Saas-Fee. Switzerland, June 5 - 23, 2015
Deadline: Apr 2, 2015

Art and the Politics of Estrangement, this year's Saas-Fee Summer
Institute of Art, engages a range of contemporary discourses to
renegotiate a seminal idea formulated in high modernism, ostraniene or
estrangement: the process or act of endowing an object or image with
strangeness by removing it from the network of conventional formulaic,
stereotypical perceptions and linguistic expressions. Times have
changed since the term's coinage, and so has the surrounding
discursive environment. What are the implications for artistic
ostraniene today? For instance, in the networked environment of "super
signifiers" and branded associations, can we still contravene in the
stereotypical perceptions they engender? If so, would that be a form of
emancipation in which artistic production can play a role, or is it
trapped in the new spirit of capitalism and its cycles of recuperation?
The Summer Institute uses the term estrangement as a foundation on
which to collage a multiplicity of contemporary metaphysical and
epistemological practices and terminologies: the Anthropocene,
Speculative Poetics, Cognitive Capitalism, Accelerations—can any of
them help find an answer to the question of estrangement? For art
students and recent graduates seeking a deeper theoretical
understanding of their practice, or for those in the fields of critical
theory, philosophy, politics, neuroscience, and media and literary
theory who aspire to challenge their presuppositions, this course will
provide a theoretical bridge to these important emerging discourses.

Warren Neidich and Barry Schwabsky directors

Faculty, Armen Avanessian, Franco Berardi, Anselm Franke, Charles
Gaines,
Suzana Milevska, JohnRajchman, Gerald Raunig, Dorothee Richter, Hita
Steyerl, Ben Vickers.

Application

Inquisitive students and professionals hailing from artistic discourses
such as painting, drawing, film making, sculpture, performance and
sound studies as well as the aligned fields of poetry, cultural
studies, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, sociology and politics, are
asked to apply.

Twenty students will be selected to attend the school. Applications
will be assessed by members of the Faculty. Two scholarships will be
available for students with special needs.

Online Application: Send an email to SAAS-FEE Summer Institute of Art
's Coordinator: saasfeesummerinstituteofart@gmail.com including:

-Letter of Intention (max 500 words)
-CV

-Work Requirements:
-Artists include 10 images of your work.
-Writers, theorists, philosophers, poets, include 2 writing samples.
-Film makers, video artists and performance artists send links to 2
video samples on vimeo.com.
-Musicians please send links to 2 sound pieces in youtube.

Any of the work samples can be submitted through a weblink.

Applications by email must arrive by 11.59 pm April 2, 2015. For more
information please contact SAAS-FEE Summer Institute of Art's
Coordinator at email: saasfeesummerinstituteofart@gmail.com

Tuition: 2,000 Euros plus room and board (special rates for Summer
Institute of Art's students). Limited scholarships for financial
support will be available for those in need