This is reality is the graduation exhibition of the Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art class of 2022. This year, the exhibitions are installed in Showroom MAMA, UBIK and the S/ash Gallery, all located on or around the Witte de Withstraat in the centre of Rotterdam.

Artists: Andrea Celeste La Forgia, Emma van Noort, Grazia Gallo, Kate Price, Madeleine Ruggi, María José Crespo, Oliver Doe, Xiaofeini Liu, Samboleap Tol, Shertise Solano.

Curated by Kim de HaasOpening:July 8 5–10pm / Open from July 9 till July 16 from 2–7pm (July 15 open until 9pm) / Closed: July 11 and 12.

Locations:Showroom MAMA – Witte de Withstraat 29 – 31, 3012 BL RotterdamUBIK – Boomgaardsstraat 69, 3012 XA RotterdamThe S/ash Gallery – Boomgaardsstraat 69, 3012 XA Rotterdam

Performances:  THIS ART HERE IS ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S ART, VIA THE DETOUR OF ‘WORK” or THE UNPAID BREAK DIALOGUES By Andrea Celeste La Forgia 

Performed by Andrea Celeste La Forgia, Silvia Arenas, Niloufar Nematollahi, Sarah Atzori, Tiago Santos, Linus BonduelleJuly 8 – 7.30 – 8pm and  July 9, 6.15 – 6.45pm at Showroom MAMAI keep changing the way I have to address youBy Oliver DoeJuly 8  (Duration variable)

Witnessing as a method of getting through gatewaysBy María José Crespo and Madeleine RuggiJuly 15 6pm – 6.45pm at Kunstinstituut Melly

Becoming an observer, then a mediator. Witnessing gains access to information around the realities and fictions of borders, territories, and the currencies and values which bodies are subjected to in these zones.

Madeleine Ruggi and María José Crespo draw together their separate processings of information within their artistic research by sharing ideas and working methodologies into an audiovisual performance presentation. The presentation will navigate different ways of collecting information, and the translation of found materials as research.

Where is my karaoke?By Samboleap TolJuly 15, 6.40 – 6.55pm  at Kunstinstituut Melly

For this lecture performance, Tol has deviced a sonic and textual response to the prompt ‘Where is my karaoke?’. Through storytelling she takes us through her musical bicultural childhood, flashing back through different sonic memories and questions, out loud, how it all relates to her now.

This is reality and it was but a chat away

A real chat is hard to come by. Trust is in short supply. But trust is needed to get a chat going, and let it generate what may qualify as social reality.

Reality is trembling. Where desire, grief, and power are at stake, many demons populate society, pulling people together and apart. Orange letters rub up against their lavender grounds in Oliver Doe’s large canvases, boldly making viewers’ retinas vibrate as performers lingering nearby signal, to whom it appeals, a readiness to engage in the poetry of clandestinely scripted encounters. Seeds, plants, clay plate poetry for garden beds, and fermented vegetable paintings are elements Kate Price offers up as tokens of trust, inspiring a commitment to fostering future ecologies. In her paintings and videos, Shertise Solano summons the multidimensional beings her grandmother in Curaçao still knew how to converse with, and who, channeled afresh, voice unaccounted traumata and limitless powers arising from the recollected history of Black families.

Places of encounter are ripe with tensions. Grazia Gallo trusts sculpture to rebuild a sense of a home, where generations clash, as the family improvises in close quarters a state-imposed architecture of social housing, to keep spirits up, and claim dignity in everyday matters. María José Crespo takes you to the Tijuana border, and in her sculptural environments makes you feel the intensities governing a strip of land where police lights color reality red and blue on CCTV, and paths are blocked, but the will to get by asserts itself with full defiance. Meanwhile, at the Metal Exchange all things solid melt into air with a flick of a trader’s hand, as Madeleine Ruggi shows. Her installation portrays how capital puts its spell on materials, and turns heavy scrap into currency flowing through Rotterdam harbor. Tracking the current make-over of port city real estate, Emma van Noort messes with the building blocks of model architecture: her sculptures scramble its vocabulary and recast it in the spirit of high precision slapstick engineering.

