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, each month specific themes are addressed in depth 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. Critical Studies explicitly welcomes applicants who want to diverge from a trajectory that they have previously embarked on, seeking an environment that offers space for further development and experimentation.

DESIGN UNDISCIPLINED
The students and tutors of the Design Department work through the complexities and contradictions of our current time. Their modes of expression range from print work, digital interfaces, films and videos, network infrastructures, games, performances, writing, educational platforms, audio tours, and more. Although our students do not always develop design practices that conform to graphic design in its traditional sense, they share the necessity to communicate through their work, may it be an informative, lyrical, dialogical, discursive, or confrontational mode of expression. Considering design as a practice of ‘making things public’, we aim to analyse the politics inherent in design, through opening up, sharing and reviewing design in progress.

STUDENTS
We are looking for students from a variety of backgrounds who like to embark upon self-initiated projects, engage in collaboration with fellow students, start new coalitions, design new forms for working side by side, learning and unlearning together. Students of the Design Department embrace their vulnerabilities, sincerely deal with their own dilemmas, and will put those up for discussion.

The Design Department furthermore welcomes students that are underrepresented in the field of design, art, education, and beyond. We acknowledge our responsibility for creating a space that is safe for all our students. Reflecting on our privileges, our position in systems of power, the department offers a range of sessions for students, tutors and staff, addressing systems of oppressions in self-reflexive ways.

The Dirty Art Department comes from a common background of design and applied art, it seeks however to reject the Kantian division between the pure and the applied. Since ‘god is dead’ and ‘the spectacle’ is omnipresent, it sees the creation of alternative and new realities as the way to reconsider our life situation on this planet.

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.

The aim of the Dirty Art Department is to develop singular individual and collective practices, regardless of 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 a new context that is, the transformation of reality. The Dirty Art Department promotes a strong theoretical and philosophical agenda and is open 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.’”

Milestones: In collaboration with the Macao Collective, with which DAD has been collaborating for five years, the department was nominated for the inaugural Milan Design Prize in 2016 with the project the Wandering School, a collective living and social sculpture. In 2018 the department continued its trip with the Wandering School Part 2: Revolution or Bust!, a dérive that included meeting the oracle of Delphi, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, walking through the wilderness to Athens, clashes with Titans, a peace offering to the Gods, helping to rebuild a refugee centre, 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.

At the core of the programme are the consistent conversations held with the main tutors throughout the two-year period. Alongside these regular dialogues, guest tutors are invited for seminars and tutorials both in first and second year. Studio time thus alternates with an extensive series of workshops, seminars, and one-off events, that also steer the student to less familiar areas within their practice. In addition to these guests and activities, an annual group exhibition is held early on in the year and research excursions abroad take place twice annually. These trips are subdivided in focus and aim: for second-year students, an intense winter thesis writing & reflection period is organized abroad (in the past to the Arctic Circle, The Isle of Lewis and Delphi), while the first years partake in a shorter programmed excursion outside of The Netherlands. All students join in a department-wide spring research trip (in the past to Glasgow, Athens, Naples and Sharjah).

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 are in place to promote small-scale try-outs and experimentation in presentation. In short, the Sandberg Instituut functions as a base for the Fine Arts students, while encouraging participants to develop and test their practice both within and beyond the school.

Students
Candidates should be motivated to question their existing practice. An extreme curiosity is essential, as well as a willingness to enter into deep conversation with tutors and peers. Perhaps most crucially, students need to be able to work and think independently—and not be afraid to critically reflect on their work. Prospective 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.

The Studio aims at exploring, investigating and shaping spatial practices that focus on the genesis and production of contemporary spatial configurations. Through extensive field investigations (excursions, studio visits, on-site workshops, location-specific method seminars), it is set up as a laboratory that tests ideas that have relevance for how we live today and how we could live tomorrow. The Studio has become a spatial agent critiquing and questioning, and possibly changing the context it works in by engaging non- academic and non-artistic actors in the urban realm. It aims to develop practices that are informed by an uncompromised and autonomous perspective in a time when spatial experts are so direly needed to proactively and productively shape the world. We are especially opening up to urban actors, as we focus on ‘the city’ in particular. The city is not the problem, but the ultimate space to live together, as one that is socially, ecologically and economically sound.

