Master Classes
HOW TO SIGN UP FOR A MASTER CLASS:
1. Click on the Edit tab at the top right of this page. It will open up the editing function of this page so that you can add your name to the list of participants of the Master Class you wish to attend.
2. Click on the blue button Save changes at the bottom of the page to save your entry.
Please sign up for one Master Class only. If you wish to take a second class, please add yourself to the Waiting List for now. Those students not inscribed for the 'Masterproef' can also add their names to the Waiting List, however inscribed students have first priority.
MASTER CLASS "BOTANICAL ENTANGLEMENTS" with BENNY NEMER
November 4-7, 2024
Whether staring into a flower, smelling its perfume, touching the textures of mosses and barks, tasting berries, seaweed, mushrooms and saffron, watching the dance of reeds and rushes in the wind or listening to the song of rustling leaves, botanical life offers us infinite sensations and affects upon which the human experience is dependent. For many of us, our attraction to, and engagement with flowers, plants, and trees is more elemental than intellectual, our intimacies with botanical life are central to the ways we live, think, and create. We turn to flowers to mediate human relations, to observe and understand the cycle of life, for inspiration on how to adorn ourselves, how to flirt, how to dance and how to wither and die. We see the true natures of our genders and sexualities in the polyform stamens and petals of flowers, a reflection of our kinship formations in the cruisy, meandering growth patterns of ivy and bougainvillea, of elm branches and gypsophila.
This Master Class will consider the ways as artists we can work with the botanical world as material and collaborators. We will create individual and collective artworks with and alongside botanical material, tuning into the vegetal world and seeking ways to invite them in collaboration. Ghent’s Botanical Gardens will donate plant matter for our experiments and collective creation.
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MASTER CLASS "THE FLOOR ON THURSDAY" with STEFAAN DHEEDENE
Attention: This Master Class will be spread out over the academic year! The first 2 days to meet will be: November 18-19, 2024
'The Floor on Thursday' is an initiative where the floor of the Installation Studio is reserved for public exhibitions and events organised by master’s students participating in this Master Class. While the Master Class is led by the Master of Fine Arts programme, students from the Master's programmes in Graphic Design, Photography, and Autonomous Design are also encouraged to register.
This Master Class is open to anyone with the ambition to organise events, experiment with different formats, create a dynamic or engage with audiences, or explore curatorial practices. Where necessary, we provide production and budgetary support, with workshops and lending services readily available nearby.
The aim of 'The Floor on Thursday' is to create public events or exhibitions on Thursday evenings, fostering collaboration, shared interests, and curatorial approaches. This initiative also seeks to bring together students from various courses, encouraging them to collaborate around these student-led public events. The participating students take the initiative, filling the space with events they find important and relevant.
Students begin by exploring their own artistic practices, engaging in discussions, and experimenting with various exhibition methods. They seek opportunities for collaboration or intersections with other students, artists, activists, musicians, and others—both within and beyond KASK. Given the diversity of media used, there are no restrictions on the format of the event or exhibition. There is no pressure to move beyond one’s preferred medium, but the focus is on developing and exploring public programming that reflects individual insights. The aim is to foster dialogue and develop concrete projects that share artistic experiences beyond the confines of one’s studio or production space.
During the two-day introduction, we will collectively discuss the options for putting together a programme. Students will also present their own work to one another, forging connections with fellow students, who serve as their primary sounding board.
We will establish a rough framework for the coming academic year, after which you can prepare for your public presentation in pairs or small groups. As a tutor, I will visit the studio during this period, and we will meet on the floor for further feedback and for the final public event.
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MASTER CLASS "THINKING A BOOK" with LUC DERYCKE
December 9-13, 2024
Attention: This Master Class is organised by the KASK Photography Master programme. It allows students from other master programmes to join.
