Curriculum 2015/16 CCC-in-transition at HEAD - Genève

2020

The CCC RP [critical curatorial cybernetic conceptual contemporary communal research practices] Master of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève is a cross-disciplinary, transnational and multilingual study program with focus on voicing the specific in the contemporary condition of globalities. It trains students (with art and non-art backgrounds) to develop a methodology for situating and materialising a multi-layered research project by the means of art. The student's future operational fields are contemporary art, curatorial projects, extra-governmental entities, scientific research collaborations, museums, activism, social platforms, self-organised platforms, human rights activities, or a practice-based PhD. The CCC Public Seminar in 2020/21 will be organized by the Theory Fiction seminar and focus on art research practices mobilizing science fiction literature, futurity and the politics of alienation. In 2020/21 the publishing platform CCC TERMS/ES also plans to participate in P.A.G.E.S. book fair 11-13 December 2020. Seminar languages are English and French. Le Master de Recherche CCC RP [les pratiques de recherche critiques, curatoriales, cybernétiques, conceptuelles, contemporaines, communales] du département Arts Visuels de la HEAD Genève est un programme pluridisciplinaire, transdisciplinaire, transnational et multilingue qui s'attache à exprimer le spécifique dans la condition mondiale contemporaine. Le programme forme les étudiant·e·x·s (venant de formations artistiques ou non) au développement d'une méthodologie pour situer et matérialiser, par les moyens de l'art, un projet de recherche multicouche. Les champs d'application futurs des étudiant·e·x·s sont l'art contemporain, les projets curatoriaux, les organismes extra-gouvernementaux, les collaborations avec la recherche scientifique, les musées, l'activisme, les plateformes communautaires, les plateformes auto-gérées, les droits humains ou les doctorats centrés sur la pratique. Le séminaire public du CCC en 2020/21 sera organisé par le séminaire Theory Fiction et se concentrera sur les pratiques de recherche artistique mobilisant la littérature de science-fiction, l'avenir et la politique d'aliénation. En 2020/21, la plateforme d'édition CCC TERMS/ES prévoit également de participer à la foire du livre P.A.G.E.S. du 11 au 13 décembre 2020. Les langues du séminaire sont l'anglais et le français.

head.hesge.ch/ccc/turbulence The CCC is the Research-Based Master Program at HEAD in Geneva. Participants are students of art and non-art backgrounds who want to work on a research project in a transdisciplinary environment. By building its pedagogy on the idea of trans-disciplinarity, the Program fosters thinking and working conditions that are composed of different practices, geographies, languages, and work-approaches to process an original research proposal in the context of an art academy. During the two-years graduate studies, the Program helps the candidates – collectively and individually – to render more precisely an own position from within his/her project by various means of research, text-work and self-reflection. Research methodologies, artistic thinking and public display strategies operate today in profoundly shifting geospatial and techno-political constellations. Globalisation, migration, computation and climate are a few of the keywords that point to reordering processes on a planetary scale within contemporary societies. How can we make our way in the world through a situational understanding of our position within complexity? Where is the location from which to speak, in-between systems, technologies, generations, time-zones, borders and entangled histories? What happens to ‘knowledge’ in a socio-technological epoch that predominately calculates the unknown into capital growth? If we are ‘planetary subjects rather than global agents’ (Gayatri Spivak), then our histories entangle on the street, through processes of transitional justice or during the work of translation. If the art of the 20th century produced a space to analyse social and political realities, then the art of the 21st century is the space to activate new vocabularies as realities inside of superstructures.

