'Academy: Learning from Art / Learning from the museum'

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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– if knowledge and business can be merged, European institutions must adopt to the inner working principles of democracy and not remain locked in hierarchical principles which favor being distinguished over real innovation. Any Academy as a business sponsored project working together with museums to further life long learning must be aware of these traps in the European context.

Instead of following the principle of an ever expanding network an old – new version of establishing connections is being proposed by a number of partners. They want to create “an academy” to facilitate an international series of exhibitions and projects. It is being initiated by the Siemens Arts Program and realized in cooperation with the Kunstverein in Hamburg, the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London, the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.

Not knowing the prospects of such an “Academy", both the organizers and sponsor wish “to prompt reflections on the potential of the academy within society.” Here it would be better to admit that an academy is an old idea. Its aim is to be an elite cultural institution beyond and beside places of higher learning. Therefore any new academy needs to be redefined before it can take root in modern society. This can prove to be a difficult task since modern society in the Information Age has taken to like a superficial culture based on digital images send in rapid seconds around the globe and has more often come out against real learning based on work with memory and working through contradictions. The latter as part of cultural heritage requires an active archive and a special concept as to what is being collected and stored. This goes all the more since intangible cultural heritage, as emphasized recently by UNESCO, is full of meanings most of which are not only ‘hidden’ or brought to silence by the media age, but also very elusive ones. At times it becomes hard to distinguish what meanings contemporary societies attach to places, events and people when compared to marketing strategies that even entire cities apply to gain in image in order to order to just lure more tourists into their places and local economy.

So it is not so easy to see how in a single act an academy can be established and expect to be recognized as such by the international world even if it has respectable and formidable partners. The real critical question is whether or not a project and program sponsored by German giant Siemens can develop an own profile rather than just respond to what other international players such as the Guggenheim museum are doing already. Here the very concept of the ‘Academy’ suggests that they do wish to compete in well the business of organizing museums and what they exhibit but the stake holders in this consortium although formidable and of high reputation don’t seem to have yet the capacity to bring about those bloc buster exhibitions which go around the world. The difference to Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art etc. becomes very quickly apparent when they do these huge exhibitions not for other but in their own museums around the globe. In other words, American museums, foundations and private collectors have already merged their interests to establish for their collections and art works a larger distribution system very much akin to what gives all the power to the Hollywood film industry. This puts any European effort as noble as it might be at a distinct disadvantage.

It is unfortunate but usually the European responses to these global challenges in the arts world end up at best to be a second best affair. In America the business being conducted with the arts sets everything else apart from the more traditional inspirations of the old academies perspiring to attain nobleness when it comes to conduct not business but discourse with knowledgeable people. So European academies fall short of any financial prowess and usually answer to the global challenge by seeking state support despite having private backing. This is due to the problem of distinctiveness as based on knowledge. The latter requires always resolving the crucial question as to who is to give recognition of that knowledge if not the people paying, then the state!

As a matter of fact distinction on account of seriousness in research and scholarly work is one thing, but to use it to become just a part of a distinguished society is an old but equally reactionary dream of a class which wishes to set itself apart from the rest of society. Often that dream as motive prevails because these people prefer through the proximity to some noble knowledge to look down on everyone else. Knowledge as class distinction is not new but if a matter of privilege to have access to it, then the Academy can fulfill that dream. What is most often not seen when attempting to realize such a reactionary dream is that it has always been the fatal flaw of Europe to mix business with knowledge in a way that nothing satisfactory comes out in the end for either business or advancement in knowledge.

Indicative of how this Academy shall answer the location question is where it shall place itself, namely “amid the speculative tensions resulting from the questions of ‘what one needs to know’ and ‘what one can aspire to bring forth’.” With a bit of British irony and humor, it can be said ‘this sounds jolly good, but mind you, a bit adventurous, don’t you think, if an entire academy throws itself amidst regulators of society determining what everyone needs to know and above all in these times when conservative politicians wish to tell those many immigrants who hardly speak the language of the country they are in what they need to know in order to be considered citizens of this country?’.

Of interest is that the Academy in this initial announcement does not seem to see it as necessity to free people from pre-prescribed social formulas as to what needs to be known but rather it is suggested that the real aim is to become creative, innovative, indeed inspirational. If one would want to be cynical about it such an aim wants only that applause at the end of the lecture or exhibition is certain but not any critical questions asked as to whether the overall intention can ever be fulfilled with such a conception?

