From the School to the Commune

Radical Pedagogy at the Moment of War – Artist talk by Olga Tsaplya Egorova, Nikolay Oleynikov and Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat)

The presentation will address the ongoing experience of The School of Engaged Art (Saint Petersburg), a project of the Chto Delat collective.

The School of Engaged art was established in the fall 2013 – 6 months before the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the war in the east of Ukraine, and ten years after the foundation of Chto Delat collective in 2003. It is a radical art education initiative with the goal of establishing a community of creative workers which use art language as a tool for transformation of society based on the values of justice and equality.

The School was established to operate inside Russian social and political situation where basic democratic freedoms are under threat, in the conditions that offer no support whatsoever for critical culture, and in the society where there are almost no academic programs in contemporary art at all. But we did not expect that the situation after the inauguration of our school will quickly escalate to the situation of catastrophe – two years of pandemic, and then the full scale war create unprecedented challenges.

What kind of art practice can we teach when the world falls apart?