JANUARY, FEBRUARY AND MARCH 2014:
The Rietveld Academie embarked on a new, exhaustive artistic research collaboration. For VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION Studium Generale Rietveld Academie* teamed up with Rietveld Uncut**. Together they created a framework for lectures, talks, performances, master classes, face to face meetings, a reading group, film screenings, a research-website, a 120 person choir, an exhibition and a conference festival.
An increasing number of makers and thinkers, in sweeping and often groundbreaking ways are concerned with the phenomenon of “voice”. Numerous exhibitions, symposia and publications continue to be dedicated to the physical, mythical, psychoanalytic, political, philosophical, legal and performative potential of “voice”.
By looking into theory, literature, film, theater, visual art, popular culture and society at large, the bachelor students in art and design at the Rietveld Academie were invited to investigate the potential for “pleasure” and “power” offered by the voice and to ask themselves what vistas, at the dawn of the 21st century, ‘voice’ has in store for them.
VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION CONSISTS OF TWO PARTS:
- 1. Beginning with a preliminary research trajectory between January 8 and March 14, a wide variety of guests from various disciplines and creeds came to the Rietveld Academie to share their knowledge and research; Simultaneously objects, installations and performances were developed by the students themselves.
- 2. In March the space of the academy will be temporarily abandoned as the project and all Rietveld students will be hosted by De Brakke Grond during the course of an entire conference-festival, a thought-provoking assemblage of voices, which will take place on March 19, 20, 21, 22, & 23.
VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION is the outcome of a collaboration between to programs within the Rietveld that are both aimed at students and faculty across all departments and disciplines, as well as at the general public:
* RIETVELD UNCUT
is a dynamic presentation revealing the experimental process of making within the Rietveld Academie to the outside world. Rietveld Uncut is initiated and supervised by Tomas Adolfs and Tarja Szaraniec, this year in collaboration with Robin Vanbesien.
** STUDIUM GENERALE RIETVELD ACADEMIE
is an annually settled, rambling theory program. It explores how art is entangled with the world, how our ‘now’ is linked with past and future, our ‘here’ with ‘elsewhere’. The framework for VOICE ~ CREATURE OF TRANSITION’s preliminary lecture program as well as the conference was conceived by Gabriëlle Schleijpen and realized by Nikos Doulos, Jort van der Laan and Joris Lindhout in collaboration with numerous others in and outside the academy.
The Flemish Arts Centre DE BRAKKE GROND offers the most significant developments, contemporary art productions from Flanders, including visual art, literature, dance and theatre, music, performance, film and new media.In addition to being a place where artists can present their work and a home base for Flemish artists, De Brakke Grond always wants to be a haven of reflection and contemplation, of debate and discussion. De Brakke Grond feeds and maintains the dialogue between genres, disciplines and communities.