Art & Spatial Praxis is a research group focused on artistic and design imaginaries that reframe and reclaim cityscapes.
Building on the work done in feminist geography, Black studies, environmental humanities, philosophy and cultural studies, we aim to craft more equitable, common, queer, and subversive engagements with our (urban) surroundings, and nurture the conditions for making new geographies possible. Our interests range from storytelling, theory as praxis, scenography and spatial design to installations and interventions in (digital) infrastructures, materials, archives, and institutions.
Art & Spatial praxis collaborates with researchers, designers, and artists inside and outside the Academie, locally and internationally. Art & Spatial Praxis is headed by Dr. Patricia de Vries.
The Climate Imaginaries at Sea coalition is excited to invite you to our upcoming festival in Amsterdam. An event for artistic and participatory research practices that speculate possible futures in and around water. Join us for an exciting week-long exploration with two exhibitions, an open studio day programme, the launch of the second issue of the Making Waves zine, a closing concert and more.
We are delighted to invite you to the launch of the publication of Plot(ting) on April 17th from 14:30 to 19:00, hosted at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Fedlev Building, Room FL101.
To kick off the year 2024, we are happy to invite you to join us for the book launch of 'The City as Anthology: Movements at the Margins of Public Space' by Mariken Overdijk on 13 January at 3pm, at Zone2Source, Amstelpark, Glass Pavilion.
A programme by Flavia Dzodan, head of the Research group on Algorithmic Cultures
Research Café is a series of lectures on methodology, open to all students, staff, tutors, and alumni of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut.
Curves of Inquiry is a Gerrit Rietveld Academie initiative that showcases the findings of nine artist-researchers who completed a fellowships trajectory in the previous academic year. Each of these projects is carried out in close collaboration with a department of the Rietveld Academie or Sandberg Instituut to foster relationships between educational programs, research activities, and societal issues.
Müge Yılmaz’s work and research presents speculative narratives on the future distilled through feminist science fiction. Over the academic year, Müge will be working with the students from TXT and Architectural Design, while conducting her own research into salt. These activities are part of the Climate Imaginaries at Sea project. On October 5th, Müge will introduce her research project on salt.
On October 5 LASP hosts a lecture by Müge Yilmaz on salt. Before the lecture, from 11.00 to 13.00, you have the opportunity to attend a workshop by the Brackish Collective in the kitchen of the Sandberg Instituut. Working with halophytes and other salt-resistant plants - all which grow in the dunes and coastal areas of The Netherlands - this workshop will be an experimental tasting and attempt at collaborative sensorial mapping involving ten plants, ranging from sea asparagus and dune roses to sea purslane, sea buckthorn and red clover, amongst others.
The ARIAS coalition Climate Imaginaries at Sea invites you to Studio Encounters on Water, a two-day event filled with workshops, presentations, talks and pod reading sessions where you can learn more about what we’ve done, where we are going and how you can be part of it.
An open call for the research group Art and Spatial Praxis run by Patricia de Vries with Liza Print.
Deadline: April 13, 2023
Workshop and Lecture Series by the Research Fellows of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut 2022/23
What is the role of publishing within practice-based research? In research publications, more often than not media production—be it audiovisual or any other form of artistic practice that isn’t writing—is still seen as somehow inferior; mere support material.
Expanded publishing, or expanded outputs as we define it, is the research lens that tries to solve this question by going beyond both traditional and artistic publishing practices.
With THE VOID (a new research project set up by INC), over the past year, there has been tons of research and experimentation with audio-visual production and distribution. To do so, THE VOID team decided to approach the topic by starting the production of their own content, in collaboration with artists. Now, after the first year of experimentation, we are trying to collect different ideas and questions that arose during this time of research. To properly set up a research agenda, we believe it’s crucial to engage in conversations with other artists, researchers, and experts from within the field.
In setting up this event, THE VOID aims to gather and discuss the role of expanded publishing and its possible trajectories. The program will consist of two parts. First, we begin with the presentation of the multimedia research done by the artist collective timeis.capital, which is creating a repository for self-organized initiatives in the art world through different multimedia means such as video, audio and 3D footage. This presentation will be the starting point for a broader discussion on the role of publishing and archiving for practice-based research. How can publishing be expanded to non-text-based output as well? What does it mean open source publishing audiovisual projects? How can artistic researchers share transparent workflows without diminishing their labor? How we can make the language of practice-based research more understandable? How do we make a wide variety of conversations happen in audio-visual language? We would like to discuss these and many other topics together with a group of experts from various fields such as art research, education, publishing, archiving, and (new) media industries.
