Title of the course: Imagined Site: Rural Contextual Practice
at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station in co-operation with the Bioart Society Residency  

Workshop period: July 18 - July 30, 2024

Period on site in KILPISJÄRVI: July 21 - July 28, 2024

Location: Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station
Käsivarrentie 14622, 99490 Kilpisjärvi, Finland

Level: MFA and advanced BFA

ECTS: 3-5

Number of participants: 15

Language of instruction: English

Eligible students:
MFA and advanced BFA students at schools within the KUNO network.
In order to participate in the course students need to be enrolled at their university at the time of the course. Exchange students are not allowed to take part.

Host institution: Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland

Partner institutions:

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Sweden

Application deadline:  24  March 2024

How to apply: please submit an online application. Selection results will be announced by 28 March 2024.

Course description: Imagined Site is a 12-day  intensive, site-responsive course that takes place at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station (in far northern Finland) and in the participants imaginings of the site. Imagined Site is the third edition of the KUNO intensive course Rural Contextual Practice. This edition is produced in collaboration with the BioArt Society Residency, that has been engaging the Kilpisjärvi station since 2008 through their Bioarctica platform. The course explores issues central to making site-responsive art in rural contexts.

Imagined Site brings together students in an advanced stage of their studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts along with select MFA students from other KUNO schools.

The course will contain presentations and introductions by research scientists, Kilpisjärvi staff and artist members of the BioArts Society, who have conducted art projects at the site. A series of collective exercises will be initiated by each of the facilitating artist teachers. In addition, there will be time for independent exploration of the site, project development, and collective meals. Students will also have an opportunity to share their past practice with the group through a series of short presentations. A temporary public project/proposal, accompanied by a work-in-progress presentation, will be done during the final days on site.

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework. 

More information on the course and practical arrangements.

Facilitators:
●     Daniel Peltz
Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts
Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/academy-of-fine-arts/
●      Dr. assoc. prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius  
Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
https://www.vda.lt/en/
●      Sissi Westerberg
Senior Lecturer, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab, Department of Craft
Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden https://www.konstfack.se/en/

Project partners:

Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia

Iceland University of the Arts, Iceland

Art Academy of Latvia, Latvia

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Level: BA & MA

ECTS: 5

Eligible students:

4 curatorial (and related fields) students at BA and MA level from each of the following institutions:

VDA, Vilnius

EKA, Tallinn

AAL, Riga

IUA, Reykjavik

Additionally four slots will be open to further students from across the KUNO network.

Application deadline: January 31, 2024

How to apply: please submit an online application by the deadline. The application must include a short (max 400 words) letter of intent answering the question – “Why is this workshop relevant to your areas of interest and curatorial practice?”

Location: Panemunė Castle, Lithuania

Lecturers: Taught by academic curatorial staff from VDA, EKA, AAL and IUA

Intensive course description:

Interaction between Culture and Nature II will be held in Panemunė Castle. This newly restored site is a part of Vilnius Academy of Arts and works as a museum-gallery and artist residence. The course will focus on the following question: how can we curate ethically in the present time by choosing means that support sustainable life and greener future? This might include new innovative ways of working, or re-thinking old habits, or both. Borrowing ideas from circular economy, teaming up with the needs of the natural environment, or finding ways to adjust the standard format of an exhibition are just some alternatives. All this can lead to questions around production, and the choices that a curator makes in terms of new commissions, using works that have already been made, revisiting already existing collections, zero-waste production, using local and organic (bio) materials or moving away from the physical permanent format. The course will expand the ideas and make visible the challenges of curating at the present time, arguing that curators can and perhaps must be cultural agents or communicators of the present environmental crisis. Therefore, taking into account the listed topical issues and topics, Panemunė Castle is a particularly interesting venue for developing new ideas, providing conceptual guidelines which could be implemented.

Objectives and outcome:

Course objectives are to give students: 1) experience of curatorial practice while working in small international teams 2) a case-study of exhibition-making and artist residence and gallery strategy concept guidelines within the context of the location (Panemunė Castle) 3) understanding the needs to adjust the format of an exhibition in the context of new climate conditions.

The main goal of the course is to create an exhibition on the topic of Interaction between Culture and Nature in small teams composed by students at different art academies and to provide Panemunė Castle’s artist residence and gallery strategy concept guidelines. 

Panemunė Castle and its garden is not an easy location for curatorial practices. Being a highest national-level architectural monument site and with its historical English garden (14,5 ha) which are a part of the wider regional park, creates a number of restrictions which must be taken into consideration before planning and during the implementation of an art event. Therefore, we have no doubt that this intensive course, especially in this thought-provoking but also recreational space, will be an excellent platform for work and discussions. The students will work closely within this cultural and natural environment and troubleshoot the issues of curating in a collective think tank alongside fellow students, lecturers, and curators from VDA, IUA, EKA and AAL. This critical discussion and research will help students to form their future projects and establish a collective one.

