What it means to call a work a work
Nov
18
to Nov 22

What it means to call a work a work

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Teaching period:  18th – 22nd November 2024

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s):  Jan Verwoert

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2-3

Level: BA/MA

Course description:
Arguably one of the hardest moments about making art and being an artist comes when you need to step up and say: "This is a work and I want you to look at it and tell me how it makes you feel." You may have been more or less happy with what you were doing in the studio. Some parts about making art may even be fun and get you so excited you want to go back to where you left it the last day and do some more. But then we get to the deadline for a crit or show, and, on the doorstep of the soul, you wonder: "What the x am I doing? Who the x am I to do it? How the x am I going to get your attention?" Two main options present themselves. Number one is the conceptual claim: "Listen up, you need to consider my project because it's based on a good idea!" Number two is the holistic existential option: "Look, I give you all of me, so in return, give a little piece of your heart to me!" This is real. And it can drive you nuts. Giving the gift of your art feels like it's all about you. But when it comes to if and how the gift is received, it seems like it's not about you at all. How can you live with this contradiction?

This seminar series will consist of a series of talks about the histories, politics, psychologies and demonologies at play when a work is called a work, presenting different traditions and techniques for going about the transactions (between people, things, sensations, spirits and spaces) that shape art. The talks will be followed up by a seminar session in which participants are asked to coin concepts for building their own philosophy of handling how to call a piece a work.

Application deadline: 27th October 23:59

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form: https://nettskjema.no/a/457507

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

General KUNO Eligibility Rules:

- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please contact hannhatt@khio.no

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Slide into my DMs
Nov
25
to Nov 29

Slide into my DMs

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Teaching period:  25th – 29th November 2024

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s):  Marthe Ramm Fortun

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2-3

Level: BA/MA

Course description:
"Slide into my DMs" is a class about textual artist exchanges, love letters and sustainable strategies with regards to an open ended and reciprocal communication with an audience, exploring boundaries, vulnerabilities and possible asymmetrical institutional relationships.

This is a project class that will result in both individual and group presentations.

Application deadline: 4th November 23:59

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form: https://nettskjema.no/a/461393

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

General KUNO Eligibility Rules:

- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please contact hannhatt@khio.no

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When Theory lacks street
Nov
25
to Nov 29

When Theory lacks street

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Teaching period: 25th – 29th November, 2024

Location: Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus

Teacher(s): Stine Marie Jacobsen, artist and professor

ECTS: 2 study points (equal to 2 ECTS)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA /MA (all years)

Requirements: no previous knowledge needed

Course description:
This course is an introduction to social art practices, conflict analysis, environmental and artistic inquiry where art students can reflect on their ethics and approach to working with/within different interests, cultures and other factors that influence their art projects. From a multifocal and multimedia perspective on the interactions and constitutive relationships between knowledge and art, we will discuss a transition from a production mode to a reproductive mindset in which art is not dominated by (individual) value extractions and hegemonic power/knowledge constellations. How can the reception of people's opinions, stories and information lead to new project ideas? What is at stake when artists make art that involves people? Artistic research can generate new collective knowledge about care and (ecological) care, motivated by a sense of political urgency. 

COURSE METHOD 

Students in this course will create their own art projects in contact with a person, a community or a specific place of their own choice. While practically applying the tools learned, conducting research, practicing negotiation skills, and learning tools of active listening through conflict analysis methods, students will reflect on their personal agenda, gather information and develop their ideas, to finally evaluate what impact their social art project has or will have on the person, community, or place they have chosen to work with or on during this 5-day workshop. Some parts of this course will be speculative due to the course time. The main goal is to develop a root concept of your own. 

BIO 

Stine Marie Jacobsen holds an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Copenhagen, Denmark) and a B.F.A. in Arts from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Los Angeles, California, USA. She also completed an advanced training program in conflict resolution and peacebuilding at the Chulalongkorn University Peace Center in Bangkok, Thailand. Over the past 15 years, she has gained extensive experience working in conflict zones and post-colonial contexts in countries such as Colombia, Lebanon, Greenland and Eastern Ukraine. Jacobsen has conceived and developed a series of participatory and educational projects such as Direct Approach, where people retell the most violent movie scene they have seen from memory and play either the victim, perpetrator or bystander in a cinematic re-enactment. Also Law Shifters, where, in collaboration with lawyers, she invites people to performatively re-enact real-life legal processes and then write their own legal proposals. Or Group-Think: a sports and protest project in which she trains collective intelligence and safety with large groups. 

www.stinemariejacobsen.com

Application deadline: 14th October, 2024

How to apply: Please send an application form and short motivation to frontdesk@djk.nu. Please state the course name “When Theory lacks street” in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Susanne Brokmann at: frontdesk@djk.nu

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Doing Things With Words
Oct
21
to Nov 1

Doing Things With Words

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Teaching period: 21st October– 1st November, 2024

Location: MALMÖ ART ACADEMY, Sweden

Teacher(s):  Michael Portnoy

ECTS: 6

Number of available places for KUNO students: 3

Level: BA

Course description:
The focus of this practice-based course is experimental creative writing. We’ll be looking at a diverse selection of short fiction and experimental texts from authors such as Richard Kostelanetz, Sheila Heti, Raymond Queneau, M. NourbeSe Philip, Lucy Corin, Edouard Levé, Claudia Rankine, R.A Lafferty, Padgett Powell, Greg Bordowitz, Lucy Corin, Daniil Kharms, Lydia Davis, Lucy Ives, László Krasznahorkai, Jamaica Kincaid and Olga Ravn, among others, as well as visual and performance artists who have innovative approaches towards language. The core of the course is the engagement in daily writing which follows from different formal and conceptual prompts. Through practice and discussion, we’ll do things with words both on the page and in the mouth in order to build a toolbox of techniques which can be drawn upon when incorporating text into one's work. The course will culminate in a PDF produced by the class including a selection of the writing created as well as prompts devised by the students designed to inspire future prose stylists.

Application deadline: 29th of September, 2024

How to apply:  Please apply by sending a motivation letter to Maj Hasager:
maj.hasager@khm.lu.se Please state the course name “Doing Things With Words” in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact charlotta.osterberg@khm.lu.se

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About walking and being together
Sep
17
to Sep 27

About walking and being together

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Teaching period: September 17-27, 2024

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s): dr. Vitalij Červiakov

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6-8

Level: BA /MA

Course description
Information about the physical and psychological health benefits of daily walking, step-counting competitions and the accumulation of virtual points for daily walking is seen regularly in the public sphere. In artistic practice, walking together or alone takes on a much broader meaning. Walking and being together - embodies an artwork in each participant.
Artists use various walking practices in their work or research in the context of the growing concern about ecological and migration crises, urban planning decisions that are not compatible with natural human movement, new forms of being together in the virtual, post-pandemic situation and alienation. In light of these issues (and many more), the workshop will focus on embodied, participatory and collaborative art practices, using walking as a key tool.
The tutor of the workshop, Dr. Vitalij Červiakov, has been studying walking as an artistic practice for over 15 years. He is not only actively involved in the Lithuanian contemporary art field by developing structured and site specific participatory walks, but also conducts scientific/artistic research on the topic at the VAA Art Institute, describing walking as one of the most immediate ways of experiencing and thinking about space.
Only working your leg muscles will not be enough. The practice will also include guest lectures, collaboration with local institutions and enjoying the warmth of Nida's dunes!
An important day for the practice is 22 September, which is not only the autumn Equinox but also the day of Baltic unity and the International Car Free Day. For the sixth time in a row, this day will be the day of the all-day walk across the Curonian Spit, organized by Dr Vitalij Červiakov for the students of the Photography, Animation and Media Art department in Vilnius Academy of Art. This is a challenge that everyone who takes part overcomes in one way or another!

