On May 7, 2020, MIARD invited three leading practices – Formafantasma, Cooking Sections, and Counterspace – to take part in an online symposium with the first year students. Each of the three was asked to present a recent project, after which the students had the opportunity to engage in a conversation with them. The three participants were selected as they all share a strong commitment to critical spatial work, which challenges the usual boundaries between design, architecture, and art – as well as a focus on linking architecture to ecological processes. This has resonated with the MIARD 1 work both in the TDP and History and Theory programs, and has a chance to be an inspiration for students as they think about their own future practice. 

FORMAFANTASMA

Andrea Trimarchi (1983) and Simone Farresin (1980) are Formafantasma, an Italian design duo based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Their interest in product design developed on the IM master course at Design Academy Eindhoven, where they graduated in July 2009.

Since then, Formafantasma’s practice has been characterised by experimental material investigations and detailed explorations of the history, context and implications of the transformation of natural resources into commodities. Their work has been presented and published internationally and museums such as New York’s MoMA, London’s Victoria and Albert and New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Most recently, their solo show Cambio opened at the Serpentine Gallery in London. 

>>> Reading: Web exhibition Cambio

COOKING SECTIONS

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners based out of London. It was born to explore the systems that organise the WORLD through FOOD. Using installation, performance, mapping and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. Their work has also been exhibited at the 2019 Los Angeles Public Art Triennial; Sharjah Architecture Triennial and 13th Sharjah Biennial; Manifesta12, Palermo,Tate Britain and elsewhere. They currently lead a studio unit at the Royal College of Art, London.

>>> Reading: “Littoral Ambiguities”; “Boundary Gazpacho”; Climavore

COUNTERSPACE

Counterspace is a Johannesburg-based collaborative architectural studio, directed by an all-woman team of Sumayya Vally, Amina Kaskar and Sarah de Villiers. Counterspace is inspired by their location – Johannesburg – and aims to work with developing design expression particularly for Johannesburg and the continent – through urban research, publications, installations and architecture. They also teach at the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witswatersrand. 

Counterspace has been selected to design the 2020 Serpentine Pavilion. 

>>> Reading: “Golden Plateaus”

We are seeing the world being potentially transformed by the massive popular resistance to racism and anti-black violence that has been prompted by recent displays of racist brutality. The master’s courses of the Piet Zwart Institute stand in support of movements for racial justice around the world and we hold ourselves accountable to address the urgent demands being issued through protests and community-led actions. We recognize that to stand in solidarity with this movement is to commit to do the work of reflecting its aims of justice and equity within our educational and creative community. We must continue to support and empower diverse perspectives. We must deepen our commitment to making our resources more accessible to a local and an international student body. We must platform voices of resistance and amplify their work through our curricula and programming. And we will continue to engage in active and persistent dialogue and self-critique. We remain committed to manifesting the transformative change we hope to see in the world as educators, artists, and designers. Black Lives Matter.

Very proud to announce that our current second year student Adam Patterson will have a solo exhibition at TENT. Rotterdam!

Adam Patterson uses masquerade, textiles, performance, video and poetry to tell new stories or to repeat old stories and provide them with new meaning. The new video installation “A Ship of Fools” is a vehicle for several voices, who try to find words for their experiences in the difficult times in which we live.

The exact opening date is yet to be announced.

Can we find ways to feel each other’s pain, mourn each other’s loss, and relate to what is happening right now? And how do we want to continue together after we have shared our experience of the crisis?

Patterson translated this desire for empathy, connection and solidarity into a way of working in which cooperation is central. “A Ship of Fools” is a collaboration with Clementine Edwards, Nicole Jordan, Ark Ramsay and M. Maria Walhout. A leading role in the new work is music and kangas – printed canvases that you give as a personal gift to someone during joyous or sad events.

Adam Patterson (Bridgetown, 1994) works as a visual artist and writer, and lives alternately in Barbados, London and Rotterdam. Patterson was a participant in the Hamburger Community of Art in Rotterdam (2019); exhibited at Live Art Development Agency (London), Barbados Museum & Historical Society (Bridgetown), Little Red Riding Hood (Rotterdam), Ateliers ’89 (Oranjestad), Alice Yard (Port of Spain); and published in ARC Magazine, Sugarcane Magazine, PREE, Mister Motley and Metropolis M.

More info here.

Image credits: Anna Sandri, Damlanur Bilgin.

