Honours Lab

Do you like to go the extra mile, are you curious and do you want to be intellectually challenged? If so, the ArtEZ Honours Lab is for you. The Honours Lab offers various tracks throughout the year that you can follow alongside to your regular study course curriculum. These are diverse, in-depth courses in which you will engage with current theories, practices and forms of research.

What you will be doing

Deepen your artistic and other research skills in a multidisciplinary environment, choosing from a diverse range of challenging tracks (in English). In the Honours Lab, you will work with fellow students from all years and from other courses – immersing yourself in theoretical and practice-related topics and critical dialogue. Follow one or more tracks in addition to your regular course, spread flexibly over your studies, and earn certificates that you can use for follow-up courses.

With the tracks of the Honours Lab you will venture off the beaten track of your study course. You will challenge yourself intellectually and broaden your horizons. How? By entering into a dialogue with others (usually once a week), asking critical questions, exchanging ideas and looking for new insights and perspectives together. The course includes relevant texts and discussions, but also guest lectures, workshops and excursions. The assignments you will be given are aimed at conducting (artistic) research.

Curious about what other students say about the Honours Lab? Read this interview with Burja Podlesnik, a bachelor's student in Dance Art, in which she shares her experiences during the Honours Lab and how it helped her find her voice as an artist.

I feel that through exploring and discussing a variety of viewpoints over the past six months, I have come to better understand my own perception and understanding of the world.

Tracks

In the tracks of the Honours Lab, theoretical depth and artistic practice come together. You collaborate with fellow students from different years and programs. In a multidisciplinary environment, we collectively explore the components of the arts based on current art practice and discourse. Where do concepts and ideas intersect? Do the arts speak the same language? For each track you wish to take, you write a short letter of motivation. Based on the content of your letter and the composition of the group, you will be admitted or not.

Some tracks in 2023/2024 are:

In this Honours Lab track, you will delve into questions about how we can keep our feet on the ground at a time when the earth seems to be disappearing beneath us. To achieve this, we will explore and critically examine current concepts that avoid the anthropocentric and dualistic nature-culture ways of thinking deeply rooted in Western thought. Additionally, you will also explore what we can learn from non-Western and indigenous perspectives.
This track is organized in collaboration with the Fashion Professorship and explores various forms of solidarity (both within and outside of fashion). We find ourselves in unsustainable and inhumane systems, where living beings are often reduced to passive numbers, objects, production tools, or commodities. Additionally, we observe that human beings often place themselves at the center of everything. At the same time, we see a growing urgency to take more care for and with others. There are increasing calls for solidarity, stemming from a renewed awareness of interconnectedness and interdependence with each other and with nature.
The track explores three key themes related to solidarity: solidarity economies, intersectional solidarity, and interspecies solidarity. Together, we will examine what solidarity could or perhaps should entail.
This track is actually for all creators, artists, and performers who are interested in the ways in which 'play' can be used to overcome creative blocks. You make art because you love something and want to share it. But sometimes you seem stuck, nothing flows. Creating feels like work. And not in the good sense of the word. In the track 'Brave new worlds, play as resistance,' we explore methods of serious gaming, psychogeography, world-building, and tabletop role-playing games to use play to generate creative work and to discuss it with each other.
Self versus other, body versus environment, inside versus outside. In Western thought strict dualisms
have served as foundational concepts for centuries. But can the complexities of our current age still be adequately understood in terms of such oppositions? Or do escalating climate emergencies, colonial legacies, and capitalist exploitation signal the limitations of these entrenched lines of thinking? In the track Inside out and Outside in , a close collaboration between ArtEZ Honours Lab and interdisciplinary art organisation Sonic Acts, we challenge the fantasy of the ‘bounded human subject’ and explore more relational perspectives, that acknowledge the interconnectivities, interdependences and permeabilities that make up our world.

Registration and certificate for completed track(s)

The tracks of the Honours Lab are expressed in ECTS (2.5 or 5 or 7.5 ECTS) to indicate their size. These credits do not count towards your current course, but are valid after you graduate. If you have successfully completed an Honours track, it will be recorded in the student monitoring system (Osiris). If you have obtained a total of 30 ECTS, you will receive a certificate with your diploma in addition to the registration of the Honours tracks. Taking Honours tracks may be advantageous if you wish to gain admission to a follow-up course at a university or university of applied sciences.

Werkplaats theorie

Are you enthusiastic about Honours Lab? Werkplaats Theorie might also be interesting for you. Werkplaats Theorie is a workplace that strives to reduce the divide between theory (making) and creative work (making). It is a multidisciplinary place where you as a student can go with all kinds of questions, just like the other workplaces.

More information about Werkplaats Theorie

Practical

In order to avoid clashing with regular courses, the tracks mainly take place in the evenings and weekends. The tracks are offered in Arnhem, Zwolle and Enschede.
The Honours Lab is led and organised by the Theory in the Arts lectureship, which has close links to the other ArtEZ lectureships and external partners such as Radboud University Nijmegen.

If you would ou like to know more about the Honours Lab or have any questions, please contact us via e-mail: honourslab@artez.nl.

Completing the Honours Lab track Where is the Artist? has had an enormous impact on my perspective and approach to dance and art. I found the Honours Lab to be a great addition to my studies. The track refreshed my artistic practice with a lot of ideas and helped me develop a critical yet open mind. By doing so, it has enhanced my choreographic knowledge and artistic output.