WaterSchool at Atelier Luma in Arles, France

WaterSchool at Atelier Luma in Arles, France
: Joana Luz

In May 2019, WaterSchool was presented at the “A School of Schools” exhibition at Atelier Luma. Atelier Luma is a think tank, a production workshop and a learning network of the Luma Foundation, based in Arles, France.

The WaterSchool installation showed how an open environment can actually work in practice. Six ‘members’ of the school – the concierge, the clock operator, a student, a teacher, a workshop owner and a parent – were followed on a day around the WaterSchool’s premises in short podcasts.

The tables in the exhibition showed how school subjects could be renamed and reframed to fit the curriculum of the WaterSchool, as well as how works by artists/designers could be included in these subjects. The subjects analyzed were: social studies (renamed liquid borders, science (renamed H2O), foreign languages (renamed international waters), national language (renamed national waters) and maths (renamed counting drops). Other tables explained the history of the WaterSchool project and gave insight into how water influences topics such as building, producing and cleaning.

The exhibition included work and projects of Atelier NL, Giuditta Vendrame, Biopolus, Rogier Arents, Nicholas Hanna, Luigi Serafini, Thomas Trum, Jonas Ersland, Helmut Smits, Daan Wubben, Klarenbeek & Dros, Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters, Aliki van der Kruijs, Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven, Marijke Annema, Caroline Jacob, Boris Lancelot and Philipp Kolmann.