education
from below:
the red door edition
In the context of Education from below, and as part of her stay at the Oudekerk red-doored house, urban thinker and experimentalist Gabriella Gómez-Mont hosted a series of conversations over dinners as well as walks, zooms and phone calls, inviting individuals from different disciplines and geographies to explore the possibilities and challenges of a vital and creative response to an increasingly volatile reality. The task was to venture a step beyond, to explore how we can better understand what creative practices, tools, experiences and questions can hint towards potential alternatives to the current state of the (art) world, at the limits of the existing political imagination, institutional arrangements, cultural and pedagogical paradigms. The approaches were intentionally oblique. Instead of addressing the central theme head-on, they arrived by the edges of other disciplines: practitioners that are close to the arts sphere, but also situate themselves and their practice in hybrid and shape-shifting territories, so as to open up a space in the margins to begin to imagine otherwise.
These conversations took place with people from Mexico (where Gabriella is from) and the Netherlands (were she unexpectedly ended up because of the pandemic), crisscrossing geographies and subjects related to education from below. The specific theme of each public output slowly emerged from a private and intimate sobremesa* (several also co-hosted by Antonio Vega Macotela, artist and chef-for-the-occasion) or during a long walking conversation, where lines of flight and territories of exploration were first traced and then set in motion, defining with each individual guest what the public output of the private conversation would become.
themes & participants (ordered by scales)
Gabriella was only passing through Amsterdam for a couple of days when the pandemic borders started clamping shut around her. Several years later… // the scale of a house
La Nutridora: Cooking to Learn – In this three-part essay, Sofía Olascoaga, artist and curator from Mexico, reflects upon cooking as social practice, cooking as care, cooking as community infrastructure // the scale of a convening
Tequiologías – Yasnaya Elena Aguilar, linguist and Mixe academic, speaks about the importance of enabling other forms of social organization; and about the mutual aid networks of her own indigenous community, living in the mountains of Oaxaca // the scale of a community
The Vertical Axis: Education from Below – Sophie Krier, in conversation with Gabriella, talks about her work as an editor, designer, artist, teacher and curator, as well as her multidisciplinary collaborations with the likes of Tim Ingold and Rolando Vázquez – plus the need to develop deeply grounded practices // the scale of the pluriverse
Weaponizing Care – Academic, technologist and feminist Nishant Shah reflects, from his own experience as director and professor at Artez (NL), on the need of care during the turbulent re-articulations that academic institutions are going through.He also cautions against care becoming intsrumentalized – instead of a reflective and vital response capable of shifting the institutional DNA // the scale of an institution
Speaking of a City – Gabriella Gómez-Mont writes about how the pandemic might evolve our ideas about the contemporary urbanscape, from the city centre and onwards // the scale of a city
La Escuelita Zapatista – One of the most important reference related to education from below is The Little Zapatista School: a fundamental space of dialogue for the Zapatistas. Political scientist and academic Eleonora Gea Piccardi created an open-source case study about some of the lessons to come out of their international gatherings // the scale of a movement
Zoops: Governance For a More Than Human World – Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, historian and experimental researcher at The New Institute in Rotterdam, shares his on-going exploration: redefining interspecies collaborations for a planet in crisis // the scale of a planet
Raven Pedagogies: Learning to (Be)Come Home – Dutch philosopher and pedagogue Thieu Besselink dives into the how he has been reimagining his role as a teacher, plus the need for more radical pedagogies given the (also radical) times at hand // the scale of these times
Post Data: But There Is Also Education From Above – After a sobremesa* in Rotterdam with Alison Killing – the only architect to ever have won a Pulitzer – Gabriella shares some thoughts on potential futures for creative (and hybrid) practices, as well as one of Alison’s latest talks on her award-wining project // the scale of space
* A Sobremesa is one of those elusive words that is not easily translatable in other languages and hence speaks volumes about a culture. A Sobremesa is that Mexican lingering moment at the end of a meal where people are relaxed, enjoying good company, reluctant to leave just yet, prolonging conversation and delaying departures (those little deaths). Because what is a good meal anyway without the accompanying pleasure of being together? A meal, not as a perfunctory food-intaking duty to be dispensed of as quickly as possible, but as ritual and communion. It can venture into quiet joy or become philosophical, poignant or hilarious, depending on the day, the weather, the setting and even the digestive whims of the people present. It contains all moods. It sometimes goes on for hours and hours as time itself bends deliciously and surrenders to the rhythm of conversation.
Artist Antonio Vega Macotela was the co-host and chef for the sobremesas with Thieu Besselink, René Boer and Pennie Key.
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 was realised over the course of autumn 2019 – autumn 2022 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.
While possibilities for meeting physically were drastically reduced, series of online events have been developed together. These 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.
https://efb.rijksakademie.nl/nl/Education-From-Below
