Education from Below is a two-year collaborative programme organised between the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, MACBA, Barcelona and WHW, Zagreb.
Education from Below explores art as a place for dialogue, collective learning and imagination. Education doesn't belong only in institutions, but it can be horizontal and come from below, from communities.
The project recognises that art practices can dislocate the usual hierarchies of what should or should not be learned and traditional divisions between theory and practice, and that knowledge does not have to be based on accumulation, but rather on sharing and mutual learning.
The partners will explore new models of art practice based on collective learning and will generate a network of institutions and professionals for sharing methodologies.
Education from Below links three independent programmes for artists, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, PEI at MACBA, and WHW Akademija that each provide important opportunities for artistic development outside of formal education systems. The project will be realised over the course of autumn 2019 – autumn 2021 through seminars, study groups, artist residencies, exhibitions, series of lectures, an international conference, a collective reader and a common web platform, involving many artists, thinkers and educators.
This lecture presents WHW Akademija, an independent, interdisciplinary and tuition-free study programme for emerging artists in Zagreb, founded in 2018 by the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW, which will share its experiences related to cultural programming with the restrictions of the pandemic and the use of open-end formats in experimental education.
During the pandemic, unstable conditions have become a prevailing paradigm of the wider cultural landscape. This lecture discusses how the processes of self-organisation, reciprocity, adaptability, collectiveness, antifragility and mutual care that WHW Akademija tries to cultivate can be relevant on a larger scale.
What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Vienna and Berlin. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. Since 2003 WHW collective has been running the programme of Gallery Nova, a city-owned gallery in Zagreb. In 2018 WHW launched an international study programme for emerging artists called WHW Akademija, based in Zagreb.
Since 2019 part of the collective (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović) works as artistic directors of Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna. WHW continues working in Zagreb, where activities are led by Ana Dević.
Since the first exhibition in 2000, WHW curated numerous international projects, among which are Collective Creativity, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, 2005; 11th Istanbul Biennial What Keeps Mankind Alive?, Istanbul, 2009; and One Needs to Live Self-Confidently…Watching, Croatian pavilion at 54th Venice Biennial, 2011. More recent projects include My Sweet Little Lamb, (everything we see can also be otherwise), (co-curated with Kathrin Rhomberg), various locations in Zagreb, 2016/2017; Everything we see could also be otherwise (My sweet little lamb), (co-curated with Kathrin Rhomberg and Emily Pethick), The Showroom, London, 2017; Želimir Žilnik: Shadow citizens, Edit Russ Haus fürMedienkunst, Oldenburg; 2nd Industrial Art Biennial, On the shoulders of the fallen giants, Rijeka, Pula, Labin, Raša, Vodnjan, 2018.