Finally you have found a quiet spot. You flip open your notebook. It takes you a while to locate the FAST45 Learning Platform hidden between the many tabs lining your browser bar, most of which have been sitting there for days and should probably be closed soon. More out of habit than real interest you check for updates. The drop-down list shows 6 new messages, 4 new links to your projects, 20 new comments and 3 new tasks to be completed. The time is running out on your latest project but you’re still waiting for your next workshop appointment so you can finally finish working on it. You check up on that. Request still pending. Nothing you can do but to navigate to your coursework. Maybe it’s good to use the time instead to get started on your readings.
Like always, you perform a superficial scan to see whether you can even be bothered with “Theories of Sp–” but then you notice something strange is going on in the Footnotes: comments and annotations are mushrooming all over the sidebar…
76. Since 2030 the tacit agreement of learning institutions around the globe seems to have been to assume the responsibility of rendering art education “more accessible, less resource-intensive and more critical of its own productive capacities”. How could this be used as an excuse to close public school buildings in favor of a neoliberal rent-extraction scheme?
102. Remember when learning was not segmented into isolated slivers of time, but an ongoing process of exchange and experimentation? I spend half of my study time sending applications to appeal to finance committees for resources to fund self-initiated projects.
116. Why does everyone always speak of contributing to societal changes, but never about what kind of change is desirable, or the conditions under which it should manifest?
135. What role does art even play these days? I feel that in our time of economical precarity, art has become either pure luxury or a coping mechanism. The Learning Platform has created a global exchange of knowledge that has been unprecedented, but the tools and techniques that we are building need to be applied to local contexts and communities. It is true that this requires meeting places.
156. I heard that some of the science campuses now offer studios to artists for free! The facilities seem great but I am afraid that my work will become too ‘tied up’. Does anyone have experience with these startups?
175. We are Red Tongues, we organize weekly workshops and sharing sessions in homes and open cantines and hear this is happening in more and more places. If you know of an organization or want to be connected to a group in your city send us a mail: contact@0ct0p0s.net
221. Hey, Good Nerves here, we are formulating demands to revise the platform script. We are also closely linked with a group that is collecting alternative practices of cultural production that have emerged since the 30s.
234. Art surely is a practice of unlearning. But to ‘revise’ does not necessarily imply the total deconstruction of previous knowledge. There surely are parts that can be resurrected. Their order might, however, need to be broken up, reshuffled, reassembled, or molded differently…
331. Hey sorry I couldn’t log in for a while since we were out of electricity last week, but I love how we’re taking over Footnotes. Still need to scroll through some more, but really feel heard with most of what you’ve been chatting about here. Let’s make this a habit, let’s plot and scheme and seep and leech into these bodies of organized scripts.
389. We should do something like Wikipedia Editing Workshops. It’s something they used to do back in the days, to sit together and edit entries together when they felt something was too biased, prejudiced or discriminatory
402. That sounds cool. Maybe we should dedicate some time to do that.
434. I would suggest 29th of August to 1st of September 2022, I know some people who can get us access to the former Campus of Zurich University of the Arts. And we can use the Footnotes here to involve everyone who can’t be there in person.
For the last three years, School of Commons has been an associated partner of FAST45 (Futures Art School Trends 2045). Together with 12 partner institutions, we created future scenarios for institutions of higher art education and drafted policies and roadmaps for futures of Arts Education. Find out more
