Artistic Ecologies : New Compasses and Tools

An inquiry into the current ways of knowing, their ramifications, and institutional and noninstitutional artistic practices that provide channels for education from below.

Artistic Ecologies: New Compasses and Tools aims to both analyze and speculate about potentials of artistic ecologies, collective learning, and engaged pedagogies to engender new institutionalities. 
 
Going beyond tensions between individuals and institutions, Artistic Ecologies examines avenues for collective learning. If learning for life is emancipation—understood not just as a matter of power but of freedom—the essential question that emerges is: What knowledge makes us free and how can institutions help produce it? In search of an answer, this publication’s textual and visual contributions explore sites and practices through which new institutionalities can emerge.
 
Artistic Ecologies comprises essays analyzing current ways of knowing and their ramifications (Marina Garcés, Yayo Herrero and Pirate Care) and portraying alternative ways of forming knowledge through institutional and non-institutional artistic practices (DAAR—Decolonizing Architecture Art Research, Yael Davids, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, The Sensing Salon). Artistic contributions in various formats—poems, drawings, visual essays—by Luna Acosta, CAConrads, Eva Ďurovec, Teuta Gatolin, Margherita Isola, and Jammers illustrate heterodox channels for questioning the dominant forms of knowledge and educating from below.

Pablo Martínez is a researcher and educator. He worked as Head of Programming at the MACBA from 2016 to 2021 where he also directed the Center of Studies and Documentation and its exhibition program, the Independent Studies Program and the et al series of essays. He’s part of the editorial board of L'InternationaleOnline (www.internationaleonline.org) as well as of the #Re-visiones (www.re-visiones.net). He is a founder member of Las Lindes, a research and action group working on education and cultural and artistic practices (2009–today).

Emily Pethick is the director of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. She was the director of The Showroom, London, until 2018; she was also the director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, The Netherlands (2005–2008) and the curator at Cubitt, London (2003–2004).
 
What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. Since 2003 WHW collective has been running the program of Gallery Nova, a city-owned gallery in Zagreb. In 2018 WHW initiated an independent, educational program WHW Akademija based in Zagreb. In 2019 members of WHW Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić, and Sabina Sabolović were appointed as artistic directors of Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna. WHW activities in Zagreb, WHW Akademija, and Gallery Nova are led by Ana Dević.