TDAR Padlock Video from Sarah Jacoby on Vimeo.

TDAR’S inaugural project, the “Academic Aesthetic Breakout Session” was a month-long residency at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study (PIFAS), an experimental cultural collective located in the Kensington section of Philadelphia.  Across August of 2008, the Department hosted a range of lectures and workshops exploring what separates gallery from classroom, image from text, and exhibition from education.

In the essay Each One Teach One, written for  Manifesta 6, curator Florian Waldvogel notes that he is “fundamentally interested in the question of education as an exhibition format, and in discussion, seminars and workshops as a form of practice and its presentation.”  Taking this declaration to heart, TDAR converted its art studio residency room at PIFAS into a test-classroom, a life-sized diorama that physicalized the educational language already adopted by PIFAS.

“Academic Aesthetic Breakout Session” consisted of a dead-rat tea party, a slightly disembodied discussion group, a pop quiz everyone wanted to take, a 90-degrees Fahrenheit crash course in comic books, and a hidden-camera final exam that was over before it began.