A New School

The conference A New School explores the question of whether approaches to a radical art education of the 20th century are gaining relevance today in view of current socio-political conditions and whether they necessitate a reform of art and design education. On the first day, panels examine pedagogical concepts as well as new places of learning and schools in Brazil, China, Germany, Great Britain, India, Nigeria, Rwanda and the USA, and discuss their relevance for contemporary education. On the second day, three workshops foreground the haptic, manual and practical processes, which are often overshadowed by a cognitive approach, though equally important. They will explore what forms of collective learning and self-organization are significant in an age of global networking and what new kinds of knowledge and actions are needed to meet contemporary challenges.

Day 1 | Day 2

2 pm–4 pm
Introduction
Marion von Osten and Grant Watson, curators bauhaus imaginista

Workshop 1: On Bodily Knowledge
Hosts: Yael Davids
Respondent: Regina Bittner, Head of Academy, Deputy Director Bauhaus Dessau

The workshop will reflect the writings of Bauhaus textile artist and designer Otti Berger, in particular her essay Stoffe im Raum (Material in Space) . Berger draws attention to the Haltbarkeit (hold-ability) of textiles, thus enunciating the sensual terms of engagement that textiles evoke. By combing a Feldenkrais lesson with a choreography of textile elements, the workshop will guide the session’s participants through a dialog between the body and materials.

Workshop 2: From the Educational Turn to the Institutional Analysis: Drafting an Art School Curriculum
Host: Janna Graham, Susan Kelly
Respondent: Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer

This workshop will critically engage with genealogies of radical education that have been called up in the recent years of the so-called Educational Turn in the art world: histories of emancipatory education; art and theory programs; arte útil, libertarian education and so on. Can the activation of these histories contend with the conditions of the neoliberal in art school today, where radical curricula are detached from radical institution making? The workshop draws on histories and practices of institutional analysis in radical psychiatry as well as case studies from campuses in the UK and elsewhere today, to see how new protagonisms might be possible, and together write a new institutional curriculum.

Workshop 3: In and In and In Institutional Lives
Hosts: Annette Krauss, Ferdiansyah Thajib
Respondent: Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, raumlabor/ Floating University Berlin

How can one inhabit different institutional lives at the same time? This workshop is dedicated to the experiences of having one foot in an institutional context, and the other foot in another, e.g. self-organized collectives. When do these different workings intersect or support each other? How can they open up ways for sustaining, subverting and transforming these very institutions? How could the boundaries between admin-orga-institutional practices and learning practices in art schools be traversed and reconfigured?

4.30 pm
Wrap up
with hosts, respondents and workshop participants
Moderation: David Dibosa

Day 1 | Day 2