Gerrit Rietveld Academie presents:

Becoming Minority

the conference

8 - 12 March 2010

This spring Studium Generale, the transdisciplinary theory program of the Rietveld Academie, presents a five day conference with ten different topics under the overarching title Becoming Minority.

Ten curators and artist-curators from in and outside the academy were invited to use the concept of “ becoming minority “ (coined as “ becoming minor “ by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari) as an umbrella for a wide range of critical or affirmative positions around the liberating potential of the act of ‘unbecoming’ part of the majority, the prevailing social system. A wealth of guestspeakers and performers will come to the Rietveld to take part in one of the ten day- and evening programmes that were tailored around the specific topics.

Visitors from outside the academy are most welcome to attend the conference together with Rietveld students and faculty . Reservation is requested for the sessions during the day (please visit studiumgenrale.rietveldacademie.nl). The evening lectures are open to all. Entrance is free.

We now proudly present you with the ten specific programmes and the names of all the guest speakers and performers; per day and per topic:

Thursday March 11

Becoming Bitch/ Becoming Outcast

Curator: Ulrike Möntman

Day Programme 10.00 – 17.00: Lectures, screenings & workshops

Guests: Hanne Seitz, professor in theory and practice of aesthetic education, Berlin. Markus Steinweg, professor in philosophy, Berlin. Christian Hübler, artist, Zürich.

Evening Programme 20.00 – 22.00: For this key-note lecture Becoming Bitch will team up with Becoming Former West What, How and for Whom / WHW, Zagreb based curatorial collective ( the 11th Istanbul Biennial): Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic

Thursday March 11

Becoming Former West

Curators: Cosmin Costinas, Maria Hlavajova

A collaboration between the Rietveld Academie and BAK, in the framework of the project Former West

Day Programme 10.00 – 17.00: Lectures, screenings & workshops

Guests: Dmitry Vilensky/ Chto delat (What is to be done?) collective of artists, critics, philosophers and writers, Moscow. Aernout Mik, artist, Amsterdam. Marion von Osten, artist, author, curator Vienna. Mona Vatamanu, Florin Tudor, artists, Bucharest

Evening Programme 20.00 – 22.00: For this key-note lecture Becoming Former West will team up with Becoming Bitch

What, How and for Whom / WHW, Zagreb based curatorial collective ( the 11th Istanbul Biennial): Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic

Friday March 12

Minor Words

Reading language against the grain

Curator: Ilse van Rijn

Day Programme 10.00 – 17.00: Lectures, screenings & workshops

Guests: Leo Wetzels, professor in grammatical structures and phonology, Amsterdam. Abram de Swaan, emeritus professor in social science, Amsterdam. Nicoline van Harskamp, artist, Amsterdam. Benoit Maire, artist/writer/performer, Paris

Evening Programme 20.00 – 22.00: Key-note Lecture Joseph Strau, artist, New York

Friday March 12

Becoming Nation: Undoing Equations in Contested Zones.

The Case of Israel and Palestine

Curator: Nat Muller

Day programme 10.00 - 18.30: Perfomances, presentations, screening & discussion

Guests: Reem Fadda, curator, art historian, former director International Academy of Art – Palestine. Larissa Sansour, artist. Oreet Ashery, artist. Galit Eilat, writer, curator and the founding director of The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon.

Evening Programme 20.30 - 22.00: Key-note Lecture: Forget Semitism: Perspectives on Race and Religion in the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse Joseph A. Massad, associate professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History, New York

All programmes may be subject to changes.

Throughout the whole conference week, from 5 pm to 7 pm, afternoon screenings curated by Jeffrey" Cinemanita" Babcock will freely comment and obscure the topics of Becoming Minority.

For introductions and more information have a look at: studiumgenerale.rietveldacademie.nl

Contact us if you wish to be unsubscribed from this list: studiumgenerale@grac.nl

Introduction:

In 2009-2010 Studium Generale Rietveld Academie appropriates 'Becoming Minor' a complex notion coined by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his friend Felix Guattari, activist, psycho-therapist and social philosopher, and will take it on board slightly simplified, as 'Becoming Minority'. Still very much in line with Deleuze 's and Guattari's initial concept Studium Generale proposes 'Becoming Minority' as one of the becomings one is affected by when avoiding 'becoming fascist'. As an upbeat to the Conference BECOMING MINORITY that will take place at the Rietveld Academie from March 8 - March 12, 2010, we now present you with a series of 7 exciting lectures that will introduce you to the notion of Becoming Minority.

