on the island during summer. For a month, I filmed a man in his surroundings while living in a shack next to him. As I didn’t speak Russian, the local people thought I was a spy. The film captured the outsider figure and dealt with the claiming of one’s space, which became a recurring theme in my work.

I did not receive a diploma, because I never wrote a thesis. As writing wasn’t part of the curriculum, its immediate relevance escaped me. I already had a Master’s degree, so obtaining that certificate was not important for me. I never saw that time as a period of study.

I did not feel like a ‘student’ anyway, it was more like a residency situation with the luxury of having time to develop my practice. I then continued in this mode with actual residencies in Bucharest and São Paulo, where I made the film Totally Up, amongst others.

How do you combine your work as an architect with your autonomous practice?

I always introduce myself as an architect, but quickly mention my autonomous background as well. A building’s capacity to influence its environment is important to me, which is the why I studied film and time-based media at VAV. Time also finds expression in architecture by providing a template for different scenarios.

Amongst others, the new Feldlev building is a result of these influences, functioning mainly as a setting, a backdrop through which you can roam, as in a landscape or a film. The building was programmed both in terms of its routing and in its use as scenography. It was important that the setting would enable people to meet and operate as a collective. The remaining challenge is how to organise this multidisciplinarity with a clear goal, not just to stimulate multidisciplinarity for the sake of it.

I have always continued to teach architecture on the side; education – both as student and teacher – has been fully intertwined with my practice. I currently teach at TU Delft and the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam, but I also taught at the Rietveld Academy for about five years, for instance.

How would you like to intervene in current forms of artistic education?

Within art education, I would like to establish many more links with the field of scientific research. Students from both worlds would benefit tremendously from each other’s knowledge. The cross-fertilisation between art and science that you currently see in institutes such as De Waag is not yet present in art academies. Aside from the CadCam, at present there are only traditional workshops at the Rietveld Academy.

I suppose that the Fedlev Building, which you designed, could be seen as the culmination of your views on the Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Instituut?

The main idea was that the building and its project spaces should stimulate new collaborations, knowledge, exchange and multidisciplinary working. We wanted to bring the Rietveld and the Sandberg closer together and create a situation where lectures could be

shared and work could be seen, for instance, allowing for cross-fertilisation between departments, and between both Bachelor’s and Master’s students. Many decisions flowed from the observation that an academy that was rooted in conceptual practices and that worked across disciplines had departments that were spatially delimited in such a way that it was impossible to see what other students were doing.

The circumstances, from conception to delivery, were highly unusual, because we had to formulate our own brief while also determining the design process itself. The only set requirement was that the building had to be 3,500 m2. Projects of this size normally require more hierarchical structures and everything is usually determined in advance. This interesting situation required a longer process and specific attention. The advantage was that special requests could be granted after critical examination, which would have been impossible in any other project on this scale.

The main challenge was to keep the different departments informed and on board. We worked from a Portakabin on site to facilitate communications, so that anyone could step in and ask questions, and we, in turn, were directly connected with the academy and its different departments.

For the Sandberg Instituut, the question remains as to how they will further stimulate the multidisciplinarity of students with multiform backgrounds. When I studied at Sandberg, there was little room for multifaceted practice; my experience as an architect was never a topic of discussion, for instance. It would be interesting to see how attitudes have changed.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

Back in my day, I mostly worked from my own studio, as the space at the Sandberg was too small – which was quite a pity. I would advise future students to spend as much time as possible on site, and also take the time to cook there, for instance.

——————————————

ROGIER ROETERS Fine Arts (2006 – 2008) What is your background?

I had the talent to become a professional footballer, but when that didn’t work out, I ended up studying management. I wasn’t happy when I graduated and decided to start doing something creative, which I had never done before.

Why did you apply to the Sandberg Instituut?

I graduated from the AKV St. Joost academy in Den Bosch at the time when Sandberg was still actively scouting for talent. The director, Jos Houweling, would ask former students to look around academies to find participants who would fit in at the Sandberg Instituut. I received an email inviting me to participate in the two admissions rounds. I got through the first round, but couldn’t attend the second round to present my work in person. I wasn’t accepted after they judged my work in my absence.

When I went to the Sandberg to pick up my work after the holidays, I had a great conversation with Jos Houweling and staff coordinator, Marjo van Baar. They decided on the spot that I was accepted after all, and could start after the summer. At the risk of sounding cheesy, this moment really saved me, as I had no clue what else to do.

At that time the Sandberg only had the Fine Arts and Design departments, with around 20 to 25 students per class. The two didn’t mingle, but you knew everyone in your own department. I’m still in contact with some of the students from those days, including Michiel Huijben and Judith Leysner. The Sandberg felt like a family and still does today.

I still feel very connected to the Sandberg, but I see the school from more of a distance now; I only return every one or two years. I came back this year to do a mindreading show as a spicy intervention at the start of the year.

What did the Sandberg bring you?

I felt that I was finally being heard and that anything was possible; we could invite guest teachers ourselves, for example. Being around

so many open-minded people really opened me up. It opened up my eyes to people from rough places and with different mentalities.

During those two years, I made costumes and let people perform in them. I filmed these situations, and I also made a lot of other videos at that time. I used to make drawings for the performances and films, which have now have become objects in their own right. I’m currently making around ten a day! All my work – the drawings, the films, and the magic, of which I will speak later – starts from obsessions. I have a lot of energy and need to channel it into work. Even at the academy in Den Bosch, my teachers would tell me: go deeper or go wider.

But this energy wasn’t directed at my thesis, which I didn’t finish until years after ‘graduating’. I kept sending in all kinds of texts, but I was always told they were rubbish.

I proposed that I just sit in front of the jury and explain my ideas, because I couldn’t write them down. Many years later, I finally made it by the skin of my teeth.

What did you do after Sandberg?

After I graduated, I worked for RietveldTV and changed the format into making portraits of students and alumni, to demonstrate the diversity of what happens during and after studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

After the Sandberg, I also worked in the film industry, but it made me feel like a hooker.

I also had to quit a few days after working as a creative art director for an agency. I’m able to come up with a lot of different ideas quickly, but I don’t care about the details; about choosing the right shade of green, for instance.

Then I decided to follow my heart ...

I’d always been fascinated by magic tricks, but I had never been able to combine this with my football career. In Amsterdam, when I was working for RietveldTV and making a documentary, I discovered a small place in Vught where a group of retired lawyers and doctors were practising as amateur magicians. Up until that moment, I had always felt very alone doing magic tricks, as there was no way to find out that such a community existed before the Internet. At first, they were quite suspicious

and paranoid, as though I was going to steal their magic tricks. I joined the club, because the only solution was to become a member. Two men acted as my mentors and explained all their routines to me. They would put my name up when they couldn’t do a gig themselves, and I started to perform. The world of magic is divided into groups; we give each other a gig if one of us is unable to make it, but it is not done to pass a gig to someone outside our clan.

More generally, I love to play with expectations and reality, whether by making drawings, films or magic. What I currently want to learn is how to make something small BIG for the audience. I want to learn how some magicians are able to build an entire story around a small object. Looking at things from different perspectives is also a trick, and it’s so easy to trick people; anything can be an illusion.

I don’t yet have the guts to bring the magic into an art context – not as a mere magic trick, but intertwined in a larger performance. It is easier to perform magic tricks than to make drawings and films, because the audience is much clearer; they are standing directly in front of you.

I don’t do any magic under the name of Rogier Roeters, because I don’t know how my corporate clients would react to my drawings and films. For instance, I wouldn’t want the costumes I created in which people can do sex acts to circulate in the corporate sphere of my magic shows.

How do you position yourself as a magician?

At first, it took a lot of stress and many sleepless nights to start performing, but now I do magic a few days a week. The thinking behind magic is more interesting than the trick itself, so every day I watch around two hours of lectures to learn new tricks.

I haven’t been able to come up with a new trick myself yet – something as weird as Tom Mullica’s cigarette trick in ‘Julien DonkeyBoy’ by Harmony Korine. I fear that there is no audience for a such new trick; the art scene would probably accept this kind of magic readily, but would only look at you for five minutes and then turn their backs to continue drinking their wine. I would love to make an

absurd piece that sat on the interface between the commercial and artistic worlds.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

Don’t trust any advice. Once you’ve got as far as entering the Sandberg, you won’t need any advice from me, because you will make it and you will manage.

—————————————— SANDER PLUG Fine Arts (2002 – 2004) What is your background?

I studied Industrial Design in Delft, which is a relatively technical programme. I was able to pull it off, but back then I was already drawn towards more conceptual questions. After my studies, I started working for a design office, but quit after a year. I moved to Amsterdam, bought a computer and started working as a freelance graphic designer. That was back in 1997.

I subsequently entered the advertising world to work at FHV/BBDO, an agency with 450 employees – advertising was then in its heyday.

After a year and a half, I wanted to enter an art school to not spend all my life in an advertisement environment. I was accepted at the Sandberg Instituut because they were curious about how someone from the commercial world would relate to an art school. At that time, the Sandberg was still located in Prinses Irenestraat, with Jos Houweling serving both as director and head of the study programme.

What did studying at the Sandberg Instituut bring you?

I was preoccupied with finding my own voice, and I was continuing commissioned work in addition to my autonomous practice. Even in a literal way, I was finding my own ‘signature’ by engaging with life drawing. I tried to discover my own position as an artist. That was a complicated process, as I was still stuck in the constant rhythm of doing commissions.

That would already be my first piece of advice

to future students: make sure that you can focus on your studies. Find a way to avoid getting too distracted by your side job, which is a mistake I made at the time. I ultimately needed to detach myself from commissions to find a way to work more slowly on more autonomous projects.

The Sandberg gave me a sense of freedom that allowed me increasingly to follow my own ideas and conceptions, rather than having to execute projects where the brief was more important than the creativity. Eventually, clients started contacting me precisely because I took the freer approach of an autonomous creator.

For me, the exciting aspect has always been this phase of conceptualisation. With the right people, anything can be produced, but it’s the initial fine-tuning of the idea that moves me.

What did you do after graduating?

I have kept on making autonomous work. In 2008, I restaged the first encounter with my Spanish ex-boyfriend and our ensuing relationship until the breakup. When I interviewed him ten years after our relationship had ended, I realised how fragmented and conditioned both our accounts of that time were. This resulted in an interview published in split form, with each of our accounts printed on a separate page. For the exhibition Amateur, I performed this dialogue of our first meeting together with him in an old model drawing classroom in the centre of Barcelona, as all of the students simultaneously sketched us.

One year before creating that work, I started collaborating with Lernert Engelberts as Studio Lernert & Sander. As creatives, our trademark minimal style resulted from a need to present a precise idea without any background noise, enabling you to look at an image or a story in a focused way. Our designs never aimed to show a personal touch, but to show objects in their most iconic form. The resulting style was never the end goal, it was just a consequence of our aim to present things as clearly as possible. Because this ‘style’ was never a goal it itself, I find it bewildering that it has been copied and that we’ve even been asked specifically to reproduce its minimalistic aspects.

The few autonomous artworks I have realised have allowed me to step beyond the constraints of applied work, where after just five minutes you think you are ready to start executing your initial idea – always being just one step away from the final realisation. Those few artworks have helped me to slow down the conceptualisation process and escape the reality of applied work.

How would you define your current practice?

That is an important question, as I have simultaneously been involved in advertising, film, product design, art direction and fine art, among others. Ultimately, it is essential to avoid being framed, by keeping your practice ambiguous. Despite our efforts, Studio Lernert & Sander has nonetheless been perceived mainly as a practice of film directors.

As you have chiefly worked in the field of communication – how to get an idea across? – what role has the Internet played in your work?

As Studio Lernert & Sander, we are the curators of our own frame on the Internet; we can construct who we are and what work to show.

We started to approach the presentation of our work as a brief in itself, instead of simply presenting a portfolio with one video clip after the other. Our website responds to a certain ideal of beauty, but we have also shown our failures. We have presented failed projects on stages where people expected us to showcase our jewels.

We have tried to dissect what components can make a project fail by openly discussing this in public with a younger audience.

