Objectives
The Postgraduate Program in Arts (PPGArtes) from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) has the objective of educating Masters and Doctors in Arts with an emphasis on contemporaneity; of developing critical and reflective capability in relation to art problems; of qualifying professors for performance within the teaching system, on all levels; and of promoting researches of excellence from the proposed fields on their lines of research. It is oriented by Art Production, Art Criticism, Art Theory, Art History and Art Teaching, as well as other learning which, in a multidisciplinary mode, sustain Art as an epistemic, sensitive, cultural, plastic, performing and political problem. The emphasis of the Program lies on the examination and elaboration of artistic processes, through relations between conceptual forces which guide its five current lines of research.
Understanding what is contemporary as a concept which invites to interrogation, more than a temporal landmark of the present, art and culture are formulated as phenomenic realities, certainly inscribed in time and in space, but which rigorously make themselves be time and space. More than ever, in our society, aesthetic practices are introduced as new manners of being, of making, of feeling, which engender new distributions of places, of times, new forms of visibility. Therefore, the fundamental commitment of the Program is renovated with critical reflection and elucidation of dilemmas involved in the creation, fruition and investigation of the artistic phenomenon. The intense problematization to which art and culture invite us obligates us to consider their impact and their social repercussions, as well as their historical value; but this will not be made without the constant questioning of disciplinary boundaries which have historically marked the academic learning, forcing to a straitness which hinders the exploration of the new in art and in culture.
For such, it seems especially important the overcoming of old dichotomies, which separated the spheres of the artistic making and the learning about Art. The basic idea of the Program is to seek integration between processes of artistic creation, theoretical reflection and cultural reception, in order to make possible a productive relation with the situation of art, of thought, and of institutions in contemporaneity, with the necessary emphasis, already mentioned, on contemporary questions of the phenomenon and the historical, theoretical and critical reflection on art and on culture. Another requirement from the Program is openness to different areas of knowledge and languages, in order that a vaster and more dynamic comprehension of art and culture may be gained, not perpetuating old cleavages of languages, regimes, and modes of making. The Program especially appreciates artistic, cultural and reflective experiments, with the confluence of various poetical languages, of diverse processes, and of multiple conceptual questions, besides understanding these as integrating parts of ampler forms of creation, institution and theorization of culture.
Area of Concentration
Contemporary Art and Culture
We understand what is contemporary not as a synonym for the present, but as a determinate and singular reflective quality of the artistic and cultural phenomena, which thinks over the time and the space which constitutes them and the ways to elaborate them. Our fundamental commitment is to the incorporation, in a deliberate and conscious manner, of the recent dilemmas which are involved in the creation, fruition and investigation of the artistic phenomenon. More than an emphasis on present artistic occurrences, this proposition intends to highlight the contemporary problematization of Art, both in its phenomenic dimension and its historical and cultural value. Which means, on the one hand, to strictly dialogue with contemporary problems of art and culture, and on the other hand, to question the very disciplinary boundaries of the academic fields of learning which comprise the studies accomplished in PPGArtes.
Lines of Research
The Postgraduate Program in Arts — Master’s Degree and Doctorate in Arts from the Art Institute of UERJ — began its activities in March, 2005. Giving priority to the area of concentration Contemporary Art and Culture, the course, currently evaluated with the score of 5 by CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), has annual vacancies within six different lines of research.
Art, Criticism, Creation
Line Scope: The line gathers studies and investigations on contemporary artistic practice which, understood both as a dimension characteristic of social life and as specific creation activity within diverse systems of art, exerts its effects upon modes of subjectivization and upon politics. It concerns the analysis of contemporary production, especially in Visual Arts, but likewise the artist’s practice, allying the activity of criticism to the clinical sensibility of the now. It seeks, thus, to construct theoretical-conceptual instruments which allow the development of new perspectives and forms of interrogation, drawing upon means of construction of thought which conjugate multiple approaches, such as artists’ writings, critical texts, imagistic projects, curatorial proposals, graphic inventions, and exhibitory experiences.
Line professors: Alexandre Sá, Lílian do Valle and Renata Gesomino.
Collaborator professor: Elisa de Magalhães.
Art, Experience, Language
Line Scope: The line gathers researches in which production and conceptualization of the work of art are problematized through different epistemic perspectives. It lays emphasis on experimentation of language with its different resources, supports and sensorial dimensions, and with its poetical, theoretical, critical and institutional articulations.
Line professors: Ana Tereza Prado Lopes, Analu Cunha, Cristina Salgado, Inês Araújo, Malu Fatorelli, Regina de Paula and Eloísa Brantes.
Collaborators professors: Ricardo Basbaum and Jorge Mena Barreto.
Art, Image, Writing
Line scope: The line gathers investigations on art, art history and art theory directed to the potency of the image and the body, their constitution and political uses in their interaction with experience. It seeks to develop and affirm new practices of the writing on art, whether they be historical, theoretical or rather artistic.
Line professors: Leila Danziger, Luiz Cláudio da Costa, Sheila Cabo Geraldo, Paloma Carvalho and Marisa Flórido.
Art, Thought, Performativity
Line scope: The line gathers researches and processes related to the concept of performativity in contemporary art, involving theoretical-critical-experimental questions on modes of action constructed by the body as a whole, which means multiple examinations of speech acts, thought acts, scene acts, and culture acts directed to the expansion of poetical, artistic and political education within the ambit of sensitiveness.
Line professors: Luciana Lyra, Isabela Frade, Eloíza Gurgel and Mariana Pimentel.
Collaborators professors: Andrea Stelzer and Robson Haderchpek.
Art, Reception, Alterity
its relation to the cultural instance, in a double concern: 1) by approaching the problem of reception and transit of artistic objects, practices, theories, and traditions within the new geohistory of art; 2) by dealing with the question of incorporating the problem of alterity into the critical and historiographical discourse, especially from objects, themes and questions usually associated with the anthropological field, such as artistic and ethnographic objects, art and ritual, art and life, among others. Thus, the line is committed to epistemologies and investigative methods which make confluent different objects, systems of thought, agents, institutions, cultural and artistic traditions, and modes of action and reflection (researching, collecting, exhibiting, teaching, writing, editing, creating, interpreting, etc.).
Line professors: Marcelo Campos, Martha Telles, Maurício Barros de Castro and Mauro Trindade.
Collaborator professor: Guilherme Bueno.
Art, Subject, City
Line scope: The line is dedicated to reflection on art, understood not only as production of artifacts and events, but also as defining praxis of modes of being and inhabiting a city. In this sense, art is the said incessant activity for creation of times and spaces of life and self-education, for experimentation of practices of subjectivation, and for production of presence.
Line professors: Aldo Victorio Filho, Denise Espírito Santo, Rodrigo Guéron, Ana Valéria Figueiredo, Isabel Carneiro and Jorge Luiz Cruz.