The fabled Danube has become a romantic symbol of Central Europe's rich culture. But one can not think of the Danube without also thinking about the brutal socio-political and ecological events that happened on its shores. The question is what can we do as artists to avoid similar future scenarios? Should we try and work with it? Or should we just let it flow? The PPA is here to 'stay with the trouble'. So, 'How do you make the Danube operate like a classroom?'
Cross-border/international
Serbia
Austria
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Novi Sad [Serbia] and Vienna [Austria]
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: andrea Last name: palasti Gender: Female Nationality: Serbia If relevant, please select your other nationality: Croatia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: antona cehova 30 Town: novi sad Postal code: 21000 Country: Serbia Direct Tel:+381 63 8345093 E-mail:andrea.and.palasti@gmail.com Website:https://andreapalasti.com/Office-for-Para-Pedagogical-Activities
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Yes
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites
‘Like a clam, burrow yourself down in the sand using one foot only. Stay there for 2 minutes.’ This is one of the activities delivered by the Office for Para-Pedagogical Activities (PPA) which conjures the image of a mussel burrowing down the sediment, with a strong emphasis on the experiential learning model, where performing, teaching and participating in nature's ‘flux’ are parallel activities. In this act, we engage in a ‘basic research experiment’ by changing personas, and changing perspectives by delivering a performance through enacting a mussel. Being a mussel is only one of the many more-than-human species that we are mimicking through our ‘Fitness for unlikely species’ performance. The exercises are transforming our bodies into a performative choreography by mimicking other entities whose shapes, movements and existence are affected by climate change: ripples, rough waves, high tides and low tides, wrigglers, the dogfish, the fire-bellied toad, or for example, the freshwater mussel by mimicking clams' movement and burrowing behaviour, because understanding how clams' move across space and time can be a fundamental question in Danube’s ecology. The Office for PPA currently provides its services in Novi Sad (Serbia), as a guerrilla pilot-curriculum developed with and for the students of the Academy of Arts (University of Novi Sad). Students are invited to participate in the activities and take part in exercises held at the Office’s headquarters: the Danube. Bound by the core values — Education, Experimentation and Collaboration — the Office for PPA is committed to create an experimental curriculum aimed at transforming art-university lessons with a series of performative events outside the school settings. The Office for PPA is established in order to find alternative ways and strategies on how to engage with the troubled ecological system of the river with arts and education, or more precisely, with the aim to practise attentiveness and empathy.
Danube
ecoliteracy
critical pedagogy
performance art
more-than-human
The Office for PPA is focusing on critical thinking, interdependence with more than human species, the importance of our local place and having nature - the river Danube as model and teacher about the rest of Us. What would Danube have to say about Us? We are thinking, feeling and acting in and around the Danube river, by using only performative events and happenings with the aim to practise creative thinking. Through creative thinking we are putting our imagination to work, and hopefully, in the future help the new generation of artists face our world in trouble!
Working with students in different informal expeditions and group actions, we are experimenting with cross-discipline presentations for example: acting as misleading tourist guides, desired landscape painters, aspirant speculative biologists, unlicensed journalists and incompetent fitness trainers. In each of these acts, the Danube is our classroom. As tourists guides we are changing perspectives and inspire a nuanced understanding of the river from the perspective of other animals and plants. As landscape artists we reproduce the colours of the Danube, which varies according to troubled histories, sluggish economies, changing geographies. As speculative biologists we are focusing on the realm of speculative evolution - how animals in/around the river might evolve in the future due to climate change. As journalists we are delivering news from the future directly from the river. As fitness trainers we are delivering a series of body-exercises, for example mimicking clams' movement and burrowing behaviour, because understanding how clams' move across space and time can be a fundamental question in Danube’s ecology [performance titled: 'Fitness for Unlikely Species'].
The Office for PPA delivered different events, performances and happenings that welcomed all learning styles and ability levels. In this light, all students could access the curriculum through differing strategies and methods. Throughout the process, we maintained a collaborative and interdependent mode of learning that acknowledged students’ personal experiences. The Office for PPA provided opportunities for students to share their own experiences and perspectives without ‘wrong or right’ answers. On the other hand, as we were delivering acts in the public space, our happenings involved more than the detached observation of the viewer. Sometimes the viewers were also actively participating. For example, when we were delivering a sightseeing tour from the perspective of the sewer, a group of tourists joined the walk. Therefore, as an ‘open classroom’ the Office for PPA is also open for others - friends, random passers-by and students even brought their dogs to the 'class'.
