Learning objectives, instruction methods & testing

During this minor, you learn to explore your own existential–artistic questions. You develop a personal area of focus and deepen your understanding of it through images, text and reflection. You learn to look, make and think like an artist, not from solutions, but from a sense of wonder.

Learning outcomes

• Experience, knowledge and insight into the theory and practice of art, philosophy and education, leading to the ability to formulate your own artistic or existential questions and to define relevant personal areas of attention.
• Applying the ability to formulate questions is demonstrated through conducting your own artistic–existential research within a self-defined area of focus.
• Communicating from an artistic–existential perspective, meaning communication through words, images and gestures — with head, hand and heart — appropriate to an artistically, musically and existentially oriented field of inquiry.
• Developing judgement in relation to your own ability to connect with and show yourself within the existential–artistic dimension as offered by the minor programme, and recognising its relevance and urgency for your own functioning and being.

Learning skills in this minor are equivalent to existential artistic skills: the skills needed to formulate a question that is relevant to your existence in the world (as a human being and as a professional), as is characteristic of art and artistic practice (artistic research, making art, experiencing art).

Teaching methods

Studio
As part of the minor, you are invited to make art yourself. Even if you have no experience with making art, you can participate. Everyone can make art: with integrity, experimentation and inquiry. You are taught by different artists who help you get started and encourage you to take responsibility for your process and the freedom within the programme. In the studio conversations, you practise clear communication, pushing boundaries and connecting to what matters to you.

Lectures
In addition to working in the studio, you will attend philosophy lectures. You will begin with an introduction to reason and rhetoric: argumentation and persuasion, logic and metaphysics, ethics and politics. Later, themes such as the body and beauty are introduced as a starting point for contemporary aesthetic thinking. You learn not only about art, but from art as well. By visiting museums together and discussing artworks, you connect with the existential dimension of art and respond artistically yourself.

During the minor, you will have access to a shared studio. There are also other teaching spaces and several workshops — such as printmaking, wood, metal and digital — which may be used depending on the phase of the minor and the work you are making.

Assessment

The minor is divided into three periods, each worth 10 credits. Assessment for each period is based on a conversation about your portfolio, which includes your logbook, attendance, presentations and your own research.

Required literature

Reflecties: 25 kunstwerken 24 filosofen – Onno Zijlstra & Wendy Janssen (Damon)
Letting Art Teach – Gert Biesta (ArtEZ Press)