Invitation to: Fellows Exhibit - a symposium and exhibition by the research fellows 2021-2022.
Research Cafe is an informal seminar series where you can learn more about various research methodologies from different senior researchers at Rietveld and Sandberg. These seminars are open to all students, staff, tutors, and alumni of Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. Below you can find more information about each session. Preparation is not necessary. Please sign up via the form below. Per session we have space for 20 participants.
Location: Library Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Jeroen Boomgaard has led LAPS (Research Institute for Art and Public Space) for 19 years of its existence and has established a strong foundation for artistic research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. For over 19 years he has facilitated and strengthened countless relationships between (international) educational institutions, artists, researchers, commissioners and developers, operating in the realms of artistic research and art in public space.
To commemorate Jeroen's achievements, we will say farewell with a symposium on some of the topics he has pursued throughout his career.
Professor Patricia de Vries will present her inaugural lecture at the start of the academic year 2022–2023. In this lecture, she will elaborate on the research area of LAPS, that will be expanded to ‘LAPS/The City’ in the coming years.
Join us on Monday 23 May 2022 from 16.00-18.30 at Rietveld Academie's Theory Stairs for presentations and discussions on the imagination of the end times in art, design, architecture, and philosophy.
A process-presentation by PhD affiliates in works and words
A radio broadcast marathon concluding with the pre-launch of BLACK REVELRY: In Honor of "The Sugar Shack"
A symposium and exhibition of the Research Fellows of 2020-2021
Title: Navigation, Gutter, Bleed: Movement and the Visual
Date: Tuesday May 18th
Time: 14.00-17.00 CET
Location: location tbc via mail
Description: movement workshop
Title: Mind the Body, Move Matter
Date: Monday, April 26 2021
Time: Practice-based session 1: 10.00-12.00hrs | Practice-based session 2: 14:00-16:00hrs
Location: GYM Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
Participation: Reservation only, max. 15 participants each session. Reserve a spot through eventbrite links below. Note it's for students of Rietveld/Sandberg/Personnel only.
Title: Ghosts in the family
Date: 22nd of April
Time: 10:00-15:00 CET
Location: 616BC, Sandberg Instituut
Title: Solar Design
Date: 21st of April
Time: 17.00-18.00 CET
Title: MAGICAL MYSTERY HEIST, a guest lecture by Frederico Campagna
Date: 14th of April
Time: 19.00-20.00 CET
Title: Black Revelry: Feeling with The Sugar Shack
Date: April 13th at 7pm
Time: 19.00-20.30 CET
Title: Ship space against civic space
Date: 12th of April
Time: 11.00-12.00 CET
Dear Students and Staff, you are very welcome to join the online launch for the book IN/Search RE/Search!
The research fellowships are a Sandberg/Rietveld initiative to pursue different knowledge practices involving topics such as Artificial Intelligence, The City and New Materials. From both Rietveld and Sandberg a few candidates are selected to research one of the topics and share their project with the students and the community. This fellowship symposium is an ONLINE EVENT open to all Rietveld and Sandberg students. The programme and live stream link will be shared prior to the event.
On 28th of September 2020 Yael Davids publicly defended her research concluding the first Creator Doctus (CrD) trajectory. She was awarded the first CrD degree!
The focus of Yael Davids’ research A Daily Practice is on somatic learning and consists of three phases. The research, supervised by the Van Abbemuseum and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, is inspired by the work of Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais developed a method for people to change bodily habits from within. This method has played an important role in Davids’ artistic practice in the last years.
Publication IN/Search RE/Search, edited by Gabrielle Kennedy, designed by Haller Brunm and published by Valiz with Gerrit Rietveld Academie / Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, features works by various Sandberg & Rietveld alumni and students. The publication explores how:
post-grad, artistic research, fellowship
An open call for the research group Art and Spatial Praxis run by Patricia de Vries with Liza Print.
Deadline: April 13, 2023
We are looking for 10 members who are interested in joining monthly meetings discussing written and unwritten words, works and spatial practices related to the notion of the plot. We shall meet every third Thursday of the month from 15 to 17 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, or another relevant location.