Again if the imagination is to speak, then ‘jolly good’, a gentleman might say, while only half listening. For he understands well that all his upbringing was about getting to know what one needs to know in order to get just by and further in society. It is a kind of minimum consensus by which to get on with your life. It is all about knowing etiquettes, no more or as others would claim ‘the rules of the game’. No more questions need to be asked if you have the knowledge you need to know. It is like Greek students who study to know what needs to be known in order to pass exams with the highest possible grades in order to get into university. That gives them hardly real knowledge since everything is based on reading just one book on the topic and memorizing only that about which everyone speculates this will be asked on the exam.

Not surprisingly if the Academy wants to place itself between the need to know and being inspirational, then it might as well face those wishing to know only very little as it is indeed a difficult task for any teacher to inspire such students. This is a down side of learning society but hardly explains the entire educational crisis. Still the need to know can be linked to certain jobs while knowing what can inspire you to bring forth new ideas sounds like a round about way to achieve innovation. Whether or not that curve can be scratched, remains to be seen, but aside from having to be inspirational, surely it does depend among other things upon what questions are being asked to bring out a student. It was the philosopher Kant who said already philosophy is the art of bringing things forth and it has to do with people becoming creative minds once they are asked good questions and can unfold in the process also their personalities in a good and practical way.

So what does everyone wish to become in a society marked by high levels of unemployment? Surely not everyone aspires to become a Hollywood script writer who requires, so the narrative of a film produced in Hollywood, a muse to give him the necessary inspiration to regain his cutting edge and thereby stands to have a contract with a film studio so that he can live happily ever after because he made it, money wise and also in personal relationships (provided they did not turn sour on him before too late to answer the question himself, but what aspires any person to do something extraordinary and thereby becomes rich and famous?) Maybe this Academy sponsored by SIEMENS will examine in future the ways things work not when a chaotic and mischievous muse is around but what happens once people learn to say ‘no’. They hardly ever do although over exploited and always blinded to this being over exploited by this promise of big money which lures them on and on so that they end up doing things no one else would do. But humiliation and over exploitation is never inspirational so it might be understandable why the Academy does seem to be interested as to what is happening on the darker sides of life.

Of interest is, therefore, the determination in the declaration stating that the “Academy should be approached as a space that generates vital principles and activities, which can be taken and continued as a mode of lifelong learning.” This puts the Academy squarely into the European context with its aim to contribute to knowledge only to be gained by life long learning and not as any share holder of an American foundation would ask for a way to secure a life long income. The reverse between knowledge and money seems odd but it is not really a contrast if solid financing and project management attains levels of sophistication due to the business practices being applied. Any sober business approach would mean putting good people in place and establishing first of all an accountability and transparency on the basis of the inner workings of democracy. That means a person working in the organization can disagree with the overall director because not observance of hierarchy is important as value is given to whoever puts forth good ideas and can make a good case out of it. That means the argumentative logic needed to convince others is set free to work in an environment which has also ethical standards and does care as any normal corporation or institution with social responsibility to serve people and their communities.

Therefore, it should be a matter of not what the Academy wants to be but what it can do for others to advance knowledge about the arts. It should be done on a solid business basis which means managing to bring together sound ideas and risk capital ventures in order to advance in the knowledge of what can be inspirational for everyone. A word of caution has to be added here for the pseudo image of just being inspirational must be avoided if any work or project done by the Academy becomes truly substantial, i.e. honest with itself.

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Further Information about the Academy: Academy. Learning from Art / Learning from the Museum Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven

09/15 - 11/26/2006

Cooperating Partners

The Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Siemens Arts Program

"Academy" is an international series of exhibitions and projects initiated by Siemens Arts Program. In spring 2005, the Kunstverein in Hamburg reflected on the situation of students and teachers at art schools in the exhibition entitled "Academy.Teaching and Learning Art". This exhibition - together with its in part processual artworks and the accompanying lecture series - referred directly to the original meaning of "academy" as a forum for exchanging ideas and for open, informal gatherings, and examined the issue of institutionalised art education and communication.

In September 2006, the series will be continued at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen and at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. These two contemporaneous approaches are devoted to two different aspects of the same subject - albeit aspects that mutually determine and complement one another, and which are closely linked with the institution of the museum and its educational potential.

Academy. Learning from Art (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen) How do we expand our notions of teaching and learning beyond the frames assigned by formal education? With this question the focus shifts from art academies as institutions per se, to perceiving them as extended aspirational drives. With that it is possible to distinguish between teaching geared to a clear output and teaching that focuses on possibilities for an enabling interaction between subjects and social organisms. The aim is to understand the core concepts by which this type of learning occurs: exchange, reflection, speculation, and fallibility. The project's foreground is the communicative quality of artistic gestures which act out the possibilities of "academy" as learning, analyzing, and communicating. Additionally, this project wishes to speculate on the possible emergence of the concept of "the civic" in order to open up a much broader sphere of "self organization" among cultural impulses and phenomena.

