What We Can Knot What We Can Knot

Shifter 20 Shifter 20 Shifter Number 20. May, 2013.

© 2013 Shifter

Printed and bound in Canada Editors’ Note ...... 1 All previous issues of Shifter are available for purchase at www .shifter-magazine .com Ashley Hunt & Malene Dam ...... 2 SHIFTER 19 : PROPOSALS Sreshta Rit Premnath, Matthew Metzger eds, 2013 Marjetica Potrč & Amanda Eicher with Ryo Yonami,

SHIFTER 18 : INTENTION Nuriye Tohermes & Mai Shirato ...... 8 Sreshta Rit Premnath, Matthew Metzger eds, 2012 Andreas Fischer & Hannah B . Higgins ...... 14 SHIFTER17 : RE___ING Sreshta Rit Premnath, Matthew Metzger eds, 2011 Corin Hewitt & Riley Duncan ...... 22

SHIFTER16 : PLURIPOTENTIAL Richard Kostelanetz with Frederick Young, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Warren Neidich eds, 2010 Michael Peters & Bob Grumman ...... 30

SHIFTER15 : WILL Michelle Grabner with Philip Vanderhyden, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Abhishek Hazra eds, 2009 Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Andrew Falkowski, Elijah Burgher, SHIFTER14 : ON CERTAINTY Julie Weitz, Christopher Mcnulty, Michael Velliquette, Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2009 Barry Underwood, Joey Farueso, Gil Riley & Adam Scott ...... 36 SHIFTER13 : INDIRA SYLVIA BELISSOP Sreshta Rit Premnath, Avi Alpert eds, 2008 Abhishek Hazra ...... 42

SHIFTER12 : UNASSIGNED Zachary Cahill feat . Cassandra Troyan ...... 44 Sreshta Rit Premnath, Kajsa Dahlberg, Jane Jin Kaisen eds, 2008 Andrew Falkowski ...... 48 SHIFTER11 : INTIMATE Sreshta Rit Premnath, Steven Lam eds, 2007 Jesal Kapadia & Brian McCarthy ...... 52

SHIFTER10 : TRANSPARENT WHITE Adelita Husni Bey & Janna Graham ...... 62 Sreshta Rit Premnath, Pieter DeHeijde eds, 2007 Tyler Coburn & A .L . Steiner ...... 68 SHIFTER9 : RUIN|MONUMENT Sreshta Rit Premnath, Pieter DeHeijde eds, 2006 Abdullah Awad & Sreshta Rit Premnath ...... 74 SHIFTER8 : RULES AND REPRESENTATIONS Sreshta Rit Premnath, Pieter DeHeijde eds, 2006 Allan deSouza & Jeannene Przyblyski ...... 82

SHIFTER7 : SCIENCE SEANCE Steven Lam & Daniel Joseph Martinez ...... 90 Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2006

SHIFTER6 : SURFACE TENSION Juan William Chávez & Anya Liao ...... 98 Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2006 Valerio Rocco Orlando & Mónica Ríos ...... 104 SHIFTER5 : DESIRE & THE OTHER Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2005 Deborah Stratman & James Benning ...... 108 SHIFTER4 : ON TRANSLATION Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2005 A .K . Burns & Alexandro Segade ...... 116

SHIFTER3 : KOSMOPOLITES Dan Paz & Tania Bruguera ...... 124 Sreshta Rit Premnath, Jason Yoh eds, 2004 Kelly Kaczynski ...... 132 SHIFTER2 : POST-MORTEM Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2004 Ayisha Abraham & Smriti Mehra ...... 138 SHIFTER1 : JETLAG Sreshta Rit Premnath ed, 2004 Maria Rosa Sossai ...... 144 Editors’ Note

Shifter’s 20th issue, What We Can Knot draws from George Bernard Shaw’s quip “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches ”. In this issue we would like to parse out and challenge what we see to be Shaw’s false binary, and to explore the value of negotiation and collaboration as important elements both in the studio and in the classroom . To this end we have invited several individuals who are both artist and educator, to consider the active relation between art practice and teaching in their life . We have invited them to do this through a conversation or correspondence with either a mentor or a student who continues to play an intimate part in their understanding of the intertwined roles as artist and educator .

We, the editors of Shifter, like so many artists we know, substantially support our artistic practice by teaching in art colleges and universities . While we find that our engagement with students is fraught with negotiations of power, intimacy and control; debate and dissensus in the classroom rarely remains there, always and already molding our thinking and practice as artists .

Is our role as educator, as Gayatri Spivak posits, to non-coercively rearrange the desires of our students? Or is our only responsibility, as Jacques Rancière suggests, creating the conditions of possibility within which students can teach themselves?

As artists we often find ourselves already skeptical of how institutional frameworks overdetermine our relationships with each other and our work . Certainly this distrust is carried into our relationship with students in the classroom . Whatever our intentions as educators may be, what ceaselessly continues is our negotiation with such institutional frameworks, which provide and simultaneously circumscribe our freedoms . At best it is a reciprocal formulation as student and teacher work collaboratively within and upon the architecture of institutional “givens” as a subversive means by which the teacher/student binary may loosen and transform .

The ethical considerations of a pedagogue are further amplified for a studio artist . The artist-educator sometimes problematically sees the student as material to be manipulated, and as a means through which to speak .

So, how may we, as teacher and student, student and teacher, artist and artist, draw a relation between these two intertwined professions? How do we conduct ourselves between such distinct fields in an effort to get more from our practice and offer even more to our students?

Editor...... Sreshta Rit Premnath Editor...... Matthew Metzger Designer...... Dan Levenson Copy editor...... Becky Bivens Fundraising Advisor...... Hong-An Truong ------

Spread throughout this issue of Shifter, nested in the fold of the journal, is a Lexicon of Contested Terms by Allan deSouza that in his Shifter is a topical publication that aims to illuminate and broaden our words, “examines concepts, words and phrases that are commonly used within the critique process and commonly encountered within understanding of the intersections between contemporary art, politics other art arenas, such as artist statements, gallery press releases, published reviews, etc ”. and philosophy . Shifter remains malleable and responsive in its form and activities, and represents a diversity of positions and backgrounds in its “The intention of the list,” he states, “is to clarify the shared language through which we conduct critical discussion and generate contributors . as in, “my work is about home; about beauty; about unicorns (actual …” examples from critiques) discourse around artworks . It is not intended as a censorial catalogue of “banned” words, but to draw attention to their effects and functions, their uses to bring forth and/or to conceal meanings ”. shifter-magazine com. shiftermail@gmail .com ABOUT Should viewers be told what the work is “about,” or is that an evaluation that they should arriveMaking at themselves? Is art the artist might already a reliable informant be an example of that on what which the it is work supposedly is “about”? about; in other words, art is a cultural practice, with the artwork a manifestation and function of culture rather than it being “about” culture. If we apply one lesson from Minimalism, an artwork is the “thingDuchamp’s prior itself,” example rather of the readymade than being suggests “about” something that an artwork else. It mayspace direct is of more the than gallery). the viewer just the in Duchamp’s thing different Fountain, itself, ways and but then,to thatother the isreferences, “about” thing its own but objecthoodit “about” becomesis itself. an artwork plus the However, historicized when it enters into discourse artistic that discourse constitutes (and not simply it as not just when a urinal it enters into but the also as art.NB: The different terms–much like other aspects of art–should be read as cumulative and relational rather than as isolated categories . 1 Malene Dam What Goes into the World: & Ashley Hunt Treacherous Teachery and Arting in Art School

AH: Are you here?

MD: Yes .

AH: What do you think of the prompt from the editors of Shifter?

MD: Well, they are getting at questions that feel familiar and central to conversations we have had in many classroom situations .

AH: They are familiar to me too, and importantly so . They are questions that many of the people I teach with ask one another, primarily through a rejection of the binary that the editors note, via George Bernard Shaw–between teaching and doing–which in this particular case might refer to teaching and making, or “arting,” if I can make up that word . We don’t only share a disagreement with Shaw, but we require a shifting of terms, a reformulation that asks, instead, whether we see teaching as a part of our practice as artists.

MD: The prompt also talks about negotiation and collaboration as core notions, which for me seem to get at teaching and learning as a part of one’s practice—being colleagues, as different from a teacher teaching student . Perhaps the “arting” and making in this sense come about fundamentally through conversations: it is through our conversations with other people that we practice our practice so to speak . So to get back to the teacher-student relationship, how do we (and I use “we” consciously because the responsibility is both on teacher and student) bring about this conversation together?

AH: So on one hand we have the question of this very negotiation: Am I a teacher at one moment and an artist at another, or do those two activities have a relationship? On the other hand, while this negotiation might take place within oneself—when I teach, or as a part of my practice—we’re also talking about what this means to a “we”: between the student and teacher, or within a class .

