For this presentation, the DAI invited Lisette Smits, former director of Casco in Utrecht, to visit our students and make a selection of their works. Her ‘tour’ of the DAI resulted in a selection of works that will be presented in an intimate and concentrated space. The outside of the presentation will be totally functional, revealing the backside of monitors, cables and other structural elements.

Lisette Smits: “Recently we’ve seen a new interest in autonomous works of art, whether it to be paintings or sculptures or new media related images and objects. In parallel to the historical avant-garde we also see a new interest in applied art - not design, but merely a general idealistic approach to apply esthetic values to every day life - a re-consideration of relations between the ethical and esthetical. This presentation wants to reflect that. Consisting of some 20 works, sketches and source material from 13 students coming from a variety of cultural backgrounds, the presentation is a non-categorical and non-thematic effort to put forward the works in a detailed, beautiful and seductive way.

Seduction through esthetics obviously is a tricky one. However, it is only one of the elements that manipulate seduction, and one that is the artist’s favorite. His / her aim is not to just seduce, but instead, to rapture. An intimate and esthetic presentation seemingly turns its back on the outside world, and could be perceived as a retreat from world problems - anxiety, conflicts and confusion on a global scale. However, it could perhaps be seen as a reflection of exactly this struggle: the individual, specific and personal in tension with the regulating, categorizing, neutralizing and controlling forces of globalization.”