Stories build worlds. Xiaofeini Liu calls a universe into being with few objects and words, as she recounts the fate of a Mice Folk leaving their Salt Marshes in search of a Sugar Book, a taste of which was prophesied to bring bliss. Universities, like factories, once promised a future. In her paintings and performance, Andrea Celeste La Forgia commemorates the toll workers pay when that promise is broken, and the mill of wage labor grinds away time and health. La Forgia paints from photos her mother sends of her factory work, and relays her stories of everyday sabotage. A better life cannot be built unless communal mourning prepares the ground. In this key Samboleap Tol addresses displacement and death, yet also parenting and spiritual practice in her paintings and sound installation. After colonial modernities have destroyed and uprooted countless lives, she observes, restless spirits abound who must be engaged for justice to come. Across multidimensional realities, liaising with ghosts can be done, says Tol: Chat with them daily!

–Jan Verwoert

Image: courtesy of The PZI Archipelago (Urte Baranauskaite, Oliver Doe, Shiila Infriccioli)

PZI Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing (XPUB) UBIK 24 – 25 June Opening Friday 24 June @ 18h. Workshops & presentations Friday 24 June. XPUB grad work will also be represented at the WDKA graduation, 13-17 July. More INFO on the WORM site: https://worm.org/production/xpub-pzi-graduation-show/

Rehearsal: Emerging Learning Sites

The MA Education in Arts cordially invites you for the two-day public symposium, entitled Rehearsal: Emerging Learning Sites hosted by TENT Rotterdam. This symposium is part of the Piet Zwart Institute’s 2022 Graduation Shows that are taking place at various venues across Rotterdam.

Through participatory workshops, open space discussions and performative exercises, Rehearsal: Emerging Learning Sites introduces the various contexts and methodologies with which the MEiA students are working. Rather than reporting on their findings, the students will engage in conversation with people who are passionate and/or curious about contemporary institutional and alternative, experimental education. This invitation to participate in emerged learning starts with pedagogical gestures developed by the MEiA cohort through experimental practices both in and outside of institutional educational settings, working with groups of students and marginalized communities of children and adults.To name a few: relating through crafting and listening in peer-led women groups; activating sensory memories in discovering nature in everyday life; allowing spaces of care and equality in learning communities within institutional settings; combining embodied and linguistic strategies for emancipatory experiences in relation to multilingual children; performing and suspending teacher-student power dynamics in theatre education by proposing ‘rehearsing change’ as pedagogy. The detailed symposium programme can be found here. The program is fully public, but due to their participatory nature, the workshops in the morning require registration. We look forward to welcome you!

With: Urte Baranauskaite, Judith van den Berg, Elina Charinti, Kasia Dembinski, Lorenzo Gerbi, Jeroen van der Heijden, Bruna Esperi, Iris Megens, Xica Negra and Huy Bang Phan.

Rehearsal: Emerging Learning SitesSymposiumFriday, July 1, 10:00 – 19:00Saturday, July 2, 11:00 – 18:00TENT, AuditoriumWitte de Withstraat 50

Workshops Friday July 1

Bruna Esperi: Opportunities for a Shared EnvironmentTime: 10:00 – 11:00Registration: required, please register by sending an e-mail to bruna.esperi@gmail.com

The number of places is limited to 30 people.

Jeroen van der Heijden: Let’s Play a Game Called TeachingTime: 11:15 – 12:45Registration: required, please register by sending an e-mail to jeroensymposium@gmail.com

The number of places is limited to 25 people.

Workshops Saturday July 2

Lorenzo Gerbi: Rehearsing New Meanings for Economic AlternativesTime: 11:00 – 12:30Registration: required, please register by sending an e-mail to loregerbi@gmail.com

The number of places is limited to 12 people.

Elina Charinti: Exploring Embodied Multilingual Repertoires through Language PortraitsTime: 12:40 – 13:25Registration: required, please register by sending an e-mail to: e.charinti@gmail.com

The number of places is limited to 12 people.

