The Last Bell Rings

LAST BELL ● STUDIO WITHOUT A SUPERVISOR

Exhibition duration: 27 June - 8 September 2024

The Atelier Without a Leader (ABV) was created as a student initiative focused on art education with an emphasis on non-hierarchical structures and decision-making based on overall consensus.

We rejected individualism as the primary mode of organization. We were interested in the activation potential of the student body and generally challenged the notion of the neutrality of academies. We analyzed the functioning of art institutions and explored ideas of radical pedagogy. We*met*to*share*each*other's*specific*knowledge*and*problematize*or*update*established*methods*of*arts*education*and*discover*other*possibilities*of*receiving, creating and transmitting not only artistic knowledge. We challenged the individualistic mantras of artistic production.
In 2017, we held a conference on art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where we introduced these principles to the wider art community. We wanted to test our ideas in confrontation with the school's management and students, and at the same time take the opportunity to formulate a different vision of education together. The conference featured our text, which we collectively wrote*i from the perspective of today in a different time and life situation. Yet, we still see it as a relevant insight into the guts of arts education today, which is why we decided*to re-present it in this exhibition.

The exhibition at the Olga Gallery is an impulse not only to reunite the former members of the ABV, but above all to reflect on the themes that this collective brought to Czech art education. And this at a moment when the "established masters" are once again taking the spotlight, demanding the return of the monopoly of power that has been built up over decades by preserving leading positions in art and educational institutions in the post-Soviet history.

The memento inscribed on the gallery wall can be seen as a reminder that there have been many revolutions, but they have often brought only a renewal of similarly authoritarian power. The members of the now-defunct group Atelier Without a Leader are long out of school or in doctoral programs, and some inhabit leadership positions that they once critically analyzed*i. We therefore begin to ask: What ideals must be digested at this banquet, if any? The last bell rings as a rite of passage, a rare moment when students are allowed to frolic in the institution they are leaving.