NIDA DOCTORAL SCHOOL 2019: FIGHT THE POWER (VENICE, 26-31 AUG 19) - ArtHist.net

1 || 4

            NIDA DOCTORAL SCHOOL 2019: FIGHT THE POWER
            (VENICE, 26-31 AUG 19)
            Venice, Italy, August 26 - 31, 2019
            Deadline/Anmeldeschluss: 15.03.2019

The 5th Nida Doctoral School: ‘Fight The Power 2019/1989: We, the Ungovernable’

The Nida Doctoral School (NDS) comprises an intensive programme for DA & PhD
students in visual & performing arts, design, media and architecture, as well as the
humanities.

Focusing on questions pertinent to their individual research, doctoral candidates
will work closely with speakers & tutors from art, design, higher education & the
culture sector. Talks, discussion groups, doctoral research presentations (formal,
informal, performative, experimental, etc.), peer review, group & individual consul-
tations, derives & screenings will contribute to developing the students’ PhD pro-
jects.

This year’s NDS will be held in Venice during the Biennale – at the Lithuanian Pav-
ilion, the Research Pavilion, & additional environments in Venice.

Application deadline: 15 March 2019

Entitled ‘Fight The Power’, this year’s Nida Doctoral School is energized by the 30th anniversary
of Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’ and its opening credit sequence soundtrack-ed by Public
Enemy. Convinced by the radical potentialities of research-as-praxis, NDS utilises this 30th
anniversary to ask: what does it mean to do the right thing?
Focusing on artistic research’s potentialities, this year’s Nida Doctoral School will struggle with
this, and the following questions: how can we as artists, designers, historians, theorists,
educators, musicians, and critics engage critically with power? Where does power reside? How is
it secured, consolidated, and utilised? And to what end? If power is embedded and embodied in
systems - the financial system, the educational system, the culture system, the healthcare
system, the system of government and law enforcement – how can we discern, participate
critically, and even transform such systems? How should we navigate our way through this
quagmire of power-knowledge-control, which shapes truth, and interpellates us as subjects of
and subjects to its ideology? If such governmentality is the organised and organising practices
(mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which our society is rendered governable,
why and how might we prove ourselves to be ungovernable?
How then to do the right thing, as we work with (and against) power’s authority and disciplining
with regards to for instance: medium-specificity; language and grammar; the limits of geometry;

2 || 4
distributed systems, ecologies, and networks; quantification and predictive analytics; the
authority of a discipline or field of inquiry or profession; and even the rules and regulations of
institutions such as the art school?
As a call to arms, Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right Thing’ vibrates with our own climate of
rising national popularism and localism, #blacklivesmatter and #metoo, structural
racial and gender and ableist inequalities, the global immigration crisis, relentless
gentrification and the demise of the high street, police brutality, civil unrest, the
rise of the precariat and the gig economy, feelings of helplessness and exhaustion,
and the whimsy of truth. As such, the Nida Doctoral School is an occasion to take
stock of the present as it has come to be shaped by the historical-political-cultural
events of and around 1989: the Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, the sup-
posed demise of Communism, the end of History and the beginning of the post-Cold
War period, the suppression of mass political protest in Tiananmen Square; the beat-
ing of Rodney Kind and the LA riots; the pre-eminence of neo-liberalism, and the
advent of an ethics of planetarity. Simultaneously, the Doctoral School is an occa-
sion to look to the future, to how we might envisage the future, and to do so in
order not only to interpret the world, in various ways, but to change it.

Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ ends with two quotations, one from Malcolm X say-
ing he is not against using violence in self-defence, and a second from Martin
Luther King Jr. advocating nonviolence in the fight for justice. In our own search for
justice, how can our research-as-praxis - our labour, our communicative bodies, our
performative acts, our conversations, our commitment to communities and to our
own creative practice itself – declare our resistance and dissent, our agonism and
dissensus, thereby enacting our right to speak which, in turn, enables us to not so
much fight the power as fight for power, and, in so doing, honour our obligation to
do the right thing?

The confirmed speakers and tutors come from across art, design, museums and gal-
leries, and the public knowledge sector, with extensive experience of carrying out
practice-led research, and supporting doctoral students to do likewise.