Credits

MA Education in Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied SciencesCourse director: Ingrid CommandeurProduction, coordination: Susana PedrosaCurator: Irina ShapiroGraduation supervisors: Ingrid Commandeur, Elizabeth Graham, Çağlar Koseoglu, Irina Shapiro, Sjoerd Westbroek, Thijs Witty

Graphic design programme leaflet: Kristin MethoDesign PZI Graduation Shows campaign images: ArchipelagoWith special thanks to TENT Rotterdam for their kind support and hospitality.

MA Education in Arts – Piet Zwart Institute   Seeking a graduation supervisor and course tutor Graduation Project SeminarDeadline for applications: Thursday June 30, 2022 Piet Zwart Institute / Willem de Kooning Academy The Piet Zwart Institute houses the international Master programmes of the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. The different programs offer a rich combination of in-depth specialization and transdisciplinary exchange with a view to imagining the future. Students and tutors come from around the globe, bringing a variety of languages, perspectives, cultural influences and international connections to an intimate learning environment.   The Master of Education in Arts is two-year part-time research master. The relation between practice and theory is central to the program: students design, experiment and research pedagogical models and tactics. Focusing on the interstices of research, pedagogical experimentation, interdisciplinary art/design practices, cultural critique and social practices, the course welcomes practitioners in the fields of secondary and higher art/design education, museum education, as well as artists and designers challenging the boundaries between socially engaged practices and experimental pedagogy. We regard collaborations and interdisciplinary exchanges as essential to the future of education.    Position To complement the current team, we seek a candidate with an in-depth knowledge of practice based, educational and artistic research. Knowledge of contemporary developments in art and design education and pedagogical theory and philosophy and the ability to be able to converse between different levels (secondary, higher art education, museum education, participatory & collective practices), is highly recommended. For this position, it is essential to connect theory and practice in a stimulating, critical and engaging ways. The role requires working closely with students and supporting their research interests.   Tasks include:– Familiarising students with the processes of research, the movement between evaluating, test-casing and observing participatory/pedagogical/educational practice and critical reflection/theorizing. – Supervising graduation research on a master level in the field of art and design education and adjacent experimental fields. – Teaching various practice-based research methodologies (theoretically and pedagogically underpinning, designing and evaluating educational projects and collective/participatory practices). – Showing ways of structuring and gathering documentation material of practice-based research creating meaningful connections and building a coherent narrative. – Fostering academic writing skills, and learning students how to focus their research. – Presenting and discussing inspiring and exemplary research practices.   Qualification requirements– Ample experience in teaching and supervising at a master level within the field of art and design education with an engaging and student-centred approach. – Excellent English language proficiency. – A curious, engaged, critical and research-oriented attitude. – Ability to work independently, while carefully coordinating tasks in alignment with the staff and management of the course. – Experience with working in larger educational/cultural institutions.   Application should include the following:–Curriculum Vitae–A portfolio of professional practice and teaching examples–A letter of motivation: teaching methods and pedagogical positionPiet Zwart InstituteThe Piet Zwart Institute offers a notable professional, progressive and international educational environment. The post holder reports directly to the Course Director, and works collaboratively with other core tutors within MEiA’s integrated curriculum structure.   Salary and employment conditionsThe Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool Rotterdam) offers a contract of FTE 0.1, with the possibility for extension and future permanent contract and the possibility to grow into a more extensive, future teaching position in terms of hours. The salary range is HBO-CAO grade 11 (EUR 3381 minimum and EUR 5332 maximum gross per month) for fulltime employment, exclusive of 8% holiday pay and 8.3% end-of-year bonus. Our fringe benefits include an attractive pension scheme.   ApplicationsPlease send your application documents: Curriculum Vitae, a portfolio of professional practice and a letter of motivation, directly to our course coordinator: Susana Pedrosa demsm@hr.nl and course director Ingrid Commandeur at comim@hr.nl.   All documents must be submitted in English. A committee will review all applications and invite short-listed candidates for interviews in the first week of July.

