Island School of Social Autonomy on Vis, Year Second
Article by Mira Oklobdžija
Classical schools are spaces with heavy, often locked, doors. When the school day ends, crowds of pupils eagerly rush towards the exit in the belief that the real life happens ‘somewhere out’. Their tired teachers follow, also believing that life is elsewhere. Only alternative schools can bring together people who are truly sad when the day’s work is complete.
Still today, the philosophical concept of praxis remainsan important worldview and political orientation rooted in the most positive elements that Marxism could offer. In the 1960s, the Korčula summer school was a meeting point of the people who wanted to keep this concept alive. In the 1980s gatherings in Komiža followed, but with a significant detour in the direction of the concrete actions shaped in a specific time and space – the final years of Yugoslavia. Today, Island School of Social Autonomy (ISSA) goes a step further, pursuing other goals, without forgetting the legacies from the past, that have also grown on these two Adriatic islands.
An island is a tract of land surrounded by water, but not large enough to be called a continent. The boundaries of this geographical definition are short and clear. Metaphors make it more complicated, associated with isolation and remoteness from the common and known, a sense of adventure, the excitement in challenging the familiar and embracing the unfamiliar, a conscious urge to educate and enlighten in some experimental way. In many famous examples from literature, islands are crossroads and bridges between what there is and what can be imagined and created instead. Islands are places of opportunities and openings to the new beginnings.
ISSA is an attempt at crossing borders and bringing together personal, geographical and metaphorical islands, creating archipelagos. In the words of its founders: “We’re starting a School on an island in the middle of the Adriatic Sea because we believe that the future lies in the archipelagos of autonomy… Our school is not merely a space for contemplation but a place of action. Its role is to explore and address the significant challenges ahead through the process of teaching and learning, while also practising social autonomy in the present moment… our aim is to cultivate ways of living, learning, and teaching together. We seek to explore autonomy as a political strategy and a model for social organization. Additionally, we adopt a hands-on approach to design, experimentation, and the implementation of processes, goods, and services. We collaboratively engage in discussions, physical labour, and the development of joint projects and programs, working with individuals and collectives. Throughout our endeavours, we remain guided by our motto: ‘We build the school, the school builds us’.” [1]
In the year following the inaugural event held in September 2023 [2], a number of activities have been accomplished, often offered to the local community. At the end of October 2023, Vanda Franičević gave a lecture in a local gallery entitled “Art colony on the offshore islands of the Vis archipelago and the revitalization of the ‘Đuro Tiljak’ collection”. The focus was an important artistic colony, formed in the summer of 1930 on the islands of Vis and Svetac, which can be interpreted as joint work between artists and workers, mostly fishermen, of the island. In another attempt of connecting ‘the real island’ and the school on the hill, Srećko Horvat organised a philosophy workshop for school-aged children aimed at introducing participants to the history of philosophy through the hypothetical story of Plato on the island of Vis. At the Kalanko children’s festival in May 2024 film and acting workshops were aimed to reveal unknown stories about Komiža from the perspective of her children, and at the same time guiding them into the secrets of acting and filmmaking. The children had the opportunity to learn and imagine together with film director Zvonimir Jurić and actors Goran Bogdan and Jovana Stojiljković. Parallel to this, some of the ISSA members took part in the event in Mokrin and Kikinda, organised by the sisterly initiative MOKRIN HOUSE OF IDEAS in Serbia[3]. There they joined avant-garde music group Laibach from Slovenia, film director Želimir Žilnik and local activists in several film screenings, concerts and debates on new models of working and living in the world of today. Various international contacts are growing.
Back on the island of Vis, construction of the stone house on the hill continued whenever possible, often with a help of local and international volunteers and guests. Goran Bogdan, one of the co-founders, said in an interview: “There is something Sisyphean, because it is on a hill and you have to go through the forest uphill for more than a kilometre, there is something crazy and futile about it, there is also something healing about it, because the whole world is in some aggression and fascism for some purpose and that something has to be for something, we push ourselves, the world pushes us, and that kind of futility is interesting.” One guest, Conner Habib, describes ISSA as a space and inspiration for a new way of learning together by encounter, by meeting others, by paying attention to new impulses, through teachers that radiate wisdom through being[4]. Involving environmental and more physically demanding activities, a workshop on dry stone walling and sustainable development on the island of Vis took place in spring 2024. It was organised in collaboration with the NGOs “Pomalo” and “Domino”. The workshop on restoring old dry-stone walls was led by civil engineer Igor Mataić who tirelessly reconstructs and builds new dry-stone walls on the island, and Tonči Darlić, a Komiža-based constructor specialized in stonework. Guided by them, some 40 artists, producers, and curators from 10 countries helped building a new dry-stone wall in front of the School. And that is far from all. Other initiatives are in progress. One, together with ZMAG (Green network of activist groups), is focused on combining traditional methods of collecting water (like old Mediterranean systems of “gustirna” which use natural terrain and bedrock to direct and preserve rainwater) with new techniques like cloud/fog collectors to ensure regular supply of water for the ISSA school and gardens. Another one is establishing a community-based seed bank on Vis to preserve the diversity of native seeds and crops for future generations while also experimenting with cultivation of new cultures adaptable to the ongoing climate crisis. ISSA garden project plans to restore some 3 hectares of desolate land and revive the part of the island which until now has been largely abandoned. It is to become the first Mediterranean forest garden. And with time, the School will have well- equipped library, archive, publishing activities, pirate radio, amphitheatre, residencies, and annual symposium. The development of all these plans will demand years of devoted work, but the willingness and energy of participants is in abundant.
