Education from Below

Education from Below is a two-year collaborative programme organised between the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, MACBA, Barcelona and WHW, Zagreb.

Art as a site for learning

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.

Network

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.

Support

  • seminar
  • WHW, Zagreb

Summer School

with Pablo Martínez and Vlatka Horvat

  • –

Seminars with Pablo Martínez and Vlatka Horvat took place on Sljeme mountain near Zagreb within the WHW Akademija summer school of the 3rd edition of WHW Akademija.

14
Photo by Damir Žižić
Photo by Damir Žižić
Photo by Damir Žižić
Photo by Damir Žižić

Following the intensive online work, participants, mentors and the managing team of the third edition of WHW Akademija gathered in person from July 12-16 on Sljeme. Summer School was realised as a part of The Tree School, ongoing project initiated by architects, artists and educators Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti/DAAR. based on horizontal and convivial ways of learning. In a simple yet invaluable act of being together, during three days, the group was building collectivity and entered the process of intensive sharing of experiences and knowledge.

Pablo Martínez

Pablo Martínez is a researcher and educator whose research focuses on the potential of images for constructing political subjectivity, institutional imagination and experimental pedagogies. In the last decade his institutional work has explored the possibilities of an eco-socialist museum: from the creation of a garden in the roof of CA2M and a permanent group of gardening, to open a kitchen at the MACBA and establish a research group on food sovereignty; from seminars about the impact of oil on 20th century culture to debates on agriculture. He worked as Head of Programming at the MACBA from 2016 to 2021. Martínez’s seminar 'Towards an eco-socialist museum' for Summer School at WHW Akademija was focused on the role of a museum seen as a one of the fundamental spaces for envisioning possible worlds to come. The museum can play a key role in shaping subjectivities as well as constructing imaginaries and collective culture.

Vlatka Horvat

Vlatka Horvat works across a wide range of forms, including sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, video and writing. Her work is presented internationally in a variety of contexts – in museums and galleries, theatre and dance festivals and in public space, through the acts of looking and listening, on processes of call-and-response and give-and-take that are at the heart of all horizontal exchanges. Vlatka Horvat’s seminar with WHW Akademija was focused on open collaborative formats generated on the spot that served as a space for sharing and reflecting on new models of education and knowledge production.The seminar by Vlatka Horvat approached all things around us – objects, spaces, animals, other people – as potential partners with whom we might enter into a dialogic exchange.

The participants were artists Luna Acosta, Eva Ďurovec, Teuta Gatolin, Lama El Khatib, Yulia Krivich, Ghita Skali, Raluca Țurcanașu, their mentors Marwa Arsanios, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins and Kasia Wlaszczyk (Kem), Vlatka Horvat, Pablo Martínez, Aude Christel Mgba, Dan Perjovschi and the members of WHW collective, as well as Emily Pethick, director of Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten from Amsterdam, Charles Esche, director of Van Abbemuseum from Eindhoven and Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti/DAAR.