Application deadline: August 30th, 2024 

How to apply: Please fill out the application form https://forms.gle/GA7KoNhxZykZMyqJ7

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

Eligibility:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact the coordinator of the Workshop: gaile.cijunaityte@vda.lt

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City out of Sight
Sep
16
to Sep 20

City out of Sight

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Teaching period: September 16-20, 2024

Opening of the city festival “All Roads Lead to Roam”: 13 September  (in Trondheim)

Location: Trondheim, Norway

Teacher(s): Annett Busch, Margarita Torrijos, Kristian Byskov Rasmussen

ECTS: 2 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6 - 10

Level: BA /MA

Course description:

A week of festive artistic urban research that invites site specific thinking and experimenting: Starting point of the course is a student-initiated city and exhibition festival in Trondheim, all roads lead to roam, that opens right the weekend before the course. The exhibition consists of nine spots, located within walking distance to the art academy, situated in Møllenberg and facing Solsiden, neighbouring Lademoen & Svartlamon, Rosenborg and Bakklandet. The selected locations, where the artworks are then installed, and walks connecting those spots, lead to places that may not have been noticed before. 

Places can open up new sights and perspectives, question everyday routines and blind spots, offer entry into historic narratives and struggles, point to economic and social divides and hidden infrastructures. 

We will engage with these places, artworks and their context and surroundings, add scientific-fiction and theoretical readings on site (outdoor), create audio-visual recordings and imaginary maps. As we roam (physically and theoretically) we will try to understand how things appear, how they are and how we would like the urban-social fabric to become. Playing with experimental utopias, exploring the potential of play in the city beyond designated playgrounds. In that sense, roaming locally can propel ideas translocally, can become a model and a new starting point to develop second festival editions, here and elsewhere. Students will discuss and work collaboratively in smaller groups, drawing on their knowledge of the different places they come from, to develop their own proposal for a site specific city festival, or propose a continuation in Trondheim. Folded into the specifics of sight and sites. "We often see computers not cables, light not electricity, taps and water but not pipes and sewers.” (Brian Larkin, “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure,” 2013)

More information

Application deadline: 30 July 2024, 13:00   

How to apply: Please fill out the following online application form with a short motivation statement and further information.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 100 €

Eligibility:

- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions:

In case of any questions please contact annett.busch@ntnu.no

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(re)Forumlating the Art School
Sep
13
9:30 AM09:30

(re)Forumlating the Art School

Teaching period: September 9-13, 2024

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Teacher(s): Magnus Quaife

ECTS: 2 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students 14

Level: BA /MA

Course description
Academies of art have always evolved often anticipating or reflecting changes in the wider art world. But over the last quarter of a century in many parts of Europe, where they have been subsumed into larger universities or merged with other schools to form arts universities, that change has often felt accelerated. Ane Hort Guttu has described how Nordic schools are no longer the “indefinable zone(s) of freedom” they once were. Art and art schools are constantly being asked to account for their value in neoliberal and economic terms, and yet Allan deSouza has argued that, ‘Without abandoning all else that they can achieve and produce, art and the MFA should also strive to be for absolutely nothing, the nothing that is resistant to being instrumentalized for other purposes, and that allow for other, as yet unconstrained possibilities.’ The challenge deSouza argues is “to teach art in ways for students to implement the known of the past in order to envisage futures and to adapt to continuous, threatening presents.’

What does this mean to a student studying art today and can we envisage a new art school for this part of the 21st century that might meet our collective needs? During this weeklong KUNO course we will reformulate what an art school/academy might need to be. It will be an exercise in collective imagination leading to the development and critique of collaboratively created formulas. Where should an art school be based, what should be taught, what kind(s) of ideology should it embrace, how does research fit in, who should attend, what kind of space is needed, what kind of pedagogies should be deployed, and what are the values and assumptions that underpin these decisions?

More information

Application deadline: The course places are filled in the order of application. The application closes at the latest on 2 September, but may be closed earlier if the course is already full.

How to apply: Please use this link:

https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/KUNO_intensive_course_reFormulating_the_Art_School_1479

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

Eligibility:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact  ulla.tissari@uniarts.fi

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Small Realities - Reconstructing Reality
Sep
3
to Sep 8

Small Realities - Reconstructing Reality

Teaching period: September 3-8, 2024

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s): prof. Žilvinas Lilas

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA /MA

Course description
Small Realities - Reconstructing Reality (later SR-RR) is a facilitator of artistic action focused on surroundings, perception, the factual, the remembered, and the desired, the interferences and obstacles, the real and the believed.
SR-RR is a 3rd International Media Refuge - a joint event of Caspar-David-Friedrich Institute of the University of Greifswald; Academy of Media Arts, Cologne; Turku University of Applied Sciences; Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Vilnius Art Academy. The previous events commenced at Naples and Cologne.
The practical idea of this residency is to observe, perceive and record Nida's surroundings using a variety of media, from traditional ones such as text, drawing, gesture/movement, photography, video and sound recording to new forms such as 3D scanning / photogrammetry. Students can work alone or in groups and engage in a mixture of outdoor and indoor activities, interspersed with periodic critical brainstorming sessions around the bonfire.
We plan a small work-in-progress exhibition on the premises of Nida Art Colony. The goal is to create what is possible with the tools that are at hand while using the visible and the seen in order to create new trains of visual thought inside the field of uncharted new media. It is expected to have a wide variety of different approaches such as but not limited to light/projection, sound, performative, and situated strategies.

Application deadline: August 16 (Friday), 2024 at 18:00 (CEST)

How to apply: Please send a short motivation letter (one A4 page maximum) with a link to your portfolio to Žilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt, with a subject heading “KUNO SR-RR Nida 2024”

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

Eligibility:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact Zilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt

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Ghostology VII-b - Ghost of Desire
Jul
22
to Jul 26

Ghostology VII-b - Ghost of Desire

Teaching period: July 22-26, 2024

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Teacher(s): prof. Žilvinas Lilas

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6-8

Level: BA /MA

Course description
This is a seventh iteration of the Ghostology cycle which focuses on artistic desire, and tries to understand “but what does an artist really want?” (to paraphrase Freud a bit). In a course of a week we will meet at predefined locations to act out possible scenarios on what (or how) it is to be an artist in the 21st century. 

We will re-learn to desire as an artist. Trying to find if there is such a thing as desire which drives one as an artist. Or is it need and want? Also, how do we weed out trivialities of carnal or other circumstantial kind, together with all shades of vanity and grasp the depths of being an artist. Because, at the end, to paraphrase Lacan,— “the only truth in art is the truth of unsatisfiable desire”.

Application deadline:  June 2nd, 2024 at 18:00 (CET)

How to apply: Please send a short motivation letter (one A4 page maximum) to Zilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)

Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

Eligibility:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact Zilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt

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Emergence: Non-human Communication in Interactive Art
Jun
17
to Jun 23

Emergence: Non-human Communication in Interactive Art

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Teaching period: 17 – 23 June 2024

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts (Vilnius), Lithuania

Leading teacher(s): dr. Vygintas Orlovas

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: BA and MA

Application deadline: 13 May 2024

How to apply: Please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/63ahifBsvo5WAKKV7

Course description:

The core concept centres around the idea of emergence in non-human communication between interactive artworks. We will explore this possibility in the context of interactive art.
The workshop aims to bring people together to brainstorm ideas for interactive works, create them, and place them in a singular space so the artworks can interact with each other and form unexpected and unplanned connections. Through the use of microphones, cameras, motion sensors, motors, programming, networks perhaps the works/objects/installations can form feedback loops and also break them to create unforeseen relationships.
A person who can help with the technical questions (programming, soldering) will join in so everyone who has ideas can participate regardless of how much experience they have with soldering and coding.
The space that we will use is called the “Šachmatinė salė” (checkered hall). It is not a white cube, but quite a liminal space that has a striking pattern and no clear purpose.  

