In the belief that art students can only learn to think independently when knowledge, imagination and reflection combine to work together in an unorthodox and critical way, Studium Generale Rietveld aims to encourage critical forms of learning, making and thinking. It follows a new research trajectory every year around a specific theme that links up with current events, issues and discussions in the (art) world. Artists and theoreticians from home and abroad offer a broad spectrum of perspectives on the overarching themes with lectures, performances, presentations and screenings.

After a preliminary programme, which also includes film screenings, reading groups, workshops and publications, there is an annual four-day conference festival in collaboration with guest curators who make contact with urgent critical discourses from different perspectives and practices. This takes place at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and is open to the public.

Since 2014 Studium Generale teams up with Rietveld Uncut; departments and individual students develop projects in relation to the theoretical framework of Studium Generale. The presentation and exhibition of these programmes is simultaneous to the conference, bringing ‘the making and the thinking’ together.

To programme

2013 – 2014
VOICE ~ Creature of Transition

“{…} the voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours {…}” – Mladen Dolar in: A Voice And Nothing More (2006)

An increasing number of makers and thinkers, in sweeping and often groundbreaking ways, are concerned with the phenomenon of “voice”. Numerous exhibitions, symposia and publications continue to be dedicated to the physical, mythical, psychoanalytic, political, philosophical, legal and performative potential of “voice”. By looking into theory, literature, film, theater, visual art, popular culture and society at large, Studium Generale Rietveld Academie explores the potential for “pleasure” and “power” offered by the voice and invites you to ask yourself what vistas, at the dawn of the 21st century, “voice” has in store for you.

With: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ali Kaviani, Tom Rice, Gregory Whitehead, Maha Maamoun, Susan Gibb, Sharon Hayes, Francesco Ventrella, Wendelien van Oldenberg, Alex Martinis Roe, Ruth Noack, May Adadol Ingawanij, Imogen Stidworthy, Danica Dakić, Luis Jacob, Susanne Oberbeck (No Bra), Mark Beasley, Joan La Barbara, Nicholas Bullen, Gelsey Bell, I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, and many more.

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