AT THE CORE
Education is at the core of the Rotterdam Arts and Sciences Lab. It started with the Dual Degree programme that was first offered in 2016. The Dual Degree started the first year with around 15 students and welcomed this year (2020) 50 new students. This is only a part of the students that actually applied for the Dual Degree. Due to a severe selection procedure, both at the arts institutes and at the Erasmus University, only a limited number of students can take part in this study. On top of that, a substantial number of Dual Degree students asked for more cross-pollination in arts and sciences, as that is how they envision the future of RASL. To address this request a transdisciplinary minor (30EC) was developed.
Next to the request of students, societal urgency is one of the driving forces of the minor. As our world is changing rapidly society rightfully demands educators who are able to transcend the (real and unreal) boundaries of education as we know this today. Complex social concerns, such as climate crises, shifting political landscapes, ecological degradation, changing economic models, migration, and growing inequalities demand adaptability and future thinking.
In 2018 the RASL team received a Comenius Leadership Grant for the proposal “RASL Composition”. With this project we research how we can develop, offer and assess transdisciplinary education which contributes to making students societal ‘game-changers’. This project develops a Transdisciplinary Teacher Programme and a RASL Transdisciplinary Minor ‘Reimagining tomorrow through Arts and Sciences’ for students. Within this project we focus on the cross-pollination between arts and sciences and the individual within the collective. By setting up an accompanying research and evaluation cycle the dissemination of our insights and lessons learned is ensured.
The experience of the minor combined with the strong (institutional) basis offered through the Dual Degree programme offers the ideal situation to further develop the educational portfolio of RASL. The students we educate need to be able to navigate in an inspirational way amidst uncertainties on the labour market.
THE MINOR
How can we learn to approach the complex issues of the 21st century (such as the waste problem, climate crisis, global poverty, etc.)? These issues are of such a different size, complexity and scale, that dealing with them has to contend with methods, attitudes and expertise that transcend disciplinary confinements. Alternative futures have to be imagined and visualized, and this can only be achieved through the combination and validation of different knowledges (societal, artistic, academic), through which we can find new ways of researching, thinking and making. In the RASL minor “Re-Imagining Tomorrow through Arts and Sciences”, we depart from the notion of transdisciplinarity as a means to identify, question and disrupt existing boundaries and binaries, among which, but not restricted to, the boundaries that separate artistic and scientific disciplines. We do not teach one specific way of doing collaborative, transdisciplinary research. Instead, we give students the space, examples, insights and tools to develop their own specific approach to collaborating in a transdisciplinary setting, while continuously reflecting on the process.
During the minor, students work in a team consisting of students from Codarts, WdkA and Erasmus University on a self-selected matter of concern in the framework of “re-imagining tomorrow through arts and sciences”. Participating students come from a wide variety of studies such as audiovisual design, composition, jazz vocals, fashion design, arts and culture studies, political science, psychology, industrial design engineering, history and philosophy. Through engagement with practices of re-imagining tomorrow (in the form of examples, exercises and their own project), we situate the minor in a broader societal context of ecological devastation and historically shaped injustices, which demand the imagining of alternative futures. The artistic and scholarly practices of our guest teachers work reflect this context, with guests from previous years including architect Ronald Rael, sound artist Jana Winderen, director Nadine Valcin and dendrochronologist Valerie Trouet – all of whom work in the interstices between disciplines. During classes as well as in their own projects, students engage with a range of different activities, such as field research, practice-led workshops, screenings, close-listening and close-reading sessions.
Practices of re-imagining tomorrow make us aware that traditional, disciplinary practices of knowing and doing are always already imaginative, as they create and reinforce specific ways of experiencing and knowing the world. By addressing and experiencing these worldmaking capabilities of current and future practices, we can start to work towards futures that are more socially and ecologically just. In their projects, students are given the opportunity and space to consider what these futures might look like and how we can start enacting them in the present.
