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Anti-Academy

Anti Academy is an exhibition and publication that analyses artists’ workshops in anti-mainstream art programmes at Tokyo (Bigakko), Copenhagen (Ex-Skolen) and Iowa (Intermedia) between 1968 and 1970. The exhibition took place place at Aros Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, as part of the Systemics programme, June - August 2013, and then at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, from November 2013 until January 2014. The publication and exhibition situate these three educational programmes, each employing the most ‘radical’ artists of the time in formations concurrently idiosyncratic and programmatic, in relation to socio-political climates of 1968. Aros Aarhus will publish an overall Systemics catalogue situating Anti Academy within their broader two year programme.

The Anti Academy publication includes interviews with key figures and contextual essays by writers in USA, Japan and Denmark. The Japanese aspects of the work were made possible by the award of a Japan Foundation grant (2010) and a Great Britain Foundation Sasakawa Grant (2010). Artists focused on include Akasegawa Genpei, Nakanishi and Matsuzawa, Kikuhata from Bigakko; Hans Breder, Allan Kaprow, Vito Acconci, Elaine Summers and Mary Beth Edelson from Intermedia; and Troels Andersen (the English first translator of Kazimir Malevich), Poul Gernes, Per Kirkeby, Henning Christiansen and Bjorn Norgaard from Ex-Skolen.