MASieraad: Digging Holes, Throwing Away Footwear
- Ideas, recollections, and explanations from the tutorial program’s main board members—the founders Ted Noten, Liesbeth den Besten, Ruudt Peters, Gijs Bakker, and Leo Versteijlen—and a few of its alumni
- How training was structured
- MASieraad’s plans for the close to future
Writing an article about MASieraad changed into three months of conversations with alumni and the founders of MASieraad. I felt like a kind of visiting scholar who briefly peeked into the guts of this program, which the founders name “not one other MA program.” “It’s extra a platform the place issues can occur. We don’t have a set strategy to what jewellery ought to be, however slightly to what it can be,” says Leo Versteijlen, emphasizing MASieraad’s freedom and its limitless nature. It’s not simply an academic program. It’s like a residing organism, and as such it undergoes metamorphoses.
A jewellery sect?
Virtually! This grasp’s program was obsessive about reforms in jewellery training. It emerged in 2021, after seven years of discussions by its founders on the necessity to refresh the jewellery world. “I believed possibly [we’d] make the jewellery discipline deeper and fewer superficial than it’s,” says Gijs Bakker. “Good craft doesn’t make good artwork.”
It’s fairly uncommon for grasp’s packages to supply college students such shut contact with a few of the main stars within the discipline, offering data firsthand from trade legends. Ted Noten says that MASieraad gave him a push to lastly share his secrets and techniques, ideas, and methods. A glimpse of them may be discovered within the alumnus Into Niilo’s remaining thesis mission—which took the type of a graphic novel! It’s primarily based on Into’s talks with their instructors about “fuck-ups” and what that time period means to MASieraad’s founders. Listed here are a few Noten’s concepts from that fascinating dialog. I’ve by no means come throughout these reflections earlier than.
- “I discover failures very moralistic.”
- “Success is time-related. Primarily not about getting cash, however making issues that give me vitality for making extra issues.”
- “All the things that you simply do can by no means compete with what’s [in] your thoughts.”
Web page from MASieraad alumnus Into Niilo’s graphic novel thesis, Fuck Ups: Failure as a Approach In the direction of Creativity, 2022
The pedagogy, as you may anticipate, was not the anticipated. Noten gave college students an task to dig a gap one cubic meter in measurement. College students needed to place some jewellery items they’d made in it, like a time capsule, a message for future generations. (By the way in which, it’s nonetheless there.) One alumna, Laila Marie Costa, mentioned that this workshop, which befell on the very starting of her research, felt considerably ritualistic to her—like a farewell to an outdated manner of seeing issues, “to bury[ing] our darlings”—because it marked the beginning of learning jewellery from a totally new perspective.
This exercise befell on the grounds of Ruudt Peters’s studio, in Ravenstein, Netherlands. Niilo, who now assists Noten, remembers the expertise: “I used to be very skeptical about it! The chilly, autumn within the Netherlands … Sooner or later, we really stumbled upon pipes and thought we had ruined Ruudt’s plumbing!” In revenge, the scholars buried a statue they occurred throughout at Peters’s place. He wasn’t there on the time and knew solely concerning the digging-some-hole workshop however didn’t think about that it might be a crater! And he didn’t know concerning the buried statue, both. He was livid when he noticed what the scholars had completed to his backyard.
After returning to Amsterdam from this workshop, one scholar, Yotam Bahat, took off his shoe, ruined from the digging, and threw it into the river, saying in despair that if he needed to throw away a pair of sneakers after each workshop, this training would value him manner an excessive amount of!
Generally the end result of a workshop might be changed into an train in meditation, because it did with Bahat’s Balancing mission. One in every of Peters’s workout routines had the scholars create a holy object after discovering holiness in 10 objects they’d collected. Bahat determined to create a type of Tower of Babel from all the college students’ objects—almost 90! The mission grew right into a efficiency about how you can discover a stability between an individual’s physique and issues.
The workshops typically centered inward, encouraging college students to find themselves, to seek out themselves as creators, in virtually ceremonial actions. (MASieraad even has its personal Decalogue, its 10 commandments. The founders devised them from a number of years of conferences and conversations about what the present instructional system within the discipline of latest jewellery lacks. See them right here.)
On this multidisciplinary and numerous program, the environment expanded the boundaries for understanding the jewellery career. This was undoubtedly not simply one other grasp’s program. Fairly, it’s the start of a motion, just like the Bauhaus or Vkhutemas.[1] Peters remembers that Nedda El-Asmar, who represented PXL-MAD College of Arts Hasselt in choosing candidates, mentioned, ”Right here, you’re feeling the vitality of the Royal Faculty of Artwork in London in 1990!”[2]
How was MASieraad organized?
The primary scholar cohort’s program administrators have been the designer duo BLESS.[3] Training befell on the Sandberg Institute, and all processes and methodology have been underneath management of the duo. Nonetheless, totally different academics carried out actions. The commencement initiatives weren’t simply jewellery items however have been accompanied by artwork initiatives. There was a podcast by Margaret Munchheimer, and an actual art-house sequence of movies by Marilyn Volkman that mirrored on this system. After the primary graduating class, this system moved to PXL-MAD College of Arts Hasselt, the place it was absolutely underneath the management of the founders.
