Joulia Strauss, Molotus
A meeting of initiatives which aims to transform the European educational system. We are building an educational system that consists of politically motivated and artistic initiatives for sharing knowledge, and of proposals by thinkers who see education as decisive for social change. Texts, documentation, manifestos, and sketches of educational models are united in a symposium entitled “The School of Everything.” The symposium takes place in both Kassel and Athens. We shift from learning to sharing. We decriminalize sharing because we would like to enjoy the pleasure of giving. We liberate ourselves from the strictures of “homo sapiens,” a construct imposed upon life. We intend to transform the educational system of Europe.
With: Constantinos Amvrosiadis, Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Sebastian Bayse Schäfer, Nuno Cassola Marques, Marco Clausen, Katja Ehrhardt, Jan Gerber, Sanchayan Ghosh, Raúl Hott, Tania Hron, Sebastian Lütgert, Jenny Marketou, Ioulia Mermigka, Martina Schumacher, Joulia Strauss, Jonas Tinius, and Arnisa Zeqo
All talks are in English.
Concept: Joulia Strauss
Curator of the symposium: Sotirios Bahtsetzis
Organized by AthenSYN. In collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung
Partners: ASFA Athens School of Fine Arts (GR); Kunsthochschule Kassel (D); LUCA School of Arts, Leuven, Brussels, Gent (B); HyperWerk Institute for Postindustrial Design; FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Basel (CH); Avtonomi Akadimia (GR); with the support of the Schwarz Foundation, Eye Square GmbH, and HAECCCC, 0+865
Special thanks to Eirini Vlavianou and Yorgos Maraziotis
Schedule
Thursday, July 6, 2017
- 12–2 pm Workshop 1: Sanchayan Ghosh, artist and educator, Santiniketan
- 2–2:30 pm Break for a Masala Chai with Junaid Baloch
- 2:30–5:30 pm Workshop 2: Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lütgert (Pirate Cinema, Berlin and Bombay)
- 5:30–7 pm Break
- 7–7:30 pm: Joulia Strauss (Avtonomi Akadimia, Athens), Sotirios Bahtsetzis (AthenSYN, Berlin, Athens)
- 7:30–8 pm Jonas Tinius, CARMAH/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- 8–8:15 pm Q&A
- 8:15–8:30 pm Break
- 8:30–8:50 pm Tania Hron, independent scholar, Berlin
- 8:50–9:10 pm Martina Schumacher, visual artist, Berlin
- 9:10–9:30 pm Costantinos Amvrosiadis, 4el, Athens
- 9:30–9:45 pm Q&A
Friday, July 7, 2017
- 12 noon–2 pm Workshop 1: Sanchayan Ghosh, artist and educator, Santiniketan
- 2–4:30 pm Break for a masala chai with Junaid Baloch
- 2:30–5:30 pm Workshop 2: Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lütgert (Pirate Cinema, Berlin and Bombay)
- 5:30–7 pm Break
- 7–7:30 pm “The School of Everything as a Continuation of Universitas,” and “Krytyka Polityczna”
Katja Ehrhardt (AthenSYN, Berlin and Athens), Joulia Strauss (Avtonomi Akadimia, Athens), Sebastian Bayse Schäfer (Berlin), Nuno Cassola Marques (Khora Athens) - 7:30–7:45 pm Q&A
- 7:45–8:05 pm Jenny Marketou, visual artist, New York and Athens
- 8:05–8:25 pm Marco Clausen, Neighborhood Academy in Prinzessinnengarten, Berlin
- 8:25–8:45 pm Raúl Hott, visual artist, Santiago de Chile and Athens
- 8:45–9:05 pm Ioulia Mermigka, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
- 9:05–9:20 pm Q&A
- 9:20–9:45 pm Arnisa Zeqo, aneducation, documenta14
Constantinos Amvrosiadis started to practice Shaolin Kung Fu after he was diagnosed with acute leukemia in 2001. In 2009, 2012, and 2014 he studied at the monasteries of Shaolin, Wudang, FaWang, and Chen Jia Gou, the birthplace of Zen (Chan); the Shaolin Martial Arts Academy with the teachers Shi Miao Dian and Shi Miao Jie, and later with Taoist monk Yuan Xiu Gang. The abbot of Shaolin Temple, Shi Jing Shin, recognized Mr. Amvrosiadis’s efforts and his contribution to Shaolin’s tradition. Constantinos was included in Shaolin’s 34th generation, named Shi Yan Jing (延 延 精), meaning: essence, seed, sharp. The Shaolin monastery teachers from Wudang and their students gave him a new name, denoting the union of the four elements, “fire,” “water,” “wind,” and “earth,” and their correspondences in martial arts, “Kung Fu,” “Tai Chi,” and “Qi Gong.”
