Situatedness generated by war: The creative experience of Kharkiv musicians
Marianna Chernyavska, I.P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkiv National University of Arts, Ukraine
Breakout Session 3: Thursday 11 May 12:00 – 13:00

Situatedness generated by war creates an artificial aesthetic space — it can be any place, even that completely unsuitable for such actions in normal peaceful times; for example, the Kharkiv subway, basements, or underground parking areas. And situational artistic events are a natural human protest in opposition to war. Join this presentation on the various kinds of artistic events which occurred as result of the specific current situation in Ukraine — concerts, meetings, conferences, readings, round tables. The leading topic of these events are achievements of Ukrainian art. At the end, Marianna Chernyavska will perform ‘Impromptu Waltz’ for the piano by Kharkiv composer Volodymyr Ptushkin, who became one of the victims of war.

Joint exploration of the intangible value and situatedness of Évora
Mathilde Kirkegaard, Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark
Breakout Session 3: Thursday 11 May 12:00 – 13:00

This workshop will explore how the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Évora is valued differently by the people attending the conference by orchestrating them to subjectively registrate and interact with the place. The workshop will work as an intervention, which is a planning method that strives to move the decision-making into the public space (Oswalt et al., 2013). The workshop is inspired by research conducted in three different heritage sites in Denmark: an old fishing harbour, a former meatpacking district, and a former freight rail area. The workshop will ask the question: Can an inclusive approach work as a democratic heritage management method? Join this exploration of the site-specific characteristics, of physical interventions as a means to include, and of the intangible nature of the seemingly physical heritage.

Situating Fragmented Histories of Creativity from the Global South
Antonio Sanchez Gomez, Rosario University, Colombia
Breakout Session 4: Thursday 11 May 15:00 – 17:00

Sanchez Gomez shares pedagogical opportunities emerging from addressing the historiography of creativity from and for the Global South. Finding panoramic histories focusing on the Global South, particularly in Spanish, has proven difficult for professors in that area. As a result, the classes have migrated to concept-based courses with three main features in common. First, the classes depart from a theoretical question that sparks the need to access historical content focused on the Global South without the ambition of outlining linear narratives. Second, while striving to provide all the content that students acquire from encyclopaedic, North-focused, normative histories, they recentre this knowledge in the South by applying criticism from various studies: gender, racial, disabled, and decolonial. Third, as the classes depart from conceptual tools that highlight fragmented, non-teleological historical narratives, lecturers encourage the theoretical and historical analysis that emerges from courses to result in a creative outcome. This talk addresses the challenges and opportunities of teaching histories of creativity focused on non-normative and decolonial frameworks.

Founding a school in Matera: Art practice, heritage, and new generations
Valerio Rocco Orlando, Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Italy
Breakout Session 4: Thursday 11 May 15:00 – 17:00

Through practices ranging from workshops to video installations, he conceives art as a process of mutual knowledge and understanding. The core of his research is the exploration of osmosis among institutions, museums, academia, and the social sphere. Thanks to the Ministry of Culture’s support within the Italian Council program, in 2021 Valerio Rocco Orlando founded an independent and transdisciplinary school; he created a digital platform and started the restoration of a building granted to him by the city of Matera for thirty years. His works are held in public and private collections, including: A. M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana; Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; La Galleria Nazionale, Rome; MACRO, Rome; MAGA, Gallarate; Mart, Rovereto; Museo del Novecento, Milan; MUSMA, Matera; Nomas Foundation, Rome; VAF Stiftung, Frankfurt am Main; Villa e Collezione Panza, Varese.
This presentation will question how the relationship between art practice and pedagogy can affect how we share learning experiences. How can we understand and translate the need for such interaction? What methods, paths, and reflections widen the social field to include diversity and otherness? How do we reconceptualize pedagogy to incorporate such informal and transversal processes? How can we stimulate and activate conditions of autonomous exchange between learners? From the perspective of a collective, self-generative, and self-reflective school, how do we facilitate an intergenerational caring relationship? How can the artist stimulate practices of self-organization? How do we construct a helpful approach to welcome functional solutions that rethink how we inhabit a place?

Situating Design Education in Context
Michal Pauzner, Jonathan Ventura, Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Israel
Breakout Session 4: Thursday 11 May 15:00 – 17:00

Shenkar is a large college located at the heart of Israel. Working in developing teaching methodologies in Shenkar holds two significant challenges. First, the sociocultural context of an Israeli-situated art and design school necessitates the ability to understand and face local and global challenges through the various curricula. Second, the students arrive from various sociocultural backgrounds, making their own situatedness extremely important as future creators and designers. These two starting points accumulate an overall approach the lecturers imbue and develop in their design education strategies. This presentation focuses on a few case studies that illuminate the importance of situatedness in our specific context, including facing ideological and political issues in the works of artists and designers; focusing on working with and for local communities; identifying and implementing tools to develop vernacular art and design; and developing tools to encourage students to bring their own perspectives into class discussion and work.

Planning for Diverse Teaching at the Visual Communication Department, Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem
Dana Gez, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Israel
Breakout Session 5: Friday 12 May 10:00 – 11:30

In Israel these days, the political climate is turning ever more divisive. People of different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities seldom cross paths in non-conflict situations. This is especially apparent within the schooling system. For many, higher education is the first meeting point with people from another background. Higher education thus lays bare this political complexity, resulting in special challenges as well as a rare potential for undoing some of the harm caused by the politics of division. Gez wishes to analyse the political and demographic dynamics in Bezalel today. In this talk, Gez presents and discusses several hands-on initiatives currently being workshopped, including a parallel typographic catalogue in Arabic to supplement the Hebrew one, Arabic language courses aimed at faculty members, an advanced undergraduate course in Arabic typography, and revising existing courses’ curricula to reflect the principle of diversity.