From the other side of the world, we were given data about a past dictatorship threatening to reinstate itself. A portion of an archive that exists to keep history truthful and educate the present, the recurrent time of political urgency and authoritarian repression. We were entrusted to secure it, manage it, and publish it anonymously. We cannot share the archive itself, but we can share our stories (experiences) and process (tools, methods) at this collectively assembled website: https://issue.xpub.nl/11/index.html 

Special Issue #11 Post-Digital Itch  Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design Experimental Publishing, Piet Zwart Institute January–April 2020 Archivists: Anna Sandri, Avital Barkai, Clara Noseda, Damlanur Bilgin, Ioana Tomici, Mika Motskobili, Mark van den Heuvel, Max Lehmann, Sandra Golubjevaite, Tisa Neža Herlec Workshops: <Digital Activist>, Mayday Rooms (Rosemary Grennan, Jan Gerber), OSP (Stéphanie Vilayphiou, Pierre Huyghebaert) Contributors: Jérémie Zimmermann, Monoskop (Dušan Barok), Warp and Weft of Memory (Cristina Cochior, Renée Turner) Teachers: André Castro, <teacher>, Sami Hammana, Aymeric Mansoux, Michael Murtaugh, Leslie Robbins, Steve Rushton In collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut, Stichting NAC, <Archival Institution>, and <Digital Advocacy Group>.

Looking forward, into the future. 

Your XPUB1.

In compliance with the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences and to respond to the ongoing situation with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), educational activities and offices of the Piet Zwart Institute are operating differently.

The deadline for applications for NONEU applicants has been extended until 31 March, 2020. The final EU deadline has been also extended to May 18, 2020.

Should you have questions concerning your application, *do not use pzwart-info@hr.nl*, please email directly the corresponding Course coordinator from the Master of your interest: Master of Fine Art and Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design, Zoraima Hupkes: z.hupkes@hr.nl Masters Experimental Publishing and Lens-Based Media Leslie Robbins: roblj@hr.nl Master Art in Education, Susana Pedrosa: demsm@hr.nl

Master Design. This course follows a different application process. Please follow this link for more information: https://www.wdka.nl/application-deadlines-master-design/

Important for application of the Master of Education in Arts. The portfolio should give a balanced overview of educational/pedagogical projects and experience, next to artistic/design work.

Date: March 9th, 2020 from 19:00 until 20:00

Location: Karel Doormanhof 45, 3012 GC Rotterdam

About the lecture:Christopher Meerdo will be lecturing on digital colonialism through his research-based photographic and emerging media projects Eigengrau (infrared facial recognition camera images mined from restricted international factory employee work registrations) and Channeling (a Generative Adversarial Network trained on the complete 70,000 image file archive of Osama bin Laden’s computer cache, released by the Central Intelligence Agency). The artist considers the working space of emerging technologies to question the power of non-human camera and data aggregations. 

Artist bio:

Christopher Meerdo is an artist who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and spent his teenage years in Šiauliai, Lithuania. He resided in Chicago for the last 15 years before relocating in 2019 to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.Meerdo received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago, taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2012-2019, and was recently appointed tenure track Assistant Professor of Photography and New Media at the University of North Texas. Recent exhibitions include Exgirlfriend (Berlin); The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago); Wilfried Lentz (Rotterdam), The National Gallery of Kosovo (Pristina), and The Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art (Pittsburg). He was an artist in residence at the SIM Program in Reykjavik and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Meerdo was most recently a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands for the 2018-2019 program. 

Image credits:

Channeling, 2019Modular LED display, Switcher/Scaler, Media Player, 8×8 ft (2.5×2.5m)Generative Adversarial Network trained on complete 70,000 image file archive of Osama bin Laden’s computer cache, released by the Central Intelligence Agency

Short Film Programme by students of Piet Zwart Institute (Lens-Based Media) in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Friday, 29 February 2020, 15:30 (duration of the programme is 1 h)EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam Tickets: https://kaarten.eyefilm.nl/eye/nl/flow_configs/webshop/steps/order/show/366610

anxiety

As consumers, we are confronted with a seemingly endless stream of images. Our faith in these images is being increasingly challenged by our understanding of the technologies involved, both in their production and distribution. This, in turn, leads to questions concerning the image’s dialogue with reality, raising questions of ‘fake news’ in the (social) media and leading to a wider anxiety that possibly our whole understanding of reality is based on a simulation.

absurd and fluid

The Lens Based Media artists from Piet Zwart Institute seek to both address and offer alternative voices for dealing with these situations. In this light, the real is not necessarily what you perceive it to be. The nature of (un-)reality is unstable, transformative, absurd, fluid, and unreliable. It can take the shape of a gaze, a home, a morning routine, traffic, observations of nature and much more.

Facebook event: Cloud Cuckoo Land

Eye on Art’s Research Labs provide scope for a new generation of curators and artists to hone their skills. Students from different art academies and universities are asked to put together a programme featuring their own work and films (including remixes) from Eye’s collection. Research Labs do not follow a strict format and often result in a cultural crossover between film and other art forms. In this one hour program, the artists present their moving image pieces that relate to our perception of the world around us and will open your eyes to the possible illusions of reality. 