Sotirios Bahtsetzis has a PhD and works as an art historian, independent curator, and art critic, based in Athens and Berlin. He teaches at the American College of Greece. Besides art historicalarticles on installation art, theory of space, visual studies, and methodology of art history, he contributes art-theoretical articles to periodicals such as E-flux journal and South magazine.
Sebastian Bayse Schäfer is a sound artist and art director. He studied communication design and earned an M.A. in Sound Studies at UdK Berlin. He gained the title of associate professor at the Avtonomi Akadimia with his 2016 lecture on “Sound Wars” at the Athens Biennale. He has been time-traveling since 2050, mingling the revolution and synthesizers.
Nuno Cassola Marques graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and has a master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices from the same institution, where he wastutored by Prof. Dr. Pedro Llano Neira. He also studied at the Hochschule Luzern – Design und Kunst, Switzerland, and at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. On board the Grande Francia freighter, he crossed the imaginary line of Ecuador in May 2012, where he could see everything on the bridge in a small gray device. A backlit display showed several digits in countdown, converting suddenly to a rising count. Nuno Cassola Marques is a founding member of Cine Clube Ponto Aurora, based in the independent space in the center of São Paulo, Ponto Aurora, and Cine Clube Khora in Athens, Greece. He currently lives in Athens.
Marco Clausen holds a master’s degree in historical and political science and philosophy. In 2009, Clausen and Robert Shaw founded the non-profit organization “Nomadisch Grün” (Nomadic Green), which aims at transforming abandoned urban spaces into social and ecological gardens. He is co-initiator of Prinzessinnengarten, an area dedicated to urban agriculture, environmental learning, and neighborhood participation on Moritzplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Clausen has organized several thematic workshops and events on feeding the city, youth participation, urban resilience, and urban farming in the European context. In the form of lectures, publications, participatory research, as well as collaborations with artists and activists, he is helping answer the question of how our cities can meet the challenges of the future. In 2015, he cofounded the Neighborhood Academy in Prinzessinnengarten, a self-organized open platform for urban and rural knowledge sharing, cultural practice, and activism.
Born and raised in Germany, Katja Ehrhardt completed an M.A. specializing in performance theory in anthropology and modern and classical Indology at the University of Heidelberg. She has lived, studied, and worked in the United States, Japan, India, Bermuda, Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Israel, and Hong Kong. In Germany, she worked in research, international arts management, and curating, at the University of Heidelberg, Pruess & Ochs Gallery Berlin (Asian Fine Arts), the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), the House of World Cultures Berlin, and the Goethe Institute. In Athens, she built up, organized, and managed the cultural program at the Athens Center for university programs from abroad, working together with cultural institutions and embassies in Athens. Before working with Athens, she coordinated and co-curated the cultural program of the Asia-Pacific Weeks at the Senate Chancellery Berlin and the House of World Cultures Berlin. She is the cofounder of AthenSYN, an initiative to foster artistic collaboration with Greece focusing on German-Greek cultural exchange.
Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert live and work in Berlin. They are cofounders of Bootlab (2000–2007), Pirate Cinema Berlin (2004 to the present) and 0xDB (2007 to the present), and have co-initiated several autonomous educational projects, including the Borderline Academy (Tarifa and Tangier, 2005), The Dictionary of War (Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin, Novi Sad, Gwangju, Bolzano, Taipei, New York, 2006–2009), The Summit of Non-Aligned Initiatives in Education Culture (Berlin, 2007), The Oil of the 21st Century (Berlin, 2007), Pad.ma (Bombay, 2008 to the present) and Indiancine.ma (Bombay, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, 2013 to the present).
Sanchayan Ghosh is an artist and educator. He lives in Santiniketan, India. Sanchayan holds a BA and MFA from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, where he works as an associate professor in the department of painting. Over the years, Sanchayan has developed a participatory and socially committed practice that usually takes place in public spaces. Through his continuous exploration he has succeeded in extending art and performance from institutional spaces to public situations. His community-based engagements and site-specific projects include Incomplete Circles: Invisible Voices and Merge Emerge.
