The Sandberg Instituut is the post-graduate school of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and offers master degrees in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture, Applied Arts, and Design. Since 2010, director Jurgen Bey has sought to align the Instituut with the dynamics of contemporary society by introducing a series of once-off, two-year temporary master programs. These ‘temporary’ programs challenge and influence the main departments in different ways, raising questions about pedagogy and the role of artistic research in addressing urgent societal issues.
The Sandberg Series published the research of each temporary program in book form at the end of their respective two year cycle. The book was both an outcome of the two years of research and a continuation of the topic beyond its positioning at the institute. The book series was co-published by Sternberg Press, and was widely distributed within a contemporary art context. Each new book developed on the language of the series, delving into the research topics and outcomes of the temporary programmes, and making these available to a broader public.
Reinventing Daily Life – Book #6
Does art possess the power to cause structural and meaningful changes in daily life? How can we inject our daily reality with the estranging, binding, and reflective qualities of theatre, performance art, and the visual arts? Using the artist’s desire to escape institutional space as a point of departure, the temporary master Reinventing Daily Life investigated the implications, the possibilities, and the limits of daily life as inspiration, as a place for presentation, and as a central material. This publication marks the completion and distillation of this inquiry. By means of a critical essay, correspondence with kindred spirits from the field, and visual impressions of the alumni’s work, this book reflects on the possibility to merge art and life, fiction and reality, and on the importance of this process for the future of artistic practice.
Edited by Thomas Spijkerman and Martijn de Rijk.
Radical Cut-Up: Nothing is Original – Book #5
Radical Cut-Up: Nothing Is Original investigates the cut-up as a contemporary mode of creativity and important global model of cultural production. The term cut-up serves as an open container for a long list of terms and actions that describe the combination and reassembly of existing motifs, fragments, images, and ideas from diverse and disconnected origins into newly synthesised entities. Refusing any disciplinary coherence, this book assembles texts from multifarious eras and origins. At the same time, the contributors share the urgency to question the dichotomy of original creation and derivative appropriation. In this way, the book itself is a cut-up of previously published essays and articles that in their proximity allow for multiple readings. It aims to translate the topic into a wider societal discourse to serve as both a source of inspiration and a platform for critical reflection.
Edited by Lukas Feireiss.
Materialisation in Art & Design – Book #4
When making things without prior knowledge of “the material,” how should such naive and potentially brutal behavior be interpreted, and what does it represent and generate? The temporary master Materialisation in Art & Design (MAD) investigated this question through multiple ways of working, on a permanent quest to (re)establish our relationship with “material” on both a personal and a societal level. This book refl ects on the experiences generated through the lens of MAD. With contributions from the program directors, MAD alumni, and experts in the field, it examines the position of the workshop within the art academy. By implication, it also reflects on the need for collective creative output in an increasingly individualised society, questioning the traditional frameworks of art and design education.
Edited by Herman Verkerk and Maurizio Montalti.
