Student participants: 

Ciprian Burete, Gayatri Kodikal, Hannah O’Flynn, Hasan Özgür Top, Jose Iglesias Ga-Arenal, Leeron Tur-Kaspa, Olivia Abächerli, Sofia Montenegro, Teresa Distelberger. 

Tutor team:

Artist: Tina Gverovic

Curator: Ruth Noack

Scholar: Maria Berrios

Peekaboo - Looking askance at issues of childhood connected to nation 

The Coop study group will follow a trajectory opened up by recent interdisciplinary interest in how the construction of childhood and the construction of the nation interact. The research field is vast, from questions on how people are socialised into national identity to the way both terms each other, from an emphasis on children's lived experience to ways children mobilise representations of the nation in order to exclude or include others - the list of sub-themes could go on. We will, however, focus on issues of space (and territory, time, rural landscape) within this field. For the purposes of this research, space is understood as an ambivalent practice, imbued with both, forms of governance and forms of freedom. (It remains to be seen whether these terms are indeed dichotomous...)

Throughout the year, the group's research will be guided by collective readings, looking at and discussing works of art and film, individually prepared input to the group, student-lead classes, face-to-face meetings and collective exhibition exercises. As always, emphasis is put on shared responsibility for the learning and research process. This Coop will engage with childhood not as other, but as an interrelational category.

The proposed research outcome is an exhibition in Sardinia and in local partnership with Nivola Museum in Orani (Sardinia), though a final decision on this will be made by the whole Coop study group about midway through the research.

Guest tutor: Isabelle Sully