Woensdag 8 juni / Wednesday 8 JuneEerstejaarsstudenten van de WdKA/PZI Master Design nemen het publiek mee in hun design research. Aan de hand van een voor hen belangrijke vraag gaan ze in gesprek met experts die daar antwoord op kunnen geven. Het publiek wordt uitgenodigd mee te denken. Vijf lezingen zijn in het Nederlands, drie in het Engels. First-year students of the WdKA/PZI Master Design take the public along in their design research. Based on a question important to them, they start a dialogue with experts who can answer it. The public is invited to contribute. Three lectures are in English, five in Dutch.Vind alle informatie hier / Find all information here:https://masterdesign.wdka.nl/expert-lectures-save-the-date/

venues in Rotterdam dates PZI Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Lens-Based Media (LB) V2_ & TENT 16 – 26 June curator Florian Weigl. Opening Thursday 16 June until Sunday 26, Monday and Tuesday closed or by appointment only PZI Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing (XPUB) UBIK + S/ASH Gallery, WORM 24 – 25 June Workshops & presentations Friday 24 June. XPUB grad work will also be represented at the WDKA graduation, 13-17 July. PZI Master Education in Arts (MEiA) Tent 1 – 2 July Workshops & presentations (some public and some closed to the public). PZI Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design (MIARD) HuidenClub 7 – 10 July curator Danai Giannoglou PZI Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Fine Art (MFA) MAMA+UBIK+Slash Gallery 8 – 16 July PZI Master Media Design (MDES) WDKA Blaak 10 and Wijnhaven 61 13 – 17 July In parallel with the WDKA graduation

We are pleased to welcome you to our annual open studios titled Open Studios, an occasion during Art Rotterdam week for visitors to experience the range of practices, realities, narratives, and dynamics the MFA program fosters in its studio building.

We open our doors on Saturday May 21st and Sunday May 22nd at 11h and all until 18h you will have the occasion to meet and engage directly with a new generation of emerging international artists and see their work. While keeping our doors open to the public, the artists will be showing their work and hosting a durational program full of surprises,indoors and outdoors. This includes their group exhibition on the ground floor, performances, radio program, guided tours, bar, shop and conversations in and outside their studios throughout the day.

Location: Open studios of Master Fine Art is located at Karel Doormanhof 45, a short walk or bike-ride from Rotterdam Central Station.

More information on the program and the participants: https://openstudiospzi.cargo.site

The two-year Master Fine Art program foregrounds the reciprocal articulation of self-directed research, practice, and professionalization. It considers critical reflection, debate, and action as integral to being an artist. The MFA guides artistic development through exposure to actors, influences, and ideas circulating in contemporary art, professional guidance and workshops, and exhibition and public program opportunities for presenting research and work to wider audiences.

Team: Liesbeth Bik (tutor), Bernd Krauß (tutor), Cannach (tutor), Federica Bueti (tutor), Jan Verwoert (tutor), Nina Wakeford (tutor),  Katarina Zdjelar (tutor), Petra van der Kooij (coordinator) and Danny Giles (Course Director).

On behalf of the students and the team we wish you best wishes and hope to see you on Saturday (21st of May) and Sunday(22nd of May).

We cordially invite you to a day of workshops, conversations/presentations, walks and field listening at the urban garden complex Volkstuinvereniging Streven naar Verbetering (SNV) in Rotterdam!

A typical urban garden such as SNV does not look like an experimental learning site at first, or as a place of (un)commoning practices that continuously negotiate between varying meanings, expertise and politics. It tends to be seen as an assemblage of tiny eclectic allotments and people of different ages and backgrounds who maintain the land and relations in the complex. Looking at it from a larger perspective, gardening is simultaneously a metaphor and a model for examining and (un)learning practices of environmental interventions. Learning with the Garden; Learning from the Land proposes to relate to this urban site of biologically and socially interdependent living beings through small-scale engagements and personal stories. Spending this day in the garden, we will explore how its soil, water, air, creatures and people trigger different scenarios of learning and co-responding. The slow process of relating to the interwovenness of the Earth’s human and non-human beings opens up the possibility of challenging institutional (or disciplinary) mechanisms that depend on a predefined method of observation and understanding. This land-based classroom invites us to experience learning through becoming together with the land and other people and sharing accountabilities, rather than through reporting and explaining those. We invite gardeners, students, artists, designers and educators to join us in imagining a non-disciplinary practiceof meaning-making which relies on embodied and intuitive experiences as tools.