All the performative events and happenings delivered through the Office for PPA project are experimenting on methods for participatory actions and activities for and with the broader public. Through interactions with diverse peers and scientists, we were considering how we could potentially save the Danube's future through more than human activities and speculative fabulation. Through our research and work we participated in different community action programs and exhibitions - for example, the exhibition ‘DUNAVERSE: Flora and fauna of the Danube in extreme futures’ was part of the 9. Memorial Scientific Meeting on Environmental Protection “Assis. Prof. Dr. Milena Dalmacija”, hosted by the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Sciences, Novi Sad. In this light, we created our own collaborative and alternative learning platform from which we were able to speak against ecological injustice; we created awareness of how we affect the environment, and promoted respect towards all species.
The Office for PPA is working in close collaboration with the art organisation the “Danube Transformation Agency for Agency” (DTAFA). Founders of the DATAFA are artists and designers: Alexandra Fruhstorfer (AU), Lena Violetta Leitner (AU), Ege Kökel (AU/TR), Solmaz Farhang (UK/IR/AU) and Andrea Palašti (RS). DTAFA was supported by the “Inter- and Transdisciplinary Projects in Art and Research” of The University of Applied Arts Vienna (2021/22). In this light, the artists were engaged in conducting workshops and research materials for the Office for PPA, as well as connecting with other scientists and institutions who helped shape the initiative through gaining valuable knowledge from them through interviews, lectures and workshops. Partners and collaborators: dr Maja Raković and dr Stoimir Kolarević, Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković" National Institute of Republic of Serbia, Department of Hydroecology and Water Protection, University of Belgrade, Serbia; Hélène Masliah-Gilkarov and Adam Kovacs, ICPDR, Vienna, Austria; dr Sanja Bijelović, Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina, Centre of Hygiene and Human Ecology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad, Serbia; Administration for Environmental Protection, Novi Sad, Serbia; Vojvodinasume, Novi Sad, Serbia; University of Applied Arts Vienna, department Art&Science, Vienna, Austria.
We see the river Danube as a hyperobject. Hyperobjects are collections of overlapping things, and in order to understand them we must transform the way we see and experience the world. In line with this idea, we came in touch with vast heaps of things outside of the Danube in order to de-center and expand the scale of its perception. We collaborated with different fields of knowledge - because, ‘we all work for the RIVER’! For example, just to mention a few: in order for the students to speculate about the future of species, we talked to Vladimir Djurdjevic, professor of meteorology at the Faculty of Physics [University of Belgrade]. Vladimir Djurdjevic is an expert in climate modelling and calculated for us the temperature change of the Danube river up to the year 2100. We also talked to Sanja Bijelović, Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina, Centre of Hygiene and Human Ecology, Faculty of Medicine [University of Novi Sad], and learned about the substances in the river and how it affects our ecosystem, for example the concentration of Ammonium ion NH4+, BOD-5, Copper in the Danube. All of this contributed to a very special learning environment that opened up for us a new ground in collaborative practices. We learned together, not just as students and artists but as human beings. We created a special ‘social ecology’ that contributed to our own ‘mental ecology’ which in turn teached us about the ‘environmental ecology’ and on the possibilities on how to raise awareness for river conservation.
Educational institutions have to function within an overly rigid framework - the Bologna Accord, and meeting standards of education. Also, even in the framework of an Art University, art is mostly teached and understood as a symbolic practice, rather than an actual practice. We are teaching students how to ‘represent the world’, how to make things, objects that address the world. But what does it mean to teach art, theory of form and colour in the climate of change? How to teach about perspective when the whole world is losing its sight? In these times it is crucial that we dismantle the rigid framework of the art class and ask students not to produce any more objects, rather to produce experiences and knowledge. The Office for PPA is using the practice of Fluxus, where we teach students not to do things about the world, but to do things that are acts in the world! For the Office for PPA art is a social practice, a platform where an open ended social engagement is taking place with the goal of producing dynamic EXPERIENCES NOT COMPLEX ARTISTIC OBJECTS! Allan Kaprow called it un-arting process, a broader movement than critical pedagogy and one that aims to de-professionalize the arts in order to get closer to the real world. In our case, to get closer to our planet in trouble!
