OSK course: Tools of Art / Art as Tool
Dates: 8-10 april 2025
Venue: Amsterdam
ECTS: The course represents a course load of 6 ECTS. A certificate will be provided by the OSK after successful participation
Open to: OSK ReMa students and PhD researchers
Convenors: Veronica Peselmann and Cleo Nisse (RUG)
Instruction language: All discussions and presentations will be in English
Deadline for applications: 1 December 2024
In the wake of the material turn, tools of art making became a major topic within the field. We propose a course that would take the concept of tools forward more expansively, coalescing around three poles: the instruments used to make and experience art; the mechanisms used to analyze and interpret art; and art as a tool in itself. Envisioned as trans-chronological in scope—from early modern to contemporary—the course would explore methods of production from the engraver’s burin to post-digital photography, critical approaches from language to artists’ based research methods, from propaganda to art therapy and art activism. Thus, the subject of this proposed seminar—tools—takes up its position squarely at the intersection of making/ thinking/ experiencing.
Tools of Art/ Art as Tool invites participants to think about:
- Handling
• Labour/ work
• Process/technique
• The body as an instrument
• Human/ thing agency
• Art/ science relationship (compass, measuring instruments, etc)
• Substances/processes
• Techne/ Ars
• The uses (and abuses?) of art
• Hermeneutics, key texts: tools for interpretation & analysis
• Propaganda
• Diplomacy/ competition
• Devotion/ religion
• Art therapy/ care
• Art as a tool for colonial resistance, and political activism around issues such as ecology, race, gender