Contagious Ideas: A Night School Workshop
Night School - Neda Hosseinyar, Marissa Lôbo, Stephanie Misa, Catrin Seefranz
Night School counts on the body of the school. It considers school to be a place that allows us to rethink an unjust and oppressive order. That allows a thinking beyond the already established, as a school is a place not just for perpetuation but for change. A change in. school is being fought for by committed educators, activists, and movements.
The Night School covers forms, bodies, methods, positions, geographies and fantasies, which contribute to what we could call a decolonization of knowledge and learning, and hopefully, a pedagogy of possibility. This means it is an education that insists on the possible. It is about the imaginary, of how to think and create against and together–intellectually, affectively, bodily, and existentially. It is about the possibilities of alliances and discord and the conditions for collective political thought and action.
The workshop will start with a retrospective, a narration through the archival material of Night School, and the second half, an exchange with participants on a reflection of their own experiences and approaches to different methodologies of teaching, learning, unlearning, and to question the idea of “knowledge” itself.
Neda Hosseinyar is an Iranian artist and youth worker based in Vienna, Austria. She graduated from Yazd University of Fine Arts in Painting and currently finalizes her studies in Post Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In her artistic practice including installation, painting, prints, video and performative intervention, she intends to give a critical analysis of socio-political structures in relation to (post-)migration art and cultural production. Her interdisciplinary work has been presented through various platforms in Tehran, Isfahan, Yazd, Vienna, Linz, San Sebastián and Baku, as well as in cooperation with the Wiener Festwochen 2017, Burgtheater 2017 and Weltmuseum Wien 2018. Her current artistic project deals with the topics dispersion, displacement, fragmentation, and transformation in the context of living in the diaspora.
Marissa Lôbo is an activist and artist born in Bahia, Brazil, living and working in Vienna after some years in Italy and Portugal. She studied Post-Conceptual Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is a PhD candidate in Philosophy there. In her artistic, often performative, work she addresses hegemonic sexualised and racialized body regimes trough decolonial proposals. For many years she was the head of the cultural department of the association maiz, a self-organization of migrants, where she created projects between cultural and political education, trying to programmatically connect politics, education and the arts from a migrant perspective. She was the co-organizer of the project Bodies of Knowledge and is co-founder of the projects kültüř gemma! and night school.
Born in Cebu City, Philippines, Stephanie Misa is an artist, curator and doctoral Student at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She currently lives in Vienna, Austria where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Installation Arts & Sculpture with Prof. Monica Bonvicini in 2012. She holds a master from the Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her work consistently displays an interest in complex and diverse histories, relating to these topics through her video work, sculpture, installations, prints, and collages. Her current artistic research looks at the persistence of languages relegated to its oral form, and the activation of this “orality” outside the usual educational modes of instruction— its evolution, cannibalism, appropriation of terms, and creative becomings. She is a co-curator of ARCHIPELAGO MOUNTAIN, currently on view at the Exhibition Laboratory in Helsinki. www.stephaniemisa.com
Catrin Seefranz is a cultural worker and researcher based in Vienna. With a long-time working experiences in the art world (e.g. documenta 12, Film Festivals Viennale or Identities), an academic background in Latin American and cultural studies, and research experience (University of the Arts, Zurich) she tries to contribute with her work to a critique of hegemonialities and colonialities within the field of arts and art education. Her research interests range from Latin American, specifically Brazilian modernisms to today’s art field and its institutions. She has published the book Tupi Talking Cure on Freud, Psychoanalysis and Brazilian modernism. She is part of the transnational research network Another Roadmap, trying to map critical, first of all decolonizing practices of art education. Since 2012 she is head of kültüř gemma!, a project promoting migrant positions in the field of arts and culture. With Galia Baeva and Marissa Lôbo she founded the initiative oca: linking arts, education, activism and research with the perspective of political education.
Workshop
Public Feminisms Forum. Collectively: Thinking, Speaking, Writing
With Anschläge (Lea Susemichel), AUF (Eva Geber, Marietta Schneider), Ona B., Bliss (Marlene Bür- gerkurator Engel), Johanna Braun, Frauenhetz (Birge Krondorfer), Lena Fritsch, Intakt (Stella Bach, Julia Bugram, Susanne Kompast), Kunst und Kind (Vasilena Gankovska, Hansel Sato), Sophie Lingg, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Raum (Christine Zwingl), MenstruationsNetzwerk (Valentina Mitterer), Migrationsskizzen (Carla Bobadilla), Miss Balthazar’s Laboratory (Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, Stephanie Wuschitz), ÖGGF (Romana Hagyo), Iver Ohm, RADS, RitClique (Erica Fischer), Salon Talk (Dudu Kü- cükgöl, Anna Mendelssohn), Juliane Saupe, Basak Senova, Sorority (Sandra Nigischer, Martina Schöggl), Melinda Tamas, VBKÖ (Stephanie Misa, Ruby Sircar), Wienwoche (Nataša Mackuljak, Iva- na Marjanovic), Wirsindfeige.org (Malu Blume, Ebru Düzgün, Magdalena Fischer, Franziska Kabisch, Sophie Utikal). The workshop is based on texts written by all the contributors. Workshop run by Elke Krasny and Claudia Lomoschitz.
Lectures
Birgit Bosold / Vera Hofmann, Concerted Actions: Women*s Year at Schwules Museum Berlin 2018
Katharina Koch, Revolt She Said. Perspectives and Questions on Feminist Art Curating and Anti- Hegemonic Production of His/Herstories
Moderated by Dorothee Richter
Lara Perry, Viewing Women's Work in the Art Museum
Dorothee Richter, Artistic and Curatorial Turns, Care and Accelerated Capitalism. From the Sixties to Contemporary Practices in Feminist Perspectives. A Tour de Force
Moderated by Elke Krasny
Noit Banai, Biopolitical Regimes of Feminism: 1938 – 1968 – 2018
Övül Ö. Durmusoglu, Who is a Revolutionary?
Moderated by Luisa Ziaja
Workshop
Night School - Neda Hosseinyar, Marissa Lôbo, Stephanie Misa, Catrin Seefranz, Contagious Ideas: A Night School Workshop