LA ESCUELA___
An art platform for radical learning in public space
LA ESCUELA___ is both an art project and an art school. With no roof and no walls, the school leaves the framework of familiar institutions and addresses the social realities that surround it. The LA ESCUELA___ program is a hybrid one: Collaborative learning communities in public space are created through art actions in Latin American cities and a dedicated online platform.
LA ESCUELA___, Spanish for “The School”, works with art as a form of knowledge production, and with education as artistic practice. It is structured in three parts: online, there are labs, lectures, and discussions to address social, political, and environmental issues across the artistic fields. In specific sites, artists, students, and local communities come together in public space to generate new knowledge with participatory art actions. The third part of the school is a growing, bilingual web platform about experimental educational practices in Latin America’s art scene – both in history and in the present.
In programmatic terms, the artist-run school places itself in a tradition of Latin American approaches for which it seeks to offer a platform: a school of many schools; constant reflection upon the idea of the school as a space of possibilities. By providing free, open access, the project responds to inequality in the education system and attempts to actively link educational institutions in the arts with the social reality of their environment.
Over two semesters each year, LA ESCUELA___ makes learning spaces available free to everyone, with a focus on the visual arts, performing arts, performance, and architecture.
»Hydrocommons Cultures«
As part of the art platform LA ESCUELA___, a publication is being produced with projects and essays from the fields of art and education that shine light on the importance of water and social and ecological challenges that come with it in Latin America.
Partners
LA ESCUELA___ is a founding initiative of Miguel Braceli and Siemens Stiftung. In his research, the artist and architect addresses requests for open education through art and calls for learning in art to be brought closer to social reality.
The projects are realized in cooperation with partners in each country:
Ciudad Abierta (Chile), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso (Chile), MUAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Universitario Mexiko, UNAM – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexiko, Museo Experimental El Eco (Mexiko), Goethe-Institut Venezuela, Universidad Simón Bolívar Caracas (Venezuela), Universidad de los Andes Mérida (Venezuela), Universidad Central de Venezuela
»Education must provide the tools to create alternative models of artistic practice and new structures of emancipation.«
Miguel Braceli, Künstler und Architekt
Project Manager LA ESCUELA___
Joachim Gerstmeier
joachim.gerstmeier@siemens-stiftung.org