Naked on the Beach
- Published on Monday, 29 January 2018 15:57

Naked on the Beach. On the Exposition of Artistic Research
The 4th Nida Doctoral School intensive course for DA and PhD students in art, design, architecture, humanities and the social sciences
26 August–2 September 2018 in Nida, Lithuania
Exhibitions, shows, performances, screenings, lectures, workshops, seminars, conferences, stands, symposiums, congresses, articles, stand-ups, unconferences, bar camps, knowledge cafes, birds of a feather, fishbowls, dissertations, artists’ books, novels, accounts, reports, essays, (interactive) storyboards, comic strips, atlases…
This year the course was focused on the following questions: When you lay-out your (art/research/artistic research) work into a publication, does it become a catalogue, a reflection, or something else? When you install your research into a space, does it (always and necessarily) become an exhibition? Can artistic research be shared, communicated, shown, narrated, performed? Relevant communication is half of the effective work artistic research does – do we agree with or dispute this statement?
Working alongside questions that are pertinent to one's individual research, a host of expositional concerns for PhD and DA researchers have been discussed and performed during the course. In this way, we have collectively tackled issues such as: 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 addition to presentations and lectures NDS participants have been able to lay out and expose their art work and research in our physical, virtual and conceptual space during the time of the NDS. Each day has begun with a lecture by our invited tutors, followed by discussions, collective lunches and dinners, walks and strolls along the shores and in the forest, swims in the sea, and sauna sessions. Every doctoral candidate had a one-hour slot to speak about and perform their research in relation to the object one is invited to bring and to the white cube, green cube or black box. Participants have also benefited from individual consultations offered by our tutors.
P R O G R A M M E

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 University of Auckland School of Architecture (NZ). Adjunct Professor of Creative Arts at UTAS (Australia) and Stage & Space with Aalto (Finland). Co-editor of Performance Design (2008) and author of Event-Space (2018).
Dr Michael Schwab artist and researcher, Chief-editor of Journal for Artistic Research, co-editor of the Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia (2013), editor of the book Experimental Systems. Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (2015).
Prof Henk Slager, Dean MaHKU Utrecht, co-curator of Research Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2015 and 2017, co-editor of the book Futures of Artistic Research (2017), and author of the Pleasure of Research (2015).
Dr Prof Mika Elo, professor of artistic research at the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki), curator, visual artist and researcher, co-curator of Research Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2019.
Dr Lolita Jablonskienė is a contemporary art critic and curator, professor at Vilnius Academy of Arts. She is the chief curator at the Lithuanian National Gallery (since 2002) and ex-commissioner of the Lithuanian Pavilions at the Venice biennale in 1999 and 2005.
Assoc prof dr Vytautas Michelkevičius, curator of the 6th NDS, 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”).
Dr Joanne Morra, 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.
Invited doctoral students:
In 2018 NDS is designed and organized by all four partner institutions: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, University of the Arts Helsinki and University of the Arts London
Upon successful completion of the NDS course participants gain 5 ECTS credits.
Contact
Dr Rasa Antanavičiūtė
Manager of NDS and executive director of Nida Art Colony
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