Site-Writing: A Critical Spatial Practice

Jane Rendell (BSc, DipArch, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she co-initiated the MA Situated Practice and supervises MA and PhD projects. Jane has introduced concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). With Dr David Roberts, she leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission; and with Dr Yael Padan, ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’, for KNOW (Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality). For her talk, she will read from three site-writings, ‘To miss the desert’ (2005), May Mo(u)rn (2010) and Silver (2017): each of which explore conditions of subjectivity and positionality – critical, ethical and poetic – through engagements with issues around gendered space, urban regeneration and fossil fuel extraction.

time: 17:00location: tba

Open Studios: Piet Zwart Institute Master of Fine Art

Karel Doormanhof 45 

3012 GC Rotterdam 

The Netherlands

February 8th 2020, 11am – 7pm 

What’s hidden in the garden? Where’s the exhibition? Whose hanging by the bar? Which things are on offer in the shop? When’s the radio on? How’s the menu? 

The Master Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute kindly invites you to come and have a nosy, meet some friendly faces and sample the wide array of culturally procured goods on offer at its annual open studios. Stop by during Art Rotterdam week and see what goes on in the MFA program’s building in Rotterdam city centre. 

Current students will open up their studios to the public and share their multi-disciplined practices that reflect the schools pedagogical approach. Exhibiting works and performances inside and outside the building, they will take you on a tour through gourmet cooking to green-thumbed gardening, pop-up bar design, radio disc jockeying and keeping shop. There will also be an opportunity to meet the core MFA teaching staff for questions about the programme and teaching methods. Keep an eye on our social media for a full program 

Prospective students, please feel welcome to join our guided tour from 2pm – 3pm

Participating artists: Emma Astner, Christine Ayo, Annabelle Binnerts, Linus Bonduelle, Dagmar Bosma, Antonia Brown, Jake Caleb, Pascale De Graaf, Aimilia Efthimiou, Halla Einarsdóttir, Guillem Arquer Gómez, Diana Al Halabi, Olga Hohmann, Peter Horneland, Jamie Kane, Junghun Kim, Bruno Machado Das Neves, Steven Maybury, Lucía Bayón Mendoza, Lukas Meßner, Christian Aagaard Ovesen, Josie Perry, Petter Dahlström Persson, Yanik Soland, Daphne Simons, Berglind Erna Tryggvadóttir 

And pedagogical team 2019-20: Liesbeth Bik, Kate Briggs, Bernd Krauß, Mike Sperlinger, Jan Verwoert, Nina Wakeford, Katarina Zdjelar.

date: Thursday 06, February 2020

doors open: 18:00   |   start: 18:00   |   end: 22:00

location: Pension Almonde   |    Almondestraat 179   |    3032 CD Rotterdam

free entrance + within walking distance from Rotterdam Central Station

Not For Profit Art Party   |   Pension Almonde edition   |   free art experiment   |   1 street of former social housing   |   1 big expo   

The counter-place-to-meet during Art Rotterdam; be welcome at the Not For Profit Art Party: the off-stage stage where experiments and new forms of exhibiting are stimulated. This year, this multidisciplinary shared chaos is taking place at Pension Almonde. Wander through the corridors, meet residents and discover new performances, mixed archives, installations, workshops, video projections and works on, in and next to the walls.

Free entrance + within walking distance from Rotterdam Central Station!

The NFPAP is an independent body, where non-profit presentation institutions from the Netherlands work together to exchange artists, knowledge and informal networks. Including: SIGN,Nieuwe Vide, Expoplu, WORM, VHDG, Tetem,Extrapool,Printroom,Bcademie, and XPub-Piet Zwart Institute with

– two performances:

   * cTrL

   * Vo Ezn

– and a presentation of their publication/installation they did last trimester at DE PLAYER (https://issue.xpub.nl/10)

Pension Almonde is a project by Stad In De Maak in the former social housing units of Almondestraat. The street functions temporarily as a home for city nomads, social and cultural projects, up to the demolition.

the party continues: Friday 07 & Saturday 08 February:  12:00 – 18:00 Sunday 09 February 9:  14:00 – 18:00

Featured Artists: a.o. Masha Somik, Esmay Groot Koerkamp, Stephanie Nypels, Valentina Gal, Bernardo Zanotta, Simon Niks, Data Bosma, Floor Milou Smit, Iris van Wijk, Jacco Jansen, Rosh Abdel Fatah, Rolf Engelen, Roxette Capriles, Sabrina Basten, Nicole Martens, Czar Cristoff, Johann Kauth, Cengiz Menguc, Ruth van Beek, Philippa Driest, Anoushka Pessy, Christy Groen, Emma Kroos, Emmy Vollaard, Flores van de Marel, Kwinnie Le, Pris Roos, S.J. Oosterhuis, Sophia Boeschoten, Suzanne van Soest,…XPUB’s own and more!

And our wonderful hosts who have prepared unexpected experiences for you: Studio C.A.R.E., Woodstone Kugelblitz, KIOSK, Keju Kitchen, Slopera, Pension Almonde, Stad in de Maak – City in the Making.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Pssst. Don’t forget to check out the New Radicalism expo, workshops and talks, it’s just around the corner at MONO