School of Missing Studies

ng project initiated by Bik Van der Pol and architects Srdjan Janovics Weiss and Sabine Von Fischer (http://www.schoolofmissingstudies.net/). Since its initiation, The School of Missing Studies (SMS) has functioned as a nomadic, collaborative platform for experimental study and research of the public environment (public space, public time, public good) marked by, or currently undergoing abrupt transition. Under the roof of the Sandberg Instituut, SMS operated as a one-time MA programme on Art and Learning (2013-2015). Following the observation that singular disciplines sometimes fail to discern or capture significant knowledge about uncommon or unprecedented situations, SMS invited students to develop, discuss and share possible methods to scout for this information, which seems to flow freely in unbound space and through open networks. Participation in the programme was not restricted to artists: SMS aims to bring together practitioners with diverse educational or professional backgrounds, who share a common ideal to make ‘the missing’ their mission and are interested in artistic practice as a modus operandi for imagination and productive speculation. SMS proposes to find common and uncommon grounds for research and practice, from where acute political, social, educational and urban challenges can be articulated and further debated. Art is a form of organizing relationships between disparate objects and/ideas that can produce new meaning and experiences, thereby effecting disruptions or significant change in everyday life – even if only small. As a way to form and formulate knowledge, art can create uncommon perspectives and bring about new ways for understanding, beyond what is relevant to its own context. One could even argue that art brings change only there where it breaks with the desire to perpetuate its own rules. Transgression is seen as an intrinsic quality of art, and the transgression of art’s institutional limits can be seen as springing from a reflective engagement with those very limits. How can this urge for self-reflection; the continuous challenging of prevailing ideas, and persistent refusal of absolute models, be disseminated as a potentially extra-disciplinary tactic – a way to work with undefined or unclassified knowledge and in spaces that are subject to change? The School of Missing Studies takes artistic practice as its point of reference for the desire to experiment with new modi operandi for the production of relations, meaning, and experiences in public space. URGENCY
In a world where the value of art is challenged, it is timely to reinvest in its place in society. The School of Missing Studies embraces the qualities intrinsic to artistic practice, as a means to disclose – make public – what is at stake in public space. The issue of public space has long been articulated in close connection to democracy, and many theorists have argued that when democracy is under threat, so is public space. The discussion of public issues is therefore not exclusively of this time, but all the more relevant in light of the current increase of private ownership and privatization of public space. With the term ‘public space’ we refer to any site of potential conflict over rights, information, relations, and objects – a space that requires articulation, so that a community can be formed, called to order, and enter the order of the political. ‘Publicness’ does not manifest itself in spatial matters only. In fact, recent debates over forms of common property such as knowledge and culture show that public space is to be understood in the broadest terms possible – as that which holds the fabric of experience-as-community together. Threatened by forms or acts of exclusion, privileged access, and disinformation, these sites of public property are just as precarious as natural resources, and need to be rearticulated time and again. However, if the economic paradigm forces us to retreat from the realm of publicness, then what is the public issue? COURSE
As a platform for experimental learning, the School of Missing Studies considers education as a space of experience and encounter, a strategy for emancipation, and a potential response to public issues. The programme offered time for analysis, speculation and imagination. While functioning as a collective space of discourse and experimentation, SMS also turns to itself – the space of education – as a model and manifestation of publicness, taking the paradoxical but necessary form of a ‘closed’ programme. Within the institutional setting of the art school, SMS proposed to formulate a notion of (artistic) practice that is articulated in dialogue with other fields of knowledge, and that could generate a political attitude towards the need of a more ‘general’ practice for effecting change and innovation in society, that takes the speculative, the undefined, ‘the missing’ into account. SMS welcomes students who believe that artistic practice has the potential to turn the School into a public sphere. Collectivity is not the result of dialogue, nor is dialogue the result of collectivity. Learning is a time-based art that implies action, ritual, theatricality: a tutorial team of thinkers and practitioners (working in, and between areas such as the arts, urbanism, technology and politics) will assist students in developing and formulating new processes of learning, using different formats of collaboration, staging, publishing and writing. We imagine a way of learning that is rooted in practice as a process for continuous reconfiguration, using dialogue as its major mode of transfer. Collectivity is the means, not the end: in the collective attempt to find common and uncommon ground, with public space as the (literally) common denominator, students enable themselves to develop conceptual tools and methods for a form of critical (self-) education. TUTORSTeam
Samira Ben Laloua,Virginie Bobin, Maria Boletsi, Minerva Cuevas, Jeremiah Day, Louis van Gasteren, Moosje Goosen, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ernst van der Hemel, Pamela M. Lee, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Sarah Pierce
Bik Van der Pol, course directors, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Tina Sherwell, Matthew Stadler, Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, Alexander Vollebregt, Jeroen Zuidgeest

PRACTICAL
We embrace the ability and flexibility of artists to be in charge of their own ‘context’ in a public environment – both in terms of production and presentation. During this two-year programme we will investigate the socio-cultural and political function of public space and spatial practice through relevant theoretical writings and reflect on current developments with different thinkers and practitioners, forming key areas of contemporary experience. Students of the School of Missing Studies develop a critical notion of ‘spaces of experience’ and actively respond to this by examining how individual practice positions itself within. Fieldwork, reading groups and discussions are tools to develop the conditions for such a space to take shape. The SMS programme was structured in blocks with a range of national and international tutors. Interactions between students in various disciplines, as well collaborations with other institutions and stakeholders will be part of the programme. Students connected with different spaces of production as well as seek collaboration with museums and art spaces, archives, theatres, universities, corporations, and other possible platforms and professional circles. Students work in and out of a team, and develop a criticality towards collaboration, practice and research. STUDENTS
Candidates for the School of Missing Studies have a clear interest in what’s happening in the here and now. They share a desire to address urgent issues of collectivity, and have already developed a basis for this in their practice. The ideal cohort of students would be of varied backgrounds, including but not limited to arts, design, architecture, social and urban sciences. Prospective students are interested in other fields of knowledge and knowledge production: by switching roles between ‘expert’ and ‘professional amateur’, and through processes of de- and re-skilling in their respective fields, The School of Missing Studies enables students to develop surprising and unconventional perspectives in their respective fields, and promotes the integration of multi-disciplinary knowledge. Students who successfully complete the programme obtain a Master degree of Fine Art (MFA) from the Sandberg Instituut. BACKGROUND BIK VAN DER POL
The artistic practice of Bik Van der Pol is collective, leaving the studio as a place of production and using the artistic workplace itself – practice – as the site of research and production. This is a conscious political and artistic choice, and also sets the conditions for a (social) space generated by dialogue and collaboration where an encounter may happen that might result in a work of art. Their work has shown an increasing focus on when and how public space ‘takes place’; on its conditions and (terms of) accessibility, exploring where and how art can create forms of knowledge. Similar to artistic practice, public space is a space of dissensus – a space of learning (by doing), of negotiating differences, of speculation and conflict. It is not a clean, pre-set space, but one that is murky, full of noise and continuously contested. Bik Van der Pol work collaboratively since 1995. READ MORE:
http://sandberg.nl/school-of-missing-studies