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 group participates in RED LOVE, a publication in reader format, which is an initiative by Dora García. The publication project features collaborations from Peio Aguirre, Ingo Niermann, Aaron Schuster, Dena Beard and Michele Masucchi, and is grounded in the utopian and applied traditions of Alexandra Kollontai, Charles Fourier and Michel Foucault.
The central idea is love in the commons and the alternative lifestyles it might give rise to (what would, for example, include The Hearing Voices Network, mutual aid entities like Radio Nikosia, or organisations dedicated to the production of work, such as The Icarus Project and Sensibili alle foglie). The project is focussed on the relationship of avantgarde aesthetics and politics, with a clear interest in the idea of red love, that is, love in a communist or commons economy.
Along with activity in research, writing, editing and publishing, practical and educational seminars are featured, with special emphasis on the participants’ artistic practice, in all formats possible. This could then derive into participation in various forms of public presentation.