Lecture Series on Arts, Cultures, Policies & Educational Practices #8

From September 2021 to February 2022, CAMP notes on education is running a series of lectures on Arts, Cultures, Policies, and Educational Practices. In nine online sessions, internationally renowned experts at the interface of Arts, Cultural Policy and Education will present their concepts and approaches. They will be talking about their research within their particular contexts. Through dialogue and knowledge-sharing, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own concepts, methods and practical experiences in the context of the upcoming documenta fifteen.

The curatorial approach of the artists’ collective ruangrupa is to locate art in people’s everyday lives and, with documenta fifteen, create a place for shared knowledge production. In line with this concept, the lecture series and its speakers will ask questions about the free and institutionalised spheres of arts and education. CAMP notes on education initiates a dialogue on the social and political factors that influence the emergence of artistic practice.

The series is organized in collaboration with the University of Hildesheim and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The lectures will be moderated by students and held in English due to the presence of international speakers.

CAMP notes on education

CAMP notes on education is a glocal* network of teachers and learners in the fields of arts, arts history, aesthetics, cultural policy and arts education. CAMP uses the practice of lumbung as an opportunity to place the question of contemporary Arts Education in networked and global contexts. For example, what role does it play in relation to artistic and curatorial actors? How does it position itself in the current cultural policy discourse?

The contemporary practice of Arts Education needs new responses to translocal teaching and learning contexts. documenta fifteen should provide a framework for instigating structural change in these areas. lumbung allows CAMP participants to learn about new parameters for horizontal decision-making processes and resource allocation. In the coming weeks and months, CAMP will be working with a growing number of cooperation partners and networks to translate these values, rituals and organizational principles. It will be questioning the foundations and practices of Arts Mediation and looking for ways to learn in and from collectives.

With this focus, CAMP notes on education is constantly growing and opening up spaces for collective and project-based learning.

*glocal = global-local

Thursday, February 10, 2022: Images of defiance: South African anti-apartheid t-shirts

Speaker: Avi Sooful

T-shirts became attire for the South Africa anti-apartheid masses during the 1980s as an interface of communication announcing resistance and protest. This lecture provides a reading of t-shirts worn by anti-apartheid activists that popularised political figures, slogans of protest and affiliations to banned political organisations. These t-shirts acted as an alternative platform and strategy of resistance believed to have the potential for political and social change similar to radio, newspapers and graffiti.

Avi Sooful is a senior lecturer of Fine Art at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She serves as President of the South African National Association for the Visual Arts and current Chair to the Exploring Visual Cultures Project. In her research she considers visuals and experiences of the apartheid era a rich area for investigation and knowledge generation. As a practicing artist, the notion of landscape occupies her work as both political and feminist images.

More information about the event can be found here.