Open Call for WHW Akademija Art Study Program in Croatia

Jan. 11, 2022

Curatorial collective WHW announces an open call for applications to participate in the fourth year of WHW Akademija, an experimental, interdisciplinary, tuition-free art study program based in Zagreb, Croatia.

The program starts in March and lasts until November 2022. It combines live and digital sessions, starting online in March and April and intensifying in May with a physical summer school that will take place in an outdoor location in Croatia. The program continues online until the end of October 2022, when the final meeting of participants will take place in Zagreb.

DAAR: ‘The Tree School,’ WHW Akademija Summer School, Zagreb 2021 // Photo by Damir Žižić

The year is focused on the notion of artistic ecologies that can foster interdisciplinary practice and cooperation, stimulate ideas, and engage communities. To navigate the period of global disruption, the program will concentrate the studies on eco-social art practices and explore how we rethink art and ourselves in the current situation. How do we encounter something that is outside and external to us in (post) pandemic conditions? This something can be another human being, art objects, situations, animal or non-human existences. What kinds of artistic ecologies can be formed with these encounters? Adapting to the colossal and unpredictable changes that affected ways in which both learning and artistic exchanges can happen during the pandemic, the emphasis will be on various formats of artistic production in times of crisis such as these. These productions can rely on collectivity, shared imagination and the usage of materials at hand, such as everyday objects, text, gesture and interventions.

The resident professor throughout the 2022 program is writer and curator Ivana Bago, who will develop a mentoring program in collaboration with participants and facilitate regular meetings with students online and offline. Guest professors are Tim Etchells & Vlatka Horvat and Pablo Martínez who will hold intensive workshops and mentoring sessions consisting of both collective and individual critiques with the participants in online and physical encounters. Additionally, the program will include two shorter seminars led by Zbyněk Baladrán and Daniela Ortiz.

Selection interviews—in person (for Zagreb-based applicants) and over Zoom—will be conducted between February 10th – 20th, 2022. Applicants will be notified of their status by the end of February 2022.