"There is something monstrous, hybrid, and vibrant in the air, dear readers, I feel new ideas coming our way. We just do not know yet what this corpus can do." - Rosi Braidotti, in: The Society of Undutiful Daughters, 2012. The CCC Research-based Master of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève is a cross-disciplinary, transnational and multilingual study program with focus on voicing the contemporary condition of globalities. It trains students (with art and non-art backgrounds) to develop a methodology for situating and materialising a multi-layered research project by the means of art. The student's future operational fields are contemporary art, curatorial projects, extra-governmental entities, scientific research collaborations, museums, activism, social platforms, self-organised platforms, human rights activities, or a practice-based PhD. Beside the specificities of non-public seminars, CCC will think in 2018/19 with the term data behaviourism as a contemporary concern. Furthermore, 2018/19 will see the CCC PUBLIC THOUGHT as a new umbrella for various transversal activities with students, faculty members, external guests and (para-)institutional collaborations. The year 2018/19 will continue also CCC TERMS/ES by publishing further edition. Seminar languages are English and French. - "Il y a quelque chose de monstrueux, d’hybride et de vibrant dans l’air, chers lecteurs, je sens de nouvelles idées qui viennent. Nous ne savons simplement pas encore ce que ce corpus peut faire." - Rosi Braidotti, in: The Society of Undutiful Daughters, 2012. Le Master de Recherche CCC du département Arts Visuels de la HEAD Genève est un programme pluridisciplinaire, transdisciplinaire, transnational et multilingue qui s'attache à exprimer la condition mondiale contemporaine. Le programme forme les étudiants (venant de formations artistiques ou non) au développement d'une méthodologie pour situer et matérialiser, par les moyens de l'art, un projet de recherche multicouche. Les champs d'application futurs des étudiants sont l'art contemporain, les projets curatoriaux, les organismes extra-gouvernementaux, les collaborations avec la recherche scientifique, les musées, l'activisme, les plateformes communautaires, les plateformes auto-gérées, les droits humains ou les doctorats centrés sur la pratique. Au-delà des spécificités de chaque séminaire, le CCC concevra l'année 2018/19 au travers de la problématique contemporaine du data behaviourism. De plus, 2018/19 verra le nouveau CCC PUBLIC THOUGHT servir de plateforme publique aux activités transverses des étudiants, des membres de l'équipe, des invités externes et des collaborations (para-)institutionnelles. De nouvelles publications de TERM/ES verront le jour en 2018/19. Les séminaires sont enseignés en anglais et en français.

CCC of Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève, 2019

The CCC Research-based Master of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève is a cross-disciplinary, transnational and multilingual study program with focus on voicing the contemporary condition of globalities. It trains students (with art and non-art backgrounds) to develop a methodology for situating and materialising a multi-layered research project by the means of art. The student's future operational fields are contemporary art, curatorial projects, extra-governmental entities, scientific research collaborations, museums, activism, social platforms, self-organised platforms, human rights activities, or a practice-based PhD. In 2019/20, the CCC will embark on the concept of art research mobilizing a network of “advanced practices” (Irit Rogoff/Florian Schneider, 2018) through the fields of international contemporary art via the program’s various pedagogical formats.

2019

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Continental philosophy; history of aesthetics and its relation to epistemology; existentialism; phenomenology; philosophy of creativity; philosophy of music; the arts and cognition; philosophy of film; media-theory; theories of symbolization. AREAS OF INTEREST: Philosophy of Mind and A.I. as related to creativity; non-conceptual forms of thinking; enactivism/embodied mind, philosophy of death; the analog/digital-relation in cybernetics, ecology and systems theory (e.g. Gregory Bateson); (New) music and philosophy; sound and music in film; the concept of 'improvisation'.

The CCC is the Research-based Master Program of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD. The academic year 2017/18 of CCC will embark on the plurality of " research practises " in the field of research-led processes in the arts. In that frame, the CCC Public Seminar " on practices " will run throughout the year once in a while attached to one or the other CCC seminar, with contributions by faculty members and guests. The CCC 17/18 will work on the second (and maybe third) issue of TERMS/ES that has been initiated as a print-/ online forum for making the edited seminar research processes public as an educational tool. Seminar languages are English and French. Le CCC est le Master de recherche du département Arts Visuels de la HEAD. L'année académique 2017/18 du CCC s'intéressera particulièrement à la multiplicité des pratiques de la recherche en art. C'est dans ce contexte que s'inscrit le séminaire public du CCC intitulé " Des pratiques ". Celui-ci, alimenté par les contributions des membres du programme et invités, aura lieu ponctuellement tout au long de l'année et sera chaque fois rattaché à l'un des séminaires du programme. L'année 2017/18 du CCC travaillera aussi sur la seconde (voire troisième) édition de TERMS/ES, imaginée comme publication papier/en ligne et comme outil pédagogique destiné à rendre public les processus de recherche propres aux séminaires du programme. Les séminaires sont enseignés en anglais et en français.

