Pedagogies of Space @Index

Friday February 12th 2016 by Peter Thomas Lang

A two-day conference summarising Index’s program dedicated to Oskar Hansen’s pedagogy of Open Form explores the notion of space in the context of experimental art and architecture education. Considering space both as a learning environment and a teaching tool, the seminar gathers postwar and contemporary examples of pedagogical practices that question and reshape established sites and modes of creative education.

Deriving from different contexts and time, those practices share their interest in space as a means to provoke changes—either to test the borders of disciplines, as in Hansen’s open-air games or Anna and Lawrence Halprin’s performative workshops, or to transform educational process through redesigning its setting, as in Hansen’s adaptation of the seat of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts to Open Form curriculum. Space may be used as a site to embody innovative pedagogical concepts, as in Ciudad Abierta (Open City), collectively built microutopia constructed by the students and faculty of the Architecture School of the Catholic University in Valparaiso, or as a non-site, becoming a tool to free education from its institutional ties, as in Buckminster Fuller’s nomadic teaching or contemporary self-organized academies that in their lack of attachment to particular place find an escape from neoliberal logics of result-oriented education. In addition to presentation by researchers and writers, there will be also presentations from student workshops organized in collaboration with the Kungl. Konsthögskolan and Konstfack, Stockholm, and the Art Acadmy of Jutland, Aarhus.

With Eva Diaz, Mark Wasiuta, Oscar Andrade Castro, Anna Molska, Tor Lindstand, Jens Evaldsson, Sam Thorne, Kuba Szreder, Alberto Iacovoni, Peter Lang, Magnus Ericsson, Florian Zeyfang and others. The conference will be in English.

Organized in collaboration with Aleksandra Kędziorek, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.

With kind support by the Polish Institute in Stockholm, the Polish Presidency in the Council of Baltic Sea States, and the Royal Institute of Art, Architecture.

Draft Program (subject to last minute updates)

Pedagogies of Space: Performative Learning and Educational Nomadism

25-26 February 2016

Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation

Kungsbrostrand 19, 11226 Stockholm

 

DAY 1 / 25 February

 

afternoon session

4 pm—8 pm

 

4 pm                Introduction

4:10 pm           Aleksandra Kędziorek (Museum of Modern art, Warsaw), Axel Wieder (Index, Stockholm) on Oskar Hansen

4:30 pm           Eva Diaz (Pratt Institute, New York) on Buckminster Fuller, Black Mountain College, University of Carbondale, nomade teaching and global learning network

5:00 pm           Mark Wasiuta (Columbia University, New York) on Halprin workshops, learning as performative activity

5:30 pm           Discussion

5:45 pm           Coffee break

6:00 pm           Oscar Andrade Castro (TU Delft) on Valparaiso School and Open City of Ritoque

6:30 pm           Anna Molska (artist, Warsaw) on her film shot in Hansen’s architecture

7:00 pm           Discussion

7:15 pm           Drinks

 

DAY 2 / 26 February

 

day session

2 pm—3:30 pm

 

2 pm                Workshops presentations by students, with Peter Lang (KKH, Stockholm), Magnus Ericsson (Konstfack, Stockholm) and Florian Zeyfang (Art Academy, Aarhus), Moderator: Alberto Iacovoni (VCU Qatar)

afternoon session

4:00 pm—8 pm

 

4:00 pm           Introduction

4:15 pm           Tor Lindstand (KTH Stockholm)

4:45 pm           Jens Evaldsson on Floating School Stockholm and learning through bulding microutopias

5:15 pm           Discussion

5:30 pm           Coffee break

5:45 pm           Sam Thorne (Tate St. Ives) on self-organized education

6:15 pm           Kuba Szreder on Wolny Uniwersytet Warszawy (Free/Slow University of Warsaw),                     nomadic self-organized school

6:45 pm           Final discussion

7:30 pm           Drinks