But a deep distrust of the Internet also runs throughout our practice. On a basic level, the Internet kills inspiration; it makes it impossible to develop your own ideas without using others’ references. On a more abstract level, we addressed the perils of search engines with our documentary I Love Alaska in 2009, which chronicled the search history of a single user. The public broadcaster VPRO asked us to make a sequel that would feature the person behind the search queries, but this film was never realised, as it was too hard to confront this person.

Besides what you’ve mentioned already, do you have any other advice for future Sandberg students?

You should be able to present your work!

I’ve seen too much gaffer tape and too many bad projectors at graduation shows; I can’t agree with the still-persistent idea that work shouldn’t be too perfect. To make work is one thing, but presenting it is, in the end, the essence – it’s what makes or breaks the work.

Final presentation didn’t receive enough attention when I was judging graduation shows seven years ago, but I hope this has changed over the years.

It’s also important to be able to negotiate the conditions of a project, to know when to say no. This process should be separated from the creative work as much as possible, because otherwise it gets infected with financial shenanigans. The moment you have to talk money as an artist, the magical membrane of creativity is perforated. I’m happy to be in the comfortable position of having an agent, which enables me to focus purely on the conceptual aspects. Whenever there is a financial matter, I can redirect my clients.

Both at the Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut, students are still clueless regarding financial matters and how to present themselves; they are not prepared for what happens after their studies. The safe womb of an art school should be infiltrated by the harsh reality of the outside world, so that after your studies you are able to convert an artistic practice into a living. This model might lead to some collateral damage, but a lot of artists would benefit from engaging with applied art so that they are able to take a firmer position in the world at large.

—————————————— TJALLING MULDER Material Utopias (2013 – 2015) What is your background?

When I returned to the Netherlands after travelling and working in Australia, I started to

draw and make various objects. A friend of mine had suggested that I apply to the AKI art academy in Enschede, and I was accepted. At the time, I didn’t even know that other academies existed; I didn’t have a clue.

During that Bachelor’s, I didn’t have a broader vision of what I was making. I was mostly working with ceramics, and made works that were small conceptual jokes. I’d put a small pedestal on a carpet, which stood on a larger pedestal and carpet, or installed works high on a socle so that you couldn’t see them from up-close, and could only apprehend them from afar.

Why did you enrol on the Temporary Programme on Material Utopias at the Sandberg Instituut?

I enrolled on the programme to find a clearer direction in my work; at that time I was focused on the technical execution of works in plaster, ceramics and steel. The fact that there was an introductory meeting to get to know the tutors and the programme was a huge draw.

How was the programme structured?

The aim was to spend two years on conducting material experiments with media such as ceramics, glass and textiles. The programme consisted mainly of students who had just finished their Bachelor’s, from either a Fine Art or a Design background. This mix of students allowed all of us to broaden our vision.

We were explicitly asked to stop doing exhibitions and focus entirely on our studies; we had classes every day, all day long, from Monday to Friday. The programme had a strong connection with the Bachelor’s students at the Rietveld; we did material workshops with them, which added a lot to the programme. It was a situation where I could suck in as much information as possible, try to get to know the ins and outs of materials and techniques. The level of the ceramic workshops was incredibly high, with tutors including Anton Reijnders, Gijs Assmann and Bastienne Kramer, with whom I’m still in contact today, outside the Sandberg.

The overloading of the programme led to strong bonding within our group and also with

the Rietveld students, but it also gave rise to quite a lot of frustration. In the second year, the programme reacted to our frustrations by giving us more freedom, an opportunity to initiate our own research, and the possibility of contributing input to the programme itself. As a group, however, it was still hard to articulate the direction we wanted to take as students, and to come up with concrete proposals for how to make the programme more interesting for both artists and designers.

All in all, I think that these temporary programmes at the Sandberg are great and are part of the game, even if they are sometimes chaotic. If you keep all the possibilities they offer in mind, you even forget these conditions.

It’s a context where you can achieve a lot if you make use of the many opportunities.

What kind of work did you make during the programme?

One of the assignments was to create a library of materials. The assignment was based on the silly premise that it was something you could continue to do for the rest of your life, which I might in fact be doing. I decided to make dildos in every possible material and now have about 900 specimens, ranging from wood to plastics to 3D-printed examples. The phallic form lends itself perfectly to execution in all materials, which makes it possible to test different creation processes on a dildo.

Unfortunately, both logistically and in terms of insurance, it has been impossible to exhibit the entire collection so far. In addition to this library, I also made videos that showed me breaking my sculptures, either by smashing them or humping into them.

How would you describe your current practice?

I like to assist artists in their practice, because you develop your technical skills faster when you don’t have to ponder conceptual questions as you make the work. It enables me to learn new methods while earning a living. This has given me a sense of peace and quiet in my work; I might make less, but now I do it with much more conviction. For instance, it has allowed me to witness the large amount of work

that succeeds even when executing it initially appears to be impossible.

Currently, my whole focus is on working with ceramics. I work at Sundaymorning (at)ekwc, a workplace where artists and designers explore the technical and artistic possibilities of ceramics. I guide the participants, most of whom don’t have any major prior experience of working with ceramics, and provide them with advice to arrive at the work they have in mind. I try to provide as much space for experimentation as possible, while trying to avoid only the most terrible mistakes. If something appears to be technically impossible, I try to find a solution to work around the limitations. Part of the job is providing psychological support, as making ceramics is incredibly tricky.

Since last November, I have also been working at the Royal Academy of Arts to help students in the context of ceramics workshops.

As making ceramics is a slow process with a number of different, carefully-planned stages, I make sure that the classes themselves are quite relaxed.

I still enjoy making work, but I’m currently less focused on exhibiting. Doing exhibitions can be a distraction from the work schedule you need to create a ceramic work without rushing it. I’d much rather lie low to focus fully on the creation of work.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

I can’t answer this, as every student is different. The only general advice I can give is to make the most of your time in the context of an institution. Use your energy and use its networks to create things beyond the limits of the institute, and to achieve what you have in mind. When I teach at the Royal Academy of Arts, I try to push the students to make work that goes beyond what the academy can offer, so that the school has to support them in realising it elsewhere. The Sandberg should also take on this role and push the students beyond the confines of the institute.

——————————————

WILLEM VAN WEELDEN Critical Studies (2016 – 2018) What is your background?

I have a background in Sociology, video activism, Net art – all far off the grid of traditional art. Seeing Lyotard’s exhibition Les Immatériaux in 1985 had a huge impact on me. It shattered my belief in visual art, and from then onward I adopted a view of art that was embedded in scientific practices in the context of the rise of the Internet. I subsequently abandoned the art world altogether, because I was convinced that it was a purely feudal system that had to be overthrown In 2003, I was asked by the head of the DOGtime department Manel Esparbe i Gasca to teach Communication at IDUM (Unstable Media Interaction Design). I considered this job a parochial affair, safeguarding the sheep before the gates of hell and moving them towards working with the conditions of life, rather than the masturbatory art world that mainly reproduces its own traumas. I try to push the students out of their traditional notions and mainstream orientations, which seem to surface more and more over time.

Today, most students who apply are drawn to Picasso and Van Gogh, which baffles me.

Does your aversion to traditional painting explain your inclination towards media art?

My aversion to painting originated in the vehemence with which developments in media art were attacked in the 1980s by artists such as Jan Dibbets and Toon Verhoef, who were my teachers at Ateliers ’63, together with Stanley Brouwn. Back then, the art world was more segregated into circuits than it is today, but I also tried to mediate between environments such as W139 and Aorta, which opened in Amsterdam in 1982. It was the time of the rise of video art, which happened underground.

It brought the sense of ‘tactical media,’ with exhibitions that challenged the thendominant ideas on media. Only later, around 1986 – 1987, when V2_ in Den Bosch became a centre for media technology, did I start to

recognise the importance of this movement.

The Manifesto for Unstable Media by the director, Alex Adriaansens, was a big inspiration for me and everyone else who stood for an art that was theoretical in approach and activist in practice, with a truly international scope.

This involvement came from an interest in Conceptual Art, which addresses the problematics of mediation and challenges the coding of meaning. Joseph Kosuth was particularly influential with his book The Making of Meaning, in which he sums up his anthropological programme. By deconstructing various codes of meaning-making, it makes the entire notion of ‘meaning’ in texts and visuals unstable.

This is linked to what I teach in New Media environments regarding the instability of meaning and the possibilities of going beyond the representational function of art.

How does your interest in media inform your own work as a teacher?

I’m constantly experimenting with forms of education that are not necessarily focused on making art per se. The image is still too important in the making of art. Instead of thinking that you can make new images, you should disrupt this entanglement, as we are fully connected in media systems. This should also be done in education: education should be based on an interventionist attitude. As soon as solidification occurs, you have to make things fluid again.

Why did you enrol in the Critical Studies department?

As the director of the Rietveld Academie, Ben Zegers came up with the idea of ‘teaching the teachers’. I embraced this idea wholeheartedly, not only in order to see education as a lifelong engagement, but also to question the authority involved in education as part of the learning experience. I felt an urge to deepen my own research and to claim more research time for myself. I had searched for a way in somewhere, but had hitherto failed miserably.

Enrolling in Critical Studies offered me a step towards doing a PhD, as I didn’t even have a Bachelor’s degree beforehand.

Given the nature of my project, it was obvious from the start that I would be on my own. I organised some seminars for the students, but they weren’t much of a success; there was little connection or mutual interest. I tried to connect by sending out several gigabytes of relevant reading material after someone’s presentation, but that didn’t help.

I went solitary and met my two mentors outside of the department, Yuk Hui in Berlin and Rick Dolphijn at the University of Utrecht.

It was an incredibly pleasant experience to have them as a sounding board for my research on new materialism and Lyotard for my project entitled Time as Matter.

The idea was to hand this project over to the Critical Studies department when it was finished. After a long struggle to find the right form and style of writing, it resulted in two extended essays and a 360˚ virtual reality environment with a sound piece, which are now serving as stepping stones for a future project.

Have you noticed any changes compared to your earlier student years?

I have encountered a new prudishness and more political correctness, which take any political discussion hostage before it has even started.

There appear to be a whole set of unwritten rules and codes with which I should comply. It’s an awkward situation, feeling you’re imposing while doing nothing. Social Studies has invaded specific formats of writing and, with it, a corpus of behavioural imperatives.

Imagination starts from the conviction that there is a free space where you don’t know shit.

If you want to create an atmosphere for permanent education, you have only to embrace the possibility of being an ignorant asshole and get rid of the symbolic debris you have accumulated over the years, so that you can encounter the circumstances afresh. No new ideas can emerge if this condition is not met.

What advice would you give to future Sandberg students?

Focus on independence, which goes beyond the idea of being an autonomous artist. The epithet of being an autonomous artist is as

ridiculous as thinking you are free in this society. The pastoral idea of the art world as a happy sanctuary where you can express yourself has to be debunked from day one.

The technique is to deconstruct these truisms not in parlance, but in your practice, which is highly theoretical at the same time. It is in the event that the thinking is done, that is your job. You have the obligation to invest in this prospect, even if there is no guarantee of meaning, let alone success.

—————————————— IVAN CHENG Critical Studies (2015 – 2017) What is your background?

While in Amsterdam, this question is posed constantly. I am Australian, my parents having migrated from Hong Kong. The negotiation of class is relative. To answer the question once clarified – the degree I earned before studying CS was a Bachelor of Music (Performance), in which I was focused on contemporary music practice and primarily interested in scores and new music. I did so in Sydney and London.

During those studies and afterwards, I was making interdisciplinary performance work, and existed within different communities, also as an organiser.

How should I interpret the ‘critical’ in Critical Studies?

I’ll address the ‘I’ with a simple leap to convey how I communicated my study while engaged in it. I know that my cohort would negotiate the question differently, and I have not chosen to stay so closely tethered to speak for the current students.