The Studio for Immediate Spaces invites ‘undisciplinary spatialists,’ whose ambition is to design, plan, test, and eventually adapt and build spaces. We prefer the collective effort of making space to an alleged genius gesture of the individual master in order to develop an alternative spatial practice – independent, collaborative, relevant. Therefore we foster collaboration in the studio as a model for education, as it is practiced in reality.

This process facilitates the study of current notions of human need focused on objects. Further investigation will also take place in fields that need aesthetic support in order to allow ‘healing’; which for example include employing aspects of jewellery in medical and political areas.

Individual research and practices continuously interact with the administrative, productive and communicative tasks that everyone in the team agrees to perform. Ideally the collective that formed over the course of the programme will naturally extend into a continued existence and significance beyond its set timeframe of two years.

Tutors, guests and participants form a mix that is characterised by its potential to explore while paying attention to the small, silent and private, the human handling, and the careful treatment of material thoughts, values and behaviours.

The Temporary Programme challenges the subject of jewellery on a fundamental level – how it relates to our present time. The approach represents an attempt to think big on a small scale, and presumes an ability to understand ‘micro-working’. The input for Challenging Jewellery is based on intergenerational dialogue. An advisory board, comprising four key figures in the realm of jewellery and design, ensures this will be done in a solid cooperation with the relevant fields. The visiting tutors and guests – varying from theoreticians and curators to contemporary architects, designers and artists – guarantee a continuous renewal of viewpoints on and insights into a discipline manifest in traditions, historical design and theoretical connotations.

The late writer, teacher and cultural theorist Mark Fisher (aka K-Punk) wrote extensively on the relation between neo-liberal politics and the rising numbers of depressions and suicides we see around us. He showed this is because we are caught within ‘capitalist realism’ and are no longer able to imagine alternative economic and social systems. According to the philosopher Byung Chun Han, this is specifically so because we became our own exploiters when the exploitation of others disappeared (or was removed) from our real life experience. We recognise that a way out is to actively see ‘the other’ again, to sense real presence so we can interrelate once more.
With these perspectives on our current society in mind, the Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, looks for new ways of living, making, owning, sharing, managing and maintaining; or generally for models for what we call ‘a new commoning’. The proposals we develop are manifold, conceptual and hands on, and tested ‘on the ground’.

Therefore the programme is located at Zeeburger Ijland, Amsterdam urban development area where participants have their actual work and test terrain. The site-specific campus allows the commoners, who are the people that will live and work there, but which also includes the heads, tutors and students of the programme, who are artists, designers, researchers, educators, theorists and communicators, to propose models for alternative ways of living, leading to new urban landscapes.

The programme started by building a temporary workspace for ourselves that is flexible and adjustable and makes crucial interaction with the surrounding living and working population possible. The programme takes as its departure point city-making structures such as General Management, Economy, City planning and Infrastructure, Arts, Culture and Sports, Housing, Employment, Health, Environment and Climate, Mobility, Public Space, Co-habitation and relationships.

The Temporary Programme is contextualised by a theoretical reflection upon earlier utopian models and strategies and will have a wider public programme. It is part of a larger frame where the University of Amsterdam, architectural platforms, the municipality, the project-developer, the building companies, etc. are involved. They all have specific roles and interests and we seek as much collaboration with them as possible to leverage the project and its effects. Potential partners include: University Amsterdam BPD (project developer), Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Failed Architecture, Archis/Volume, Municipality of Amsterdam, AFK, Upstream Gallery, Studio Framis NL.

Within this context, participants have the possibility to pursue a self-initiated research project with great autonomy, working individually or collectively. Research projects are presented in a series of regular meetings in the area or on other locations in the city. We use existing or build new spaces for collective discussion and exchange. Within the framework of the programme participants are also provided with support and resources for the development of collaborative projects related to their research, such as publications, exhibitions, screenings workshops, actions, events.

The Temporary Programme, The Commoners’ Society, runs from 2018–2020 and welcomed applications from amongst others artists, writers, editors, theorists, curators, philosophers, sociologists, architects, activists, designers, dancers, lawyers.