Extra Academy - Tomer Damsky
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
Tomer Damsky is a sound artist, choral leader, and educator based in Barcelona, working in and between the worlds of early music, folk, metal, and electronic music. As a researcher, Damsky focuses on the intersections between historical sound studies, mystical literature, philosophies of listening, and the reconstruction of archive materials into new sonic formations.
Since 2011 Damsky has taught in interdisciplinary platforms worldwide. She is a professor of sound art and choral composition at the School of Visual Theater and the Musrara School of Art & Society (Jerusalem) and is currently a PhD researcher at Orpheus Institute, the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, and the Ruusbroec Institute for the History of Spirituality, collaborating with the CERCCA (Center for Aesthetics, Religion, and Contemporary Culture) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her research explores the sonic world of Carmelite nuns in 16th-century Spain and its translation into contemporary vocal music.
As an active musician, Damsky has created, performed, and designed sound for theater, dance, and film, collaborating with numerous choreographers, filmmakers, and directors. She is a self-taught conductor of vocal ensembles, the director of Barcelona-based Coro Del Gallinero, and the founder of the Quantum Choir, a vocal group performing extreme interpretations of ancient texts. As a composer, Damsky has collaborated with versatile artists and ensembles, among them Chœurs de Jeunes de la Monnaie (Belgium), and Ensemble Mazì (Italy). Damsky regularly tours and records as the frontwoman of the Belgian-based Oriental Doom project Atonia and industrial audiovisual trio Wackelkontakt. She released music on labels from Spain, France, Germany, and Belgium, and performed in theaters, galleries, clubs, and festivals in Zurich, Vienna, New York, Paris, Munich, Brussels, Athens, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Moscow, and more.
EXTRA ACADEMY - Nikolaus Hirsch
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the scheduled lecture by Hussein Shikha will be postponed. We are glad and thankful that Nikolaus Hirsch will be able to join us instead.
Nikolaus Hirsch is an architect, curator, editor, and educator, merging different formats and categories into a unique transdisciplinary spatial practice. Currently he is the artistic director of the architecture museum CIVA in Brussels where he co-curated exhibitions such as “Marcel Broodthaers – The Architect is Absent”, “Pre-Architectures”, “Style Congo” (with Sammy Baloji). Previously he was the Dean of Städelschule art academy and Director of the Portikus Kunsthalle in Frankfurt and has taught at the Architectural Association in London, the Institute for Applied Theater Studies at Giessen University, at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Columbia University in New York.
His work includes the Hinzert Document Center, Bockenheimer Depot Theater (with William Forsythe), unitednationsplaza (with Anton Vidokle), European Kunsthalle, Cybermohalla Hub (New-Delhi, with Raqs Media Collective), “Becoming Monument” in the contamined zone of Fukushima, and together with artist Rirkrit Tiravanija the pavilion “Do We Dream Under The Same Sky“ (Art Basel / LUMA Arles).
Hirsch has curated „ErsatzStadt“ at Volksbühne Berlin (2005), “Cultural Agencies” (Istanbul, 2009/10), numerous exhibitions at the Portikus, the Folly project for the Gwangju Biennale (2013), “Housing Question” at the HKW in Berlin (2015) and the German Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2021 in Venice.
He is the author of the books “On Boundaries” (2007), "Institution Building" (2009), “Cybermohalla Hub” (2012), and editor of the Critical Spatial Practice series at Sternberg Press and founder of e-flux architecture (https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/).
Extra Academy - Kate Briggs
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
image from the first SPTM 'winter school' hosted by Het Wilden Weten in Rotterdam, January 2025.
image credit: Kate Briggs
Join us Wednesday, March 12th, for a conversation with writer, translator, and educator Kate Briggs!
Kate will be in conversation with Kim Gorus, delving into her unique approach to writing and translation.
Kate Briggs was born in the UK and after many years in France is now based in the Netherlands, where she teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute and co-runs the writing, publishing and co-learning project Short Pieces That Move! She is the translator of works by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and, most recently, Hélène Bessette, whose 1953 novel Lili is Crying will be published in June 2025. Recent editing projects include: Silent Whale Letters by Ella Finer and Vibeke Mascini; Preparations, a special issue of Barthes Studies co-edited with Sunil Manghani and A Social Process of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time: Work on Conversation, co-edited with Laura Haynes. She is author of This Little Art, an essay on the practice of translation (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017), Entertaining Ideas (Ma Bibliothèque, 2018) and The Long Form, a novel (Fitzcarraldo Editions & Dorothy, a publishing project), which was shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize and The US Republic of Consciousness Prize. In 2021 she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize for Non-Fiction and in 2022-2023 was the inaugural practitioner-in-residence at Glasgow School of Art. Short Pieces That Move! publishes pamphlets of new writing by artists, writers and other beginners twice yearly, most recently: Dot Dash Fish by Arno Renken, I Did Not Want to Interrupt the Man Who Was Not the Optician: A Love Story by James Epps, O Delicate Roundabout! by Linus Bonduelle and The Weather and the Tides / Are Changeable Like People's Minds by Eothen Stearn.
Kim Gorus is a teacher and senior researcher at Sint Lucas Antwerpen. Her research focuses on narrative fiction strategies in the visual arts. Next to coaching master papers and PhD’s, she teaches Narrative Strategies in the master and Writing in the Advanced Master. She is editor-in-chief of Grounds, the new in-house research magazine of SLA.
