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Content

FAST45 – The art school in a posthuman era consists of three lectures, one workshop, a laboratory (i.e., walking the ontological turn), and a team assignment. It introduces speculative adventures to explore the art school from a posthuman perspective. 

FAST45 – The art school in a posthuman era centres around speculative work. A deep dive into the concept of posthumanism will serve as a lead-up to a workshop, a laboratory and a team assignment. The lectures introduce food for thought (e.g., visions, theories, methods, skills, stories, and examples). The workshop, the laboratory, and the team assignment aim to cross the culture-nature divide. Students will explore ways of posthuman thinking to constitute a more sustainable art school. The course digs into biomimicry (i.e., the practice of making (educational) designs copying natural processes). It reveals conjectural knowledge to rethink practices which are not (or no longer) sustainable in the art school. The output of the lectures, workshop and laboratory will bring input for a team assignment (see section study materials).

In this course, students will develop their posthuman literacy. More specifically, the course will zoom in on the following topics, themes and methodologies:

• What is the posthuman condition?
• What if the ontological turn becomes a transformative tool for art schools?
• What constitutes the critical zone of the art school?
• A hands-on overview of speculative methods and tools
• Reflection on an (own) artistic or design practice from a posthuman perspective

Course material

• Text materials, online tutorials and audio-visual materials
• A brief to introduce and document the team assignment
• A brief to introduce and document the reflective paper assignment

Format: more information

The course consists of a mix of complementary learning activities (students will receive the dates and exact brief for all learning activities at the start of the course).

• Lectures (0,6 ECTS): Two inspirational talks developing more profound insight into the posthuman condition, ontological turn, and the concept of critical zone  (study load on campus: 9 hours/ study load preparatory reading task: 6 hours).
• Workshop (0,2 ECTS): A workshop to develop speculative cartographies of the art school across a posthuman perspective (study load on campus: 6 hours).
• Laboratory (0,2 ECTS). A speculative performance (walking the ontological turn) in which students explore the art school’s critical zone (study load on campus: 6 hours).
• Team Assignment (1,8 ECTS): Taking inspiration from the lectures, the workshop, and the laboratory, students will inventory formats for the role of the arts (artists) and design (designers) in a posthuman era. Students will work in teams of 3 to 5 students. Each team will create three scenarios (one plausible scenario, one desired scenario, and one extremely imaginary scenario) to present a reconstitution of the art school beyond the nature-culture divide. The students will present the scenarios in an artistic form that they can choose freely (e.g., a comic book, a theatre play, a paper, a song, a trailer for a new tv series, a podcast, a game world) (study load teamwork per student: 45 hours).
• Personal Reflection Paper (0,2 ECTS): An individual writing task to reflect on what insights you will take from the course in your future career as a student, designer, or artist. (800-1000 words) (study load: 8 hours).