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.
Sandberg Research enables different research cells to engage with research in their own specific methodology. The research cells at Sandberg are functioning as semi-autonomous research units and each have a specific and current topic.
Each research cell initiated by Sandberg Research is run by a senior researcher who formulates their own research goals and programming. Although there is a lot of freedom in the direction of the research, there are typically two types of activities: substantive research by the senior researcher, in which applied and autonomous research has a place and the education-related activities that introduce findings from the research into education.
We are proud to announce the launch of the Sandberg Instituut Graduation Exhibition 2023 Publication, titled Perpetual Stew (2024), the second in a new series of publications organized by Public Sandberg which began last year with The Salmon of Knowledge (2023). Perpetual Stew compiles the writing of 18 incredible authors who were invited to conduct interviews with and ruminate on the works of our nearly 60 graduates, from 7 departments.
A series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema.
This three-part program aims to explore anxieties surrounding human-animal relations, as depicted in 20th-century genre-fiction movies. We will watch and discuss three films together, each selected to represent specific anxieties expressed through cinema, either directly or metaphorically.
Unionizing the Speculative is an informal gathering that invites precarious cultural workers whose value of labor is likely to be challenged under the influence of generative AI. Participants will explore the collective strategy of advocacy through Speculoos biscuits containing AI-generated images.
"I am going to be your last teacher. Not because I'll be the greatest teacher you may ever encounter, but because from me you will learn how to learn. When you learn how to learn, you will realize that there are no teachers, that there are only people learning and people learning how to facilitate learning." – Moshé Feldenkrais
Apply for the international exchange project, WASALIWA, a collaboration of Framer Framed, the Sandberg Instituut and the Oceania Arts Centre in Fiji. We are looking for Amsterdam based artists to explore the ecological history and future of the Pacific Islands through a series of workshops 5, 6, 7, and 8 June 2023. Send in your motivation statement before 26 May to apply!
Join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema.
Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Sandberg BC Building.
A workshop on how to apply algorithmic image creation with deep learning techniques for artists and creatives.
Workshop by: Enrique Gutiérrez
Hosted by: the Artificial Intelligence Research Cell at Sandberg Instituut
Public Sandberg presents its monthly series of talks—PUBLIC SEWER—where guests are invited to speak about the strange things building up in the margins of their creative practices.
IN SEARCH OF MONEY seeks to unravel how art and design within capitalism are driven by money. We will consider if culture, like people, is inevitably cast in a role of extremes - money-making machine or oppressed victim.
Public Sandberg presents Public Sewer 4: Graduation Book Launch Edition, where we will launch Sandberg Instituut’s Graduation Publication for 2022—titled The Salmon of Knowledge, the first in a new series of publications—featuring works of and essays about graduating students, and made in collaboration with Our Polite Society and photographers Sander van Wettum and Tom Philip Janssen.
February 15th @ Critical Studies Studio Space, 4pm-7pm
Hosted by Sandberg Research - Artificial Intelligence
4pm-7pm @ Critical Studies theory room
Keep your mind in the gutter.™
This year, Critical Studies research fellow Olya Korsun organises a series of seminars to collectively map out and question the contours and layers of ecological imaginaries through the study of eco-critical theory and experimental/queer/world cinema. We will open up the second meeting with the question: «How can we even talk about imagination without reviving the spectre of human exceptionalism?»*
What if instead of imagining new worlds we could learn to imagine the existing ones differently and celebrate the coming-to-an-end of human/language/Western – centred imaginaries?
Guided by the lines from Federico Campagna and films by Ana Vaz, Renée Nader Messora, João Salaviza we will look at how worlds are built and left in ruins and how Magic can be transformed from incurable disease into a tool for world-making.
Open Call for a new kenniskring/ research group run by Flavia Dzodan - deadline extended to 23rd of November 00.00AM.
Keep your mind in the gutter: S*an D. Henry-Smith talks Hunter x Hunter and Daniel de Paula talks DJ Screw.
Critical Studies auditorium, 4pm-7pm.
A workshop by research fellow Wael el Allouche.
Keep your mind in the gutter.
Flavia Dzodan talks Godzilla & Kaiju & Philip Coyne talks Bigfoot and other green men
Please join us in the Rietveld/Sandberg library next week, Tuesday 17 May—for a playful writing workshop focused engaging with language, material, categorisation and storytelling—hosted by Toni Brell and Naomi Credé.
