Call for Applications
Khoj Contemporary Art Intensive
In collaboration with the Royal Institute of Art, Sweden

The Khoj Contemporary Art Intensive is a focused, rigorous, hands-on learning program being designed in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, Sweden. The nine-day course will be held from December 1-9, 2012 in New Delhi, India. The taught modules will cover key developments in contemporary art theory and criticism that are currently under-represented or overlooked in the curricula of fine art and art history departments across India. The course is aimed at young curators, writers/critics, practicing artists and other art professionals with varying educational backgrounds and work experience to engage with developments in international contemporary art (broadly post-1968, specifically post-1989) and associated theory.
Participants will be required to make formal and informal presentations and actively contribute to discussions by drawing on their previous knowledge, experiences and practices, as well as through their
understanding of pre-assigned readings.
The Intensive will consist of four taught modules (read below for details), led by a group of international experts (academics and practitioners) from the fields of performance, institutional critique, media studies and conceptual art. Teaching will be supplemented with a series of guest lectures and studio/gallery visits around New Delhi in an attempt to generate some discussion around developments in art production, curation and critique in contemporary India.
The total cost of the Intensive, including course fees, boarding and lodging in New Delhi (on a twin-sharing basis) and the cost of study materials amounts to Rs. 10,000 per head. Generous scholarships are available to subsidize or entirely eliminate this cost for a number of participants. In addition, a limited number of travel stipends will also be offered to those from outside New Delhi.
To apply for the program, please send the following documents by email to applications@khojworkshop.org

A one-page statement with your reasons for wanting to participate in this program
A detailed curriculum vitae listing your previous education and recent work experience
A writing sample of approximately 500 words (and no more than 1000 words)

To be considered for a scholarship you must submit an additional essay(up to 500 words) in which you discuss your specific career goals and detail how a program like this will benefit you.

The deadline for receipt of all applications is Wednesday, August 22, 2012.
The following modules are currently being discussed and customized for this year’s Intensive:
1)The Three phases of Institutional Critique and Beyond?
This module introduces students to First, Second and Third Wave Institutional Critique (IC) as a significant art historical trajectory emerging after the two world wars of last century. Artistic practices and theoretical discourses from each of the three phases of IC will be taught, with a focus on students being able to identify and write or speak knowledgeably about IC and its relation to contemporary artistic
practices and criticisms.

The module also provides a historical mapping of new wave IC, the ‘educational turn’ and new museum theory, as well as what we might consider post-IC terrain, so-called ‘post-object’ artistic practices, activist art and tactical media, and independent curating as different modes of conceptualizing what it means to critique institutions through artistic practice, not only inside the domain of the art institution itself, but more importantly, in the social milieux within which contemporary political and economic problems are being tackled by local communities.

Module Tutor:Artist, researcher and pedagog Amanda Newall is currentlyworking as senior lecturer at Royal Instituteof Art in Stockholm, Sweden. Herpracticeincludessociallyengaged art, performativity, curating, pedagogy, humour and transnationalism.
Oftenincorporatinginterdisciplinary forms including new media, costume, sculpture, performance and installation. She has beeninvolved in projectsfunded by the Arts Council England, New Zealand Arts Council,
STINT SE, Swedish Arts Council and more. Newall has taken upresidencies, exhibited and lectured at many institutions including: SymbioticA WA, University of Paris 1 Sorbonne FR, Fremantle Art Centre Aus, GovettBrewster art Gallery NZ, Weld Stockholm SE, Shunt Lounge London UK.

2)Media Art Histories
This module introduces participants to multiple histories and theories of audio-visual media as art, bringing the field previously known as ‘new media’ into contact with ‘mainstream’ art histories and theories, as well as with associated disciplines such as computer science, media studies and philosophy.

Participants will gain a basic understanding of the histories of audio-visual media as they developed from photography, film and video to interactive computer programs, wearable computers, ‘app’ art for smartphones and augmented reality games blending ‘virtual’ and actual spaces through
user participation.

Participants are exposed to and recognize significant technosocial developments particularly from the last half of the last century to today, as well as important works of art based on those developments.
Participants are equipped with a toolbox of concepts with which to analyze and think about new media, social media, and the‘globalization’ of art, and provided references to (and readings of) critical texts relevant to the field.
Module Tutor: Leon Tan (PhD) is a professor of art history at Savannah College of Art & Design (Hong Kong), a cultural theorist and occasional curator of interdisciplinary projects. He researches and writes on contemporary art, media-arts, globalization, digital cultures, copyright and assemblage theory. He is also a clinically trained analyst working in the orientation of schizoanalysis.

3)From Performance to Participation via Performativity
This module presents three strands of performance studies, which have overlapped each other for the past hundred years or so:
–    performance: an exploration of the genealogies of performance theatre and performance art, two artistic escape lines that have criss-crossed each other since about 1900 but never quite merged, and that continue to offer effective means for progressive art – always on the other side of modernism and postmodernism, or whatever side there is.
–    performativity: if performance offers means for progressive art, performativity offers realities for it. Performativity implies an inevitable although radical democratization of philosophy, politics and the arts; it’s about producing identity and otherness, centre stage and heterotopia, marriage and riot, and art – always along liminal lines of social life and the art world.
–    participation offers ways of bringing together performance and performativity by confronting its own artistic, institutional and public conditions in light of the ultimate consequences of the performative turn and performance art. After this there can only be informed praxis, to paraphrase Paolo Freire. After acquiring knowledge of the three concepts in question, the students will also get to test some practical exercises which put the three strands of performance studies in critical relations to one another.
Module Tutor:Ola Johansson is Reader in Contemporary PerformancePractices at ResCen, Middlesex University (UK) where he manages and carries out artistic research. He has taught applied performance in the UK, Tanzania, India and South Africa. Along with works in performance art and video art, Johansson has published two books: Performance and Philosophy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Performing Arts (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008), and Community Theatre and AIDS (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Johansson’s next monograph has the working title From Performance to Participation
via Performativity.

4)From Conceptual Art to Experience Design
This module is based on Ronald Jones’ own distinguished career, from his involvement in conceptualism in the 1980s to his current work as a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack Stockholm. The content provides a historical survey of conceptual art in the US from its beginnings with Marcel Duchamp and through the succeeding decades. Professor Jones will also discuss the development of interdisciplinary studies and experience design, and its importance across a variety of disciplines.
Module Tutor: Ronald Jones is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack and leads The Experience Design Group (www.designingtime.se).  He is a Guest Professor in Experience Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. He served as the first Provost at Art Center College of Design and came to Art Center from Columbia University, where he was Professor of Visual Arts in the School of the Arts, Chair of the Visual Arts Department and Co-Director of the Interactive Design Lab.  Before joining the faculty at Columbia, Jones was Senior Critic at the School of Art, Yale University for nine years.  He has also served on the faculty of the Staatliche HochschulefürBildendeKünste, Städelschule Frankfurt, the Royal Danish Academy of Art, Copenhagen, The Rhode Island School of Design, The School of Visual Arts, New York, among others. Jones contributes regularly to Art Forum and Frieze and writes frequently on contemporary art and design for various international publications.