history
challenges

From the first Pro PhD meeting in 2006, the Director of the Geneva University of Art and Design has supported periodic seminars ProPhD with participants involved in research projects following their degrees in the field of visual arts, and participants from the academic areas of art history and other areas and fields. In 2011-2012 the Pre-Doctorate/PhD Seminar opens its foundation course followed one year later by a foundation course for research training (MRes).

In 2006-2007, with the perspective of creating an experimental research platform within Geneva University of Art and Design, CCC Postgraduate studies Programme opens a research seminar. The objectives are to discuss the conditions and possibilities of a practice-based research in or through arts, developed by independent researchers and by doctoral students affiliated to a university. The Prospective PhD Seminar [ProPhD] aims to create a stimulating dynamic between researchers and doctorate students thanks to modes of exchange.

The challenge for the seminar ProPhD is to identify the similarities between the practices, methods and themes developed by the researchers, to reveal the needs and achieve a real exchange platform to accelerate the research process and increase its influence. The seminar aims to identify the specificity of the PhD as a doctorate in art practice, to clarify and to invent forms and supports for production, to establish evaluation criteria, and the structures and bodies appropriate to deliver the titles.

Since the academic year 2006-2007, the seminar Pro PhD has been a new research entity to encourage, assist, and support new forms of doctoral and post-doctoral research through situated artistic practices.

the 6 objectives of the Pre-Doctorate/PhD Seminar

1)  to provide a platform for reflection, discussion and exchange to favour the development of a doctoral research by means of art

2)  to enable researchers and doctoral students to situate their research in a multidimensional and multimedia art context, to support the elaboration of the research pitch and to find the right methodological tools.The seminar participants self-organised in transdisciplinary teams and clusters have to take into account the multidimensional context to develop their projects.

3)  to promote debate and confrontation of ideas

4) to develop communication skills and competences for distribution and dissemination are essential to increase dynamic internal and external exchanges in the artistic and scientific networks

5) to bring together researchers and doctoral students with other art research groups in promoting contacts for co-supervision or support of research, in other institutions

6) to establish a future doctorate/PhD school in arts (HES-SO)

ProPhD 2006-2011

In 2006-2007, with the perspective of creating an experimental research platform within Geneva University of Art and Design, CCC Postgraduate studies Programme opens a research seminar. The objectives are to discuss the conditions and possibilities of a practice-based research in or through arts, developed by independent researchers and by doctoral students affiliated to a university. The Prospective PhD Seminar [ProPhD] aims to create a stimulating dynamic between researchers and doctorate students thanks to modes of exchange. The invitation is primarily addressed to CCC alumni, independent researchers and to doctoral students affiliated to other institutions.

The first session is a forum open to multiple opinions. A free expression, aware of the impact of economical and political limitations in knowledge transmissions and research acts.

The main objectives of the first seminar are: the presentation of the participants and their research projects; a discussion on the practical and institutional modes of inscription and diffusion of the work; the identification of the valorisation needs; advantages and handicaps of inter-institutional partnerships and co-supervising; the methodology of research in arts and the potential format of practice-based PhD.

ProPhD 2007-2008_Session 1
26,27 April 2007

Guest: Jean-Pierre Greff, director of HEAD
Participants: CCC alumni and students as well as doctorate students from the University of Geneva

ProPhD 2007-2008_Session 2
2, 3 April 2008

Lecturer: Giairo Daghini, philosopher

ProPhD 2008-2009_Session 3
29,30 April 2009

Lecturer: Franco Berardi (Bifo), philosopher and activist

ProPhD 2009-2010_Session 4
24,25 March 2010

Lecturer: Christian Marazzi economist and philosopher

ProPhD 2010-2011_Session 5
5,6 April 2011

Lecturer: Anna Grichting, architect, urbanist, musician

students-organized ProPhD/CCC Angelus Novus

The self-organized Angelus Novus Seminar founded 8 June 2010 in the framework of ProPhD establishes itself to meet the demand of several researchers who want to increase the number of the sessions and to actively participate in the seminar, in proposing other possible forms and formats of organisation.

Self-organized ProPhD/CCC_Session 1
Monday 15 November 2010
Venue: CCC Programme, 2 rue Général-Dufour

Self-organized ProPhD /CCC_Session 2
Wednesday 9 March 2011
Venue: Shark, Artamis

Self-organized ProPhD /CCC_Session 3
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Venue: Shark, Artamis

Pre-Doctorate/PhD Programme 2014-2015

The Pre-Doctorate/PhD Séminaire is organized in clusters. A cluster is a flexible groups of researchers united by their research fields and methods; a cluster is connected; it is diverse multiplicity connected by research hubs.