The main outcome of the course is a detailed proposal of the exhibition in a written form, which includes the title, the concept, the form of exhibition, the list of selected artists/art projects, and the calculation of financial needs.

The course is based on learning by doing. It will include individual re-search for information; teamwork during the course: ‘mind mapping’, on-site discussions, lectures, the consolidation of working group proposals to the joint project of an exhibition, and writing individual reports after the course.

About the location:

The Interaction between Culture and Nature II will be held in Panemunė Castle. This newly restored site is a part of Vilnius Academy of Arts and works as a museum-gallery and artist residence. Panemunė Castle is unique for its remarkable size and its surviving mural paintings that dates back to the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The institution regularly hosts symposiums, exhibitions, debates, lectures and seminars conveying reflective thinking in step with current times and raising current issues. 

http://www.panemunespilis.lt/?lang=en 

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework.

Contact for enquiries: lina.koseleva@vda.lt

LOCATION: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

LEVEL: MFA and advanced BFA

ECTS: 6

Number of participants: 15

Language of instruction: English

Eligible students:

-          4 students at each of the following institutions:

Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland

Konstfack University College of Art, Craft and Design, Sweden

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

-          additionally, 3 slots will be open to students across the KUNO network

Application deadline:  19  March 2023

How to apply: please submit an online application. Selection results will be announced by 3 April 2023.

Course description: This 10-day intensive course aims to open a safe space for sharing your artistic positions, and discussing the ways you make and relate to society as an artist. Teachers, staff, administrators, peers and the academy's resources have been ‘taking care’ of you for many years. How do you carry forward this legacy of care into the communities you enter and create?

 The course will convene in the remote location of an historical artist colony site for 10 days of making, talking, walking, working, not working and being shy. The workshop will be hosted by Nida Art Colony (NAC) - part of Vilnius Academy of Arts. NAC has been running since 2011 as a residency centre and experimental faculty where various pedagogic modes are tested and (re)discovered.

 Among other questions sincerity, shyness, responsibility, care, craft and other qualities of artistic work will be discussed and performed. Artistic work will be put here as the central focus and the time of the course will be both deliberately experienced, counted, wasted and reflected.

 The course opens with a series of rituals/exercises aimed at helping the group to become immersed in the site and surroundings of the Nida Art Colony. Moreover, during the first part of the course you will be served, both with content and catering, in order to allow you to be devoted only to ‘artist work’. The meeting in the rural location of the Nida Art Colony not only discusses and examines (artist) work but also performs it. Each activity is measured by the working time involved, which varies from 8 to 24 hours per day. This gives an opportunity to experience various durational modes of performed labour. 

 The tutors will be responsible for 1-2 days in the programme and will propose a way of working and being together that the group will inhabit and consider. At the end of the course we will have an in-depth period of reflection on the time spent together, as well as the methods used in the course.

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework. 

More information on the course.

PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

RT transportation to NAC in Nida will be provided for all participants from the sponsoring academies (and for all others there is travel funding through mobility grants)

Housing will be provided for the duration of the course at NAC.

5-6 days catering is provided by the chef-in-the-residency, the catering for the remaining 4-5 days is co-organised (cooking and cleaning) by course participants working in small groups (ingredients/supplies will to be provided by the host).

TUTORS

Daniel Peltz: Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/academy-of-fine-arts/
Dr. Prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius: Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
https://www.vda.lt/en/art-and-research/art-and-research-department/vytautas-michelkevicius
Dr. Vitalij Cerviakov: artist, doctor of arts, postdoctoral fellow in Art Research Institute at  Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania, https://vitaleus.com/pass/
Sissi Westerberg: Senior Lecturer, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab, Department of Craft. Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.konstfack.se/en/
David Larsson: visual artist. Stockholm, Sweden

The course is designed with a help of previous participants and MA students to ensure horizontal planning and wellbeing of all the participants

 Facilitator Gailė Cijūnaitytė

HOST INSTITUTION

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

PARTNER INSTITUTIONS:

Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland

Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Sweden

Border as a place: collisions in time is a course which focuses on investigating and being immersed in sites in the environment where traces of time mark the surroundings. The course is a five day process where participants engage in field work individually and in groups at different places in Iceland. 

Hosted by the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA) this couse is a collaboration between the IUA, Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA), Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and Oslo National Academy of Arts (KHiO). Teachers in the course come from across these institutions along with guests teachers.

 In the five day course, participants will investigate through walks and exchange of experience several locations which embody the relationship between human and geological time scales. The focus is on process, being in contact with the environment through observations, listening and focusing on how time is present in the natural and built environment through traces, structures, the tangible and invisible elements around us. 