There seems to be a problem where the overlaps between one’s teaching and art-making are understood in default categories of material and conventions belonging to the discipline itself (are the students then “my medium,” or is what’s done in the classroom “my art”); as opposed considering the practice to which one is committed, whose nature might not be discipline or medium specific, but is driven instead by a set of values or a vision of the world .

For example, many of the things you and I have studied together, whether the subject at hand was art, pedagogy, or both, have circled around questions of liberation and justice . Values of liberation and justice don’t necessarily privilege the classroom, as an academic might, nor do they privilege objects or “works,” as an artist might .

A practice predicated upon such values; on values of social change and a different world, require many spaces of praxis, some of which is art, and some of which require the possibilities, potentials and powers of classrooms, with the collective learning, research and thinking that can take place there . Others will have nothing to do with art or educational settings, but will have to do with different forms of action and thought—activism and political action, advocacy, community building, philosophy, and so forth .

In this sense, teaching and making wouldn’t have a relationship because they look similar, because they’re adjacent to one another, or because they involve a similar subject matter, but because they form parts of a larger practice that one inhabits in the world . Does that make sense?

MD: Yes, very much, and I want to talk about how this relationship is negotiated in the classroom, in our independent studies, in our conversations, in our art making, and possibly in its relationship to activism . Along my way as a student, I have sought out and created spaces for thinking through our larger practices . These spaces were sometimes the classroom, sometimes the street, and at other times private spaces . It takes experiences, conversations and conflict to arrive at these ‘values’ and strategies . Sometimes for me there is a difficulty in actually getting to the conversation of this larger practice, to these larger commitments in the particular classroom setting of the critique, where we then default to the comfortable common place of talking about formal issues, discipline and medium .

AH: So does this get at another tension then, or another distinction, in terms of the kind of learning that one privileges in the classroom? I ask because reducing the space of critique to ‘disciplining by way of the discipline’ contradicts the teacher-student relationship we’re addressing—one in which teaching is about helping a student to locate their values and to find their practice, rather than delivering values and a form of practice to them . Either way it touches on the larger notion of your point, that of a shared practice between those in a class, where the classroom houses a collective practice that we are formulating and pursuing together . 2 3 The challenge pedagogically is not to assert one’s own practice as the practice of the class, or as that of the students . This is where an AH: That was one of the most challenging moments for me, when I suggested making something more directly activist in response to interesting edge, perhaps a messy one, can be found—between the collaborative and anti-hierarchical impulse on one hand, where one where that excitement seemed to be directed; but at the same time, I was trying to be clear that my desire wasn’t to influence the desire sees oneself “in collaboration” with students, while at the same time, needing to be vigilant about the authority that your own ideas, of the class, but rather to present the possibility . Nonetheless, it was a very good sign that, despite the ease of getting swept up in such values and desires carry, asserting themselves even inadvertently (especially if the teacher’s authority is merely masked behind a style of excitement, you all had the space and perspective to make that decision collectively . the horizontal) . This is where our “Collaboration” class became especially interesting . And challenging! To be honest, there was a question in my mind as to how much of that hesitation reflected an internalized desire to keep our art practices MD: Or the “Prison Class” . sanitized of “the activist,” a problem that I too often observe, stemming from both the privileged sensibilities and the discipline-policing that pervade art schools–in terms of what are considered the kinds of practice “appropriate” to art and the tones of voice that are most AH: Do you mean because my own practice is so centered around prison issues? tasteful . But I was equally self-conscious about the presence of my position and felt it was important to trust the assessment of the class . MD: No, not because of that . But in the Prison Class I saw a particular challenge in trying to understand our own positions within In hindsight your assessment seems to have been very sound! these discussions, or in fact developing our own positions . And how do we create a space that allows for the time to actually think MD: We somehow did come together though . I remember when we made a “mind-map” from the reports on everyone’s group through these notions . What would be the implications of prison abolition, for instance? research, and the debate afterwards about the presentation that had some clear homophobic strains in it, and some of us got a bit snappy AH: The challenge I often felt in “Prison and Systems and Structures” was that I might be simply indoctrinating people, or enforcing at that . I think we all came out of the Prison Class with a lot, but I didn’t feel like we reached a unified consensus on the right strategy, an ideology, since I am, quite simply, against prisons, and things like prisons . or a singular approach to making work . It opened up to a lot of things and was a bit unruly in that way . I loved it and found it frustrating at times too . But on the other hand, it was quite simple for me to think about the ideological aspects of almost any discussion that goes on about prisons and “criminal justice,” which, no matter how objective they present themselves to be, continue to reinforce distorted ideologies And as much as I understand your point about art practices in art school being sanitized of “the activist”, for me the concern was how we of race, class, gender and sexuality through the figure of “the law,” “law enforcement,” and the presumption of binaries like “good guys would come together around a work for Critical Resistance . We all were speaking from very different places . I tend to think that these and bad guys” and “us and them ”. more committed collaborations will organically grow out of classroom structures, but thinking of attempting a submission amongst 30 people honestly made me a little anxious . The classroom is for me a space that allows for these differences to be explored, but not I had no interest in creating one more space in which those ideologies could pass unsuspectingly and be reinforced, or reinscribed necessarily resolved . through our conversation, learning and working . AH: So on one hand we have the question of timing: is this enough time in which I can come to my position?, along with the difficult Of course, any subject matter—by the time it can be discussed as an object of study—has already issued from a historically specific question of collaboration: how do I allow the particularity of my voice to be submerged into a unified voice and not feel subordinated? constellation of ideas, subject positions, legibilities and politics, all of which are carried implicitly along in the conversation . Just as a part While on the other hand, there is the place of “making work” within one’s learning process . of our conversation involved familiarizing ourselves with the critique of prisons that has issued largely from the New Left, its ancestors and offspring, it also required an awareness that the ideological dispositions hidden within the figure of the law would be asserting One of the things that I came upon when I started teaching at CalArts was this emphasis on classes making exhibitions together at the themselves quite sneakily, as they are most likely already within us . Assertions for instance in how we discipline one another, in what we end of each semester—supported by the fact that we have seven student galleries on campus which we regard as classrooms . At first, I felt expect of institutions, laws, rules and rule-breaking, in our very perception of what “safety” means, in our very identities, and in regard this was a bit too prescriptive, suggesting that the outcome of a semester’s work should be perfected to the level of public presentation, to what all this helps to constitute and limit within our political imaginations . In other words, to even begin the conversation, we had which may not be right for some students, or for particular works, forms of learning and so forth . to call these things out and question the very language we already have for prisons, which might inevitably be experienced initially as What I find, however, is that this allows a space in which students don’t necessarily have to take a final position . It does not have to be points of view, as indoctrination rather than critique . all that you ever get to say on the matter . Instead, it provides an instance of learning by thinking and speaking—not only through one’s Hopefully this manifested as an opening rather than an enclosure in that class, allowing people to, as you said, consider and develop materials, media, processes, and so forth, but through the communicative acts of exhibition and presentation, including the responses their own relationship to the prison, and to decide what one does with that—whether that manifests in your art practice, in your one receives and the conversations that might follow . academic life, in your civic life, or more deeply in relation to your larger subjectivity, thoughts and so forth . The interesting wrinkle with the Prison Class, however, is that we decided not to do an exhibition per se, but to twist this trope of the MD: But we decided to do an event at the end, to do the making, the “arting,” if you will . People did performances, installations, etc ,. school, calling it a “conference”—a way of naming a multi-headed performance event, while it was, in actuality, nothing like a typical collaboratively and individually . I found a tension in that for myself; I had not come to a point where I felt like I could make a work conference . This made it even more experimental, and in the end, as you called it, “awkward ”. This wasn’t an assignment but something through our class . I remember this awkward event we did . At this moment, the question became so potent: How do we speak about we chose to do collectively, and in my mind, rather than forcing people to take positions publicly, there was, as you said, the opportunity this, make work, invent a language around this that does not fall into those exact ideological dispositions? What is our language and to have the presentation act as an attempt to negotiate one’s position—to question it, to stake it out, to falter, to attempt to have none, or position as a class, what is it for us individually, how do we negotiate that? to address the contradictions that each of us might inhabit in relation to questions of the class, or to push back against them altogether .

