Aiming to integrate new perspectives and research fields, the artist-run platform LA ESCUELA___ announces the participation of six guest scholars from different disciplines in the design of its 2023 programming. Ana María Durán Calisto (Ecuador), Nicolás Valencia (Chile), Juliana dos Santos (Brazil), Federico Pérez Villoro (Mexico), Rolf Abderhalden (Colombia), and Nayse López (Brazil) will weave new perspectives through the contributions of creatives and intellectuals from across Latin America to the fields of arts and education. The confluence of their investigations seeks to generate frameworks for reflection and transdisciplinary action departing from the visual arts, architecture, and performing arts.
LA ESCUELA___ is a platform for radical learning in public spaces co-created with the continuous rotation of collaborating artists, researchers, and educators to address the question of how a school can be conceived, shaped and activated through artistic practices and pedagogies. Online and on-site, each semester proposes a formative and editorial program that unfolds through Classrooms, Laboratories and public lectures, as well as a website that hosts a growing archive of essays, conversations, resources, and methodologies developed by a network of collaborators located throughout the Americas, produced in a joint effort with affiliated universities, institutions, and communities.
Education, transdisciplinarity, and public spaces
“Dismantling the disparity between the appetite for developmentalist knowledge and the material frontiers of a sustainable life” is one of the aims of artist, researcher, and educator Federico Pérez Villoro. He points out “the need to reject the framework that separates educational processes from everyday life, institutionalizing knowledge as isolated disciplinary regimes.”
Along this integrative spirit, artist and educator Juliana dos Santos will delve into “the legacy of educational and artistic practices and contemporary intellectual discussions of Afro-Brazilian communities,” based on a question regarding learning and teaching spaces, seeking “to recognize the contributions of black artists and thinkers to Brazilian art.”
This year, LA ESCUELA___’s interest in the public space will also be approached from the field of architecture, in co-curatorship with architect, writer, and editor Nicolás Valencia and scholar, designer, and urban planner Ana María Durán Calisto, who will focus on “the work of Amazonian collectives, artists and designers, within a broad program that contributes to bringing Latin America closer together.”
A third research axis will bring experiences from the performing arts through the participation of journalist, scriptwriter, and performing arts curator Nayse López, and of transdisciplinary artist, teacher and founder of the Interdisciplinary Master’s program in Theater and Live Arts of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Rolf Abderhalden.
The collaboration of this group of Guest Scholars expands LA ESCUELA___’s scope of reflection and action, as it continues to grow as a platform that allows weaving an international network of people and initiatives with the shared interest of thinking about and acting upon local realities through the pedagogical potential of art in public spaces.
The joint founders of LA ESCUELA___ are the artist, architect and educator Miguel Braceli and the nonprofit Siemens Stiftung international foundation. It is based on Siemens Stiftung’s experiences with co-creation programs and artistic interventions across Latin America, and the artistic and educational works of Miguel Braceli in public spaces.
Keep up with the programs and learn about the upcoming formative projects and publications by visiting laescuela.art, follow its social networks (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), and subscribe to the newsletter.
