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Processes and rhythms of work |
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| This is the third and last part of the dossier that David Armengol has prepared, with the collaboration of Martí Manen, in order to analyse and reflect on the place that education occupies in contemporary art. We also include an interview with Mai Abu ElDahab, commissioner of the forthcoming Manifesta in Nicosia next summer, which on this occasion will move away from the ‘great exhibition’ model and adopt that of the art school. |
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DAVID ARMENGOL
Using the monthly bulletin of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica as a platform from which to reflect on the links between art and education has served to give a degree of critical visibility to an area of work —the teaching of art— whose communications resources within the system art are rather limited.
While insisting on the idea of understanding the production of art as a generator of knowledge from which to open up possible models of non-regulated education, the relations between educational positions and the art context are still conflictive. The analysis of these confrontations makes it possible to see that there is a difference in rhythms of work between the two spheres, and that this difference makes it difficult to arrive at mutual understanding and coexistence.
While the art system, with the exhibition as a primary medium of presentation and generation of discourse, posits a prior intensity centred on the opening, the educational project needs a slower and more continuous rhythm, an extended temporality that, furthermore, tends not to possess mechanisms as potent and definitive as the final exhibition. This means that art education has to assume a space of actuation a posteriori, that is to say, once the exhibition has opened and the various agents involved in it (such as the curator, the artist, etc.) have started to dilute their presence. This means that the educational project often had no alternative but to take on a popularizing function, generally lacking in rigour and far from true to the initial intentions of the exhibition itself. Having brought out the time difference that tends to exist between the art context and its possibilities of learning, we can see that effectively modifying these rhythms of work is far from simple, in that both the art context and the education systems tend to function within hierarchical parameters that stand in the way of any change or innovation in their structures.
Unofficial frameworks of knowledge
In the second text of this study (in bulletin no. 14, June 05), Martí Manen and I looked at the problem of synchronization between art and education from the proliferation, in the art context, of unofficial frameworks of knowledge, of art platforms with a degree of independence that work from other premisses, both discursive and educational (Copenhagen Free University, the Invisible Academy, Protoacademy...). These are thus spaces of production, reflection, communication and exhibition that seek a present function on the basis of interchange and dialogue.
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The
exhibition posits a prior intensity centred
on the opening,
the educational project needs
a slower and more continuous rhythm |
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Here, the presence of specific workshops and studios parallel to the exhibitions, as well as of other working processes closer to the receiver, makes it possible to generate from the art sphere more effective models of learning in which the user is seen as another fundamental element of discourse and not simply as a faceless and indifferent consumer.
While we must inevitably situate ourselves in a serious problem of connection between art and public, these spaces of interchange and dialogue invoke a considerable potential educational in real time. In other words, a will to contact with the receiver from the present; a critical analysis in which the user is not left out but included in the working process with a high degree of involvement. In this way the risk of metareferentiality and disconnection from reality that tends to affect art in many cases is replaced by a closer framework of reflection in which the results, without being all that spectacular, are a lot more satisfactory.
The notion of the public
Meanwhile, if we think of education as a channel of mediation between art and user, we see that one of the more evident problems lies in the very notion of the public. If the public was traditionally thought of as mere spectators who used observation from a distance as their sole system for consuming art, for some time now art has been committed to establishing other kinds of relations with the user. In this sense we can speak of the public as active agents capable of interacting with what is presented to them from a critical and personal position. Being conscious of this multiplicity of audiences means reviewing the responsibilities of the different positions that intervene in the art context with the real objective of facilitating direct two-way contact with the users.
This means that from the ideological position of museums and art centres there is an attempt to define what kind of public can be reached and draw up effective lines of engagement to reach them. In the best of cases this practice can generate a type of à la carte programme in which the specific audiences for exhibitions, lectures, workshops and other activities find those points of connection they need. However, if we analyse this multiplicity of publics in terms of the responsibility of the artist, curator, educator, museum and so on we also have to take into account what responsibilities we have as a public. In other words, how (we as) users can assume this active role from a position that we approach with a certain mistrust and reticence. Here we find once again the conflicts we noted above. In order to bring about an open debate with the user in which they can act freely from their position, and not just from the position constructed a priori, it is necessary to alter the habitual rhythms of work that operate both from the art context and from educational premises.
Given the inability to find concrete solutions to this crux, the art system’s willingness to rethink its capacity as an instrument of knowledge, makes it possible to test out effective formats, often outside the habitual structures of functioning. In this line of art experiences in which the rhythm of learning is no longer fixed and one-way but instead offers freer lines of access, I would like to talk about two recent initiatives that work from the exploration of spaces of interchange and dialogue in the present time. The first of these is the educational project Crossed Gazes, aimed at an adolescent public and carried out at the Caixafòrum on the basis of the Rineke Dijkstra exhibition and the other is the series of the workshops at the Quizzing d’Art de Montesquiu art fortnight (QUAM) and centred on a specialist public. These two initiatives deliberately alter the usual rhythms of learning in order to facilitate a different kind of interaction between the positions involved.
In view of the nodal points between the work of Rineke Dijkstra and youth cultures, Crossed Gazes runs parallel to the exhibition as such in which an ongoing project half way between the school and the art centre involves young people in a learning process that is directly grounded in their own realities and identities. In this way, on the basis of a photography workshop at the Caixafòrum and a series of follow-up sessions in the classroom, the young people take part in a crossing of gazes that invites them to engage in person and in depth with systems of representation, both from their own position as adolescents and from their conception of what adults are like.
Meanwhile, at Mind the Gap, the most recent QUAM, organized by Montse Badia, Francesc Ruiz and Jacob Fabricius ran workshops aimed at the artistic community from their lines of work in art. Over a week, from a professional framework, the two workshops generated a space of encounter that offered the artists taking part a chance to try out other formulas for learning in which their practices interacted with one another in a critical way.
Although they were different initiatives, the two formats both centred on their development over time more than on their final resolution, (exhibition of the school students’ works in the Caixafòrum and the presentation of the result of the workshops in the framework of reflection of the QUAM). Nevertheless, we have to bear in mind that for this kind of premiss to be effective, the necessary tools have to be provided so that the receivers can assume their active role throughout the process. As we said above, you have to offer the necessary instruments so that the users are in a position to feel confident about taking on their responsibility, and this is not always easy to do. Perhaps this should be seen as one of the principal challenges when it comes to rethinking the role of education from the art context.
Other work rhythms from education and art (two examples):
Mirades creuades (Crossed glances) is an educational project aimed at an adolescent public based on the exhibition Retrats (Portraits) by Rineke Dijstra at CaixaForum. Led by Tanit Plana and Maria Lacambra, it encourages a process of reflection and work around the construction of juvenile identities.
This educational proposal from the Laboratory of the Arts at CaixaForum, with the collaboration of different secondary schools, is presented in three phases: work on reflecting about juvenile cultures, which are usually always defined from an adult position; photographic and textual practical work on redefining the representation of adults from juvenile identities and an exhibition and area for participating at CaixaForum.
Mind the Gap is the name of the edition of the QUAM 05 by Montse Badia. In addition to the conferences and debates at the QUAM Forum (Montesquiu Castle), for a week Mind the Gap offered two practical workshops addressed at young creators with the aim of offering a framework for discussion and non-hierarchic knowledge.
Jacob Fabricius’ workshop was the continuation of a piece of work that was started at the Old News exhibition in Los Angeles. It was a practical experience dealing with the excess of information received from the mass media.
Francesc Ruiz’s workshop, called Procrashtination, sought a context that was limit and under pressure so that the participant artists could generate an excessive production able to make them reflect on the state of their work. |
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