Where does Co.Laborations stand now? If last academic year was about developing directions and setting up the necessary conditions and infrastructures for a totally new organization, this year is going to be about increasing our visibility, ongoing experimentation, formulating lessons learned, and assessing the added value of Co.Laborations. By now, you probably know that through partnerships Co.Laborations aims to strengthen education and research, increase societal impact, and provide clearer job perspectives for our students. This is done by forging new contacts or strengthening existing collaborations in the fields of media and culture, by collecting best practices in exchanging expertise, by enabling staff and students to develop new initiatives through the Co.Lab fund, and by organizing interdisciplinary dialogues and events.

Where do we want to go? We anticipate on a future in which societal relevance is becoming an increasingly important part of our work as humanities scholars. This calls for interdisciplinary approaches to our ‘core business’ of teaching, doing research, and generating societal impact. Despite the planned relocation of our department to Parnassos still being unsure, Co.Laborations wants to be the ‘lab space’ for such experiments. What new visions and concepts can we develop to productively exchange expertise and increase our societal impact? From numerous informal chats and conversations, we’ve learned that many of us at MCW are already doing interdisciplinary projects. For starters, we can make that more visible and learn from it. In the next few weeks, Rinke de Haan plans to knock on your office door to hear more about your activities and ideas for exchanging expertise. Meanwhile, don’t forget to apply for the Co.Lab fund if you have a good idea and need some money!

See you soon,

Michiel de Lange

On the 24^th of May, 2017, Floris Schuiling – with support of Co.Laborations – organized an event on music and media during which the Eliot String Quartet gave a workshop on the role of old and new media in historical musical performance. Couldn’t be there? You can now find a report, written by Floris Schuiling himself, on the Co.Laborations website.

On September 29, 2017, Nanna Verhoeff and Michiel de Lange organized an RMeS masterclass in partnership with the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) revolving around the topic “Making Interactive Narrative”. It was given by renowned scholar Janet Murray, who focuses on interactive design and specializes in digital narrative and digital humanities. Click here to read more.

Koen Leurs, Domitilla Olivieri and Michiel de Lange organized a lecture and screening with media artist Tabita Rezaire on October 5^th, 2017, in Parnassos. The session was titled “Decolonial Trinity: Technologies of the Spiritual, Erotic and Politics”. Tabita Rezaire introduced and discussed her video work for an hour, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session. Click here for a full report.

In the last week of October, Cinekid organized the Cinekid Film, Television and Digital Media Festival for children. Head of Film, Erik Tijman, and intern / Assistant Production Film Nikki Esselaar (student TCS at Utrecht University) gave students of the Practicum Film and Media Culture course the assignment to make a short item about one of eight films in the international program by interviewing the (mostly very young) actors and directors. Cinekid placed five of these eight productions on their YouTube Channel: one, two, three, four, five.

The Media and Culture Studies department MCW and cultural organization Sonic Acts join forces to organize a seminar series in January/February 2018. It is part of a longer running relationship and an investigation of new kinds of collaboration, between Rick Dolphijn and Sonic Acts. Interested? Click here for more information.