(via pocketmonsterd)
PROFESSOR OLAFUR ELIASSON.
Artist Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste will be an experiment in art education.
Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin, 2008
In April 2009, the Berlin-based Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will begin his professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste (UdK). This might not sound like ground-breaking news, but for an art school that has endured much recent criticism in the German press for botching its relationships with professors and being woefully behind the times when it comes to hiring local talent, it’s a significant move forward.
Granted, it took almost three years to negotiate a compromise between the structure of the traditional German art academy and Eliasson’s vision for his teaching position. Following the German art education model, Eliasson will take on 15 to 20 ‘spatially motivated people’ from the pool of UdK applicants for the five-year duration of their studies, in addition to a few exchange students and – he hopes – three PhD candidates. But rather than commuting to the University’s studios, Eliasson will teach them in a 550-square-metre space located literally on top of his own studio.
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Though Eliasson admires artists who never went to art school, he nevertheless thinks that art education is increasingly important. ‘The world is just so fucked up that it seems desperately to need art around. I think the participants will take away from the school the potential of being productive participants in the world. And I think this requires a sense of responsibility and precision. I hope they’ll learn to be a part of the world or “with the world”.
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http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/open_studio/
