Creativity Exercises. Spaces of Emancipatory Pedagogies
Photo documentation
Referring to the examples from the visual arts and architecture, the exhibition “Creativity Exercises” demonstrates how open and participatory forms of learning such as different techniques of montage, movement exercises, utopian architectural models, non-verbal communication games, or collective actions can fuel the imagination and contribute to the formation of experimental and democratic communities.
The title of the exhibition was borrowed from Miklós Erdély and Dóra Maurer’s art course held in Budapest between 1975 and 1977. Tracing similar examples of self-organized transdisciplinary study circles of the 1970s and earlier pedagogical experiments connected with the artistic milieus of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and the Situationist International, the exhibition discusses the pedagogical potential of art and contributes to contemporary debates on the educational turn in the visual arts, and the industrialization of creativity.
The architecture of the exhibition, designed by Tamás Kaszás, refers to Robert Filliou and Joachim Pfeufer’s “Poipoidrom,” an architectural installation developed in the 1960s that in its space reflected the consecutive steps of the creative process. One of its chambers, the PoiPoi Cabinet, embraced a plethora of cultural references that could be used to feed further processes of creation. The exhibition, being a PoiPoi Cabinet itself, also treats the presented pedagogical activities as a source of inspiration, offering the audience a possibility to experiment with alternative forms of learning during a series of workshops organized by the museum’s educators.
The exhibition embraces works and references to the oeuvre of such artists, architects and theorists, as: Josef Albers, Imre Bak, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Guy Debord, Miklós Erdély, Escuela de Valparaíso, ex-artists collective (Tamás Kaszás- Anikó Loránt), Robert Filliou and Joachim Pfeufer, Paolo Freire, Yona Friedman, R. Buckminster Fuller, Lujza Gecser, Group 143, Oskar Hansen, Hannah Higgins, Ivan Illich, INDIGO Group, Asger Jorn, Paul Klee, Attila Kotányi, Dóra Maurer, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Plágium2000, Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, SIGMA Group, International Parallel Union of Telecommunication (Trustee in bankruptcy: Tamás St.Turba), Raoul Vaneigem, Judit Vas/Ferenc Mérei.
The exhibition is a continuation of a project that was previously presented at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig (2014) and tranzit.hu in Budapest (2015).
