LEARNING INTENTIONS / LEARNING IN TENSIONS presents a radical experiment that began from the intimate and friendly dimension of living together, from engaged and relational artistic practices and horizontal pedagogies, challenging the knowledge-power structures of the dominant culture. A kind of anti- or counter-university (“free” and “at home”), Free Home University has, over the years, become a para-institution for artists, activists, farmers, defenders of the land, migrants, thinkers, and practitioners. Education, art, life, care, social and ecological regeneration, practice and theory coincide in the cohabitation of physical and intellectual spaces and produce collective investigations on and with the territory, a commitment to unlearn destructive paradigms and embrace multiple perspectives. the exhibition, as before the FHU experiment, intends to nourish poetic and political imaginaries defending life in all its forms.
Already in its making, the show realizes some of these intentions: an ecology of knowledge that serves the living, avoiding as much as possible an impact on the environment and the creation of waste. To this end, the Polo biblio-museale of Lecce, engaged in sustainable protocols, will provide materials from previous installations that the designers, architects, and artists ZIP Group (Berlin) and Basak Tuna (Rome) with matteo Locci and Dario Rizzello will reuse for the exhibition setup. The exhibition is conceived as a continuous opportunity for learning and experimentation, starting from the very construction of the devices hosting the works and the public. The phase of design, recovery, and reuse of materials is open to those who wish to learn techniques to build temporary structures, “learning by doing” alongside international professionals.
Free Home University was constituted by and with : Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Lu Cafausu (Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luigi Presicce), Adrian Paci,Constructlab (2014); Ultra-red, Gluklya / Natalia Pershina-Yakimanskaya (2015); Dani D’Emilia of La Pocha Nostra, Coumba Tourè, WHW, Clare Dolan of the Bread and Puppet Theater, Claudia Signoretti of Teatro dell’Oppresso, Barbara Toma (2016); Emilio Fantin, Fernando Garcia Dory + InLand, Luigi Coppola with Casa delle Agriculture, Sista Oloruntoyin (2017); Silvia Federici with The Feminist Research on Violence Platform, Chto Delat, Babi Badalov, Françoise Vergès and the M.E.D.U.S.E. collective (2019); fireflyfrequencies (2020); Arkadiy Kots Band with Partizan Jam Salento, Luca Nostro, Silvia Maglioni, and Graeme Thomson (2022); Oliver Ressler and Custodi del Bosco d’Arneo, ZIP group, Manifesto Brutal, Ecology of Care, Going Sideways, What is the Sound of the Border Collective (2024), and with the contribution of many from various here and now.
Realized with the support of the Musagetes Foundation, Biblio-Museum Center of Lecce, Regione Puglia, with support of KOW (Berlin), The Gallery Apart (Rome)
Produced by Ammirato Culture House, curated by Alessandra Pomarico and Nikolay Oleynikov with the communities of Free Home University and Ecoversities Alliance.