Olya Korsun works across film, text and research. Her practice is driven by the constant inquiry into the ways knowledge and imaginaries of the natural world and its phenomena are built, distributed and dismantled. Her writings, performative lectures, visual essays, always unapologetically personal and poetic, invite the viewers to defamiliarize themselves with what is considered ‘known’ and experience it outside of the hegemonic orthodoxies. The varied subjects of her investigations intertwine into a polyphonic universe, where speculative geography is narrated through the noses and familial memories, the tropes of magic realism are applied to address the ecological crisis, and mutant herbariums are made to reflect on the displacement and border violence.
Curves of Inquiry is a Gerrit Rietveld Academie initiative that showcases the findings of nine artist-researchers who completed a fellowships trajectory in the previous academic year. Each of these projects is carried out in close collaboration with a department of the Rietveld Academie or Sandberg Instituut to foster relationships between educational programs, research activities, and societal issues.
In the Fellows-in-Process series the research fellows of the Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut 2022/2023 will share their process and findings with students and the Rietveld community at large. The series aims to aid interaction, while engendering meaningful conversations between the fellows, students and teachers of both institutes. To that end, events are open to Rietveld and Sandberg students and teachers. Below you can find all workshops. Note that for some workshops you have to sign up.
We continue scouting the peripheries of Ecological Imaginaries with a series of seminars conducted by the filmmaker and Critical Studies research fellow Olya Korsun. This time we will attempt to defy ‘the regimes of emptiness’ imposed on deserts and their inhabitants by 'industrialized subjectivities and exploitative authorities searching for and in need of so-called "empty" places to be "filled" through occupation, extraction, mining, production, and accumulation.’ (Samia Henni)
Critical Inquiry – We continue scouting the peripheries of ecological imaginaries with a series of seminars conducted by the filmmaker and Critical Studies research fellow Olya Korsun. This time we delineate the field where crises of ecology, human imagination and mental health meet.
Critical Inquiry – This year, Critical Studies research fellow Olya Korsun organises a series of seminars to collectively map out and question the contours and layers of ecological imaginaries through the study of eco-critical theory and experimental/queer/world cinema.
Critical Inquiry – This year, Critical Studies research fellow Olya Korsun organises a series of seminars to collectively map out and question the contours and layers of ecological imaginaries through the study of eco-critical theory and experimental/queer/world cinema.
During her fellowship Olya Korsun will attempt to map out and question the contours and structure of Western ecological imaginaries. Through the collective and individual study of eco-critical theory and experimental/queer/world cinema, she hopes to tap into the ways the existing imaginaries can be disrupted and bewildered.