2016

UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS 2016 There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art, and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe In 2015, UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS, inheriting a long experience of residency for international artists (2000-2012), launched within the unique and special context of Cittadellarte – a research centre and an exhibition area – the experimentation of an educational prototype or ‘model’ that combined theory with practice, which bases the processes of learning on doing and discovery, favouring the exercising of imagination through a meeting with the differences and plurality of languages, and that responds to the desire and need to delve more deeply into things, phenomena and stories through relationships, dialogue and the exchanging of views of the participants. Through residential dynamics, UNIDEE sees education as a life experience and social process characterised by the particular cognitive and emotional intensity of the exchange by members of the spontaneous community that is formed each week within the module. This is an educational model based on a research and project laboratory under the guidance of a mentor who is an expert in the theme of that specific module and the active participation of a guest with the objective of examining the topics in their complexity and many facets, trying to maintain a balance of the thought forms (theories) and free or unforeseeable situations (creative processes). The participants create a common space, conversational and relational, in which attention is placed on the procedure and final collective shape that closes the educational experience without turning to easy and pre-established formulae but through the organisation of complicated situations that vary each time, without worrying about precise goals that need to be completed but reaching their conclusions slowly following the time required for reflection, deeper consideration and imagination. The laboratory modality with which we work together with mentors requires the participants to be involved in questioning their own field, using dialogue and collaboration to evolve their ability to interact in this game as though exercising in a gym of complexities, the unpredictability of performing moves; this allows the development of a doing attitude, giving value to mistakes, comparing contrasting points of view, opening up to view and do things differently than usual, shifting from one position to another without losing attraction for personal territory or language; favouring the ability to localize problems, enter into details, ask questions, confound significance and uses, and create new openings in meanings. The didactic approach is a demo-practical one of responsible use of power, in the manner of circulating and distributing knowledge within the group, which is expressed, for example, in the dual-dialogue between mentor and guest and between the mentor and participants where the horizontal and circular sharing of knowledge is aimed at the creation of a common ground and language. A brief time, a pause of one week or longer (for those deciding to return) is what the participants allow themselves away from their usual routine so as to expand on a topic or add final touches to a project, and therefore return to study or work in their own contexts. The intent of the modules is to form ‘artivators’, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language, becoming agents for the activation of responsible actions and processes in urban transformation and social emancipation in the territories in which they live and carry out their professional activities. The originality of the UNIDEE programme lies in its collaborating with Universities and Academies of the Fine Arts so as to identify reciprocal shortcomings and intervene in the more immediate critical necessities to elaborate together and find another path compared to that indicated by the traditional educational system; and, furthermore, thanks to the flexibility of the modules, to invent new residential formats, similar to what happened with the re-defining of long residencies and in the development of two projects co-financed by the European Union “Ottomans and Europeans” and “Understanding Territoriality: Identity, Place & Possession – TIPP”, where every week the artists in residence met couples of intellectuals and operators in the sector at an international level and exchanged ideas and opinions with them, having collective discussions full of new stimuli and in-depth content for the final Open Studios. Encouraged by the unexpected high number of participants (111 presences from 16 different countries) and their enthusiastic feedbacks and proposals for future developments of this new educational model experimented in 2015, the intention for 2016 is to continue to analyse and thus fine-tune this educational method through the close examination of three other macro- topics, which are research, gift and alteration, considered central to both theoretical reflection and the practice of artists operating in the public sphere. With an interdisciplinary approach articulating these three concepts according to the Trinamic principle of Michelangelo Pistoletto, that bases the cognitive process on the combination of detachment of an analytical approach with the implication of who is profoundly involved in the situations, the three semantic areas are considered in their interrelationships as sites for generating forms of resistance, new possibilities in meaning and social transformation. The word ‘research’ contains the act of ‘searching anew’ that refers back to semantic proximity, as well as for assonance, in the action of ‘encircling’ something, a study object, a disciplinary field, a territory and leads us back to that which is an aspect of the study method, in other words to the condition of losing one’s self while researching, with the impression of moving in a labyrinth (in which the work, from labor, shares the same etymological root labh) to regain the thread, relocate direction. Besides the willingness to lose one’s self, the research also includes the strain of intellectual and poetical in-depth analysis, attitudes of care and dedication, the ability to enter into the crevices, into the circles of things and discover hidden details due to curiosity and amazement. Today this is nearly a privilege, as it is so difficult, to take a break from study, without taking anything away from work, to think according to the slow time of research that favours activities of reflection, impossible under the pressures of a project. The latter, was already used by conceptual artists in the late 1960s (in particular by the Art and Project Gallery in Amsterdam) to denote a proposal for an artwork, from the 1990s it became a broad term used to include various types of social art (collective practices, groups of self-organised activists, participatory art and socially involved and curatorial experiments), in which duration and process are more privileged compared to the aesthetic solution. In the present phase of cognitive capitalism dominated by networks and projects our working life is described by a succession of ‘projects’, based on efficient connections the value of which lies in the fact that they allow us to generate or enter into a following project, often very different in context and content (L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, 2005). Having liberated the restricted space of the canvas and metabolised the processes and dispositifs through which life enters art and vice-versa, the challenge for artists today is to not abandon their own field of research but to occupy themselves with it, taking care to examine any potential in depth and to cultivate new possibilities. To not tie one’s self totally to the exclusive rules and transformative power of the art system, but rather stop without losing interest in one’s own research and language, and without being satisfied with crossings connected to the themed projects of a certain Biennale or exhibition or space. What are the survival strategies to resist the neo-liberalist spiral emphasized by multiple projects? How do we regain the slow and unproductive time for research today? [...]