- Dr Michelle Williams Gamaker, an artist working with moving image & perfor-
mance; Lecturer, Goldsmiths; Chair, commissioning agency Pavilion; co-founder,
Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group.
- Professor Guy Julier, Design Leadership, Aalto University, Finland; researcher,
activist, & consultant; publications, Economies of Design, Design & Creativity, The
Culture of Design.
- Morgan Qintance, presenter, BBC’s The Culture Show; contributing editor, e-flux’s
Art Agenda; founding member, curatorial collective DAM PROJECTS; broadcaster,
RESONANCE FM, musician; artist and documentary film maker; contributor to Art
Monthly, Frieze, and Rhizome.org.

The curator of the 2019 NDS is Dr Marquard Smith; Programme Leader, MA Muse-
ums & Galleries in Education, UCL; Professor of Artistic Research, Vilnius Academy
of Arts; Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Visual Culture; Board Member, Live Art Develop-
ment Agency & Arts Catalyst.

                                                                        arthist.net - network for art history

3 || 4
Tutors:

Dr Mika Elo, Professor of artistic research at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of
the Arts Helsinki); curator, visual artist and researcher; co-convenor of Research
Pavilion in Venice Biennale 2019.

Dr Vytautas Michelkevičius, Associated Professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts;
Artistic Director of Nida Art Colony; curator of artistic research projects in various
contexts, including the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (featuring
Dainius Liškevičius’ ‘Museum’); and author of Mapping Artistic Research. Towards
Diagrammatic Knowing (2018).

Dr Joanne Morra, Reader in Art History and Theory; curator of the Doctoral Plat-
form at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London; Founding Principal Edi-
tor of the Journal of Visual Culture.

Dr Sofia Pantouvaki, Professor of Costume Design at Aalto University; scenographer
and exhibition curator; Founding Editor Studies in Costume and Performance; Vice--
Head for Research, OISTAT Costume, Chair of Critical Costume, Co-Convener, IFTR
Scenography Working Group.

What is Nida Doctoral School?
We explore unorthodox approaches to research. Through making, performing, writ-
ing, exposing & discussing we test possibilities for generating knowledge outside of
the conventional venues and models of academic research. NDS’s goal is to provide
time, space, & a conceptual framework for participants to gain insight into their
research as well as to broaden and diversify their outlook & methodological tools.

NDS was initiated by Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts and Aalto Universi-
ty. University of the Arts Helsinki and University of the Arts London joined in
2016-2017.

NDS is tailored for doctoral students in visual and performing arts, design & humani-
ties. The programme comprises intensive courses organised once a year and doctor-
al residencies. Usually at VAA Nida Art Colony, in 2019 the NDS will be held in
Venice, coinciding with Nida Art Colony producing the Lithuanian Pavilion for the
58th Venice Biennale. Check the Colony’s call for residency applications for more
about doctoral residencies. Upon successful completion of NDS, participants gain 5
ECTS credits.

Tuition, Funding, Costs & Application
There is no tuition fee. Free accommodation in Venice, breakfasts and lunches are
provided for selected applicants from Aalto, UniArts Helsinki, UAL, and VAA. Partici-
pants from Aalto, UniArts Helsinki, UAL and VAA will cover their travel and dinner
expenses in accordance with the guidelines.

Other participants are expected to cover accommodation & partial catering costs,
which amount to 400€ per person, and travel costs. UK applicants can benefit from

                                                                       arthist.net - network for art history

4 || 4
financial assistance via CHASE and TECHNE.

Additional information on ‘Fight the Power’ is available here:
http://nidacolony.lt/en/nida-doctoral-school/fight-the-power-2019-1989-we-the-u
ngovernable

http://www.nidacolony.lt/
https://www.facebook.com/NidaArtColony
https://www.instagram.com/nidaartcolony/

            REFERENCE:
            ANN: Nida Doctoral School 2019: Fight The Power (Venice, 26-31 Aug 19). In: ArtHist.net, Feb 1, 2019 (accessed Apr
            10, 2019), .

                                                                                          arthist.net - network for art history