The Public School is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system.

It is, instead, a provocative model for extra-institutional education. Especially for those who have finished formal schooling, are between schools or could care less about accredited degrees, this is a venture which democratizes the pedagogical process by creating a community around learning/teaching. The subject matter runs the gamut from heavy intellectual pursuits to casual interests and practical skill-based courses. Courses are free or affordable and small enough to encourage engagement over simple reception.

The way it works: users propose classes online, discussion ensues, classes are nominated by a committee and then instructors are sourced and the class scheduled for a one time session or repeated meetings. fees are determined by a formula “Hourly Teachers Fee X (Classroom Hours + Preparation Hours)) + Materials + (Administration + Overhead” and those who can’t pay are afforded scholarship by a system where teachers can opt to forgo their payment.

The public school is hosted in the basement of TELIC ARTS EXCHANGE in China Town (Los Angeles), and echos some similarities of its neighbor, the Mountain School.

From the Telic website

TELIC’s program emphasizes social exchange, interactivity and public participation to produce a critical engagement with new media and culture.

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After Jon Sarkin had a stroke while playing golf in 1998, doctors removed part of his cerebellum in order to save his life. His world has changed dramatically since then, due in part to an emergent impulse to create artwork. His work cannot escape the story behind it, and the viewer cannot resist the desire to somehow “decode” some deeper significance, if not meaning.

Outsider art is about the inside, we suppose. Since it’s not informed by tradition, because it emerges as sometimes uncontrollable activity, because the artist doesn’t seem to be fully conscious of his motivation, and due to it’s almost childish innocence, this category (parallel to the canon) threatens to hold a mirror of truth. It’s very being, that inevitability, seems to mock the psycho-analytic attempts of a more conscientious conscious artistic impulse (from action painting to abstract expressionism and even minimalism) not to mention the well trod paths of painting as explanation and figuration. In Sarkins work, however, he executes another level of referential redirection: his explicit textual and iconic references to art historical figures and cultural relics create nonsense and pattern without forming content. As he says, “Most people are looking for a coherent pattern to something. They like things to make sense. So do I. But you know what? Too bad.”

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An impressive project with deep theoretical implications, or at least deeply psychedelic imagery.

More information on Nikolas Schiller, here.

Selections from Los Angeles, often wrapping and weaving the interchanges in ways that simulate the circuitous navigation of this city’s commutes.

How crazy beautiful is this 500-year old book?!

Perhaps an ideal literary artifact: unintelligible script, an unknown author and beautiful pictures. Illustrations creep up and across the text threatening to leave the pages, images that still, many generations later, signal future life and untold growth. And yet, this is an object so wrapped up in its own cryptic story, so colored by the fingers that have passed it through the years, that it shatters any concerted interest in its formal/material conditions. Like a crystal which refracts a million beams of light, the Voynich Manucsript launches even the casual investigator down infinite and endless (branching and galactic) paths of inquiry: magic, alchemy, astrology, art fraud, John Dee and Roger Bacon, ciphers, micrography, glossolalia, and stegotexts.

This note is taken from the Beinecke library that hosts this incredible online gallery.

Scientific or magical text in an unidentified language, in cipher, apparently based on Roman minuscule characters; the text is believed by some scholars to be the work of Roger Bacon since the themes of the illustrations seem to represent topics known to have interested Bacon. ,,, Although several scholars have claimed decipherments of the manuscript, for the most part the text remains an unsolved puzzle. R. S. Brumbaugh has, however, suggested a decipherment that establishes readings for the star names and plant labels … (Beinecke Library)

Download the complete Voynich Manuscript as a .pdf