Conceived and realised at CCC Research-Based Master Programme Critical Curatorial Cybermedia Studies, Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD)

Authorized and subsidised project: German art organisations (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine) and Lüneburg University.

In the context of the exhibition and lecture series Crosskick, initiated by the Working Group of German Arts Societies (ADKV), students from the CCC Postgraduate Study Programme critical curatorial cybermedia of Geneva University of Art and Design are invited to conceive a project that will take place in the Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg. Together with local students of Applied Cultural Sciences of Lüneburg University. Given both art departments’ institution-critical teaching tradition it seems appropriate to put the concept of institutional criticism on the agenda once more. Reflecting on their own conditions of production, the students decide to investigate the ongoing reforms of the educational system and the Bologna process, which leads to questions of the economisation of universities and how the access to knowledge has and will change.

The topic of knowledge and education in a neo-liberal environment is of crucial importance, not only for the current students but also for the generations to come. Therefore, this project wants to claim responsibility in public space.

From the beginning of the project, the art students from the Geneva University of Art and Design are asked to realise an exhibition that does not juxtapose individual works of art, but instead presents the results of an intensive debate among the participants that reflects upon and analyses their own conditions of production. It became furthermore a crucial point that we not only invited art students but as well the visual sciences students of Lüneburg university. Therefore the students of Geneva and Lüneburg decide to turn the planned exhibition in a one-week workshop and seminar, thus escaping the institutional framework of their respective university. During one week, an alternative and subjective university offers teach-in sessions in terms of lectures, workshops, discussions and screening in the afternoon and be-in sessions in the evening that are seen as a research-based entertainment program. The students want to open up a space where the world can be looked at differently, imagined in another way than neo-liberal logic prescribes. Various topics ranging from the working conditions of the so-called creative class to the question of which forms of resistance are efficient, from the Bologna process to the Freie Klasse, from cognitive capitalism to propaganda make up the discussions to which the public is invited.

Many of these topics can be rediscovered in the glossary of the publication Edu Tool Box. After the first initial week of action, Halle für Kunst functions as a place of documentation for five weeks. Crosskick – Critiques Croisées, which includes exhibition, workshop, events, and a publication, addresses critical thinking in the frame of art practices.

This publication marks the end of a productive, intense and interesting phase of encounters and discussions. The heterogeneous constitution of the project offered various forms of critique that do not come to closure but that are only fixed temporarily.

Exhibition «Edu Tool Box », Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, 16 January – 4 March 2007, conference « Teach-in / Be-in » 16 January – 20 January 2007. Initiated by Lisa Mazza, Bettina Steinbrügge

Project coordination Geneva:  Marianne Guarino-Huet, Jérôme Massard, Catherine Quéloz, Liliane Schneiter

Participants
The project group from Geneva: Marie-Avril Berthet, Diego Castro, Adrien Laubscher, Alejandra Ballón, Alejandra Ayala Prati, Sylvain Froidevaux, Luz Munoz, Nathalia Rodriguez, Tilo Steireif.
The project group from Lüneburg: André Bernau, Ulrike Gerhardt, Katrin Glinka, Julia Hahn, Emeline van Houtte, Dagny Hübner, Lena Jöhnk, Imke Kannegießer, Inga Karow, Silviya Kitanova, Daniela Kummle, Ines Koop, Clarissa Moeller, Blandine Martin, Maike Moncayo, Mareike Neuser, Daniel Orthey, Catharina Rahlff -Mackeprang, Janina Reuter, Katrin Schaefer, Stephanie Seidel, Benjamin Seibel, Jan Sieber, Christiane Stier, Daniela Toedt.

Lecturers and panelists: Sacha Kagan, Alexander Koch, Meine Akademie(Johannes Raether/ Robert Burghardt), Freie Klasse Berlin (Artur Van Balen), Felix Seyfarth, Bastiana Stutterheim, students of Hamburg University.

Publication Edu Tool Box, Cross critique – Towards a Subjective University
Publisher Halle für Kunst e.V. / Bettina Steinbrügge Reichenbachstr 2, D – 21335 Lüneburg 2008

Conceived and realised at CCC Research-Based Master Programme Critical Curatorial Cybermedia Studies, Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD)

Authorized and subsidised project: Centre d’art contemporain, Genève

During the academic year 2003-2004, the curatorial research laboratory of CCC Postraduate Study Programme critical curatorial cybermedia, of École supérieure des beaux-arts, (currently Haute école d’art et de design de Genève) begins a research in the field of Gender Studies. Starting from study cases, the students examines the relations between the writings and the films of three women artists living in the United-States :Yvonne Rainer, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Renée Green.

Katia Garcia-Anton, director of Centre d’art contemporain, invites the curatorial laboratory of CCC Programme to present the outputs of the research in the project room. The exhibition takes place from 18 May to 27 June 2004. It brings together photographic documents, texts, video and films by the three artists. The display shows the diversity as well as the convergence in the positions and working methods: mutual appropriations, affinities for media and for the dialogs format through five paradigms: History/Story; The Use of Language; to Speak Nearby; the Woman with a MovieCamera; Critical Education.

The academic year 2004-2005 is dedicated to the postproduction: writing of texts and translations of a selection of writings of the three artists ; selection of citations retrieved from the theoretical texts studied; construction and writing of a timeline situating the works in the intellectual, political and social context of production.

History/Story deals with the issue of narration and of the writing of history; The Use of The Words studies the writing methods and the specificity of women writings; To Speak Nearby develops the issue of the position of the author and her relationship to the spectator; The Woman with a Movie Camera studies the transformations of the filmic writing; Critical Education shows the influence of the educational engagement in the work.

Participants: the students of CCC curatorial laboratory: Paolo Alcantara, Claudia Anchique, Estelle Germain, Adla Isanovic, Délia Perrois, Fabienne Radi-Maître, with the help of Kristina Sylla, assistant.