Sandberg Instituut
Master programmes in Art and Design of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam
Fred. Roeskestraat 98
1076 ED, Amsterdam
T +31 20 5882400
[email protected]
www.sandberg.nl
The Cure Master programme examines the function and definition of health and disease in society. A group of autonomous researchers create individual and group projects aimed at realizing Cure Park—a place to meet, exchange ideas, and inspire a fresh dynamism and new ideas.
Researchers start by acknowledging the individual’s transformative power to affect illness or injury. Utilizing their artistry and their personal experiences with health and illness (physical and mental), they engage with various cultural and philosophical notions of health. They investigate external circumstances and scrutinize social constructs. Health is an important issue in people’s lives and thus also in the political and social spheres. Important economic and social interests are at stake. How do we as a society want to deal with this issue on an individual, a collective and an international level, both now and in the future?
During the programme, you will experience first-hand how consciously engaging with your body and mind can influence your attitude to life as a human being and an artist. You will experiment with this by investigating various concepts and lifestyles, and by developing new ideas about what is healthy on the basis of such subjects as nutrition, loneliness, environment, beliefs, nature and death. The individual and collaborative projects can take the form of scripted experiences, rituals, workshops, courses, performances, diagnostics, therapies, new images, prescriptions, consultations or interventions in existing healthcare practices. Personal body awareness is actively reinforced so that the experience forms a foundation for further work towards the subsequent levels of the study.
Course
Each semester is centred on a specific approach, which is reflected in the selection of guest lecturers and the theoretical focus, and responds to the individual research trajectories of the participating researchers.
– An anthropological/intercultural perspective (are individual differences properly identified?)
– A socio-political perspective (does everyone have the same access to health?)
– An institutional perspective (the practice and future of healthcare)
– An artistic–philosophical perspective: a study of the artist as a healer.
In general, the research in the Cure Master course focuses on deploying old strategies and developing new ones, along with tools and technologies that can contribute to a healthier living environment. This also necessitates defining what a healthy living environment is. How do social, physical and emotional environments affect individual health? And what can you do to improve that environment?
Work is conducted using a cross-disciplinary approach to art, science and healthcare. The research spectrum covers society as a whole and the healthy human as a social being. How can individualistic, free-thinking humans contribute to a broader and more diverse understanding of health?
In the Cure Master programme, the emphasis is not on making claims for any particular portrayal of mankind or therapeutic approach. But we do take into consideration that there are and always have been paradigms other than the prevailing Cartesian and high-tech view of a body and a mind that aspire to health. A broader, holistic and critical but also sensory and intuitive approach does justice to our rich cultural history and contemporary transcultural, international diversity.
Participants
We are seeking enthusiastic researchers from creative backgrounds who are not afraid to explore their vulnerabilities, who do not avoid painful issues, and are keen to continue developing their own professional practice in collaboration with other students. The participants will have already built up a professional practice in the visual arts, design, architecture, dance, music or theatre.
Course directors
Martijn Engelbregt (Circus Engelbregt; NL), Theo Tegelaers (TAAK; NL)
Tutors
Nils van Beek (TAAK; NL), Pavèl van Houten (Circus Engelbregt; NL)
Cure Master works with a variety of partners and guest lecturers from the broad spectrum of healthcare and art.
Please visit www.sandberg.nl for an online application.
