IT’S (ALL ABOUT) TIME!
Part 2 - INTUITION IS A MUSCLE
research class by Els Dietvorst & Dirk Braeckman
Schiller wrote his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man' in response to his deep worries about the politics of his time. His answer was that the most urgent task wasn’t to build stronger armies to defeat our enemies, but to strengthen our appreciation of art and beauty in order to learn to live together in peace. Art, according to Schiller, isn’t mere ornament to the more serious parts of life, but its highest expression. Through beauty and play we can unite spirit and matter, thought and feeling, and become more complete, and harmonious beings. In this research class we invite you to befriend the thin line between art and life where art becomes a place for communication, desire, exchange and engagement.
During the five active days of working and thinking together in the 'Lange Zaal’ of the research class, you are challenged to broaden your artistic boundaries towards a more social interaction. You are explicitly invited to focus on YOU and US. US collectively can make a difference. YOU as a human as an artist as a creative thinker and do-er can make a difference to be an active citizen and use your art as a changemaker/gamechanger. Open to all disciplines, you discover how intensive research can enrich your work, how processes can open up your practice to discover different forms of experience. INTUITION-IMAGINATION-TRANSFORMATION are the guiding concepts to be put into practice.
Inspired by Schiller, Jürgen Habermas claims that "It is the creative move that allows us to come into a meeting with a proposal, with an idea, or just with the desire to listen and then put something together collectively and create. It's the creative moment that allows us to make a new agreement.”
A creative move, an unexplored proposition, demands resilience. Just like an ‘act de révolte’. Resilience is something that artists who stand in the world need. It takes courage. It requires elasticity. Fluidity. Working with nature, but also in nature – whether land or sea – asks for precisely this kind of flexibility. You never know what lies ahead, whether the wind will change or the clouds darken, or if the river might flood. You are never prepared enough (or else you forget to prepare at all). “You must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”
So which tools do we need? Where do we find connection? What can lead us to create, and change? What are the skills you need? How do I, as an artist connect to the world and what do I find necessary to share? How can we collectively share and create?
Following Beuys we will find it in the social realm where were connect with primal social gestures and collective desires, needs and values. Following Steiner Body, mind and spirit have to be in line. We will experiment with exercises that stimulate our intuition muscle. You will learn the tools how to create freely, unattached to form, and connected to your artistic soul. By creating small rituals we come closer to express the inner nature of things. It will lead us to questions as: How can we stimulate a new ethical awareness from an aesthetic point of view and stimulate new knowledge formation? What are the skills you need? How do I, as an artist connect to the world and what do I find necessary to share? How can we collectively share and create?
"Schiller wrote that a democracy does not survive without some kind of aesthetic pride in people. You have to develop a sense of beauty to also recognize the ethically important and valuable things, which is also part of patriotism for me.” Jonathan Holslag
The research class is open to students from all disciplines and will focus on experiment, serependity and necessity. Participants combine ideas through rituals and the use of drawing, in situ, movement, sculpture and video.
After this research class a 16-Page Notebook will be completed.
ARIA Research Seminar: Partisans of the real! It’s (about)TIME!
The research class is part of a two-week event in De Lange Zaal organized by Els Dietvorst in the context of her PhD research 'Partisans of the Real’. The research class will use work analyses and outcomes raised in the ARIA seminar that also takes place in De Lange Zaal the week before. As a practice-based follow-up of the ARIA seminar, it is a test-case environment for preparing and laying the foundation of a permanent and continuing artist platform 'TIME IS A BOOK (IS TIME)'.
(Image: 'The world looks indeed quite different', masterclass by Els Dietvorst, October 2020, photo Wannes Cré)
>> This research class is part of the RESEARCH WEEK October 2021 and ARTICULATE 2021.
