This may or may not be a true story or a lesson in resistance

It is a tradition that the six curatorial programme participants at de Appel organize a final collaborative public programme that reflects their sensitivities and approaches to the practice of curating. It also acts as a culmination to intensive research-led travels, engagement in critical discourse, and immersion in Dutch culture. Our chosen format, an exhibition and public programme, was scheduled to open this summer but as the world finds itself in a crisis, we have decided to continue this work in the form of a publication due to launch in the fall of 2020. This is a drastic opportunity to rethink the frame and the format of institutions and educational systems, as well as the time to seek and trust alternatives.

This may or may not be a true story or a lesson in resistance seeks to untangle the role of education from the neoliberal economic agendas while honoring artists who create alternative possibilities within the noise of our socio-political reality. Once an exhibition — now a publication-in-the-making — the title is borrowed from Allan Sekula's photo work, School Is a Factory, which he made between 1978 and 1980 while working as an instructor at Orange Coast College, a community college in Costa Mesa, California. Through documentary-style photography and writing, this work sheds light on how social divisions are perpetuated by a factory-like approach to education. It also manages to document the ways in which resistance efforts and solidarity can take place even in the bleakest of times.

We are six individuals from very different backgrounds, coming from Colombia, Greece, Ireland, Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Turkey. Not unlike the figures in Sekula’s photo work, we are learning in an institutional setting but under radically different conditions. Conceptually our project makes a necessary contextual nod to the building de Appel inhabits: a former high school that opened during the heat of student revolt in the late 1960s. In contrast to the factory-like approach to education that still underpins conventional schooling and large swathes of academia, de Appel nurtures a culture of collaboration, research, and sharing in a way that goes against the grain and is generative and challenging to those who take part in it. However, the tale we are telling is also a cautionary one: our invocation of Sekula’s work frames our position as cultural workers in a wider economic system that has not improved since 1980; rather, it has faced a very real acceleration of social inequality and economic disparity. As we forge ahead, the lesson of the story reveals itself in the struggle to imagine a truly democratic future. We continue this work by trusting the path of a collaborative voice imbued with the potential of utopian aesthetics.

Artistic collaborators will be announced as the project progresses.

Danai, Iris, Juan, Naz, Sharmyn and Thomas
2019-2020 Curatorial Programme Participants

Updates

29 April 2020
An introduction to nibia pastrana santiago

06 May 2020
An introduction to Dilek Winchester

12 May 2020
An introduction to Jason Dodge

20 May 2020
An introduction to Simon Browne

3 June 2020
An introduction to Danilo Correale