http://head.hesge.ch/ccc/turbulence The bilingual (English/French) two-years Master Program at HEAD – Geneva School of Art and Design welcomes any candidate that wishes to embark upon an original research project by contemporary means. The Program’s trans-disciplinary environment addresses future researchers from any cultural and educational background committed to art-led thinking processes.

Abstracta Iranica, 2022

Maresca, G. (2022) Review of: Damien Agut-Labordère, Rémy Boucharlat, Francis Joannès, Amélie Kuhrt, Matthew W. Stolper (eds.). “Achemenet. Vingt ans après. Études offertes à Pierre Briant à l’occasion des vingt ans du Programme Achemenet”, Abstracta Iranica 44, document 43. CNRS (UMR 7528 Mondes iraniens et indiens), Éditions de l’IFRI; ISSN: 1961-960X ; DOI: 10.4000/abstractairanica.55710

The phenomenon of art activism is central to our time because it is a new phenomenon. Boris Groys, “On Art Activism” Now into its third year, and with a long history of residency programs for international students (2000-2013) behind it, the new UNIDEE-University of Ideas of Cittadellarte format proposes an educational model based on ‘other’ ways of gaining experience in the meeting of critical theory, activism and artistic practice, not through subordinate relationships but rather through levels of interaction, exchanges and reciprocal interference. Laboratory or seminar modules are held each week at Cittadellarte, moderated by a knowledgeable mentor with the support of a guest. The groups of participants, who are always different and arrive from all over the world, interact intensely as they discuss and examine relationships between art and the public sphere in depth, starting from different practices and going through connections with various disciplines (from visual art to the theory of economical politics, music, etc.). The resulting storyline is woven from their words, discussions, actions, images, works and the pre-texts for other works created every week, in different ways and forms. This is done in a common environment of thought and action in which the demo-practical (from the neologism “demopraxia” that intends the power of demos as an exercise of practices) sharing is circular in its meanings, knowledge and perceptions that are not only the final result of the process that was initially activated in the module but also becomes the tool for the following steps each participant will develop on their own, or in a group, in their own academic research and artistic planning. In a relationship of methodological continuity and semantic connection with the key words selected for 2015 (Temporality, Responsibility and Participation) and for those in 2016 (Research, Gift, Alteration), the 2017 course will use an interdisciplinary approach to examine three more macro-themes. They will be Revolution, Desire and Mediation, which are central to contemporary social-political debates as well as in the practices of many actors (artists, curators, public and private institutions, organisations, etc.) operating in the public sector. Inspired by the words of Michelangelo Pistoletto: “The Third Paradise forms the basis for a new educational vision involved in every formative level, necessary in starting the third phase of human evolution, that of responsibility, after the ancestral age of lack of awareness regulated by nature and the era of knowledge generated by artificial progress”, UNIDEE is an experimental school that uses methodologies, practices, the languages of art and the forms of activism to educate ‘artivators’ or agents for the organisation of actions and processes responsible for change in the social contexts in which they live. The origin of the term ‘revolution’ was astronomical and indicated the movement of the stars, therefore, a recurring and cyclical motion. The word comes from the Latin revolvere, composed of re-again and volvere-turn, literally meaning ‘to turn again’ and not only ‘turn over ‘ or ‘spill’ as it is commonly meant today. Re-volvere, referring to an action of turning twice along a curve to return to the starting point, reveals a sense of ambiguity and apparent change. If applied to politics, the word would mean that known forms of government represent themselves in an endless procession, which on one hand is very far from the idea held by all of the revolutionaries to bring about the fall of an old order to establish a completely new one, but on the other hand, it is unfortunately very close to the real results of these phenomena, from the French Revolution to the Russian one and onwards to the recent Arab revolutions. Consequently, and in accordance with the École des Annales, instead of revolution we prefer its antithesis ‘evolution’, or the daily manifestation of slow and continuous structural changes to society (in that sense, the industrial revolutions would represent a multi-century evolution beginning a long process of worldwide economic transformation).[...]