Alternative Education Programme: The Secretary, the Shaman, the Scholar, the Lobbyist, the Publicist, and the Virtuoso

Rupert is excited to announce the open call for the 13th edition of the Alternative Education Programme, which will take place between 16 June and 28 November 2025.

The deadline for applications is 31 March, 23:59 (EEST).

Being an artist today means developing new sensitivities, systems of care, working conditions, and forms of kinship. We steer our ship through rough waters—navigating institutional and market pressures, financial uncertainty, and a polarized political landscape. Today’s artists are expected to be not just creators, but also administrators, producers, financiers, and strategists of their practice, constantly shifting between different modes of labor. Yet, do we have the tools to embrace the many roles we must play in order to sustain our work, with confidence?

José Esteban Muñoz, a foundational thinker in queer theory and performance studies, describes disidentification as a strategy of resistance—one that allows marginalized communities to navigate dominant social and ideological structures without fully assimilating or outright rejecting them. Instead, they negotiate, subvert, appropriate, and reinterpret1. Perhaps artists, too, employ disidentification as a way of working—moving within and against the systems that shape their practice, adapting and repurposing the tools at hand. But how does this actually work? 

Let us begin with looking at the overlooked spaces of artistic labor—the kitchen, the toolbox, the Excel sheet, the backyard, the storage room, the delete-folder—the backstage mechanics of artistic survival. Yet these less visible aspects of practice are rarely acknowledged, let alone compensated. The Secretary, the Shaman, the Scholar, the Lobbyist, the Publicist, and the Virtuoso seeks to highlight artistic practice as a complex whole, one that requires a range of skills, and to help less experienced artists find their way through it. This year’s AEP invites a constellation of fantastic accomplished tutors whose research fundamentally rethinks the self-organisation structures of artistic life and practice, the artist’s relationship to institutions, and artistic practice as a form of labour. 

Andrea Fraser is one of the visionaries to offer a bird’s-eye view at the artistic self within a larger ecosystem, in order to detect whether, with our choices, we resist or reproduce the status quo. She deconstructs the contemporary art field, proposing that it has fragmented into relatively segregated subfields (art market, exhibition, academic, community-based, and cultural activism)—each operating under different economies, discourses, and systems of value2. Instead of a singular art world, we are agents of a complex ecosystem where struggles over power, legitimacy, and value define an artist’s position and practice.

A close-up view of a practice reveals that the kitchen, the backstage, or the spreadsheets may each be art forms unto themselves. But how do we embed administration into the practice or, how do we, as Kate Rich suggests, radicalise it to the degree of practice, finding magic within it3? How do we resist the authority of museums, galleries, and the media whose focus almost exclusively lies on the final product? And what determines whether we remain stuck in the carousel of never-ending “boring” tasks—is it a question of class4? What conditions would allow us to work as artists differently? Perhaps, as Vijai Maia Patchineelam insists, it requires an entirely new job position, one that does not yet exist5? 

We need to learn from one another, to displace and exchange contexts in order to reimagine our own practices anew. This year, the Alternative Education Programme is focused around nine condensed weeks of workshops, presentations and events in Vilnius, spread across six months. Additionally, the group will embark on a research trip to Brussels, to collaborate and exchange with artists’ collectives active in Belgium, including Level 5, Établissement d’en face, KASK Curatorial Studies, A.pass, and others. The programme will culminate with the final event and Rupert Journal publication in late November. We are looking forward to dedicated interdisciplinary applicants with a certain degree of experience in their practice, yet those who feel a need to question and re-invent what they know and do, and to experience collective experimental forms of learning. There are no formal requirements for the applicants’ education or experience.

Finally, artists need time off too—to detach themselves from the struggles of the art world and reshape their immediate contexts into something entirely different, perhaps into looser structures. Shall we cook some potatoes over an open fire? Or build a ship together, as an alternative floating space, a place for escaping the system while continuing to practice coexistence6? 

Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme (AEP) is a transdisciplinary para-academic programme centred around the principles of collectivity, performativity, and criticality, embracing non-linear, decentralised knowledge. Each year, Rupert’s team selects a diverse, international group of artists and other cultural practitioners from an open call to join the six-month programme. Through workshops, lectures, research trips, peer criticism, other collective engagements, and individual mentoring sessions, participants develop and share their projects, in close relationship with Rupert’s curatorial team and guest tutors. The curriculum is part-time and compatible with other commitments. During their stay in Vilnius, participants are introduced to the local art scene, invited to take part in Rupert’s other activities and engage with the residents of the institution.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 31 March, 2025

REQUIREMENTS: 

– Motivation letter positioning your current practice and defining your research interests. 
– CV & Portfolio.

Application Form

If you have any questions about the application process, do not hesitate to contact us at info@rupert.lt

PARTICIPATION: 

AEP Programme 2025: 16 June – 28 November

The participants are expected to be present on site at the collective gatherings, workshops, excursions, public events and presentations that are part of the programme in Vilnius: 2 weeks in June, 3 weeks in July-August, 1 week in October and 3 weeks in November. 2 weeks in September-October will be dedicated to the research trip and public presentation in Brussels. In between, the participants are expected to do individual research and develop their projects for the final AEP event (November) and for the publication in the AEP Journal. Throughout the whole programme they will be guided and supervised by the tutors, the curator and the Rupert staff. The language of the programme is English. The educational programme is free of charge, however, participants are responsible for their subsistence and other individual costs.

TUTORS & GUIDES 2025:

Andrea Fraser (USA), Futurefarmers (USA/BE), Jonas Palekas (LT), Kris Dittel (NL), Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė (LT), Kate Rich (AU/UK/IT), Vijai Maia Patchineelam (BR/DE), Level 5 (BE), KASK curatorial studies (BE), A.pass (BE), Paveldo Institutas (LT), Robertas Narkus (LT), Soft Power (DE), Adrijana Gvozdenović (ME/DE).

The programme is curated by Goda Palekaitė.

Design by Marijn Degenaar.

Rupert’s programmes are supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City Municipality, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Tech Zity and Creative Europe. 

  1. Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ↩︎
  2. Fraser, Andrea. “The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram.” e-flux Notes, no. 10/24, 2024. ↩︎
  3. Kate Rich, one of this year’s tutors, is a trade artist and feral economist. In 2003 she founded Feral
    Trade, a grocery import-export business and long-range economic experiment, using the spare carrying capacity of existing movements to transport coffee, olive oil and other vital goods. And in 2020 Kate established the Feral MBA, a radically reimagined training course in business for artists and others. ↩︎
  4. The research project and exhibition “Between Us: Work in Art” (presented at the Museum Of Contemporary Art of Montenegro, 2025) by one of this year’s tutors, Adrijana Gvozdenović, in collaboration with Nela Gligorović, explores the potential of the art spaces as fluid sites for gathering. They question predefined roles within institutional frameworks and address the precarious conditions of cultural workers, drawing parallels between artistic labor and broader working-class struggles. ↩︎
  5. Vijai Maia Patchineelam’s, one of this year’s tutor’s, artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institution. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, he argues for a more permanent role for artists. As a final outcome of his doctoral thesis at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Antwerp, Vijai has published the book “The Artist Job Description: for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution.” Track Report, OAZA BOOKS, and a.pass, 2022. ↩︎
  6. Exploring the potential of building a ship together is envisioned as one of the workshops led by the Futurefarmers collective. Futurefarmers is an international working group founded 1995 and based between San Francisco and Gent, Belgium. They are artists, architects, computer programmers, farmers, writers and anthropologists who form collaborative constellations based on the context in which they work. Based in enmeshed acts of wandering and material processes, Futurefarmers cultivate public life in place. ↩︎