About the lecture on Wednesday 11:

Ever since Gayatri Spivak's rigorous rejection of Deleuze and Foucault in her famous article 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988), the political significance of the work of Deleuze has been heavily contested. Following Spivak, the biggest charges against Deleuze and Guattari are related to questions of 'representation', the supposed detachment of reality (even 'outof worldliness') of Deleuzian thinking, and hence the impossibility of politically accountability. Furthermore, according to these postcolonialcritics, Deleuze's model runs the risk of 'perpetuating a universalized and unmarked western norm, [leaving out], or marginalizing local [or indigenous knowledges]. Deleuzian concepts are considered to be problematic from a postcolonial or political perspective. Especially the concepts of the nomad, the Body without Organs and becoming-minoritarian have met serious objections.

In this lecture Patricia Pisters will propose some thoughts in answer to all these charges by looking at the films of Elia Suleiman, especially Divine Intervention (2003). She will argue that in order to grasp the political accountability of Deleuzian philosophy it is necessary to grasp all the paradoxical implications of the schizoanalytic nature of nomadic thought and becoming-minoritarian.

Patricia Pisters is professor of film studies at the department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam. She published Micropolitics of Media Culture: Reading the Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari (ed., Amsterdam University Press, 2001); The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory (Stanford University Press, 2003), Shooting the Family: Transnational Media and Intercultural Values (ed. With Wim Staat; Amsterdam University Press, 2005). Articles on Deleuze include 'Arresting the Flux of Images and Sounds: Free Indirect Discourse and the Dialectics of Political Cinema' in Ian Buchanan and Adrian Parr (eds.). Deleuze and the Contemporary World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006 and 'The Spiritual Dimension of the Brain as Screen. Zigzagging from Cosmos to Earth (and back). In Robert Pepperell (ed.) Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Available on home.medewerker.uva.nl/p.p.r.w.pister From 12-14 July she organizes (with Rosi Braidotti) the conference 'Connect, Continue, Create' on the notion of creativity in art, science and creativity. See www.deleuze-amsterdam.nl

About the lecture on Wednesday 25:

The Language Machine: Bugs in the code of control.

In this discussion Martin Lucas will look at some recent art projects by artists and non-artists in light of the reformulation of the security state since the World Trade Center attacks and the language that has accompanied it, suggesting that there are recent changes in the tenor of 'what can be said.' What are the possibilities for creating space for resistance to those forces of 'normalization'? What is the role of new communications platforms in this area? Can one be a 'bug' in the code? What new routes to meaning can artists and media activists imagine at a time when war is predicated as endless and when economic crisis has shown people, if for only a moment, the grim chasms under the smooth surface of reality?

About Martin Lucas:

Martin Lucas is an artist and media activist. His work explores the links of the technological with the language of control and forms of resistance both in relation to the machinery of industrial war and in the technology of communications.

As a member of Paper Tiger Television Collective, Martin was one of the producers of the Gulf Crisis Television Project in 1991. Other works that look at the advent of modern war include Cold War in 24 Frames (Durable Reinforcement Art , Utrecht, 2001) and In Flanders Field (State of Mind, Rotterdam, 1996) and Unnecessary Suffering (Ik & de Andere, Amsterdam, 1997.)

Most recently he has been a participant in the Continental Drift series of seminars on geopolitics and poetics with the 16 Beaver Group. Work in that context includes wecanrun.org, a mini-marathon for the global economy (WHW, Zagreb, 2008)

Recent articles include “Resistance and Public Art: Cultural Action in a Globalized Terrain” (Afterimage) and “One Laptop per Child - Malawi Style” (Incommunicado).

From 2005 through 2007, Martin was a fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University. www.centerforsocialmedia.org.

In 2008 Martin worked with Story Workshop, a media NGO in Malawi, Southern Africa. He has organized two unconferences on mobile and locative media, mobilizednyc (2007) and Mobile Tech 4 Social Change (2009)

Martin teaches documentary and new media production in the Film and Media Studies Department at Hunter College, City University of New York, where he is the director of the Integrated Media Arts MFA Program.

For more information: www.martinlucas.net