AH: I can see how that was a problem, if our awkward event felt like a way of having to “take a position,” especially if it was perceived MD: I think what you are pointing to here is important, that we made a conference, an event . There is a primacy placed upon as one that the teacher would be assessing . individual studios at CalArts . That is where we make our work, where we have our studio visits . To this end, and perhaps with the end of semester exhibition, a certain notion of an exhibition is assumed: individual artworks hung and placed next to each other . I often had MD: Could I, as a student, disagree with how some of these works were operating, in the context of the classroom, and even more so a difficult time with this, as you know . when talking about other classmates’ work? Especially given what we said earlier, of having a larger practice and asking how we function in the world, these kinds of exhibitions Just as it takes time to find one’s position and to figure out how to speak from it, making work adds to that challenge; how do you can implicitly assume certain kinds of practices, certain kinds of work . But how do we allow for other practices to develop? For instance develop these strategies? Having a class focused on the prison industrial complex, in some way, forces you to stake out a position, even if Social Practice? it’s ever so discretely . There are ethics in a classroom . AH: The Prison Class event was based in part upon a model that some of us had concocted together for the end of the “Collaboration” Maybe this is the difficulty between having a conversation around prisons, and teasing out these ideological dispositions and so forth and class the semester before: a circuit of simultaneous performances and interactions that revolved around a small geometry of classroom then making work about it . tables (ones you all had relocated from our classroom to the lawn, if I remember correctly!) . It was an organizational form that allowed smaller collaborative groupings to bring their ideas into a shared and connected temporality and authorship-space . AH: This dilemma—between providing the critical tools to find one’s position and being asked to assume a position—could that be a part of the difficulty of each one of us already having a position, which we bring into the room on the first day? While the Prison Class event was certainly different from this, for me they both held the possibility of articulating a different mode of production than the mode you’re pointing to as the privileged one: the individual studio, and the solo exhibition, as well as the group MD: I remember the first day in that class, there were close to forty people there, all wanting to join the class . People came in fired exhibition in which singular works are held at a distance, their individual authorship(s) always clearly and stably clarified . up . I also think of our Skype with Rachel Herzing from Critical Resistance (CR), and I think this was important . She spoke to what abolition of prisons might mean . It was amazing, and in a lot of ways it blew my mind . This scratches interestingly at the notion of practice that we started with, where practices are, in part, characterized by their mode of production . Where, for example, despite a work’s intention to be critical of capitalism, it might reproduce it nonetheless through When I speak about time, I think you yourself have spent so much time thinking about prisons, and you are quite clear on your its mode of production—valorizing individualist production, obscuring non-capitalist community and value, producing the same position . Then I remember you talked about possibly submitting something to CR, which at that time felt way too soon . We had that fetishisms, alienations and atomizations that the cultural reproduction of capitalism relies upon, despite what Walter Benjamin would conversation in class, and we agreed that we were not there yet . There was so much energy and excitement in the class, but I also felt we call its “correct tendency ”. were all in very different places . 4 5 A perfect example of this, which you brought up, is the common approach we see right now to describing “Social Practice ”. Social interested in, while also utilizing this allocated time and space for something productive for us and our peers? Or to go back to the Practice is too often being seen as a new medium or a genre, often in ways that still preserve stable individual authorship . Moreover, Shootout in the Guggenheim: how can we use and transform the institutional settings we are within and make a ‘space’ to think through Social Practice is rarely taken up as a form of practice—praxis—one that privileges modes of production other than what these and develop the questions we have together . This is very much tied to a feminist practice, in my mind . disciplinary understandings can reflect; modes that are in contradistinction to conventional structures of authorship and spectatorship . The focus is so much on translating them into art historical and museological purposes that their historical modalities are altogether We decided to invite our peers to have conversations with us in the gallery space over the course of one week (the time span of a obscured —modalities rooted in the political and philosophical questions of the social, and the contexts of revolution and radicality from thesis show) . We made six round tables, painted with chalkboard paint, and gave people chalk pens to take notes with during the which they have historically emerged . conversations . Afterwards the tables would remain, leaving a record within the gallery . CalArts is a large art school with many departments . We wanted to develop a conversation specific to the art school, and invited both undergraduate and graduate students . We Clearly, this raises the stakes of our notion of a practice, and with that in mind, can I turn the starting question around? Instead of asking would introduce the project in our email invite . We would begin each conversation by talking about the importance of listening, and what it means to say one’s teaching is a part of their practice as an artist, since you’re a student at the moment, do you consider being a student that we thought of the chalk pens as ways of remembering your thoughts until it was your turn to speak . as part of your practice as an artist? I think we both felt that at the heart of the project were these conversations, along with how we introduced and framed them . We MD: Yes, I do . And when I finish school, I will need to consider how to continue my practice . At school you are in a place where you were interested in creating a space where we could talk about and reflect on how we had come to CalArts, what art practice was, how are challenged by being amongst other students and faculty . When earlier I talked about how it requires time to develop one’s positions, our educational setting played into this and how we understood ourselves as students and practitioners . It produced a space where we to stake them out, develop a practice and a language around it, all of this is done in the setting of the school, through having ongoing actually privileged this conversation and took it seriously, instead of just informally talking about these things amongst our close friends . conversations . In pursuing this curatorial degree now, perhaps, I’m trying to find ways to stay in this setting of ongoing conversations with their occasional manifestations as publications, symposiums, exhibitions, projects and so forth . AH: This seems like a place in which your role as both student and artist found a knot that you can’t untangle, offering something that was specific to the school context, but providing much more than just a mere extra-curricular supplement to the school . Instead AH: So do we both look to what happens in school as a part of a practice that bleeds beyond the school’s boundaries and is porous it seemed to provide a space to step back, to step outside, to defamiliarize and open up the space, to question its terms and conditions, to the world? Such that the politics of that learning space—the politics of teacher-student relationships, the architectures of learning while using its conventions (the graduation exhibition, the school’s time, the language of institutional critique and the tools of the and assessment, classrooms versus galleries versus individual studios versus collective workspaces versus learning in the field, and its classroom) in an unexpected way . temporalities—are continuous with the same politics in the larger world? MD: It ended up making a lot of sense to me—the approach, strategy and focus of that project . Heather and I think about it as an MD: YES! ongoing project, but we have yet to determine how to proceed . I think this collaboration, combined with my research practice at CalArts, actually led me to shift gears a bit, to now be studying in the context of a Curatorial Studies program . It allowed me to think AH: I feel that a primary way in which we exercise that is by building temporary communities together, and that in itself is a about my practice differently . practice—a social practice—in which we produce the “we” you mentioned at the beginning . However, then the temporary location of that practice (our school) must not be the point or else, as an institution, our purposes are reduced to our own narcissistic, institutional I remember an interesting point you brought up in a studio visit with Heather and me . We were talking about an upcoming critique self-reproduction . The point has to be the practices people leave with, what goes into the world . and how we would deal with it, especially anticipating questions like, “Would this be art, what are the boundaries,” etc . Your strategy for those questions was “well, how is it not art?” Again opening up what, how and why we designate something to be art and using the But this takes me to why I wanted to have this conversation with you . I felt you were always very self-reflective upon the conditions of framework of the critique to grapple with these constructed boundaries . our learning—the kind of space and relationships we were drawing up, and that you were always a strong advocate for the quality of learning in the class . You asserted the need to dig deeper into things, to push ourselves and our understandings and I always appreciated In the same way I’m now often asked if I’m an artist or a curator . I ask, “do they have to be all that different?” the enthusiasm you brought to our classes . AH: Yes, “is this art” can be the most predictable question, missing the point of the work altogether if the point is not “to be art” per With this in mind, I have questions about how all of this led to Classroom Case Study, the collaboration that Heather M . O’Brien and se; but then again, at the right time, it can be the most useful to have to answer, so long as it’s to analyze by, not to discipline one’s work you began together your final year, as well as your choice to follow your MFA in the Photography and Media program with a Curatorial into being more conventionally “arty ”. Studies program? Similarly, I think of the ‘artist-curator’ question with both limitations and possibility—on one hand it disciplines (why does it matter MD: I came to CalArts from the department of one of your collaborators, in the setting of the Art Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark . whether a cultural producer calls themselves an artist or curator at one moment or another?) . On the other hand, it’s a powerful thing to So perhaps I had assumptions that you as a teacher and artist might share similar interests, approaches and so forth with her . In this way be able to switch between one modality of production to another, summoning the powers of one in order to surpass the limitations of you were familiar to what I knew, and to a practice and teacher whom I admired and shared interests with . another . To masquerade, to infiltrate, to productively pollute .

