Publications

Creativity Exercises: Emancipatory Pedagogies in Art and Beyond

Editor: Dóra Hegyi, Zsuzsa László, Franciska Zólyom
Publisher: Sternberg Press, Berlin
Copublishers: GfZK—Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig; tranzit.hu, Budapest
Content: 378 pages
ISBN: 978-3-95679-552-7 (Sternberg Press)
ISBN: 978-615-80566-5-67 (tranzit.hu)
Year: 2020

Texts by LÁSZLÓ BEKE, ILDIKÓ ENYEDI, MIKLÓS ERDÉLY, ÉVA FORGÁCS, JANNA GRAHAM, DÓRA HEGYI, SÁNDOR HORNYIK, ZSOLT K. HORVÁTH, EMESE KÜRTI, ZSUZSA LÁSZLÓ, DÓRA MAURER, MARION VON OSTEN, FERENC MÉREI and TAMÁS ST.AUBY, AXEL WIEDER.

How do people learn, what do they know, and how does it influence their personality, their behavior and their position in society? These questions were the focus of the research project and exhibition series entitled “Creativity Exercises” between 2014 and 2016, which displayed historical and contemporary art projects experimenting with alternative forms of learning, spanning three exhibition stations: Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, tranzit.hu in Budapest, and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

The book contextualizes the Creativity Exercises—an amateur art course led by neo-avant-garde artists Miklós Erdély and Dóra Maurer in Budapest from 1975 to 1977—within the postwar intellectual networks that connected artists, architects, educators, sociologists and other socially engaged professionals, fostering the exchange of ideas and concepts and making connections between different fields of knowledge. The first part of the publication consists of historical texts translated into English for the first time, including the exercise descriptions that functioned as the curriculum for the Creativity Exercises, studies written on the methods employed in the Creativity Exercises course, and parallel models for progressive pedagogies and art education. In the second part of the book, newly commissioned essays offer historical and transnational context for the “case study” of the Creativity Exercises course. The impact that such “creativity exercises” had on aesthetic, educational and institutional concepts, and the impulses for participation, co-creation, knowledge production and exchange that they continue to give—even beyond the realm of art—are the central themes of the book.

This publication is available at ERSTE Foundation Library.

Florian Bauer

Director Social Finance, Sustainability and Innovation
Since 2023, Florian Bauer has been responsible for social finance, sustainability and social innovation at ERSTE Foundation. Prior to this role, Florian worked in the NGO & Social Entrepreneurship sector for more than 13 years. He led the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international multilateral NGO that works to accelerate market-based deployment of renewable energy and energy efficient systems in developing countries, and was Managing Director & COO of the Impact Hub Vienna. From 2020-2023, Florian established strategic alliances with key partners and helped to create innovative semantic technology solutions at Semantic Web Company (SWC), a leading IT company in semantic AI solutions.