“Acts of Learning—or how to sensibly comprehend curiosity, will, and chance”
November 7–14, 2014
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Caracas
Venezuela
www.coleccioncisneros.org
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How do we form, express and comprehend new sensibilities? How is critical thought formed and manifested through aesthetic experience, and what are its ends? What are the roles of the symbolic as well as the place of intuition, creativity and artistic innovation today? How, what and why can we learn from art? And, for that matter, why is it important to unlearn or let go of ideas, to interrogate emotions and question beliefs? These are some of the questions that gave rise to, and which will be publicly posed by, “Acts of Learning.”
This fourth edition of the annual Seminario Fundación Cisneros is an occasion to learn with a group of people by actively responding to these questions through their work. The seminar explores forms of learning with art and about culture. Organized by the Caracas and New York teams of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) and conceptualized by its contemporary art curator Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, “Acts of Learning” takes place from November 7 to 14 at different venues in Caracas, Venezuela. It consists of several programs and initiatives, and convenes 23 presenters from Venezuela and abroad in addition to several online contributors.
A lecture series held on the mornings of November 7 and 14 presents theories of learning that have been developed while making artistic and curatorial projects or through the process of designing schools, curricula and research institutes, particularly in Latin America. Freddy Castillo Castellano, Benjamín Mayer Foulkes, Sandra Pinardi, and Santiago Roldós will lecture about this at the Fundación Cisneros headquarters in Caracas; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev transmits her lecture to the room from the CPPC headquarters in New York, and Paul Ramirez Jonas from SOMA in Mexico City.
A conversation and Pecha Kucha program held at Centro de Arte Los Galpones in Caracas takes place on the evenings of those two days, presenting ideas, proposals and examples of formative learning experiences in different fields. Speakers are Luis Enrique Belmonte, Ángela Bonadies & Juan José Olavarria, Alejandro Castro, Rodrigo Figueroa, Ariel Jimenez, Antonio López Ortega, Santiago Pol, Tupac Amaru Rivas Estanga, Amira Saim, Carlos Sánchez Torrealba, Juan Souki, Florencia Alvarado & Natasha Tiniacos, Nancy Urosa, and Gerardo Zavarce. This is an inter-generational and cross-disciplinary group of artists, educators and learners, cultural catalyzers at large in Venezuela.
In addition, different workshops were especially designed for the occasion of “Acts of Learning” by three partner institutions in Caracas. The workshop The Poetic Action and the Action of Politics conducted by Santiago Roldós is offered on November 11–13 at Centro de Creación Artística – Taller Experimental de Teatro (TET). Brief Workshop on Brief Poetry is conducted by Alejandro Castro; it’s organized and hosted by the bookstore Lugar Común on November 4, 11 and 18. The third workshop is Unlearning the Gaze, conducted by Erik del Bufalo; it’s organized and hosted by the artist-run space ONG on November 11–13.
Also in conjunction with “Acts of Learning,” the CPPC launches two online debates in November. In one of these, a group of Latin American artists offer their views on forms of learning with art: Ricardo Basbaum, Saidel Brito, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Monica Giron, Carla Herrera-Pratts, and Ana Laura López de la Torre. A second debate addresses notions of exercise in art and of art as exercise; it is moderated by Sarah Demeuse and Manuela Moscoso of Rivet, who gather statements from Inés Katzenstein, Angie Keefer, Mario Navarro, Bernardo Ortíz, and Dushko Petrovich. These online debates invite you to comment and respond to these topics and initial contributions.
All of the programs in “Acts of Learning” are open to the general public and free of charge; prior registration is required. Admission to the workshops is through an application and selection process (details in the website); a CPPC grant program managed by each partner institution covers tuition costs for all workshop participants. As with previous editions of the Seminario Fundación Cisneros, “Acts of Learning” can be accessed from anywhere online. The programs of November 7 and 14 will be live-streamed from CPPC’s website.
General information and video documentation of all seminars to date, as well as information on this upcoming edition, including biographies of all of the participants and briefs on their presentations, may also be found on CPPC’s website.
