6th Nida Doctoral School took off at NAC

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Intro to the course by Vytautas Michelkevičius during the first day of the 6th Nida Doctoral School. Photo by Arnas Anskaitis

The 6th Nida Doctoral School Naked on the Beach at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts is taking place from August 26th to September 2nd. Gathered for one intensive week DA and PhD students, speakers and tutors are tackling the questions that revolve around the exposition and communication of artistic research.

The international programme for doctoral students in visual and performing arts, design and architecture is designed and organised by the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts since 2012. The sixth summer school has selected 18 participants from 11 different European and world universities. Nida Doctoral School seeks to address anew relevant academical topic every year. Playfully named Naked on the Beach. On the Exposition of Artistic Research and placed in a remote location in a contemporary venue spiced up with sun, beach, pine-scented sand dunes, this year‘s summer course is aimed towards the relevant practical and theoretical issues of artistic research.

Working alongside questions that are pertinent to one's individual research, a host of expositional concerns for PhD and DA researchers are discussed and performed during the course: What is the most suitable way to present one's artistic research so it speaks to artistic and academic audiences? How to be proficient in publishing by making your work relevant to academic readers, while, at the same time, being attuned to the layout of your work and thoughts in space and time, and also ensuring it is pertinent to art professionals? What happens if we bring these two audiences – the artistic and academic - together into one space, and invite them to participate in the same event? How can we work together to make a hybrid exposition and not a traditional exhibition? How to publish a hybrid paper which will have both academic and artistic qualities? How to communicate your artistic practise, while avoiding compromises and pressures of having to conform to the usual research presentation? 

In this way, the participants of the summer school collectively tackle issues along with star tutors and speakers of the programme. The invited speakers and tutors are coming from very different contexts with competences in editing and publishing in academic and art research journals (eg. JAR), curating exhibitions and education events (eg. Research Pavilion at Venice Biennale), creating and curating performance design (eg. World Stage Design): Prof Dorita Hannah is a post-disciplinary researcher, artist, curator, performance designer and architect based at the University of Auckland School of Architecture (NZ) while Adjunct Professor of Creative Arts at UTAS (Australia) and of Stage & Space with Aalto UniversityDr Michael Schwab is an artist and researcher, founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Artistic Research, Prof Henk Slager is the Dean of MaHKU Utrecht, curator and an author who has co-initiated the European Artistic Research Network (EARN), Dr Prof Mika Elo is a professor of artistic research at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki), curator, visual artist and researcher, Dr Joanne Morra is a reader in Art History and Theory, curator of the Doctoral Platform at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), founding principal editor of the Journal of Visual Culture. This year's Nida Doctoral School is curated by Assoc prof dr Vytautas Michelkevičius, author of a book Mapping Artistic Research. Towards Diagrammatic Knowing (2018), researcher and curator of artistic research projects in various contexts, for ex. Lithuanian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (featuring Dainius Liškevičius’ Museum).

This school is a non-degree doctoral programme which comprises an annual seven day-long intensive course, and doctoral residencies. NDS aims to open up the horizons for experimental development by intersecting with a diversity of disciplines and experiences. Participants gain 5 ECTS credits upon successful completion of the NDS course. In 2018 NDS is designed and organized by all four partner institutions: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of ArtsAalto University School of Arts, Design and ArchitectureUniversity of the Arts Helsinki, and University of the Arts London.