During the minor, students work in a team consisting of students from Codarts, WdkA and Erasmus University on a self-selected matter of concern in the framework of “re-imagining tomorrow through arts and sciences”. Participating students come from a wide variety of studies such as audiovisual design, composition, jazz vocals, fashion design, arts and culture studies, political science, psychology, industrial design engineering, history and philosophy. Through engagement with practices of re-imagining tomorrow (in the form of examples, exercises and their own project), we situate the minor in a broader societal context of ecological devastation and historically shaped injustices, which demand the imagining of alternative futures. The artistic and scholarly practices of our guest teachers work reflect this context, with guests from previous years including architect Ronald Rael, sound artist Jana Winderen, director Nadine Valcin and dendrochronologist Valerie Trouet – all of whom work in the interstices between disciplines. During classes as well as in their own projects, students engage with a range of different activities, such as field research, practice-led workshops, screenings, close-listening and close-reading sessions.
Practices of re-imagining tomorrow make us aware that traditional, disciplinary practices of knowing and doing are always already imaginative, as they create and reinforce specific ways of experiencing and knowing the world. By addressing and experiencing these worldmaking capabilities of current and future practices, we can start to work towards futures that are more socially and ecologically just. In their projects, students are given the opportunity and space to consider what these futures might look like and how we can start enacting them in the present.
RASL Minor 2020 - Collaborative hybrid learning across arts and sciences
Impression of the RASL minor 2020 student experience, made by minor students Laila Fantozzi, Julia Gat and Francesca Giunta.Developing the RASL Minor - Creating Transdisciplinary Education Across Arts & Sciences
In this short documentary, RASL educators present their visions on transdisciplinary education across and beyond arts and sciences.FROM MINOR STUDENTS (2020)
The core of the RASL minor is the collaborative, transdisciplinary project, in which the arts and sciences are combined to explore a matter of concern through which students re-imagine tomorrow. In the first part of the minor, students collaborate intensively in self-selected teams of 6 or 7 students from the three participating institutions, and as a team decide and define their topic. In the second part, students depart from an individual concern, and combine different disciplines, knowledges and methods to develop imaginative, critical and speculative approaches. The main aim of the minor is learning how and what it means to collaborate in a transdisciplinary manner across arts and sciences, and therefore the emphasis is just as much on the transdisciplinary process as on the outcome(s) of the project. We also take into account how students facilitate collaboration, position themselves as researchers and practitioners, justify their choices, how they approach the project and how they make things public. All projects are framed by four aspects of transdisciplinarity in a RASL context: collaboration across arts and sciences, equality of knowledge, engagement and making public(s) (click here for more info on the pedagogical approach and an elaboration on the aspects of transdisciplinarity).
While covering a wide variety of topics, collaborative approaches and methods, the emphasis on process and reflection was key to all projects. All projects processes shared an emphasis on taking into account the perspective of the students, as well as reflecting critically on their own positionality in relation to the concern they researched. An awareness of scale was developed - while complex societal issues are ungraspable by nature, we always engage with them in some way or another on a local and personal level. At the same time, students had to develop different ways to engage with their topic, which would be accessible to all members of the team. This also led to different ways of making public (some of) their results, which creates new audiences in the process. One of the most important aspects of the process was the commitment to work with tensions and conflict, instead of avoiding or ignoring them. All of the above sprung from this “staying with the trouble” and finding ways to remain with the tension instead of attempting to solve it.
Click on a project below for more information about each project:
While covering a wide variety of topics, collaborative approaches and methods, the emphasis on process and reflection was key to all projects. All projects processes shared an emphasis on taking into account the perspective of the students, as well as reflecting critically on their own positionality in relation to the concern they researched. An awareness of scale was developed - while complex societal issues are ungraspable by nature, we always engage with them in some way or another on a local and personal level. At the same time, students had to develop different ways to engage with their topic, which would be accessible to all members of the team. This also led to different ways of making public (some of) their results, which creates new audiences in the process. One of the most important aspects of the process was the commitment to work with tensions and conflict, instead of avoiding or ignoring them. All of the above sprung from this “staying with the trouble” and finding ways to remain with the tension instead of attempting to solve it.
Click on a project below for more information about each project:
MiMort’s mission was to provide exercises, sources, podcasts and other material to break the taboo around death and to open up a space for learning, sharing and personal grief.
