KOOZ So really, what is a school — told through the experiences over the duration of your exhibition at a83 in New York? Who are the learners and the teachers?

secret poster club A school is a place for collective learning. In this sense, the exhibition is an experiment in softening the dynamic between teacher and learner. A crucial part of the exhibition space is allowing those with certain kinds of knowledge to feel comfortable to both step up to share, as well as sit down and listen without the sense of losing authority. Anonymity plays a key role here because while the authority of truth is embedded in the work, no one can claim full ownership over its authorship. Spatial arrangements play a role in this; the teacher isn’t always a person. Sometimes it’s the wall of posters or a series of images, confronted when someone walks in the room; at other times, it’s the table and chairs that allow people to gather and converse or read.

KOOZ What are some of the things that don’t happen in your experience of school, which pushed you to create this alternative space?

spc There’s no single answer to this question, and a lot of the conditions changed since the start of the project — including increased policing. But it makes sense to consider the GSAPP Solidarity Letter, a petition written by GSAPP students with specific demands from our administration to acknowledge the student encampment on campus, the genocide in Palestine, by restructuring the reminder of our semester to be centered around the current events. As GSAPP prides itself on its “radical pedagogy,” the lack of response from administration was incredibly revealing. The letter — which was drafted prior to an NYPD raid on 30 April, but notably after several other Columbia schools had made public declarations condemning the mobilisation of NYPD on campus and the University’s complicity with genocide in Gaza — called on GSAPP administration to do the same. In fact, the Solidarity Letter references several earlier petitions and statements of solidarity with Palestinian liberation, signed by members of our faculty and administration just three years prior. That the Letter was met with absolute silence signalled to us that we need to take responsibility for creating our own spaces.

We should be clear: conversations about decolonisation and antiracism do occur at GSAPP. We’re grateful for them and for the teachers who keep this pedagogy alive, particularly in addressing the interconnected nature of these struggles. An example of this is that our courses prompt us to think about human displacement and policing in Harlem — but too often, the conversation stops there. We’ve seen how the tactics and materials used in Harlem are mirrored in Gaza and in Puerto Rico. We’re not talking about Rossi-like architectural analogy; we’re talking about a literal equivalence of companies, investors, and materials.

We take the school’s antiracist, decolonial pedagogy very seriously. The problem is this: when these issues came to the forefront as Columbia’s investments in genocide were revealed, and when other Columbia schools rose up in their own ways, our education seemed to be rendered entirely theoretical. We could only speak of colonialism and genocide in terms of isolated, past events. On one hand, we expected the GSAPP administration to provide guidance on applying their pedagogy to present events. On the other hand, we were surprised that our peers — many of whom had given presentations on colonialism or student resistance — couldn’t find their voices when it came to the ongoing genocide.

KOOZ Your exhibition what is a school? worked through an aggregative and participatory mechanism. Can you explain your open call for materials, and what they taught you?

spcThe exhibition, much like secret poster club, is an evolving project. We invited visitors to directly respond to or engage with the exhibition by submitting printed matter throughout its duration. None of us know everything about every struggle for liberation, but we can understand a bit of their interconnectedness; inviting submissions was a way to work through their connections. There’s an area with poetry by Mahmoud Darwish in conversation with the works of June Jordan — another intersection that shows the relationship between Palestinian and Black liberation.

A remarkable aspect of the open call is that it did not result in any co-opting or conflict; instead, it almost autonomously self-curated into a series of works that respond to one another. We had hoped to engender this tone from the beginning — secret poster club has always been composed of many people. The space of the exhibition afforded what began as stairwell encounters a space to grow, nurturing longer and recurring conversations. Handmade magnets, comprising words from selected texts, outlived the duration of the workshop Critical Pessoptimism to become an ever-evolving wall of poetry. The sense of how people share grief and respect the tone of the exhibition has been palpable in reading these bits of text and images, which change in their configuration with each day.

KOOZ What about being outside of the circumscribed space of the academy: what happens when you hold a ‘school’ space in the city? Are there new freedoms, compromises, policing?

spc Maybe it’s the nature of architecture licensing or the sunk cost fallacy about tuition that allow some of us to forget that school is a choice. That isn’t much of a problem at what is a school? — visitors enter with a degree of intentionality and willingness. Coming in from the street usually involves a momentary decision, and leaving is just as easy; we aren’t so implicated in the commitment to linger or return. This self-motivation of visitors is important, because it sets the tone for the atmosphere of the space for everyone.

The goals of this ‘school’ are also distinct from those of the academy; our political aims are stated at the door. The space of the exhibition assumes its place in the city in service of liberatory community solidarity and tactics. As of September 2024, there’s certainly less surveillance at our exhibition site in downtown SoHo than on campus — even if the types of things for which people are disciplined have only recently and nominally been deemed to be “against the rules.” There’s nothing illegal about looking at posters in either location, but the atmosphere engendered by their consistent removal imbues even a conversation about Palestine with a subversive feeling. Outside of the space of concern for their position in the university, many people found they could speak with a greater degree of honesty.

KOOZ What did you learn about your expectations and the potentials of pedagogy both inside and outside of school? Is there such a thing as a safe space?

spc On “safe spaces”: There’s no fixed notion of a safe space; no permanently, all-permissive place where everyone feels safe. A safe space is an event, or an action, that is, an active process of continual, reaffirmation of a conditional hospitality. For us, those conditions were inscribed in our community agreement:

the focus of this exhibition is on the conversations and learning that happen here in these two weeks. viewers are thus asked to assist in maintaining this space as a safe, welcoming environment. when in doubt, active listening is encouraged. please understand that this environment does not exist in a vacuum, and that, for many visitors, this is a precious relief from an otherwise ubiquitous rejection of their human concerns. discrimination, harassment, vandalism, or any violation of participants’ privacy will be met with immediate removal from the space. further questions can be directed to secretposterclub.org or to designated attendants in the gallery.

At least for small-scale spaces, a pact like this is important to set out and agree upon. If there is a lesson from the agreement, it’s that we could have been more explicit about the nature of privacy, but that is a topic beyond the scope of a single exhibition.

KOOZ For those of you returning to the academy as students or teachers, what do you take back with you?

spc what is a school? was well received and highlighted a solidarity across our student / faculty body as well as designers / professions in the field, and we think the space we created was meaningful and necessary, which in many ways is inspiring, and something that can be taken with us. We take away a renewed sense of trust in our community (both those that helped organise the exhibition and the community members who came out and expressed gratitude for the space) and a better understanding of the importance of community agreements. We still have a lot of work to do, but we have more energy knowing who needed this exhibition.

Bio

secret poster club (spc) is an anonymous and unsanctioned group formed of people across disciplines at Columbia GSAPP. spc produces posters daily and uses design as a tool to convey and reveal information about current events related to colonialism, war, and systems of oppression. spc is committing to learning from, and participating in the long history and struggle for global liberation.