Migrating Art Academies : MigAA
- Published on Tuesday, 04 March 2014 12:46
Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) is a platform for innovation and exchange in arts teaching and research. It is a network of universities and associated partners across Europe (including Finland, France, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, UK, Russia and other countries). The model uses the concept of migration – of resources, people, competencies, disciplines – as a method of producing knowledge which aspires to expand traditional educational systems. Since 2008 MigAA has developed a distributed model for networking and communication based on creative laboratories, including workshops, conferences and public presentations. The MigAA network is forming a strong international expert and tutor board.
Literally the Migrating Art Academies is linked to Plato’s school of philosophy which was later called Aristotle’s Peripatetic School or simply the Academy. It is based on a process of thinking by walking. Replacement of the accustomed educational practice with experimental forms of work like doing-while-moving unleashes new forms of creativity and offers a different kind of study and research.
The basic idea behind the project is to challenge the traditional and habitual artistic routines of the students in order to inspire their continued creative development. The Migrating Art Academies project is an attempt to juxtapose the digital, non-haptic, anonymous, collective, and virtual on one hand with the unique, corporeal, and individual on the other. The project concentrates on social and interpersonal communication and encounters between differing cultural habits. “The breach between locations are the breaches between the individuals’, as the Maître à penser of this project, Vilém Flusser, once stated in his writings on migration and nomadism.
Since 2008 MigAA was led by different organizations and was supported by European Commission Culture Program, Culture Support Foundation of the Republic of Lithuania, the Nordic Culture Point, the Goethe Institute and other foundations and organisations.
Networking of MigAA:
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Pori Unit of Department of Art
Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Allenheads Contemporary Arts
Art Academy of Latvia
Association Temps Réel, Villefagnan
Bergen National Academy of the Arts
Contemporary Art Centre kim?, Riga
Estonian Academy of Arts, E-Media Center
European School of Visual Arts, Angoulême & Poitiers
Kaunas Technical University, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Liepaja University, Art Research Laboratory
Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association
Newcastle University, School of Arts & Cultures
Noarte Cultural Association, Paese Museum, San Sperate
Paidia Institute, Cologne
Ptarmigan project space, Tallinn
Rauma Art Museum
Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia
Top e.V. association supporting cultural practices, Berlin
Universität der Künste, Institut für Kunst im Kontext, Berlin
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Department of Photography and Media Art
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Nida Art Colony
Weissensee Academy of Art Berlin
Wonderland Films