In our first class together, “Shootout in the Guggenheim,” you centered the class around, to put it simply, the question of where we are MD: I guess I’m proposing–through answering “do they have to be all that different”–to have other types of relationships, other forms left with institutional critique and the agency of the artist within the museum . I remember thinking that I had to adjust my listening, that the of collaboration than you might assume between artists and curators . context from which my peers where speaking was fundamentally different from what I knew from Denmark’s state-funded museums . This very simply demanded all of us to be able to hear those differences together and think through what they might mean in this shared AH: I accept that proposal! And I think it highlights really well the stakes of practice, as we’ve been discussing here—not in how one landscape . is reproducing the discipline, but how one applies it . How, through one or more modes of production, are we acting as shapers of the world . In that sense, identifying as either an “artist” or “curator” might be useful, but either may be limiting as well, so that we need to I actually think this shift of schools and contexts has been very important for me . It has made me think about how you enter rooms, what forge new positions, new distributions of authorship, new capabilities and powers, new modes of honesty and subterfuge, and as you say, you assume, how you adjust, how you communicate within a group of people that may not share your experiences or understand the forms of collaboration that defy the neat categories that “artist” and “curator” presume . context from which you are speaking . I think we are all challenged in this way in classroom settings . I became interested in how we can allow for those differences and nuances to be explored more within the framework of the classroom . And now I’m thinking of your previous question, about “how you enter rooms ”. We discussed seeing the politics of the school as continuous with—rather than separate from—the politics of the larger world . In that way, do you think that, whatever role(s) you As a second year graduate student at CalArts, you are meant to do a thesis show . At that point I was working through what a feminist inhabit will give you paths to continue opening rooms, reflecting upon how we enter into them and making better rooms for us to practice might be, how these have been historicized and so forth . Again I enjoyed a new look onto what I, from a Scandinavian context, inhabit beyond the confines of school? I had learned a feminist practice to be, through understanding the feminist histories and practices tied to Southern California and CalArts . MD: I will try to! The notion of practice we have developed in this conversation strikes me—at this very moment of developing a “curatorial thesis proposal”—as something that is so very important in how we think about institutions, exhibition-making and But the thesis actually grew out of another collaboration started with my fellow first year graduate student, who you mentioned, Heather collaboration . It will be the very challenge of insisting that practice changes how we think of processes, of viewers, of exhibitions, each as M . O’Brien . We would nerd out talking about notions of Social Practice; I would share my two cents from the educational setting participants in conversations, and to this end, never as entirely resolved . How do we maintain community and conversations? That I see at the Art Academy in Denmark, and Heather would talk about her experiences coming from a non-traditional art background, and as a core attribute of the setting of school, going into the world with peers that I share practices with and holding them open for others working with community and non-profit organizations in New Orleans and New York City . I think we came to a point where we to enter as we move beyond the confines of school . And to this end always insisting that our practice extends beyond the imagined limits wanted to think through what such a project might look like in the context of my upcoming mandatory thesis (usually a solo exhibition and boundaries of the art world . in one of the galleries at CalArts) . Pushing up against the finality that can be felt when you pursue these exhibitions, their celebrated individualized nature, and the realities of finishing school, how could we, as collaborators, extend the conversation we were the most ART Proposal and/or action and/or object, plus discourse. While this is an inadequate explanation of art, it might be necessary to refrain from a definition since art, by definition, might be that which resists definition. Arthur Danto makes the argument that art is defined a mimeticthrough a theoretical practice was model; changed. he gives Untilthe example that of the change, impossibility Impressionistcreating of regarding reality works could only throughImpressionism be considered new forms. as inept,as art hoaxesuntil or the a resultdominant of madness. theoretical A theoretical model understandingdefining art as of artprimarily had to shift from art imitating reality, to art 6 7 Marjetica Potrc,č Amanda Eicher, Learning by Doing, Performing, Ryo Yonami, Nuriye Tohermes Exchanging, Communicating & Mai Shirato

In the autumn of 2012, Marjetica Potrč and her “Design for the Living World” class from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK) went to the Stockholm suburb of Fittja, by the invitation of Botkyrka Konsthall, where they worked with Amanda Eicher and OPENrestaurant from San Francisco and Kultivator, a Swedish collective of artists and farmers, on the project The Common Roof Kitchen . The HFBK students designed and constructed a roof, tables, and benches in front of the Botkyrka Artist’s Residence for the Open Café . There, OPENrestaurant prepared food to exchange for recipes, stories, and ideas from the residents of Fittja’s largely immigrant community . The students also collected local breads and recipes to create The Bread Library . The goal was to stimulate discussions among local residents about a new identity for Fittja – to envision a sustainable future based on traditional knowledge and urban agriculture . The following conversation took place in Hamburg on December 19th, 2012 .

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MP: We have fifteen to twenty minutes, no? Any ideas? You have a lot of ideas .

AE: Well, I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Marjetica, ever since you said some time in October when we were together, “I never go anywhere without my students ”. Which is probably not completely true, but I felt kind of the same . When I went back to the United States, I got a call saying, “So you’ll come back to Sweden in December?” And I thought, “Oh no! How am I going to do this by myself?” Then I realized I had a really beautiful group of students around me . I told them, “If any of you have the means and the time to come with me, it would be wonderful to have you ”. And that’s how Ryo is here . So it was really you! [Laughs ]. It was your way that inspired me .

MP: Back in October, I remember, you said your students weren’t allowed to work with institutions outside your university . Did I get that wrong?

AE: There are rules that prevent students from working in the real world . So unless they have special permission, a student’s work has to remain within the University . Which is nice in a way; it gives them a white box to experiment in . You know you’re not designing a house that someone will live in, but rather designing something or thinking about something in an abstract space where you can dream to the fullest extent of your abilities . But we are really trying hard to break down those walls and work in the real world .

MP: Ryo, did you have to get permission to come to Sweden?

RY: No, I didn’t . I just needed to have my passport .

AE: But I’m sure that if someone found out I was travelling with a student, and off school property, I’d probably be held responsible for all of Ryo’s cuts and scratches and things like that . [Laughter ].

RY: Yeah! Be sure you don’t cause them! [Laughter ].

MP: You know, when we worked together in Fittja, I was impressed by how minimal–nearly invisible–your actions were . In our class, we are interested in what we call relational objects. We are not into physical objects . We think that art or design is about relational objects . For instance, when my students Julia [Suwalski] and William [Schwartz] did a project about Fittja’s breads–The Bread Library–they created a whole system . But you were just exchanging something: you cooked and exchanged stories for food . It was a very extreme, nearly invisible performative action .

AE: Everything just went away at the end . I mean, in a way education is the medium, because I’m learning to cook recipes and learning about everything that goes with a recipe . You know, the culture that comes from the conditions you’re cooking under, how taste works in a different context . The people who collaborated with us were also learning about the [Botkyrka] residency and Konsthall and about the shift in their community . And I think everyone involved was starting to dream about what this relationship could do .

NT: So the performative part of your work is important? 8 9 AE: Yes . I mean, I don’t think about it as a performance, but I always do think, well, if we do something, and there are resources like AE: I also think that the word “exchange” is a little bit right and a little bit wrong here . Because in a way it’s also a guess that this kind food or ideas or human abilities, and they’re going to move from one place to another, there has to be some currency of exchange . It of exchange might already be happening . So if you put a cupcake or a question mark or something else there, things might flow in a way could be money– that’s really easy–but in this case it was fun to think about what else could serve as currency . that we could write down, observe, or look at more closely . But each time it’s a guess that maybe these ideas are already out there and we just haven’t accessed them yet . And so I wonder, Marjetica, what questions you are thinking about now? Because you’re beginning a new I think in the Fittja project the medium of exchange was performance, more than even the food or recipes . We took the recipes and on project in Norway and I’m sure you probably have other projects that are generating questions for you . the last weekend made a big meal at the Botkyrka Konsthall . Elmas, a Turkish woman who had been working with us the whole time, did a performance just by moving her normal everyday life in Fittja to the gallery . What she normally does is sell little things–soap, MP: Every project we do together is different . Take the St . Lambrecht project, where we practiced making decisions by consensus, razors, stockings or slippers . She brought everything to the gallery on the day of the meal and set up a table to sell things, just like we which was amazing because we agreed together as a group on every detail . Consensus is not like democracy, where your vote can cancel were setting up a table of food . And she was living her normal life, more or less, as a performance in the gallery . And we were doing our mine out . In consensus, a decision is only taken when everyone agrees . But after the St . Lambrecht project we stopped using consensus performance, which was trying to cook recipes from Fittja . as a way of working .