EXTRA ACADEMY - Hana Miletić
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
image credits: Kristien DaemWe welcome Hana Miletić. With a background in documentary photography, and inspired by her family's long tradition of handwork, Hana Miletić has developed an artistic practice based primarily on the creation of hand-woven textile works. She uses the weaving process to reflect on the social and cultural realities in which she lives and works. Weaving, which requires practice, time, care and attention, allows her to formulate new relationships between work, thought and the emotional sphere, as well as to counteract certain economic and social conditions at play, such as acceleration, standardisation and transparency. Through her use of weaving, Hana reproduces the public gestures of maintenance and repair, showing buildings, infrastructures and objects in mutation, or in various states of transition.
Hana Miletić was born in Zagreb in 1982, today she lives and works in Brussels. Her most recent solo exhibitions were held at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2024); Kunsthalle Mainz (2022-23); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU), Rijeka (2022); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2022); Bergen Kunsthall (2021); La Loge, Brussels (2021); and WIELS, Brussels (2018). She has participated amongst others in the Dhaka Art Summit (2023), Manifesta 14 Prishtina (2022), and Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017). She was a resident at Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht (2014-15), and at the Albers Foundation’s cultural centre Thread in Sinthian (2019). In 2021, she was awarded the Bâloise Art Prize.
EXTRA ACADEMY - Jennifer Schmidt
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
Jennifer Schmidt is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, NY, who works with print media, graphic design, writing, and sound to create site-responsive installations, video, and performances that question the role of visual iconography and repetitive actions within a given environment.
She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Delaware; and is Professor of the Practice in Print at SMFA at Tufts University in Boston, MA.
Recent exhibitions and performances include: DeBouwput Galerie, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Miriam Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; 32. Biennial of Graphic Arts, International Centre for Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; International Print Center New York, NY; Open Engagement, Queens Museum, NY; BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; EFA Project Space, New York, NY; and Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA. Recent artist residencies include: Trix, Belgium; TYPA, Estonia; AGA Lab, Amsterdam; Frans Masereel Centre, Belgium; Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, MD; Kala Art Institute, CA; Skaftfell Center for Visual Art, Iceland; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency on Governor's Island, NY; Nida Art Colony, Lithuania; The Banff Centre, Canada; and The Morgan Conservatory, OH. Jennifer Schmidt is a two-time fellow in Printmaking /Drawing/Book Arts from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is a grant recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Artist Statement:
I am a multi-disciplinary artist, who works with print media, graphic design, writing, and sound to create site-specific installations, video, and performances that question the role of visual iconography and repetitive actions within a given environment.
My creative projects draw on the use of repeat patterning and aural/visual sampling as a means to create graphic images, while studying human behavior and modes of reasoning. Through my use of materials and process, I often employ “repetition” as an ideological concept. In this way, I am interested in ideas of abstraction: as it relates to form and the distillation of meaning within a system, mode or sample.
In my most recent work, I use the language of self-published multiples to explore ideas of authorship and assertion related to “sourcing” a historical subject. This involves a re-working of text, use of particular technology/equipment, the activation of process as idea, performance, and the revisiting and occupation of a particular site. The presentation and format of the project often relates to the subject in question, and how it adapts with time.
EXTRA ACADEMY - Ian Waelder: A Moth Goes Into a Podiatrist Office
Extra Academy is a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Sint Lucas Antwerp and Royal conservatory of Antwerp. They organize an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practices, reflection and research. Since September 2024 they hold there monthly meetings at Stadsform. The program is in English and open for non students also, no need to register!
Ian Waelder in 1996 next to the sculpture “Noia evadint-se” (1967) by Joan Miró. Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona
For his lecture at EXTRA ACADEMY, Ian Waelder will introduce his work through a selection of recent works and exhibitions. Together with thoughts on seeing space and exhibition making as a medium, the importance of the encounter, things that can happen in the studio, materiality, Phyllida Barlow, Bas Jan Ader, Norm Macdonald, and how an understanding of anarchy helped him to survive the many times non-sense of the art world.
Ian Waelder (b. 1993, Madrid) is a Spanish-American artist and publisher. He divides his time between Mallorca, where he grew up, and Frankfurt am Main, where he studied at the Städelschule (with Prof. Haegue Yang)
His practice explores memory and trace by isolating archival histories and language in relation to his biography, working through the poetics of the accident and the repurposing of the discarded. Waelder’s work unfolds through the mediums of photography, sculpture, exhibition, sound, and installation.
His work has been shown, among others, at diez, Liste Basel (2024), carlier | gebauer, Berlin (2024); Super Super Markt, Berlin (2024); Es Baluard Contemporary Art Museum, Palma (2023-2024); Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Rome (2023); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2023); Delfina Foundation, London (2023), ethall gallery, Barcelona (2022); Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden (2021); Centro Párraga, Murcia (2018); The Finish Museum of Photography, Helsinki (2018); La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2014). Since 2019, and in parallel to his artistic practice, he runs Printer Fault Press, a small-scale publishing house for books, editions and a variety of projects with other artists and writers.
Currently, he is a resident in WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art and is preparing an upcoming exhibition at carlier | gebauer in Berlin, opening at the start of 2025.