New Programme “Fluid Rhythms” — Summer School, LAB & Seminar

Amsterdam, Netherlands
Application deadline: July 1, 2018

Open Set is pleased to announce the Call for Applications for our new seven-month programme Fluid Rhythms: Urban Networks and Living Patterns. It’s a fresh round of Open Set, dedicated to exploring the potential of rhythm in the context of the Bijlmer, — one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Amsterdam, once envisioned as an urban utopia and (in)famous for being called the “city of the future”. We are looking forward to a new collaboration with the scientific consortium Designing Rhythm for Social Resilience (IS Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions). Together we investigate rhythm-led practices as common ground for research and artistic practice.

The programme o ers three different modules to join: a Summer School (15 – 25 Aug 2018), a practice-based LAB trajectory (Oct 2018–Feb 2019), with the parallel track Seminar ‘Rhythmanalysis in Context’. The applications are open for individual modules, or for the combination for all three.

Fluid Rhythms

“The crowd is a body, the body is a crowd” — Henri Lefebvre

Life in the city both repeats itself, and is constantly changing. Situated in the Bijlmer, one of Amsterdam’s most vibrant neighborhoods, Open Set launches a new programme, dedicated to exploring the potential of rhythm in the city. The movement of bodies in space; financial transactions; the circulation of sounds, cells, and smells; changing social constructs that divide and connect people; the flow of microscopic substances—such looping patterns generate dynamic complex structures, or ‘rhythms’, that shift over time. In the words of Caroline Nevejan: “where there is rhythm, there is life”. Understanding and working with such dynamic complexities requires careful attunement to the interactions between social, imagined, and physical realms.

We are looking for artists, designers and scholars to join this international and interdisciplinary programme that investigates the potential of rhythm-led practices as common ground for research and artistic work. This means both providing tools to perceive rhythms, as well as tools to tap into their generative potential. Rhythms occur on multiple levels at the same time, in the macro-level structures of the city, within the cells of bodies, and in the interconnections between mind, emotion, brain and heartbeats. By investigating the intertwined patterns of change, a world of subtle complexity starts to reveal itself to us in how humans, machines, animals and microbes interact and coexist.

Artistic interventions can take on any form, whether they are sound, food or image-based formats, performances or digital applications—offering the opportunity to discover new, invisible or forgotten rhythms, to find the points of friction and blind spots and to transform and harness the power for social and ecological change. Eventually, working with rhythms is a way of synchronizing our efforts in acting and living together in a network society.

Line-up of experts

Nadia Al Issa / Christidi—artist & writer Heather Barnett—artist, researcher & educator
Cascoland—network of designers & artists Dash N’ Dem — design action group
Anton Kats — artist
Uta Eisenreich —artist
Satinder P. Gill—researcher
Pei-Ying Lin—designer & artist
Caroline Nevejan—researcher
Thought Collider—design & research duo Noam Toran—artist
Angelo Vermeulen—artist & researcher
more to be announced soon

Open applications 2018

— Summer School: Aug 15–25, 2018

Application deadline: July 1
Intensive programme of workshops and lectures.

— Open Set LAB: Practicing Rhythm: Oct 19, 2018–Feb 23, 2019

Application deadline: Aug 20
Five-month programme with practice-based sessions held every two weeks in the Bijlmer, aiming at developing individual projects. The parallel trajectories will end in sync, with a shared public presentation and conference.

— Seminar: Rhythmanalysis in Context: Aug 13, 2018–Feb 9, 2019

Application deadline: July 1
Series of presentations, discussions and theoretical texts readings from different disciplines, aiming at exploring the key concepts and multidisciplinary practices related to rhythmanalysis.

See more: https://mailchi.mp/db560ab26b97/fluid-rhythms-new-programme-open-set?e=58ed74cb5d

Fluid Rhythms Flyer PDF.