Sabine Bitter / Helmut Weber: Encounter Educational Modernism
Book Presentation & Discussion
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 | 7:00 PM 鈥� 9:00 PM
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre
SFU School for the Contemporary Arts
149 W. Hastings St., Vancouver
With Sabine Bitter and Jeff Derksen and respondents Roxanne Panchasi and Althea Thauberger.
At a time when universities are flashpoints of social justice and the repression of protest, where students鈥� and faculty calls for change and answerability are met with unblinking neoliberal logic, Encountering Educational Modernism poses contemporary questions regarding the relationship of architecture, knowledge and the idea of the student through a broad case study of architect Arthur Erickson鈥檚 1972 University of Lethbridge campus. Through the concept of the encounter, Jeff Derksen鈥檚 text identifies three crucial spatial and educational encounters: encounters for and by students; encounters between forms of knowledge; and the encounter of architecture with site. Together, these encounters form a spatial legacy and produce a counter-temporality to the value theory of education in neoliberal management.
The third book in Bitter and Weber鈥檚 artist book series on educational modernism, Encounter Educational Modernism is illustrated with archival architectural drawings, curricular material, and contemporary photographs. The book is a critical document on the relationship of education and architecture and the past and future potential of universities. Bitter and Weber鈥檚 artistic project, the video performance 鈥淧ublic Seminar鈥�, staged on campus in collaboration with current U of L students, brings the 1960s potential of the building in dialogue with the experience of a university education today.
Biographies
Vancouver and Vienna-based artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber collaborate on projects addressing the politics of how cities, architecture and urban territories are made into images. Mainly working in the media of photography and spatial installations, their research-oriented practice engages with specific moments and logics of the global-urban change as they take shape in neighborhoods, architecture, and everyday life. Their ongoing research includes projects such as 鈥淓ducational Modernism,鈥� 鈥淧erforming Spaces of Radical Pedagogies鈥�, and 鈥淪hifting Perspectives: Maps, Spaces, Places and the Urban鈥�. Sabine Bitter is professor of Visual Art at 尤物视频, Vancouver.
Jeff Derksen鈥檚 research and creative work resides in the intersection of poetry and urbanism. His poetry books include Future Works, The Vestiges, and Transnational Muscle Cars. His critical books include After Euphoria and How High is the City, How Deep is Our Love. With the collective Urban Subjects, he has co-edited The Militant Image Reader and Autogestion: Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade. A former research fellow at the Centre for Place, Culture and Politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, Derksen works at 尤物视频 and lives in Vancouver and Vienna.
Roxanne Panchasi is Associate Professor of History at 尤物视频. Her current research focuses on the history and legacies of France's nuclear imperialism in Algeria.
Althea Thauberger is an artist, filmmaker, and Associate Professor in UBC's Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory. Her teaching and research interests include photographic history and theory; documentary practices in photography, video, and performance; collaborative/collective community research; biopolitics and institutional critique/reform; and site- or place-based art and activism.