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More info, provided by the coordinator:

Each year the Department of Art & Architecture of the PHL organizes a studio for second- and third-year art-students around the theme of the public domain. The main goal of this annual project is both to respond in a critical way to what’s going on in contemporary art and to learn to work out of the studio and to engage the confrontation with an audience and the location (the context) where the work is placed.

In the past years we worked with the park of Sint-Truiden, our campus on the Elfde-Liniestraat and the former school for midwives at the Guffenslaan in Hasselt. Last year, under the title ‘Traject H’, the students realized a temporary intervention on a virtual line through Hasselt.

A temporary intervention in the landscape

The quality of previous projects gave the confidence to tackle a more ambitious project this year and to expand the action into the landscape through three different municipalities: Hasselt, Diepenbeek and Genk.

A project in which the dialogue is established with the landscape is already for the sheer scale of the environment not an easy task. A work of art in a landscape is something completely different than in a white cube. You also can not simply speak of a confrontation between nature and culture because the landscape itself -like a painting- is constructed. Nature here has been largely shaped by humans. Nature itself is culture. How would you respond then? Can or should the artwork be something other than a fleeting gesture? How visible does it have to be? Is it a temporary “disturbance” of the environment? Or does it try to bond with nature? Is the focus on beauty or more on the banality of  the suburban space? Questions that are essentially about what social position “autonomous” art today can or should take.

 Hasselt, Diepenbeek and Genk

To realize all the ideas of the students a unique partnership has been developed with Hasselt, Diepenbeek and Genk. The three municipalities did react with much enthusiasm to the question to help make this project where a lot is involved to be succesfull.

This cooperation could be seen as a reflection of what is happening  between both art schools/ campusses. The PHL is already working in Hasselt and Diepenbeek, but works from this year on with the Media and Design Academy in Genk which is also in that area a promising ‘artistic’ cooperation. They will form together MAD Faculty.

The works will gradually take shape in the month of May. The designs looks promising!

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