Art parasite

Research for ArtEZ Art Academy

………….Art, what is it?
Is it an alternative? A surprise? A political choice? Disturbance?
In the Netherlands, so much context is created for art, that you already know what you can expect. The stage, the frame, the gallery, the museum, and the hierarchy between them, even streetart has become a standard presentation mode.
Tell me when was the last time you where captured, touched or overwhelmed by an art work without knowing how and when or where it came to you?
Without having to reflect on it, or think it through. Without being influenced by others first, but in a way that Martin Heideggerdiscribes as: “…in this way that the art work immediately revealed itself in all its splendour and severity” ?
How can art still be all those things as we like to experience it at best: surprising, disturbing, setting us aside, the alternative for the step-by-step-plan that our life is supposed to be. Our regular life in which we all created our own hierachy of priorities that we believe in. Even the arts have become a subject to its own discourse on which they depend. Is art supposed to be autonomous? How? Can it be a private entity that moves independently…………..?

 

This text is a small part of the research proposal:

How can we use art and art education as an alternative for the leading views on what society needs, repectively as an alternative for education that is based on measurability and control.

The research involves two major case studies.
Case one is called ‘The making of’ and it involves a module about art and free space in which students of 14 to 15 years old, try to follow their own creative process comparable to one that an artist experiences during the making of an artwork: receiving as little instructions as possible.

The second case is the project ‘Art parasite’. Makefactory is developing this together with artist Gigja Reynisdottir. In this case we will research how much or how little context an artwork needs to be understood, and how we can get around the ruling system and still be understood as art. In this case we are designing a mobile artwork that moves around everywhere like an autonomous entity, outside the context. We will travel to all the ‘must-see’ art biënnales uninvitedly and consult the public.