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How do people learn, what do they know, and how does it influence their personality, their behavior, and their position in society? These questions are in the focus of the exhibition entitled Creativity Exercises – Spaces of Emancipatory Pedagogies that displays historical and contemporary art projects experimenting with alternative forms of learning. The continuation of the project, previously on view at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig in autumn 2014, will be presented in September 2015 at tranzit.hu’s open office in Budapest. The title of the exhibition was borrowed from Miklós Erdély and Dóra Maurer’s art course held between 1975 and 1977. For a short time, this course labeled officially as amateur-training, independent of state art education, presented the opportunity to experiment with collective and process-oriented work and to transcend the boundaries of artistic thinking of the time.

In this project, we define creativity as a form of agency that is brought to life when the web of relations and roles surrounding the individual is dislodged. In other words, it is not a quality, nor an ability to be developed, but an interpersonal agency that enables critical, community-based learning. This does not mean the passive intake of information units, but the (inter)active shaping of personalities and interpersonal relations, the conscientization and the empowerment of groups and individuals, so that they can be critical and responsible social actors.

From the oeuvres of Oskar Hansen (1922-2005), Robert Filliou (1926-1987), and Miklós Erdély (1928-1986), the exhibition, accompanying workshops and lectures show artistic concepts and methods that create alternative learning situations or environments. The evoked works examine the interplay of the individual and the community and the mechanisms of skills, methods, and approaches that are generated by these interactions. They are seeking to find the physical, mental, and social spaces that would enable the activation of creativity as the agency conjured by the interaction of the individual and the community.

Architect Oskar Hansen published his Open Form manifesto in 1959, which, in contrast to “closed” architecture’s hailing of the almighty power and individualism of the designer, recognizes the everyday diversity of various individual idiosyncrasies, needs, initiatives, and their transmutations. As a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, he has influenced several generations of artists, who, in their own practice, have further elaborated the methods based on process and collectivity, as well as the radical humanist utopia that is manifested through them.

Working in Paris and New York in the 1960s, Robert Filliou was alienated from the ideals of both communism and consumerism, and imagined learning as a dialogical, performative process, in which the emancipation of not-knowing plays an important role. Instead of the coercion of useful work, he advocated play and poetry as tools of research and “permanent creation.” This approach led to the creation of spaces that turn the recipient into an active participant, such as in the Poipoidrom, presented in Budapest in 1976, which is now recreated for this exhibition by the ex-artists’ collective (Tamás Kaszás and Anikó Loránt).

Whether art can be taught at all, and if so, in what ways, were also central issues in the work of artist Miklós Erdély. His creativity and imagination-development exercises, much like the central ideas of reform pedagogy, mapped open, interactive forms of learning and knowledge exchange. Some of the defining themes in these exercises included the interplay of individual and collective actions, open processes, the role of ignorance, the deconstruction of teacher-learner relation, as well as the ways to turn concept and thoughts into acts and artworks. Erdély’s pedagogical work resulted in collective creative processes, first in the framework of FAFEJ (Fantasy Development Exercises), then the InDiGo group. We invoke the ideas of Erdély and his “students” regarding collective creativity and creation with the contemporary replicas of two works/actions. The ex-artists’ collective recreates the environment Bújtatott zöld (Hidden Green, 1977), while the InDiGo group’s action Művészkijárat (Artists’ exit, 1979) is restaged by the temporary group MinDiGő.

Expanding the “space of references” of the Poipoidrom, the exhibition also presents a mind map, showing projects and documentations that contextualize the precursors and contemporary consequences of these artistic and pedagogical processes within and beyond the sphere of art.

WORKS, FILMS, AND PROJECT DOCUMENTATIONS
Paweł Althamer, Imre Bak, Igor and Ivan Buharov, Miklós Erdély, Miklós Erhardt – Dominic Hislop, ex-artists collective (Tamás Kaszás – Anikó Loránt), János Fajó, Robert Filliou – Joachim Pfeufer, Friderich Fröbel, Oskar Hansen, InDiGo group, Little Warsaw, School of Public Life, András Kovács, KwieKulik, Grzegorz Kowalski, Dóra Maurer, Miklós Mécs, Plágium 2000, Katarina Šević, János Sugár, AMBPA, IPUT Parallel Course - Study Track, Judit Vas, Nicolas Vass, Artur Żmijewski, and others.