The University of the Arts consists of the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatoire. The research lectorate Art Theory & Practice (KTP) is situated at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) and is headed by prof. dr. Anke Haarmann.
Coordinator: Leon Lapa Pereira
The lectorate stimulates research in visual art and design. Together with the lectorate Design it constitutes and develops a structural level of research at the KABK. Its task is to stimulate and position artistic practices as research as well as theoretical research. The aims of the lectorate is also to promote the entanglement of theoretical and practical education, and to stimulate students and teachers to engage in research.
The lectorate KTP has within its history since 2007 initiated the Art Research Programme, which consists of interdisciplinary courses and encourages research and critical reflection. The lectorate runs a research group consisting of tutors and staff of the Royal Academy of Art who engage themselves with research in their practice. The lectorate organizes symposia, workshopsand lectures with various partners.
The lectorate closely collaborates with the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts at Leiden University, where Anke Haarmann is Professor of Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts and head of PhDArts, a PhD program for artists and designers1.
Prof. Dr. Anke Haarmann is a philosopher, artist, and design theoretician. The main focus of her work is artistic research, design research, visual culture, and public space. Anke Haarmann studied philosophy and fine arts in Hamburg, Berlin, and Maastricht and earned her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Potsdam.
Anke Haarmann founded the "Centre for Design Research", a platform for practice-based, design research as well as critical theory, at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. She currently heads the German Society for Artistic Research together with Mathias Zeiske and Michaela Melián and leads the research project "Speculative Space (SpecSpace): Labor zur Erprobung und Erforschung epistemischer Designpraktiken" (2019-2022).
Haarmann is regularly invited to give lectures and publishes monographs, articles, and papers on artistic and design research, including but not limited to: "Die Keimzelle. Transformative Praxen einer anderen Stadtgesellschaft. Theoretische und Künstlerische Zugänge", Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021; "Artistic Research: Eine epistemologische Ästhetik", Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2019; "Künstlerische Forschung" in: Handbuch Designwissenschaft. Geschichte – Theorie – Praxis. Eds. Thomas Hensel and Oliver Ruf. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2021; "Praxologie der Kunst. Kunst als Praxis" in: Handbuch Kunstphilosophie. Ed. Judith Siegmund. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021; "Theater of Research" in: The Routledge Companion to Performance Philosophy. Eds. Cull Ó Maoilearca/Alice Lagaay. London: Routledge, 2020.
Leon Lapa Pereira is the coordinator of the lectorate Art Theory & Practice. He is also a teacher at the ArtScience department, as well as at Leiden Univeristy. In addition, he manages the research project Making Matters at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Leiden University which is headed by Prof. Dr. Anke Haarmann.
Leon Lapa Pereira (he/him), is a cross-disciplinary performance researcher, who creates experienceable ecologies bridging humans and more-than-humans. He uses anthropomorphising methods to translate relational worlds and biological processes into movement, robotic agents, and performances. With an engineering background, he questioned knowledge production after enrolling in the Master's ArtScience in Den Haag. Here, Leon established a performative and curatorial art practice and became a hosted program facilitator of Flipchart at the Instrument Inventors Initiative during his studies. Merging performances and technologies, he built a robust network in Randstad that he aims to expand as a lab coordinator at the Performance Technology Lab. Beyond his performance work, he co-founded WASTELAND Festival, initiated the interdisciplinary Resonant Bodies residency in Georgia, teaches at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague, and is a Creative Producer at the Embassy of the North Sea. At the latter, he combined his research interest with his activistic ideologies, which led to co-developed the Network of European Waterbodies. Currently, he is researching the topic of ecology for the Manifesta15 in Barcelona.
Prof. Dr. Janneke Wesseling was the firts Professor in the Practice and Theory of Research in the Visual Arts, Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University (NL). She was also director of PhDArts, international doctorate programme in visual art and design, at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University, and headed the Lectorship in Art Theory & Practice at the University of the Arts, The Hague.
In 2013 Wesseling obtained a doctoral degree at Leiden University with a dissertation on contemporary art and reception aesthetics, entitled De volmaakte beschouwer: De ervaring van het kunstwerk en de actualiteit van de receptie-esthetica (The Perfect Spectator: The Experience of the Artwork and the Topicality of Reception Aesthetics).
Wesseling writes as art critic for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad. In addition, she publishes regularly on contemporary art in magazines and catalogues in The Netherlands and abroad. She has also published a number of independent studies and books, including:
- De volmaakte beschouwer. De ervaring van het kunstwerk en de receptie-esthetica. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015.
- See it Again, Say it Again. The Artist as Researcher. Ed. Janneke Wesseling. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2011.
- Het museum dat niet bestond. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2004.
- Schoonhoven, beeldend kunstenaar. The Hague/Amsterdam: SDU Publishers/Openbaar Kunstbezit, 1990.
Emily Huurdeman was the coordinator of the lectorate Art Theory & Practice. She is also the portal manager for the Research Catalogue and is one of the Research & Discourse tutors at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK). In addition, she managed the research project Making Matters at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Leiden University which was initiated by Prof. Dr. Janneke Wesseling, and currently headed by Anke Haarmann.
Emily is a performance artist, researcher and educator. She works as a research teacher at the Master Education in Arts at Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts (FHK). She published the peer-reviewed article Essaying art, an unmethodological method for Artistic Research in 2020 with an accompanying lecture performance Essaying Art. She has presented her research at multiple international conferences. She also works as a freelance manager for collaboration projects with art(ists), research(ers) and commercial parties and is the co-initiator of Café Chercher art cafe for unfinished research projects and a board member of Mouse Ear Concerts.
Emily studied Fine Art at the University of the Arts Utrecht (BA), Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam (reMA) and Education in Arts at Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam (MEd).
Website: www.egahuurdeman.nl