Raúl Hott is a Chilean architect, artist, and educator who does work on the body, designing collective experiences for public spaces and natural environments. Raúl holds a Master of Fine Arts in New Forms from Pratt Institute. He has been particularly drawn by pedagogy, teaching in different art and architecture schools since 2007. He is currently based in Athens, Greece, where he is as a fellow resident of Capacete, a Brazilian experimental educational program. To participate in this residency program, Raúl was awarded the Motel Capacete Fellowship from Chile.
Tania Hron is an independent scholar and one of the editors of the Collected Works of Friedrich Kittler. She studied German Literature, Cultural Studies, and Ethnology at Humboldt University. She later taught there in the Cultural Studies department. She has also worked as a German as a foreign language instructor and as a trainer for aerial acrobatics. Tania Hron worked for and with Friedrich Kittler from 2004 until his death in 2011. From 2011 to 2014 she was involved at the Deutsche Literaturarchiv Marbach, archiving Kittler’s literary estate. In 2016, she worked as a Data Analyst in Linguistics for the Amazon Development Center.
Jenny Marketou is a Greek-born interdisciplinary artist, art educator, and cultural producer based in New York City. She has taught at Cooper Union School of Art in New York, and currently is a visiting artist at the School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in Athens, Greece. Marketou’s work has been widely exhibited at Artium Museum, Spain; Museum Tinguely in Basel; 1st International Biennial of Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; Kumu Art Museum; 4th and 5th Athens Biennial; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; New Museum, New York; Biennial of Seville; Reina Sofia Museum Madrid; National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens; Biennial of Sao Paolo in Brazil; Manifesta International European Biennial.
Ioulia Mermigka was born in Stuttgart and grew up in Athens. She studied Media Arts at the University of Plymouth and did her postgraduate studies on Film and Cultural Studies in the Media department of the University of Athens. Mermigka’s interests revolve around grassroots politics, philosophy, and aesthetics. Her research on Antigone resulted in a short film and a play adapted from contemporary texts, indicatively from J. Butler and C. Castoriades. It was performed at the Votaninkos Kipos Petroupolis, the occupied social space in the western suburbs of Athens, where she actively participated in the assembly and curated a series of no-ticket screenings. Ioulia is part of kyrck kollect, a noise music band. She is a researcher and adjunct lecturer in Film and Cultural Studies in the Media department of the University of Athens.
Martina Schumacher is a Berlin-based conceptual painter and celebrator of the eternal festival of art. Her works explore the physical characteristics of materials and modify them according to the needs of artistic fantasy. Enormous liquid geometrical works demand scientific inquiry. Schumacher studied in London at the Royal College of Art and at UdK Berlin, where she was awarded a master of advanced studies degree. In 2016, she introduced her research at the Athens Biennale with her artist talk “Architecture of Seeing – Works Focusing upon Color and Transparency.” Her artwork is coveted by major permanent collections including the Richard Massey Foundation for Arts and Sciences in New York, the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection in Germany, and MONA in Tasmania.
Joulia Strauss (the political activist supercat shaman artist in Athens) stands for a chord of artistic media, resonating in a deep bond with philosophy, technology, and politics. She founded and organizes Avtonomi Akadimia, a socio-cybernetic sculpture for education after the era of master discourse. Strauss’ works were recently presented at the Fourth Moscow Biennale, Tate Modern, London, and ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. In collaboration with Peter Berz, Peter Weibel, and Friedrich Kittler, she has edited a book titled Gods and Writing around the Mediterranean, Wilhelm Fink Verlag / Brill Publishers, May 2017.
Jonas Tinius, PhD, is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), co-funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and based at the department of European Ethnology, Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin. He studied at the universities of Münster and Cambridge (UK) where he completed a PhD in political theater and self-cultivation. His current research explores how Berlin-based art institutions engage with notions of otherness through critical curatorial strategies. He is convenor of the Anthropology and the Arts Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (with Roger Sansi, Goldsmiths).
Arnisa Zeqo is an art historian based in Athens. In 2011 she cofounded rongwrong, a space for art and theory in Amsterdam. Recently she was curator in residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College where she focused on works of art at the edge of the performative. There she wrote the conceptual essay “Let’s Spit on Szeemann.” Zeqo is part of the team of documenta 14 in Athens as coordinator of education. She initiated the Society of Friends of Ulises Carrion within the Parliament of Bodies.