Relation

as in a relationship with one another in the discussion and experience of art. This means seeing, describing, finding language, discussing, learning, and fighting about and with artistic works. How can “radical listening” be practiced? Not a passive reception, but rather a collective process as part of an empathy-laden study. Can we let ourselves dive into entirely different perspectives? Can we prevent ourselves from falling into simple antagonism? How could we practice pausing and reflecting before delivering a counterargument? How do we handle that which we can not understand and seems closed off to us? These questions are the necessary preconditions for breaching the hierarchy in knowledge production. They prompt the development of a consciousness about one’s own position and the beginning of a process of collective (self-)questioning. What is the potential of not only trying to change our perspectives and standpoints, but also of opening ourselves up?

 

Practice/Rehearsal

as in the unfinished, the sketch—that is, to know the artistic process as a way of thinking, testing, experimenting, breaking, and refusing. The class as a collective practice, the joint establishment of a space, in which fearless experimentation is allowed and encouraged. To work in a group: to develop and present exhibition formats in places close to and distant from art, to implement disrupting actions, and to facilitate the communal creation of alternative platforms and presentation strategies. Here, there is no mandatory engagement with specific materials or knowledge, but rather the necessity of a pursuit of ideas that require careful practice. Which skills should I, or should we, acquire? What is necessary to express an idea? The goal is a deliberate and meticulous approach to materials and media that does justice to the work.

Context and Conditions

What is the general framework of art: which roles do education and cultural politics play in it? What happens to an artistic practice when it leaves the studio? How can it be thought of in the context of schools? But also: what are the conditions for one’s work in the art school and in schools, and which effects do such conditions have on one’s work? How can we explore and unpack these questions in the classroom?

Representation

in its artistic, social, and political dimensions that address not only bodies, but also elementary components of postcolonial critique.

Representation as the presentation, the demonstration, the making visible, but also as in to be represented by, i.e., to stand in for.

Which visual systems are built into or were employed in the work? Which hierarchy exists between those who watch and those who are watched? What structures the space, and how is the space structured? Are there moments in which the illusion of an objective perspective is claimed? Who or what is outside the frame? What is the context of the work and of the observation? Who speaks and from which positionality… about whom or what?
This is the deconstruction and overcoming of central assumptions from colonial discourse that appear in other areas of the knowledge production, such as in concepts like nation-state, family, and gender. The Art School as a space of representation, in which not only the presentation, the demonstration, and the making visible are addressed, but also the construction of a rationale to know the world otherwise.