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 concept of plague indicates a relationship between life and territory: life forms which, from this point on, will be considered excessive in a given space. Being a plague means that you are categorised as an agent that destabilises a standardised relationship system. The plague is a mathematical notion and an economic matrix: the number of individuals considered problematic for a given economic operation in a territory. There are about 50,000,000 pigs in Spain. These pigs are animals bred for the purpose of being sold as dead animal protein. There are also 1,000,000 wild boars. The former are part of the life-and-death economy of contemporary capitalism; the latter are considered a nuisance because they get in the way of real-estate speculation in forest areas. Although both are of the same species —Sus scrofa— pigs are considered breeding stock and wild boars, a pest. Lives to be produced and lives to be eliminated, respectively. The exhibition ties the concept of plague into the way living things are categorised. Eucalyptus, parrots, urban grasses, water, native species and invasive species; the Cultural Ecologies group of the Independent Studies Programme offers us a critical look at the different forms of “nature” management currently applied.
Adrià Guardiola Rius, Anna Turbau, Archivo Asociación para la Defensa Ecolóxica de Galicia - ADEGA, Archivo de la Fundación Salvador Seguí, CED MACBA, Centre de Documentació Mercè Grenzner, Diego Cidrás, Ecologistas en Acción, Enric Puyoles García, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Filmoteca Española, Fundación Solón, Illa Bufarda, Llorenç Soler, Luz Broto Salvador Solé and Waves Films.
The PEI 2019-2020 Cultural Ecologies Research Group, coordinated by Alberto Berzosa and Jaime Vindel. Members: Luna Acosta, Renan Araujo, Bia Bittencourt, Rafael Frazão, Karen, Ánxela Louzao, Maíra das Neves, José Platzeck, Lucas Pretti and Marguerita Isola.