The future is unwritten

What can art education be, beyond what it already is? Based on the approach of thinking of mediation not as the passing on of knowledge, but as the opening up of spaces of possibility, Gila Kolb asks about the social conditions under which cultural institutions operate today: Polarization, inequality, the crisis of democratic public spheres. If art education is to shift what is visible, sayable and showable, then it needs more than new formats - it needs an attitude that can withstand dissent, names power relations and dares to imagine something that does not yet exist. The lecture will shed light on what this means in concrete terms: for institutions, for mediators and for a society in transition. The title "The future is unwritten" is borrowed from a film about the musician Joe Strummer (the clash).

Gila Kolb is a research-based art educator and art mediator, professor of art education and art didactics at the University of Bremen and co-founder of the art education agency art education. Since 2016, she has published the trilingual interview blog The Art Educator's Talk. Main areas of work and interests: Being able to draw, strategies and agency of art educators, unlearning, conditions of post-digital art education. She is also interested in anti-racist art education practice, questions of digitality such as memes as subversive practice, sustainability in relation to art education.