While studying, there was the sense that the programme was still coming into its identity, and we were lucky to have some voice in the way we mediated ourselves. The group I studied with did not share academic backgrounds, so a lot of reading we encountered was unburdened with background, and read for affect, construction, beyond its contextual-

ised position of authority. Based on our group position, ‘critical’ thus had the flexibility to be conveyed as related to issues of temporality, or positioned with irony; what differentiated the tenor of pedagogy here from other studies?

As I understand it now, the programme exists within an ecology of academia, and increasingly draws on a respected community of thinkers and practitioners, many of whom are based outside Amsterdam. It could be parenthetically noted that many Sandberg departments draw from international or European networks to bring interesting practitioners with mixed relationships to what teaching might constitute. In my experience, objectivity and subjectivities are constantly at the fore of negotiating what the course of study entails.

Reading and writing in English are naturalised within the course, and due to the size of classes and the time structure, oral participation is valorised. Discussion, reaction and affect take strong positions.

What do the studies consist of?

The year was divided into trimesters, with a shift in tutors for writing, research and theory.

From memory, the language used for the fortnightly meetings of the CS cohort was ‘roundtables’, and on a monthly basis, invited guests would come to speak in a ‘public moment’ and run a seminar. Course participants have a self-led ‘research project’ which is developed alongside the pedagogical framework, which both years encounter together.

The thesis component is not prioritised, but submitted in the first trimester of the second year and positioned as part of the continuity of the programme rather than the result. The course offers flexibility in what form it takes. As in any small educational programme, there is the possibility to shape the course to better reflect the interests of the participants. The participants are considered and invited in relation to each other by core department members, as well as students.

What would the ideal format for artistic education look like to you?

No form of education is right for all students,

but an ideal format for artistic education is friendship, entrustment and learning from intergenerational peers. What does generosity and discipline look like?

How would you define your current practice?

Like a baby, I have a baby-sized practice.

It’s infantile and still finding its bearing. It’s coughing up stuff and shitting itself and it has a strange relationship to trust and expectations; maybe not strange, but burdened. The position of powerlessness is simple to adopt, ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’ You can’t stop being a baby just because you want to.

What are you working on at the moment?

This week in Antwerp at the MuHKA I conclude a project I’ve been working on over the last few months with a performance called ‘Sunset Blister’. It’s remarkably flip, but follows a negotiation of the role of ‘spy’ across the five-act exhibition, as well as producing glass wind instruments from pumice – abrasive, porous volcanic ash – and a series of workshops I devised for young people through the museum.

I’m also showing a two-channel video work and a large wall painting. The function of the in-between and limits to proposed transformations has been at the core of my research and thinking for this work.

After that, I’m in Amsterdam for a few days, minding the current show at the project space I run, then touring in Lithuania with the opera Bad Weather that I wrote for Arturas Bumšteinas. It positions nativity and subjectivity in relation to the weather, and uses reconstructions of baroque noise machines, traditionally off-stage as devices to create fallacies within illusory, presentational space.

After that, I go to Athens to make a performance, try to see some friends over the New Year, a stint in Sydney, then some little things in Utrecht, and working on a thing in late February at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. I think I’m then on tour again with Bad Weather.

How do you disseminate your work?

I don’t think I engage with platforms in any way that’s totally integrated with the work,

but am predisposed to no-strategy-publicness.

Many past performances are subtitled and available on YouTube, which as an interface feels more pleasurable (excremental?), than say, Vimeo. Often the camera has degraded these images, and the registration meets the eye in a particular way. Self-destructively earnest, the internet is obviously also a site of deceit. Not sure how to deal with inevitable context distortion, but very grateful to work with the people I do, and to perceive their trust.

How does your practice relate to the space bologna.cc you set up more than a year ago? bologna shares the same pleasures of naming that I like to exercise in my work. I love acronyms. BCC is often understood to refer to the blind copy, an audience who is not aware of the others who choose or not to observe. bologna has been operational for just over a year, following a series of events and gestures which were sited in a space I ran in the centre of town with a constantly shifting name which primarily made invitations via email. Initiating this space was directly related to the desire, shared with CS classmates, to be accountable for invited guests, to engage beyond the institute, while also recognising the protocols of paying dues and building a reputation as a space, and addressing the privilege of space that I was often away from.

The space that b.cc is located in was offered to me as a studio, and it felt right to use it to host. bologna marks a foray into a semi-public; we’ve hosted something like 25 events or exhibitions in the last year, and will continue to modestly do so.

I’ve only recently realised that I’m allowed to say that bologna does not constitute my studio practice; it’s a negotiation of community and audience. We invite practitioners into the shifting context of my studio, and attempt to accommodate with grace. Somehow it has never made sense to offer a traditionally discursive programme. It has been a pleasure to defer or lose full control over how it distributes itself. Which is a good thing.

The name also refers to the Bologna Process, being located on a floor of a building

which I understand to be leased by Sandberg.

I find it valuable to be sceptical of things coming together into one space. To put an s in front of bologna is apparently slang for fool’s gold, or can mean to aggressively give away.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

This question presupposes a flatness across all Sandberg students, rather than acknowledging the diversity of economic and educational backgrounds among the students.

My advice would be to think about space and what it means to take it. Do it with as little ego and as much energy and fervour as you can. Remember that any dissatisfactions that you have with a situation can lie within an institution, but can also be with yourself. Ecologies only exist if you make them, so you can’t expect to simply receive, particularly in this neoliberal paradise. In editing the text that my spoken words have transformed into, this question bears the weight of offering closure.

One of the books that has stayed with me from my studies is Lee Edelman’s, No Future. I’d recommend finding a position on this book.

—————————————— YURI VEERMAN Design (2010 – 2012) What is your background?

Nineteen years ago, I started studying Art Direction at a private school in Amsterdam.

I could not imagine myself going to an advertising agency straight after that, working at an office would not fit my ideas about communication and I was still too young anyway. I then studied graphic design at the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht. That period had a big influence on getting me to work more artistically.

For the first time, I was confronted with education that tried to get the most out of you, that encouraged you to create your own world. Before that, studying had always been one directional.

Afterwards, I did all sorts of things, I was part of a theatre group, worked as a graph-

ic designer and participated in social design projects; I have always been a generalist. In 2007, I did an internship at EGBG–Martijn Engelbregt, and later at the studio of the designer Annelys de Vet. At the time, Martijn was a guest tutor at Sandberg and Annelys became head of the Design Department later on, so there was already a natural link to the Sandberg. The Design Department interested me because it asks fundamental questions about design. It uses language to deconstruct things, not to proclaim them.

How did your practice evolve at Sandberg?

At Sandberg, I found the method, the material and the subject of my practice. My material being symbols, be it words, images or shapes.

It still left the question open of what then to do with these symbols, but at least at Sandberg you learn to find your own voice. At last, you are able to leave the fluff behind and focus on what is actually relevant to you.

After graduating from the HKU, I made a one-minute video called Trots op Nederland (Proud of Holland), where a Dutch-Moroccan singer sings the Dutch national anthem in Arabic. It was a response to a quote from Rita Verdonk, former Minister for Integration and Asylum Affairs, who had proclaimed that it should be forbidden for immigrants to speak their native tongue in public. Already, while making it, I understood that it would hit a nerve. To unpack a national symbol means to remove the existing framing to build a new one. You could say that my work largely consists of unpacking The Netherlands. I always end up tweaking its strongest symbols: the flag, the language, the currency. It became my method to remix the remix in order to get back to the original.

Is there a formula for the right intervention?

The sparser the intervention, the better. The clearer the idea, the easier it is to explain the project and to get people on board. But, mostly, the simplicity makes it possible to get a hold on a complex world. If a design can itself function as a new symbol, it can then travel on its own in the world of symbols. My

projects that tell a story on their own have worked best.

It’s a wicked realisation that if a symbol is related to a big idea, one can then bend the bigger idea by tweaking the symbol.

So, your practice consists of hacking into symbols, of dismantling them. But would there then also be a space to make a constructive contribution?

I was one of the founding members of Platform BK, which operates as an active thinktank for artists and other cultural workers.

The first meetings actually started at the Sandberg in 2011, right after the budget cuts on culture were announced. It’s a real pain to mount a coalition of artists; to unite as a group in order to have political influence. But since it is the only way to make a difference, it had to be done. After the first enthusiastic group discussions, people quickly dropped out. I had decided that, for once, I would at no point leave the discussion but just stay to see where it would all lead. A year later, Platform BK was launched at W139. We really did achieve some things that actually had an effect on political decision-making. For example, the fair practice code and a guideline for artists’ fees.

How would you define your practice now?

From a negative point of view: scattered. It is challenging to shift gears between different types of work all the time. From a positive point of view: full of opportunity. It wouldn’t be productive to work only for one client at a time. I work as a designer, artist, performer, public speaker, and as a teacher.

What is the ideal format for artistic education according to you?

That’s a hard question. When teaching at the HKU University of the Arts, I try to give examples – little video clips, or images – from completely different disciplines, so that my students can spot parallels with their work. I ask them: What can you learn from the way that someone works with their instruments, their ingredients, their materials, their audi-

ence? I feel very privileged to see the creative process of beginners (first-year students and students in the preparatory course) who have not been spoiled by the circumspection of the professional. The naiveté often leads to the most original visual ideas.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Don’t hide behind abstractions. Be courageous enough to propose clear ideas. Design is often used to broach sensitive subjects, but the social relevance should never become the main forte of a work. Just because a work is politically relevant, doesn’t mean it is automatically any good.

When discussing work, don’t be afraid to just say: ‘I don’t get it, why is this your approach? What are you actually trying to say?

What are you actually trying to achieve?’ Question each other’s work and try to learn that way.

Your studies are the best time to challenge each other’s strategies and aesthetics.

—————————————— ANNA REUTINGER Dirty Art Department (2014 – 2016) What is your background?

Before Sandberg, I studied Design Media Arts and Digital Humanities at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) so I guess I would say I have more of a ‘design’ background.

Studying in such a large school of 40,000 students gave me the opportunity to take a number of really specific classes, like Introduction to Space Weather, East Asian History, and Tribal Worldviews, which I think completely informed my way of working later on. I was already making objects to avoid sitting in front of a screen all the time, and after graduating I tried to maintain that balance. After graduating, I worked as a studio assistant for two of my former professors, who had very different practices, and I also worked as a Concept Developer with a design studio. What drew me to the Dirty Art Department was part cir-

cumstantial, part deliberate, but I was really attracted to the tone coming from the department as being interdisciplinary, and that it seemed to position itself as a truly alternative school where anything could happen.

How would you characterise the Dirty Art Department?

Well it depends who you’re talking to, but I like to start by saying that it’s not Fine Art and it’s not Design, but somewhere in a grey area.

Every year it changes, depending on who the students are, but in my year, we started with a fashion designer, a car designer, a cabinet maker, a performance/video artist, a product designer, a photographer and a psychology professor. It’s a bit ridiculous to label them as such, as they were all looking for ways to escape the constraints of the discipline they worked in before, which is I guess what brought us together in this weird other place called Dirty Art. There were a lot of strange situations we were dropped into and had to navigate, the best of which was our time in Milan, where we spent six weeks living and working in a squatted palazzo/alternative cultural centre called Macao. There were a wide range of activities already taking place in Macao, and besides learning how to live together amidst these techno parties and tango nights, we also had to set up our own programme of things to happen during the Salone del Mobile. Much of the work happened out of necessity (e.g. when the toilets broke, you had to find water to flush them, or sweet talk the restaurant across the street into letting you use theirs). Some of us hated it, and some loved it, but in the end we turned out to be a very tight group, and I think it really influenced our practices.

I picked up Josefin Arnell’s thesis the other day (another former student) and opened it at the chapter, ‘Collective’, and it was talking about how most cults and religions have some type of initiation/right of passage ritual which usually involves pain and suffering. I think that we had a few moments of that in Dirty Art, but through those moments, through all the commiserating, we became closer.

After Milan, the graduation show was less of a priority, as we had already been out in the ‘real world’ and done something, while for other departments it was the big final moment. Also, our show was in a giant inflatable structure that blew down after two days due to heavy winds, so not many people saw it, but it still lives on as urban legend … which is maybe better.

What did you do after graduating?

