The work “A Reflection on an Institution” puts its focus on the institution of art education. Like any kind of institutional critique, the object of the critique can be examined on different levels. Where can we locate the existence of the “art education institution”? In political decisions on a global level (like the Bologna Process for higher education), or on a personal level of people embedded in the institution’s identity (like the title “a HZT person”)?

 

In this research I tackled the different intersections of individuals and institutions on this range. I reflected on notions like routine, transformation, ideology, patterns, aesthetics, communication, backgrounds, politics, symbols, traditions, identity-construction, personal taste, legacy and semantics- which compile the entity of an institution.

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Its background located in my past experience as a student in the BA program Dance, Context and Choreography at the Inter-university Center for Dance in Berlin, back then a young artistic institution of UdK. Over 2.5 years as a student, I’ve witnessed the ever-growing institutionalization, reforms and identity formation of the school. This led me to ask about my personal status within, and demanded a critical point of view, attention and intuition. It was an interior process as much as exterior. During the development of the research, I realized that my interest is drawn more and more into the direction of education in general, and art education in particular. Why does society need institutions for art education? It is clear that in order to become a doctor one has to complete medicine studies, but is it the same case for art? If one wants to become an artist, does he/she have to go through the mechanism of art education?

 

“A Reflection on an Institution” contains numerous works of different formats- like discussions, texts, installations and happenings, which reveal and express various perspectives: How does the name of a school design the way of thinking within it? And what does it mean when it becomes an adjective (“this piece is so HZT!”)? Which symbols does an institution produce? How to deal with the friction between its open-spirit identity on the one hand, and the precise policies on the other? And how the hell do we use the Copy-machine card?