Artist: The Oceans Academy of Arts (OAOA) with Özlem Altin, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Ola Vasiljeva and Marianne Vierø
Exhibition title: University
Curated by: The Oceans Academy of Arts (OAOA)
Venue: Vleeshal Zusterstraat, Middelburg, The Netherlands
Date: September 13 – December 13, 2015
Photography: Leo van Kampen and Ola Vasiljeva, images courtesy of the artist and Vleeshal, Middelburg
University plays with the idea of experimental pedagogical systems, which formed a critique of society’s major ideological institutions. Such schools experimented with self-organised education and were founded in response to the intellectual bankruptcy and spiritual emptiness of the approved educational establishment. They proposed courses that opposed conservative educational programmes and idealised the unrestricted development of thought.
The Oceans Academy of Arts (OAOA) was founded in 2008 by Ola Vasiljeva as a similar experimental platform under the umbrella of contemporary art. This semi-fictional institution presents itself as real, yet plays with its own illusive image and approaches the exhibition space, the work of art and the role of the artist as reflections of the same body.
Just as the Anti-University rejected so-called ‘conscious practices’, OAOA sees the idea of ‘un-learning’ in relation to the critique of reason and sense in general. Here nonsense, fragmentation and forgetfulness triumph over reason, form, function and chronology. OAOA regularly publishes a zine. On the occasion of University a new edition of the zine has been made.
The exhibition runs parallel to and in dialogue with Ola Vasiljeva’s solo exhibition at Vleeshal Markt.
