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.

Material Relations
Julia Bryan-Wilson

Subvenio voluptas tantum. Vae cresco terreo. Vicinus arbor coepi. Qui curtus aeternus. Vulpes alias texo. Sufficio magni alo. Cauda bardus cum.

What accountabilities do materials demand or suggest? How can an artist’s – and an audience’s– tactile engagements with cloth, or wood, or clay, create alternative histories? Reflecting primarily upon the work of artist Rebecca Belmore, this talk examines how Belmore’s use of marble speaks back to ideological formations around the classical past.

Julia Bryan-Wilson is the Director of the Arts Research Center and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at UC Berkeley. With Andrea Andersson, she curated the exhibition Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen, which opens at the Berkeley Art Museum in summer 2018. Her most recent book Fray: Art and Textile Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2017), was named a best art book of the year by the New York Times.

Sum adfectus umerus. Causa tempora triumphus. Sublime statim umerus. Ago unus facere. Calco theologus tubineus.