Three days after graduation, I found out about this Creative Industries grant and just applied for it and somehow got it. The grant was to do a short residency in the labs at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Coming from Dirty Art that environment felt very institutional. While I was making ‘clean’ work in Dirty Art, my impulse was to get really dirty to contrast the cleanness of Jan van Eyck. I wasn’t given a studio space, so I produced a studio on wheels made from waste material I found lying around, then I worked in every part of the institution from this very aesthetic trash heap, as a sort of protest. In the end, I produced a text which expanded on my thesis and further analysed my working method and general philosophy. I wrote about approaching physical material as being non-static and volatile, and how this can be used to take what is normally considered ‘waste’ and use it as raw material. This is of course something that people of privilege never learn, because we are told that the consumption of new things is the only way to go. The text itself is also evolving, it will never be finished.

After the Van Eyck, my student visa expired, and getting the next visa meant either paying a ton of money, or forging a romantic relationship with a close friend. I didn’t have any money, and I didn’t want to support a system which privileged ‘romantic’ relationships over friendship, so I moved to Berlin. It was easier for me to get a visa, cheaper to live, and in a way, I think it was good for me to start all over again (although I do still miss my community in Amsterdam). Living in Berlin as an artist is like living in L.A. as an actor: everyone ends up working in a café, but everyone stays because the dream is still there, the hun-

ger is still there. I still go back to Amsterdam though; I recently taught a workshop at Dirty Art with Daniel Dewar.

How would you describe your current practice?

I call myself a sculptor, but I’m working across media. I still have trouble placing myself in the traditional art contexts (like showing work in a gallery) – I’m always looking for ways to make my work more accessible to an actual general public, and honestly I think that’s way more interesting. It’s crazy as an American to work in Europe, because I still can’t wrap my head around this constant country-hopping.

For example, I’m producing a show now with a friend in Lyon, whom I met along with the curator in Bolzano, and the show is in Zürich.

That’s four countries involved in one exhibition if you count my studio in Berlin. I think it’s dangerous in a way, this EasyJet lifestyle can’t last forever, and I’m trying to be careful and conscious of it.

As someone coming from abroad, how do you look at the Dutch system of funding the arts?

In the States there’s basically no government funding to count on as a young artist, so it’s very commercially focused. In the Netherlands, there is less of a market and much more public funding; however, those funding entities act like any business – they always weigh the risks before making an investment.

The Mondriaan Fund even asks you in their applications to ‘quantify’ a number of aspects of the work you are proposing. That impacts the work quite considerably! It becomes less about the quality of the work and its cultural contribution, and more about the numbers.

I’m not sure if those entities are as self-critical about this as they could be. You see a lot of works where you think, ‘Oh, of course this was funded by the Mondriaan’. Now that I’ve said that, I will never be funded by them. For me, this was one of the reasons to move.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Welcome the unexpected, and be ready to really open yourself up. Know that you’ll go

through very long periods of doubt, but that’s the only way you can have a ‘Eureka!’ moment later. In these periods, just do something, experiment, exercise, learn a technique, get off your ass. Those that have trouble are those who resist changing their minds, maybe they’re already too stuck in their ways.

It’s also important to already imagine how you want to continue after graduation, and use your time in the Sandberg to prepare for that.

Don’t worry about impressing professors, what really matters is learning from your peers and doing work that you are happy with and can defend. There will always be things that take you away from making your work, so you need to fight to find the space and rhythm to do your thing, but once you figure that out, it will help you move forward.

—————————————— SMÁRI RÚNAR RÓBERTSSON Fine Arts (2015 – 2017) What is your background?

I was born and raised in Iceland and studied VAV – moving image at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

And then?

After that, I went directly to the Sandberg Instituut. Making the decision to continue my study, I was immediately confronted by the question of what my practice actually was. I don’t think you take a masters degree directly after your BA to refine or solidify your practice. Pretty soon on, in individual talks with my tutors, I realised that I had many naive, unchallenged preconception of what my work should be and that the reason to continue was to root out and challenge these notions.

At the Graduation show, I presented the work Tabula Rasa at the exhibition space Kunstverein. In it I opened two hatches from the floorboards of the space and placed a pair of studio monitors underneath. From an iPod shuffle I played a playlist of around 1500 audio files of me reading individual words from

an essay I wrote, called ‘The period is a hole that the sentence falls into after it is read.’ The essay itself discusses the reader’s relation to the writer and vice versa, while concerning itself on a broader scale with how we negotiate traces of our own temporal selves. Because it is looping and shuffled, the voice from beneath the floorboards is always making a new string of sentences, a new form. I then added another thing that sort of implies there is a specific meaning to get, in this case it was a metronome sliding into a whale’s eardrum. I added this as an element just to mess with the tendency to seek meaning in distinct elements.

It helped that the eardrum looks a lot like a human face.

After the graduation, I planned to move to Sweden but then I received a talent fund from the AFK, the Amsterdam Art Fund. It is the socalled 3Package Deal, that includes a stipend, a living/working space and support from a coalition of art institutions such as the Oude Kerk.

How would you describe your current practice?

It’s interdisciplinary in the sense that a discipline is like a colour you choose, or like the key of a song. The medium is a component of the work and communicates certain things, history, technical procedure, resemblance or connotation to something within the work.

Taking the discipline into the narrative of the work, it often becomes about the process of its own making. I think that any creative process transfers knowledge directly across all mediums and methods, this is why you can always find a good cooking metaphor for any art problem. You can have different successes and different failures in all mediums. I think that having a versatile problem solving vocabulary is better than mastering anything.

At some point I had the epiphany that I should not try to build meaning into my work.

I realised I had been thinking of art sort of like a rebus puzzle, a complicated discrete communication system to convey something simple. That’s mad because you obviously shouldn’t have an explicit message or moral wrapped into the work. This led me to play with the idea of meaning itself: to play with

the expectation that there should always be some sort of meaning.

Shuffling and randomness are important aspects of my work. They create new structures. And in this randomness, new meaning is generated. I play with the concept of apophenia, that we recognise a signal in the noise and tend to see connections between things that are unrelated.

How do these principles manifest in your work?

For the Get Lost Art Route in Amsterdam Zuid, I took trail markers that I had collected and replaced from a four-day hike in Iceland.

The old poles have an echo of the landscape in them, the wear of wind and rain create this contour of the landscape into the wood. You can see the seasons in them; it becomes a spatial – site specific object. In the Zuidas I transposed the poles as stickers onto the pavement and had them all pointing at their original direction. It formed a trail that didn’t make any sense. I then recorded a lot of directions and imitations of the sound of wind. I mixed those sounds by putting different random combinations together. This piece Walking In Place (The Northern, Eastern, Southern And Western Wind) was compiled with a soundtrack as an audio guide that you can listen to on your phone while walking through the city.

What are you up to now?

I have a show coming up on the 15th of December 2018, I will show work together with my partner at the project space Neverneverland. I will work with my collection of license plates that have fallen off cars on bad roads in Iceland. I have worked with them before, in their crooked and deteriorated condition, but now I decided to make casts of them in plaster. I have always thought of them as casts of the landscape, they become these little maps of where they fell off. As a title for my piece I’m thinking of Contour Maps of Treacherous Roads.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

I can only answer from what has worked for me: I think you should always be aware that you have unjustified and unfounded notions of what your work should be, and that these notions will dictate and confuse your work until you find and address them. You should be aware that you often don’t know why you think the way you do about things. The learning environment is perfect for shifting your opinion and people should definitely not be dogmatic about their practices. You should be open to reform or total restructuring of your ideas on a daily basis. I think ideally anything that nurtures that kind of introspective questioning is good. Regularly loosely writing out what it is you think about your practice can be a good way of achieving a distance and letting go of firm beliefs. Looking at it later, you should encounter the text like that of a stranger almost.

Then do it again and again. I wouldn’t change much in the given structure of the school, as an artist try to play the cards you’re dealt.

—————————————— REIN VERHOEF Studio for Immediate Spaces (2016 – 2018) What is your background?

I studied Fine Art at the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht and was a construction worker at the same time.

How would you describe the Studio for Immediate Spaces Department?

Studio for Immediate Spaces is about breaking up architecture to find new ways to look at its practice. In general, the study programme became more formal over the two years I was there, to accommodate more students who had experience in developing architecture. It’s the only Master’s at the Sandberg that doesn’t offer a degree in Fine Art and Design but instead an MA in Interior Architecture.

The studies confront you with the reality of spatial design. To give an example, we went to the migrant camp in Calais as a group after ten days of preparation. We interacted with

the local economy of the place while trying to use our practice to come up with a meaningful architectural intervention. We made a belfry out of reclaimed materials on a dune in the camp. This watchtower acted as a community centre, a tea kitchen, and playful workshop for the men. Our presence helped to amplify the already existing social dynamics, but also interfered with the privacy of the people who used the place to call their families. SIS made apparent this tension inherent to structural approaches to spatial design.

Of course, you need a structural approach to realise an architectural project, but it also deprives you of your artistic freedom to create by freewheeling. This constant balancing act between autonomous art – in my case sculptural work – and an applied artistic practice is what makes the department interesting.

As well as courses by architects, geographers and artists, Tom Vandeputte gave theory classes that were very instructive. They helped me to identify the power structures and systems of surveillance that I had encountered first-hand while working on the building sites but had never been able to conceptualise.

I should not forget that an essential aspect of the programme is that you learn how to pitch your project. Architects focus on their digital drawings and models but depend on the pitch to have them realised. Before Sandberg, I was just totally lost in a group setting when I had to present my work in a design context. SIS taught me to speak about my work in a more pragmatic manner, I learned this the hard way.

How would you describe your current practice?

While I was studying at Sandberg, I started the art space Dappie at the Dappermarkt in the Oost neighbourhood, as a collective of friends from my Bachelor’s days had moved to Amsterdam. It’s quite a wild bunch of people; there is also a musician and a poet involved.

We started Dappie as a project space that would offer us the possibility to have an atelier in Amsterdam. We invite artists to work for a month, followed by a month-long exhibition.

We see it as a raw place, to experiment, not

at all promoting eye-catchers. There are too few places in Amsterdam that offer the possibility to develop your practice beyond the format into which your work has already been squeezed. Usually, you’re asked to show exactly what you have been doing for years. Can you still escape from the expectations that already surround your practice soon after graduating?

We have an intense exchange with the invited artists, not by organising public talks, but through lengthy discussions in the atelier. After starting in the Nieuw-West neighbourhood of Amsterdam, we moved to the vicinity of the Tropenmuseum. Currently, we are again looking for a new space.

As well as this, I’m also involved in Fabulous Future, a group of former students from my graduation year of Studio for Immediate Spaces. The purpose of Fabulous Future is more focused, as a collective we try to obtain commissions in the fields of art, design and architecture. Recently, we built a hotel room during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, but we have also intervened in De School nightclub and in the Vondelbunker. We want to collaborate with all kinds of different organisations, for example on a plot of land with project developers who are open to finding new functions for public and private spaces – like a communication agency for spatial design that translates commissions into formats that are financially sustainable. I want to give credit to Jurgen Bey, as he helped us to find the place.

The Sandberg Instituut continues to support this initiative.

These are all initiatives on the scale of the collective. What currently challenges you in your individual practice?

As I come very much from the culture of construction work, I’m always afraid that my work will become too heavy. I tend to keep poetic inclinations at bay. In the future, I would like to find a new balance, to create more openness on that level. I’m not an avid reader, but recently I was offered a book by Perec. He masters the ability to both maintain a superficial approach and simultaneously explore his characters in-depth. On a more practical

level, I will soon go to Japan for a month-long course on traditional woodwork.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Make sure that you have enough time at hand, so that you can dedicate yourself fully to your studies. This is especially important for students who already live in the Netherlands, who could be tempted to stick too much to their existing context. And if you have to focus on things outside your studies, communicate clearly to your group and tutors to avoid misunderstandings as much as possible.

—————————————— TING GONG Challenging Jewellery (2018 – 2020) What is your background?

