Masterclass Is vrede uit te beelden? Ronald Ophuis & Renate Schepen

• Date: 11 October 18:30 - 21:00
• Location: Stroom Den Haag 

[Thie event is in Dutch only]
As part of the programme line See You in The Hague and Just Peace Month 2022, Stroom Den Haag is organising two workshops on the theme of art and peace.

In a world where war, violence, crisis and conflict are increasingly coming to the fore, it is important to examine the mechanisms underlying these. Art offers new perspectives and thus makes an important contribution to this research. Conflict and war already has a tradition of imagination in our culture, but what about the imagination of peace?

Peace is one or perhaps the most important goal society - and often the individual - has. Peace can be applied and interpreted in different ways, and so has no fixed definition. Yet there is a commonality in how we relate to peace, or the idea of peace. The starting point for these workshops is the search for what peace actually is, how we relate to it from the individual and collective traumas that define our lives, and how this carries through into the making process. We invite you to reflect together with visual artists and philosophers on these questions and themes from different art practices and methods.

Ronald Ophuis is known for depicting traumatic situations. His work is praised for the power of daring to name and depict violent situations that are beyond our imagination, and which we collectively try to avoid. He challenges the viewer to look, even if it hurts, precisely to break the taboo and silence that lies at the root of such situations. Over the past year, Ronald Ophuis has been exploring the possibility of depicting peace, the other end of the spectrum, in his own work. During the master class, he will share his findings and connect them to his far-reaching understanding of the artist's role as an activist without a political movement.

Renate Schepen is an independent philosopher. From her research in intercultural philosophy and into forms of dialogue, she has specialised in different sources of knowledge and knowledge transmission. She is an activist for epistemic justice, or recognising different forms of knowledge, knowledge carriers and becoming aware of power mechanisms that influence this. She describes this in the book of her dissertation Kimmerle's Intercultural Philosophy and Beyond. The Ongoing Quest for Epistemic Justice (Routledge, Aug 2022). In this master class, she will guide dialogue on the relationship between peace and conflict, and explore whether art can be a form of knowledge that contributes to understanding how we want to relate to both peace and conflict.

Participation and registration

Participation in the workshops is free, and KABK students will receive 1 ECTS for participation. Each workshop consists of two half-day sessions, and expects active participation from participants. Depending on the workshop, there will be practical assignments, for example.

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