20-Jan-2022 Isis Freitas Vale Germano Catelijne de Muijnck

Preface

Welcome to Powertools, an online publication about art and diversity. The essays you find here examine the relationship between art and socio-political matters of power, as well as between inclusion and exclusion. From January until April 2022, we will publish one new essay weekly. The complete online essay collection and accompanying resources and materials will be invaluable to teachers and students in art school, interns, in your artistic practice or your rehearsal space. They will be essential additions to your toolbox to improve your vocabulary and literacy in conversations about art, diversity and inclusion. These essays will not only grant you easier access to this discourse; they will also encourage your own agency in actively participating in diversifying art.

These essays were written between 2019 and 2022, with the intention of making theoretical concepts related to diversity and inclusion more accessible. These are concepts you can use as tools for making, designing, building and rehearsing. But our ultimate aim is that you go further and use them to think critically about artistic strategies and practices and about how these interact with and influence power relations and inclusion. Each essay introduces one central concept, using concrete examples, practices and case studies. As such, every contribution bridges the gap between practice and theory.

The essays give the reader an intersectional window to differences between human beings and their realities and experiences. They also examine and illustrate different forms of social and cultural oppression and exclusion by discussing case studies from a broad variety of art contexts. We hope to introduce you to a wide variety of artistic and educational practices and strategies that engage with differences, and in so doing, help you increase your professional know-how as an artist and as an educator.

We would like to thank the authors for sharing their knowledge and going to great lengths to create a collection of theoretical concepts that function both as a vocabulary and a set of powertools. Their work offers the reader the chance to think and talk about artistic strategies for social change.

This publication series is an initiative from ArtEZ studium generale and was developed by Isis Freitas Vale Germano, Catelijne de Muijnck, Els Cornelis, Fabiola Camuti, Aude Mgba, with the assistance of Barbara Collé.

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The Powertools series consists of the essays:

‘Introduction’, by Isis Freitas Vale Germano
‘Subversive Affirmation’, by Sigrid Merx / Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink
‘Vulnerable Looking’, by Jules Sturm
‘Representing the Self, Improperly’, by Milica Trakilović
‘Critical Tactics in Participatory Art’, by Fabiola Camuti
‘Is Crossing Boundaries Always Liberating? The contested politics of transgressive humour’, by Dick Zijp
‘Can Translation Do Justice?’, by Sruti Bala
‘Art, Design and Architectural Practices Beyond Precarious Working and Living Conditions: Proposals for Everyday Action’, by Bianca Elzenbaumer
‘Appreciate, Don’t Appropriate: Strategies to Avoid Cultural Appropriation’, by Renée Akitelek Mboya
‘How is Affect Related to the Social?: On Affect As a Tool’, by Eliza Steinbock
‘Communication as Radical Tool in Times of Societal Shift’, by Els Cornelis

Click on an article to read

Isis Freitas Vale Germano

“I’m a teacher, lecturer and researcher in ArtEZ, and a freelance lecturer and advisor with a focus on storytelling focussing on visuality, embodied cognition and diversity and inclusion.

I have worked as a teacher in Media and Culture for Utrecht University between 2014 and 2019 where I was nominated for the teaching talent prize in 2016. I’ve worked for ArtEZ University of the Arts since 2018. Here I’ve coördinated the Honours Programme, I work as researcher, writer and lecturer for Studium Generale, I mentor students in the Academy of Theatre and Dance in their research and I work on decolonising and depatriarchalising the curriculum. As a freelancer I work as advisor for questions concerning diversity and inclusion, storytelling and visual representation.

I have a bi-cultural background as a white queer Latina, and my mother tongue is Brasilian-Portuguese. My cultural background and life experience are rich and diverse and an important part of what I bring into my work in terms of knowledge and empathy”.

You can reach me at i.germano@artez.nl for all ArtEZ matters, and at isis.fvg@outlook.com for my freelance work.

Catelijne de Muijnck

Catelijne de Muijnck works at ArtEZ University of the Arts as programme maker for the Studium Generale and as editor of APRIA, the (online) Platform for Research Interventions of the Arts. At ArtEZ Studim Generale, she is involved in the research group Future Art School, in which visions of the art college of the future are researched and shared.