Un/foldings in Materiality
The fall 2024/spring 2025 program un/folds connections between materials and bodies. From the perspective of art and craft, we wish to consider the fold as an artistic and academic method and tool to understand materials and their interconnections with machines, bodies, techniques, and space, as well as culture, politics, and affective relations in the world.
In The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1988) Gilles Deleuze uses the figure of the fold to interpret the world as a body of endless folds that weave through time and space. His conception challenges the idea of subjectivity as something that only human beings have, and moves beyond the nature and culture divide. In that conception, humans are not sovereign subjects among passive objects, but matter and humans emerge dynamically and uncontrollably between states of being in a world of endless folds, materials, and surfaces. We find this idea of the fold and weaving intriguing, especially in times of multiplying crisis.
The lecture series is part of the MFA art and theory course Contextualization and artistic practice of the two programs Medium- and Material Based Art, and Art and Public Space. Taking a collaborative approach to practice and research, the lecture series seeks to generate inspiration, critical navigation, and community across the arts. It invites scholars, artists, and curators from different disciplines to give a traditional keynotes or conversations that guide the semester, and as a platform for students and faculty to share and discuss practice, concerns, and inspiration, with an open door to the public.
The Art and Craft lectures take place in the main auditorium, KHiO, on Thursdays at 3pm CET, or on Zoom. The lectures are free and open to the public.