Period
2010
Proposed by
Luigi Fassi
Location
Prague
About the project
The project School Under Construction attempts to search and propose new possibilities and forms of education and its role in society using its potential to connect people of different ages and professions and spread not only knowledge but also the ability of mutual understanding, sensitive approach to the surrounding and need of collaboration. It questions the system of formal education prevailing in most countries and its impact on the development and formation of the individual and his/her ability to find a place in society.
series of 4 videos documenting children situated in strict educational positions
School is understood not only as a specific space where children are collectively taught by adults, accepting and following their rules, communication patterns etc. It is often the first structured community which (after family) influences crucially their future integration and functioning in other social structures. Education can be (and also was in the past in several countries, including the Czech Republic) misused as a powerful tool of social control, manipulation and dissemination of unifying thoughts and propagandistic ideas. History can easily be played with and modified, facts drastically changed, and parts of school books erased when not fitting the official version declared by the regime.
In the past, I was focusing on the destructive aspect of education which restricts, traps and manipulates the individual rather than supporting individuality against collectively accepted mental schemes. From the study of my nearest surrounding and focus on very personal themes questioning memory and constructing one’s biography, I moved to bigger scale projects which, besides constructing and visualizing social schemes, integrated active participation of various groups of people.
School Under Construction involves pupils of the approached school, their parents, current and retired teachers, former students, old people from the area as well as specialists in this field-students of pedagogic faculty, sociologists and more. The education program runs for a period of 2 months and offers various collaborative models, diverse ways of social interactions between younger and older, teacher and pupil etc. It attempts to create a school which serves not only as the centre of knowledge but as a mediator and communication centre, place for interaction and experimentation.
view to the installation at MAC, Lyon biennale 2011
The starting part of this project has a working title School for the Old (Memory Lessons), and uses the platform of an alternative school building to involve an unusual group of participants. It is old people who become pupils again to re-construct their fragmented memories and verify and re-evaluate their biographies. Each of them creates his/her diaries or notebooks containing words, names and events he/she remembers(no matter how reliable these are) and which all together constitute his/her world. Through various lessons and exercises, often in collaboration with children who become initiators of these actions, interviewers or archivists, old people re-enter and re-evaluate their past and offer it as rich study material for the young ones.
External links
About the artist
Inspired by surrealism Eva Koťátková’s distinctive artistic vocabulary unites sculpture, text and performance. As metaphor of modern civilization her comprehensive work illustrates dreams, and expectations and deals with mutual anxieties mainly experienced by children, elderly people and animals – the so-presumed weak of society to indicate the fragility of the subject facing maintained structures. She further explores the relationship between the private and personal on one hand and the public, authoritarian sphere on the other and their antagonistic relation constantly implying and questioning a sublime institutional critique beneath the surface.
