Principle of Equality

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is proud to announce the appointment of Adam Szymczyk as Lecturer and initiator of the project Principle of Equality— Open Studio . Situated within the Institute of Fine Arts at the Academy, the two-semester program comprises of different forms and formats of student participation, including an inaugural public event, a program of lectures, follow-up sessions, a study trip, and an exhibition as the final outcome of the group’s activities to be presented in Fall 2019.

Principle of Equality— Open Studio

“Principle of Equality” is a term that Polish polymath curator, writer, and philosopher-activist Anka Ptaszkowska (b. 1935) used as a guiding concept for her seminar at École supérieure d’Arts et Médias in Caen, France, where she taught in the 1980s and 1990s. The program “Principle of Equality” at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2019 will continue along the political lines drafted by Ptaszkowska in her text and embodied by her multifarious practice.

Intuitively, equality is the twin sister of freedom. To proclaim the “Principle of Equality” within an esteemed educational institution sets the tone for this program, which is different to predetermining an outcome. Rather it opens up a space for uninhibited practice, individual or collective, and dependent on the participant. Attention is given to listening and being listened to, those two states that form reciprocity, as seen in the dual figures of speaker/receiver (as per artist Moyra Davey), writer/reader, artist/viewer. At some point in the process, these distinctions and their attendant hierarchies must give way to new relationships between equals.

Adam Szymczyk was Artistic Director of documenta 14, in Athens and Kassel, in 2017. In 1997, he co-founded the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw. He was Director at Kunsthalle Basel from 2004 to 2014. In 2008, he co-curated with Elena Filipovic the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, When Things Cast No Shadow . He is a member of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and member of the Advisory Committee of Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation in Vienna. In 2011, he received the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Collection in Houston.

Anka Ptaszkowska (b. 1935) is an art historian and art critic based in Paris. She worked with gallery Krzywe Kolo, Warsaw 1966–1970. She was editor for the Polish art magazines Struktury and Wiadomosci Plastyczne and founder and co-director of Foksal Gallery, Warsaw. She was director of Galerie 1 à 36 1973–1973 and Vitrine pour l’art actuel 1977–1980 in Paris. She has organized numerous exhibitions and international exchanges, such as Échange entre artistes, Pologne – USA, Experience Muséographique, Henryk Stazewski. She was professor of art history and culture at the École des Beaux-Arts de Caen from 1984 to 2003. She is the author of numerous publications on modern art, notably a monograph on Henryk Stazewski and a series of articles on Tadeusz Kantor; articles and publications on French and international modern art; essays on Polish and Russian contemporary art for Art Press; and is co-author of Kantor à la Galerie Foksal, Galeria Foksal, Warsaw. Translations include Guy Debord’s La Société du spectacle, Slowo/Obraz Terytoria Gdansk. Currently she is organizing “Soirées privées” in the former studio of Eustachy Kossakowski in Paris.