Review Symposium Dare #5 Doing DisseminationApril 01 2010Review Symposium Dare #5 Doing Dissemination Interaction is the magic word / A meet & greet with Nicolas Bourriaud This year the annual DARE conference in Utrecht offered an interactive alternative for the traditional lecture series. The concept: six tables, six speakers, a six-course dinner and six discussions. ‘It feels like Plato’s Symposium’, Nicolas Bourriaud grins. Thirty students of the masterprogrammes at the Utrecht School of the Arts and thirty invited lecturers, speakers and artists who are seated at six beautifully laid tables, stare expectantly at the relational aesthetics-guru. And indeed this conference resembles a feast more than a lecture session. The new concept of the annual DARE (Dutch Artistic research event) conference is simple: six speakers give a lecture before every course of a six-course dinner. During the eating of the course the lecture is discussed at all tables, led by a moderator. This experiment is the interactive substitute for the one-way traffic that a regular lecture entails. And it was about time, say dean Henk Slager and programme leader Hein Eberson of MaHKU: ‘The students felt the traditional lectures were rather boring and there was hardly any contact with the speakers. Now students can do some networking, or in the case of Bourriaud, just ask for an autograph. And the results of these dinner conversations will serve as a foundation for further exhibitions and discussions on this theme.’ This last hope may be a little optimistic for this first edition. Even though the conference, titled Doing Dissemination, aimed to investigate the increase in the number of media and the blurring of boundaries between disciplines, the speakers referred to this theme indirectly only. And the table conversations, if at all audible in the noisy industrial space of the Utrechtse Toonkamer, did not go beyond the interests of the loudest participant or the question of what the speaker had meant to convey. Nicolas Bourriaud for example used an abstract story to make a call for more locally oriented activity as a way to inject humanity in a world that becomes ever more impersonal because of large phenomena such as economic crisis, globalization and supranational entities such as the EU. Speaker Remko Scha, Bik van der Pol and Jurgen Bey spoke about their own work but did not make a clear link with the theme. Media theorist Geert Lovink was the only speaker to connect the theme to his lecture productively. However the open question that concluded his contribution (‘How can art education keep up with the deluge of developments in the new media?’) was no match for the main course (which was delicious by the way) that was just being served. So traditional transfer of knowledge was limited. Yet in this setup the students had more of a chance to pursue their own interests than they would have had in a mandatory flood of lectures. In this case those interest were overwhelmingly centred on one person: the mysterious, charismatic Bourriaud was always surrounded by students. He must have felt like a popstar who allows the lucky winners a meet & greet for a day. Dean Slager looks back with satisfaction: ‘It was a dynamic and chaotic first time and interaction certainly arose. Next time we should possibly stick to one heavyweight speaker and follow up that contribution in the discussions. But one thing is clear: we will never return to boring series of lectures!’ With some necessary adjustments the diner rouler could indeed be a more focussed - and more fun – way of knowledge transfer. Moreover, one that is fun for the speakers: during a smoke break the philosopher, dressed in vague beige, casually asks the female students that surround him whether there is a party somewhere tonight. The answer spontaneously makes his beige suit sparkle. (This is a translation of the review that appeared on the website of Metropolis M) |
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News > Review Symposium Dare #5 Doing Dissemination