I graduated three years ago from the fashion design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and developed a practice that uses fashion in installations and through performance. I’m looking for ways to use sculpture as a garment. Since I tend to work with choreography and scenography, the focus is very much on the fabric and material choice and the relationship to movement. I recently had a performance in Shanghai with 50 people who I found through social media.

What is the shift like from Rietveld to Sandberg?

At Rietveld, you often function as an individual. Your concern is to build up your own practice. In this sense, the Sandberg to me is a step forward: it is about thinking as a collective.

How would you define your practice currently, as an artist or a designer?

Can I really not be both? The dominant transition that I make between practices is from fashion to the language of visual art. It still seems to be taboo for your practice to be about this slash between different fields. I still have to present myself as a ‘fashion designer’, al-

though it is more than that.

For me, a space is always the beginning.

That’s why the catwalk doesn’t work for me, because then the context too often comes after the work. I don’t see any boundaries in the work; in my mind, fashion is an artistic criterion, it is not about the collection or the clothing.

How does your own practice relate to the Challenging Jewellery programme?

As my practice lies in the context of fashion, installation and performance, I am constantly searching for the link between my profession as a fashion designer and artist, and who I am, and how that plays out in a group.

How has the programme functioned in these first few months?

We are organising ourselves to become a company, a persuasive collective. We have regular studio visits to learn from other functioning models of established practitioners.

It will be important to find the core of the company, because now it is only a structure.

Basically, the aim here is to create a business plan with the group and then execute it. Right now, we are meeting twice a week. You have to learn to work by talking, normally it works by practice. That means that I have to train myself to become more of a mediator. The most challenging task is that we plan everything from zero. This means that you can’t hide behind the role of the student anymore.

Group decisions are made using a method from deep democracy: you make a mind map of the different positions, then proceed by voting, and then the majority has to accommodate the minority to ensure it is on board. So, what I realised is that in theory this is teaching people how to express and communicate in a group, both consciously and unconsciously, and how to structure a convincing plan within a group.

The main question then remains: How do you bring your own practice to the group?

What needs to be done to make this work?

It would be good to have courses on the financial side of things, on copyright, taxes and

other business issues. It would also be good to learn something besides our main professional work in these two years, so that we can im-prove what we are not good at. Then, the possibility of mixing things up a bit would be good, between the departments and programmes at Sandberg, which still stand very much on their own. This would also involve theory courses, because currently most is done through talking. It also means that we, as a group, need sessions to learn how to give and receive feedback.

To function as a company or collective would require even more transparency. We, as students, are in charge of a budget to organise things ourselves. Ideally, we should also be able to look into the broader budget of the programme, so that we can ensure equal payment for everyone involved, including the coordinators.

Where could this lead to?

What I learned from my group is that we need to get rid of the gallery system, currently the dominant system of distribution for limited edition works and jewellery. Jewellers have suffered too much from this dependence, and it hinders them in finding a larger audience.

As a group, we are currently working on a manifesto to spell these things out; thinking how to change the practice of design in a structural sense.

When would you consider you have succeeded in that?

If we as a department became the institute.

Also, I would eventually like to take the programme to China. Because, while we can just have an exhibition here in Amsterdam and that would be fine, just having a show there and then leaving would not be fine. It could only work if it is an exchange between institutions that leads to true cultural exchange.

The way of working there brings in a lot, but it can also be too fast. In Shanghai, you would be much more in demand, people would take the initiative to work with you. But that also creates the tendency for the work to become commercial. Also, if your work has a

political side, then it needs constant negotiation to make it happen. How to go to China and work there and not get hurt, that is the question.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

First, be patient. As there is an open education structure to follow, we sometimes tend to fall into endless meetings. While you can zone out, you should never leave the discussion.

Also, try to set up cross-disciplinary collaborations and build a professional network.

And, finally, if you want to operate in a collective, everyone in the group needs to learn to be a great mediator.

—————————————— WILLEM SCHENK The Commoners’ Society (2018 – 2020) What is your background?

After I graduated from AMFI, the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, I started working as an assistant to the trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort in Paris and New York. We worked together from the Arnhem Fashion Biennial in 2013 up until the moment I started at Sandberg a few months ago.

Being an assistant means being able to speak like your boss, to understand her ideas through and through. It is an intense rhythm, where you present two different trend forecasts a year through books and lectures, precisely eighteen months in advance of the collection presentation of the fashion brands. Coordinating these lectures all over the world meant to schedule meetings, to negotiate contracts and give presentations myself.

In 2016, I moved to New York with Lidewij Edelkoort. She became the Dean of Hybrid Design Studies at the Parsons School of Design. We worked on a new hybrid first year for all freshmen that would focus on the body, space and time, alternatively from the perspectives of the humanities, architecture and art. We didn’t manage to set this programme

up because the tuition costs and thus the career expectations in the US are just too high for students to engage in an experimental programme. We did, however, manage to launch a Master of Fine Arts in Textiles, which is currently running. To gain even more awareness of the importance of textiles and to give future graduates of the MFA a platform to present themselves, we also launched the New York Textile Month (the third edition just finished this September).

To then go to Sandberg seems quite a shift. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was already commoning before, but I definitely was co-doing. For instance, we managed to build the New York Textile Month from the ground up, just by collaborating with partners and aligning agendas without any budget. I see commoning more as an attitude than as a very refined concept. As commoning popped up in academia, everyone started to come up with their own definition. I see it as a trend. I want to elaborate on it from a position as mediator.

What would be a typical day in The Commoners’ Society programme?

I can only answer that by depicting four different days. Day one would be a group outing to places that study or practice commoning. This might be an initiative in the neighbourhood or an organisation such as Casco in Utrecht, for instance. Day two consists of guest lectures, for instance from architects Liam Young and Stavros Stravides and performer Lucy Orta.

On day three, we debate and present our ideas to each other. Day four would be a reading group, where we discuss various texts on commoning together.

Our programme is now involved in a project that takes Zeeburgereiland as a testing ground for our initiatives. The idea was initiated by the BPD building company culture fund to incorporate art into the public space in the neighbourhood. Alongside independent researchers from Rietveld and the UvA, The Commoners’ Society MA also jumped on that boat. The project is still in its initial development phase, but we have already taken off and

we can probably start working from the plot of land on Zeeburgereiland from March 2019 if all goes well.

Does this structure work for you?

Yes, the only issue is that currently the programme is housed in a temporary location in the city of Amsterdam, which is a little isolated from the other temporary programmes and main departments. Stronger hybridity between my practice and other practices (including non-artistic forms) would be useful.

We are such a diverse group of people, consisting of artists, designers, a dancer ... with so many different needs and ideas about this programme. So, even if we are not closer to other departments, we nevertheless have a lot to teach to each other.

I miss a stronger connection with the outer world; the option to directly work with society, with the government or even industry, beyond the cultural field. With some guidance, it would open much more possibilities to co-produce work.

How would you define your own practice?

I am a consultant and would like to advise communities, cities and regions on how to discover and incorporate local identities in new forms of public space and ownership. I’m also approaching this programme as work. I try to handle the situation as it comes, just as I would work with a client. I want to give everyone a seat at the table, including people who have never been invited, like the minorities of the community, and make sure their needs and voices are present when imagining a better future for everyone. But I am excited to work with the ‘bad guys’ too, I feel that by influencing the big companies things can reach more communities at a faster pace.

One of the first projects that I proposed was a community centre to design typography.

I came up with the idea of Common Sans, a font that people could use to communicate with each other within the neighbourhood and for the municipality to communicate with them. It would be based on a composite version of everyone’s handwriting.

That seems ambitious, but still quite manageable on that scale. Would you also use commoning in a more structural approach?

Today, I had an interview with the global company Shell on how to integrate commoning into their new energies department. I’m excited to work with the bad guys, I’ve done that for some time and I want to keep on doing it. From my angle, it would be unethical not to work with companies such as Shell just because they are considered evil; it is in fact evil to not engage in a system in which you take part anyway. Shell is investing in new energies, so this venture is an opportunity to change things from within. In The Hague, they have 300 people working purely on the question of how you can integrate new energies into a community. I think I can help them with this, and use their resources to bring about structural change, over and above merely showcasing an individual social project in cultural venues.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Come with high levels of trust in yourself and others. Joining a Temporary Programme means the same uncertainty for everyone, both students and programme directors.

Don’t let uncertainty scare you off, and keep believing in yourself and the co-members of your programme. However, don’t discuss everything collectively to eternity, try to set boundaries and spend the majority of your time producing – together.

Also, come with high expectations of yourself. Dare to approach people you otherwise wouldn’t approach. Remember that the programmes are very free, so use the chaos.

Don’t do things because others do them in a certain way, do them the way you want. Know your own agenda and know what you want to take from the programme. Keep in mind that you will probably not be taught a new profession, you will become better at what you’re doing already.

——————————————

ELIF ÖZBAY Shadow Channel (2017 – 2019) What is your background?

I did my Bachelor’s at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and graduated from the Man and Communication Department. After graduating, I worked as a graphic designer and filmmaker. I had fun with the freelance life, but at some point I felt like I needed more job security. So, right now I’m working as a digital designer and producer at Johnny Wonder, a communication agency that focuses on valuable digital storytelling. This work gives me knowledge I won’t be able to find in my studies, while my work can’t provide the personal growth that my studies gives me. I very much enjoy the balance of these two worlds.

What is the goal of the programme?

My idea of Shadow Channel when I applied was that I would be collaborating with a lot of fellow students. The collaboration turned out differently than I expected. Everyone is mostly focused on their own projects, which for me, unexpectedly, has worked really well. The way we all work together is in helping each other out in our own personal projects and works. I film, edit and make the music myself. Whenever there is a problem, or I have certain questions, I can talk to my group. And this group consists of people who I see as my comrades.

Everyone is very enthusiastic and open and this led me to learn a lot about art practice in all its diversity. In a way, this is what our course director Juha van ’t Zelfde wanted for us as well, this solidarity in either working together or supporting each other, through which we can educate each other. This becomes the backbone of the group. Of course, we had some issues in the beginning; it’s inevitable with this diverse group of people. Everyone has a different background, interests, their way of working and also a different level of artistic practice. But in the end, you get over these hurdles quickly, since the time you have together is only two years.

Because we are a diverse group, the goal of the programme is more than just making a film. We engage in creating counter-narratives, question what cinema is, experiment with different methodologies and really learn from each other when it comes to techniques and using different media. It could be about writing, filming, making music, scores, or having discussions about distributing the work beyond the white cube.

Then I guess it is not only about producing counter-narratives, but to set the stage for other voices.

Well, the moment someone else steps onto this stage for these unheard voices, is precisely the moment where it can go wrong. We address these topics in Shadow Channel in various classes and discussions. Because of these discussions and the knowledge they provide, it definitely was the positive push for me to realise the capacity of storytelling and personal experiences.

Reclaiming certain elements from my background, using only what fascinates me, inspires me, and makes me proud, instead of telling the story that’s expected, is what I find very liberating. It’s also the only way for me to take this very personal theme to a level where it becomes more than only my voice. It can become bigger. And I believe that is exactly the point of being aware of whose story you’re telling.

From the description of your programme, I get the sense that it wants to be more professional and cleaner than cinema. It takes from the recent democratisation of HD video (‘Anyone with a smartphone has a movie camera at their disposal’), suggesting that students should aim for maximum circulation and accessibility of counter-narratives.

I guess everyone who applied for Shadow Channel was critical of such statements. And that is exactly the point. To not take these statements as a fact, and critically reflect on them. Does it mean that my work should be transparent and accessible, or fast? Not at all, I think. Before Sandberg, I started a project with a friend called OUR EYES,

which we saw as a platform and a keeper of stories. We talked to many of our peers with mixed backgrounds and we shared amazing stories with each other. These stories are so important to us that we didn’t want to make them visible to everyone. These stories are on lockdown. Not everything is made to be overly shared. Not everything in Shadow Channel needs to fit the fast circulation of information-sharing. There is a place for these opinions in Sandberg, as well as the ones that work within the position you mention in your question.

Do you have a connection with other departments?

