Participants have the possibility to pursue a self-initiated research project with great autonomy, working individually or collectively with supervisors of their choice. Research projects are presented in a series of regular colloquia, which function as spaces for collective discussion and exchange. In addition to this, participants are provided with the support and resources for the development of collaborative projects related to their research, such as publications, exhibitions, screenings or symposia.

Alongside the research trajectory, participants take part in a programme of seminars, lectures and workshops. This programme provides a thorough introduction to key concepts in critical theory and continental philosophy, explores research methodologies in relation to cultural practices and supports participants in the development of a writing practice. In addition to this general programme, specific themes are addressed in depth each month during lectures and seminars given by visiting speakers. Participants take an active part in shaping the educational programme and have the opportunity to organise workshops, seminars and excursions in parallel with it.

Critical Studies welcomes applicants from a range of backgrounds, including writers, editors, theorists, artists, curators, educators and other cultural practitioners interested in exploring points of convergence between research, practice and writing.

Global challenges are approached from a personal and human point of view, where the different perspectives within the department are articulated; identities, stories and visual strategies merge throughout the practices in personal, specific and committed manners. Forms become relations, disciplines turn into mentalities and internet is used as a continuous common canvas for trying new things. The self-initiated projects that are developed present new disciplinary frameworks, start movements, construct collectives and invest in alternative models of living.

With a trust based educational model (filled with extreme talent, positive energy and a spirit of equality) we stimulate people to feel both free and passionate about engaging in the things that they love or care about, through making and collaborating. We welcome students who embrace the vulnerability, doubt and unpredictability of where design can lead them. They are investigative designers, critical optimists, generous collaborators, storytellers, eternal students, friends, lovers, fighters, or sensitive guides for our precarious future.

The aim of the Dirty Art Department is to develop singular individual and collective practices, distinct from medium or subject, and to give an insight into how to place these practices into the existing contexts of art, design, performance, writing, pizza making, etc. The final challenge is to create new context; that is, the transformation of reality.

The Dirty Art Department promotes a strong theoretical and philosophical agenda and is open, in practice, to dangerous attempts and spectacular failures. It sees itself as a journey, and wherever it stops off, it remembers that ‘Any Space is the Place’. The Dirty Art Department is open to students from all backgrounds, including designers, artists, bankers, sceptics, optimists, economists, philosophers, sociologists, independent thinkers, poets, urban planners, farmers, anarchists and the curious. Please enjoy the trip.

In collaboration with the Macao Collective the department was nominated for the inaugural Milan Design Prize in 2016 with the project the Wandering School, an collective living and social sculpture. In 2018 the department continued its trip with the Wandering School Part 2: Revolution or Bust! a real derive and wandering that included meeting the oracle of Delphi, Franco Bifo Beradi, walking through the wilderness to Athens, clashes with Titans, peace offering to the Gods, helping to rebuild a refugee center, regular encounters with tear gas, and just simply being there. The collective film 'Revolution or Bust!' was presented at the third Youth Biennale of Bolzano in 2018 curated by Christian Jankowski.

Several times a year, students come together with staff and tutors to discuss common interests that have emerged and can be addressed with the help of experts who, following these sessions, are invited accordingly. Student-led activities, such as group crits, film nights and Monday lunches are encouraged, while internal platforms such as The Stolen Studio are in place to promote small-scale tryouts and experimentation in presentation.

Throughout the two years, the Sandberg Instituut functions as a base, while encouraging participants to develop and test their practice both within and beyond the school. The programme unfolds across three open modules over the course of two years, structurally redefining conventional notions of artistic labour.

Language
The Language module concerns actual language as well as ‘language as description’ and the languages of what is seen, heard and written. The programme is divided between developing artistic practice and broadening (through specific tasks) ways of seeing and working. Language takes a holistic approach to the making of art, expanding and exploring our notions of what artistic practice can include.

Image
The Image module centers on the notion of representation, time and context in various visual and audio-visual practices. Although the programme does not disregard technical or formal considerations, nor public presentation, the emphasis lies in developing individual production strategies: strategies for processing and materializing thought, intuition and knowledge; and strategies commonly developed through production experience and through considering the strategies of others.

Play/Object
The Play/Object module focuses on contemporary constructions of ‘performativity’ and object-based productions within a cross-disciplinary, public context. It concentrates on the creation and practice of production, with particular attention paid to how objects interact with time, space and value.

Students
The Fine Arts Department is looking for eager, active and ambitious students who are willing to participate in group tutorials, workshops and other forms of education. We are looking for authentic makers and thinkers who are open to fundamental reflection on their work. A sound background in art or possession of equivalent expertise in affiliated fields is required. Candidate students will be evaluated on their motivation, previous experience and portfolio. The admissions committee will focus on the authenticity, artistry and autonomous visual quality of the work presented.

