[artinfo] Visibility Works - exhibition and workshop series at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts

Mon Feb 18 20:05:10 CET 2008

The Hungarian University of Fine Arts cordially invites you to the opening
of the exhibition and workshop series entitled

VISIBILITY WORS
On 20 February 2008 at 7PM

Metahaven Design Research: 
Vinca Kruk (NL), Daniel van der Velden (NL), Gon Zifroni (BE/ NL): 
Academy Flows (20/02  23/02.2008)
Katarina Zdjelar: Residue Department (20/02  23/02.2008.)
Marjolijn Dijkman (NL): Geography is a Flavour (10/03  13/03.2008.)
Inga Zimprich (D/NL): Department of Practice (10/03-13/03.2008.)

curated by: Eszter Lázár
on view: 20. 02  13.03. 2008-02-18 
venue: Hungarian University of Fine Arts 
 <http://www.mke.hu/> www.mke.hu
barcsay at mke.hu 

The program will be realised in the framework of the LOW Dutch-Flemish
Festival

The aim of the program 'Visibility Works', hosted by the Hungarian
University of Fine Arts, is to encourage students, professors and the
general public to think aloud and work together. The exhibition and workshop
series will be held in the exhibition space of the university, which will be
transformed into a meeting point, a classroom, a professors' study, a studio
and an office for the occasion.

The program of workshops run by the guest artists  the 'guest professors'
of the university  will be closely linked to the building  the education
facility  as well as to the training of artists and the processes of
artistic creativity. The program will provide an opportunity for students
and all participants to discuss the legitimacy of academic training, forms
of representation of the university and possible new visual strategies.

On display on the walls of the exhibition space will be works presenting the
earlier projects of the invited artists  Inga Zimprich (D/NL), Metahaven
Design Research (NL), Katarina Zdjelar (YU/NL), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL).
These will be continually added to and complemented with the material
results of the workshop.

Metahaven Design Research: 
Daniel van der Velden, Vinca Kruk, Gon Zifroni
Academy of Flows 
date: 20  23 February 2008. 
venue: Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall

Metahaven: Design Research, based in Amsterdam and Brussels, is a think tank
focusing on design, visual identity and the political. Its current partners
are Vinca Kruk, Daniel van der Velden and Gon Zifroni. Metahavens aim is,
through design research, to re-think political potentialities in design and
to generate visual-theoretical discourses around both commissioned and
non-commissioned topics, resulting in projects in the area of the
hypothetical and the proposal, as well as in direct action. 
Metahaven, in its current configuration, is functioning as a connective
agent between theoretical and visual positions. While the collective argues
that new connections between design and theory are needed, at the same time
it rejects that these should operate on the basis of a mutual license to
restrict the other. In other words, Metahaven argues for a design theory
where the jouissance of visual imagination is allowed full space.
www.metahaven.net

The project aims at creating temporary devices  symbolic and structural 
to mobilize and destabilize the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in
Budapest (MKE) and its identity, via confronting it with flows of
information that link it to past, present and future. This is happening
precisely at the moment when, in the arts, the concept of academy is
itself becoming the metaphorical carrier for implementing all kinds of
political and research projects into a globalized context of mobile actors. 
For this workshop we want to challenge the concept of academy by
developing a new visual strategy for the representation of MKE both in print
and online. During the week that we will be working at the institution, we
will create  with students  a web site structure that will host these
representations. The web site will form a virtual counterpart to the
buildings real architecture. 
We will create a collection of representations and develop binary
virtual/physical proposals that expose MKE to a wind tunnel of
geopolitical currents. 

Katarina Zdjelar: Residue Department
date: 20  23 February 2008. 
venue: Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall

Katarina Zdjelar creates new or employs already existing situations that
stimulate speech production. Apart from working on the notion of language as
the very event of speech manifestation, her inquiry also concerns the way in
which language marks the speaking body and vice versa. She works with
language as an object or a tool for convening and discussing various
subjects around much wider notion of our contemporary culture. In particular
her curiosity is in existence that is plural, unsettled or in-between. Such
as/in the state of transition, translation, migratory or nomadic being. 
In addition to her audio-video work, her practice is based on parallel
interests that include developing projects that function as platforms for
knowledge building and exchange. She initiates projects that rely on or take
a form of a reading group, discussion, publication and examine relevant
topics of our contemporary culture and art.
http://katarinazdjelar.wordpress.com/