I have personal connections with other departments of course. But as part of Shadow Channel, we are sharing lectures by our guest tutors with the other departments. We also share our main tutors, Rob Schröder and Daniel van der Velden, with the Design Department. Some of us were very interested in the methodology weeks run by Studio for Immediate Spaces, so we proposed a collaborative week, which will happen very soon.

What are you up to now?

As I’m now in my second year of Shadow Channel, my thesis has the highest priority. Right now, we are on our way to Nida Art Colony in Lithuania to write our theses. It will be nice to start this hectic assignment together and push each other through the process of writing.

Then there is also graduating of course and thinking of what to do after and how to handle it all in such a short amount of time.

‘We got this’, is the mantra of this year.

What will you do after Shadow Channel?

Most of us are working on quite big projects, so I believe they will be extended after graduation. I still see a lot of collaborative work in the future. Especially as Shadow Channel is being extended an extra two years, I see us coming back together now and then to see how we can either support the new group or how we still want to make work together. A lot of stuff can still happen.

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Be sensible and sensitive. Be enthusiastic about each other’s progress and work.

—————————————— FABIAN REICHLE Radical Cut-Up (2017 – 2019) What is your background?

I studied music journalism. Before deciding on what to study, I had written twenty applications to all kinds of universities in Germany, ranging from architecture to theatre and science, because I had no idea what I wanted to do. As I was very interested in a lot of things, I thought that maybe in journalism I could bring together this generalist perspective of dealing with any kind of topic. During my Bachelor’s degree, I felt that journalistic forms were limited, and in order to challenge them, I found answers in the arts.

For me, a lot of artwork serves as a presentation of research, and in that sense it can also be journalism. As a curator you can be a journalist, as an artist you can be a journalist.

So, what I’m doing now and what I’m planning to do after Sandberg can be still considered journalism in a certain way, but wrapped up differently.

How do you see your Temporary Programme, Radical Cut-Up? First, it is interesting that it is a temporary programme that will only run once for two years. To some people, the themes of these programmes might sound ridiculous, such as ‘Material Utopias’, ‘Challenging Jewellery’, ‘Reinventing Daily Life’. It could be frowned upon. If you don’t know much about the institute, and you hear those terms, you might ask yourself what is the relevance of these temporary programmes in these times? But it is interesting precisely because it only happens once. It is a frame in which a single person, in this case, Lukas Feireiss, initiates a movement that triggers the emergence of a collective. In

our case, we wanted to have a deep look into documenting and defining the cut-up as a form of expression in all kinds of disciplines.

We talk a lot about how appropriation, stealing, borrowing and copying are defined.

What is plagiarism and when could it be justified? With the premise that everything has already been done, does originality even exist?

If something has been done before, why would I be stopped from doing it again? Maybe picking up something and putting it in a new context can make it mean something completely different – by using the cut-up as a method, and by questioning its use, such as with cultural appropriation, for example. It is not a juridical approach, but more an ethical one, asking: What are the common rules? I think the real relevance right now just comes from the current circulation of information, imagery and sound. It all revolves around the question: Who does knowledge belong to?

In the end, this temporary programme is a good context to work in, with the current speed of travel of things. The cut-up as an art form is nothing new, I admit, but I think it’s just a good moment to face it in the context of our times. We should document this and try to learn from it.

Is there a link with your background as a journalist and your work with PUB radio?

Before PUB Radio was founded, I had started collaborating with Arif Kornweitz and Tamar Shafrir from the online radio platform Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee on some soundpieces that for me worked as some kind of hybrid between art piece and journalistic medium. In order to do something else with the student-run PUB initiative, I started producing jingles for the radio. And then during the Graduation Exhibitions and Events in 2018, I hosted a radio show that was broadcast non-stop for 24 hours, doing eight hours each day. The last time I hosted a show was years ago and I had never hosted longer than two hours.

PUB should pass on knowledge, not only internally but also to the public. And at the same time, for me it works as some kind of student union, where you collaborate and engage

with people from other departments. Agustina Woodgate and Miquel Hervás Gómez, the initiators of the whole PUB movement, have begun a strategy to pass things on from second to first-year students. In our second year, we often don’t have the capacity to work on these kinds of initiatives, because it’s the moment to write our theses and graduate. However, I hope that PUB is something that will continue. There is now a team that is doing the PUB journal, and there are people who are doing PUB TV and PUB radio.

After our kickstart last year, we’ve had the opportunity to do amazing projects, like a broadcast during Het Weekend at De School on sexism in the music industry and the resistance to it. Afterwards, we were also invited to a design festival in Switzerland. So, it’s kind of just starting and I think that once these connections have been made, it will be difficult to end the initiative. I hope the Sandberg Instituut sees the quality in this project and with its support and dedicated students, I see a bright future.

What would be your advice to future students?

When I came to Sandberg, I really said to myself, ‘I’m going to give it everything or I’m not going to do it’. There will always be things that can be looked at critically, but there are so many things that I took as a chance. Take what you can! In our class, we have a very good base for communication. We have a lot of people who are incredibly social and who come with a certain experience of being in a group and being part of a class. Create a base in the beginning! It will come in handy. We also come from so many different places, so we can learn a lot from each other. The 10 Rules for Students and Teachers, popularised by John Cage, were always in the back of my head. Use your time smartly! It is just two years, so let’s do something. Don’t forget that it’s a small institute, so if you want help, just ask for it. You just need to find the right person.

Stay informed! School politics are interesting and in order to make changes you have to be up to date. Stay in touch with friends from other departments that you met at the

academic year opening dinner. I missed out on a lecture and Q&A by Mark Leckey, whom I adore, you don’t want to make the same mistake, and with the number of guests invited, it is likely to happen.

I would suggest you make your study truly yours, even if that might sometimes mean attendance in your own department decreases and increases in another department. Sorry if I’m messing something up here, Jurgen and co., but I really enjoy seeing departmentally fluid students running their rounds.

In general, as a philosophy, it would always be good to have trust in the process. It will only work if you’re confident. Because if you’re not confident, the work won’t be good.

That is also naïve, but it can save you from a breakdown.

—————————————— JUHEE HAHM Master of Design Experiences (2017 – 2019) What is your background?

I studied spatial design in South Korea and communication design in Eindhoven, where I made furniture, installations, video and clothes. My career continued with video and drawing because it was easier to work on that by myself. That is still the core of my practice at this moment, but my way of drawing spatial situations only came about after my graduation from my Bachelor’s. I was bored and needed distraction, so I decided to do one hundred days of drawing. That’s how I started.

The thread through these past studies up to my current work and time at the Sandberg is to approach space as a language. In the end, architecture means not proposing a building; it comes down to the communication of a drawing. I see architecture as communication.

Beyond this, for me, the question is: How do I involve movement in a space with non-verbal elements, with objects? This is a cinematic approach: if a space is a scenario, then moving through it means filming it. Your eyes are a camera. This is how I became interested in

film and vision. The horizontal view of a resident is very different from the top-down view of an architect. My practice is to make people understand what is going on in a space. A wall and a door don’t really mean anything, it is about the activity that goes on in the space.

The drawings are a mix of both digital and hand drawings. It might be hand drawing on the computer, painting, 3D drawing, etc.

I start with them in the same way you would start a building: with the structure. Then I define the activity that can happen in-between the elements. The people in the drawings come last.

It actually sounds like the opposite of networking, where the people are defined first, and then used to define the structure. That network building seems to lie at the core of the Master of Design Experiences. How do you see this hosted programme?

The programme is an initiative of the University of the Underground, hosted by the Sandberg Instituut. The programme is externally funded, for example, by WeTransfer, meaning that our tuition is free. The programme reflects the global scale of this set-up. It investigates the implications of external funding for art education and it is about learning to intervene in global structures: about getting funding; finding a network. Next to developing my practice, I wanted to learn how to talk with institutions.

The programme functions according to the corporate structure of a brief. A brief might be: talk with an institution, find out what is their trauma, and make an opera out of this – within two months. But then, I have to ask myself: How do I articulate my own position within this brief? I know what I’m interested in but how do I use that in the context of a rigid form of a brief. And, in a more general sense: How do you talk with an institution? How do you initiate projects with institutions while keeping control of your artistic freedom?

As tuition in this two-year hosted programme is free, ironically it becomes clearer that I’m investing my time and my career. No tuition fee means scholarship, and I applied

for the scholarship and was selected. Now, I just need to work hard on what I applied for.

At the same time, I have to make good use of the system in my development. To invest my time and energy to develop myself should be the aim of the educational institution. Therefore, when I achieve my aim, the purpose of the institution and the intention of the scholarship should have been achieved. If an institution is geared towards helping the student, then this will ultimately go back to the institution and benefit them.

My programme is all about rethinking, analysing, hacking into the institutions and individuals behind them, as a response to the precarious position of designers. We, as students, are more focused on our experience and our portfolio than on finances. We also have a lot of discussions about post-colonialism, neoliberalism, we applied to the programme because we are interested in these questions, and explore how to solve these problems as individuals by using the existing system, which means existing institutions.

In the Master of Design Experience, we have constantly been questioning and discussing our aims, what the course is about and what our position is as individuals between institutions. This is the difficult question, it boils down to: How to talk with society – not only with yourself? Or, more concretely: What is the institution? How do you make use of an institution as an individual? I think these are important questions for any new applicants to temporary programmes. For me, it brings in bigger questions, such as: Who am I? What am I good at? What is my position as a designer? Am I a journalist? A researcher? An architect? How is my position different from those? What I’m good at is making things pretty ... but that’s not enough. Then, how can I survive?

What would be your advice to future Sandberg students?

Hang out with other Sandbergers as much as possible, look for collective work, and also look around Amsterdam and the Netherlands as much as possible, especially if you are from

abroad. Talk with as many people around you as you can, including neighbours, friends, people from school, the institution, because these will be your assets.

Two years is not really that long. First, look at yourself, what are you interested in, what are you strong at, and then look around institutions, communities and find ways to merge these two. I would recommend collaborating with other departments, or other schools, even if that school is not about art. I think it is important not to be trapped solely in art.

Read more Notes to Future Students on https://sandberg.nl/writings

CHAL LENG ING JEW EL LER Y CHALLENGING JEWELLERY Finished Temporary Programme (2018 – 2020)

Programme Directors BLESS: Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag Coordinator Sarah Mesritz

Supervisory Board Gijs Bakker, Liesbeth den Besten, Ted Noten, Ruudt Peters

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-challenging-jewellery

Guests and Thesis Tutors

2018 – 2020 Peter Biľak, Yonathan Keren, Buro Belén, Louise Schouwenberg, Ben van der Wal, Anne Dressen, Sachi Miyachi, Benjamin Lignel, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Pravu Mazumdar, Zoe Ryan, Benjamin Lignel, Ben van der Wal, Liesbeth den Besten, Ted Noten, Ard Huizing, Laura Mott, Anna Schetelich, Nicolas Trembley, Eva Svennung, Catherine Chevalier, David Lieske, Tido von Oppeln, Current Obsession (Sarah Mesritz & Marina Elenskaya), Roseanne Bartley, Linda Beumer Alumni Seline Durrer Veronika Fabian Silvia Faggiani Gabriella Goldsmith Ting Gong Eva van Kempen Morgane de Klerk Laila El Mehelmy Marek Mrowinksi Margaret Munchheimer Stephanie Schuitemaker Marilyn Volkman Joanne Vosloo

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THE COM MON ERS’ SO E CI TY THE COMMONERS’ SOCIETY Finished Temporary Programme (2018 – 2020) Programme Directors Alicia Framis Lilet Breddels Coordinator Helena Lambrechts

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-the-commoners-society

Guests

2018 – 2020 Casco, Tine de Moor, Monnik, Florence Okoye, Lucy Orta, Stavros Stravides, Liam Young, Bardhi Haliti, Aldo Ramos, Josefin Arnell, Jeroen den Uyl, Deep Democracy, Janneke de Rooij, Tamar Shafrir, Martine Neddam, Shelley Sacks, Ivanka Annot, Jonas Staal, Roosje Klap, Dear Hunter, Jeanne van Heeswijk Alumni Anto López Espinosa Franziska Goralski David C. Kane Kamila Kantek Kasper van Moll Amber Oskam Lucia Fernandez Santoro Willem Schenk Simpson Tse Cindy Wegner