Financial support available from KUNO: Travel support between countries: 330 € (660 € to/from Iceland) Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days).

You can also vail of the Erasmus+ grant to cover your travel and subsistence expenses in Lithuania. Please contact your International Office and enquire whether they could allocate the Erasmus grant to you. 

In case of any questions please contact vygintas.orlovas@vda.lt

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Uncovering. The magnetism of the Lithography Stones
Jun
7
to Jun 14

Uncovering. The magnetism of the Lithography Stones

Teaching period: 7 – 14 June 2024

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts (Vilnius), Lithuania

Teacher(s): assoc. prof. Jolanta Mikulskytė

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA and MA

Application deadline: 28 April 2024

How to apply: Please send your motivation letter / artistic portfolio (the main artistic field / artistic research, maximum 12 slides, *pdf) to: jolanta.mikulskyte@vda.lt Please include an email subject Uncovering.

Course description:

Uncovering is a practical printmaking lithography course. The course focuses on exploring the possibilities of the print culture phenomenon, i.e. the possibilities of stone lithography. Lithography is one of the greatest artistic printmaking adventures of our times. The theme of the course is Uncovering. Lithography is a particularly auspicious form of creative expression, encompassing a wide variety of expressive forms: an expressive drawing method, a watercolor like treatment of color, the drawing of miniatures, the raster offset printing, the art of ink etc. During the course the participants will be introduced to the specifics of the planography print: stone and offset lithography, zinc plate lithography, also polyester lithography and mixed media; and its main technological image creation principles that separate it from other graphic printing methods. The students will be encouraged to use the plentiful and unique plastic expression opportunities offered by stone lithography. During the printmaking process the students will be encouraged to experiment and use common as well as non-traditional means of lithographic image creation and search for their own individual artistic style.  

Financial support available from KUNO: Travel support between countries: 330 € (660 € to/from Iceland) Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days).

You can also vail of the Erasmus+ grant to cover your travel and subsistence expenses in Lithuania. Please contact your International Office and enquire whether they could allocate the Erasmus grant to you. 

In case of any questions please contact jolanta.mikulskyte@vda.lt

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Imagine Stories Through Drawing
May
20
to May 24

Imagine Stories Through Drawing

Teaching period: 20th – 24th May, 2024

Location: Umeå Academy of Fine Arts

Teacher(s): EvaMarie Lindahl

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2

Level: BA /MA

Course description:
This workshop will investigate how to imagine and tell stories through drawing. Together, we will explore different methods to challenge existing narratives and histories, and imagine new stories and perspectives. Through various drawing techniques and tools, we will reimagine and question old stories, sparking the creation of new narratives inspired by the histories and narratives that surround us. This week-long course will include drawing workshops, brief writing exercises, and introductory lectures on drawing.

Application deadline: 1st of May, 2024

How to apply: A short motivation of text and two works to Simon.gran-danielsson@umu.se Please state the course name Imagine Stories Through Drawing in an email subject title. 

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact  Simon.gran-danielsson@umu.se

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Old School
Apr
8
to Apr 12

Old School

Teaching period: 8th – 12th April, 2024

Location: Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus

Teacher(s): Mathias Saederup

ECTS: 2 study points (equal to 2 ECTS)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA /MA (all years)

Requirements: no previous knowledge needed

Course description:
The workshop is about nostalgia and the mythologies we live through/make use of / build our society on - without necessarily being aware of it.

The workshop makes use of didactics, undermined didactics, joint education, theatre, film.
The workshop takes place at DJK and in Den Gamle By (The Old Town – a life size museum where Danish history is reenacted).
The workshop is a kind of scripted reality show, where everyone takes part in teaching and developing.
Together we develop this reality TV-theatre where the plot is, that ... 
- time has stopped

- we find ourselves in an art school in the future, where the past keeps repeating itself

- we need to find out why the time is stuck / looping and how to fix it
- we have different roles, e.g.: TV crew 1, teachers, students, resistance group (/ rebels), detectives / journalists, TV crew 2 from another time, etc.

The plan is that we live at least 3 nights in Den Gamle By. We have an everyday life here, eat food, hang out, film with cameras, rehearse scenes, develop scripts, discuss etc. We use the old classroom in Den Gamle By as a film set, make costumes and sets.
Along the way, I will make presentations and facilitate conversations about, among other things, nostalgia, myth-making, the disappearance of the future, hauntology, power and didacticism.
We will read texts by e.g. Mark Fischer, Solvej Balle and Philip K. Dick. And watch movies, e.g. Olympic Games Opening Ceremony London 2012, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One by William Greaves and Night Passage by  Trinh T. Minh-ha.

BIO: Mathias Sæderup, born 1984, visual artist from Det Jyske 
Kunstakademi and Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Among 
many other things he works with video and is concerned with ghosts, 
criticism of power, improvisation and institutionalisation.

Application deadline: 3rd March, 2024

How to apply: Please send an application form and short motivation to frontdesk@djk.nu. Please state the course name “Old School in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Susanne Brokmann at: frontdesk@djk.nu

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Conceptual joining. Experimenting with the limits of timber on the Curonian Spit
Mar
24
to Mar 28

Conceptual joining. Experimenting with the limits of timber on the Curonian Spit

Teaching period: 24 – 28 March 2024

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s): Eva-Maria Lisa Körber, Anton Shramkov

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: BA and MA

Application deadline: 3 March 2024

How to apply: Participants should submit 250 words explaining their motivation to take part in the course in relation to the main course concepts and either a 2–3 min video or other kind of documentation evidencing successful completion of the following task to: anton.shramkov@nidacolony.lt

Course description:

The focus of this study course is human-engineered landscapes and the flow of timber materials, which are measured, categorised, valued, and devalued. Organic materials considered irrelevant, ‘unusable’, or even harmful will be at the core of this course. By studying, questioning, critically assessing, and approaching the historical, political, and economic reasoning behind these categories, the course will take a hands-on approach by inviting participants to reimagine and test the possibilities of working with what is supposedly ‘useless’.

The course takes place within a distinct landscape; the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO Heritage site, affected by its continually changing and seasonal social and urban nature. The scale, together with the unique geographical, climatic, natural and historical contexts, provides an opportunity for investigating, discussing and getting a deeper understanding of relations between global and local, centre and periphery, ‘invasive’ and ‘initial’ and the meaning of these terms as constructs and documents of specific time periods. This course takes place within the framework of Neringa Forest Architecture (NFA), a research and residency programme that was established at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2019 and ‘seeks to assemble an intersectional view of these diverse viewpoints focusing on the agency of culture in enhancing the ways to sense and understand forest’. Participants will have access to a library of locally-grown timber materials assembled throughout the NFA project, which from its inception, has looked for possibilities of deviating the timber logged in the Curonian Spit for the biofuel and paper industry towards experiments, architecture, design, art, research processes.

Over the course of five days, participants will: experience local natural and urban landscapes through a series of guided tours; gather, study, and process locally grown timber species; learn basic woodworking skills, working with hand tools and wood workshop machines; attend lectures given by the tutors on the statics of objects and wood joints, and participate in discussions; undertake individual and group tests of the structural properties and capabilities of different locally-grown materials with the objective of creating experimental structures from those materials. This workshop is conceived as a collaborative open-ended process where ideas will emerge from an open discussion between participants from multidisciplinary backgrounds and tutors. Proposals will be tested through the process of handicrafting and prototyping. Participants are invited to learn by unlearning, to deconstruct and reconstruct, to acquire skills and to focus on background and context. The course is open to participants from all backgrounds and fields of study and does not require specific knowledge or skills in architecture, design, or the material sciences

More information on the teaching staff

Additional information: The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo str. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania. The teaching period begins on Sunday morning (24 March) and ends on Thursday evening (28 March). Participants are expected to arrive on Saturday, 23 March and depart on Friday, 29 March. The cost of travel, accommodation, and meals are to be covered by the participants.

