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A community experiment in the Allegheny Highlands dedicated to rethinking art and education in uncertain times.​​
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LVS PRESENTS: EUROPEAN GRADUATE SCHOOL SEMINARS
LVS is honored to partner with the European Graduate School's (EGS) Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought (PACT) division to offer our artist community access to a selection of their groundbreaking fall graduate seminars at a reduced cost. In the company of leading thinkers such as Joshua Oppenheimer, Albert Serra, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, the three offerings this fall will grapple with the role of art and artists in navigating an increasingly complex and volatile world. Questions? See below.
2026 SEMINARS
LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR
AUGUST 7-12
Sensory Ethnography Today and Tomorrow: Art, Anthropology, & Aesthetics
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An anthropologist and filmmaker, Lucien Castaing-Taylor directs Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab, creating films that explore how people experience and sense the world around them. His work has been shown at MoMA, the British Museum, and the Tate, among others institutions, and has screened at major festivals in Berlin, Locarno, New York, and Toronto.
Through screenings and analyses of major works (e.g., Sweetgrass, Leviathan, Caniba, De Humani Corporis Fabrica) emerging from and influencing the SEL, Lucien will guide seminar participants in considering the urgent ethical, aesthetic, ecological, and political challenges that confront image-makers today. He will also propose various audiovisual projects for creation through telephones or cameras based on exercises undertaken each year in the SEL. ​
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Dates and times: August 7-12 (daily) from 4:45-7:15 PM CET, 10:45 AM - 1:15 PM EDT
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Cost to audit: $200 (regularly $400) through Little Valley School
ALBERT SERRA
& PEDRO COSTA
AUGUST 23-28
Auteur Film in the Digital Era: The Cinema of the Future/Untitled
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Albert Serra is a Catalan filmmaker and artist whose work reimagines historical and literary figures—from Don Quixote to Casanova to Louis XIV—through the lens of a radical, image-driven digital cinema. Working with non-professional actors and long, unscripted takes, his films—including The Death of Louis XIV (2016), Liberté (2019), Pacifiction (2022), and Afternoons of Solitude (2024)— Serra treats the camera's unrelenting, unblinking gaze as the primary material of cinema.
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Pedro Costa is a Portuguese filmmaker whose work centers the dispossessed communities of Lisbon's Fontainhas neighborhood and the long shadow of Portuguese colonialism in the lives of Cape Verdean immigrants. Like Albert, Pedro works in sustained collaboration with nonprofessional performers. In films such as In Vanda's Room (2000), Colossal Youth (2006), Horse Money (2014), and Vitalina Varela (2019) he works against narrative efficiency to build images of extraordinary stillness, fractured memory, and everyday endurance.
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In this seminar, Pedro will discuss his own art and his distinctive approach to filmmaking, while Albert will talk about the position of auteur film in the digital era; more precisely, about how the digital revolution has changed the way of making films, writing scripts, shooting, editing and, of course, all elements of post-production.
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Dates and times: August 23-28 (daily) from 1:30-4 PM CET, 7:30-10 AM EDT
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Cost to audit: $200 (regularly $400) through Little Valley School
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JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER
& SREĆKO HORVAT
OCTOBER 19-24
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Joshua Oppenheimer is an American filmmaker based in Copenhagen who has spent much of his career confronting political violence and the stories we tell about it. Based on years spent with perpetrators and survivors of Indonesia's mass killings, Joshua created The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), using dramatic restaging and testimonials to expose how atrocity is remembered, denied, or turned into myth. He resists the distance and comfort of typical documentary, putting the people at the center of violence in front of the camera, complicating the relationship between art and audience.
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Srećko Horvat is a Croatian philosopher, writer, and political activist whose work has long confronted the possibility of civilizational collapse — from nuclear catastrophe to climate breakdown to pandemic. In books including After the Apocalypse, The Radicality of Love, and Poetry from the Future, he reframes apocalypse not as an ending but, drawing on the term's root, as a "revelation": a lens for reading the interlocking crises of the present and asking what future remains worth fighting for. A co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25), Srećko treats philosophy as inseparable from political struggle, insisting that thought earns its stakes only in confrontation with catastrophe.
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This seminar will explore the apocalypse as a condition of the present rather than a fantasy of the future. Srećko and Joshua have spent their working lives confronting systems of violence and the stories we tell to make them livable — from ecological devastation to genocides, occupations, and war. But the deeper subject of their work is the rest of us: the ways we all, in everyday life, participate in and naturalize exploitation; the narratives that render invisible what we would rather not see.
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Dates and times: October 19-24 (daily) from 6-8:30 PM CET, 12-2:30 PM EDT
Cost to audit: $200 (regularly $400) through Little Valley School
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How does “auditing” differ from taking the seminar for credit?
LVS is partnering with EGS to allow artists to audit their seminars. LVS participants and regular students will largely have the same experience: both can attend and participate in lectures online, access readings and resources, and complete and submit assignments. The only difference is that LVS participants’ assignments will not be graded, nor can they receive credit.
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Do I need to be present for every session to participate?
No, recordings of every seminar will be available to LVS participants upon request. Attendance is not recorded, and LVS participants can attend part or all of any given session.
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How do I attend seminars and access resources?
EGS will grant LVS participants access to all seminar materials and links to live seminar broadcasts through Moodle, an online classroom management system.
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How long will the material be available to LVS participants?
LVS participants will have access to seminar materials through Moodle for a year and a half after the seminar. If participants request seminar recordings, these will be available for three months after they are received.
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Is LVS offering scholarships to attend EGS seminars?
Unfortunately, because the cost of the seminars is already highly reduced, we are not able to offer scholarships to attend EGS seminars at this time. Returning LVS participants, partner programs, and subscribers will receive a small discount. Email info(at)littlevalleyschool.org for more information.
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Is it possible to take the seminar for credit instead?
Individuals interested in taking the workshop for credit should visit the EGS application page.
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Is there a deadline for registering for an EGS seminar?
We recommend registering at least a day in advance of the first seminar session if you would like to attend the seminar live.
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Is it possible to access materials and recordings after the seminar is finished?
Yes. LVS participants can still take the seminar asynchronously (accessing materials and recordings) for up to one and a half years after the seminar. The cost remains the same.