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MAST ER DE PE SIGN RI OF ENC EX ES MASTER DESIGN OF EXPERIENCES Finished Hosted Programme (2017 – 2019) Programme Director Nelly Ben Hayoun Coordinator Sjoerd ter Borg

Tutors Lauren Alexander, Teun Castelein, Sjaron Minailo, Dr. Mijke van der Drift, Tom Greenall, Mariana Pestana, Nina Pope Cultural Attaché Ted Gioia

https://sandberg.nl/hosted-programme-master-design-of-experiences

Alumni Malena Maria Arcucci John Bricker Tom Burke Alexander Cromer Ryan Eykholt Heather Griffin Juhee Hahm Anna Maria Merkel Joseph Pleass Ada Reinthal Luke George Hardy Rideout Evita Eva-Maria Bianca Rigert Jack Waghorn Guest tutors 2017 – 2019 Bruce Sterling, Jasmina Tesanovic, Rachel Armstrong, Barbara Imhof, Paula Scher (Pentagram), Dana Gioia, Stefan G. Bucher, Michael Bierut, Tea Uglow, Suzanne Wertheim, Fay Milton &

Ayse Hassan, Mirik Milan, Alex Margot Duclot, Ross Allmark, Our Machine, Clemens Winkler, Sina Najafi, Farah Anede, Joseph Popper, Visual Editions, Yonathan Keren, Simone Ferracina, Rolf Hughes, Andrew Ballantyne, Austin Houldsworth, Gareth Owen Lloyd, Shabazz Palaces, Yamuna Forzani, Nicholas Mortimer, Peter Sellars, JL Dianthus, Nadezhda Andreyevna Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot), Regine Debatty, Julijonas Urbonas, Noam Toram

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-radical-cut-up

RAD I CAL CUTUP

RADICAL CUT-UP Finished Temporary Programme (2017 – 2019) Programme Director Lukas Feireiss Coordinator Antoinette Vonder Mühll Tutors Amal Alhaag, Femke Dekker, Amie Dicke, Maria Guggenbichler, Michiel van Iersel, Afaina de Jong, Charlie Koolhaas Guests 2018 – 2019 Gianluigi Ricuperati, Gloria Wekker, Shumon Basar, Tamar Shafrir, Margriet Schavemaker, Robert Shore, Imara Limon, Sara Blokland, Tomislav Feller, Elisa Giuliano, Natasha Papadopoulou, Matthew Day, Jonas Liveröd, Clemens Behr, Isabelle Andriessen, Sands Murray-Wassink, Lara Joy Evans, Rachael Rakes, Christian Nyampeta Guests 2017 – 2018 2A+P/A, Sarah Farina, Nadine Goepfert, Hanne Lippard, Leonard van Munster, Ahmet Ögüt, Floyd E. Schulze, The One Minutes, Thomas Marecki Alumni Adam Bletchly Lou Buche Daan Couzijn Rebecca Eskilsson Zsofia Kollar Wesley Mapes Juliana Maurer Barnaby Monk Alexander Murray Fabian Reichle Javier Rodriguez Fernandez Fenna Schilling Farida Sedoc Anthony Smyrski Agustina Woodgate

68

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-shadow-channel

SHA DOW CHAN NEL

SHADOW CHANNEL Finished Temporary Programme (2017 – 2019) Programme Director Juha van ’t Zelfde Coordinator Polina Medvedeva Tutors Rob Schröder, Daniel van der Velden, Kate Cooper, Donna Verheijden, Ash Sarkar Guests 2018 – 2019 Flavia Dzodan, Akwugo Emejulu, Cécile B. Evans, Rana Hamadeh, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Johan Grimonprez, Mark Leckey, Yuri Pattison, Roger Hiorns Guests 2017 – 2018 Chino Amobi, Kévin Bray, Ben Cerveny, Flavia Dzodan, Warren Ellis, Gaika, Gideon Kiers, Vinca Kruk, Metahaven, Michael Oswell, patten, Nina Power, Sam Rolfes, Ash Sarkar, Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson Alumni Holly Childs Marijn Degenaar Juan Arturo García Elisa Grasso GVN908 André Lourenço Kani Marouf Elif Ozbay Anna Petrova Mark Prendergast Miša Skalskis Emilia Tapprest Valeria van Zuijlen Gediminas Žygus

69

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-master-of-voice

MAST ER OF VOICE

MASTER OF VOICE Finished Temporary Programme (2016 – 2018) Programme Director Lisette Smits Coordinator Dorothé Orczyk Tutors Paul Elliman, Amelia Groom, Snejanka Mihaylova, Marnie Slater, Lisette Smits Guest tutors 2016 – 2018 Tyler Coburn, Jeremiah Day, Lubomir Draganov, Maria Guggenbichler, Lisa Holmqvist, Raimundas Malasauskas, Boryana Naydenova, Falke Pisano, Hinrich Sachs, Cally Spooner, Cara Tolmie, Wu Tsang, Alex Turgeon, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Werker Collective, Geo Wyeth Alumni Angelo Custódio Thom Driver Miyuki Inoue Kyung Bin Koh Maria Montesi Natasha Papadopoulou Danae Papazymouri Duncan Robertson Eva Susova Cécile Tafanelli Mavi Veloso

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RE IN VENT ING DAI LY LIFE

REINVENTING DAILY LIFE Finished Temporary Programme (2016 – 2018) Programme Director Thomas Spijkerman Coordinator Puck Mathot

Tutors Matthijs Bosman, Martijn de Rijk, Maarten Gulickx, Nastaran Razawi Khorasani & Davy Pieters, Guy Königstein, Lucas de Man, Suze Milius, Henriette Olland

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-reinventing-daily-life

Guests

2016 – 2018 Jeroen Boomgaard, Erik Hagoort, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Harmen de Hoop, Hans van Houwelingen, Ruben Jacobs, Anneke Jansen, Jeroen Jongeleen, Rosa Reuten, Lara Staal, Berend Strik, Nienke Scholts, Judith Wendel Alumni Laura Bolscher Sean Cornelisse Kees de Haan Luuk Imhann Sjors van Leeuwen Anouk van Reijen Daan Roukens Céline Talens Gijs Velsink Carlijn Voorneveld Nadja van der Weide

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-fashion-matters

FASH ION MAT TERS

FASHION MATTERS Finished Temporary Programme (2015 – 2017) Programme Director Christophe Coppens Coordinator Martine Zoeteman Tutors Pieter Van Bogaert, Anne Marie Commandeur, Liesbeth in ’t Hout, Mikki Engelsbel, Aliki van der Kruijs Guests 2015 – 2017 Acreati, Javier Barcala, Christina Binkley, Walter Van Beirendonck, Pauline van Dongen, Peet Dullaert, Elisa van Joolen, Anita Evenepoel, Lukas Feireiss, Liselore Frowijn, Katrien Van Hecke, Kitty de Jong, Nicole Hoefsmit, Eric Klarenbeek, Jos Koninckx, Lisa Konno, Eve Marie Kuijstermans, Rickard Lindqvist, Elja Lintsen, Emma Lundgren, Edwin Oudshoorn, Bradley Quinn, The Cloud Collective, Timo Rissanen, Madeline Schwartzman, Saskia Stoeckler, Jeroen Teunissen, Raïssa Verhaeghe, Viktor & Rolf, Danielle Wanders, Veerle Windels, Workmates Presents, Anna-Nicole Ziesche Alumni Maaike Fransen Sanne Karssenberg Rafael Kouto Duran Lantink Fieneke Ploeger Vera de Pont Gerda Postma Karime Salame Sainz Mona Maria Steinhäußer Gerrit Jan Vos Timna Weber Margret Wibmer

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MA TION TE IN RI ART AL AND I DE SA SIGN MATERIALISATION IN ART AND DESIGN Finished Temporary Programme (2015 – 2017)

Tutors Jens Pfeifer, Laurie Cluitmans, Tamar Shafrir Guests

2016 – 2017 Nina Glockner, Hedwig Houben, Mariana Lanari, Saskia Noor van Imhoff, Lex Pott, Ronald van Tienhoven

2015 – 2016 Eylem Aladogan, Marjan van Aubel, Laurie Cluitmans, Cocky Eek, Thomas Feuerstein, Pascale Gatzen, Alexander van Slobbe, Jo Taillieu, Marta Volkowa & Slava Shevelenko, Vincent Zedelius Alumni Oliver Barstow Carly Rose Bedford Iris Box Anne Büscher Dominique Festa Mio Fujimaki Caroline Jacob Thom van Hoek Julien Manaira Johan Romme Ellen Vårtun

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-materialisation-in-art-and-design

Programme Directors Herman Verkerk Maurizio Montalti Coordinator Linde Dorenbosch

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-cure-master

CURE MAST ER

CURE MASTER Finished Temporary Programme (2014 – 2016) Programme Directors Martijn Engelbregt Theo Tegelaers Coordinators Simone Kleinhout Anke Zedelius Tutors Nils van Beek, Valentina Desideri, Rory Pilgrim, Louwrien Weijers, Egon Hanfstingl, William Speakman Guests 2014 – 2016 Appie Bood, Melanie Bonajo, Trudy Dehue, Valentina Desideri, Ivo Dimchev, Marius Engelbrecht, Gijs Frieling, Jasper Griepink, Rosie Heinrich, Madelon Hooykaas, Machteld Huber, Natalie Jeremijenko, Ida van de Lee, Ruchama Noorda, Overtreders W, Mauk Pieper, Stephan Schäfer & Emily West, Floris Schönfeld, Esther Vossen, Henry Weessies, Peik Zuyling Alumni Hallie Abelman Linda Beumer Claudia van Dijk Olly Glaudemans Kim Haagen Vera Hofmann Emily IJzerman Nieke Koek Silvan Laan Lynne Morris Eva Pyrnokoki Alexander Sand Cathalijne Smulders Naomi Tattum Brenda de Vries

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DE SIGN ING DE MOC RA CY

DESIGNING DEMOCRACY Finished Temporary Programme (2014 – 2016) Programme Directors Max Cohen de Lara David Mulder van der Vegt Coordinator Rebecca Bego

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-designing-democracy

Tutors Felix Burrichter, Alfons Hooikaas, Barend Koolhaas, Gabriel Lester, Jeffrey Ludlow, Reineke Otten, Todd Reisz, Julika Rudelius, Saskia van Stein, Coralie Vogelaar and Francien van Westrenen Alumni Benoit Ferran André Fincato Fabian Hijlkema Max Smit Julien Thomas Tom Tjon A Loi Ana Maria Osorio Alberto Valz Gris Ekaterina Volkova Iskra Vukšić Long Wu

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-system-d-academy

SYS TEM D ACAD E MY

SYSTEM D ACADEMY Finished Temporary Programme (2014 – 2016) Programme Directors Cynthia Hathaway Melle Smets Coordinator Nora Morton Tutors Arne Hendriks Bart Witte Christiaan Fruneaux Jessica Gysel Simon Angel Guests 2015 – 2016 Leila Anderson (DasArts), Ed van Hinte, Thomas Hirschhorn, Harmen de Hoop, Michele Kasprzak, Sophie Krier, Monnik, Bart Witte, Erik Wong 2014 – 2015 Hans Abbink, Daan Alkemade, Pek van Andel, Baptist Bray, Kris De Decker, Failed Architecture, Gwendolyn Floyd, George Hathaway, Dirk van den Heuvel, Ed van Hinte, Freek Janssens and Ceren Sezer, Jan Dirk de Jong, Arjo Klamer, Niek Knol, Tom.s Libertiny, Dirck Mollman, Monnik, Joost van Onna, Prof Corn. Pieterse, Pink Pony Express, Willem de Ridder, Prof Jan Rothuizen, Marc Schuilenburg, T.relt.r.t.s, Francien van Westrenen Alumni Janneke Absil Karolien Buurman Clément Carat Theofanis Dalezios Maarten Davidse Dennis Muñoz Espadiña Annette Kouwenhoven Gitte Nygaard Martina Raponi Ming Sho Tang Boo van der Vlist

