OPEN CALL:On Ethics & Representation

The Royal Institute of Art (RIA) in Stockholm is a leading art institution of higher education located in Stockholm with a long artistic tradition dating back to the beginning of the 18th Century. The education offers both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Fine Arts and postgraduate studies in Architecture. The institution is diverse with programs and courses in traditional methods as well as instruction in the most innovative and the very latest techniques. The institute has about 230 students and leading Swedish and foreign artists and architects teach at the institute.
Critical Images, One year part-time post-master (30 ECTS credits): Critical Images aims to contribute to a universal reflection on The Right to the Image in collaboration with the anonymous Syrian film collective Abounaddara and additional national and international guest lecturers. Critical Images is intended for those with a background in art, filmmaking, photography, visual media, journalism, poetry, ethics, aesthetics, human rights law, activism and philosophy, who wish to advance and expand their critical, artistic and research skills and experiment with the production of images in order to reconsider the representations of the world. The participants will develop a work which will be presented at the end of the academic year.
Decolonizing Architecture (60 ECTS credits): The course uses the term decolonization as a starting point to understand the globalized present and the associated contemporary conditions of exile, displacement and migration, revolts and struggles against oppression and domination with the aim to produce a convincing new conceptual vocabulary and practice engaged in today’s struggles for justice and equality. The analysis of the ways in which colonial architecture has been re-utilized represents a privileged and new arena to understand broader political and cultural issues around national identity and exile, sense of belonging or alienation, social control or urban subversion. In this course architectural space is seen simultaneously as the product of the interaction of social and political transformation and as a privileged site for the analysis of these dynamics. The course is built on the work developed at DAAR (Decolinizing Architecture Art Residency). The course is intended for those with studies or experiences in architecture, art, urban research, postcolonial theory or activism who are interested in the ideological, social and political dimensions of Architecture. The course welcomes applicants with diverse cultural backgrounds committed to develop an artistic and architectural practice that is both theoretically and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality.
Research Lab: Architecture, Urban Artefacts and Collective Representation (30 ECTS credits): R-Lab focuses on the role of public memory and its symbolic significance for architecture, monuments, and landscapes. Students will pursue long-term individual research projects and participate in international workshops that produce new and experimental practices that engage with contested public sites in the Baltic and in the Balkans. The course is open to architects, designers, artists and urban practitioners. The course is run by Professor Peter Lang.
Exchange and international residence: Students from schools that RIA has an exchange agreement with can apply for an exchange period ranging from 3 months to 1 year. Students coming from schools that don’t have an exchange agreement with RIA, or students who have recently graduated from a comparable institution, can apply to RIA as a visiting student. Exchange and visiting students are provided with a studio space, a supervising professor and will be assigned to a professor group with a mixed group of students. They will have access to the college’s workshops and the elective course components within fine arts. Knowledge of Swedish is not necessary, but proper command of English is required to take full advantage of the studies.

Application deadline: 3/5/17
Apply: Critical Images, Decolonizing Architecture, R-Lab: Architecture, Urban Artefacts and Collective Representation