Machine bias fed by human input runs through the technology of the Smart Cities. Striving to re-imagine the “Smart City” of Rotterdam, this group focused specifically on Afrikaanderwijk, a multicultural neighbourhood in the south of the city.
This group started with an interest in critically questioning the “banking system” of education, and reclaimed the notion of “childish” to explore how children’s imagination can help us think differently, through collective rituals and conversations with children.
This project was based around re-discovering our connection to nature, making theory accessible outside of the realm of the university and trying to make visible urban gardening initiatives taking place in the city of Rotterdam. The group eventually combined the artistic, the communal and the ecological in a zine that made ecological thought accessible to the general Rotterdam public.
As a collective, Dopamine Democracy explored the influences and effects of social media on the individual as well as on society, created and participated in “Detox Events”, and made a website with a podcast and small archive on the effects of social media taking over our lives.
Following perspectives are based on conversations with RASL’s Dual Degree and minor students, who share their education and research experiences.
ASIM is a talented composer whose research interests lay in perceptions of sound. He is a third-year Codarts student in classical composition and is participating in the RASL minor this year. In this minor, he explores what it means to collaborate transdisciplinarily on topics such as intersectionality, smart cities and surveillance.
As a third-year EUC student in Political Science, CHIARA is very engaged with topics such as the environment, human-nonhuman relations and decolonisation. She is currently enrolled in the RASL minor and is working on the topic of ecology from both academic and artistic perspectives.
CLAIRE TIO is an alumna of Erasmus University College (EUC) where she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. In 2019-2020, she followed the RASL minor and explored ways of blurring the divide between theory and practice. This year, CLAIRE continues to focus on social issues across and beyond the disciplines in the Master Engaging Public Issues at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR).
During the RASL minor Re-imagining tomorrow through Arts and Sciences in 2019-2020, YORI ETTEMA (WdKA Product Design), JULIET ULEHAKE (WdKA Graphic Design), JULIA DE ROO (EUR Arts and Culture Studies) and TOSCA VAN HECK (WdKA Lifestyle and Transformation Design) formed the collective Entangled Brains. Together, they explored a new attitude to deal with wicked problems that they named “conturbative”.
Dual Degree student FLORIEKE DE GEUS studies Jazz Vocals at Codarts and Arts and Culture Studies (IBACS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). She is currently in her fourth year and is following the RASL minor where she is exploring ways to combine her artistic and academic backgrounds to address social problems.
As a fifth-year Dual Degree student, who is also enrolled in the minor this year, GABIJA is a familiar face in the RASL community. She combines Graphic Design at Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA) with her studies in International Relations and Politics at Erasmus University College (EUC). GABIJA is especially passionate about engaging with social issues and developing ways to visualize them through her projects and practices.
How can we connect to children in new ways and what can we learn from them? We spoke to a group of RASL minor students who are working with such questions by exploring rituals, dreams and the imagination. In this interview, they talk about collaborating transdisciplinarily, their project and future perspectives.
Dual Degree student LISA VELEMA studies Fine Art at Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA) and Arts and Culture Studies (IBACS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). She is currently in her fourth year and is working on an artistic research project about gentrification in the neighbourhood of Coolhaven in Rotterdam.
Willem de Kooning’s Product Design alumna MAAIKE VAN PAPEVELD participated in the RASL minor Re-imagining tomorrow through Arts and Sciences in the academic year of 2019-2020. As a designer, she is interested in developing new (design) methodologies through which to address complex social issues.
Dual Degree student MAËL VAN DER GIESEN studies Spatial Design at Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA) and Arts and Culture Studies (IBACS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He is currently in his third year and is working on an artistic research project on the housing crisis in Rotterdam.
Dual Degree student RUI DE BOER studies Fine Art at Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA) and Arts and Culture Studies (IBACS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He is currently in his second year and is working on a research project about toxic masculinity.
As a third-year Dual Degree student, TIM seeks to combine his major in Molecular Biology at Erasmus University College (EUC) with his passion for Brazilian music and vocals at Codarts. Although these disciplines may appear unrelated, Tim believes the combination of academic and artistic education provides him with a broad skillset, a large network and a better understanding of his (future) practices.