Accommodation prices: a room with a shared bathroom costs 16€ per person per night.A room with a private bathroom costs 24€ per person per night. Rooms are shared by 2 to 4 students. Shared and self-funded cooking in the group will be planned for specific days as part of the study process.

Financial support available from KUNO: Travel support between countries: 330 € (660 € to/from Iceland) Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days).

For further enquiries please contact: anton.shramkov@nidacolony.lt

Eligibility requirements:
- only BA and MA full-degree students from the KUNO network schools can participate;
-exchange students from other institutions, which do not belong to the KUNO network, studying at one of the KUNO network schools, CANNOT participate;
- full-degree students from the KUNO network schools, currently on exchange at another institution, CANNOT participate (neither with nor without the KUNO grant).

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Exploring Artistic Entrepreneurship
Mar
18
to Mar 22

Exploring Artistic Entrepreneurship

Teaching period: 8 & 15 February 2024 (online), 18-22 March 2024 (in Trondheim)

Location: Trondheim, Norway

Teacher(s):

Annett Busch, Prerna Bishnoi, Ayodele Arigbabu

ECTS: 4 ECTS (for those who join online and in Trondheim) / 2 ECTS (for those who join in Trondheim only)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6 - 12

Level: BA /MA

Course description:
Is Artistic Entrepreneurship the new Punk rock? Artistic Entrepreneurship argues for an agency that involves and engages new combinations across disciplines and sectors and new forms of cooperation among researchers and artists, ideas and technologies. We aspire to a different kind of entrepreneurship in the truest sense of the word: More than just a business model, it is an undertaking of acting together to inspire people to tackle the challenges society faces.
How does Artistic Entrepreneurship extend the studio practice? The course combines artistic practice and critical artistic research through project based thinking and reframing exercises. We are creating a playful glossary, rewriting the rules of Monopoly, reimagining innovation by analysing rural frameworks, stimulating collaborative ideas and looking at dissemination and publishing formats.
As a KUNO express mobility course, “Exploring Artistic Entrepreneurship” is embedded in an elective course at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. Participants are encouraged to attend at least one introductory session online in preparation for the intensive course days in Trondheim. In conjunction with the introductory elements, the course builds on the participants' artistic practice and aims to develop entrepreneurial ideas and themes collectively to foster strategic artistic agency against monoculture.
Learning Outcomes
Students can use relevant methods for research and artistic entrepreneurial development. The students can reflect on and articulate the significance and potential of art and artists in relation to society. Students will have the skills and training required to work collaboratively.

Readings: 
Antonio Negri / Michael Hardt, ‘Entrepreneurship of the Multitude’, in: Assembly, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Francis de Vericourt, Framers, Penguin Random House, 2021.
Gijs de Vries, To make the silos dance, Brussels: European Culture Foundation, 2020.
Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World, Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.
Explore and learn from Fluxus artists: https://monoskop.org/Fluxus

Application deadline: 22 January 2024, 13:00

How to apply: Please fill out this form with a short motivation statement and other information.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 100 €

Financial support is not provided for online participation. 

In case of any questions:

In case of any questions please contact annett.busch@ntnu.no

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Queer Labour; how, when
Mar
11
to Mar 15

Queer Labour; how, when

Teaching period: 11 – 15 March 2024

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s): Vidisha-Fadescha

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: BA and MA

Application deadline: 9 February, 2024

How to apply: Participants should submit their CV (1–3 pages) and either a 2–3 min video or 250-word motivation letter (may include images), outlining how their lived-experience and interest align with the focus of the course to: office.partyofficehq@gmail.com

Course description:

This course aims to address BiPOC students, and those affected by war, displaced persons and refugees, and encourage them to reach out to us and participate in the course in Nida.

This seminar will provide participants with the opportunity to absorb and discuss artworks and texts (both fiction and non-fiction), and to explore different methods of collective care including embodied practices. Looking at first-person accounts of the dissident, divergent, outcast, racialised or punished, we will witness to sites and forms of Queer Labour, the labour of surviving the everyday.

During the week we will assay ‘Qworkaholics Anonymous’, a project by Vidisha-Fadescha, that reimagines the format of de-addiction programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and creates a time and space for individuals from marginalised communities to acknowledge and celebrate the labour of their very act of survival. Such labour is often dismissed as unproductive by the neoliberal order, whose measures fail to consider the exhaustion that comes from navigating the obstacles faced by individuals who are not a part of, or those who do not align with, the hegemony, and are tired of constantly having to prove their worth and defend their identities.

In a society that values isolation and self-abandonment, over self and collective care, it is a radical act to prioritise one's own needs and well-being. For those who have historically been oppressed and marginalised, setting boundaries, saying no, and prioritising self-love is a form of resistance. Together, we will read through the twelve steps of ‘Qworkaholics Anonymous’ designed to de-addict from the ‘burnout’ faced while doing this labour, through a metaphysical connection with ourselves and our peers.

The seminar will be guided by emotion and intuition, rather than tire to succeed theoretically.

Vidisha-Fadescha is an artist, curator and cultural critic. Holding their lived experience of a radical gender, caste, race and disability, Fadescha suggests centering one’s own body and desire towards liberation. Their artistic work includes video, sound installations, text, and performance. They direct collective practices as a norm-critical pedagogy to queer hegemony.

Fadescha’s curatorial project, Party Office, is an anti-caste, anti-racist, trans-feminist, art and social, space and time that was founded in New Delhi in 2020. Through publications, grants, archives, conversations of life-lived, social gatherings, and more, they are building transnational dialogues on empathetic futures, care communities, and radical agency.

In 2023, Vidisha participated in projects with Prince Claus Fund Biennial Symposium (Colombo), Survival Kit 14 (Riga), Rehearsing Moves on Hazy Paths (at ZK/U Berlin), Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts (Vilnius / Nida), Kunst im Untergrund (organised by nGbK Berlin), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney), and was a lumbung artist at documenta fifteen, Kassel in 2022. They are an artist at the Lagos Biennial in 2024. Fadescha’s work has been published in arts and cultural magazines including Frieze, Flash Art, Texte zur Kunst, Metropolis M, Hyperallergic, Mezosfera, Aperture Magazine, Art in America, Galerie, Dazed, and Vogue. 

Additional information: The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo str. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania.

The teaching period starts on Monday morning (11 March) and ends on Friday evening (15 March). Participants are expected to arrive on Sunday, 10 March and depart on Saturday, 16 March. The cost of travel, accommodation, and meals are to be covered by the participants.

Accommodation prices: a room with a shared bathroom costs 16€ per person per night or a room with a private bathroom costs 24€ per person per night. Rooms are shared by 2 to 4 students. Shared and self-funded cooking in the group will be planned for specific days as part of the study process.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days)

In case of any questions please contact egija.inzule@nidacolony.lt

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Mar
4
to Mar 8

Energy Philosophy Theory: Cosmos, Ethics, Cosmetics

Teaching period: 4-8 March, 2024

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s): Jan Verwoert

ECTS: 4

Number of available places for KUNO students: 1-2

Level: BA/MA

Requirements: attendance, attention, supportive listening to others, readiness to take the risk of thinking out loud.

Course description:
The alternative was there: Spinoza ridiculed Descartes for splitting the living creature into mind and body, raising an isolated rationality to godlike status, and reducing all else to stuff for rational domination. Instead, Spinoza wrote an ethics, a psychology, and a political philosophy of connected beings, expressing modes of embodied cosmic energy in multiple significant constellations, and elementary (interspecies) relations. Much critical thinking has been born out of writers tuning in with Spinoza, among others Nietzsche, Deleuze and neomaterialist feminists like Rosi Braidotti or Donna Harraway.

