What is to be done (Education)?
The question of developing adequate forms of education and communication is one of the most fiercely debated issues in present-day society, not just in the art world. Accepted practices and established institutions are coming under increased pressure and currently find themselves in the midst of a crisis of definition. Newly founded institutions, however, often follow the example of these traditional models. In a parallel development, a wide range of new forms of organisation and selforganisation, new kinds of artistic and communications work have emerge - above all on a local level. Which of these local initiatives and action spaces are capable of securing the future of advanced, open and autonomous working practices and providing answers to the question of education they themselves represent?

Roger M. Buergel, December 2005: “The final question concerns education: What is to be done? Artists educate themselves by working through form and subject matter; audiences educate themselves by experiencing things aesthetically. How to mediate the particular content or shape of those things without sacrificing their particularity is one of the great challenges of an exhibition like documenta. But there is more to it than that. The global complex of cultural translation that seems to be somehow embedded in art and its mediation sets the stage for a potentially all-inclusive public debate (Bildung, the German term for education, also means ‘generation’ or ‘constitution,’ as when one speaks of generating or constituting a public sphere). Today, education seems to offer one viable alternative to the devil (didacticism, academia) and the deep blue sea (commodity fetishism).”

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