Do you ever feel like you’re performing something? Or that maybe that is the medium you are working in? Now we are preparing a project in Tromsø, Norway, where we are thinking about exercises, or performative actions . There are eight of them, from gathering around a rocket stove someplace in the open air, to dumpster diving . But what is important is that each of these NT: Yes, I think so . What we do is sometimes very normal and basic; it’s just about how people live together and try to solve problems . actions comes with a certain kind of knowledge, such as revisiting the concept of the commons, or pushing ourselves to realize that we live I think it’s beautiful to think of it as a performative act, because when you do a performance as an artwork then you have to think about in the Anthropocene Era . We have looked at the idea of exchange–the exchange of food, the exchange economy–and what participation every detail . I think it’s the normal way we deal with situations; it’s maybe not normal for everyone, but for us it’s kind of normal–talking means . We are currently reading texts by Markus Miessen, Claire Bishop, and others in order to understand more about participation . to people and then thinking of this also as part of a performative act . That gives value to the little details, which we like and which As outsiders, can we think and work with a local community to bring change? Or will we be instrumentalized? We are building an would seem unimportant if looked at without the glasses of an artist . open source library around this kind of knowledge; it will serve as our foundation of knowledge for this year .

MP: Communication with people becomes one with the work; talking with people is just as important as the objects . AE: And is this new for your group? You haven’t used this kind of open source library for projects in the past .

NT: Yes . NT: Actually, it’s like this: in the St . Lambrecht and Fittja projects we were one united group . Okay, I have to add one thing: we are a mixed group and we all speak different languages . So at one point we sort of made up our own language . [Laughter ]. Which was MP: As artists, we’re agents of the process–mediators . very beautiful, but of course it wasn’t possible for outsiders to understand what we meant . If I said, “The stewardship of the land is such-and-such in Austria,” then Marjetica would know exactly what I meant but someone else maybe wouldn’t . Our knowledge was AE: Also, Marjetica, what you said makes me think of one of my amazing teachers, Anna Halprin . I used to attend her performance something very much within our group; it came and grew through talking . So this is why it’s so necessary for us now to have a universal class . At one point I think someone was frozen in a stance with their hand held out facing downward and she turned the person’s hand framework around our work . I don’t know if this answers your question, but until now we didn’t make this knowledge understandable over and said: “Now isn’t that interesting?” And the whole pose came to life and became the cornerstone for the choreography we were for everyone . [Laughter ]. working on . I think the details of how you go about doing things really inform a project like the one you did in St . Lambrecht . Or how we worked together in Fittja . Some of it’s natural and some of it we can talk about in words, but the way we work with people–the MP: I think the projects also serve as a link . For me, it’s interesting that we somehow had an urge to do this because traditional studies way we approach groups of people or individuals–is really very important in how the final feeling of the piece comes out . I think that’s of design don’t do this . But what’s important, actually, are all those issues that come before the project–like ethics and what your probably why it was so exciting for us all to come together in that apartment in Fittja in October . It seemed so easy to talk about the way position is with regard to nature or in civilization–which have suddenly become very instrumental for what we do . So we also have to we do things, and we didn’t need to talk about it very much because we have similar approaches . be aware of our position in the world .

Marjetica, what do you think about that? About the ways you approach projects or even how your students approach projects? NT: And this very much comes back to our group . I would say that what you did this year, Amanda–putting your class outside–I think this is also a little bit like what we are doing at the moment; maybe it’s not different at all . The difference is for the others to be able to MP: That’s a good question . Through our involvement in participatory projects with local residents in different localities, the students talk to you, but there is also the difference to you that you be heard by others . So you cannot talk your own language; you have to talk and I realized that we are similar to what Germans called the wandergeselle . This was a wandering journeyman who gained experience in a way that is understandable . in his craft by travelling from town to town . It’s a traditional way of learning by doing . On the other hand, I am aware that we are now interested in local and traditional knowledge because we see it as a potential basis for a twenty-first century post-neoliberal way of AE: Yes, you have to grow into the project . In a way, I’m still living my own life in the project but there’s a certain point when I realize, living . “Oh, I’m living the project’s life now ”. I think for us, by the time Friday came last week, it felt like, we’re living in a sort of combined life of working together in Fittja . And at a certain point for our class this semester, we felt like we could speak as a group together . AE: I was thinking of my classroom at the University of California and how much the walls are really part of the education there . You have your studio and you stay in it . I was wondering how it was for you this semester, Ryo, to be going outside the classroom almost RY: Yeah, I think the class did a good job trying to figure out the living style of an artist . A lot of people, including me, were expecting every day, taking our mobile classroom to different parts of the University . We went outside to look for answers to certain questions to make a sculpture or a painting, or something like that, in an art class called “New Genres ”. But it was nothing like that really . During probably once a week, with big photo scrims and a blackboard and charrette cards sometimes, or with food, or something else, to create the semester, people came to realize that art is about keeping the mind working and working . Everyone was thinking about how we a space where we could talk to people . So I wonder, what that was like for you? could translate the vision of the university into an art piece . It’s just very difficult for most of us traditional artists, who make paintings or sculptures . We were all trying to figure out how we could make athing . I was trapped in the thought of making an object while RY: I think it’s very much based on the topic you’re presenting in the classroom . So I don’t think going outside the classroom would be ignoring the fact that there were different forms of presenting art pieces, like Amanda’s work and OPENrestaurant . valuable in other types of classes . However, in this particular class we were trying to figure out the future vision of universities in the United States . A lot of the time, we were outside interacting with students who happened to be walking by at that time, and they would We did some events and projects, such as the cupcake event and a movie night, and we were on campus trying to get people to pay interact with us . They didn’t necessarily join in the conversation, but they would stop and listen to it . attention and participate . So we were constantly thinking about projects and how to transfer our idea to the crowd . That was a new habit for us, I think: to realize that we were in an upper-level art class and should be generating ideas outside the classroom or during At the very beginning, we only had some big screen stands with a series of photos taken by Ansel Adams . Most of time, students would our break . And that was good because that is how we should be as artists, in my opinion . just stop and look at the screens . They might have been listening to the conversation too, I don’t know . NT: And did you find a way to attract people and get them involved? After we did that maybe twice, people started observing what we were doing – not really behind the screen but listening to our conversation a little bit . Then they would walk away . At a later stage, we tried to interact with students and faculty members . We set up a RY: My part in this whole project was to make advertisements . We had two main events . I made invitations with my own hands and cupcake table and some blackboards and then would stop people and offer them free cupcakes or soup, and in exchange we asked people sent them out to people . For the first one, I tore sketching paper into small pieces, stuck on a little chrysanthemum, and wrote the event to tell us about their vision for the university–our University, to be more specific . Personally, it was relatively new to learn about our information down in pencil . For the second big event, I used chocolate kisses, you know, the candy . I tied them with a ribbon on which subject in a way that gave us a chance to interact with people from other classes or just people on the street . the event information was printed . I think that worked pretty well; people were more willing to accept it than fliers . 10 11 NT: The experience we had was that it’s all about doing things personally . And best, of course, is eye-to-eye contact .

RT: Yes, yes .

MS: What’s a good way to contact people? One can say, “OK, they live there, and we’re visiting ”. But beyond visitors and residents, what we have in common are three big elements in life–food, clothing, and shelter . That’s it: food, clothes, house . That’s the beginning of all life .

During the St . Lambrecht project, William [Schwartz] and I collected recipes for traditional dishes . That was the beginning of building a relationship with the local community . We were strangers knocking on people’s doors without an appointment [laughter] and asking them, “Could you tell me your family recipes?” It was hard, but slowly they started to talk about themselves–not only about their recipes, but also about issues around food . Collecting recipes was a successful way to understand the local knowledge .

MP: Yes, that’s true . Amanda, what can you tell us about your exchange of food for knowledge in Fittja? You went back to Fittja half a year after your performative act . What has remained from the project?

AE: What has remained in Fittja? Well, I think one of the really interesting things I found was that this time when we first arrived, in December, knowledge of the project was really present . The day we arrived it was already dark out and nothing was really happening, but people saw the light on and came knocking on the door–and it wasn’t people who were just passing by, it was people who had been involved in the project . They said, “When we saw your light on, we thought there must be something happening ”. And so the idea of that space as a space for them was still there . People were actually thinking, “Oh, if they’re in there we must be able to visit and go inside ”. I think this might be troublesome to the other artists who go there, but the sense of that artist residency as a space to which neighbourhood people can come, is genuine and real . And then I think the idea of using a public space the way that we did is also still very present . So other people might be able to make experiments like that more easily . I don’t know if they would do it by themselves, but the curiosity is there .

People’s own interest in their recipes and ideas is also still present . We had come in with the idea of making five different recipes we had been given . And we ended up with a table full of different types of food, because people kept telling us about more dishes . So I think that exchange is very much alive . I don’t know what happens when we’re not there . I think in a way it might be dormant, but we just don’t know . If it is, the feeling remains that it could be activated again .

Then there were other things: For example, Erik, the Slovenian neighbour, mentioned that he’d been thinking of us, so when he saw that things were happening in the apartment, he came to the opening at the Konsthall . He wanted to make sure we got the message to you, Marjetica, that he says hello . He said he always checks to see what’s happening .

