The past thirty years have witnessed an immense increase in self-organized academy programs and schools in the arts. Artistic practice is now often labelled »knowledge production« and exhibitions no longer show art objects, but instead enable processes of gathering and learning. In order to escape the subsequent commodification of knowledge in the art market, the artistic academies claim to create counter-publics or spaces of opacity. Following examples from St. Petersburg and Dakar, the talk will inquire into the political landscape in which »non-validated«, or »opaque« forms of knowledge are brought into play. In an act of mimicry to academic infrastructures, the aim of these artist-run academies is often to »de-school« and un-learn what are considered traditional epistemologies and institutions of knowledge. From a curatorial studies perspective, the lecture will introduce such artistic and curatorial knowledge practices and the politics of learning they operate in.

Olga Schubert is a cultural worker and editor at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, where she co-curated the New Alphabet School (2019–2022) and the Dictionary of Now project (2015–19), among other projects.

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THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID.

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