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Education and learning models based on the exhibition format |
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Education in museums or arts centres, although it is one of the most important tasks that must be carried out (as mediators between art and the public) does not seem to arouse great interest or, at least and most importantly, sufficient attention. David Armengol (artistic educator and freelance curator. Barcelona, 1974) maintains there is a need to rethink educational art projects. This means the spectator must be understood as more than merely a passive subject and educational projects must be integrated into the core discourse of the exhibition rather than being an added extra.
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DAVID ARMENGOL
At a time like the present, defined by the speed at which information is transmitted, it is difficult to find really effective learning contexts; that is, contexts which, far from approaching their possible consumers in a uniform, linear way, understand users as active agents ready to interact from a differentiated position, where their critical reception plays a decisive role.
Based on various strategies, contemporary cultural production encourages direct contact with its users, but does not always achieve it. For some time now, artistic institutions have been working based on an attempt to define themselves as new spaces for relations within the public sphere and have therefore been addressing a wide multiplicity of audiences requiring specific reading contexts. Contemporary art appears to open up discourses that are close to daily life. It is therefore committed to lines of action in which the museum and the exhibition establish themselves as the main contexts for relations between artistic practice and its (possible) receivers. In fact, all museums or arts centres accepting a critical position towards our times are faced with the need to analyse their types of audience in order to offer them the right discourses for users of these spaces, at the same time as also allowing a more direct, non-hierarchical relationship. |
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| Album
of instants. Sala Moncunill,
Terrassa. |
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If we make a rapidanalysis of the art-education
pairing, we find a first point of conflict in the very
definition of this practice. What exactly is museum-based
education? Failure to answer this question clearly
means that, from the start, there is little educational
presence in most centres dedicated to art. Educational
proposals often appear afterwards instead, failing
to form part of the central discourse of the exhibition.
In this way, artistic education is often reduced to
offering a few guided or animated tours, workshop formats,
etc. which allow contents to be transmitted to particular
sectors of the population, largely developed from the
school perspective or from a broad definition of the
general public. Despite this, it must be borne in mind
that this model, even though it is incomplete because
it ignores a large part of the potential audience who
do not find support tools, is a useful tool for schools
and education centres which, based on art's |
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own formal structures, have another parallel, unofficial, informal access route to its issues and concerns which are even present in the formal education system's school curriculum. Nowadays, we see how some of the agents involved in the artistic situation, such as creators, curators, managers, schools, etc. are committed to a certain critical revision of existing learning models based on artistic practice. Approaches such as Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetic, experiences such as Com volem ser governats (How we want to be governed) organised by MACBA, the practices of Les Laboratoires a Aubervilliers or MIND THE GAP and the next QUAM co-ordinated by Montse Badia are some important examples of this, showing how, in order to study the distancing of art and society in depth, we must explore the presentation systems habitually used in the art system. Exhibitions manage to be very effective in terms of creation and production, fostering a good framework for visibility, but they are less effective in terms of reception parameters on the part of an audience which is not normally prepared for the critical experience they offer. This initialfissure means educational strategies run the risk of falling into transmission systems owing a great deal to the rhythms of academic education, where the public learn what the museum says, without room for manoeuvre. It is true that exhibitions offer a critical reading of the environment, that they note other possible models for interpreting reality, that they favour a political position, but, in the end, the public continue to have problems and doubts when faced with an artistic event. In fact, by showing themselves to be closed when the user receives them, exhibitions only seem to allow single-direction access, which makes it difficult to establish dialectic nodes between art and audience.
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| “within the crisis situation of artistic education, the capacity for empathy of the various agents involved (arts centres, artists, public...) can open up new ways of working to bring them closer together” |
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However, the distance between art and society does not only have to focus on the reading of exhibitions. Part of the problem of communication between artistic practice and the public is also visible in its mistrustful approach. The lack of custom, expansion of knowledge from a position of comfort or, to a certain degree, access to culture seeking shallow elitism prevents social approaches to modern art from being more fruitful. In a dialogue between father and daughter in Robert Mulligan's film To kill a Mockingbird (1962), the girl tells her father about an argument she has had with a classmate. The father (the lawyer Atticus played by Gregory Peck) explains her how important it is to understand why her friend was angry with her, to find out the reasons. Atticus tells her: “You will never learn anything new until you manage to put yourself in his shoes.” In fact, he is talking about the idea of empathy. I cite this example to note how, within the crisis situation of artistic education, the capacity for empathy of the various agents involved (arts centres, artists, public...) can open up new ways of working to bring them closer together. From the art scene, we see how attempts to offer the public other ways of relating to one another which, by questioning the notion of artistic institution as an area of power, foster models of change based on two-way learning rhythms, where the linear relationship of museum as transmitter and public as receiver is replaced by a horizontal structure in which the different roles are constantly fusing.
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| Hardtuning. Workshop
at Hangar |
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Finally, I would like to illustrate some
of the arguments noted based on two projects that provide
a good reflection of the will to change normal learning models
in art. Firstly, Hardtuning, a project by Albert
Tarés presented at the Santa Mònica Art Centre
in 2003 and, secondly Interferències_04.
L'instant: l'ara que ja no (Interference_2004: the
now that no longer is) curated by Cristian Añó and
Lídia Dalmau (the Let's Experiment with Art Association)
in different areas of the city of Terrassa in 2004. The former,
focused on the culture of car customisation offered alongside
the exhibition a workshop at Hangar where different school
groups could make an in-depth study of the links between
youth culture and contemporary art with no more intellectualisation
than the direct experience of customising cars. The latter,
as well as exhibiting works close to the idea of the temporary
(with artists such as Diego Bruno or Toni Crabb), found a
place in the social fabric of the city based on the curator's
idea of an Album of instants, a collective involvement
project which, together with the exhibition, offered users
the opportunity for direct action based on their personal
experience.
Ultimately, and aside from formalisation and results, Hardtuning and the Album of instants (one based on the specific identity of a particular section of the population and the other on its effect on the public sphere), show clear attempts to rethink models of access to contemporary art. Of course, both of them open up doubts and conflicts, but, at least they suggest experiments in which artistic practice generates a critical discourse around reality, and not based on artistic reality but rather on the reality of the audience itself. I think that, based on a desire for education, this is a good form of action.
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