Invited to Antwerp are international artists and artists' groups whose works enter into the process of imparting and learning the material they present as a constitutional element of the pieces themselves. Some of the participants have been invited to transform the exhibition spaces in the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen into places of discussion, discovery, and understanding. To this end, their works aim to create ideal situations for receiving art that enable people to learn from it. Other artists will be involved in projects that respond to the exhibition's theme and describe its context.

Academy. Learning from the Museum (Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven) The Van Abbemuseum project is regarded as an ongoing process. It aims to ask what it may be possible to learn from the museum beyond what the museum sets out to offer. By producing an alternative set of principles for teaching and learning, and by viewing the museum as a cumulative archive of experiences, histories, and dynamics that expand beyond the notion of a collection of objects. While traditionally the museum presents an idealized notion of what or how one should learn, "Learning from the Museum" wishes to address several questions. These include: What does the museum make possible beyond itself? How can the museum become a series of exchanges and responses, and how can it move beyond acting as a vehicle of established values?

Groups of activists, theorists, artists, students, archivists, librarians, and philosophers have been invited to the museum to help answer these questions. They will work with the collection, archives, and other resources, including the staff. Instead of studying the museum, the conditions are being set up for the museum to produce some new models of knowledge and to engage visitors in new ways of thinking about the experience of coming into the museum. "Academy" is therefore a pilot project for further investigations of the new possibilities for education and knowledge exchange that the Van Abbemuseum will develop in the future.

In keeping with these core questions, one of the groups, consisting of media activists Jan Gerber, Susanne Lang, Sebastian Lütgert and Florian Schneider will tackle the subject of "Imaginary Property". A pilot film is to be shot in the Van Abbemuseum's collection and used for a project that examines the question of "What does it mean to own a picture". In the age of digital reproduction and networked distribution, the museum as a place that not only grants public access to pictures, but also invests them with value, is faced with an ever mounting challenge: what potential does public accessibility have today, and how can it be realized in remove from or immediately in face of the present scenarios of digital rights management and scenarios? In another group, the artists Liam Gillick and Edgar Schmitz are developing a series of banners inside and outside of the museum. The banners will suggest protocols of engagement with the library, a site of knowledge inside the museum. Through this project, the group points to the unseen dynamics that make up the Van Abbemuseum as a learning environment.

"Academy. Learning from the Museum" is also a part of the long-term program "Be(com)ing Dutch in the Age of Global Democracy", which has been awarded the Development Award for Cultural Diversity 2006 by the Mondriaan Foundation.

Dates:

Academy. Learning from Art, September 15 - November 26, 2006, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium Opening September 14, 2006, 9 p.m.

Academy. Learning from the Museum, September 16 - November 26, 2006, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, Opening September 15, 2006, 7 p.m, Artists AntwerpUli Aigner; Herman Asselberghs, Dieter Lesage & Ina Wudtke; Dockx & Mast; Jimmie Durham; Gelitin; Johanna Kandl; Mary Kelly; Modulator; Lia Perjovschi; Michelangelo Pistoletto & Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto; Raqs Media Collective; Apolonija Sustersic; Jo'lle Tuerlinckx; et al.

Contributors EindhovenIrit Rogoff & Deepa Naik; Anselm Franke, John Palmesino & Eyal Weizman; Jan Gerber, Susanna Lang, Sebastian Lütgert & Florian Schneider; Liam Gillick & Edgar Schmitz; Janna Graham, Valeria Graziano & Susan Kelly; Jean-Paul Martinon & Rob Stone; Mårten Spångberg & Bojana Cvejic; et al

Curators

Bart De Baere & Dieter Roelstraete (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen), Charles Esche & Kerstin Niemann (Van Abbemuseum), Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths College), and Angelika Nollert (Siemens Arts Program)

Publication

The publication will appear in September 2006. Edited by Bart De Baere, Yilmaz Dziewior, Charles Esche, Angelika Nollert, Dieter Roelstraete, and Irit Rogoff

Symposium: Learning and Teaching

September 14 / 15, 2006, Organised by Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (MuHKA), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, in collaboration with University Antwerpen, Karel de Grote Hogeschool en Hogeschool Antwerpen, Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London, and Siemens Arts Program.

Contact Person

Dr. Annika Schoemann

Siemens Arts Program

Wittelsbacherplatz 2

80333 Munich

Germany

T. +49 / 89 / 6 36 - 3 35 08

F. +49 / 89 / 6 36 - 3 36 15

E. annika.schoemann@siemens.com

 

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