LEARNING INTENTIONS / LEARNING IN TENSIONS / Free Home University: pedagogie radicali, arte e comunitá. 2014-2024 e oltre

from 19 December 2024 to 8 March 2025, in  San Francesco della Scarpa, Polo biblio-museale of Apulia region In Lecce.

Free Home University (FHU) is a pedagogical-artistic experiment germinating from the need and the desire to share different knowledges in circular ways. A decade after its inception, in which multiple investigations and propositions were carried out by local and international artists, curators, and educators, alongside communities rooted in Salento - curator Alessandra Pomarico and Nikolay Oleynikov, artist and co-curator, take the risk to present in an exhibition the trajectory of this plural and collective exploration and highly relational process. Conceived as an ongoing learning program and a site of encounters, the exhibition traces the relationships, practices, and methodologies that emerged in Salento, which have manifested and encouraged other experiences in other contexts.

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.

LEARNING INTENTIONS / LEARNING IN TENSIONS features textile works, films, audiovisuals, murals, objects, and sculptures created during Free Home University sessions. It hosts a library, the Firefly Frequencies radio studio, a living archive, and an extensive, free public program of seminars, meetings, presentations, and workshops, designed together with other associations such as Ecoversities Alliance, Casa delle Agriculture, The School of the We, Custodi del Bosco d’Arneo, Gruppo Umana Solidarietà, Diritti a Sud, Kora, and others, addressing themes related to the investigations produced in these years, and in response to urgent contemporary issues.

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.

Works from the participant artists are collected and shown progressively in the exhibition, conceived as a work in progress, or better work in process. In the title, the intention to learn evokes our wish to create forms of inclusive, emancipated, free, just, solidaristic, eco-centric, and conscious knowledge. The reference also points to the inevitable tensions and contradictions encountered in collective processes of critique and deconstruction of prevailing models, as well as to the tension toward an otherwise, a common horizon of situated, transversal, interlocal practice, research, and productions (or non-productions), alongside communities of practice and struggle of the territory.

The exhibition is designed to be dynamic and enriched over time with different works and processes.

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.

Photo courtesy: Chto Delat, dalle serie Learning Flags  (Creative Time Summit, Venezia 2015). Courtesy KOW + gli artist