Anja Groten is a designer, researcher and community organiser, and since September 2019 the course director of the design department. 

Investigating collectivity in practice, her work revolves around the cross-section of digital and physical media, design and art education and her involvement in different interdisciplinary groups. In 2013 she co-founded the initiative Hackers & Designers, attempting to break down the barriers between the two fields by enforcing a common vocabulary through education, hacks and collaboration. Groten currently holds a position as practice-led PhD researcher at the consortium ‘Bridging Art, Design and Technology through Critical Making’ and PhD Arts.

About Anja’s classes
Anja tutors students in their individual and collective study trajectories. Our weekly group meetings will be framed around the ‘workshop' – a format to be explored conceptually, materially, artistically. The workshop has evolved from a site of manufacture, into a format with rather ambiguous motives. Our classes will (re)consider the workshop as a format with narrative potential, which we will explore collectively in class. Students will develop and host workshops for each other. A concrete outcome is not the goal. Much rather, a workshop situation might become an opportunity to escape the pressure of producing something meaningful or useful.

Reading recommendations:
Jack Halberstam “The Queer Art of Failure” (2011)
Karen Barad “Meeting the Universe Halfway” (2007)