YTB Gallery was asked to be a collective liaison for the Knowledge Garden Festival by Gudskul and AGYU, where we worked with the Toronto collectives and help facilitate meeting leading up to the festival. We were very excited to be a part of this exhibition and festival and to deepen our relationship with the Toronto Collectives, AGYU, and Gudskul
Gudskul Art Collective and Ecosystem Studies (or Gudskul for short, pronounced “good school” in English) is a collective of collectives based in Jakarta, Indonesia, comprised of Grafis Huru Hara, ruangrupa, and Serrum. Since 2018, Gudskul, has focused on working with art collectives to study and teach collaborative and sustainable practices through experimental dialogue and experience-based learning.
Knowledge Garden Festival puts on display Gudskul’s playful and collaborative way of working, their process of engaging with creative communities across Toronto, and invites audiences to join-in through art-making activities, workshops, and social gatherings. A concentration of events will take place daily from October 22 to 30, 2021.The physical display of the Knowledge Garden Festival and its events will cumulatively emphasize sharing and the exchange of knowledge, resources, and artworks — making visible the principles for generating and sustaining collective existence. The notion of sustaining collective existence builds on Gudskul’s use of lumbung, an Indonesian word and concept, that translates in English to “rice barn,” and is described by Gudskul as “a collective pot or accumulation system used in rural areas of Indonesia, where crops produced by a community are stored as a future shared common resource and distributed according to jointly determined criteria.” The practice of lumbung has guided Gudskul’s engagement with Toronto art collectives as they produced and disseminated a workbook, Collective as School, to unveil the values, economic, and material circumstances under which each collective operates. The workbook was then augmented by online monthly meetings known as Majelis (an Indonesian term denoting a form of assembly) that acted as a forum for collectives across Toronto and in Jakarta to exchange knowledge and consider shareable and sustainable resources in the development and presentation of the exhibition.
AGYU has commissioned the Knowledge Garden Festival led by Gudskul and supported by Younger Than Beyoncé, who collectively liaised and hosted the majelis. The art collectives and individuals who collaboratively produced this exhibition include Diasporic African Womyn Art collective (DAWA), Department of Public Memory, Jane Street Speaks, LAL and Unit 2, The Pavilion, Reuben ‘Beny’ Esguerra and New Tradition Music, and the plumb; artists and curators Golboo Amani, Barbara Balfour, Emelie Chhangur, Abidin Kusno, Lisa Myers, and Joel Ong; and various York University student groups and Organised Research Units such as the York Centre for Asian Research and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology (AMPD). Curatorial and artist collectives Teabase, Aisle 4, Gentrification Tax Action, and Sister Co-Resister participated in the workbook and preliminary meetings. Gudskul’s Knowledge Garden Festival is collectively curated by AGYU curatorial.
