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.
In light of the current Woon Protest (housing protest) in the Netherlands, and similar movements around the globe that fight for the right to affordable housing in big cities, we invite you for a city walk: ‘The Right to the City’.
This 7-track audio work explores Amsterdam's grassroots resistance against homelessness and unaffordable housing and its consequent fuel of counterculture platforms in the city.
Initiated as a collaborative piece hosted in the context of the Rijksakademie workshop Social Practice, ‘The Right to the City Walk’ brings together Rijksakademie residents Werker with broadcaster, curator and sound practitioner Femke Dekker.
Evoking the evictions and rent strikes from the 1920s, the early squatter activists from the 1950s, the Nieuwmarkt and Coronation riots from the 70’s and today’s squatting actions from We Are Here, Hotel Mokum and the flash actions of the Niet te Koop action group, the project invites you to map the city through conversations and soundpieces.
Some of the questions we would like to share: How to survive today’s neo-liberal policy in Amsterdam? Is it possible to create alliances from different positions, privileges and vulnerabilities to claim back together our Right to the City? What role does art and artists have to play in this ongoing housing struggle as they are being used as agents of gentrification?
The Right To The City Walk merges Femke Dekker’s and Werker Collective’s ongoing and long term practices that investigates the role of the archive as a tool for resistance and political imagination.
Guests: We Are Here, Niet te Koop, Hotel Mokum, OCCII, W139, Wooncafe020, Annegriet Wietsma, Guilly Koster, Alite Thijssen, Boudewijn Ruckert, Wouter Stroet, Sjoerd Stolk, Ad de Jong, Adam Adriss & Teferi Mekonen.
With additional support from the San Serriffe (Mondriaan Fonds).