Closely reading text excerpts from the Ethics, we will familiarise ourselves with the joys and pains of getting into Spinoza, and then follow up with contemporary thinkers putting his ideas to work in reimagining society and relations between creatures, with the planet, on the planet.

A key question will be: After centuries of heteronormative thinking being inscribed into (reductive dualistic accounts of) energy relations (spirit/form masculine, body/matter feminine etc…), how to live and express energy relations in the Spinozian spirit of true cosmic multiplicity (with 7 planets and counting, why settle for 2 genders)?

Application deadline: 8th of February, 2024, 23:30 (Norwegian time)

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form https://nettskjema.no/a/394632

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact kjerjens@khio.no

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Mar
4
to Mar 8

Sounding Solidarities/ How we are listening/hearing, How do we Sound?

Teaching period: 4-8 March, 2024

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s): Anawana Haloba

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 3-4

Level: BA/MA

Course description:
This is a course that explores positionality in which we encounter, digest information/histories, and share or speak about them. 

The course will focus on reading Knowledge comparatively and critical thinking where oral and literary citations are considered on the same level—reviewing other methodologies of looking at art knowledge about art production. In the course, we shall examine how work oral narrative and stories are deconstructed within artistic practices that use sound, actively listening and hearing while reflecting on the materiality, concept, language, and context in which the respective practices are formed and informed.  

 This process will allow us to learn about and reflect on artists' and individuals' roles in working with specific themes and materials and their implications and symbolism regarding their historical context. 

 For this course, I have invited a collective working with sound and based in Berlin called LISTENING AT PUNGWE, Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri (TBC), known as Listening at Pungwe, are a multidisciplinary collective working between Windhoek (Namibia) and Johannesburg (South Africa). Their practice deals with archived memories – which frailly echo traces of life and movement – as well as transcendence linked to the violent colonial legacy and its implication on contemporary lives. Their work focuses on Namibia and Zimbabwe.

https://www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/artist/pungwe/Links to an external site.

 Additional information:

 What to bring:

Every student must bring a piece of music or sound they would like to share as part of the course; this can also be a story. - we shall work with these materials in groups to conceptualise an idea of a sound work.

 The course's objectives and goals are to help the student:

-To analyse the connection between materiality and the theme and concept.

- Learn to use sound material in conceptualising a project.

Application deadline: 8th of February, 2024, 23:30 (Norwegian time)

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form https://nettskjema.no/a/397126

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact kjerjens@khio.no

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Ghostology VII - Ghost of Desire
Mar
4
to Mar 9

Ghostology VII - Ghost of Desire

Teaching period: March 4-9, 2024

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Teacher(s): prof. Žilvinas Lilas

ECTS: 2 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA /MA

Course description
This is a seventh iteration of the Ghostology cycle which focuses on artistic desire, and tries to understand “but what does an artist really want?” (to paraphrase Freud a bit). In a course of a week we will meet at predefined locations to act out possible scenarios on what (or how) it is to be an artist in the 21st century. 

We will re-learn to desire as an artist. Trying to find if there is such a thing as desire which drives one as an artist. Or is it need and want? Also, how do we weed out trivialities of carnal or other circumstantial kind, together with all shades of vanity and grasp the depths of being an artist. Because, at the end, to paraphrase Lacan,— “the only truth in art is the truth of unsatisfiable desire”.

Application deadline:  February 1st, Thursday, 2024 at 18:00 (CET)

How to apply: Please send a short motivation letter (one A4 page maximum) to Zilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)

Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

More information

In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact Zilvinas Lilas at: zilvinas.lilas@vda.lt

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Stop Motion
Jan
29
to Feb 16

Stop Motion

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Teaching period: 2+1 weeks, January 29th to February 16th (or February 9th if 2 weeks) 2024. The length of the course is 3 weeks; KUNO students are invited to join the full teaching period, or only the 2 first weeks if 3 are not compatible with your local pedagogic schedules.

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Teacher(s):

Johan Wahlgren, Johan Forslind, Kalle Sandzén

ECTS: 4,5 or 3 ECTS (depending on the duration)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2

Level: BA and MA

Requirements: No previous knowledge needed.

Course description: This is an introduction to the skills involved in making stop motion animation. Students will learn how to set up a animation studio, with lighting and working methods. Work with both lo-tech and hi-end technique. The course also gives basic knowledge in the digital camera with manual exposure. We will discuss media theory connecting to film and animation and look at some examples of works.  

The course includes workshops, lectures, individual work, group works and individual tutoring. We encourage students to explore stop motion animation through their artistic practice regardless of what medium they usually work in.

Students from Konstfack will come from three different departments - Fine Art, Graphic Design & Illustration and Ceramics & Glass.

Course module description can be found in full here.

Application deadline: 31st of December 2023

How to apply: Please send the application form together with a short motivation letter (1 A4 maximum) to johan.wahlgren@konstfack.se

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days) - 1st week, 100 € per week - 2nd and 3rd weeks. 

In case of any questions please contact katarina.stanisz@konstfack.se

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Intersections - Streaming and Performance Art
Jan
15
to Jan 19

Intersections - Streaming and Performance Art

Teaching period: January 15-19, 2024

Location: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Teacher(s):

Full-time twitch streamer and educator Stephanie (AKA Apollolol);
Artist-researcher from Vilnius Academy of Arts Vygintas Orlovas (also, sometimes a streamer AKA V_of_Londor);
Artist and researcher Daina Pupkevičiūtė (AKA Daina Dieva);
Performance artist, dancer, drag queen and event organiser Povilas Bastys (AKA Miss Plastica).

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: BA /MA

Course description

The focal point of this course is exploring tools and techniques for streaming and discussing it in the context of performance art.

Performance art often involves these basic elements: time, space, body, and presence of the artist, the relation between the creator and the public. This time the relationship between the creator and the public takes place online - via streaming platforms.

The goal of this workshop is not only to discuss key concepts of performance art but also to recontextualize it for a digital environment and provide the tools to do so.

We will discuss the platforms, hardware and software (OBS, streamlabs, voicemeeter, capture cards, green screens etc.) needed for streaming and try to apply them for ideas created during the workshop. And use methods of brainstorming and mind-mapping to work together to figure out the possible intersections of these fields and discuss the idea that:

“Performance art is a notoriously sensory practice, and often requires the audience to be able to smell, feel, and taste the experience. It does beg the question, if we are separated from the performer by potentially thousands of miles and a lagging internet connection, will they really be able to communicate their expression as effectively as they might if we were in the same room as them?” [1] 

We will have a PC setup to be a streaming station, which we can use for the ideas we come up with, however, if you can bring a smartphone or a laptop - that could be really useful equipment~

[1] Marianna Manson, Is live streaming the future for performance art?, 2016, https://www.huckmag.com/article/live-streaming-future-performance-art

Application deadline: 10th of December, 2023

How to apply: Please fill in the Google Form https://forms.gle/RrfE6mYB4avkJXBQ6
We hope to reach back to you by the 18th of December.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)

Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days).

More information

In case of any questions please contact Vygintas Orlovas at: vygintas.orlovas@vda.lt  

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Art Commons Part I - a different form of being an artist
Nov
20
to Nov 24

Art Commons Part I - a different form of being an artist

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Teaching period: 20-24 November, 2023

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s):  Dora García 

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 1-2

Level: BA/MA

Course description:
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Commons are worlds in movement, they are communities that create forms of life in common and that together produce and share and are continuously transformed.
Under capitalism, art is a social technology that traps, immobilizes, divides, ossifies, occupies and compartmentalizes life into flat moving images, museums, choreographed actions and conceptual speculations that reproduce the dead commodity form and its fictious movements.
Under conditions of art/commons, the making and circulation of objects, atmospheres and situations are aimed at concretizing, making visible and surrendering agency to the expanded, multimodal and abstract relational network in which human value resides.
Countering the movement of capital are the acts of commoning, the pooling and sharing of resources for the reproduction of life in common. The commons are not outside capitalism, rather, they have carved zones of self-organization and autonomy within them. The commons are a socialist and postcolonial space where knowledge, gestures and social relations go towards the reproduction of the commons - they are aiming at changing the world without governing it. 