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The two-year programme proposes an alternative take on the field of interior architecture, exceeding the boundaries of its traditional curriculum. The interdisciplinary environment of SIS is a platform for debate and experimentation, opening up new terrains and allowing for the development of independent practices. Here, exploration fuses with reflection; design is an instrument of research, research is an instrument of discovery. Production methodologies focus on urban investigations and building processes, promoting a hands-on approach and DIY culture as a means of emancipation, celebrating craftsmanship and the immediacy of space making. By engaging critically with the context we recognize our responsibilities and take position.

The course revolves around three main axes: Research, Theory & Writing and Methodology. Participants develop their own spatial practice and artistic position through these axes. While these trajectories are individual, great emphasis is put on working as a collective endeavor. Traveling, observing and building together is at the core of the education process. The backbone of the course is formed by the project studios which are led by tutors active in different fields and offer a strong support to individual projects and experimentations. Each tutor focuses on a specific topic. Through these lenses, the participants follow their own intuitions, experiment with the tangible aspects of their work, the context they relate to, or the environments they produce. Unlike other departments of the Sandberg Instituut, SIS delivers an MA in Interior Architecture.

The interdisciplinary programme no longer regards the artwork as an endpoint but a simple moment in an infinite chain of contributions. It embraces the ‘ecstasy of influences’ (Jonathan Lethem), refuses any form of ‘source-hypocrisy’ and boldly accepts all ideas as secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.

Drawing on a broad and inclusive range of media, RCU embraces new methodologies for the future of education: interdisciplinarity, collaboration and co-production. It is based on a cooperative learning approach in which all participants interact with each other to facilitate individual as well as collective artistic development by capitalising on one another’s resources and skills. Beyond disciplinary boundaries and conventional pedagogical models, the programme adopts the principles of cut-up not only as its conceptual and methodological foundations but applies them directly by questioning the classical format of an institutionalised art school. Radical Cut-Up explores new forms of teaching and learning by bringing together practitioners from all over the world. In 2018, the course worked in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Not in New York, Rotterdam and Lodown Magazine Berlin.

Radical Cut-Up (RCU) is a continuation and a disruption of the former temporary material-based programmes Material Utopias (MU) and Materialisation in Art and Design (MAD).

Tutors and students at the Sandberg Instituut’s Design Department have, since the Department’s inception in the 1990s, been at the forefront of this development. The department’s new and radical approaches to the moving image began to eat away at the edges of film and cinema. Many experimental graphic designers – including Shadow Channel tutors Rob Schröder and Daniel van der Velden – started to present their ideas via moving image installations, online videos, and, eventually, feature films.

To channel the momentum of an emerging movement of makers who embrace new approaches to filmmaking, in 2017 we launched the two-year Temporary Programme, Shadow Channel.

Shadow Channel is a utopian platform commissioning, streaming, and distributing counter-narratives created by underrepresented voices, in response to platform capitalism, post-truth politics and the rise of neo-fascism. Students of Shadow Channel operate as a renegade production studio, running a deep stream narrating the real, playing short-and-long-form documentaries, music videos, and live feeds in the shadows of the internet. Responding in real time to real-world issues, revealing and reflecting on the dominance of film and design, and the dread, desire and dizziness of freedom controlling the human condition.

During the two-year programme the channel streams from the deep web, and from within cinemas, galleries, clubs, and festivals across the Netherlands. Students of Shadow Channel curate, promote, and produce public events that attempt to expand the discourse around art and activism, and push the possibility, potential and poignancy of what art can do. As author Ursula K. Le Guin rallies us, ‘resistance and change often begin in art’. There is an alternative. Another world is possible. Demand the future.

The curriculum is concerned with a contemporary and strategic foresight implying politics, economics, systems thinking in institutions, new technologies and scientific developments both in Artificial Intelligence and in the current digital ecosystems. It makes innovative use of a variety of practices to engage members of the public with the experiences and the debates created.

Partner Institute
Sandberg Instituut’s partner for the hosted programme is the University of the Underground, which was founded in February 2017 to reinvigorate creative education. The mission of the University of the Underground is threefold: it aims to forge plurality and critical thinking in leadership, supporting experiential and experimental practices by offering free education to the next generation of creatives. It aims to maintain, support and cultivate countercultures that will reactivate the public’s engagement with democratic institutions, politics and their plausible futures. Finally, it aims to nurture transnational education by defining new and co-existing models, within and outside academia, established in supportive groups in the form of federations spread across borders, beyond nation-states.

The University of the Underground is developing more educative structures in London and NYC, and it is opening a research department in 2019 in Amsterdam together with a programme in New York City in the summer 2019.