fluent’s Study Programme
20/09 – 22/12/2023
International application deadline: August 20, 2023
Introduction:
Praxis, is a Study Programme taking place from September 20 through December 22, 2023.
The intensive programme runs during 14 weeks (180 contact hours) and is devised and organised by fluent, an arts organisation devoted to rehearsing radical imagination as a means to propitiate new ecologies of thought and action.
Reacting to current conditions of great narrative anxiety where detachment and hyper–mediation have replaced the openness of the narrative; emotion and affectivity are at the forefront of this new phase of neoliberalism. Considering these challenges and the subsequent role of the arts and humanities, Praxis aims to develop socially transformative prospects that repair the social realm from reduced listening and re–articulate aesthetics, and making processes. In this, the words of Audre Lorde resonate with the logics and dynamics that organize and structure this programme: ”(…)is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. (…) It is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives’’.
Building upon this ethos, the programme is open to a maximum of twenty participants and encourages applications from different fields of knowledge. This diverse spectrum of practices seeks to unfold an experimental and ephemeral community of learning. How can a transitory, moving community gathered in a small Atlantic city contribute a shift in the social landscape within and beyond the direct context?
Preliminary notes:
The way Praxis is structured embraces theoretical bases and practice–based exchanges as processes to build a critical community capable to unfold socially transformative prospects and to re–articulate aesthetics and methodologies of making and listening. Bringing together different fields
within the arts and humanities, the programme is willing to question existing structural dynamics that make social and cultural ecosystems unrelatable, positioning form–making (aesthetical, social, ecological, subjective, spiritual and otherwise) as a methodology that nurtures structural transformations.
Praxis opens up a space for sharing and thinking together, developing new ecologies of thought and action in the face of today’s socio–ecological crisis. It seeks to instigate discussions on the theoretical and practical dimensions that constitute our material and immaterial lives. Texts and essays by authors from different fields and inputs by artists working in multiple media are shared and discussed in terms of their resonance with the learning community’s concerns and spaces of relevance.
Praxis will run from September 20th to December 22nd 2023, taking fluent’s ongoing programme and practice as a departing framework, as well as its connections to different educational and institutional contexts in an international level. Favoring an experimental approach within the professors’ faculty and the learning community of students, this methodology aims at articulating a living sphere in which the form/content, learning/living, theory/practice binaries are dismantled and able to constitute new speculative landscapes.
Throughout the programme, participants will be encouraged to reflect on their individual practices and the polyphonic dynamics taking place within the course. These processes implement methodological competences for trans–disciplinary analysis, embodied thinking, structural observation and intellectual interaction; as well as specific competences connected to lands / systems / bodies and subjectivities.
Therefore, fluent offers regular lectures enriched with a range of seminars. In addition, students have the opportunity of becoming involved in all activities at fluent, which produces exhibitions and public programmes and runs an independent bookshop.
For whom:
fluent’s study program is addressed to a diversity of profiles in terms of educational and vital backgrounds: practitioners from both arts and humanities, artists are invited to apply.
It is oriented to anyone with an interest in the described questions, with or without a specific project in mind that could gain experience engaging with the intellectual and professional tissue of the programme and the on-going projects that fluent is carrying out, with both local and international projection.
Content:
Praxis is structured in four dimensions (or learning modules) that aim to unfold different intellectual axes. These dimensions run in parallel and are interspersed throughout the programme’s duration:
I MODULE: VITAL DIMENSION
Directed by Yayo Herrero.
II MODULE: THE DIMENSION OF LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
Directed by CAConrad.
III MODULE: STRUCTURAL DIMENSION
Directed by Stefano Harney.
IV MODULE: CORPOREAL & MOVING DIMENSION
Co–directed by Andrea Rodrigo & Isabel de Naverán.
These sessions will take place on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with two breaks throughout the programme. The format alternates lectures with workshops, walks, working sessions, reading groups and online conferences. During these sessions the academic program will unfold through the methodologies proposed by the different professors that compose the faculty, always facilitating the participants’ contributions and debate. Participants are also encouraged to engage in face-to-face discussions with fluent’s team and the teaching faculty.
For more information about praxis’ faculty visit https://fluentfluent.org/praxis
Praxis’ faculty:
Each of Praxis’ module are directed by Stefano Harney, Yayo Herrero, CAConrad and Andrea Rodrigo & Isabel de Naverán.
The faculty is composed by a range of internationally renowned practitioners and experienced professionals such as Denise Ferreira da Silva, Lamin Fofana, Maurin Dietrich, Inland Campo Adentro, Reto Pulfer, Paulino Viota, Michael Marder, Ibon Aranberri, Agustín Pérez Rubio, B. Ingrid Olson, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, Andrea Soto Calderón, Alejandro Alonso Díaz, Dodie Bellamy and others.
Application:
Those interested in taking part in Praxis must submit their applications via e– mail to studies[at]fluentfluent.org including:
- A letter expressing their interest in the program (no longer than one page).
- A CV including the most relevant work instances to their current practice.
The selection among all candidates will be processed according to their interest and adequacy with the programme’s criteria. The selection process will be carried out by fluent’s team and advised by the faculty members, aiming to constitute a group of participants with a diversity of profiles and backgrounds from a vital and academic perspective.
International application deadline: August 20, 2023.
Support:
fluent provides free accommodation (single rooms) in Santander to all participants in the programme.
fluent provides five grants to selected candidates (if you are interested in applying to one of the grants, please state the reasons in your application).
The programme offers support for obtaining legal documents, if necessary.
For further information about the programme please contact Praxis‘s office at studies[at]fluentfluent.org.
Practical information:
Duration and calendar: The course runs from September 20 to December 22, 2023.
Group: The programme is composed by a maximum of 20 participants.
Format: 15 weekly sessions (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays) with some potential variations according to the group’s and faculty members’needs.
The format alternates lectures with workshops, walks, working sessions, reading groups and online conferences.
Fee: 1.000€ per participant. Students accepted in the programme can choose when they enrol to pay the fees either in a lump sum or in two instalments. The first instalment will be 50% of the fees, to be paid when accepted, with the remaining 50% payable by October 30th 2023. Payment must be made either by bank transfer or direct debit to the bank account indicated in the admission confirmation letter.
Grants: fluent will provide five full grants to candidates who express their reasons to apply for these grants.
Grants are conferred based on the assessment of the candidates’ financial need, the potential benefit to their development and/or research, and the relevance of field experience in relation to the objectives of Praxis.
You can indicate if you would like to request one of those grants within your application and we will communicate with you in more detail once all applications are received and considered.
Languages: The languages of Praxis are English and Spanish. Candidates who are able to follow the sessions in one of these languages only, are still legible to apply. fluent will provide the optimate resources to follow the sessions.
Caption: CAConrad, 13 Moons: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. Installation view, fluent, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photo: Pablo Madariaga.