What do we mean when we say artistic practice can be directed towards the commons, art as common?

The course is structured like a workshop with different exercises to be realised as a group, around the following questions:

o   How can we imagine art as a common? What do we mean when we say art is for everyone? What means "public"? Can art transform the public sphere? What is the role of art in leisure and in work? - guest: Apolonija Sustersic https://apolonijasustersic.com/

o   Should art become invisible to be truly public?  What is the political importance of art? The Invisible theater of Augusto Boal - performance in public space.

In order to pass this course students must actively participate in the lectures and workshop activities, being present (and responsive) min 80% of the time of the course.

Additional information
Basic bibliography:
Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, Allan Kaprow
Art Commons, Anthropology beyond Capitalism, Massimiliano Mollona
Capitalism 3.0: a guide to reclaiming the commons, Peter Barnes
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde
and other .pdfs to come.

Application deadline: 20th of October, 2023, 12:00 am

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form: https://nettskjema.no/a/353761

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact kjerjens@khio.no

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NOW-TIME TV: a collective moving image experiment
Oct
16
to Oct 20

NOW-TIME TV: a collective moving image experiment

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Teaching period: 16th – 20th October, 2023

Location: Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus

Teacher(s): Joen Vedel

ECTS: 2 study points (equal to 2 ECTS)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA /MA (all years)

Requirements: no previous knowledge needed

Course description:
Over the course of this week-long workshop, I propose to engage with video-live editing (a sort of VJ’ing) as a practical tool for the experimentation with the representation of time and together reflect on how one can make an image of a historical process still unfolding messily in the present. To help orient our collective production, I suggest starting the week by looking at some examples of radical media experiments from the past, in addition to a presentation of my own work and use of the live-editing equipment. Further on, I would like to share a reading of the theoretical and discursive framework related to this, namely the notions of now-time and contemporaneity. Halfway through, I suggest changing into a more practical mode while slowly starting to record and gather moving image material for the live TV broadcast. The week culminates with a live-edited broadcast, in which all forms of participation and technical tasks are equally important. And finally, I propose to spend some time watching our live-edited moving-image experiment and talk about the experiences we have made along the way. As such, the course aspires to a collaborative model of working together, with artistic expressions, methods, and techniques to be discussed and developed through improvisation, archival research, studio-recordings, collages, readings, and video-documentation from the field. With the ambitious aim of being contemporary with contemporaneity, NOW-TIME TV offers an aesthetics of potentiality open to different temporalities, political geographies, and momentary constellations of chance-encounters, glitches, and traces of everyday life.

Background:
For the past 10 years, I have been developing a performative method of video live-editing – normally deployed in live TV – as a materialist investigation into the temporal aspects of various forms of political events. Drawing on media theories and philosophical debates on historicity, contemporaneity, the event and its aftermath, I have used video live-editing as a way to collapse the temporalities of production and presentation, in order to connect the representation of events with the event of their presentation. Most recently, I’ve created a series of live TV programs for a local TV station in Kassel, as part of my contribution to Documenta 15, documenting and reflecting on the event of this mega-exhibition while it took place.

Bio:
Joen Vedel is a visual artist, writer, and organizer, educated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, and currently a PhD candidate at the Art Academy in Trondheim, working on an artistic research project titled In Search of Now-Time: Live-editing as a mode of research.

Application deadline: 10th September, 2023

How to apply: Please send a short motivation (mention also your full name, home university, study level, contacts) as an attachment to frontdesk@djk.nu. Please state the course name “NOW-TIME TV: a collective moving image experiment” in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Susanne Brokmann at: frontdesk@djk.nu

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Energy Philosophy Practice: What’s your sign?
Oct
2
to Oct 6

Energy Philosophy Practice: What’s your sign?

Teaching period: October 2-6, 2023, Monday 13:00-17:00, Tuesday-Friday 10:00-17:00

Location: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway

Teacher(s):  Jan Verwoert

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 1-2

Level: BA/MA

Course description:
Art can channel energy. It does so when it taps into  constellations that generate energy in very particular ways, under specific signs: constellations of stars, combinations of elements, compositions of pigments, constructions of motifs. The zodiac sign, the animal on your flag or shield, the make-up that makes your face radiate, the motif you play in the intro, and repeat in the chorus…: all these form potential signatures for focussing and relaying energy. Art historian Aby Warburg called them “Dynamogramme”.

Energy signs transport you into the presence of forces at work. But they may also come to you from the forgotten past, from the depth of the archive. The spirit of an equally irreproducible and irrepressible event may have left its energy traces on tape or celluloid, in a photo or note, traumatic, or ecstatic, or both it might be. Revive it? How? Or lay it to rest and let it go? Parapsychology says: Ghosts are space-time energy traces. Live with them? Nourish them? Exorcise them? Or seek justice for them, so they can find peace?

The course will be a practice workshop dedicated to experiments in convoking energy signs (in many forms and fashions) and having conversations over how and why do so today, how tap energies from collective personal memory, and how to project into the present future.

Students are expected to actively participate in workshop activities min 80% of the time of the course.

Application deadline: 11th of September, 2023

How to apply:  Please apply via this online form: https://nettskjema.no/a/353768

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact kjerjens@khio.no

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Radical Cringe
Sep
25
to Oct 6

Radical Cringe

Teaching period: 25th September – 6th October, 2023

Location: MALMÖ ART ACADEMY, Sweden

Teacher(s):  Michael Portnoy

ECTS: 6

Number of available places for KUNO students: 4

Level: BA

Course description:
Radical Cringe is a 2-week production course where we’ll wallow in the aesthetics of glorious embarrassment, shame and bad taste. Oversharing, overacting and over-being, we’ll watch each other through our fingers as we search for a radical agency in being free from self-awareness. In an era where the pressures of self presentation are almost paralyzing, and conversely, where cringe culture has become a veritable force in the entertain-ment industry, we’ll engage cringe as a joyous escape valve. If the feeling of cringe is a warning that one has violated some social normand strayed from the cultural path, is it not also precisely a territory we should seek out as artists, a place where authenticity, vulnerability, otherness and innovation overlap. The working process will involve daily active sessions borrowing techniques from devised theatre, improvisation, performance art and contemporary dance, combined with discussion. Mixing solo and group production, we'll create a performance, which will be presented at the end of the course.

Application deadline: 10th of September, 2023

How to apply:  Please apply by sending a motivation letter to Maj Hasager:
maj.hasager@khm.lu.se Please state the course name “Radical Cringe” in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact maj.hasager@khm.lu.se

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Sturdy Textiles
May
23
to May 30

Sturdy Textiles

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Teaching period: May 23 - 30, 2023

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s):

Monika Grašiene, Egija Inzule, Lina Jonike

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 6

Level: BA and MA

Course description: This course is dedicated to the study and exploration of the role and various typologies of textiles and their use and function as part of public space infrastructure: spaces that are shared and used by many, spaces of formation, of oppression, as well as spaces that promote the open and public discourse of shared resources and employ a sense of mindfulness towards the built environment. Over seven days, the course will cover production possibilities and infrastructure of textiles in the Baltic States; the economy of how resources and labour circulate; and how historical textiles have been used in spaces such as monasteries, cruise ships, prisons, hospitals and youth hostels.        

