The Educational Web

Taking the theorist, educator, and decolonial thinker Ivan Illich’s seminal book Deschooling Society (1971) as a point of departure, THE EDUCATIONAL WEB aims to generate a dialogue between art and the educational and pedagogic practices that underpin it.

THE EDUCATIONAL WEB was an exhibition that took place at the Kunstverein in Hamburg between 1 April–6 August 2023. This project brought together the work of eight schools, educational organisations, and independent study programmes which define themselves as alternatives to the traditional “art academy”. Over the course of the exhibition, Afterall ArtSchool initiated a series of online interviews and a growing library physically present at the Kunstverein. These conversations involves practitioners thinking through three different strands: education as learning together, problematising the decolonial institution, and studying in the shadows.

Essays

ArtSchool Podcast with Johanna Palmeyro

Conversation between Buenos Aires-based initiator of Movimiento Justicia Museal (Museum Justice Movement) Johanna Palmeyro and Afterall ArtSchool co-editor Arianna Mercado as part of THE EDUCATIONAL WEB at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. This discussion will reflect on the question of knowledge and unlearning within the context of museological practice.

ArtSchool Podcast with Zach Blas

Conversation between artist, filmmaker, and writer, Zach Blas and Afterall ArtSchool co-editor Camille Crichlow. Blas’s creative practice engages the materiality of digital technologies while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, the internet, and biological warfare. The discussion reflects on Blas’s pedagogical and research-based approaches to artistic practice and technologies of capture informed by queer and feminist theory.

ArtSchool Podcast with A Particular Reality

Conversation between Afterall ArtSchool editors Arianna Mercado and Camille Crichlow and members of the arts education collective, A Particular Reality. The discussion reflects on building collective, collaborative and creative learning environments and anti-racist approaches to arts education.

ArtSchool Podcast with KUNCI Study Forum & Collective

Conversation between Yogyakarta-based KUNCI Study Forum & Collective and Afterall ArtSchool co-editor Arianna Mercado as part of THE EDUCATIONAL WEB at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. This discussion reflects on KUNCI’s School of Improper Education and the collective’s ethos to experiment with methods in producing and sharing knowledge through the acts of studying together at the intersections of affective, manual, and intellectual labour.

ArtSchool Podcast with Rinaldo Walcott

Conversation between writer, critic and Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at University at Buffalo Rinaldo Walcott, and Afterall ArtSchool co-editor  Camille Crichlow as part of THE EDUCATIONAL WEB at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. The podcast explores the logics of what Walcott terms ‘the long emancipation’ in the context of educational apparatuses and knowledge systems, in addition to the role of Black creativity and its centrality to the emergence of Black freedom.