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.
All revolutions carry with them radical changes and generate new perspectives about how we relate: other ways of loving and new approaches to knowledge become possible.
‘Amor y revolución’ presents writings by Alexandra Kollantai (Saint Petersburg, 1872 – Moscow, 1952), a Marxist feminist, key figure in the Russian revolution, and Soviet diplomat. The book also includes different voices that, based on the contributions of the Russian writer, seek inheritance in artistic experiences that challenged the logics of love and knowledge of her time, and thus trace an alternative genealogy of aesthetic and political avant-gardes.
Contributors include Dora García, Rina Ortiz, and Andrea Valdés, as well as Margherita Fabbri, Lila Lisenberg and Pol Guasch, from the research group ‘Red Love’, part of the MACBA Independent Studies Programme 2019-2020.
This book is part of et al., an editorial project by MACBA published in collaboration with the Arcàdia press.
Forthcoming December 2020