The Iranian photographer who hung out with us for many days became friends a little with Elmas, the older Turkish woman . He checks in on her now, and they have a relationship of solidarity in the community . So you know, even though those things are happening on a hyper-personal level, I think that it quite often takes an individual’s leadership, a leadership voice, to develop larger changes within a community . And that sense of leadership is there–even if it’s just being willing to knock on the door- this is really important .

MP: Would you agree that the artist’s or designer’s role in the process is to be a mediator? Do you think that’s a good description?

AE: Yes, or sometimes an instigator . Also, sometimes I think of what William said when we were all talking together in October: “Sometimes we’re the ones who do something in a silly way that allows other people to do it in their everyday lives ”. I think sometimes that’s our role (see also Aura; Honest/y) AUTHENTIC/ITY Except for issues of provenance (whether art historical, commercialversion of an or anthropological), “original.” Art, this especially is of limited contemporary use for assessingpastiche art, art and may deliberately the despite multiple. how frequently Each oppose of these presumptions it is needs used. to One be assessed assumption of originality on its own, made different is that a copy and terms. is authorship, automatically and may instead a lesser propose the copy, the simulacrum, the ready-made, the plagiarized, the Authenticity is also used to mean “authenticity of expression,”amalgam as though the artist of learned behavior, has revealed invention some interior and translation essence in an unmediated into form, all The way. Authenticity making of which are complex, of an may artwork, highly be used in relation mediated whether to “core” conceptual being, one’s processes. as evidenced or “expressive,” by entails theupon popular or promote an artists, phrase, “being and are true seen as to being oneself,” or the even “keeping ultimate it real.” qualities These are almost for the truisms making of among art–qualities artists, or at least that those claim who comment to transcend the market, yet representing an artist’s prime marketability. 12 13 Andreas Fischer & Hannah B. Higgins

If I’m going to have to commit suicide, I’m going to have to make teaching like art. Or somehow a form of art.

John Baldessari 1

What Michael Craig-Martin has called the “unstructuring” of art schools has been seen as a manifestation of institutional critique, a practice born out of the late 1960s . If massive structural change seemed unavoidable to many progressive students and faculty2 and significant change was necessary, then asserting oneself against inherited structures seemed reasonable and productive . In art schools unstructuring happened through the total or partial elimination of grades, attendance requirements, and regular class meetings . When courses did meet, they sometimes convened in bars or wherever people happened into each other . Planned curriculum was thrown out in favor of a selection of courses that often had irregular content . Foundations and fundamentals were eliminated as ideals and students were often asked to jump into topics at intermediate and advanced levels and just sort things out . John Baldessari summarized teaching at CalArts, a progressive art school known for its appetite for unstructuring, in the 60s this way: “you’re acting like cupid, trying to make relationships between the artists […] it might just be dead in the water, but then again sometimes something happens ”. 3

Many of the features added to (or removed from) art programs in the late 60s persist to varying extents, if only in the form of the latent desires of more progressive faculty . But a shifting cultural context means that it is likely less productive to understand these features as institutional negation or critique now (if it ever really was) . The gradual fracturing of the master narratives that guided the idealism of the 60s has arguably leveled production, making the various layers of training and subsequent forms of practice of Sunday hobbyists, commercial makers, and otherwise progressive artists culturally viable in one context or another . Pop Art, of course, was an early symptom of this widening consideration and was followed by similarly symptomatic manifestations in the forms of conceptualism, new media, decorative arts and social practice . Recently, articles have been written about the populist conceptual functions of the works of artists like Bob Ross and Thomas Kinkade .

The world of material cultural practice can now be seen as a set of fractured worlds that interact with or parallel each other as they address widely divergent concerns . It no longer makes sense to speak of “the art world” or to assume that an art practice can address culture as a whole . Where it might have once been necessary to resist apparently anachronistic value systems of institutions, given the perception of a hegemonic sphere of influence at which any self-respecting cultural producer would balk, it is possible now to see some of these same institutions (museums, schools, galleries) as parts of an increasingly fractured world, each layer with its own concerns, problems, and strengths . When a perception exists of a dominant sphere of influence, it makes sense to fight against oppressive expressions of that sphere . When there is a sense that many spheres co-exist and that no single voice or value system dominates, is it much more possible to have an affirmative relationship to some fragment of even the most conventional institution of production because of some part of what it has to offer (instead of reacting against it wholesale, as the dominant logic of cultural criticality prescribes) .

One might argue that it is desirable in this context to look at institutions as uniquely valuable sites of thought, innovation, development, and certain kinds of freedom . Unstructuring, from this contemporary perspective, has much to offer as an orientation that moves beyond a negation-based monitoring of direction .

Unstructuring actualizes the multiple layers of social interaction possible in and around institutions . On a basic level, our art schools and university art programs are labs filled with people thinking and materializing side-by-side . This often takes place across multiple disciplines, especially where art schools exist within universities . The living, breathing, and constantly changing permutations of students, teachers, staff members, and visitors in addition to surrounding publics that make up institutions offer huge varieties of interactions and negotiations of thought, experience, values, knowledge, and potential for innovation . Unstructuring sets a foundation for free development of these volatile mixtures . Unstructuring also allows increased connectivity to capitalization of the larger worlds surrounding institutions .

Recently, I had a discussion about teaching and practicing in an institution with Hannah B . Higgins at The University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is a Professor of Art History . Higgins is the author of The Grid Book (2009), Fluxus Experience (2002), and co-editor of Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of Digital Art with Douglas Kahn (2012) . By no coincidence, Higgins is

1 Baldessari, John and Michael Craig-Martin, “Conversation John Baldessari and Michael Craig-Martin,” in Art School (Propositions For The 21st Century), ed . Steven Henry Madoff (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 48 . 2 Baldessari, John and Michael Craig-Martin, 42 . 3 Ibid ,. 43 . 14 15 the daughter of Fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins . She was a professor of mine years ago and continues to be a mentor and This is another place where I think there is some curious productive influence from you to me . I always think of myself as a maker great friend . Given that I have considered the ways institutions link to wider contexts, it is worth mentioning that Higgins’s husband, who starts off with, or at least early on abandons things to intuition and just lets things sort of play themselves out . I run a whole range Joe Reinstein, was Deputy Social Secretary in the first term of the Obama administration and Head of Surrogates for the 2012 re- of activities and then stop and ask what’s productive, then maybe edit or see what can be pushed forward . Oddly enough, I feel like election campaign . permission to do that didn’t so much come from my experience in the studio—I was somehow too self-conscious about that side of things for a long time—but from studying art history with you . Your approach was so much about being open and curious and there was Andreas Fischer: I think this is about mixture . I’d like to talk about the mixture—the productive place between your practice, my even an appetite for failure there . Even the discussions we would have night after night in seminars—you were interested in and willing practice, and our teaching . The reason I came to you is because I feel that as an artist a lot of what I practice somehow comes to me to let strands from readings float off into some other place and find some remote relationship that we wouldn’t have found had we stayed from art history and historiography . As a teacher a lot of what I find myself trying to do somehow points back to what you did in the strictly in the reading even if we didn’t always get to that obviously productive place . (By the way the word “obviously” is important classroom . So, there is a kind of double stream of influence coming from you . I wanted to come back and talk about that a little bit, but here because many of those strands ended up in some place that we only realized was valuable days or weeks later, or even longer beyond maybe it would be interesting to hear some of your views about your research and the way it dovetails with teaching, then we could the initial conversation…Some of that still goes on when I go back to readings today ). move on from there . HH: Well, I learned a lot from you too . I mean, I hadn’t thought about painting the way you were thinking about painting . It is very Hannah Higgins: I came to art history, as you know, through a family of working artists—it’s very important because I had the lived important that the perception not be that I’m the only one giving information even though I have mastered certain skills of logic or experience . I was studying with really good art historians at Oberlin College and not often finding the place where I could ask my writing or whatever I do . It has to be an exchange—this attitude towards the classroom only works if both sides are open to actually questions or find the thing I wanted to do . I wanted to make oddball projects, not necessarily art history projects . learning from each other . I never learned to paint . I never felt the way that painters do about what they do and so I learned a lot in that exchange as well . There is a man named Jeffery Hamburger, a medievalist now at Harvard, who let me write a play as a paper . I was convinced there were like fifteen different points of view, and I sort of imagined how all of these different perspectives on how a building comes to be what Its almost like a tangible cloud of thinking that happens in my classes—at least it feels that way to me . It almost feels like if you could put it is could easily coexist in Abbot Suger’s St . Dennis . Another professor let me do a film looking at examples of classical architecture on a meter in there it would tick—because everyone is relatively unselfconsciously putting themselves out there with the material so there’s campus, and I got more out of those projects than conventional research papers . I still reflect on those values and bring them into my a kind of vulnerability, a shared project that might fail that makes a kind of human pulse . John Dewey wrote about that . In some of my classroom . It doesn’t mean that I don’t see the place for research, but it meant that I see art history at a material practice—as something classes the students say that afterwards they have to go do therapy with each other because if you are really doing the work it is going to that actually has a life off the bookshelf . That’s why I have performance reconstructions, or publications . Or instead of exams, the go to those primal places for you . students do journals . Or if I have artists in the class, I want to see that stuff in their work—not to turn them into illustrators of some theory, but actually to give them an opportunity to internalize things . Through internalizing, that’s when you know—this philosopher This isn’t unique to me though . I want to mention Thomas Jefferson’s ideas about education—also Leon Botstein, the President of Bard writes so well you can’t find the hole, but when you try to use it the hole is there right away . College—the most important things that happen in education are the things that happen outside what we usually call the classroom . What I try to do is make my classroom the outside-the-classroom space . AF: And as an artist in your classroom, I thought that doing what you are describing was a way to work using trial-and-error . It wasn’t internalizing as in, “You are taking an exam,” it was internalizing as in, “Wrestle with this!” AF: That is so interesting because I hear myself say something very close to what you are saying about making the class into the outside- the-classroom experience in studio classes often and I think that is largely influenced by knowing that you were trying to do what you HH: Turning it into practice, seeing what an idea actually does when we try to explore it outside of academic discourse . are describing . I feel it more than anything . I’m not even sure I ever heard you tell us that—it was in the air .