Session 1: The role of artistic practices in the memory politics
13-15 October 2014
Clusters: Made-in-History; Governmentality
Pierre Hazan, David Rüfenacht, Yan Schubert, Denis Pernet, Mélanie Borès, Milica Tomic, Catherine Quéloz

Presentation of a collaborative research project, supported by SNSF dealing with the representations in public space of massive violations of human rights.
Although many researchers in the fields of human rights, peace studies, political science, history and philosophy have recognized the importance of remembrance initiatives in reconciliation processes, they rarely question the artistic form and societal impact of such initiatives. Through case studies, the project analyses the way mass crimes and conflicts are represented. It examines the decision-making process of the different shareholders in remembrance initiatives (i.e., artists, governments, political parties, human rights activists, victims' associations) and studies how these commemoration initiatives have influenced societal debates on the representation of the past, collective identity and reconciliation processes.

Session 2: Montage as an arrangement of history
08-10 December 2014
Clusters: Made-in-History; Governmentality; Edu Forecast
Muriel Pic, Barbara Chitussi, Giairo Daghini, Liliane Schneiter, Cécile Boss, Catherine Quéloz

The study of the writings of Walter Benjamin allows to trace the elaboration of the methodology of montage, within a few significant readings.
The participants are confronted to Benjamin’s texts on the experience of history, Theses On the Concept of History. It focuses on the montage through the methodology of Benjamin’s last and unfinished work Paris, Capital of the 19th Century, the book of the passages in which the writing is referring, through citations and thought-images, to past references of radicalized times. Research on critical theory of the city is correlated with the thumbnail images of One Way Street. The attention is on the street, the ways and conditions of life. Titles, advertisement text and images are invading the streets of modernity; they permeate the mind with their phantasmagoria.

Session 3 : Cultural Urban Interventionism, Activist Design and Art Practices
12-14 January 2015
Clusters: Governmentality; Edu Forecast; Eco Path; Post Urban
Luca Pattaroni, Mischa Piraud, Nils Norman, Yves Mettler, Tilo Steireif, Liliane Schneiter, Catherine Quéloz
Between normative constraints and capitalism, what is the art policy in the contemporary city? Faced with the twofold constraints of property and regulation, the domains of art tend to be polarized between artists and cultural actors who orient themselves on the (international) market and others who have the skills and networks to obtain the necessary subsidies. The question, then, is how the eminently political character of art can be unfolded as a difference beneath a well-seated fringe in the system of profitability of capitalism. Are there places for free experimentation, benevolent actions and precarious life and room for industrial or abandoned wasteland?

Session 4: Extended Curatorial
16-18 February 2015
Clusters: Eco Paths; Post Urban/Urbanomics; Digital Impulse; Edu Forecast; Made-in-History; Gouvernmentality; Tout-Monde; Everyday Pragmatic Agency
Bettina Steinbruegge, Jérôme Massard, Katharina Schlieben, Denis Pernet

Extended curatorial can be understood as the organisation and the arrangement of the outputs of a research, the mapping of transdisciplinary connexions through the means of art. It is using different formats such as the library, the glossary, the exhibition, the atlas, the symposium, the philosophy café or café des libertés, and many others. Curating is a function that develops publishing, translation, care, attention, education, entertainment. It is also a cooperative medium and a collaborative format.

Session 5: Emerging Cultures of Sustainability
9-11 March 2015
Clusters: Eco Paths; Post Urban/Urbanomics; Edu Forecast; Gouvernmentality; Everyday Pragmatic Agency

Keywords: critical and artistic response to the degradation of the biosphere; extinction of species and climate change; cultural translation of sustainability; permaculture; ecosophy; textures of the anthropocene, futuristic narrative; bricolage and do it yourself; home-made items; counterculture; over consumption and degrowth; voluntary simplicity; resource depletion; cultural translation of sustainability; environmental footprint

Session 6 : Media Archeology
20-22 April 2015
Clusters: Eco Paths; Post Urban/Urbanomics; Digital Impulse; Edu Forecast; Made-in-History; Gouvernmentality; Tout-Monde; Everyday Pragmatic Agency
Yves Citton, Emmanuel Guez, Jussi Parikka

Media archaeology is an approach to media studies that has emerged over the last two decades. It borrows from Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, and Friedrich Kittler, but also diverges from all of these theorists to form a unique set of tools and practices. Media archaeology is not a school of thought or a specific technique, but is as an emerging attitude and cluster of tactics in contemporary media theory that is characterized by a desire to uncover and circulate repressed or neglected media approaches and technologies. Jussi Parikka in CTheory

The participants are invited to retrieve elements from media archeology in order to develop further reflexions and to shed light on their own research. Some questions such as: what are the media layers in my project? What could media prehistory teach to current media? Where is the medium in my media? Is my work related to “dead media” or “zombie media”?

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