15 Jan 2014

Piet Zwart Institute - Master Education in Arts: Lecture Series 'Critical Pedagogies of the 21st Century'

Lecture Series: Critical Pedagogies of the 21st Century

Dates: January 31, February 28, March 28 2014: 19.30 – 21.00 h

Locations:
Piet Zwart Institute: Karel Doormanhof 45, Rotterdam
Witte De With: Center for Contemporary Art, Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam

Admission: Free
The lectures are open for public

Lecture # 1
Friday January 31
Jan Masschelein: Making Art School: A Story about (Cave) Walls and Tables
Location: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art

Lecture # 2
Friday February 28
Dennis Atkinson: Events of Learning and the Poietic Materialism of Art
Location: Piet Zwart Institute

Lecture # 3
Friday March 28
Jonas Staal: Art in Defense of Democracy. An Introduction to the New World Summit and New World Academy.
Location: Piet Zwart Institute
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Hereby we cordially invite you for the public lecture series Critical Pedagogies of the 21st Century. What is a school? How does it influence and construct politics and social relations in our present day society? Society seems to be ready for implementing change in schools. On the one hand this is based on the premise that we have to rethink education in relation to the future and challenges of the 21st Century. On the other hand there is a critical evaluation of conventional institutions and formats, fuelled by a clear interest from artists and theoreticians alike in alternative educational models.

The film Postcards from the Desert Island from the artist Adelita Husni-Bey documents a 3-week workshop with students from an experimental, self-run elementary school in Paris. The artist asked the pupils to turn the school hall into a desert island, and to relate themselves to this new territory. The video documents the children's approaches to self-governance and the possibility of imagining institutions and social relations from scratch. What if we break down the concept of school to its bare essence? What is a school? This question is the starting point for the lecture series Critical Pedagogies of the 21st Century, which deals with the phenomenon 'school' on a philosophical, theoretical and fictional level.

The first lecture entitled Making Art School: A Story about (Cave) Walls and Tables is organized in cooperation with the educational department of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, and marks the starting point of a structural cooperation.
In this lecture Jan Masschelein (Professor of Philosophy of Education and director of the Laboratory for Education and Society at the University of Leuven) proposes to discuss the (art) school in terms of 'forms of gathering and actions', rather than in terms of functions and institutions. The school is neither an institution nor an organization. It refers to a particular 'scholastic form' of gathering: a time-space-matter arrangement including architectures, technologies, practices and figures - that allows for a particular relation to the world and for an experience of making things public. By identifying what makes a school a school, Masschelein wants to pinpoint why the school as form has value in and of itself and why it deserves to be reinvented today.

Critical Pedagogies of the 21st Century is developed by the Master of Education in Arts as part of the seminar Critical Pedagogy. It is indebted to the inspiring meetings of the 'New School Collective'.

For more information about the lecture series please visit: pzwart.nl/nl/courses/mea/Public-Events/
Or: www.wdw.nl/event/making-art-school-3/

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Please note: The Master Education of Arts has opened its call for applications for 2014. First priority deadline is January 31.

Piet Zwart Institute
Master Education in Arts
P.O. Box 1272
3000 BG Rotterdam

E-mail: pzwart-info@hr.nl
Telephone: 0031 (0)10 794 4716