[Launch] Living to Learn: Art & Education for the Common Good

What are the stakes of learning and research if we compare the contexts of Belgium, Lebanon, Palestine, the US, and elsewhere? How do we navigate our freedom to ask pointed questions or learn how to respond to rapidly changing political economies? How does education function as a mechanism for political possibility in militant cinema? How can alternative organizations and traditional institutions learn from one another? Finally, how can we think about the sustainability of all of these practices?

These questions are addressed by a new book, Living to Learn: Art & Education for the Common Good (ICA at VCU and Inventory Press, 2026) which presents the work of artists, curators, collectives, and scholars in the Americas and the Middle East who address contemporary art as a site of learning in the 21st century. Building on earlier histories of education as a civic service for the common good, it focuses on the last 25 years, as well as the question of the future of art education—as a practice that unfolds both in and beyond school.

Please join Noah Simblist, the editor of Living to Learn, along with Haig Aivazian, Robert Ochshorn, and Reem Shilleh in conversation to address the ways in which this book might be used to address local and global urgencies.

Find the book here on our website: https://rile.space/books/living-to-learn-art-education-for-the-common-good

Schedule

18:30 Doors
19:00 Start presentations

Location: rile*books, Rue des commerçants 62, 1000 Brussels

About

Noah Simblist is a curator, writer and educator. He works on the ways in which contemporary artists address history, sovereignty, and the tensions between political forces and self determination. He edited the book Tania Bruguera: The Francis Effect (Deep Vellum, 2022) as well as Commonwealth (Publication Studio, 2022) and Artist in Residence (Publication Studio, 2021). Simblist has contributed to Art in America, Art Agenda, Art Journal, Terremoto and other publications.

Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across a range of media and modes of address, he delves into the ways in which power embeds, affects and moves people, objects, animals, landscape and architecture.

Robert M Ochshorn is an artist, engineer, and cultural theorist based in Brussels and New York City. He is co-founder and CEO of Reduct. Video and a researcher at KASK School of the Arts. Working collectively, collaboratively, and in correspondence, he makes software and interface that offer new tactility and perspective to media and archives.

Reem Shilleh is researcher, curator, editor, and on occasion writer. She lives and works in Brussels and Ramallah. Reem Shilleh’s practice is informed by a long research project on militant and revolutionary image practices in Palestine, its diaspora, and solidarity network. She is also Co-Founder of Subversive Film, a curatorial and research collective formed in 2011 that casts new light upon historic works related to Palestine and the region; engenders support for film preservation; and investigates archival practices, its effects and reverberations on imaginations.