As the Danube flows and circulates through different countries and channels, our Office for PPA is already appearing in exhibition formats, as performance events, in school classes, and in a scientific conference. It has a great potential to be implemented in every school curriculum as research-based pedagogy through which students can find alternative ways and strategies on how to engage with the troubled ecological system of the Danube river with arts and education. These acts/(performances) can be described as a series of experimental and experiential pedagogical events or interventions with a strong focus on the Anthropogenic impact on our planet. Therefore, these exercises and pedagogy practices could be even adopted for different rivers, or even parks, woods, lakes and other ecosystems.
The Office for PPA takes its reference from Fluxus, conceptual art, but also contemporary participatory artistic practices, and places knowledge production and production of new social bonds as the primary goal of the Office for PPA. Similar performative strategies as a pedagogical method can be found in John Cage’s mushroom foraging expeditions in the woods, which he was conducting as part of his Mushroom Identification course taught at the New School in New York; Alan Kaprow’s ‘Six Ordinary Happenings’ and short-lived intervention into the public school system called ‘Project Other Ways’; or, for example, Robert Filliou’s proposal for establishing a non-degree program - the ‘Institute of Permanent Creation’. The Office for PPA is also recalling Félix Guattari’s question "How do you make a classroom operate like a work of art?", which opens the final question by switching it to: “How do you make the Danube operate like a classroom?” in order to harness creativity and inventiveness toward an ethico-aesthetic paradigm.
As there is no river that is not connected to another waterbody, which is then connected to something else - there is no single or local solution for the Danube’s ecology. The Danube river is a meandering and intertwined entity, which 801,463 km² long together with its tributaries. Having in mind the hypothesis that water must have been delivered to Earth from the outer Solar System, it complicates the situation even more. We are all intertwined, affecting each other. In line with this idea, by providing local experiences, we can demonstrate this interconnectedness very illustratively. The water quality of the Danube in Serbia is critical, and the destruction of its natural ecosystem are mostly based on cultural and political implications. As a non-EU member state, Serbia does not have wastewater treatment plants. Pesticides, pharmaceutical waste, faeces and blood with high concentrations of Escherichia coli are poured directly into the river, which then flows further down the stream, making the Danube one of the most polluted European rivers.
The Office for PPA is already experimenting with its multi-disciplinary curricula for 2 years. Each year with different students, and newly added performances/acts/happenings. Through these interventions, it is already demonstrated that students developed the ability to think critically and open up their thoughts for a multiplicity of perspectives and views. We also organised exhibitions, participated in conferences showing some of the examples of our methodology. For example, the performance ‘Fitness for Unlikely Species’ is established now as shape-shifting somatic exercises that are delivered even outside of the Danube region as a good example on finding new ways of learning, understanding, connecting, and moving between our worlds. In particular, these more-than-human exercises might help trainees to address their own eco-anxiety and environmental grief. As Donna Haraway puts it: we are STAYING WITH THE TROUBLE!
On the other hand, the students developed a lively sense of curiosity for their surroundings, social consciousness and sensitivity to the river Danube. By exploring the dialectics of both nature and culture students are now encouraged to think about the fragility of nature - the heat that has become stronger, to the Danube that floods more often, and about the fine line between human (mis)actions and our planet. And hopefully, one day, someone from this new generation will have the capacity to save our ‘world in trouble’. But until then, the Office for PPA will continue with its initiative by inviting other students, youths, scientists, civil society groups, conservationists, plants and animals to join the mission!
During his teachings at the Bauhaus, Johannes Itten was known for instructing his students: 'Before you draw a tiger, you have to roar like a tiger.' Today in our climate of change, we need to switch to: ‘Before you draw a tiger, you have to keep the tiger away from extinction’, or if we wish to paint a landscape, we have to keep it first! All the activities developed within the Office for PPA are promoting nature and valuing sustainability by not producing art objects, rather life experiences through artistic performances. Through the exercise of speculative fabulation, we are embracing critical thinking but at the same time framing the problem(s) in order to come up with speculative future scenarios. Through the shape shifting exercises when mimicking other species, we are acting as a collective, delivering the performances in collaboration, in order to reduce stress and anxiety caused by fear of environmental cataclysm. In this light, the Office for PPA is a multi-disciplinary curriculum, a new pedagogical methodology and an artistic project all rolled into one, which contributes to developing new competences on how to address climate change with arts.
