Site Specific: to be - there - or not to be - there?

We have ideals! Such as: a society in which we live and work together in an equal manner. Artists and art educators who work with site-specific research or with community arts gain a lot of information in their projects. What do they learn from working with different people and groups in society? Is any random resident, class or association actually waiting for the arrival of art? What do they bring and what do they leave behind? And what role (s) does the artist actually play in this process?

Have a seat at the table (with PIZZA and drinks) to exchange ideas about this with artist Saskia Janssen and researcher and teacher Emiel Copini.

Photo: Welcome Stranger’, two site specific projects for Peekskill Project 6 in Peekskill, NY, by Saskia Janssen and George Korsmit

Saskia Janssen mixes different media in her socially committed site-specific works. She has worked with a.o. sailors, nightclub singers, hard drug users, Buddhists, psychiatric hospital patients and prisoners. Often to make situations that are invisible in the beginning visible or to materialize. The results of these collaborations have taken the form of installations, recorded albums, drawings, performances and printed publications.

As a researcher from the project "Cracking the Code", Emiel Copini is interested in the interplay between research, ideals and artistic practices. How can students, teachers and artists enter into socially engaged artistic collaborations with a place, with people? How do you prepare yourself for that, how do you break through the we / they think, how do you identify urgency and relevance? We're going to talk about that.

About Kitchen Table Conversations
ArtEZ Studium Generale invites students and teachers of ArtEZ to participate in the Kitchen Table Conversations. The aim of the Kitchen Table conversations is to exchange ideas about how we as artists and people can live and work with and relate to other people in our society. We reflect for example on the notions of home and belonging. Which stories are related to these notions. What makes a home in- or exclusive? We will also look at the aim for diversity and inclusion within ArtEZ as our educational ‘home’.

The Kitchen Table Conversations is an ongoing platform for reading, sharing, researching. It will bring thoughts, questions, texts, objects, performances, door knobs, voices, encounters, cartographies etc. We welcome everyone who wants to hear new ideas and share their own thoughts.

The Kitchen Table Conversations are organized by the Master Education in Arts, Corpo-real master Interior Architecture, Teacher Department Theatre, Mister Motley online Magazine and ArtEZ studium generale. Its base is Zwolle.