Lisette Smit | Revisiting Black Mountain College Symposium

Director documentation

Lisette Smit, Programme Director of finished Temporary Programme Master of Voice (2016-2018) was part of the Revisiting Black Mountain College Symposium at ZHdK (Zürich University of The Arts), 25-27 May 2018. The symposium, programmed Dorothee Richter, Head of MAS Curating, WB, ZHdK, explored cross-disciplinary experiments and their potential for democratization (in times of Post–Democracy).

It was part of the overall programme of the Revisiting Black Mountain College exhibition at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (4 April - 6 June).

Experimenting with experience, democratic coexistence, interdisciplinarity, the self-determination of students and teachers, and working in art and design to develop and reconstruct society: Black Mountain College, founded in 1933, served as a space for artistic and social utopias for two decades and has remained a starting point for discussions on the conditions for successful teaching and research in the arts and design through to today.

These cross-disciplinary experiments seem to be especially important in times of so-called Post-Democracy and Post-Facts, which imply a reformulation of the public sphere. Is there on the other hand a potential in the cultural sphere that might offer a space for democratization? Does the impact of new working methods linked to digital technology propel further interconnections and resources that create other public spheres? Might this be a catalyst for new patterns of a communal exchange?

More information: symposium and exhibition