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MA TE RI AL U PI TO AS MATERIAL UTOPIAS Finished Temporary Programme (2013 – 2015) Programme Director Louise Schouwenberg

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-material-utopias

Coordinator Judith Konz

Guests Eylem Aladogan, Gijs Assmann, Laurie Cluitmans, Mikel van Gelderen, Conny Groenewegen, Bart Guldemond, Agata Jaworska, Esther Jiskoot, Folkert de Jong, Matthias Keller, Bastienne Kramer, Karel Martens, Erik Mattijssen, Ted Noten, Jens Pfeifer, Lex Pott, Anton Reijnders, Thomas Rentmeister, Vincent de Rijk, Maria Roosen, Aaron Schuster, Louise Schouwenberg, Robert Zandvliet Workshop assistants Claire Verkoyen, Sander Boeijink, Marie de Bruyn, Nicky den Breejen & Lise Lefebvre Alumni Marijke Annema Daniel van Dijck Nandi Enthoven Laura Fügmann Robert Grundström Vincent Knopper Sarah Meyers Tjalling Mulder Ea Polman Alice Ronchi Michelly Sugui Nadine van Veldhuizen Robin de Vogel

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SCHOOL OF MISS ING STUD IES SCHOOL OF MISSING STUDIES Finished Temporary Programme (2013 – 2015)

https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-school-of-missing-studies

Programme Directors Liesbeth Bik Jos van der Pol Coordinator Martine Zoeteman

Tutors and guests Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Nick Aikens, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Samira Ben Laloua, Bik Van der Pol, Maria Boletsi, Jeremiah Day, Charles Esche, E.C. Feiss, Louis van Gasteren, Moosje Goosen, Ernst van den Hemel, Pamela M. lee, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Sarah Pierce, Tina Sherwell, Matthew Stadler, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Alexander Premala Vollebregt, Jeroen Zuidgeest Alumni Abla elBahrawy Clare Butcher Sofia Caesar Sanne Cobussen Katinka de Jonge Nikola Knezevic Grace Kyne-Lilley Mariana Lanari Geert van Mil Dina Rončević Eloise Sweetman Meir Tati Luisa Ungar

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https://sandberg.nl/temporary-programme-vacant-nl

VA CANT NL

VACANT NL Finished Temporary Programme (2011 – 2013) Programme Directors RAAAF Coordinator Martine Zoeteman Tutors Ronald Rietveld, Erik Rietveld, Ester van de Wiel, Barbara Visser, Frank Havermans, Vibeke Gieskes, Martine Zoeteman Guests 2012 – 2013 John Lonsdale, Hessel Dokkum, Annet Jantien Smit 2011 – 2012 Mike Lee, 2012Architecten, Rob van Kranenburg Alumni Christiaan Bakker Daan van den Berg Sjoerd ter Borg Ruiter Janssen Jorien Kemerink Pieter Alexander Lefebvre Henriette Waal Celine de Waal Malefijt

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BC 1

Critical Studies / Theory (CS)

Project Space

Critical Studies (CS)

Dirty Art Department (DAD)

(FA)

https://sandberg.nl

(DAD)

(CS) (SIS)

Studio for Immediate Spaces (SIS)

Project Space Bridge

Fine Arts (FA)

FEDLEV BUILDING

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INDEX Critical Studies (CS) Design (D) Dirty Art Department (DAD) Fine Arts (FA) Studio for Immediate Spaces (SIS)

Media Lab (ML)

Approaching Language (AL) Blacker Blackness (BB) Disarming Design (DD) Ecologies of Transformation (ET) F for Fact (FFF) Resolution (RES) Media Lab (ML) Locations of new Temporary Programmes (Blacker Blackness, Ecologies of Transformation) to be announced.

BC 5

Disarming Design (DD)

(RES) Resolution (RES)

https://sandberg.nl

Approaching Language (AL)

(DD) (AL)

BC 4

(D) Design (D)

Auditorium BENTHEM & CROUWEL BUILDING

BC 3 81

https://sandberg.nl/apply-now

APPLY NOW APPLY NOW APPLY NOW

Master’s Programmes 2021 – 2022 Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam Publisher Sandberg Instituut Director Jurgen Bey Curator Jules van den Langenberg Coordinator Anke Zedelius Editing Jules van den Langenberg Jason Page Contributors All departments and programmes, staff, students and alumni Graduates 2020 PS (Public Sandberg) Graphic Design Our Polite Society Typefaces Bill OPS Kappla OPS Used Future De Verenigde Sandbergen Issue # 81 January 2021 De Verenigde Sandbergen is the magazine published occasionally by the Sandberg Instituut. © 2021 Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam (NL) Sandberg Instituut Master’s of Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design Gerrit Rietveld Academie Location Fedlev building & Benthem Crouwel building Fred. Roeskestraat 98 1076 ED Amsterdam The Netherlands Contact T: +31 (0)20 588 24 00 E: info@sandberg.nl W: www.sandberg.nl

HTTP:// SAND BERG .

NL /

GRA DU A TION 2020 /

SANDBERG INSTITUUT As the postgraduate programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, the Sandberg Instituut offers Master Programmes in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture and Design. The five Main Departments aim to deepen the practices of artists, designers and critics. In addition, the Temporary Programmes reflect on specific urgencies in society and the arts, and the Hosted Programmes focus on collaboration with other institutes.

MAIN DEPARTMENTS Sandberg Instituut’s Main Departments are Critical Studies, Design, The Dirty Art Department, Fine Arts and Studio for Immediate Spaces. An average of only twenty students per programme allows each course to be flexible and open to initiatives from students and third parties. The course directors, who are prominent artists, designers, theorists and curators with international practices, invite tutors and guests who are able to challenge the students to critically reflect on their profession, their work and their progress.

The Sandberg Instituut is open to candidates from many different backgrounds. We require a valid Bachelor degree in a field relevant to the programme you are applying for, as well as proof of proficiency in the English language.

TEMPORARY PROGRAMMES Jurgen Bey, the Sandberg Instituut director since 2010, has sought to find ways to align the institute with the dynamics of contemporary society.

Bey introduced two-year Temporary Programmes that are developed according to urgent world issues. Vacant NL – the first Temporary Programme – was launched in 2011 and explored the vast potential of the thousands of vacant buildings in the Netherlands. In 2013, two additional temporary programmes were introduced: the School of Missing Studies dealt with art and the public space, whereas Material Utopias investigated the shifting boundaries between materials and techniques. Other finished Temporary Programmes include System D Academy, Cure Master, Designing Democracy, Materialisation in Art and Design, Fashion Matters, Master of Voice, Reinventing Daily Life, Master Design of Experiences, Radical Cut-Up, Shadow Channel, Challenging Jewellery and The Commoners’ Society. Current Temporary Programmes are Approaching Language and Resolution. The two new Temporary Programmes starting in 2021 are Blacker Blackness and Ecologies of Transformation.

RESEARCH Research at Sandberg Instituut is research that opens the possibilities of imagination. This means that questioning dominant paradigms becomes embedded in the way we approach learning, making and creating. Imagination that is not limited to the way things are but rather to the possibilities of what could be.

We conceive of the institute as a place for interdisciplinary research and crosspollination that exceeds the confines of conventional academic disciplines. In our search for new forms of engagement with research we work through de-centering and dislocating the traditional sources of knowledge to give way to what has always been relegated to the periphery. Knowledge, then, not as a top/down resource that is transmitted through authoritative practices but as part of shared experiences where the emphasis is put in searching together rather than in uncritical dominance. The Research at Sandberg Instituut consists of fellowships, research cafe, publications, lectures and a CrD pilot.

CRITICAL STUDIES

END OF YEAR PROGRAMME

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Main Department

Het HEM

Nicholas Reilly-McVittie Patrycja Rozwora Luca Soudant Aimée Theriot Ben Tupper

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DESIGN

I SWEAR TIME PASSED

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Main Department

De Dood Het HEM (*)

Emirhan Akin * Carmen Dusmet Carrasco Levi van Gelder Andrea González Francisca Khamis Giacoman Tali Liberman Heleen Mineur Nicolò Pellarin Charlotte Rohde Wouter Stroet Fabian Tombers Hanna Valle

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DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT

COLD SWEAT

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Main Department

De Dood

Veronika Babayan Constantin Dichtl Janina Fritz Natalia Jordanova Sara Santana López Cóilín O’Connell Octave Rimbert-Rivière Sophia Simensky Linda Stauffer

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FINE ARTS

FESTIVAL OF CHOICES

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Main Department

Het HEM

Anouk Asselineau Anna Maria Balint Jesper Henningsson Miriam Kongstad Alexander Kuusik Pedro Matias Yara Said Sasha Sergienko Dimitris Theocharis Lieselot Versteeg Myrto Vratsanou Klara Waara

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STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES Main Department

GRADUATION SHOW

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Het HEM Hembrugterrein (*)

Beatriz Conefrey Spazio Cura * Kyulim Kim Goytung (Wei Tung Kuo) María Mazzanti Roman Tkachenko Michael Weber Andoni Zamora

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CHALLENGING JEWELLERY

GRADUATION SHOW

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Temporary Programme

Het HEM

Seline Durrer Veronika Fabian Silvia Faggiani Gabriella Goldsmith Ting Gong Eva van Kempen Morgane de Klerk Laila El Mehelmy Marek Mrowinksi Margaret Munchheimer Stephanie Schuitemaker Marilyn Volkman Joanne Vosloo

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THE COMMONERS’ SOCIETY

GRADUATION SHOW

PARTICIPANTS 2020

Temporary Programme

Het HEM

Anto López Espinosa Franziska Goralski David C. Kane Kamila Kantek Kasper van Moll Amber Oskam Lucia Fernandez Santoro Willem Schenk Simpson Tse Cindy Wegner

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Het HEM

DESIGN Main Department I SWEAR TIME PASSED

De Dood Het HEM (*)

DIRTY ART DEPARTMENT Main Department COLD SWEAT

De Dood

FINE ARTS Main Department FESTIVAL OF CHOICES

Het HEM

STUDIO FOR IMMEDIATE SPACES Main Department GRADUATION SHOW

Het HEM Hembrugterrein (*)

CHALLENGING JEWELLERY Temporary Programme GRADUATION SHOW

Het HEM

THE COMMONERS’ SOCIETY Temporary Programme GRADUATION SHOW

Het HEM

Nicholas Reilly-McVittie Patrycja Rozwora Luca Soudant Aimée Theriot Ben Tupper Emirhan Akin * Carmen Dusmet Carrasco Levi van Gelder Andrea González Francisca Khamis Giacoman Tali Liberman Heleen Mineur Nicolò Pellarin Charlotte Rohde Wouter Stroet Fabian Tombers Hanna Valle Veronika Babayan Constantin Dichtl Janina Fritz Natalia Jordanova Sara Santana López Cóilín O’Connell Octave Rimbert-Rivière Sophia Simensky Linda Stauffer Anouk Asselineau Anna Maria Balint Jesper Henningsson Miriam Kongstad Alexander Kuusik Pedro Matias Yara Said Sasha Sergienko Dimitris Theocharis Lieselot Versteeg Myrto Vratsanou Klara Waara Beatriz Conefrey Spazio Cura * Kyulim Kim Goytung (Wei Tung Kuo) María Mazzanti Roman Tkachenko Michael Weber Andoni Zamora Seline Durrer Veronika Fabian Silvia Faggiani Gabriella Goldsmith Ting Gong Eva van Kempen Morgane de Klerk Laila El Mehelmy Marek Mrowinksi Margaret Munchheimer Stephanie Schuitemaker Marilyn Volkman Joanne Vosloo Anto López Espinosa Franziska Goralski David C. Kane Kamila Kantek Kasper van Moll Amber Oskam Lucia Fernandez Santoro Willem Schenk Simpson Tse Cindy Wegner

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Photography by Sander van Wettum (DOP), Maarten Boswijk, Tom Janssen

CRITICAL STUDIES Main Department END OF YEAR PROGRAMME