Education is going to the dogs, we’ve been told. We’re overeducated, we’re underperforming, we can no longer afford to learn. Coupling these concerns with the idea that learning doesn’t need to stop at adulthood, grassroots organizers have responded by implementing non-hierarchical models of learning. These organizations all share a wish to dismantle the hierarchies of traditional teacher-and-student models, positing that everyone has something to learn from someone else, regardless of background or economic means. Many groups—Copenhagen Free University, Anhoek School, the Public School, Trade School, and the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, to name a few—developed from within art communities. More recently, some groups have formed outside of the art world, such as the more commercially-inclined Skillshare and the Brooklyn Brainery.

I’d like to delve into the world of non-hierarchical learning via two case studies, Trade School and The Public School New York ...

When Benedict Anderson wrote Imagined Communities in 1982, he was seeking to upset the idea we take for granted, of the nation-state as an inevitable and natural community. Anderson defines a natural community as one based on the everyday, face-to-face interactions of its members. By contrast, he claims that members of the nation state must imagine their affinity with one another. A nation requires an immense psychic investment on the part of its members to imagine an entity that is finite, circumscribed by geographic boundaries, and sovereign, governed by autonomous rule. Anderson chronicles the development of inspirational symbols like the anthem and the flag that gave rise to such psychic investment, encouraging people to come together in spite of traditional ethnic divisions. He also charts the invention of technologies of control, such as passports and visas, which harshly affirm the authority of these constructed territories. Rather than see the nation ...

A Blade of Grass has been working together with OurGoods to offer a new monthly program: "Artists Helping Artists," a workshop and roundtable discussion led by members of OurGoods.  Participants will have the opportunity to connect with each other to share resources and skills in order to accomplish a creative project. Participants will also address collaboration between artists, providing a forum for artists to share their own skills and ideas in relation to new practices of art-making. 

Come to this month's "Artists Helping Artists!"

Thursday, September 20th

6:30 - 8:30 PM

at 50 West 17th Street, 12th Floor

RSVP to aharsanyi@abladeofgrass.org

Refreshments will be served

About OurGoods

OurGoods is a scalable, local initiative and part of the growing landscape of alternative models of exchange in art, design, and culture. OurGoods is specifically dedicated to the barter of creative skills, spaces, and objects. It is a community ...

"Single Point Perspective: A New Series"

http://hyperallergic.com/53887/single-point-perspective-a-new-series/

This essay connects a piece of art to the Jerry Sandusky case, and underscores just how relevant art can be to news and our perception of the world.

"The Art of the Flame-Out"

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/yayoi-kusama-2012-7/

83-year-old Yayoi Kusama's retrospective just opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This article gives an overview of the history of her early politically-charged pieces to her current, more commercial works.

"Art History with Labor: Working in the Art World Sucks"

http://www.artfagcity.com/2012/07/10/art-history-with-labor-working-in-the-arts-sucks/

The Bruce High Quality Foundation created a 50-minute video about the history of greed and corruption and how that relates to art and philosophy. The video's structure is based on Martin Luther's 95 Theses. Despite its length, the video is most certainly worth watching. It raises ...

 Critic Dave Hickey's advice to young artists: go to the point where you know art was good and pick it up from there. At dOCUMENTA (13), the most recent iteration of the international art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany, Curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev appears guided by a similar wisdom. The works in the show, while largely contemporary, span the course of modernism. One entry, the small figurines known as the Bactrian Princesses, dates from the second millennia B.C. dOCUMENTA (13) is a sprawling exhibition with dozens of venues and over 2000 events that take over the entire city center during the exhibition's 100 days. The show's expansiveness, however, is not limited to chronology, duration, and geography, but reaches to the very definition of artist. The exhibition, which includes close to 200 named "participants," includes philosophers, anthropologists, poets, zoologists, and even a physicist, Anton Zellinger ...