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.