Participants will visit different locations in the vicinity of Reykjavik along with a longer distance trip to Iceland‘s south east region where Vatnajökull glacier is a predominent marker of the environment and a container of deep time in the information stored in the ice.

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework.

 Level: Bachelor&Master

Participating countries: Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway

Number of students: 20

Number of teachers: 4

Number of ECTS: 3

Duration in days: 5

Workshop dates: 28 August - 1 September 2023

Eligible students:
4 fine art (and related fields) students from BA and MA levels at each of the following institutions:

VDA, Vilnius

EKA, Tallinn

KHiO, Oslo

IUA, Reykjavik

 Additionally, 4 slots will be open across the KUNO network.

 How to apply: please submit an online application.

Application deadline: 20.04.2023

More information

Project partners:

Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia

Iceland University of the Arts, Iceland

Art Academy of Latvia, Latvia

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

Level: BA & MA

ECTS: 5

Eligible students:

4 curatorial (and related fields) students at BA and MA level from each of the following institutions:

VAA, Vilnius

EKA, Tallinn

AAL, Riga

IUA, Reykjavik

Additionally four slots will be open to further students from across the KUNO network.

Application deadline: June 30, 2022

How to apply: please submit an online application by the deadline. The application must include a short (max 400 words) letter of intent answering the question – “Why is this workshop relevant to your areas of interest and curatorial practice?”

Location: Nida Art Colony, Lithuania

Lecturers: Taught by academic curatorial staff from VAA, EKA, AAL and IUA

Intensive course description:

Interaction between Culture and Nature will focus on the following question: how can we curate ethically in the present time by choosing means that support sustainable life and greener future? This might include new innovative ways of working, or re-thinking old habits, or both. Borrowing ideas from circular economy, teaming up with the needs of the natural environment, or finding ways to adjust the standard format of an exhibition are just some alternatives. All this can lead to questions around production, and the choices that a curator makes in terms of new commissions, using works that have already been made, revisiting already existing collections, zero-waste production, using local and organic (bio) materials or moving away from the physical permanent format. The course will expand the ideas and make visible the challenges of curating at the present time, arguing that curators can and perhaps must be cultural agents or communicators of the present environmental crisis.

Objectives and outcome:

Course objectives are to give students: 1) experience of curatorial practice while working in small international teams 2) a case-study of exhibition-making within the context of the location (Nida Art Colony) 3) understanding the needs to adjust the format of an exhibition in the context of new climate conditions.

The main goal of the course is to create an exhibition on the topic of Interaction between Culture and Nature in small teams composed by students at different art academies.

Nida Art Colony serves as a perfect location for the course, allowing students to work closely with the natural environment and troubleshoot the issues of curating in a collective think tank alongside fellow students, lecturers, and curators from VAA, IUA, EKA and AAL. This critical discussion and research will help students to form their future projects and establish a collective one.

The main outcome of the course is a detailed proposal of the exhibition in a written form, which includes the title, the concept, the form of exhibition, the list of selected artists/art projects, and the calculation of financial needs.

The course is based on learning by doing. It will include individual re-search for information; teamwork during the course: ‘mind mapping’, on-site discussions, lectures, the consolidation of working group proposals to the joint project of an exhibition, and writing individual reports after the course.

About the location:

This intensive course will take place at the Nida Art Colony (NAC). NAC is a resourceful platform, which initiates art, education and research projects, and aims at a creative confluence of academic and professional education, artistic and scientific practice. It serves as a perfect place to discuss the questions of sustainability, to dialogue between culture and nature, and for collaborations between artists or curators and local residents. Developing projects at NAC will help students to understand the sensitive approach to a local environment, and discuss the need to rethink curatorial practice. Students will be introduced to NAC staff and projects run by NAC, which are related to the specificities of local natural, cultural, and institutional contexts.

https://nidacolony.lt/

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework.

Contact for enquiries: lina.koseleva@vda.lt

LOCATION: Rejmyre, Sweden

LEVEL: MFA

ECTS: 6

Number of participants: 15

Eligible students:

-          4 MFA students at each of the following institutions:

Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland

Konstfack University College of Art, Craft and Design, Sweden

Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

-          additionally, 3 slots will be open to students across the KUNO network

Everything you want was already here  is a two-week intensive, site-responsive course that takes place in the rural, glass factory town of Rejmyre, Sweden and is hosted by the artist-run organization Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies. Participants will explore issues central to making site-responsive art in rural contexts and create an artwork in response to the site of the course.

The course will bring together MA students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm and the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts along with select MA students from other KUNO schools.

This transdisciplinary course explores contextually responsive art practice with a specific focus on the rural. The dominance of the urban in artistic discourses and the marginalization of the rural, as an often invisible space of industrial production and resource extraction, combine to form a strong argument for focusing our attention, within the space of master-level art and craft education, on developing our conceptions of the rural and rural publics and our capacity to make complex works within and about rural contexts.

