WHW Akademija 2024 starts in April 2024 and runs through November 2024. It combines in person and remote learning, launching with online sessions in April before convening an in-person summer school in Zagreb in May. The program then continues online until the end of October 2024, when the participants will once more reconvene in Zagreb.
As we transition from the pandemic era to an even more severe crisis related to the ongoing wars, rising austerity measures, international recession, and intensifying ecological disaster, WHW Akademija 2024 is structured to combine online and physical encounters and to venture new participatory modes of artistic production and ways of being with each other.
Through seminars and workshops, the program rethinks and redevelops notions of care and eco-social values, with particular attention to strategies of repair, artistic ecologies, and collective learning. Together, participants will explore methodologies developed by artists, cultural workers, thinkers, and activists to develop more inclusive, feminist, decolonial and ecologically sustainable models for engagement with one’s surroundings.
The 2024 program includes twelve participants: Željka Aleksić, Damir Avdagić, Sanda Črnelč, Haonan He, Vismayee Karande, Gaia De Megni, Nominis, Aslı Özdoyuran, Andrés Matías Pinilla, Emily Roderick, Áron Rossman-Kiss and Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty.
The professorial team for 2024 is: Andris Brinkmanis, Gabi Ngcobo, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina/ Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care, Kate Sutton, Françoise Vergès and WHW. Alongside this core team, Evenings with WHW Akademija brings together artists, curators, thinkers, and alumni of WHW Akademija, in a series of public conversations, workshops, and lectures.
WHW Akademija is realized in partnership with the Kontakt Art Collection. The collection focuses on experimental and neo-avant-garde art activities in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe from the late 1950s onward. The manifold artistic positions included in the Kontakt Art Collection will serve as a point of departure and stimulus for the interdisciplinary approach of WHW Akademija, which bridges divisions between theory and practice.
The 2024 program will be realized in conjunction with the collaborative project Care ecologies, organized between WHW, G&A Mamidakis Foundation, State of Concept Athens and Idensitat.
After launching online in April, the participants of WHW Akademija will later physically gather twice in Zagreb: for the summer school in May 2024, and again in October for the conclusion of the program.
Through a series of bodily and somatic collaborative exercises, seminars, presentations, discussions, workshops, and collective actions led by Andris Brinkmanis, the WHW Akademija summer school will initiate an intense exchange between the participants, the professorial team, and the local setting. The summer school takes place May 13–20, 2024, in Zagreb. Guests of the summer school program include Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Elena Sorokina/ Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care.
This program will also include public presentations and seminars led by Gabi Ngcobo and Françoise Vergès, while Kate Sutton will provide mentoring support throughout the entire WHW Akademija 2024.
As in previous years, a series of public talks and workshops, entitled Evenings with WHW Akademija, will share topics and experiences with a broader audience.
Since 2018, WHW Akademija has enacted and established innovative form of education and collaboration in different formats: workshops, intensives, exhibitions, summer schools, actions in public spaces, lectures, conversations, practical workshops, podcasts, and performances.