Anarcademia

For one month, under the guidance of Dora Longo Bahia and Rutger Emmelkamp (both artists and art tutors), five young artists from Brazil and five from Amsterdam will use W139’s exhibition space as their studio. The public will follow their work processes without the intervention of any kind of moderation.

Here, every day, the participants will present their reflections, references and experiments in the form of individual and collective works that overlap, infect, eradicate or augment each other. To optimize the collaboration and production, they will live, work, cook and eat together for an entire month.

Throughout these four weeks, the artists will sometimes take apart old work, while consistently producing new ones. This generates a process that is fresh and unpredictable to both participants and the public, and will culminate in an exhibition. Performances, film screenings, presentations, book reviews, lectures and workshops will be organized. Taken as a whole, the event constitutes a collective artwork: the exhibition space serves as studio, gallery space, living room and movie theatre in one.

Part two of Anarcademia, in the fourth week, will simultaneously take place at De Kunstvlaai in the Sint Nicolaas Lyceum in Amsterdam-Zuid, where the project will have the space it needs to become a public event. During the final week of the project, the intensive processes and experiments will intermingle, then erupt in a finale at both locations. During this parallel period, a physical and digital bridge will be built, connecting the two venues.

TeTo Projects, W139 and the Kunstvlaai take a critical and innovative approach to art, reflection, education and public involvement. They position themselves within the international context through collaboration and exchange. Anarcademia supports these objectives by contributing to renewed paradigms of contemporary art and participation through intensive collective international partnerships and a structure that invites public engagement. Anarcademia presents itself as a place where discussions can grow into interventions and where high-risk acts may expose the contradictions inherent in art-making, leading to critical and collective thought.

In its current form, Anarcademia was first realised at the 28th Sao Paolo Biennial. The concept developed during the Friday evening sessions Dora Longo Bahia organised for her students, at her home, as a tutor at the School of Visual Arts of Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP) in Sao Paulo. These informal meetings gave rise to activities ranging from watching DVDs to reading philosophical writings on art, architecture and politics.