EM arose to reflect upon the controversial school known as ‘Ecole Mondiale’, launched by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1905. The project was initiated as a postgraduate school to develop and prepare young men for a colonial career in the overseas areas of the European nation states.

In adopting the name of this never realized school, we intended to create a collective platform for developing new pedagogical models and “tools for learning” as an artistic practice. EM’s world view does not begin by discovering the world, but rather from the idea that we must first learn how to deal with today’s globalized world in order to embrace and ensure our world. Although EM does not address Leopold II’s perspective as the colonizer, our project shares affinities with current debates regarding ‘decolonialisation’. EM organizes artistic “Fieldstations”, open-form, public cross-over workshops presented in the context of art exhibitions. We’ve replaced the original Ecole Mondiale’s departments ( Agronomy, Ethnography, History, Languages, Law, Mathematics, Medicine and Natural History) with 9 thematic Fieldstations.