Welcome to the Studium Generale Rietveld Academie website! To encourage critical making and thinking, Studium Generale offers a diverse and transdisciplinary programme every year on an urgent theme. Read more about the set-up and structure here.

This website consists of 3 substantive and informative layers that constantly feed each other.

The Programme Overview home page displays announcements of ongoing events and activities, and provides instant access to their live streams when appropriate.

Below the Programme overview is the Archive Picks area, which presents varying selections of older programme contributions, curated by guests or by ourselves. Older contributions can thus regain attention or meaning, or be presented in alternative arrangements.

At the bottom is the Archive. There you will find material from 2011 to the present: part of the video-recorded contributions to the annual conference of Studium Generale and since March 2020 also recordings of events and presentations of the preliminary programmes. The archive is searchable in various ways and offers a chronological overview of previous editions and links to the associated project websites. It also contains announcements and descriptions of previous programme components, which can no longer be relived, but do provide some glances in the histories of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.

The purpose of the website is to inform and present what is happening at the moment, but it is also a memory, in which a lot can be found and unexpected encounters can take place.

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N.B. This website is still under construction! Not everything has been completed yet and the search functions in the Archive are not yet fully functional.

Must a Song always be a Song!
Joan La Barbara, Mark Beasley, Gelsey Bell, No Bra, Nicholas Bullen, Napalm Death, Susanne Oberbeck, Scorn

INTRODUCTION
Must a song always be a song! presents four British and American vocalists, performers and composers, each with a unique professional history and a unique relationship with vocal composition and Extended Vocal Technique, ranging from the popular to the avant-garde. EVT – also known as Extra Normal Vocals – is the study and categorisation of radical singing techniques, or in short: odd mouth sounds.

Curated and presented by Mark Beasley

With contributions by Joan La Barbara, Nicholas Bullen (Napalm Death, Scorn), Susanne Oberbeck (No Bra), Gelsey Bell and curator Mark Beasley. Dedicated to Robert Ashley.