All the educational yr was divided into three elements, every of which was taught collectively by two academics: a founder and a co-teacher. The latter was typically youthful, with a totally totally different perspective and strategy. So there was no Large Boss, however as a substitute an enormous variety of opinions, a dialogue between generations. For the second cohort, Noten paired up with the jewellery artist Kalkidan Hoex, Peters with the jewellery designer Estela Saez-Vilanova, and Bakker with the Dutch artwork and design theorist Louise Schouwenberg. Bakker normally labored with college students to start with of the educational yr. He admits that he enjoys the state when they’re “very insecure, very unsure,” as their minds are versatile and as mushy as a chunk of clay, in order a creator you are able to do something with them!
An necessary a part of this system was the theoretical workshop, referred to as Discourse. It concerned journeys to museums, galleries, and artist studios, in addition to lectures, readings, writing programs, and discussions. Liesbeth den Besten led it, with workshops by Mònica Gaspar, Alena Alexandrova, Ben Lignel, Ben van der Wal, and Pravu Mazumdar. One of many Discourse assignments concerned the scholars making a presentation concerning the that means of gold of their nation of origin. This demonstrated how gold can maintain varied meanings, from crime to holiness, from avenue to palace, from battle to connection.
The ultimate thesis, so typically feared by practice-oriented college students, might take very unconventional turns. PXL itself inspired college students to experiment with its type.
For his thesis, Bahat produced a 16-page newspaper as a manifesto concerning the energy of artists and their ethical accountability in a hyper-globalized society. Bahat displays on the high quality line between modern ethics, cultural correctness, and the discrimination which might be born out of it, offering a five-step information for the artist to keep away from separatism and join us all:
- Keep away from essentialism, keep away from identification of place
- Keep away from possession
- Be free
- Be respectful
- Think about tomorrow
Many assignments and workout routines centered deeply on the scholars, they usually in flip created very touching and candid initiatives. Jana Brevick, by the top of the task “Replicas and Derivations,” led by Bakker and Schouwenburg, created an equipment referred to as Electrical Broomstick. The workshop stimulated college students to provide you with a duplicate of a product and to replicate on it by making as many derivations of it as attainable. Towards the top, college students started realizing that their derivations slowly turned an authentic new product.
Brevick wore Electrical Broomstick to journey and work, to know her grief after the loss of life of her mom. Watch a video of the efficiency she did to go along with the equipment right here.
Diana Kirdeeva’s remaining mission is an set up of objects made in wax. All of them—uncooked, rugged—are lined with the writer’s fingerprints. The set up is devoted to an episode from Diana’s childhood when her grandfather misplaced his finger. This made him unable to do one thing he cherished: taking part in the accordion. This mission was chosen for the Talente Masters of the Future 2025 exhibition.
Jeannette Knigge’s remaining analysis centered on the query of how our identification is constructed and the place of artwork jewellery on this matter. Can or not it’s part of a performative act? We see right here a dialogue just like Lauren Kalman’s strategy.
MASieraad bears fruit
Initially, the founders thought of handing the reins of this system over to the graduates sooner or later, however they as a substitute determined that graduates want to start out one thing of their very own.
In 2023 and 2024, the scholars organized an exhibition of their works as a part of Munich’s jewellery week. In November 2024, Bahat and fellow alumnus Daniel Jirkovsky based the studio annex exhibition house and residing house The WearHouse, positioned within the middle of Amsterdam, which organized a present throughout Munich Jewelry Week 2025.
Over the course of 5 years, MASieraad has graduated 25 college students from varied fields, hailing from totally different continents. Why gained’t it proceed as a grasp’s program? As a result of it doesn’t have to be one.
Freedom, route, idea, perseverance, braveness, delight, rigor, reinforcement—these are only a few of the phrases alumni affiliate MASieraad with.
Now, a brand new member has joined the board—Chequita Nahar. And the board is on the lookout for extra new individuals, people who find themselves not essentially jewelers, who’re able to invent, implement, and contribute to the event of latest jewellery. “We’re open to individuals who need to encourage others, create occasions,” says den Besten.
In February 2025, a platform assembly, open to the general public, facilitated a networking session with founders, alumni, and others. In November 2025, throughout Obsessed, the platform will host a second public occasion. In 2026, a particular spring faculty session will happen in Ravenstein. If the unusual workshops and unconventional methodology described right here haven’t scared you off, however as a substitute impressed you, now’s the right time to attempt to be a part of!
P.S.
This textual content accommodates maybe 5% of the whole lot I’ve discovered from interviewing individuals concerned with MASieraad. The supplies of our dialogues are rigorously preserved and can—I imagine—be revealed at some point. I need to categorical my deep gratitude to the interviewees for offering me with insights and ideas to replicate on. They embody the founders, and MASieraad graduates of various years: Eva van Kempen, Margaret Munchheimer, Into Niilo, Yotam Bahat, Daniel Jirkovsky, Ana Escobar Saavedra, Meeree Lee, Jana Brevick, Jeannette Knigge, and Mengying Solar.
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[1] Each have been revolutionary actions within the twentieth century that profoundly influenced the event of contemporary structure, artwork, and design worldwide. Their imaginative and prescient on structure, portray, and design nonetheless resonates in the present day.
[2] This particular time on the RCA is important because of the look of the Younger British Artists (YBA) group. Amongst them are RCA graduates Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili. The YBA phenomenon immediately influenced a lot of the modern artwork discipline within the UK, and made an impression on the Tate Fashionable, which later opened in 2000.
[3] BLESS is a transdisciplinary studio primarily based in Paris and Berlin. It was based in 1995 by Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag. They work on the intersection of trend, product design, and the gestural, specializing in creating on a regular basis environments by sensible, conceptual, and surreal objects. The studio defines itself as “an outspoken feminine” who “… tends to be future oriented.” https://bless-service.de.
