Dear Aeolian student community,
These are times of change, and in recent years we have experienced a few. We have been living together, suffering, and ceding spaces of our freedom for the Covid-19 for almost a year. And we resist. And right now we have received with astonishment and sadness the news that from a certain sector of IT teachers, for decades, actions have been carried out of (alleged) abuses that should be unforgivable for a docent; sexual and power abuses that absolutely disqualify those who practice them and those who encourage them, and also those who may have protected them. These practices are in many cases a form of corruption and also a crime.
News like this rules us inside and makes us repulsed. But they also fill us with hope because they urgently show us the way to begin and delve into a new social paradigm that cannot wait any longer.
We look forward to working with you to ensure that any kind of abuse, whether sexual or power, or of any other kind, cannot occur in our home. And by extension in the world of the performing arts (neither in the academic nor in the professional world).
We need to know that what we allow in schools is what you will end up finding out in the future. A future that belongs to you and is yours, of the generations you are forming.
Please never give space and do not allow any incipient attitude that violates the code of ethics to which we owe: responsibility, sensitivity, growth, freedom, work, humanism and respect, these are the values of teaching, never coercion, authoritarianism, intolerance or abuse of any kind.
Gone are the days of the autocratic teaching of gurus and untouchable beings who instill fear and with whom one cannot dialogue or reason. We are opening up to a new era where respect for all people marks the pulse of artistic and teaching activity, please. It’s where we’ve always wanted to go. Let's all go together. And we overcome at once the pedagogues who think that the pain and trauma of young artists is the ordeal to go through. And that they enjoy torturing, and that they seek their benefit. We do not yield a single meter to these selfish and prehistoric attitudes, heirs of an outdated system that encourages trauma and amputates vocations.
We are also ashamed to see how a society forged in an archaic masculinity does not respect women, nor sensitive people in general. Art must undoubtedly pave the way for these new paradigms that must end up shaping a more egalitarian, less dogmatic and also more just society. And we will only achieve this if we work constantly and continuously with these goals.
From Aeolian we are committed to redouble our efforts to keep a close eye on any attitude that we think is unethical based on this value system, and we will act relentlessly, and without contemplation, against any indication of abuse. We will denounce these attitudes, from home or abroad. And we will change it when it is in our hands. And that’s something we can only do if we work as a team, as a community, and making communication flow. We have many channels to communicate with. Let's use them.
It seems incredible to be talking about sexual assault or abuse of power in academia and the arts in the XNUMXst century. And it seems impossible for anyone to cross these red lines, both academically and professionally. This area is also worrying. It deserves even deeper reflection. What happens in the profession? What attitudes are taken for granted and are not? The debate on all this needs to be opened now that the infected wound has been opened and remedied.
Something stinks in Denmark. But if Harvey Weinstein’s alleged apprentices in the world no longer live quietly, and begin to fall from their pedestals thanks to the courage of their victims, we may have a better world.
If those of us who have wanted this social change all our lives do not do it now, it is clear that we will never do it. To begin with, we only need one simple but at the same time incalculably valuable thing: Learning to respect.
Academic direction and coordination.