@ 5:30 PM, join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
Please join us on Thursday, April 28, from 17.00-18.30, for brief presentations by the recipients of the "Ecological Imagination” stipends. Each of the four recipients will share and discuss a sample of their research in progress, prompting a collective discussion on the study of ecological crisis, environmental justice, and planetary futures.
@5:30 PM, join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
lecture & workshop series by the 2022 Research Fellows of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and Sandberg Instituut
@ 5:30 PM, join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
@5:30 PM, join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
16:00-18:00 @ Theory Stairs
A public lecture hosted by Femke Herregraven with keynote speaker, dr. Rodrigo Ochigame.
Join us for another screening and discussion on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff and graduates.
17:30-20:00
17:00-19:00 @ Auditorium 3rd floor BC, Sandberg Instituut
Join us for another screening and discussion on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff and graduates.
17:30-20:00
The Research Cafe is a space to support research projects led by students at Sandberg Instituut. Each session revolves around a specific theme and text related to Artificial Intelligence that we use as a starting point for discussions on the topic. The idea behind the research cafe is to discuss different approaches and understandings to the session’s theme. It is meant as a moment to share “unfinished thinking”. That is, a process of exploring and expanding the possibilities of open-ended research.
Join us for the first in a series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema. Open to students, staff and graduates.
On Wednesday 22nd we welcome you to the first Sandberg Research event In Search of Lost Time, hosted by Gabrielle Kennedy. During the sympsium, invited guests Thierry Geoffroy and Toby Sterling alongside alumni David Womack, Johan Deletang, Andrea Gonzalez, Juliette Lépineau, Simpson Tse and Jelia Veldeman will present their research in order to explore the meaning of time in art and journalism. The symposium takes place at Theory Stairs at 4pm.
Eva Hoonhout
Tom Vandeputte
postgraduate, research, lecture series, publishing, CrD, PhD
Join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema.
Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Sandberg BC Building.
Tuesday 25th April: 17:30
Starship Troopers (1997)
For this first screening in the Xenoecologies series of the Green Screen programme, we will be watching Starship Trooper (1997), directed by Paul Verhoven. This science fiction cult classic (often overlooked as just another 90's Hollywood action movie) actually offers some interesting perspective with which to explore Western anxieties of reverse colonisation, through both its explicit satirical segments and a deeper reading of the movie as a text. So please, come along, watch a film and for those who feel like it — stick around for a beer and a chat afterwards.
Tuesday 9th May: 17:30
Prospect (2018)
In this session, we will watch Prospect (2018), a low-budget (big impact) science fiction film directed by Zeek Earl & Chris Caldwell. This coming-of-age story follows a teenage girl on a toxic alien planet as she and her father hunt for precious materials, aiming to strike it rich. We will look at the ways in which the hostile ecology of the world in the film might inform how we view our own planet today, and explore how the logic of extraction and exploitation are transplanted on to a new environment, far beyond Earth.
Tuesday 16th May: 17:30
Invasion of the body snatchers (1978)
In this session, we will watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), a science fiction film directed by Philip Kaufman. This remake of the 1965 classic sci-fi film (itself based on a novel from the year prior) involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who discover that alien duplicates are replacing humans; each a perfect copy of the person replaced but devoid of human emotion. Among many other themes, this psychological drama is a lamentation for the end of the counterculture of the 1960s, and uses invading alien ecologies (xeno-mono-cultures) as a vehicle to explore such ideas. The film is wrought with the paranoia and anxieties that pervaded the USA at this time (during the height of the cold war), and as such, explores this notion of an "invisible enemy at home", albeit in the form of gelatinous creatures that take the form of small pods with pink flowers.
is a series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema, taking a closer look at imaginaries of ecologies from beyond Earth’s ecosystems. This programme of three screenings will explore the encounter between humans and alien Others and attempt to understand how cinematic depictions of these events betray deeper Western anxieties of “reverse colonisation”, contamination and replacement, to name a few. How have we perceived aliens and what imagined threat they pose? What fears about humanity’s own actions and the current state of Earth do we project onto these external, speculative lifeforms? During the series, we will view the selected films and, after, for those who wish to stick around, discuss their explicit ecological themes and subtexts. Open to all students, staff and graduates of the Sandberg and Rietveld.