The workshop approaches art making as specific production of knowledge. It
addresses knowledge that is being used and directly communicated through the
artwork itself. But, the focus is on waste knowledge. The participants will
make visible knowledge that became misfit along the way and left behind
during the process of making the work, but initially was integral part of
it.
Each participant focuses on making a publication (reader) for one of the
works she/he made, giving access to the line and flow of thoughts, showing
how the work developed. This publication will be a collection of different
material that each student collected during the process of making his/her
art work, such as texts, images, sketches, audio and video files. The
publication will function as a knot of  thoughts, doubts, questions,
dead-ends or conclusions that came across during the process of making an
artwork.
We will work on material that surrounds the actual work, and while doing so,
we question the status of that material in relation to already produced work
and discuss how the work itself communicates in relation to the source/s.
The exhibition space will be transformed into a research-library-archive
room, making available for the audience to dive into the work and research
material.

Visibility Works //: 
Marjolijn Dijkman: Geography is a Flavour
date: 10.03  13.03 March 2008. 
venue: Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall and different venues
in Budapest

Her practice consists of the parts that are closely interconnected: research
projects that are carried out all over the world, site-specific
interventions and the initiative Enough Room for Space. The ongoing research
aims to gain an insight into the way in which the world is organised. Not by
means of abstract maps and purely geographical data, but by arranging
photographic registrations of the world according to personal criteria. The
archive is a footing for site-specific interventions as well as a reflection
of the many travels she has undertaken to realise interventions. By making
temporary structural alterations, by reorganising objects and spatial
characteristics she queries the meaning and stratification of space. By
recording the traces of other peoples actions, or by making a confronting
gesture vis-à-vis the actual organisation of the space, these works
reinforce the existent characteristics. Proceeding from the wish and the
necessity to collaborate with others to further develop my thinking and
working methods, she has initiated several collaboration projects. In 2005
she set up Enough Room for Space <http://www.enoughroomforspace.org>
(ERforS) together with Maarten Vanden Eynde. Since 2007 Martijn Hendriks is
jointly running and coordinating this foundation.
About her projects: http://www.marjolijndijkman.com/

It seems that Budapest is the third most popular destination in the world
for luxury weekend gateways. How is the city influenced by the tourism and
what kind of influences from outside Hungary did this bring along? 
In a three day photography workshop she would like to investigate together
with the participants how geographical references to different places are
build into the city and how the city is influenced by tourism. 
The workshop will be a dialogue between Dijkman 'as a short visit tourist'
and the students who live in the city. 

Inga Zimprich
Department of Practice 
Date: 10.03  13.03. 2008.
venue: Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Barcsay Hall

Inga Zimprich studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, and at the
Jan Van Eyck Academie, NL, and curated for the project space Public Space
With A Roof, Amsterdam (2004 / 2005). Departing from socially engaged
art-practices she is interested in the potential of opening speculative
spaces through artistic thinking, experiencing the internet once again as a
valuable tool to re-negotiate contexts and relations, to speculate about the
making of and distribution of knowledge, touching upon concepts such as
university, access, in-/exclusion and the making of a public sphere.
She has conducted the Thinktank 0.1  A groupware research and development
project since 2005 which questions values, methods and principles developed
in self-organized contexts and within socially engaged practices and their
possible transfer into online environments. She initiated the Faculty of
Invisibilty project which dedicates itself to answering
<http://www.alterfin.net/congress/foi.html>  the central questions 'what is
artistic research and production', by following case-studies of persons who
practice artistic research and production. 
More about her projects: http://con-gress.net/

>From March 10th to March 13th the Department of Practice will be put in
practice in the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.
Invited to reflect with students on the degree the university is visible to
itself within and to the public outside, the Department of Practice proposes
to practice the question of university. Who are students? Why are you? How
does one teach art? If you were to create an art-academie, what would be the
entrance exam? When would students graduate? What would they have learned?
The Department of Practice publishes assignments which can be issued by
anybody, excercised by anybody  or not. You can issue own assignments at
http://practice.tinka.cc/en/create-content
At all times it is possible to graduate from the Department of Practice. The
Graduation Certificate can be downloaded here (http://practice.tinka.cc) and
can be stamped in the University
of Fine Arts. This website offers an unmoderated forum to which you can
contribute if you want.