About
The Advanced Master of Research in Art and Design program focuses on the research development of artists and designers whose practice is addressing a social-political context (including, but not limited to, feminism, social design, migration, decolonization, race, gender, queer, class, disability politics, capitalism, the Anthropocene, the (under)commons, community art, critical design, healing & rituals, history, AI & digital cultures…). The program is developed in accordance with the specific research proposals, interests and needs of participants. We offer intense coaching in writing, critical theory, artistic research methodologies and in sharing research. The coaching is individual, collective and participatory.
Collective learning and participatory coaching are central to the program. We ask from each participant the engagement to care for and contribute to each other’s research development and well-being. We offer a nurturing research environment of dedicated and experienced tutors, researchers and PhD students as well as an international and local network of professionals, institutions and guest lecturers. Participants have access to the workshop facilities of Sint Lucas Antwerpen and the support of technical staff (photographic labs, ceramics, digital printing, printmaking etc.). We work with a small team of maximum twelve participants.
Who?
The Advanced Master of Research in Art and Design is intended for candidates who have previously obtained an MA degree in visual arts or in other subjects with an active arts or design practice. We welcome artists or designers who have developed an individual or collaborative practice and who are in the position to dedicate themselves for the duration of the program to a research project related to their practice. The program is particularly suitable for those interested in critically developing their practice within a social-political field or in preparation for a practice-based PhD in the arts.
Practical Information
Participants meet in Antwerp every two or three weeks for three full days, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. These three days are dedicated to four modules: Methodology, Writing, Critical Theory and ShareResearch. In these modules we focus on the participants’ specific research proposals and enable them to advance in writing, theoretical explorations, research methodology and sharing their research. Parallel to this trajectory, we also organize three intensive weeks. These are full-time research weeks with international or local artists or designers across the fields of artistic research.
Team
Advanced Master participants are supported by:
Daniel Blanga-Gubbay (Critical Theory tutor), Joud Toamah (program coordinator), Kim Gorus (Writing tutor), Loraine Furter (Research Methodology tutor), Marnie Slater (program leader and Research Methodology tutor), Vijai Maia Patchineelam (ShareResearch tutor) and Wesley Meuris (ShareResearch tutor).
Daniel Blanga-Gubbay
I am a performing arts curator and writer. Since 2018, I have been part of the artistic direction of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels. I have recently worked as an educator and independent curator of performance and public programs, including for the São Paulo Biennial, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut (Yogurt and Other Spaces of Labour), and Manifesta in Palermo. I hold a PhD from the University of Palermo and am among the founding members of Celador, a space for experimenting with language in Brussels, and of the artistic committee of the Beirut Art Centre. I teach regularly, including a weekly class titled Contemporary Salmon at the Brussels Royal Academy of Fine Arts. I also write in different contexts (sometimes under the name Dani, a more personal “night name” in the lineage of artists and queer writers who use a diminutive to signal intimacy and experimentation). I currently write a regular column on choreography for Mousse magazine, titled Notes on Spitting.
At ADMA, I lead the seminar Para-Theory, which proposes working beside, beyond, and against dominant forms of knowledge in Western epistemology. Drawing from the prefix para, meaning alongside or beyond, the course explores how knowledge moves through undervalued or peripheral channels: dreams, ghosts, rumor as counter-archive, walking blogs, comics, craft as epistemology. Through readings, collective discussion and experimentation, we investigate what happens when theory itself becomes a performative, porous, and embodied practice.
Joud Toamah
I am a graphic designer and research-based artist born in Syria and currently based in Belgium. I work across moving image, publishing, and sound. My practice engages with memory regimes centred along the Euphrates River in contexts of erasure and against histories of militarism, displacement and ecological transformation. Through fragmented archives, transmission and relation, I explore poetic gestures of re-membrance and forms of knowledge that emerge through collaboration and acts of imagining otherwise.
I coordinate the Advanced Master of Art and Design Research (AdMa) and co-lecture 'Islamic Ways of Knowing and Aesthetic Practices' at Sint-Lucas with researcher Ruth Loos.
Kim Gorus
I am a teacher and researcher at Sint Lucas School of Arts, Antwerpen. My research focuses on the intermediate space between literature and the visual arts. I teach courses on Narrative Strategies in Art & Design, Writing and I am a thesis coach for students in their master’s degree.
I am the tutor of the Writing module within the Advanced Master program.
This module will incorporate three different takes on writing: a contextual survey of the praxis of writing within and without academia, a training of academic writing skills and an exploration of creative writing. Through the reading of texts, class discussions and (collaborative) writing and editing exercises, we will investigate the possibilities of writing as practitioner-researcher.
Loraine Furter
I am a graphic designer and researcher based in Brussels since 2007, specializing in editorial design, hybrid publishing and intersectional feminism. I design and edit paper publications as well as web and digital ones, and am particularly interested in the interaction between these media. I’m currently working on a research project entitled Speaking Volumes – art, activism and feminist publishing. I am a PhD researcher at Sint Lucas Antwerpen, and also part of the cyberfeminist collective ‘Just for the record’.
I am taking care of the Research Methodology module within the Advanced Master , in collaboration with Marnie Slater. In this module we discuss with the participants different tools to do research, and the ethical and political questions that come with each protocol.
Marnie Slater
I was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, and currently live in Brussels. I am a visual artist and my work engages with multiple formats, including sculpture, collaboration, editing, performance, painting, and installation. Alongside my solo work, I am a member of the All the Cunning Stunts, co-curator of Buenos Tiempos Int. and part of the team of Mothers & Daughters: A Lesbian & Trans Bar*. I have previously taught at l’ERG (Brussels) and on the Master of Voice program at the Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam).
I am the program leader of the Advanced Master and take care of the Research Methodology module, in collaboration with Loraine Furter. In this module we discuss with the participants different tools to do research, and the ethical and political questions that come with each protocol.
Vijai Maia Patchineelam
I am an artist, researcher and educator. I hold a PhD in the Arts from the University of Antwerp and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. My practice focus on the dialogue between the artist and the art institution. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, my research-based practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists, and in turn artistic practice, as a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. As a result of the PhD, I published the book The Artist Job Description: for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution (2022). In collaboration with KIOSK, Ghent, I am currently experimenting on the implementation of this job position for artists.
At AdMa, I co-lead the module ShareResearch with Wesley Meuris. With an understanding of artistic research as a sharing practice, I look to experiment and develop with the participants’ different strategies to present and communicate their research, as well as to engage their practices through collaboration, self-organization and transdisciplinarity.
Wesley Meuris
I am a visual artist, mainly working with installations, sculptures and drawings. During the last decade, I investigated different forms of cultural classification systems, their linguistic, social, political and architectural translations. Since 2009 I have been a researcher at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. In 2017 I published my PhD in the format of ‘The Foundation for Exhibiting Art & Knowledge’.
I’m responsible for coaching and supporting participants of the Advanced Master program in their share research trajectory.
Read more about the program here:
Sint Lucas School of Arts Antwerp - Advanced Master of Research in Art and Design
For more information or questions contact AdMa coordinator Joud Toamah: adma@kdg.be
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