Jeroen Boomgaard, Lector of Art & Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and Flora Lysen, media researcher at the University of Amsterdam, together make up the new team at ARIAS, the research platform for science and arts in Amsterdam. The platform was established in July 2016. As programme manager and project coordinator respectively, the pair form the backbone of this burgeoning initiative, which unites existing artistic and scientific research, and stimulates new research programmes.

On 24 March 2017, ARIAS organised the first network meeting between the five collaborative partners involved in the platform: the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK), the VU Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The meeting was held at A Lab, a living lab in Amsterdam. From thinking plants and emotion networks to webcam cinema and the advantages of miscommunication: a series of current art-science research projects already came up for discussion during the first meeting. Spearheads for the near future were also addressed, including a speed dating event for the five partners, establishing an information point for subsidy applications at the interface between art and science, and exploring various artistic doctoral tracks at the participating institutions. Additional information about this and future meetings is available on https://arias.amsterdam/

Jeroen Boomgaard (ARIAS Programme Manager) is Lector of Art & Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and is Head of the Research Master’s degree programme in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. Boomgaard regularly publishes articles in Dutch and international art journals addressing avant-garde concerns, art in public spaces and artistic research. The following two works will be published in spring 2017: Jeroen Boomgaard and Rogier Brom (eds.), Being Public; How Art Creates the Public, Valiz Publishers; Jeroen Boomgaard, Rini Hurkmans, Judith Westerveld (eds.), Compassion; A Paradox in Art and Society, Valiz Publishers.

Flora Lysen (ARIAS Project Coordinator) is a researcher in the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam, where she is conducting doctoral research into the history of brain science in popular culture. Together with the UvA’s neurocultures research group, Flora initiated the interdisciplinary Worlding the Brain conferences. She has previously held positions at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, BAK (Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht) and If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam). Her articles have appeared in publications including Nuncius, Contemporaneity and Metropolis M. Flora also published an article in the Stedelijk Studies journal about Visual Aspects of Science, an exhibition held in the Stedelijk Museum in 1962.

About ARIAS

ARIAS is the Amsterdam Research Institute of the Arts and Sciences, where scientific and artistic research unite in collaborative projects. In addition to its role as platform, ARIAS is keen to develop into an international centre for knowledge and debate regarding research in the arts.

In line with the Dutch National Research Agenda’s theme of ‘Art, science and innovation in the 21st century’, ARIAS has formulated three points of particular interest:

* Art, science and education: about the role of artistic research as an indispensable source of new methods of knowledge development, learning and reflection;

* Art, culture and health: about the application of creative technologies within the healthcare sector, prevention and the associated ethical and philosophical issues;

* The city as field of research: in which artists and researchers collaborate to develop new concepts that contribute to ensuring that an increasingly cosmopolitan city such as Amsterdam remains liveable and attractive.

During the meeting on 24 March, it became clear that the participating institutions are home to an enormous range of research programmes. In this light, ARIAS therefore also aims to stimulate more collaboration in order to facilitate promising research programmes

ARIAS is a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK), the VU Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

If you have any questions about ARIASnl or would like to register for the mailing list, please send an email to f.c.lysen [@] uva.nl.