Research unit Image

Artistic research at Sint-Lucas Ghent comes in many shapes and forms: autonomous and applied, individual and collective, discipline-bound and interdisciplinary, theoretical and practical. Starting from a shared ambition to prepare and shape the art and artists of tomorrow, every artist, designer and researcher at the Ghent campus follows their own intuitions, expertise, subjects and visual languages. Creation, education and reflection on art and design are closely intertwined, time and time again differently. Nevertheless, a number of common threads can be discerned within the research unit Image.

The research unit Image brings together researchers in the arts around three research nodes, all three closely connected to the academic programs at the Ghent campus (Visual Arts and the Educational Master in the Arts): the coming into being of the image, the interaction between image and discourse, and the relationship between image and society.

1. Studio practices and processes in Art and Design

The focus here is on different methods and methodologies of artistic practices, as well as on the physical and mental space within which the process of designing, imagining and shaping takes place. How to create and co-create starting from intuition, sensibility, knowledge, experiment, creativity, substance, technique and technology? True to tradition and with an eye to the future, special attention is paid to the role of drawing within the creation process, both as an autonomous practice and as a preliminary study.

Keywords: creative process, drawing, craft, studio, method, technique, experiment, crossover between different disciplines, inspiration, imagination.

2. Image, Word and Discourse

The focus here is on the relationship between theoretical discourse and artistic practice, the dialogue between word and image, as well as on the relationship between making, shaping and thinking. The written and spoken word, the mental and physical image, the concept and the act form a constellation whose benchmarks are examined in all possible and thus varying connections. This is done by looking, documenting, archiving, thinking, reading, writing, interpreting, imagining, inventing, translating and designing.

Keywords: reflection, criticism, art and science, art history, philosophy, literature, authorship, archive, writing, fiction, word & image.

3. Image and Society

The focus here is on making the image public and on the relationship that the image establishes with society. What is the position of the image within education and within other social domains and disciplines? How does the public relate to the image and how does the image show itself to various audiences? The political, social, ecological, educational and emancipatory power of the image is examined from different artistic practices and disciplines. Special attention is paid to the pedagogical experiment and the significance of the art school.

Keywords: society, art education, publication, exhibition, participation, emancipation, present-day art, sociology, artistic economy, anthropology, ecology, social engagement, activism.

Afbeelding Image
Thomas Libeer

Researchers

Anja Veirman

Ans Nys

Ella de Burca

Esther Venrooij

Eva Moulaert

Fiona Hallinan

Frank Maet

Frank Theys

Gabriel Molist

Gianluca Cosci

Isolde Vanhee

Jack Eyram Azor

Jan Peeters

Kaat Celis

Lut Pil

Marina Kazakova

Mattijs Driesen

Nancy Vansieleghem

Peter De Graeve

Pepa Ivanova

Ritsart Gobyn

Roel Kerkhofs

Sébastien Conard

Shervin Kianersi Haghighi

Steve Michiels

Stijn Van Dorpe

Sylvie Vandenhoucke

Tine Guns

Tom Van Imschoot

Volkmar Mühleis

Yana Dimitrova

Publications and realisations

School of Equals

Edited by Stijn Van Dorpe and Sarah Késenne
Designed by Emmely Comhaire & Septian Priyatna

The publication School of Equals collects a series of reflective texts, instructions, notes, testimonies and slam poetry reflecting the mechanisms at art schools that give rise to exclusion and inequality. A great deal of attention goes to the decolonising and intersectional feminisms that are questioning the status quo of arts education at the institutional level. The publication exposes in that sense situations of discord in relation to the art academy -which is often considered a neutral place- and wants to intervene in essentialist approaches of identity and difference.

Through a variety of personal and peripheral writing practices, the interdisciplinary writing was approached as a critical strategy intervening in the homogenisation and objectification of debates on these issues. Authors that didn’t follow official or formal arts education, or texts that can not simply be placed into recognisable critical frameworks, were thus considered as significant. 

The publication can be viewed as an attempt to place critical and emancipatory approaches in arts education higher on the agenda.

School of Equals
Grafische Cel

Contact

Head research unit: tom.vanimschoot@luca-arts.be
LUCA - Campus Sint-Lucas Beeldende Kunst Gent
Alexianenplein 1
B-9000 Gent

tom.vanimschoot@luca-arts.be