The Documenta Certificate in Philosophy and Art: Thinking in the Present Tense

November 12, 2026

Maria Lai, “Learning from Athens,” documenta 14, Athens, 2017. Photo: IDSVA.

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Call for Participation
Kassel, Germany | June 17–20, 2027

The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts invites creatives from all backgrounds and disciplines to apply by February 15, 2027.

Description

How can we think-art through and with the uncertainties of our world?

The Documenta Certificate in Philosophy and Art: Thinking in the Present Tense is a four-day advanced certificate program designed by the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) and led by philosophers Giovanbattista Tusa and Silvia Mazzini. Taking place in Kassel, Germany, June 17–20, 2027, the program invites curators, artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners to explore art and philosophy through encounters with the artworks and ideas of Documenta 16.

Following the success of IDSVA’s inaugural certificate program at the Venice Biennale in 2026, the Documenta Certificate brings IDSVA’s approach to art and philosophical inquiry into a new context. Central to this approach is the artist-philosopher: someone whose creative practice generates thought and whose philosophical inquiry takes shape through an engagement with art. Here, art is understood as a form of thinking in its own right, neither an object awaiting philosophical interpretation nor an illustration of concepts elaborated elsewhere.

Documenta 16’s proposition that art remains “a mode of thinking in the present tense” gives this inquiry particular urgency. Responding to a world shaped by conflict, displacement, ecological crisis, and technological change, D16 directs our attention toward those forms of knowledge produced through instability, transcultural encounter, disrupted logic, and nonlinear reasoning. Program participants enter the full complexity of this terrain through IDSVA’s mode of inquiry, which does not seek to resolve its tensions into a common interpretative language. Together, we will explore discontinuity, unexpected proximity, and ambiguity through dialogical encounters between different ways of sensing, knowing, and inhabiting the world.

The program thus approaches Documenta 16 neither as an object to be decoded nor as a collection of works to be surveyed, but as a living constellation of relations: between artworks and their modes of appearance; artistic gestures and curatorial decisions; bodies and spaces; histories and institutions; different epistemologies and forms of life; individual experience and collective imagination.

For participants, the program offers a rare opportunity to deepen the relationship between philosophical inquiry and their own artistic, curatorial, and research practices.

Certificate Program Structure

Preliminary Online Session (April 2027)
Participants will first meet for a preliminary online session, during which the faculty will introduce the final schedule and contextualize the assigned readings. The primary goal of this session is for participants to begin building a community before the trip.

In Kassel: Practices of Uncertainty
Participants will immerse themselves in a flexible rhythm of work and experimentation, punctuated by recurring practices. A multisensory warm-up session will open each lecture, while an embodied brainstorming session will follow the group’s exploratory outings through the Documenta 16 exhibitions.

Independent Reflection and Documentation
Throughout the program, participants will also be encouraged to carve out spaces for reflection and re-examination of what they have seen, experienced, discussed, and created. These encounters will be recorded through different media, such as written or visual logbooks and photographic documentation.

Final Day Lecture: “The Unfinished Present”
The final day will be dedicated to a concluding polyphonic lecture and participatory four-dimensional mind mapping, laying the groundwork for further developments of this long-term laboratory of possibilities.

Certificate Requirements

Participants who complete the full 25-hour advanced certificate program, including guided sessions and self-study, and submit a 1,000-word reflective statement will receive an Advanced Certificate in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA).