LA ESCUELA___ begins its second semester of creating spaces for learning in collaboration with artists, researchers, institutions, and communities and working collectively in public spaces across Latin America. With geographic decentralization as a premise, the second semester will unfold online and on-site through formative projects in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and Ecuador. This semester features Sara Garzón (Colombia) and Catarina Duncan (Brazil) as guest scholars, who have developed editorial and research programs on contemporary perspectives and experiences of art as education that are driven by ecological, political, and cultural issues relevant to Latin America and in line with the curatorial axes of LA ESCUELA___’s platform. Throughout the 2022–II semester these topics will be addressed through corporal manifestations across the performing arts and street activism. Such situations, in which the body is exposed to vulnerability and risk, relate to other entities that are essential for life—such as nature, food, and the spiritual—which are necessarily political.
The platform is run by artists and thinkers for the purpose of collective making, learning, and research rooted in the experimental relationships between art and education in Latin America. Therein, editorial and research programs—gathered in the Library section of LA ESCUELA___’s website—converge with formative projects designed as Classrooms. These projects are oriented toward the development of artistic initiatives by students in public spaces and the co-creation of Laboratories in translocal virtual meeting spaces. All the programs are free and open to the public.
LA ESCUELA___ is an expanding platform that grows as it weaves an international network interested in creating collective experiences at the intersection of art and education. More than sixty collaborators from twelve countries will organize programs for the 2022–II semester, including lectures by choreographer Lia Rodrigues (Brazil) and director and playwright Miguel Rubio (Peru); on-site Classrooms in Colombia and Argentina with Brazilian artists Gustavo Ciríaco and Jorgge Menna Barreto with Eloisa Brantes; simultaneous projects in Ecuador, Chile, and Guatemala coordinated by curator Félix Suazo (Cuba/Venezuela) involving local artists María Jose Machado, Jessica Briceño-Cisneros, and Benvenuto Chavajay; and online Laboratories conducted by artists from the collective Agremiaçao LATIDOS (Brazil), Andrés Pereira Paz (Bolivia), and Daniela Medina Poch with Elizabeth Gallón Droste (Colombia).
In addition, LA ESCUELA___ launches a new international exchange program: a Residency for teaching artists in educational institutions that aims to develop formative projects for educators and cultural mediators. The first artist-in-residence is visual artist, professor, and researcher José Luis Macas Paredes (Ecuador), who will work alongside local multidisciplinary artist Ana Paula Santana in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The institutional allies for this semester include the Maestría en Artes Vivas of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Plural Nodo Cultural (Colombia); Departamento de Artes del Movimiento of the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, El Asunto de lo Remoto performance program, and Fundación Andreani (Argentina); and Casa Orozco and the Secretaría de Cultura de Jalisco through the Escuela de Artes Jalisco (Mexico).
LA ESCUELA___ draws upon the rich legacy of Latin American artists and educators and seeks to engage education with real-world contexts in order to learn from and act upon them. The joint founders of LA ESCUELA___ are the artist and educator Miguel Braceli and the international nonprofit foundation Siemens Stiftung. LA ESCUELA____is based on Siemens Stiftung’s experience with co-creation programs and artistic interventions across Latin America and the artistic and educational works of Miguel Braceli in public spaces.
To learn more about the upcoming programs, visit laescuela.art and subscribe to its newsletter.