A summer school for 18 participants from among young artists, theoreticians, curators and students of selected humanities disciplines.

The PLATO Summer School is an experimental project aiming to convey, in a short period of time, knowledge other than the systematized. Its programme will focus on knowledge based on instinct, imagination, insight and intuition, on the ability to read from symptoms, clues, traces and hints. We will learn from people, and from professions which are not conducted on a purely rational, systematic basis, but go beyond the categories of the rational and irrational. We will be interested in approaches based on the understanding of situations that cannot be generalized and defy being dealt with in conformance with formalized procedures; and also in approaches that involve intensity, rhythm, empathy or subconscious response. We will meet people who are experts in their fields, as well as those who have undergone some kind of extreme experience; with people familiar with professions excluded from society or, on the contrary, in professions that have retained their character and knowledge unchanged for centuries.

We are looking for 18 participants from among young artists, curators, theoreticians, and all other disciplines touching in any way the conjectural paradigm (fields with real results, but not achievable by a systematized method). They will be led by five tutors, foremost artists and curators, who will convey to the participants the experience of seven selected guests (from professions such as pharmacist, offender, doula, priest, shaman), and assess this experience together with them. During the one-week intensive programme all participants will have the opportunity to share the intense experience of staying together, discussing and creating.

The School’s language of communication is English.

When:
2–8 September 2019 (arrival: 1 September – departure: 9 September)

Where:
PLATO Ostrava (former Bauhaus hobby market), Janáčkova 22, 702 00 Ostrava, CZ

Tutors:
Valentinas Klimašauskas (LT), curator of the Latvian pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019; Viktoria Draganova (BG), curator, director of the Swimming Pool; Julie Béna (FR), artist; Zuzanna Czebatul (DE), artist, Pavel Sterec (CZ), artist, and Wojciech Kosma (PL), artist

Who we are looking for:
Senior students of art schools, senior students of any thematically related humanities disciplines, young artists, curators, critics, theoreticians

Deadline for applications, how to apply:
Applicants shall send their CV and portfolio (or a motivation letter with a summary of hitherto activity in lieu of the portfolio), by e-mail to info@plato-ostrava.cz by 31 May 2019 at the latest.

Participation fee:
4,900 CZK (189 EUR)
(The participation fee covers the costs of board and lodging, other costs are covered by PLATO.) Participants are responsible for their travel costs.

Further information:
As we wish to keep the fee as low as possible, the participants‘ accommodation will be provided at a students’ hall of residence in double and triple rooms (with common bathrooms). If they so desire, applicants can arrange for other accommodation individually, and their participation fee will be reduced accordingly.

Board will be provided throughout the day on the premises of PLATO (breakfast, lunch, dinner; vegetarian food).

Valentinas Klimašauskas (1977) is a curator and writer. Klimašauskas was the programme director at Kim?, Riga (2017/18), curator at CAC Vilnius (2003/13), and a founding co-author of Baltic Notebooks. He is the author of the books “Oh, My Darling & Other Rants” (Baltic Notebooks Anthony Blunt, Vilnius, 2018) and “Polygon” (Six Chair Books, Kaunas, 2018). His book B (Torpedo Press, Oslo, 2014) is a meditation on how to make an exhibition in a book. In 2019 he curates the Latvian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Viktoria Draganova is a curator and writer living between Frankfurt am Main and Sofia. In 2014 she founded the Swimming Pool, an art project dedicated to research, cooperation, art education and art policy. Her personal research touches on poetic institutions, the potentials of the imaginary, the policy of truth and the south-east. As a freelance curator she has collaborated with Städel Museum, MMK for modern art, with Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main, and also with art spaces David Dale, Glasgow and Art in General, New York. She has published in Baldland, echogonewrong, Flash Art International, Frieze, frieze d/e, Mousse Magazine, CBEMA. She has a PhD. in the history of law.

Julie Béna (1982) graduated from Villa Arson, Nice and Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. In 2012–2013 she took part in the Pavillon residency at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. She exhibited at Fondation Ricard, Paris; Museum M, Leuven; ICA London; Kadist Foundation, San Francisco. In 2018 she participated in the Biennale de Rennes, this year her exhibitions include Jeu de Paume, Paris and CAPC, Bordeaux. Her work is at the intersection of performance, theatre, sculpture, installation and video, connecting the artificial and theatrical in the thematisation of acute social and political subjects.

Zuzana Czebatul (1986) graduated from Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main and Cooper Union, New York. She had solo exhibitions in Cologne, Warsaw, Los Angeles, New York, and Prague. She attended internships at Hunter College, New York and Soma, Mexico City. Her work often involves the construction of gender stereotypes in relation to sculpture practice and stems from the traditions of pop art and pornography.

Pavel Sterec (1985) has studied at several studios at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His work is based on personal and social encounters and situations transformed into conceptual installations. These combine an interest in the reinterpretation of mythical and ritual objects and natural phenomena in the context of contemporary thought and an engaged criticism of the social and political status quo. Sterec has introduced his work at a number of exhibitions primarily in Central and Eastern Europe.

Wojciech Kosma (1981) is a Polish visual artist, musician and choreographer-composer. His performances combine elements of psychology a physiology, as well as pornography, logic and irony with traditional musical notation. His work was presented in Jerusalem, London, New York, Paris and Tel Aviv. He had solo exhibitions in Berlin, Copenhagen, Eindhoven, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Since 2015 he has been a member of the Rzeczywistość Emocjonalna, a collective organising public sessions on the subject of politics and emotions, and of Important Part, a “noise-punk, drag-ghoul, exorcism seethe” music band.

The School is a part of the re:bauhaus festival organised on the occasion of the Bauhaus school’s 100th anniversary.

re:bauhaus – modern emancipation, education, exchange – is a transnational festival exploring the origins of Functionalism and Bauhaus in Central Europe, the political and societal conditions that gave rise to the movements, and how these are perceived today. The festival is a joint initiative of Goethe-Institut in cooperation with bauhaus reuse, curatorial collaborative, National Gallery in Prague, PLATO Ostrava and zukunftsgeraeusche. Supporters include the Czech-German Future Fund, German Federal Agency for Civic Education, Federal Foundation of Baukultur, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the city of Ostrava and Moravian-Silesian Region.

School of Expressions_publication

Contributors:
Nadia Markiewicz, page 1
Eliška Kupcová, page 2–3
(Contributors did not sign as a choice), page 4
Agnieszka Mastalerz, page 5
Eleonora Luccarini, page 6–8
Ewelina Węgiel, page 9
Zai Xu, page 10
Laura Franzmann, page 11
Dayna Cassey, page 12
Maciej Nowacki, page 13–14
Valentina Vallorani, page 15–17
Krisztian Török, page 18–19
Natalia Dorocka, page 20
Julia Dornobińska, page 21–22
Karolina Rybaciauskaite, page 23