Extra University

Why do universities without any tradition in art education suddenly think that they are competent when it comes to artistic practice? How much longer will academies accept the patronising style of universities when it comes to the so-called academisation process? What is so difficult to understand for university professors and university managers when academies try to explain in their own words that there are differences between art and science?

Dieter Lesage, born 1966, studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven). From 1988 until 1990, he attended the seminars of Jacques Derrida as an ‘étudiant libre’ at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 1993 he obtained his Doctorate in Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy in Louvain on his dissertation Names like Faces. A consolidation theory of proper names [Namen als gezichten. Een consolidatietheorie van de eigennaam]. Dieter Lesage was a research-assistant at the National Scientific Research Foundation of Belgium (1989-1993), a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain (1993-1995) and a scientific attaché at the Center of European Culture of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and the Arts of Belgium (1994). In 1998, he became a part-time lecturer at the department RITS of Erasmus University College Brussels, where he was appointed as a full-time professor of arts, politics and culture in 2006. Dieter Lesage was a visiting professor at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem De Kooning Academie (2003-2005) and at the Institut für Kulturtheorie of the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg (2007). He is a member of the Editorial Board of Afterall. A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry and member of the International Advisory Board of Art & Research. A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods (Glasgow).

He is the author of, among others, Peut-on encore jouer Hamlet?, Paris, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2002 [Can one still play Hamlet?]; Vertoog over verzet. Politiek in tijden van globalisering, Amsterdam/Antwerpen, Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2004 [Discourse on Resistance. Politics in the times of globalisation]. With Kathrin Busch, he is a co-editor of A Portrait of the Artist as a Researcher: The Academy and the Bologna Process, Antwerp, MuHKA, 2007. With German artist Ina Wudtke, he wrote the essay Black Sound White Cube (Vienna, Loecker Verlag, 2010) and curated the eponynous exhibition at KunstQuartier Bethanien in Berlin in 2011. With Belgian artist Herman Asselberghs, he wrote the script for Asselberghs' video After Empire, which has been designed and published as an eponymous book by AraMER (Ghent, 2013). As of October 1, 2013, Dieter Lesage took take office as the new Director of RITS | School of Arts (Erasmus University College Brussels), one of Belgium’s leading film (fiction, documentary, animation), theater, television and radio schools.

Language English