AA.VV, Breathing Out of School–RAW Académie, 2021

RAW Académie was developed in Dakar to create a space of experimental teaching and collaboration, of deconstruction and exposure, of knowledge and nourishment. Koyo Kouoh, founder of RAW Material Company, wished for curatorial inquiry and critical writing to join artistic thinking at this site of international encounters. During these two-month long sessions that take place twice a year, young artists and curators—the Académie fellows—come from all over the world to be accompanied by faculty members with whom they exchange and experiment around particular discursive practices or thematic foci. The commitment to create a community that did not previously exist has led to an ever expanding RAW Académie family of Pan-African and global orientation. This thriving and stimulating meeting ground of pedagogy and art has cultivated the emergence of many provocations, reflections and new possibilities, some of which are shared in Breathing Out of School—a volume of diverse texts that slowly constructs an invitation to ruminate upon what it means to share the table of curiosity and creativity with others, as well as think about what feeds our own earnest dreams.