reflecting on summer schools
We are very happy to invite you to a reflective gathering and open conversation between Vik Bayer, Monika Georgieva, Michal Leszuk, Vida Rucli and Chala Itai Westerman around the topic of summer schools. We will talk about the motivations and impulses behind the creation and participation in such programs, the ways in which we learn and unlearn together and the strange yet profound gesture of attending school in the warm embrace of summer.
Our discussion will journey through three summer school initiatives: ‘Land: Places of Belonging & Edge Effects’ (de Appel); ‘Academy of Margins’ (Robida), and ‘Intimate Assemblages: #1 Ecologies’ (Kevin Space), each a window into alternative forms of learning and connection.
We start at 14h for a day event with bubbles, tea, coffee and snacks. Come join us!Links:
Links:
‘Land: Places of Belonging & Edge Effects’ (de Appel)
https://www.deappel.nl/en/curatorial-programme/14482-summer-school-24
‘Academy of Margins’ (Robida)
https://robidacollective.com/projects/academy-of-margins
‘Intimate Assemblages: #1 Ecologies’ (Kevin Space)
https://www.kevinspace.org/program/intimate-assemblages-1-ecologies
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Vik Bayer lives, films, edits, writes, builds, and reads. Vik believes in collaboration as a way of production, one that translates into sculptural installations, films, reading circles, teaching projects, and books. Their work primarily focuses on forms of agriculture that carry the potential to transform the dominant exploitative economic system. Vik is also interested in how the crises haunting our present influence ways of storytelling. Both interests led to an extensive exchange with Sicilian farmers who cultivate a solidarity-based economy in response to the growing struggles caused by the climate crises and the fictions of the free market. This collaboration materialized in the video installation Slo-Mo Visions of Refusal of Unfulfilled Promises, which was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize and the Recognition Award of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where they graduated in 2024.
Monika Georgieva is an independent curator based in Vienna. Since 2023, Monika Georgieva works as an exhibition director at Kunstverein Eisenstadt. Georgieva has a background in architecture and is an alumna of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam. She teaches at the Vienna University of Technology and at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since 2020 she co-runs Laurenz, an independent exhibition space in Vienna dedicated to artistic experimentation and discourse.
Michał Leszuk (he/they) is a researcher and curator currently based in Vienna. They serve as a Curator at Kunstverein Kevin Space. Alongside their Masters in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths University in London, he has worked at Camden Art Centre and White Cube Gallery. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, their research predominantly focuses on queer practices, curatorial as research, and visual cultures, with a particular emphasis on questions related to art’s world-making capacities. These lines of investigation manifest in various forms and experimental formats, including exhibitions, alternative/para pedagogies, reading groups, and conceptual writing.
Vida Rucli is an architect and cultural worker based in the village of Topolò/Topolove, situated on the borderland between Italy and Slovenia. She is editor of Robida Magazine (2014-) and co-curator for Robida’s public programmes and projects (2017-). She lectured in different universities, collaborated with the festival Climate Care (Floating University, Berlin, 2023) and is a member of the international research group Ecologies of Care. robidacollective.com
Chala Itai Westerman is a freelance curator based in Amsterdam, currently working as an assistant curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. In 2022, she participated in De Appel’s Curatorial Programme, followed by a collective fellowship that culminated in organizing De Appel’s Summer School in 2024. She was an advisor for project grants at the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK).
(Photos: fig1-8 Laurenz)