Each month one member takes the lead and curates theprogram, by either selecting a text, initiating a visit to an archive, going for a walk, joining a sit-in, initiating visits to exhibitions or sites, to name but a few suggesti- ons. If a text is selected, the reading will be done collecti- vely during the session, so that little to no preparation is required.
We are specifically looking for people whose work is already engaged with topics connected to the concept of the plot, this can range from but is not limited to: feminist cityscapes, collective (spatial) work, imaginative agricul- ture, social organising, urban studies, feminist geography, Black studies, environmental humanities, philosophy and cultural studies. As a study group member, you would be committed to attending a minimum of 8 sessions throug- hout the calendar year.
The positions are for one calendar year with the possibili- ty of renewing for a second year.
In addition to funding for trips, exhibition tickets, as well as facilitating the meetings, we offer a fee of 1000 euros per participant (this includes travel expenses outside of trips). A publication will be realised in 2024 for which we currently seek additional funding.
Please write a short motivation, no longer than 200 words, a CV, and a portfolio. Please include your name and contact details and send your motivation before April 13th to: liza.prins@rietveldacademie.nl
The research group will focus on conceptual, artistic and design imaginaries that reframe and reclaim citys- capes. We aim to craft more equitable, common, queer, and subversive engagements with our (urban) surroun- dings, and nurture the conditions that will make new geographies possible. Our interests range from storytel- ling, theory as praxis, scenography and spatial design to installations and interventions in (digital) infrastructures, materials, archives, and institutions.
Thematically, Art & Spatial Praxis expands on Sylvia Wynter’s concept of the plot. Wynter’s plot connects the his- torical enclosures of the plantation to today’s cityscapes. Plots were provision grounds enslaved folks could culti- vate. Plantation owners made these bits of land available, often mountainous and of poor quality, to reduce opera- tive costs -- to maximise profit. These plots were places where enslaved people collaborated in relation to, but also in relative autonomy from, the plantation’s violence. For Wynter, in these plots of land, a social order with its own structure of values existed; they stood for the resistance that existed alongside the extractive logic of the plantation. Wynter does not romanticise the plot and emphasises that it does not exist outside of the violent ordering of the plantation. It does not represent free zones or safe spaces. The plot and plantation implicate each other, and they inhabit the same locus – plot-and-plantation and not plot versus plantation.
A plantation logic, she argues, can be traced to today’s ordering of cities, public spaces and neighbourhoods. If the plantation is an ongoing locus that can be tracked to today’s cityscapes, so too are plots. Thus, where the orderings of today’s cityscapes embody the ongoing locus of plantation history, the plot represents the other possibilities that are always present. The plot represents cityscapes and public spaces that are relational, contingent and always contested. The plot challenges the forces of do- mination, appropriation, exploitation, commodification, gentrification, segregation, digitization, and quantification. It fosters assemblages between people and things that seek alternative ways of relating – not outside the city or off the grid, but in our urban realities.
The plot is a transformative praxis, it interlaces ‘the material and the metaphoric,’ past, present and future, earth and earthlings. It is a conceptual tool and a historical reality. It is figurative language and a challenge to current spatial arrangements. It is a verb and a narrative device. It shows us how we are ensnared in market logic and reminds us of other possibilities.
Plot-work as Collaborative Research
Wynter’s understanding of the plot has travelled. It signifies practices in which other values are acted upon, constituted, grounded, in space, and where dominant social orders and values are challenged, or evaded. What if the plot migrates further to forms of making, crafting, imagining, thinking, organising and doing in relation to cityscapes? Plotting practices can take up various positi- ons concerning the pressures exerted on cityscapes. How is the idea of the plot socially enacted, embodied, narrativised, and materialised in art practices, social organising and theoretical kinships? What positions can be distin- guished in relation to today’s cityscapes? What do theo- rists, artists and designers do today when they keep their ground or create ground in the increasingly regulated, privatised, surveilled, and diminished public spaces in ever-more neoliberal cities? In short: what could the plot mean as a praxis in today’s cityscapes?
The research group, Art & Spatial Praxis, at the Rietveld Academie, engages with these questions. And this work is collaborative work. Art & Spatial Praxis wants to explore these questions with artists, designers, theorists, archi- tects, researchers, novelists, dancers, filmmakers, and so on. How can we propagate and nurture spatial art prac- tices to extend, diversify, multiply and exchange plotting imaginaries, concepts, materials, and ideas?