With: Skye Maule-O’Brien (educator, researcher, WdKA); Victoria McKenzie (eco-warrior, academic-activist, choreographer), Tara Page (Head of PhD Art Practice and Learning, Goldsmiths, London),

Ida Hiršenfelder (sound artist and archivist), Irina Shapiro (designer, educator, events curator) and Renée Turner (artist and senior research lecturer WdKA).

This event is part of a larger event series called Co-respond: Bodies, Voices, Spaces in Art Education initiated by the MA Education in Arts / Piet Zwart Institute: Ingrid Commandeur (Course Director), Irina Shapiro and Renée Turner in collaboration with Jules Sturm (ZdHK, Zurich).

Practical information:

Location: Volkstuinvereniging Streven naar Verbetering, Roel Langerakweg 33, Rotterdam

Date: Friday June 3, 2022

Time: 10:30 – 18:00, drinks until 19:30

How to enrol: Attendance is free, but due to the event’s participatory nature, the number of places is limited to 40 people. Please enrol in time by sending an e-mail (with your name and contact details) to correspondingarteducation@gmail.com if you wish to attend.

The Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art is pleased to announce our participation in “Personal Structures”, an exhibition organized by the European Cultural Centre Italy coinciding with the 59th Venice Biennale. The works of current PZI MFA students will be on display at Palazzo Mora April 23rd until November 27th 2022. The MFA presents an exhibition within an exhibition curated by our friends Shimmer. 

This exhibition, I Must Be Living Twice, proposes an unfixed quality of artistic production, returning to the studio as a space of powerful inarticulation. We invite the method of the studio into the exhibition to resist the environmental impacts, demands of production pressure, and typecasting that often accompany exhibitions. We attend to the private, tender points in which decisions are made in an artwork. This is where artwork splits off, continues, changes, rejects, or is forgotten.

This collection of work is amassed from the off-cuts or the not-yet-decided of material processes. These are the trimmings, the unworked ideas, the might-have-been that ends up sidelined. These materials have yet to find a footing in an artwork. These could also be the ‘objects’ of influence of painting or your practice over time. Perhaps it is a mirror on the desk, the rocks you keep picking up, or the ever-growing folder of dolphin tattoos.

I Must Be Living Twice features the trimmings, edges, and studio fragments of artists currently enrolled in the Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art in Rotterdam and is curated by Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma, co-directors of Shimmer art space.

For more information visit https://personalstructures.com/

MIARD 2021 Alumni Rachel Refael, Milena Sekulić and Gavin Oliver O’Leary have received the Architecture Grant Scheme from Stimuleringsfonds.

“Refael argues that our cities are faced with a progressive marginalization of sex-related places in the city. This is pushing queer culture and the sex work industry to the outskirts of the city, with gentrification happening in the Old Town. Through several personal interactions, the project aims to demonstrate the necessity of Red-Light Districts within cities in providing a platform for the people who depend on them. The research uses field research, mapping techniques and interviews to arrive at an extensive written and visual document. The focus is on three types of spaces: The Ball Room, The Brothel and The Sex Shop. For the project, Rachel Refael is collaborating with Milena Sekulić and Gavin Oliver O’Leary.”

“The proposal clearly describes how certain places that have a representative value to marginalized groups within society are slowly disappearing from the urban fabric, limiting their freedom of movement and putting them at risk of social isolation. This mapping gives one of these groups a voice and leaves room for a special polyphony that is of added value to the current debate about the city. The committee finds it interesting that the applicants themselves do not have a background in architecture, which means that a fresh perspective can be offered.”

The Architecture Grant Scheme supports projects that contribute to the quality, development, or understanding of the field of architecture.

https://www.stimuleringsfonds.nl/en/grants/architecture-grant-scheme