Method/Art 2025

31 March & 1 April 2025 - Royal Conservatoire & Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp 

Research seminar initiated by Vivi Touloumidi, Umut Eldem and Adilia Yip

With the theme 'skill_DEskill_REskill', the seventh edition of the METHOD/ART seminar in 2025 will explore the role and necessity of skill in artistic research. The 2-day event will take place on the 31st of March at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp and on the 1st of April at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

The approaches to skill have been going under significant changes since the 20th century. In the visual arts, the connection between craft and skill in artistic production was profoundly displaced by the rise of the readymade. In music and performing arts, chance procedures and conceptual processes became a valid means of shaping both the artwork and the performance of it. The further developments in technology exponentially intensified the trend towards deskilling: It is now possible to generate thousands of artworks with the click of a button. Such developments merged the realms of artistic and productive labour and, moreover reconditioning the function of the hand in the making of art. Through the paradigm shifts of modernism, the avant-garde, and postmodernism, interpretations and definitions of artistic skill have been repeatedly re-inscribed. 

The integration of new artistic practices, technology, and interdisciplinary methods is bringing artistic skills, social interdependencies, and material and philosophical processes into closer interaction. Consequently, shifts in skill demand shifts in strategy. Deskilling becomes a form of reskilling, on the basis of reconceptualizing not only the resources, but also skill itself. This evolving dynamic presents a unique challenge for artistic research, which must continually adapt to and interrogate these shifts, exploring new practices and reimagining skill itself. 

On this note, skill can be understood as a sensibility to correspond to current times. How can the relations between skill and habit, repetition or complexity, be yet again reinterpreted? Is AI a new form of the readymade? How is the perception and mastery of deskilling and reskilling evolving for artistic research?

Programme

31 March Monday - Witte Zaal - Royal Conservatoire Antwerp

• 11:00 - 11:20  Introduction
• 11:20 - 11:50  Lecture online - What would Leonardo do? De- and reskilling in the (early modern) past - Annemie Leemans (ViDi - Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center, University of Antwerp)
• 11:50 - 12:20  Lecture - Expanding horizons – Reimagining 20th-century Western classical music via improvisation - Peter Knudsen (Senior lecturer in Music performance at Örebro University // PhD candidate in artistic research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology - NTNU)
• 12:20 - 12:50  Lecture - The proficient jazz performer – Insights from an experimentation with jazz and abstractions from spectral music - Piergiorgio Pirro (PhD candidate, Vrije Universiteit Brussel / Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel)
• 13:00 - 14:00  Lunch break
• 14:00 - 15:00  Keynote lecture - Performance art: craft or ‘amateur’ art? A game with the codes of the theatre and the museum - Katleen Van Langendonck (Teacher & researcher Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, Dance Department)
• 15:00 - 15:15  Coffee break
• 15:15 - 15:45  Lecture - The three-legged horse. Topic theory as a means of performing Peter Benoit (1834-1901) - Hannah Aelvoet (Chair of Labo XIX&XX research group, PhD candidate at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp / University of Antwerp)
• 15:45 - 16:15  Lecture - Territory between. Reskill in dance within museum space - Inesa Markava (University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts, Center for Research and Studies in Fine Arts (CIEBA)) 

1 April Tuesday - Wintertuin - Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp

• 11:00 - 11:20  Introduction
• 11:20 - 11:50  Expo + lecture - Jewellery mockumentary - Elena Karpilova
• 11:50 - 12:20  Lecture-performance - Skill as empathy, empathy as skill -Julie Michael (PhD candidate, KU Leuven / LUCA School of Arts)
• 12:20 - 12:50  Expo + lecture - Lithophanes – Images of light - Martha Kicsiny (DLA fellow at the Doctorate School of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design // Guest researcher at KASK, Belgium)
• 13:00 - 14:00  Lunch break
• 14:00 - 15:00  Keynote lecture - Essaying as a way of de-skilling - Emily Huurdeman (PhD candidate, Fontys, NL), Peter Thomas (PhD candidate, Middlesex University, London), Ana Cristina Pansera de Araujo (PhD Candidate, University of Basque Country), Jo O'Brien (PhD Candidate, University of Applied Arts, Vienna // Lecturer, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver)
• 15:00 - 15:15  Coffee break
• 15:15 - 15:45  Lecture - Patricia Domingues (PhD, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
• 15:45 - 16:30  Workshop - How to become a platypus. A gameplay to (un)learn - Alessandro Tollari  (PhD candidate, Iuav University Venice // Visiting student at CCQO, University of Antwerp)