AF: Yes that, but not just that—seeing if there is a way to relate through practice to verbal information and ideas that maybe can’t In teaching, of course, there is the question of time and mental energy being pulled away from one’s own practice, but I want to talk happen the same way in a studio setting . I think relating verbal and material information is a hugely complex issue for artists and it is about ways that this stuff bounces back and forth productively . The relationship between teaching and what I do in my studio, for highly valuable that there are a range of settings where artists can work out this negotiation . It makes sense that in addition to working example, or the relationship between teaching and how you write . When I think about this relationship for myself, I think that it on studio production with studio faculty that artists would have a place to really negotiate their ideas with specialists on the linguistic absolutely is a productive relationship, but I am sort of at pains to describe exactly how . side who somehow know how to accommodate studio production or who are sensitive to studio production as well . HH: Again, it’s not for everyone . Some of our best scholars, in this department even, need their scholarship to be much more separate HH: That is what I aspire to . I do get a lot of crap work—the same way you have in the tenure bubble—people who exploit its openness from their teaching and would be very uncomfortable with a kind of leveling . I want to be clear that there is a place for that as well . in order to do as little work as possible . Some people are wired for a certain kind of hierarchical structure, which is very fertile for them . I’m not a sort of everything should be deconstructed, no hierarchies person . It’s just that for me, in my classrooms and in my own scholarship, this is productive . It is not a AF: There are people who would argue that having the opportunity is worth the risk . universalizable concept . I don’t want it to be universalizing anyway . There should be as many teaching styles as learning styles .

HH: And I am 100 percent in that camp . AF: It would be sort of ridiculous to talk about it that way—as if it needs to be the same for everyone . Is there, then, a kind of indirect AF: So growing up with artists? energy that comes from teaching and just sharing ideas with a group that causes you a sort of higher level of motivation, or are there direct things? I think I have experienced some of this with you . I think you might have been working on material that we read with you HH: Growing up with artists…You see that that’s how they work . They/you have a problem or an interest or a passion, It doesn’t have at some points? to be negative or positive in the critical culture or affirmative culture sense of being against this or for that . But there is something driving them forward—they’re looking for a place, they’re looking for some way in the world to address, they’re looking for a site of HH: One of the things I really enjoy doing, especially, is a first reading with students where I don’t necessarily have a lot of familiarity . address, and you have to open up those spaces to them . In my “Experience” class, I hadn’t read any of that stuff before—all of Heidegger’s Being and Time, cover to cover .

AF: And you have to be willing and able to run down a thing that turns quickly into a cul-de-sac and not try to preemptively get rid of AF: That was insane! that kind of thing? HH: That was insane .

HH: Right, you have to be able to fail . Well-examined failure is the key to success in everything . I would say—this is in some ways very selfish—there are different kinds of pleasure . So sometimes a high can come from reading really complex material as a group and exploring together . It feels like an experience, like you break away from your own life and your perceptions are cued up and you have these amazing interconnections that may or may not yield anything that’s useful outside the You were so interesting because you got so interested in Katz… . . classroom . I still think that’s a useful sort of vapor to breathe . Every so often there is material or a new idea that comes out of it .

AF: That was sort of about guilty pleasure, trying to see if there was something to an intuition . Because looking at him started off that One example: I taught a food art course last spring with Lisa Lee, and it was an amazing course . We ran a banquet at the end instead of way for me . a paper project . That was great, but there were a number of the conversations in that class that somehow didn’t work . I thought those would be the best weeks…so it’s not like you can turn it on and off . It’s not like you can guarantee that because you have interesting HH: But I still see some of those thought processes in your painting and it’s been a decade . The way that you were able to frame those readings and a group of good readers that you are necessarily going to get this thing that you’re after, whether it’s something that yields questions within an academic discourse—they just merged together . Your thesis was a really, really good thesis . ideas in the classroom alone or is useful outside the classroom . I’ll tell you in terms of its effect on my own scholarship, the problems with those weeks have made it virtually impossible for me to continue with my food project . AF: Thank you! BAD/GOOD For any evaluations of bad/good to be useful, one would need to state the criteriacan be bad and bad for that can be evaluation—what good. makes it “bad” or “good”? Any resulting evaluation is specific to those criteria. Under different criteria, good One would also need to be clear that the evaluation is being conducted about the work itself,Bad/good rather are final than beingjudgments, a symptom and own ofone one’s method taste of andcritique bias. is to defer judgment since Thethe work’s critique meaning does is notalways have the context-specific same function as (or a trial, circumstantial; even if its dynamics and one might therefore occasionally can’t arrive at any bear thatkind of resemblance. final judgment). 16 17 AF: Is that teaching or classroom interaction functioning to uncover a problem with a project? culture of, you know, the most exotic, the most local, the most organic, the most rarified, the most expensive . It’s an almost seamless run into material that I find really problematic . In other words, its countercultural stance and use as outside dominant culture is a lie . That’s HH: Yes . my view . Its countercultural stance is a lie and the way it is deployed by museums on the basis of its ephemerality or its sociality—its relationality is a pose . AF: So that’s productive in a sense? Maybe similar in a sense to what critiques or focus groups might do? AF: This is one of the critiques that relational aesthetics has gotten . HH: In a sense . HH: Right . Exactly . Exactly, and I don’t think I had quite understood that . I always knew there was that risk, but maybe when I started My food project is called The Food Art Manual . It’s equal parts instructions for making and historical exploration of food art since thinking about the project four or five years ago I didn’t think it was necessarily that . What I don’t want to do is to write the attack on Futurism . So, you know, banquets where half of the food is edible and half isn’t, or all rainbow foods from Fluxus or Rirkrit Tiravanija’s all of contemporary food art, right, and if I’m not going to write that attack then I’m complicit in this problem . Thai banquets with spaghetti westerns running in the background . I thought, this is going to be great—it is going to be interactive— practice, theory, and history together . What I wound up feeling as the course was ending is that I was merely fueling the latest attempts AF: I totally respect that and it overlaps with something I have been holding onto recently . There is a part of a talk I recently gave that by museums to capitalize creativity . I felt so depressed that somehow we’ve abdicated even our diets . I’ve spent weeks trying to get back was about trying to avoid or trying to work beyond negation… . into that project, but it was just a crushing blow . So we’ll see if I ever get back to it—I don’t know . HH: Right! AF: That’s really intense! AF: Maybe that’s something else that either we just both relate to or maybe came through your influence . I do not mean to throw out HH: Intense . the kind of real productive use of critique as a way to break down, say, an oppressive circumstance… .