The starting point for Sturdy Textiles is the specific environment of Nida Art Colony, a subdivision of Vilnius Academy of Arts, and a hybrid institution designed to accommodate and host student seminars, artists-in-residence and many other activities in a comfortable and inspiring setting. Attention to the site, the surrounding resources, and functionality are currently the main criteria behind the design of NAC’s interior spaces that inform the development of NAC’s programme of activities.
The course is composed of three parts:
- sharing references and experiences that relate to the history of design of public spaces and the use of textiles
- studying NAC as a site, and learning about the textile production possibilities in Lithuania and the Baltic states
- working on a design proposal for new textiles: towels, beddings, washcloths
To complement the study and theory, the course will initiate the production of a range of new textiles for NAC to be produced in 2023 and 2024.

Application deadline: 10th of May, 2023

How to apply: Fill the application form

Additional information:

More information on the course

The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo St. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania. 

Accommodation prices: a room with shared bathroom costs 16€ / person / night or a room with private bathroom 24€ / person / night. Rooms are shared by 2-4 students. Shared and self-funded cooking in the group will be planned for specific days as part of the study process. 

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days)

In case of any questions please contact monika.grasiene@vda.lt

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Landscape as Interior
May
21
to May 25

Landscape as Interior

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Teaching period: May 21 - 25, 2023

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s):

Andrius Zakarauskas, Jovita Aukštikalnytė-Varkulevičienė, Petras Lincevičius

ECTS: 2 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 8

Level: BA and MA

Course description: This is an open call for 8 students interested in painting as a way of thinking about a specific place and its multi-layeredness. During the workshop, a team of teachers and students will research the theme “Landscape as interior” in Nida - a resort town in Lithuania, located on the Curonian Spit between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea.

“Landscape as interior" is a visual project that invites you to think through the images you create and is open to interpretations both in the classical form of painting and by rejecting the usual "rectangle" form of an artwork. During this project, students will use a different visual language to explore Nida as a multi-layered narrative that changes through the interaction of urban and natural spaces. During this project, not only painting will take place in specific places, but also painting at different times of the day. Night painting will be carried out under non-natural light sources.

The purpose of these activities is to explore the landscape of Nida as an interaction of natural, social, cultural, and technological tensions in search of the relationship between closed and open spaces. Discussions and presentations of creative works will be organized during these practical sessions. During them, the participants will present their artistic research analyzing the sensitive nature-human relations.

Discussions on the topic of ecology will help students understand the multi-meaning of the area, interpret the project theme in various forms and experience a variety of creative solutions. All project participants (students together with participating teachers) will create paintings, drawings, and mixed media works using the authentic landscape as a source of creative expression and will present them at a public exhibition in the spaces of the Nida Art Colony.

Application deadline: 5th of May, 2023

How to apply: Fill the application form: In case of any questions please contact petras.lincevicius@vda.lt 

Additional information:

More information on the course

The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo St. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania. 

Accommodation prices: a room with shared bathroom costs 16€ / person / night or a room with private bathroom 24€ / person / night. Rooms are shared by 2-4 students. Shared and self-funded cooking in the group will be planned for specific days as part of the study process. 

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days)

In case of any questions please contact petras.lincevicius@vda.lt 

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Live performance and how to do it
Mar
27
to Mar 31

Live performance and how to do it

Teaching period: 27th – 31st March, 2023

Location: Arts Academy - Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland

Teacher(s): Tuomas Laitinen

ECTS: 1

Number of available places for KUNO students: 5

Level: BA

Course description:
The workshop will address the artistic genre of live performance through practical experiments and exercises, examples of art works and some historical trajectories. What is performance or live art, how did it come about and how to do it? In the workshop we can take some peaks into these questions.  

Timetable:

Mon 27.3 arrival and campus tour (late afternoon)

Tue 28.3. at 14-18

Wed 29.3. at 10-16

Thu 30.3. at 10-16

Fri 31.3. at 10-16

 

BIO: Tuomas Laitinen is a Helsinki-based director, performance artist, curator, and pedagogue whose work is questioning the role of the audience and experimenting with it. Currently, he works with a doctoral research project at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. 

Application deadline: 10th of March, 2023

How to apply: Please state shortly why you are interested in attending this course by email: henna.halonen@turkuamk.fi

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Henna-Riikka Halonen at henna.halonen@turkuamk.fi

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Wake Up? Sleep, Soma, a Studio in Our Head
Mar
27
to Mar 31

Wake Up? Sleep, Soma, a Studio in Our Head

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Teaching period: 27th – 31st March, 2023

Location: MALMÖ ART ACADEMY, Sweden

Teacher(s): Marie Muracciole

ECTS: 3

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2

Level: BA /MA

Course description:
In Woman Sleeping (1981) Liz Magor interprets one famous sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, Sleeping Muse (1910). Stating that women have been, for so long, artists “put at sleep” and struggling to wake up, Magor’s photomontage associates the passivity of Brancusi's beautiful head to a space for elaborating a practice, a studio – as when she says that being slow is a method, a different pace for thinking, moving and producing, and incidentally, a way to deal with the brutality of the art market.  

This seminar will take “sleep” as a ground to explore art practice through the way it is linked to different kinds of awakening and to the possibility of developing multiple nuances of attention, as well as the part played by the body, the soma, in the artist's experiments and projects. Alternation and porosities between sleep and awakening are discretely shaping our lives. Stating that art embodies and renews awareness, we will explore the working process and ask ourselves what is at work in the studio that we are.  

Biological rhythms of activity and rest have a social and political history. Indeed, both the duration and structure of sleep have been governed by a succession of norms. Jonathan Crary's book, 24/7 Capitalism and Sleep, details the political stakes attached to this supposedly unexploitable moment. Roger Ekirch, by researching segmented sleep in preindustrial societies, has excavated long term politics of sleep and the invention of insomnia - initiating what is now called Sleep Studies. Modernity wants the body to be “recycled” overnight. The contemporary world cultivates and exploits the ideology of sleep disorders. Meanwhile, the most dispossessed among us, in metropolises the world over, sleep outside.  

Falling asleep stays a resistance –to the principles of blind exploitation that ruled the planet, to permanent solicitations of commercialized exchanges -, an escape - to socialization and its orders, to the brutality of the real, and sometimes a luxury.  

Art settles sometimes some reactivation of sleep, some hallucinatory experience, by imbedding the viewer’s body into montages of sound, visual mirages and their woven narratives, like in the cinema projection theater and the black cube today. We’ll question experimental practices addressing more directly to a somatic regime that stresses our proximity with the other living organisms on the planet. Moreover, they bring what anthropology today is stressing by contesting the opposition between nature and humans, and denying the human specie the ownership of the planet, as in the approaches opened by Viveiros de Castro or Philippe Descola. The daily cycle of rest is our intimate winter, when we are most in phase with our planet rhythms and of other species, as well as with the unknown that we contain. In this contradiction stay perhaps some forces.

Application deadline: 3rd of March, 2023

How to apply: Please send an e-mail with a short motivation to Maj Hasager at maj.hasager@khm.lu.se

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Charlotta Österberg at charlotta.osterberg@khm.lu.se

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Plots and Props and stories of Un-Earthing
Mar
20
to Mar 24

Plots and Props and stories of Un-Earthing

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Teaching period: 20th – 24th March, 2023

Location: Jutland Art Academy, Aarhus

Teacher(s): Ralo Mayer

ECTS: 2 study points (equal to 2 ECTS)

Number of available places for KUNO students: 3

Level: BA /MA (all years)

Requirements: no previous knowledge needed

Course description:
Within the workshop we will approach a plethora of objects, and we will try to weave stories around them as much as between ourselves. How can we, as artists, tell stories that present multi-subjective perspectives on a complex world, and how can we tell stories about things and their relations without playing into the hands of conspiracy theories? No definite answers are to be expected, but perhaps we will begin with each of us bringing along an object of interest.   
The workshop integrates several aspects and modes of working with stories in art: a reflection on modes of investigation, the translation of research into storytelling, for instance as spatial settings or in time-based media, and a certain inclination towards speculative fiction and outer space. These aspects – and their questioning – are also key elements of my own practice. 
The term “plot”, for instance, is quite a wondrous word. It radiates ambivalence and contradiction. Against the rather location-based and territorial concept of site (and artistic approaches towards it), plot can refer not only to a piece of land and its intended economic use, but also invokes geometry, various shades of scheming, or story lines in fiction. 
When an object is used as a prop in a performance, on stage, or on screen, a peculiar transformation takes place, interplay of script, story and other actors allows for new and playful ways of interacting. Through performative research, we can make use of this playfulness for artistic storytelling. 

