Asia Art Archive (AAA) presents a talk by art educators from across Asia on alternative and expanded settings for learning today.
In 2021, AAA announced an open call, and six artist-educators and collectives from across Asia and the Asian diaspora were selected to develop a series of creative Artist Exercises for their communities of learners, drawing inspiration from AAA’s Collections.
To extend the interests and concerns raised in the exercises, this programme invites Kathmandu-based educator and writer Niranjan Kunwar to respond to the series, and to mediate a conversation around the role of art in education today, with an emphasis on supporting learners to engage with their surrounding environments.
Anga Art Collective (Guwahati, India), Omnispace (Bandung, Indonesia), and Czar Kristoff (Laguna, Philippines) will discuss their artist exercises with Kunwar, with questions including: How can artist-educators act as mediators between teachers and students? How can exercises inspired by archives make pedagogical practices more local and personal? And, in a rapidly changing world, how can we think more broadly about what constitutes a “setting” for education?
In their artist exercise, Anga Art Collective prompts young learners to step out from the classroom to learn from their natural surroundings. Czar Kristoff encourages students to engage with their neighbourhoods, mapping their memories and experiences from a personal lens. Omnispace invites homemakers to document and reflect on their daily activities from an artistic perspective. These exercises highlight the need for curricula to be connected to local contexts and environments through personal experiences, and to complicate what a “setting” for learning is beyond the classroom. The educators ask teachers and learners to consider the socio-emotional aspects of education, with this session considering the values and challenges of such an approach.
This event is free and open to the public with registration. Teachers and pre-service teachers from all disciplines are welcome. A certificate will be given to participants upon request as proof of Continuing Professional Development of Teachers (CPD).
Anga Art Collective is based in Assam, and was formed in 2010 as a self-led studio space that explores the possibilities of freedom in art as well as in life. The collective thinks and works through regional and cultural specificities within a process of decolonisation in making and learning. They develop aesthetic responses, host lectures, talks, and pedagogical reach-out events. Their collaborators include village communities, river communities, forest situations, folk artists, ecologists, social scientists, and activists.
Czar Kristoff is a Laguna-based artist, designer, educator, and publisher. He is interested in the (re)construction of space and memory, through concepts of nesting and temporary architecture, and for (pedagogical) occupation, using cottage industry publishing—blueprints, xerox, and other low-fidelity printing methods—as his current media of interest. Kristoff runs Temporary UnReLearning (URL) Academy, a school with no permanent address interested in queering art and cultural production in the Philippines.
Niranjan Kunwar’s practices connect the arts with pedagogy, literature, and queer issues. He has an MSEd from City University of New York with a specialisation in Childhood Education. He is the author of Nepal’s first queer memoir, Between Queens and the Cities (2020), and holds a diploma in Narrative Practices and Ideas.
Omnispace, together with Pupa and Lab Ngebon, merged into Omni Kolektif in 2021. Located in Bandung, Indonesia, Omni Kolektif is a contemporary art collective that focuses on education, knowledge exchange, and ideas. Their goal is to provide an inclusive space for both actors in creative fields and the general public, so as to create an environment conducive to collaboration, while considering the economic value needed to sustain the collective.
The AAA Learning & Participation Programme is supported by the S. H. Ho Foundation Limited.