This year’s second gathering under the title “To live together” (from 4-9 October), lasted longer and welcomed some 200 participants, compared to the last year’s 100, from more than 20 countries, and included more actions, workshops and discussions than the first one[5]. It is fair to say that this social experiment is gaining momentum, firmly focused on the concepts of cooperation, compassion, solidarity, forms of self-government and learning about it all and many other topics. One of the permanent goals remains expanding the network of connections with similar initiatives, wherever they are located. Up on the hill concrete working actions took place, starting with carrying a load of material up the hill along a narrow footpath, proceeding with the continuation of building more dry-stone walls, familiarizing participants with circular water system as convivial tool, working on the solar panels, preparing wood for construction of the space in front of the ISSA small stone headquarters. Cooking, cleaning and assisting in various tasks was performed in the spirit of autonomous and relaxed cooperation, with a lot of sweat, laughter and background music. It is worth mentioning that majority of the workers on the site were people not particularly used to heavy manual work but, with a concrete goal in mind, they adapted willingly and fast. And the general feeling was not one of the exclusive group of like-minded people separated from the outside world and its reality. As James Bridle, one of the participants, stated: “When we go to the mountain we are not going ‘out’, we are going ‘in’”.
The backbone of any progressive form of education is building capacity to learn, encouraging people to experiment, cherishing autonomy and personal choice, stimulating critical thinking and the aversion to conformism. Pupils of any age should mistrust imposed authorities, know when and how to take a chance or a risk, perform direct action when needed, have courage, look around with their own eyes. Following this guidelines, ISSA organised a number of well-attended activities which took place in three locations at Komiža[6]. Workshops included “I have my voice”, “Memory of the World”, “IssaFix -print, repair, reuse”, “Your own private pirate radio station”, “Naan-aligned cooking”, “For a global mutiny against an empire of negligence”, “Esperanto – the subversive utopia of talking together”. Lectures, discussions and conversations covered subjects as “Re-existing together? Towards relational, experimental onto-epistemic mutuality”, “Making friends with chaos”, “60th anniversary of Praxis”, on-line conversation with Silvia Federici, “Computer says no! Practices of Tracking, Control, and Resistance” and “Islands of the future”. Two reading sessions focused on subjects such as the difference between ‘house’ and ‘home’, identity, patriotism, belonging and elusiveness of the concept of ‘nation’. Other sisterly initiatives presented their experiences (‘Cho Delat’, ‘Forest University’, ‘Aventura’). Screenings of the films “The man who could not remain silent” and “The tempest of Neptun” as well as the performance “Speedrun to nowhere land” took place in the memorial centre. This year again, Srećko Horvat led a tour through the revolutionary history of Vis and the event “Together with the people of Palestine” was attended in equal numbers by the School’s participants and locals. On the closing night, the rain didn’t interrupt “Dancing together” and the day after, the ones who could stay for a few more days headed back for the house on the hill to continue with work. The plans for future actions are well under way.
There are two islands in the Adriatic Sea that cradle an island on the waters within them. Košljun, on the Island of Krk, is still a home to the Franciscan friars in St Mary’s Monastery. The Isle of St Mary in the middle of Veliko jezero (the Big Lake) on the island of Mljet hosted Benedictines for a long time but is now a secular space. Geographically speaking, Vis doesn’t have a lake that could have an island on it, but ISSA is becoming its metaphorical one that doesn’t hesitate to reach out to its surrounding. In his recent essay “The ‘Dream Valley’ Conspiracy”[7] Srećko Horvat, speaking about islands and archipelagos, states: “… we are not ashamed to be called naive, romantic, or even crazy for trying to bring to life the utopian desire of our future islands… What we are learning once again is how to breathe together – how, through cooperation and the pure joy of community building, we can create something bigger than ourselves, both in terms of the individuals involved and temporality behind and in front of us… we are opening our sails towards archipelagos of permanent autonomous zones. These zones already exist in many places of the world, as a consequence of conspiracy, a deliberate, mutual, somatic, and gratuitous gift to each other. We are not the first, and hopefully not the last.”
Albert Camus has said „The struggle itself towards the hights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Some aspect of the struggle towards the hights is always a sort of rebellion. The one that this School is embracing is, as Goran Bogdan put it after the projection of the film “The man who could not remain silent”, rebellion against the silence. Silence is the modus vivendi of the ones who can imagine only unhappy Sisyphus and do nothing to help him. And something can and has to be done, at least ‘pomalo’.
- https://issa-school.org/reflections/why-starting-a-school/
- https://pescanik.net/skola-autonomije-na-visu/
- https://mokrinhouse.com/
- https://issa-school.org/news/good-life-in-times-of-extinction/
- https://issa-school.org/to-live-together/
- https://issa-school.org/participants-of-issa-2024-to-live-together/
- https://issa-school.org/reflections/the-dream-valley-conspiracy/