Our chosen theme, Everything you want was already here, is an opportunity to explore conceptions of abundance and lack in our respective approaches to art, craft and making. Rural spaces have historically attracted artists seeking a respite, or a near total escape, from the implicitly urban art worlds. All of the participants in this space are currently enrolled in art academies in different large cities of Europe. These urban areas, and the academies themselves, are places of abundance in many ways, in terms of the resources and opportunities they present. Those of us who inhabit these urban institutional art spaces also come to recognize that, in all this seeming abundance, there is also a great deal of lack (over regulated time and space, disconnection from the natural world/the source of the materials we consume and the people who produce them). Rural areas in turn present different forms of abundance and lack, real and imagined (‘open’ space, decreased regulation, different conceptions of time, social disconnection etc.).

The course is an opportunity for students pursuing master’s degrees in fine and craft arts as well as media art, to meet and engage in a site-responsive exploration around these issues, through their own existing practices.

COURSE COMPONENTS

The activities and methods of the course include:

-          guided tours and independent exploration of the site, introduction to industrial forestry, glass and iron industries, local crafts and various constituencies in the community

-          a series of collective exercises initiated by each of the facilitating artist teachers

-          collective meals

-          previous work presentations by each participant

-          time for project development

-          a final temporary public project accompanied by a work-in-progress presentation.

 Among the methods explored, some that are specific to the rural will be highlighted including: walking, orientation, foraging, forest bathing (shinrin-yoku), sited research, "indigineous" knowledges, daily rituals and working together (talka).

NOTE: While participants are encouraged to respond to the context of the active glass factory town of Rejmyre, the course does not have facilities for making in glass.

PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

For students from the host and partner academies, international travel and local travel to and from the site are covered through the KUNO intensive course support. Accepted students from other academies can apply for travel support from KUNO. Housing and some meals during the workshop are covered for all participants and there is no course fee. Housing will be in double and triple rooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms in Rejmyre’s renovated, historic school building. Studio and meeting spaces will be in historic buildings formerly used by the glass factory.

APPLICATION

You are welcome to submit an online application by 06/03/2022. Apply with a brief statement of interest, explaining why you would like to take part of the course and how it relates to your existing practice or new possible directions that you would like to explore. Include link to online portfolio or website.

NOTE: Please ensure you can attend the entire course dates prior to applying. In order to maintain a strong group within this intensive study period, it is not possible to attend only part of the course, to arrive late or to depart early.

FACILITATORS

• Daniel Peltz

Professor of Site and Situation Specific Practice, Department of Time and Space Arts

Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland

https://www.uniarts.fi/en/units/academy-of-fine-arts/

•  Dr. assoc. prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius

Head of Photography, Animation and Media Art Department and Head of Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

https://www.vda.lt/en/

•  Vitalij Cerviakov, Doctoral Candidate, artist

Doctoral Programme in Fine Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

•  Sissi Westerberg

Senior Lecturer, Smycke & Corpus: Ädellab, Department of Craft

Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, Stockholm, Sweden

https://www.konstfack.se/en/

•  David Larsson, visual artist

Stockholm, Sweden

HOST INSTITUTION

Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki

PARTNER INSTITUTIONS:

Vilnius Academy of Arts

Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design

Border as a place is a workshop which focuses on borderlands and peripheries as manifest in built, natural, political and imagined spaces. The workshop will take place at Mizarai Practice and Recreation Centre in Lithuania, a residency belonging to the Vilnius Academy of Arts, close to the borders with Poland and Belarus. The week long workshop will bring students from across the KUNO network together where they will work in groups and individually, exploring topics that emerge from questions of what borders are and how they manifest in political realities, cultural history and in a variety of physical and intangible ways in spaces, bodies and narratives. The workshop will revolve around joint seminars, excursions and discussions with the possibility of realizing a process-focused exhibition at the end of the workshop. Students will be asked to present their work at the beginning of the workshop.

The workshop is funded under the Nordplus/KUNO framework.

 Level: Bachelor&Master

Participating countries: Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway

Number of students: 25

Number of teachers: 6

Number of ECTS: 3

Duration in days: 7

Workshop dates: 14-20 March 2022 (7 days)

Eligible students:
5 fine art (and related fields) students from BA and MA levels at each of the following institutions:

 VAA, Vilnius

EKA, Tallinn

KHiO, Oslo

IUA, Reykjavik

 Additionally, 5 slots will be open across the KUNO network.

 How to apply: please submit an online application. The application must include a link to your portfolio and a short (max 400 words) letter of intention answering the question - Why is this workshop´s theme and context relevant to your work or process?

Application deadline: 04.02.2022

More information