{"id":1698,"date":"2015-09-18T10:53:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T08:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/?p=1698"},"modified":"2016-12-12T15:37:14","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T14:37:14","slug":"ko-forschungsprojekte-zusammenfassungen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/2015\/09\/18\/ko-forschungsprojekte-zusammenfassungen\/","title":{"rendered":"Summaries of Co-Research Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

HEAD Projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How to survive in the Swiss art school jungle
\n<\/em><\/strong>The project of Daniel Zea, Hyunji Lee and Andrea Nucamendi is concerned with the inequalities faced by non-European students at Swiss art schools. The research group that understands itself as a collective has identified several administrative and everyday challenges structuring the marginalization of non-European students at HEAD such as money and paperwork, language, artistic and conceptual references, or the lack of courses that transmit basic technical skills. While focusing on the students\u2019 lived experiences, their survival strategies, and their everyday and artistic responses to discrimination, the collective is also asking how a more just treatment of non-European students could contribute to a more successful internationalisation of the art school. These questions will be addressed through the creation of a web-series in which non-European students and teachers speak about their experiences and (strategic) responses to discriminations (see https:\/\/vimeo.com\/search?q=coKo+nuts for first videos). This video documentation seeks to (1) make visible and raise consciousness about mechanisms of exclusion, (2) to equip non-European students with tools to perceive of (and cope) with discrimination, and (3) to think about the ways in which art schools could enhance their process of internationalisation, notably by making reflection on structural inequalities an integral part of the curriculum.<\/p>\n

Alterity put into center
\n<\/em><\/strong>Martine Anderfuhren, Patricio Andr\u00e9, Claire Bonnet, Fabio Fernandes Da Cruz and Ivan Gulizia from HEAD\u2019s department of visual communication seek to initiate a series of events that stresses the ways in which students differ from the school\u2019s assumed norm. In a first step of preliminary inquiry, the research team has identified strategies which students deploy to tame and curtail their \u201calterity\u201d over the course of their study. They developed a definition of \u201calterity\u201d and found five dynamics \u2013 assimilation, concealment, confrontation, resistance, and autonomy \u2013 which were tested with the help of a self-administrated questionnaire. The team\u2019s initial concern with the tools students and lecturers may seize in order to call attention to the art school\u2019s internal \u201cothers\u201d has increasingly given way to the question of how an informal networking and mentoring system could be developed, whereby different students god-mother_father each other. The first event they have planned for shall be announced by a \u201cfire alarm\u201d signalling the urgency of questioning institutional norms and its processes suppressing difference. It is the requisite initial event from which further unannounced events shall follow, sparking off exchange and conversations on the (existing) diversity within the student and teaching body. The aim is to make \u201calterity\u201d a functioning principle that is conscious and present throughout institutional processes. In this way and along the events, the project shall grow and eventually spread to other departments of the school and be taken up by further student cohorts.<\/p>\n

HEM<\/strong> Projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"coll12<\/a><\/p>\n

The socio-cultural & socio-economic backgrounds of non-European students
\n<\/em><\/strong>Patrik Dasen and Soojin Lee conduct an ethnographic study that investigates the socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds of non-European students at the HEM-Gen\u00e8ve. They are particularly interested in their musical trajectories and their lived experiences in Geneva. The study is based on semi-structured narrative interviews that focus on a broad range of issues such as the students\u2019 family backgrounds, their current financial situation in Geneva or their relationship to the school\u2019s and the Swiss federal administration (regarding visa issues ect). A preliminary analysis of these in-depth conversations complicates generalized notions about the assumed comfortable, upper-class status and the privileged position of international music students. While evaluating their everyday needs and intense institutional struggles in Switzerland, the researchers also aim at valorising the socio-cultural potential non-European students represent for the school. Further, interested in student-teacher interaction, they are also interviewing teaching staff. The data generated allows for the sensitisation and the opening up of critical debates among and between students, teachers and administrative staff, concerning the processes of discrimination at the heart of the institution.<\/p>\n

Solf\u00e8ge \u2013 a universal language?
\n<\/em><\/strong>Victor Cordero, Bernardo Di Marco and Micha Seidenberg suggest that solf\u00e8ge (ear training), as it is currently understood and taught at Swiss music academies needs to be profoundly rethought. Contrary to popular notions about the universality of music theory, the theoretical premises of solf\u00e8ge are far from being universal. Rather, there is a variety of underestimated non-western pedagogic traditions that theorize musical processes in ways that have not made it into higher education. Based on qualitative interviews with students, professors, and executives and on the analysis of statistics by HEM-Gen\u00e8ve, the group explores the structural exclusions of (mostly) non-European music students who were not socialized into the inherently Euro-American solf\u00e8ge tradition \u2013 hence who have not been trained to read or rewrite a score after hearing music. While solf\u00e8ge plays a decisive role in the admission process at Swiss music academies, its testing demands competences acquired prior to entering higher education. By assessing (universal) cognitive competences according to a regional tradition, music academies are prone to overlook much artistic potential. Given that HEM-Gen\u00e8ve wishes to attract and integrate \u201cinternational\u201d students, thus students, whose cognitive ear training may differ from the way in which solf\u00e8ge has been constructed by Euro-American art schools, the conflicts emerge that are the object of this study.<\/p>\n

