OPEN CALL:Summer School-Landscape (post) Conflict at IMMA

The Irish Museum of Modern Art and the National College of Art and Design, as part of L’internationale Museum of the Commons, are seeking applicants for the Summer School: Landscape (post) Conflict which will take place in Dublin between July 7–11, 2025.

What is the relationship between landscape and conflict?

We are living in a period of increasing global instability and accelerating violence. Atrocity, invasion, genocide, mass-displacement – these are realities for millions across a growing number of conflict zones. Given ongoing advances in military technology, we are also witnessing the deployment of ever-more ruthless forms of mechanised violence, often against civilian populations. The limits of international law and the notion of a Western ‘world order’ are being brutally exposed. The effects of this violence extend to the non-human environment too; landscape becomes a locus of conflict and its legacies.

Is there capacity within the field of art to respond to the realities of conflict? What are the landscapes within which this escalating violence has been enabled? What are the conditions that underpin it and what are the traces it leaves on the land in turn? How are our ideas of spatiality, sovereignty, borders, and boundaries—the components through which landscape is codified and constructed—informed by a militarised imaginary? Certain powers of representation—as historically exemplified by the international press—are being disassembled. Who can document the experience of contemporary conflict? Do artists have a role in this process?

What are the critical and practical uses of contemporary art at moments such as this? How do underlying power structures and sociopolitical conditions contribute to the mechanics of conflict? What are the ideological operations (within and beyond conflict zones) that enable militarised violence at mass scale? What can be learned from the ‘post-conflict’ experience – in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia, for instance—and how do the traces of conflict continue to manifest even in times of ‘peace’? Can art function as a space for meaningful enquiry—for instance, through organisational and evidentiary art practices such as Forensic Architecture that seek to reveal violations of international law and serve as judiciary tools in the prosecution of war crimes?

This Summer School aims to provide a space for the theoretical and practical exploration of these questions, bringing together an array of artistic and academic voices including Jill Jarvis, Amanda Dunsmore, Yazan Kahlili, Zdenka Badovinac and Clare Bell, among others. This programme will explore how art intersects with the histories, legacies, and futures of conflict and landscape.

The Summer School will involve lectures, discussions, excursions (Belfast and Dublin), workshops, group work, as well as visits to exhibitions at IMMA and elsewhere.

Participants are invited from art, design, architecture, art history and theory and curating and also from related fields such as sociology, political science, geography, literary studies and anthropology. One can be at any stage in one’s academic or professional career. All events will be held in English and will take place in Dublin with a day-trip to Belfast. Participation is free but applicants must commit to full attendance and will need to cover their own costs for meals.

Please send a short biography, CV, and a statement of interest (500 word max.) by April 25, 2025 to summerschool@imma.ie. Successful applicants will be informed by mid-May. See imma.ie for more information.