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.
The online programme 'Artistic Ecologies, New Compasses and Tools' is part of a discursive series 'Evenings with WHW Akademija'. The programme explore tools that are being developed and experimented with by artists, thinkers and institutions in order to navigate a period of immense disruption and social change, and what kinds of artistic ecologies can be formed with these.
Tuesday March 23, at 7pm CET: 'One is Always a Plural: moving together over distance' by Yael Davids.
For the Zoom link please sign up in advance to register via e-mail.
With works by: Lygia Clark, Vlatka Horvat, Sanja Iveković, Fina Miralles, Àngels Ribé, Mladen Stilinović, Cecilia Vicuña
Over the past five years, Yael Davids has trained in the Feldenkrais Method. She uses the Method as a research device for comprehending the inner-workings of structures and prevailing tendencies — bodily, institutionally, artistically. In her work, she focuses on learning conditions and duties of care, and addresses questions such as: How can we reform the prevailing trope of learning being a competitive, mentally demanding experience? How can we integrate other learning processes, beyond the common optic experience? How can we support the practice of self-reflection and individual interpretation? How can we think differently about limitation? Yael will present a Zoom workshop, in which a somatic analysis of artworks forms the foundation for a Feldenkrais lesson. Drawing on the workshops she recently presented at the Van Abbemuseum, Yael invited each member of the curatorial team to select an artwork that, amidst the conditions of the pandemic, has acquired a personal magnetism — a charged significance.
This constellation of artistic materials presents a unified yet multifaceted ‘body', which Yael examines for commonalities, harmonies and overlaps, but also sites of tension, contrast and resistance. Through this close study of the selected artworks — as individual yet connected materials — Yael seeks to determine how to best listen to and support this ‘body’. Yael will study the works selected and will develop a corresponding Feldenkrais lesson.
The workshop invites participants to lie on the floor, in the comfort of their own home, and be guided through a series of gentle movements and bodily orientations. Each participant integrates and experiences within their own body the structural qualities of the artworks. No former familiarity with the Feldenkrais Method is needed, and the workshop is open to all levels of physical mobility. It is important that you attend with your video ON and in a well-lit space. This will help Yael to guide the lesson.
During the session itself, please mute yourself so as to limit background noises. Feel free to unmute yourself if you need to ask a question. You can ask a question at any time. In order to best see your movements, Yael recommends to wear lighter coloured clothing if you’re lying on a dark surface. Equipment: mat or blanket (optional), pillow (optional), comfy, warm and non-restrictive clothes.
Yael Davids examines the capacities in which the body operates as a documentary vessel. She studies how collective heritage and socially charged narratives become intertwined with the individual’s biography and sensibilities, surmounting to an experiencing of the concrete world that is defined by a unique finitude.