How might an experimental program evolve without replicating what it was designed to circumvent? The stultifying frameworks, the same old codes of what you need to learn or unlearn, and the set way of doing things in a chronological way. Rather, I see the history of art as a dispersed, volatile structure that can start or happen anywhere. This difference can resemble a straw-man argument: the purportedly open and interdisciplinary art study program versus methodologically repressive academe.
Moreover, how can an interdisciplinary arts program with an ever-changing structure strike a balance between a responsive flexibility and a debilitating volatility? Any consideration of the pedagogical and institutional makeup of HWP cannot be separated from the specific position it occupies in the Lebanese educational landscape.
Established in Beirut in by Ashkal Alwan, The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts , itself founded in , HWP offers a unique environmentโindeed, the only such opportunity in the countryโfor sustained engagement with contemporary art theory and artistic production in a non- or para-academic setting. The application process is competitive: the program is tuition-free and provides the ten to fifteen selected international fellows with a modest monthly stipend and shared studio space during their ten months of participation.
Painters and sculptors who graduated from fine arts programs with little to no experience with critical theory, contemporary art theory, or philosophy were given the opportunity to participate alongside artists better versed in these fields. Though this created discomfort for fellows and professors alike because of the sense of a hierarchical distribution of knowledge, the situation both allowed for fruitful collaborations between practitioners with very different skill sets and broadened the educational and professional opportunities for both groups.
However, naturally, challenges arose, especially when practitioners with backgrounds in writing- and research-based practice were advised to produce more visual or performative work. Given that each edition of HWP differs from the last, perhaps the most productive analytic and methodological approach for addressing its structural and conceptual makeup is to examine how individual seminars and workshops from distinct editions shed light on questions of education, production, and professionalization.