BIO:
Oscillating between art, filmmaking and research, Ralo Mayer’s work delineates “ecologies of contemporary history”. By exploring concepts such as space settlements, artificial ecosystems, or asteroid mining, he creates artistic storytelling about pasts, futures and the science fiction of everyday life, on and off Earth. Mayer has studied art at republican and royal art academies in Vienna and Copenhagen and has co-founded the self-organized Manoa Free University. His work has been presented at exhibitions, film festivals, theaters and conferences. In his artistic PhD about “Space Un·Settlements” Mayer has investigated the relation between scenarios of human life in outer space and rather earthly realities here, on our planet, through the concept of un·Earthing. His current interests include licking meteorites, kids in space and clouds on exoplanets. 

More detailed description

Application deadline: 20th February, 2023

How to apply: Please send a short motivation (mention also your full name, home university, study level, contacts) as an attachment to frontdesk@djk.nu. Please state the course name “Plots and Props and stories of Un-Earthing” in an email subject title.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence per week: 250 € per week.

In case of any questions please contact Susanne Brokmann at: frontdesk@djk.nu

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Art and Social Context
Mar
13
to Mar 24

Art and Social Context

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Teaching period: 2 weeks, 13th - 24th of March 2023

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Teacher(s):

Olivia Plender, Emanuel Almborg, Joanna Zawieja

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 2

Level: BA and MA

Requirements: No previous knowledge needed.

Course description: A two-week course which addresses how artists can work with communities, with reference to socially engaged projects, public art, but also film and other practices that may involve collaborating with groups of people or individual subjects outside of the art world.

Course module description can be found in full here.

Application deadline: 12th of February, 2023

How to apply: Send the application form together with a short motivation letter (1 A4 maximum) to olivia.plender@konstfack.se.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days), 100 €-2nd week, 100 €.

In case of any questions please contact olivia.plender@konstfack.se

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Rites of a Secular Age
Feb
27
to Mar 4

Rites of a Secular Age

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Teaching period: February 27 - March 4, 2023

Location: Nida Art Colony (VDA), Lithuania

Teacher(s):

Anastasia Sosunova

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: BA and MA

Course description: A seminar and multiple activities like reading group sessions, workshops, excursions and site visits led by artist Anastasia Sosunova, curator and NAC director Egija Inzule and invited guest lecturers are aimed at exploring the meshings of sacred and secular in contemporary politics and culture. From occult economies in late Soviet period to corporate spiritualism in the neoliberal capitalism, from national cults to everyday magical thinking, students will be introduced to these topics through the lens of anthropology, sociology, feminism and critical as well as postcolonial theory. 

The participants will be encouraged not only to explore sacralization patterns in their immediate environments (e.g. social taboos, public spaces; authority structures) and critically address them but also employ this knowledge in creating counter-relics of their own and reclaiming the ritualistic and myth-making practices while resisting dominant narratives. 

 The seminar is based on Anastasia Sosunova’s research methods and topics that emerge in her artist book Express Method and various art projects since 2018. By inviting guest researchers and writers, the seminar is aimed at acquainting participants with the tools that help to work across disciplines and fields, paying homage to academic research and modern critical thought while applying first hand experience and autoethnography exploring rites of a secular age.

 The Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts and the Curonian Spit will partly act as a case study of the seminar’s investigations through various activities. However, the themes will extend far outside of Nida and Lithuania, touching upon the riddles of the Baltic region and contemporary society. 

Anastasia Sosunova is a visual artist based in Vilnius. Sosunova’s multidisciplinary practice, combining video, installation, graphics and sculpture, grows from personal histories and their entanglements within broader cultural, economical and spiritual structures. Through a process of distortion and the interweaving of elements belonging to old mythologies, hybrid entities and the surveillance society, Sosunova creates alternative forms of ‘contemporary folklore’. Spanning lifestyle concepts to pillars of belief, these new folklores are at once a play with notions of home and belonging, a questioning of existence and coexistence, and a critical view on structures of power and the psychology of collectivity. Her work serves as a proposition for new ways of living by rules, ethics, codes and agreements between beings.

Application deadline: 13th of February, 2023

How to apply: Candidates should apply by sending one single pdf (1-2 pages) with CV and a 200-word motivation letter outlining how your interest pairs with the course’s focus to the course tutor.  

Additional information:

The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo St. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania. 

 The teaching period starts on Monday morning (February 27) and ends on Friday evening (March 3). Arrival on Sunday, February 26 and Departure on Saturday, March 4. Travel, accommodation, and meals are to be paid by the participants. 

 Accommodation prices: a room with shared bathroom costs 16€ / person / night or a room with private bathroom 24€ / person / night. Rooms are shared by 2-4 students. Shared and self-funded cooking in the group will be planned for specific days as part of the study process. 

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)
Subsistence: 250 € -1st week (5-7 days)

In case of any questions please contact egija.inzule@nidacolony.lt

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Common Boundaries
Feb
6
to Feb 11

Common Boundaries

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Teaching period: Feb 6-11, 2023

Location: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Teacher(s):

Agata Marzecova and Sean Tyler (Estonian Academy of Arts)

ECTS: 3 ECTS

Number of available places for KUNO students: 10

Level: MA

Course description

This research workshop explores how struggles over the boundaries between economy and society, production and reproduction, and work from family are brought into light through the concept of commons. Through the lens of materialist feminism,  we will critically interrogate the notion of commons and commoning, but also explore its creative possibilities as a method to coproduction of diverse knowledge and different models of sharing.

The workshop will take the Curonian Spit national park as a vantage point from which to investigate these curiosities, beyond the Baltic area, along with ways in which these histories have been challenged in the context of specific urban and natural environments.

The Nida Art Colony (NAC) and the Curonian Spit will act as cases of our investigation through a series of excursions, workshops, seminars and student-led enquiries into critical theory, interdisciplinary knowledge-production and artistic research.

MA students with backgrounds in arts, writing, architecture, design, ecology and related fields interested to exchange knowledge and learn from each other are welcome to apply.

Application deadline: Jan 15, 2023

How to apply: Candidates should apply by sending both a CV (1-2 pages) and a maximum 500-word statement outlining how your interest pairs with the course’s focus to Agata Marzecova agat.marzec@gmail.com or Sean Tyler sean.tyler@artun.ee.

Additional information: The workshop will take place at the Nida Art Colony of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, E. A. Jonušo str. 3, Neringa LT-93127, Lithuania. The teaching period starts on Monday evening (February 6th, 19.00) and ends on Saturday morning (February 11th). Travel, accommodation, and meals are to be paid by the participants. Accommodation prices are as follows: a room with shared bathroom costs 16€ / person / night or a room with private bathroom 24€ / person. Rooms are shared by 2-4 students.

Financial Support by KUNO:
Travel support between countries: 330 € (except 660 € to/from Iceland)

Subsistence: 250 € per week (5-7 days).

In case of any questions please contact Egija Inzule at: egija.inzule@nidacolony.lt

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