The famous german photographer Katharina Sieverding will teach at the Summer Academy again next summer after a three-year's break. She will deal with the core questions of artistic image production but also will encourage the students to individual articulation and working methods. If you happen to be this weekend in Düsseldorf, you will see Sieverding's work in several places of Duesseldorf Photo Weekend 2012 as well as in the Museum Kunst Palast and in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.
What is the role of an artist? How does he/she perceives him/herself? And how becomes this perception visible in his/her work? To find answers to these questions, Matts Leiderstam will look into the mirror with you in his course "Self-portrait".

Following last year's curatorial course with Maria Lind which was extremely successful, the Summer Academy offers two courses in 2012  to learn and to discuss more about crucial curatorial questions. First, the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW (curators of the 11th Istanbul Biennial 2009) will be concerned with pivotal questions of institutional critique in exhibition making.
Then, Maria Lind, together with Juan A. Gaitan, will focus on notions concerning the public and the mediation. Maria Lind, Director of Tensta Konsthall and an internationally recognised curator, will be opening her exhibition "Abstract Possible" TOMORROW (27 January) at Bukowskis in Stockhholm.
Additionally, Berlin architect Arno Brandlhuber (brandlhuber+) will offer a course that not only addresses artists and architects, but also activists, cultural producers, scientists and all other persons who are interested in questions of spatial production and in shaping social space.

Peter Friedl agreed to return to Summer Academy and to continue his intense enquiry to which extent images are involved in sharpening the sense and perception of history. Peter Friedl's work is included in the group show "Utopie Gesamtkunstwerk" at Belvedere's 21er Haus in Vienna, that will be opened TONIGHT.
We are also very happy to welcome documenta artists Tania Bruguera (d11) and Shaina Anand & Ashok Sukumaran (d13) to teach at Summer Academy for the first time. While Bruguera is concerned with political art and its impact on society, Anand & Sukumaran will navigate their students through the vast field of media arts. For the complete programme please click here.

Beginning today, during the next weeks, we introduce all teaching artists of this years's Summer Academy.
Well known German sculptor Manfred Pernice will manipulate gravity in his course, checking out the possibilities of objects and bodies in space. Until January 15, he has a solo exhibition at S.M.A.K in Gent. His works are also still on view for a couple of days in group shows at Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin and at Galerie Mai 36, Zurich.
If you like to learn how to forge art, you should apply for Katrin Plavcak's course "Stealing from the best" . For the third time in Salzburg, she will teach how to improve your painting skills. Her own works are on view until January 15 in a group show at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin and until February 11 at Galleria Bianca, Palermo. For the complete programme please click here.

The motto of new 2012 course programme is "to jump into the abyss, only to resurface"*. Detailed descriptions of the courses are available here

We wish you a prosperous and productive New Year, and we would be delighted to welcome you at the 2012 Summer Academy.

* After Milena Dragicevic