The Spanish university is not going through its best moment. To the fact of being highly institutionalized, chronologically graded and hierarchically structured, they have added, in recent times, that “university capitalism” that commodifies the education and diminishes their autonomy, and the loss of prestige caused by the fact that several political leaders have received official certifications without having completed the mandatory studies.
To combat this situation, Isidro Lopez Aparicio has founded the Children’s Arts University (LAU), a new higher education institution that is the result of the commitment to training in the world of culture that has marked the career of this artist from Jaén, convinced that only the autonomy of the different decision-making university spaces will allow the development of democracy.
However, the fact that, in addition to being an artist, Isidro López Aparicio is a professor at the University of Granada, further complicates this project, which many could describe as contradictory. “Contradictory no, paradoxical yes. But the paradox is a very powerful didactic and reflective element that I use both in teaching and in creation because I believe in changing systems both from the outside and from the inside”, explains López Aparicio who, despite his criticism, did not hides his weakness for the institution where he teaches his classes: “I am in love with my University of Granada, where I have had important responsibilities both nationally and internationally. I have led processes of change, but I have also seen the involution of a system that does not respond to the dynamism that the teaching and scientific processes that the university community needs. That is why I have wanted to generate with my language, the artistic one, a work that reflects and shows that other actions are possible”.
Clarified the difference between contradiction and paradox, it is still curious that López Aparicio has decided replicate the same educational institution that is questioning, instead of articulating criticism through another model. “The simplest thing would have been to name this action with something far from what is questioned. But the decision not to resort to the typical politically correct euphemism and maintain the nomenclature was an act of consistency and courage,” explains López Aparicio. , what I propose is what the Universities always were, spaces that generate freedom that did not depend on endless bureaucracies, ministerial accreditations, nor were they subject to rankings generated by control structures.This is where the idea of generate a university free of profitable interventionism and whose prestige is based on recognition among equals. In addition, it was essential to use the same nomenclature to reformulate the performance and aesthetic codes of universities as elements that build culture”.
Despite the fact that López Aparicio’s criticism is executed from art, the conceptual, irony and humor, it is not to be ruled out that in those university environments so corseted and solemn your proposal has caused some discomfort.
“You would have to ask them, but the truth is that, if they see LAU as a threat, such a humble university, without headquarters, without stable resources, without payroll, without tuition fees, open and free… it would be a success for the LAU and something that would have to make the regulated universities think a lot about their actions”, reflects the artist, who goes further in his reasoning: “On the other hand, if they consider it a criticism, it would be fine, well, if they are true university students, they should know how to assimilate it, find the reasons that caused it and, based on them, find ways to improve. Finally, if there are people who see it as a joke, I must clarify that the LAU does not deny humor as one of its resources, on the contrary, it assumes it as fundamental, but this does not detract from its educational proposal: that people find the recognition from other professionals starting from a new university understanding as a symbolic element of reflection”.
Let us rejoice
Without a permanent seat, the LAU can be established anywhere. From López Aparicio’s own home, to prestigious art centers such as the Museo Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía in Madrid or the refugee camp on the Syrian/Jordanian border in Zaatari. “They were already created in times of fat cows many huge infrastructures that are now empty of content. This university, on the contrary, is based on the excellence of its content and its sustainable and nomadic nature, which adapts to the physical, digital or virtual spaces in which it takes place”, explains López Aparicio who, until April 24 , has established the headquarters of its university in the Lazaro Galdiano Museum Madrid as part of Germinar sin fin, an anthological exhibition that reviews his own work.
In addition to this peculiarity related to its facilities, the LAU lacks a formal structure, of a systematic training offer and does not teach annually either, since there is already an abundant supply of this type in public and private universities. However, it does not rule out implementing any of these policies to cover a need that a regulated university would not offer.
In accordance with this philosophy, the Liberis Artium Universitas has recently awarded its first scholarship to Gregorio Sánchez Pérez, a creator who, as Isidro López Aparicio explains, “has developed a unique artistic thought in brutally precarious conditions”. A help that other institutions would never have provided and that, in addition to providing economic support to Sánchez Pérez, “has fulfilled the function of giving him a reason to live to make his thoughts concrete, while his mother will be able, at some point, to feel the proud to see your son’s name on press pages like this one and linked to a university, which he was never able to attend”.
The case of Gregorio Sánchez Pérez is not unique in the Spanish art scene. Despite his prestige and relevance, creators like louis camnitzer O Isidoro Valcárcel Medina they lack university degrees or master’s degrees, which makes them unfit, for example, to defend a doctoral thesis despite being amply prepared to do so. To solve this anomaly in the system, the LAU has allowed these and other artists to defend themselves before a court made up of prominent personalities from the art world, including María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco Carrillo de Albornoz, Alfonso García de Figueróa, Capi Corrales Rodrigáñez, José María Díaz Cuyas or Yaiza Yaiza Hernández Velázquez, their thesis project.
In the case of Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, the theme chosen was The maxims of experience in law and philosophy from the perspective of art; in Luis Camnitzer’s Speculation and drift versus the dilemma presented by an original forgery; and, during its time at the Lázaro Galdeano Museum, the LAU has organized two more readings: TEIGHT, 28 years of strange, colorful and fun experimentation in the edition of La Más Bella magazine 1993-2022 of Diego Ortiz and Pepe Murciego held on March 24 and The use of chance in the creation of meaning: the case of Los Torreznos which will be defended on April 7 by Rafa Lamata and Jaime Ballaure, members of Los Torreznos.
Experimental edition
“From the moment that it is a personal project of the artist Isidro López-Aparicio, it is the LAU that invites whoever it considers to develop and present the Doctoral Theses. In our case, the invitation is made to a groupThe Most Beautiful and not an individual person, which is another atypical feature that differentiates LAU from the academic world official“, explain Diego Ortiz and Pepe Murciego who, after receiving the invitation from the LAU, decided that their thesis would consist of making an experimental art edition adapting to the event, the place, the time and the money.
“The hypothesis to be proposed in our thesis was whether The cutest was able to ensure that any act/event, such as defending a doctoral thesis, could become an editorial event and result in an art edition. The way to demonstrate it was to do it, to ensure that the defense of a doctoral thesis became an editorial academic event, and that we could create an art edition, an edition of La Más Bella Magazine”, explain Murciego and Ortiz.
The edition that emerged after reading the thesis has been BILL“not because more or less everyone associates theses with a billet of papers the fatter the better, but because it was based on a BILL real, since we used volumes of old encyclopedias that were in our houses. authentic relics in a way of handling scientific knowledge, nowadays totally surpassed by the digital world”, they explain from La Más Bella.
As happens with any self-respecting university, after appointing Valcácel Medina, Luis Camnitzer or La Más Bella as doctors, it would not be surprising if the LAU also considered appointing honorary doctors. “Although any university act is likely to be assimilated by the LAU, we had not considered this figure because all the actions that have been carried out up to now imply a condition of merit in which an action was carried out”, comments Isidro López Aparicio, which also points out: “However, an event has recently occurred that has made us rethink this situation. Tamara Díaz Bringas, who was going to participate in one of the LAU actions, recently passed away and we are evaluating some action in this regard, because this It is a university with feelings in which love is one of its fundamental axes”.