UNIDEE - University of Ideas
Call for applications, NOVEMBER 2015 Programme
Individual deadlines below
UNIDEE at Cittadellarte is changing. After 14 years as a residency programme, and a transitional 15th edition questioning the relevance of traditional residency schemes while testing out a new format, UNIDEE has evolved into a multifaceted platform, with a new educational programme based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and experience exchange, alongside a series of artists’ residency projects.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas offers an educational artistic programme of weekly residential modules taking place both at Cittadellarte and at international academic partners’ sites. An alternative to the traditional educational system, it works in synergy with international academies and public universities. It fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere, focusing on topics like social responsibility, urban transformation, participatory art practices, demopraxy, alternative models of local economic development, sustainability, etc.
Designed for artists, curators, students, social entrepreneurs, cultural project managers, etc., UNIDEE - University of Ideas’ modules put forward a participatory learning experience in a small group setting, through practices, methodologies and tools apt at forging knowledge while fostering relational skills, socially responsible behaviours that value diversity, “effective” horizontal thought processes, and the possibility to “err”, on a quest for new means of expression.
The programme is conceived as a long term endeavour with the mission to be engaging continuously with civil society not only through dialogue and active participation, but also through the (re)localisation of those processes of symbolic identification on the side of the modules’ and residencies’ participants, in Biella as well as in their own original social contexts and groups.
Bikurim (first fruits), Photo Asher Benari, 1953
Sign UP FOR THE UNIDEE - University of Ideas' Modules:
UNIDEE - University of Ideas educational programme of weekly modules at Cittadellarte kicks off with its first year on May 4th and runs until November 27th, 2015.
Its programme for 2015 sets out to explore three broad concepts: temporality, responsibility, participation (www.cittadellarte.it/unidee). Analysed from a variety of angles (artistic, historical, geographic, philosophical, political, economic, anthropological, sociological, mediological, juridical, architectural, etc.), these three key topics will be unravelled together by participants, mentors and guests, through an exciting blend of formats spanning from the theoretical to the performative.
09 Nov / 13 Nov, 2015
Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear: contemporary art histories and other news
Module curated by Federica Martini
Guest: Anne-Julie Raccoursier
Deadline for application submission: 18.10.2015
Starting from examples of detection, “aesthetic journalism” and fictional institutions, this module will investigate the writing of art histories in contemporary artistic research practices.
The hypothesis is that the contemporary perception of the psychological potential of the past, the present and the future as cultural ideas, shapes our relationship to archives, documents, artworks and oral histories produced by art scenes. Such relationship is affected by the difficulty of holding one’s gaze on topicalities while they unfold, and running the risk of fitting so well to one’s epoch that it becomes impossible to critically observe it. Faced with an ever-expanding array of media and sources with which to interact, the writing of contemporary art history has been confronted in recent years with the transfer of storytelling techniques beyond the borders of the literary sphere. Approaches from new journalism and historical novels are employed in the writing of art history not only as a means to chronicle the past and present of contemporary art, but also as a situation where utopian and dystopic anticipation assists the representation of a plural art scene.
More synchronic and less chronological, the community-based recording of contemporary art enables to infiltrate major narratives with micro-histories and material knowledge. The speed of information has dramatically reduced the gap between the moment when the event takes place and that when it gets recorded. Far from being a mere site for storing information, the archive is interpreted as a situation where knowledge is produced and not only documented.
With the aim of “doing theory” throughout the week, the module will feature lectures, screenings and discussions, supplemented by workshop-based activities. Special attention will be given to the notion of responsibility in the writing of history and collective authorship with reference to art theory, communication studies, literature, cinema and digital cultures.
TOPICS/TAGS: New journalism, aesthetic journalism, fictional institutions, art history paradigms, temporality, archives of the present, responsibility
Eligibility: all conditions must be met:
-you have a fluent knowledge of the English language
-you submit all the required documentation as part of your application in the correct format and by the given deadline.
-Costs: € 570 (including tuition fee, accomodation and half-board)
16 Nov / 20 Nov, 2015
Performative situations in public space: The research and action group
Module curated by Omer Krieger
Deadline for application submission: 26.10.2015
he module will commence with the formation of a group out of several individuals. We will discuss and research together which groups act in public space and we will train to become one, or more. We will become a group of people moving together, building common performance structures, self-design of shared behavior, as moments and building blocks of a public choreography that can serve to manifest, attack, defend, protest, relate to other people, create conflict and pleasure, violence and beauty, reality and fiction.
Using video, photos and other documents, and, most importantly, the participants’ own experience and physical knowledge, we will work in the studio and move on to outdoor public spaces, creating formations of power, resistance, friendship, solidarity. We will walk in town and study it together: reading and analyzing public choreography, the performance of the state, modes of civic behavior, performances of power, order and danger.
We will choose a public site to relate to, or invent one, and develop a public ceremony, a performative situation to activate and celebrate it, following research of commemorative actions and new rituals for sites of past and present conflict, in relation to architecture, politics, public sculpture, urban space, and involving questions of pilgrimage, assembly, collective progression, spatial tensions, the performance of mythos and ethos.
topics/tags: performance, action, public space, group, politics, public choreography, conflict, civic ritual, ceremony, assembly, state art
Eligibility: all conditions must be met:
-you have a fluent knowledge of the English language
-you submit all the required documentation as part of your application in the correct format and by the given deadline.
-Costs: € 570 (including tuition fee, accomodation and half-board)
23 Nov / 27 Nov, 2015
Recipe for Stone Soup: How to Let Time Cook Us All. Precedures for Conversational Practice in Contemporary Arthistories and other news
Module curated by Monica Narula (Raqs Media Collective)
Guest: Rasmus Nielsen (Superflex)
Deadline for application submission: 04.11.2015
A folk tale found in many cultures speaks of the magical culinary ability of a host surprised by a sudden guest which consists of her being able to cook a delicious soup, out of odds and ends, (with a hot stone as a base ingredient), apparently out of nothing. The host makes the delicious soup, insisting all the time, that it is made of nothing but stone, while borrowing odd bits of flavouring and an assortment of ingredients, from the guest and from neighbours.
Raqs Media Collective will deploy this method to devise a set of procedures for the making of an art work / situation while directly addressing the questions of temporality, responsibility and participation. A gathering of participants who commit to acting together for a few days will be asked by Raqs to contribute a “hot stone” - an idea, an image, a question, a memory, a hope or an anxiety - these “hot stones” are the catalysts for a “soup” or “soups” - that Raqs will cook, together with the participants during the time of the module. The “stones” will interact with each other and with their contributors, over time, to produce a matrix of possibilities - a soup full of charmed and flavoursome particles. Some of this may give rise to art works, or curatorial, or educational projects.
In this way, Raqs will introduce methodologies of collaborative work, protocols of thinking together in a public way, and invite the module participants to consider the task of thinking together as a joyous, and delicious, activity.
TOPICS/TAGS: Improvisatory knowledge, foraging practices, conversation, the effect of time on a gathering of ideas
Eligibility: all conditions must be met:
-you have a fluent knowledge of the English language
-you submit all the required documentation as part of your application in the correct format and by the given deadline.
-Costs: € 570 (including tuition fee, accomodation and half-board)
