Encounter Educational Modernism
Book launch
At a time when universities are flashpoints of social justice and the repression of protest, where students’ calls for change and answerability are met with unblinking neoliberal logic and police action, this series of three artist books examines the modernist architecture, curricular and social design, and idea of the university from the 1960s to today.
With the centenary of Canadian architect Arthur Erickson’s birth, his buildings and the social imagination of architecture are being reevaluated. Encounter Educational Modernism situates Erickson’s 1972 University of Lethbridge—his most unique public building—within the golden era of global university expansion to pose critical questions regarding the relationship of architecture, knowledge and the idea of the student in the late sixties.
Erickson was active in the international discussion of universities and that historical moment, shaped by local and national politics, allowed him to test his ideas at the University of Lethbridge, set in the spectacular coulee landscape on traditional Blackfoot territory. Unlike conventional campuses, the linear plan aimed at an active spatial democracy, at the breakdown of the separation of student and faculty and the shattering of distinct spaces for disciplinary knowledges.
Using the concept of the encounter, Jeff Derksen identifies three crucial spatial and educational encounters: encounters for and by students; encounters between forms of knowledge; and between architecture and site. Together, they form a spatial legacy and produce a counter-temporality to the value theory of education in neoliberal management. Erickson envisioned education as rooted in unpredictable encounters—generative moments of learning, invention, and sociability. This legacy of architectural space and educational temporality is alive in the design of the University of Lethbridge.
Framed by an interview with architectural historian Victoria Baster and illustrated with archival architectural drawings, curricular material, and contemporary photographs, Encounter Educational Modernism, is a vital critical document on the spaces and potential of universities. Bitter and Weber’s video “Public Seminar”, realised in collaboration with students, brings the 1960s potential of the building in dialogue with the contemporary educational experience.
For the second book, Unsettling Educational Modernism, Bitter and Weber formed a group with Indigenous students and faculty (collectively named Guests & Hosts) to question the relationship of educational modernism and Indigenous knowledges and epistemes. Examining the lived experience of Indigenous students at Erickson and Massey’s Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, 1965), they staged workshops in solidarity with the actions against pipelines on Wet’suwet’en land in northern BC. This research-driven project, accompanied by Bitter and Weber’s photographic interventions, examines how the 1960s vision of the modernist university is transformed through Indigenous knowledges.
The initial book in the series, Bildungsmoderne entzaubern (Demystifying Educational Modernism), published in German, explores the transformation of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Originally an inner-city campus headed by Max Horkheimer and host to the Frankfurt School, the university moved to the former 1930s IG Farben building—once a Nazi chemical supplier. Urban sociologist and Lefebvrian scholar Klaus Ronneberger contextualizes the university’s relocation as a neoliberal redefinition of both campus and student, offering a grounded and dynamic analysis of this urban and educational shift. Photography theorist Ruth Horak’s text situates Bitter and Weber’s photographs of the university through the framework of the trophy.
In memory of our friend, collaborator and independent scholar Klaus Ronneberger (1950–2025).
Events
Book launch and talk: May 7, 6pm
Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber, Introduction: Arne Zerbst / Respondent: Christian Teckert. Location: Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Legienstrasse 35, Kiel, Germany.
Book presentation: May 9, 7:30pm
Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber, Respondents: Dagmar Pelger and Kathrin Wildner. Location: Pro qm Bookshop, Almstadtstraße 48, Berlin, Germany.
Wartenau Assembly #26: May 13, 7pm
Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber. Location: Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK), Wartenau 15, Hamburg, Germany.
Book talk: May 19, 5pm
Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber, Klasse Prof. Sandra Schäfer. Location: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München Akademiestraße 2–4, Munich, Germany.
Book launch and talk: June 2, 7pm
Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen, Helmut Weber with Maja Lorbek, Moderator: Michael Klein. Location: Kohlenrutsche, Am Tabor 29, Vienna, Austria.
