Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik | Learning Laboratories, BAK

A research exhibition and a symposium, Learning Laboratories: Architecture, Instructional Technology, and the Social Production of Pedagogical Space Around 1970 sets out to reconstruct educational imaginaries—the past’s conceptions of the future of education—in an archaeological excavation of learning spaces and knowledge environments of the 1960s and 1970s.

The case studies include, among others: the Laboratory School and the Oberstufen-kolleg, Bielefeld, both based on concept of the “de-schooled school” (research prepared by Gregor Harbusch); televisual education—otherwise known as “tele-learning”—developed in Ivory Coast with the aim of drawing rural populations into the educational system; the extraterritorial “pilot schools,” and the nomadic schools carried through the Liberated Zones by guerrilla fighters in the anti-colonial liberation wars in Guinea- Bissau, presented here by Filipa César and Sónia Vaz Borges. The exhibition also comprises works by: Hartmut Bitomsky and Harun Farocki; Darcy Lange; Wendelien van Oldenborgh; and Florian Zeyfang, Alexander Schmoeger, and Lisa Schmidt-Colinet.

Curated by Tom Holert

Exhibition design: Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik (Jesko Fezer, Anita Kaspar, Andreas Müller with Peter Behrbohm)

Realized in collaboration with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin

Fotos: Tom Janssen