Avant-garde pedagogies and academic freedom: on the possibility of experimentation, inutility and research communities in modernist art schools (Svomas-Vkhutemas, 1918–1927)

Against the backdrop of universities’ shift toward performativity, this article examines current technocratic, outcome-oriented agendas with the modernist educational quest for experimentation, collaborative research, and the convergence of research and teaching as core components of academic freedom. Building on the philosophical foundations of this notion, first articulated by Kant, the article analyses how early-twentieth-century progressive art schools established themselves as spaces of creative autonomy. The discussion highlights the difference between the inventive practices developed in these schools and today’s utilitarian conceptions of creativity, which align with what Lyotard identified as the performative turn in HE – a shift still evident in a culture of efficiency and managerialism. To explore alternative ways of thinking and doing within academic institutions, the article reconstructs the historical experience of the Soviet system of art workshops (Svomas-Vkhutemas, 1918–1927), where, contrary to the contemporary rhetoric of efficiency, immediate application was postponed in favour of open-ended experimentation.