Artists at Schools
The Artists at Schools project is part of the international collaboration Art mediation in the age of media saturation: how can the potential of art be teased out rather than disciplined? This project is based on a collaboration between three different organizations, Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm, The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art in Riga, and tranzit.hu in Budapest.
The idea is to share experiences from varied forms of production of public space and audiences. The aim of this collaboration is to practically test new mediating forms of contemporary art, by considering each organization’s local context (which include multi-ethnic areas), in addition to the art produced there as a starting point.
This collaboration will be realised in each institution as tailor-made pilot projects within the field of mediation of contemporary art, as well as seminars, workshops, and symposia.
The Artists at Schools project is organised around the concept of democracy.
By approaching this topic from the point of critical pedagogy, we would like to highlight and reflect on the relations between knowledge, authority, and power.
The goal of the Artists at schools project is to relate art and critical pedagogy, as well as to rethink and apply the notion of democracy, its working principles with artistic pedagogical practice. This experimental project provides an opportunity for pupils – by meeting and working together with artists – to get to know ways of thinking that question stereotypes and statements built on routines conforming to norms and forces. While in the traditional art approach the artist always appears as someone who is blessed with manual skills and creates the ‘beautiful’, in our projects students will meet artists who engage with critical thinking and social responsibility. In these projects art does not appear as an isolated field, but rather a medium that helps to sharpen critical reflection orientated towards social responsibility and freedom.
Three artists – Lilla Khoór-Ágne Szabics, Zsolt Keserue, Péter Szabó – will realise projects for the Artist at schools project by working with students in three different elementary and high schools in Hungary. The projects will be carried out in Spring (April-May) and Fall (September-October) of 2012.
A part of the project will be a video documentation tracing the collective work of the artists, students, and teachers. The main topics of the projects the artists will engage with in the schools are: the teaching and learning of history, considering its contextualisation from different point of views; and its representation with different artistic tools.
The project will conclude with an international symposium in October 2012. The symposium will address the theme of art and education with a focus on collaborative projects carried out by artists and young people in schools. At the symposium,a historical overview, international examples of artists realizing projects in schools, models of alternative pedagogy employed by artists; discussion on the role of contemporary art institutions as mediators between artists, schools and audiences not visiting the art institution. Also the the pilot projects initiated in the framework Artists at Schools will be presented. The outcome of these projects will be discussed in relation to the current changes in the Hungarian educational system and the idea that artists can stimulate democratic thinking.
Conception: Judit Angel, Dóra Hegyi, Lilla Khoór
Curators: Dóra Hegyi, Lilla Khoór
Project coordinator: Vera Simon
Artists projects:
Zsolt Keserue Nemzeti Tankönyv
Lilla Khoór - Ágnes Szabics Position definer
Péter Szabó Present Research Group
The project is supported by the European Cultural Foundation
