Education or no education? Do we only see or hear what we know? Or are there aesthetic experiences that are possible without any prior knowledge? Where does the sensual perception of artworks meet its limits? How much artistic training is necessary to gain access to contemporary art?
Ruhrtriennale 2012–2014 under the artistic direction of Heiner Goebbels collects artists and groups of artists who create situations for intense aesthetic experiences. They turn performances into exhibition and the museum into a stage, to encourage spectators and visitors to encounter art without false respect and to experience it very directly.
The program No Education enables children and young people to experience art without any prior knowledge. Fears of contact are broken down and cultural participation is practices. No Education opens a terrain in which non-knowledge and non-understanding do not lead to an exclusionary experience, but an intuitive, “sensual understanding.” What the children and young people see and hear without having to understand: this is an important aspect for approaching art.
Does artistic experience begin where concepts and meanings end? Does not a powerful, lasting artistic experience first emerge in the encounter with the foreign, the unknown? Or does a comprehensive cultural literacy enable a different or a deeper understanding of art? Is the direct access to art actually better, or does this mystify the “innocent child” and his experience of art?
Part of Ruhrtriennale since 2008, ZEIT Forum has been a regular podium for experts from culture, politics, science, and the media. In cooperation with the weekly Die Zeit,various issues and questions raised by the festival program are discussed.