ZHdK Projects<\/strong><\/p>\n

\""good<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The notion of \u201cgood design\u201d in higher design education
\n<\/em><\/strong>The project of Sarah Owens, Tingshan Cavelti and Allaina Venema interrogates the figure of the \u201cgood designer\u201c and the seemingly universal nature of \u201cgood design\u201c with its implicit claim to moral integrity. Starting from the BA course in Visual Communication at ZHdK, they ask how the \u201cgood designer\u201c is constructed within professional discourses and within the logic of tertiary education. A preliminary analysis of design journals and conversations with students shows that the most celebrated designers tend to be able-bodied, white men who represented as \u201cdesign mavericks\u201d or \u201cdesign service providers\u201d. In as much as these figures function as role models at German Swiss design schools, it needs to be asked how they shape and homogenize students\u2019 professional identities, and to what extent their construction works to perpetuate the internationally recognized \u201cSwiss style.\u201d
\nThe project thus aims at questioning and interrupting this seemingly natural, reproductive cycle. This will be done by examining curricula and teaching materials, and by instigating critical conversations among students and teachers over unspoken understandings of \u201cgood design\u201d and related key terms such as \u201cgood taste,\u201d \u201ctalent,\u201c or \u201ccreativity\u201d. Finally, the norms constructed within admission procedures, presentation of final works, employment strategies, or criteria for course self-evaluation shall be discussed and, while always considering the school\u2019s institutional framework, possibly modified.<\/p>\n

Notions of one\u2019s \u201cown expression\u201d in grammar school art education
\n<\/em><\/strong>Julia Kuster, Laura Ferrara, Lorenz Bachofner, and Nora Schiedt interrogate how grammar school art educators understand the phrase \u201cown expression\u201d (\u201ceigener Ausdruck\u201d) in art education, as well as related key terms such as individuality, autonomy, or authenticity. They are concerned with the in- and exclusions produced by these understandings. Based on their own experiences as former grammar pupils, as MA students of Art Education at ZhdK and as future grammar school art educators, the group sees itself positioned at an interface where aesthetic tastes, norms and values have been reproduced without thorough reflection.
\nTheir preliminary analysis shows that finding one\u2019s \u201cown expression\u201d amounts to more than a learning target. Inscribed in grammar school curricula, this phrase reflects ideas about artist originality that hail from the project of enlightenment. In practice, expression is equated with originality and contrasted with imitation, e.g. when teachers mention a pupil\u2019s manga-style drawings as an example for lacking \u201cown expression\u201d. The group has been collecting, visualizing, and mapping thoughts, questions, pictures and teaching materials; this \u201cmapping\u201d serves as a guide for further interviews (at Kantonsschule K\u00fcsnacht) and is continually extended by the examples art educators contribute from their own teaching practice. Based on this mapping, the group envisions the production and dissemination of digital and analogue leaflets, are aimed at sensitizing art instructors at different institutions.<\/p>\n

Inclusion und Exclusion through mentoring in artist education
\n<\/em><\/strong>Romy R\u00fcegger and Yvonne Wilhelm are examining the mentoring format in the BA program in Art and Media and the MA in Fine Arts at ZHdK. Mentoring consists of a series of one-on-one conversations between teacher and student or, possibly, artist group: An experienced artist accompanies a prospective artist (group) in developing their practice and recommends references, work methods, decision-making tools ect. Inevitably, these conversations are shaped by differences in artistic socialization and professionalization that foster mutual preferences, discriminations, in- and exclusions. Given that mentoring has been\u00a0a tool to sustain cultural differences, to perpetuate the existing canon and to reproduce exclusive and excluding relationships within the field of art, the project addresses the (potential) \u201cbonds\u201d and the power relations at the heart of the intimate mentoring situation.
\nDue to different personal and institutional positions, Romy R\u00fcegger (as an assistant and BA tutor) and Yvonne Wilhelm (as a lecturer in the MA program) follow slightly different approaches. From the outset, they have been documenting their mentoring experiences and research strategies on a semi-public blog. Their sporadic exchange with mentored, co-researching students will be continued and the research results of mentors and students shared on a second, semi-public blog. Further, in spring 2016 a workshop on the mentoring format will be developed and offered; as an artistic outcome, performative presentations on artistic research are being contemplated.<\/p>\n

All of you: Thanks for your amazing work!<\/p>\n

Serena O. Dankwa.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HEAD Projects How to survive in the Swiss art school jungle The project of Daniel Zea, Hyunji Lee and Andrea Nucamendi is concerned with the inequalities faced by non-European students at Swiss art schools. The research group that understands itself as a collective has identified several administrative and everyday challenges structuring the marginalization of non-European … Summaries of Co-Research Projects<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2706,"featured_media":1702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,152745],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","category-kolloquium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1821,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/1821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}