Dartington, a Eulogy – by Olchar E. Lindsann

An open letter on pedagogy, community, history, and the life and death of utopian institutions – written for distribution at the closure of Dartington College of Arts. 

Part of the utopian community founded in Totnes, England in 1926, Dartington College of Arts was for many decades a defining force in the development and sustenance of ethically and communally based creative activity, experimental pedagogy, contextual and site-specific work, devised and non-narrative theatre, performance poetry and digital writing, minimalist and concrete music, shamanic and durational performance, and many other experimental and socially-grounded practices in European advanced culture. It was central to the development and circulation of Neoism, Fluxus, Post-NeoAbsurdism, SPART, and other avant-garde networks. While this text is addressed to the extended Dartington community in the wake of the school’s recent closure, more broadly it critiques the mainstream educational system that Dartington contested and attempts to address the apparently inevitable death of any utopian project in the current educational climate, and to open discussion as to what strategies might be adopted among radical creative communities in response to the inherently temporary nature of all utopian projects.

20 pgs. on folded 8.5″x11″. June, A.Da. 94. (2010 Anti-Vulgar)
$2.00 + s/h