Clémentine Deliss works for a number of years in the frame of art academies. In the last four years, she has been involved with the issue of a new academy. She has conceived her Future art academy first and foremost within different art institutions in which she worked. Throughout all the years of her research project, she has been focused on the reflection on modes, contents and structures that would fit the idea of establishing the academy. In years, she has come up with remarkable conclusions and questions that she formulated in three segments for the workshop Plan for a Mobile Faculty of Arts:

1. The cartography of mobility.
What is mobility in art research and practice? Is it classical romanticism or neo-liberal policy to believe in a mobile, peripatetic faculty of arts? If not what is required to make itinerant academies into a reality? What can we learn from the conceptual and organisational make-up of recent small-scale associations or artist-led collectives? Do these present cases for increased localization or for mobility? Is sustainability actually possible with a mobile faculty of arts or do we need to conceive of impermanency and informal economic parameters as part of the productivity of a new structure? Who can be the host of a mobile faculty of arts?

2. The positions of artist and curator as polymathic agents.
What is the polymath in today’s world? How do curators negotiate specificity and multiplicity in the way they choose to work with artists and audiences? How do we assess the artist’s articulation of a combination of activities that include private gallery shows, increased participation in large-scale international events, and ‘activist’ education? Why are artists interested in the question of education and what is the current fuss around research? Under what conditions can art colleges and universities generate autonomous dynamics of practice and production?

3. Defining future faculties of knowledge.
What is a faculty of knowledge? Is it a person, a skill to be learnt, or a discipline that evokes relations of power? Do we shy away from naming members of new academy of competence in art practice and art theory in favour of neutralized and semi-abstract definitions? What formulations and methodologies of knowledge production travel across cultural and disciplinary borders? Who or what shifts knowledge from one place to another? What forms of knowledge and art practice do not travel or translate and why? Is there confusion between the private and the social, or the covert and the public within our concept of future faculties of knowledge? What role do curators play today, fifteen years after the ‘global art’ surge?

The Future academy or any kind of institution that would deal with education certainly indicates an aspiration towards mobility and, connected to this, the international linking of informal educational programmes. The main objective would be to transfer the content from one space to another, which is the key prerequisite for establishing the institution of the future, aimed towards polymathics and diversity.

It was through those questions that the workshop participants, under the mentorship of Clementine Deliss, have managed to conceive a proposal for the functioning of the future institution in which they would work themselves, both content- and organisation-wise.

The final product of the workshop Plan for a Mobile Faculty of Arts is an imaginary constitution of an art institution of the future. The sum of the ideas of the workshop participants is embodied in the image of the space of Pension or Guesthouse. The main advantage of this art institution is independence and a lesser degree of relying on public subsidies. The organisational structure is divided into three groups: moderators (coordination and institution management); researchers (programme collaborators) and audience (people of various profiles). Formally, the institution is divided into service and production sectors, which are not strictly separated. The service sector is basically a platform for gathering financial means that would be used in the production sector. The accent is on the production of long-term projects, whether they would be lectures, workshops, research projects, exhibitions, performances or activities in other artistic fields, depending on moderators’ preferences.

A transcript (pdf, 161KB) of the public presentation of A Project for Mobile Art School, Cankarjev dom, February 11, 2007-04-27.

The theatre play Das Gasthaus Polymath by Maja Šorli was created during the workshop (pdf, 140kb) (in Slovene).

The participants of the workshop were:
Alja Buič, Andraž Golc, Samo Gosarič, Tevž Logar, Maja Lozič, Vasja Nagy, Teja Rot and Maja Šorli.

The workshop was prepared in collaboration with Maska Institute, Performing Arts Seminar, season 2006/2007.