Anyone who has been involved in the creation of a book will know that the term 'book' does not (solely) refer to the physical object (or the run of identical objects) that is the final result of book-making; rather, it is to be considered as a process. In this sense, it is not a thing but a mental — logical — space, and the activity it demands is, as Wittgenstein might term it, the “picturing of facts” — through both language and imagery.
We can view every book project as originating from a vast, rhizomatic, entangled field, and the book process as a kind of battleground — a furious, haptic pruning that typically results in a string of words and/or images. In an art book, this often takes the form of a list; in textbooks, it appears as a sequence of words, grouped into numbered chapters, verses, and pages.
A string, especially a very long one, would make for an unwieldy object. Therefore, it must be compacted, conditioned to be rolled into a scroll or folded into a book. Materials and machinery are available to make this possible, to package the book into books that can be handled, viewed, read, and stored on a shelf.
All of this requires thinking — often collaborative thinking by a group of people. This is possible because they are all ‘thinking a book’ — that is, simultaneously imagining it as both complete and still in progress. This thinking will shape the book’s design. The design can be split into distinct tasks, such as writing, editing, iconography, sequencing, graphic design, publishing, marketing, financing, and so on, all contributing to the thinking of the book. Since, in the end, only one book can exist, all of this thinking must be expressed in a single design: the book as an object. However, this one design is a combination of many designs, and it is the act of combining these that creates the book. When the object finally materialises (e.g. rolling off the binding machine), it inevitably reflects all the thinking that went into its creation.
This masterclass is about the book before it takes the form of an object. It is about the many states a book can exist in without being a physical object. It is about the discussion surrounding the book process, and about picturing a book as a combination of facts.
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Master Class with Frank Wasser
February 10-14, 2025
DESCRIPTION OF MASTERCLASS IS COMING SOON!
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MASTER CLASS "UNHINGED?: THE OPPRESSION OF NORMAL" with LILI HUSTON-HERTERICH
March 24-27, 2024
Beginning with a guided trip to the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent, we will think through the ways 'unhingedness' might relate to artistic practice. Questions that may emerge through our time together could be: How do the educational and museological institutions we have experienced shape our definitions of art? What is consensual classification? How are creative practices categorized in relation to normative cultural and social contexts? What is an 'unhinged' or 'abnormal' practice?
We will employ a method of journaling as we look, tour, sketch, listen to albums, and read, creating a collective mind map as we move through our days together. Alongside a trip to Dr. Guislain Museum, participants will be introduced to the canonical histories of "Art Brut" in a western European context, as well as "folk art" and "craft". Non-required reading and listening will be recommended, which could include: Sylvia Wynter, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, and Daniel Johnston (an incomplete list).
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MASTER CLASS "FROM THE SKETCH TO THE WALL: EXHIBITION MAKING AS COLLECTIVE LEARNING" with JANA JOHANNA HAECKEL
March 17-30, 2025
Attention: This Master Class is organised by the KASK Photography Master programme. It allows students from other master programmes to join.
This Master Class proposes a hands-on introduction to exhibition making, showing how to transform an abstract idea into an actual project within less than two weeks. After a theoretical investigation of curatorial concepts and approaches in the field of photography, the students are invited to realise their own exhibition from concept to realisation, including the A-to-Z of production. This also takes into consideration the scenography and mediation of an exhibition, such as exhibition texts, a publication, and the communication on different social media platforms. In this process, photography is not the result but a starting point to experiment with the various possibilities to transform two-dimensional images into space. The curatorial process intends to mirror this experimental and at the same time playful endeavour: each participating artist will be asked to collaborate with one curator of the KASK-Curatorial Studies Program to have an in-depth conversation and evolve a presentation. The resulting individual projects interact with the final group exhibition, showcasing the idea of an exhibition as 'collective body‘. The aim is to develop a curatorial project that helps the students to look at their own work differently and overcome inhibitions about production and presentation through a collective and empowering learning process. To deepen this knowledge, external guest critics will be invited to visit the exhibition and give individual feedback.
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If you have any problems with this page please contact: masterfinearts@hogent.be