De kunstschool als ecosysteem

Enkele gedachten over de Hogeschool voor de Kunsten*

Johan Pas

The School of Arts is a pile of bricks, an institution, an ecosystem, a community, a biotope, an organization, an organism, an organ, a brain, and a pile of bricks.

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The School of Arts explores the imaginable by investing in the unpredictable.

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The School of Arts should be in the centre of the city but at the margins of society.

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The School of Arts should function more as a garden (hortus) than as a campus (a field).

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The School of Arts can be regarded as a bomb shelter as well as a power station.

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The School of Arts will never be profitable; therefore, it is essential.

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The School of Arts blends preservation with progress; its uniqueness lies in balancing these out.

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The School of Arts teaches the hard skills but nurtures the soft ones.

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The School of Arts surpasses the binarities of body and soul, mind and matter, style and content, practice and discourse.

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The School of Arts is rooted in exclusivity but strives for inclusiveness; to do the latter, it should be honest about the former.

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The School of Arts forms students and staff, guests and visitors, as they form it.

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The School of Arts does not produce artisans or artists but educates Arts workers.

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The School of Arts preaches collectivism but practises individualism; to do the first, it should be aware of the second.

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The School of Arts embodies hyper complexity; therefore, it should embrace unverifiability.

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The School of Arts offers the most complete education.

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The School of Arts is not academic; it is artistic.

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The School of Arts is a contradiction in terms.

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The School of Arts is a School of Life.

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• Based upon experience, including research, touching upon the descriptive as well as the normative, and offered to feed a conversation, hence the "…"

Johan Pas

is an art historian and dean of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, School of Arts of the AP University for Applied Sciences and Arts. In 2023, The academy commemorates its 360th anniversary.

johan.pas@ap.be