Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) How do we want to work together?

Mentor:
Annette Krauss and Yolande Van de Heide
When:
11 Nov / 13 Nov, 2019
Where:
Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto
Language:
English
Outline
Annette Krauss and Yolande Van de Heide workshop is part of the UNIDEE fall term titled MODES OF INSTITUTING, that is dedicated to imagining the role of art organizations in times of perennial crisis, and to discussing what their future(s) in the next twenty years will be. A group of eight international applicants will be selected to follow a two-weeks programme of workshops and conferences. Together with Annette Krauss and Yolande Van de Heide other artists and curators will promote their own workshops: Kobe Matthys, Bik Van Der Pol, Janna Graham and Valeria Graziano.

The selection was made by invitation from the Cittadellarte and UNIDEE board.
A group of eight young artists and curators from Italy and beyond have been selected to follow the workshops and produce a final document: Agil Abdullayev, Gaia Di Lorenzo, Nicholas Ferrara, Giulia Floris, Carlotta Sofia Grassi, Majd Nasrallah, Yates Norton and Carolina Ongaro.

The 3-day workshop builds upon the outcomes and findings of the collaborative research Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) between the team at Casco Art Institute and artist Annette Krauss, and revolves around other forms of organizing institutional work. We will introduce the long-term project, revisit key features of its collaborative practice, and put these in relationship to practices of un/learning, institutional legacies in art, and commoning. In the second part of the workshop, we will test some of the practice-based approaches, explore and translate them to relate the realities and experiences present in the workshop group.

About SfU:
Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) was conceived in 2014 as a long-term artistic-collaborative project between artist Annette Krauss and the team of Casco Art Institute to ask: “How does art institutional change relate to unlearning, commoning and the redistribution of power?” By addressing psychosomatic experiences of busyness as an emblem of (art) institutional habits, we have studied (amongst other things) working rhythms (individual, institutional, common), collective authorship, institutional hierarchies, respective team capacities in their entanglement with the colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist structures of the society we live in.

In 2018, the project culminated in a publication entitled Unlearning Exercises Art Organizations as Sites for Unlearning edited by Annette Krauss, Binna Choi, Yolande van der Heide and Liz Allan (co-published by Casco Art Institute and Valiz) and informed the inaugural assembly for commoning art institutions: Elephants in the Room. The project has also been presented in several exhibitions including the group shows: Shapes of Knowledge at Monash University Museum for Art, 2019, and DARK ENERGY. Feminist Organizing, Working Collectively at Xhibit, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2019.


Mentor

BIOGRAPHIES 

Annette Krauss works as an artist. In her conceptual-based practice she addresses the intersection of art, politics and everyday life. Her work revolves around informal knowledge and normalization processes that shape our bodies, the way we use objects, engage in social practices and how these influence the way we know and act in the world. Her artistic work emerges through the intersection of different media, such as performance, video, historical and everyday research, pedagogy and texts. Krauss has (co-)initiated various long-term collaborative practices (Hidden Curriculum / Sites for Unlearning / Read-in / ASK! / Read the Masks. Tradition is Not Given / School of Temporalities.) These projects reflect and build upon the potential of collaborative practices while aiming at disrupting taken for granted “truths” in theory and practice.
Recent exhibitions include ‘Regimes of Memorizing’, Kunci, Yogyakarta, 2015; Stedelijk Bureau, Amsterdam, 2014; ‘Randzonenlesung’ Kunstverein Wiesbaden, 2014; ‘In Search of the Missing Lessons’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2013; (In)visibilities, The Showroom, London, 2012; GDR goes on - Grand Domestic Revolution, Casco, 2012; Amateurism, Kunstverein Heidelberg, 2012; ‘For Einhoven’ Van Abbemuseum, Einhoven/NL, 2011; ‘We are Grammar’, Pratt Gallery, New York, 2011; ‘School Days’, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 2011. She’s been a lecturer at HKU Fine Art Utrecht since 2010. She is currently a PhD researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
http://siteforunlearning.tumblr.com
http://hiddencurriculum.info
http://read-in.info

 

Yolande van der Heide is deputy director at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, where she began as an intern in 2008, and has worked as a producer of many project exhibitions including the Grand Domestic Revolution (2009 — 2012). She is co-editor of several books published by Casco including 365 Days of Invisible Work (2017) and Unlearning Exercises: Art Organisations as Sites for Unlearning (2018). She is a faculty member at the Dutch Art Institute, Roaming Academy (see Southern Wave); and a thesis advisor in the Fine Arts department of the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam.
Currently on her nightstand: bell hooks and Stuart Hall, Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue, bell hooks and Stuart Hall and Tony Morrison, The Source of Self Regard: Selected Essays Speeches, and Meditations.
Currently listening to: Orchestra Baobab, Bamba.
Updated 9 September 2019.