"To survive and thrive in the 21st Century a VCA graduate needs to have a highly developed specialist practice, a breadth of understanding, versatility, cultural literacy, facility with new media, and professional skills. Together with the specialist schools, The Centre for Ideas enhances the VCA’s capacity to deliver this new tool kit to students."
Director and Dean, Victorian College of the Arts
In the last decade we have witnessed profound changes in the ways culture, information and technology relate to each other. Arts Colleges and universities around the world are facing the need to respond to new global pressures and urgent local issues. With the introduction of the Centre for Ideas, the VCA has launched a dynamic model for engaging critical thinking and collaborative practice.
The Centre for Ideas is a new cross-disciplinary course at the VCA. All undergraduate students take a series of subjects as part of the new degree structure. The Centre for Ideas offers students an exciting opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills crucial to artistic development.
The Centre for Ideas marks a radical departure from the conventional teaching models in arts education. The Centre for Ideas embraces the whole College, and provides a range of perspectives on contemporary culture. The VCA is unique in its assemblage of different schools and artistic practices. The opportunity for students to mix and learn together in a new critical context provides a resource from which students will draw throughout their careers.
In 1999 leading up to Jacques Derrida's visit to the VCA, a series of interdisciplinary seminars and workshops were held on his work. The outcome was a student exhibition that included performance, sculpture, painting, film, video and installation. Jacques Derrida opened the exhibition and met with the students. The success of this event anticipated the role philosophy now plays in the College.
At The Centre for Ideas students explore interconnections between philosophy and the arts. Professional philosophers working in the areas of ethics, aesthetics, politics and eco-philosophy are frequent visitors to the Centre. The range of lectures, seminars and other events ensures that students have the opportunity to engage with the thought and writings of major philosophers.
Philosophy encourages students to extend the limits of thinking. It encourages them to explore possibilities for making, for thinking about what has already been made and what can be made. Philosophy helps to bring what so often goes unarticulated in arts practice into a shared language.
Philosophers who have presented seminar programmes and lectures, or are involved in the co-supervision of PhD candidates at the Centre, include Andrew Benjamin, Raimond Gaita, Kate Rigby, Simon Critchley, Claire Colebrook, Kevin Hart, Russell Grigg, Adrian Parr, Dimitris Vardoularkis, James Phillips, John Armstrong, Justin Clemens andAgnes Heller. Jean-Luc Nancy ( Strasbourg ), and Alexander Garcia Düttmann ( London ), are both Honorary Professorial Fellows at the Centre.
In 2006 The Centre welcomed The Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, who presented a postgraduate Continental Philosophy seminar programme. In September the Centre presented the 'Wandering with Spionoza' conference with key note speakers, Alain Badiou, Thomas Hirschhorn and Genevieve Lloyd. A book from the Conference with an additional contribution by Antonio Negri will be published by Stanford University Press.
In May this year Michel Onfray ( France) will visit the Centre and in second semester Dimitris Vardoularkis (Berlin/ Melbourne) will present a seminar series on Heidegger and Benjamin.
Dr Elizabeth Presa
Head of the Centre for Ideas
The Centre for Ideas creates opportunities for on-line study and projects. This year the 3rd year Collaboration Contract subject provides web-based opportunities for students to develop collaborative projects while in second semester, students will develop their own web sites as part of their study in Professional Development. This semester the first on-line World in the Artist seminar course entitled 'Evil is Evil' will link Berlin to Melbourne. This philosophy-based seminar course is devised and delivered by multimedia artist Boris Eldagsen.
The Centre for Ideas common curriculum was established in 2001 as an affirmation of the principle of collaborative arts practice and research in the 21st Century. The common curriculum is a compulsory element of all undergraduate degrees offered at the VCA. For more information on the common curriculum please click here.