AF: Do you see that as being different or could you anticipate how it might have been different from thinking it through away from the HH: Yes, but you have to have a reason for living . classroom? AF: Yes! HH: Yeah, because the difference is this: coming off my research on Fluxus, I had assumed that material that caused one to be awakened at a sensory level and, therefore, curious about the experience would by definition create a more open relationship to the world . That HH: We need that . If I look at our political system right now, and I’m going to try to avoid Obama’s terminology because my own is the thesis of Fluxus Experience, and that’s how my book works, right? I still fundamentally believe that you can engage with an object relationship is so complicated there, we need to know what we’re for and what we’re for is (as far as I’m concerned) much more than by revisiting it . Where you have a thing that you touch, or a painting that you see, and it alters you . Then you can come back to it and what we’re against, right? It’s our dignity, our energy, our creativity, our selfhood, our aspirations . check your reaction again and see if you’ve changed or it’s changed or the context has changed . And then six months go by, and you come back and you do it again, and by then all those outside experiences are built into the object . I assumed that food would be that way AF: I wanted to ask you about the relationship through your parents to Black Mountain College . Are there conscious things you feel because it was social, that it would somehow sidestep issues of commodity that people suppose are particularly intense with painting, for from that or is that just something that operates in your intuition? example . Right? HH: I think I’m hugely influenced by Black Mountain . I think the way I work aspires to what I imagine those conversations must have AF: Right, that assumption about painting has been one of my battles . I am interested in something similar to you—art as a site of social been like . interaction . In my case, I just have to argue against a certain convention or view of my delivery device . AF: Did you get any of that stuff delivered to you directly? HH: Of course, it’s a hundred-year long battle . HH: No . Do you mean was there conversation about Black Mountain growing up? No, not at all . But there was a sort of special place of What I found instead was kind of like what Allan Kaprow found about happenings, which could only be performed once and why he affection for friends who were involved in the Cage class at the New School in 1957 and ‘58 . Cage ran this course called “Experimental decided to stop making Happenings . Food art as it is currently deployed in the high art mainstream—as the latest thing in museums—is Composition” and many of the people later associated with Fluxus and Happenings were in that class . It was not specifically musicians that only the board gets it, only the people who can pay the four-hundred dollars a plate get it . I was trying to do the manual, in part, who took it— painters, poets, scientists, composers—all these kinds of people took it and that was a topic of conversation . “This is a so people could do it in their own homes . But there it’s mere novelty . I think the problem with the food is it becomes just sort of cool, friend from the Cage class,” like Allan Kaprow . Or a friend from that context, like Al Hansen . Yoko Ono wasn’t in the Cage class but weird, “wow ”. It’s merely novel and I found that unbelievably depressing . was sort of orbiting in that world .

AF: You don’t think that there is a kind of secondary layer of possibility there? I was thinking about Boris Groys’s writing about AF: And these conversations weren’t so directly about what happened in the class? Malevich, though I wouldn’t apply this idea to all painting . Groys’s claim is that even though paintings are only consumed by a specific HH: No, but they made me think of the classroom as something like a bar . You know, there’s the Cedar Bar for the Abstract group of people in terms of their actual material ownership, everybody else can consume the idea of them . So, there is another layer to Expressionists, but for Fluxus and Happenings there’s the Cage class . the experience that it is available . AF: So this gave you a view of class that’s nothing like a more traditional, highly regimented, hierarchical context? HH: Food is very different . Let’s say all you have is a crappy reproduction of a painting in a newspaper . Some things you see, then try to imagine what they really look like . In other words, there’s a sensory homology—it’s still something you see . You see it here, then you HH: No! It’s kind of like a bar without alcohol . Cage had been at Black Mountain . see it there, then you imagine it visually . It is working in the same sense system . Whereas food—if you write about it, it’s words versus that actual experience of tasting . When I was in undergraduate and graduate school—I had this experience of being informed by smart people about stuff that I knew first hand, and thinking, “Wow! What they just said doesn’t match what I understand at all ”. Not because they’re stupid but because they’re AF: So basic representation doesn’t get to the actual experience of something . using archival documents and a certain view of art history to generate their story . When I was in graduate school, somebody started talking about Black Mountain and Rauschenberg as if they were talking about Rauschenberg in the 60s . I didn’t know Rauschenberg’s HH: No . No . I don’t know… . work in the 60s . All I knew about Rauschenberg was some very late Rauschenberg that I had seen in a museum and this dirt painting AF: I’m squirming a little bit about even that, because for people like me who work with tactility and texture and things that get that John Cage had on his wall in his loft . It was dirt . It was just dirt . And they’re talking about Rauschenberg in terms of combines and flattened—that aren’t there or get erased in reproduction… . things, and I’m like, “Combines? Wait a minute . This is the guy… isn’t this the guy who had dirt on his wall in, like, John’s house?”

HH: No, I know . I don’t think it’s exactly the same problem . No . Because I don’t see paintings certainly as exclusively visual things and So that was really important to me . All of that was really important to me because it meant that these were people living lives making I’m not saying that the fact that you can take a picture of it and put it in a newspaper means that it is strictly visual . We can use words to stuff and some of that stuff was coming out of a classroom and some of that stuff was coming out of a bedroom or a living room or fully fix that problem . Look, there’s no substitute for the actual thing . maybe even a studio . And then, you know, after the fact the historian comes in and sort of craft this thing you call history because we have to find some way to make sense of where we are and when we are . But it’s really important to me that historians realize that it’s a I think I was viewing The Food Art Manual project as my answer to that problem for the question of food art . .I wanted to make the kind of fiction writing that we engage in . connection to the actual thing really primal . It’s a formalist project in the sense that I have a lot of faith in the encounter with the real thing and what it feels like, looks like, smells like, all of it . For me the issue is pretty simple and speaks to our current context . As an AF: I’ve always been blown away by things like going to a sporting event, for example, experiencing it first hand and coming home and idea food art moves through culture and runs headlong into our habits of consumption . It very quickly flattens out into a sort of foody maybe catching a re-cap on TV… . 18 19 HH: And you’re like, “Wait a minute! I didn’t even see that event! I didn’t even see that basket!”

AF: Yeah! That’s essentially what we’re talking about, right? The capture is necessarily reductive always .

HH: So you had asked what I knew of Black Mountain . I didn’t have anything concrete, but when I was in graduate school and beginning to study for my exams, I came across Black Mountain College . I saw all of these people in it that I’d heard about, then I started really researching what kinds of conversations people were having and thinking about how I could duplicate that openness and intensity to new ideas . But it’s very hard to do that in a large institution . The reason Black Mountain was so amazing was because of the casualness of the conversation and the small number of people in it .

AF: I remember talking to you about the closed community atmosphere of Black Mountain years ago . I imagine that sort of essential exchange of information was happening there, whether you were noticing it or not . You are sitting outside someplace in a chair talking to somebody under the sky . And you are actually doing something that might be more valuable than what happened in the structured setting that day . Right?

HH: Right .

AF: I think some of that tends to happen when people get really involved anyway . You come to campus on a Sunday night to pick something up and you notice that there are five people sitting in the corner of the painting room eating food, listening to music, and working on their stuff . But they’re doing it in a way that is very different from the way that they perceive it in the classroom, even though we might struggle to try to make our classrooms exists like out-of-classroom experiences . They’re doing it in a way that is real . They’re doing it with peers only, they’re exchanging ideas, they’re critiquing each other—it really matters in an immediate sense . I think those experiences might have a little bit of this in them and I think they happen all over the place to students . When I hear about them or stumble across them I try to join in or learn from them .

HH: And that’s the point that Leon Botstein makes, the head of Bard . He wrote this book called Jefferson’s Children, which is about using the educational environment to create those kinds of spaces and possibilities . (see also Aesthetics) BEAUTY The problem with beauty as a criterion for artwork is that share we don’t a common value or anAt least affect up to the of twentieththe forcefulness century, of beauty. beauty was considered as the definingconsidered as thecharacteristic, pleasure produced by the or simultaneousat least aspiration or almost-simultaneous of art; good art was beautiful, contemplation bad ofart a pleasurable failed sensoryto be beautiful. experience. This It is the beauty identification(extrapolating and contemplation from Kant), of mightthe experience be rather than the experience itself. This beauty was also good for you, and good for society. Thus beauty becomes an upliftingNot to dispute, then, moral that force. different artworks have differentanother’s, affects so one upon can the never have viewer measurable that ormight equivalent be thought of relationships as responses to “beauty,”there to but beauty. one degrees person’s Does experience beauty of beauty? reside is never Is in there thequalitatively anything object, or is it or a response thatquantitatively from, is devoid or experience of beauty?the the category How dosame we assess of as the viewer? of beauty? beauty, Is in one thing Without its innocuous adequate more beautiful forms, means is and communicable language than another,a shared more to address or as are platitude experience these questions–and or of as kitsch. a previously In its agreed more aesthetics insidious standard, has forms, provided in which beautymost us potent case with is used it ideological can no definitive as only a call be applied for tool, deeply andanswers– to conservative forms one that that plays are ultimately values. already Its appeal familiar, to an to transparency–that authoritarian which, in turn, politics. we know is and more likely immediately experience when something is beautiful–is its 20 21 Corin Hewitt & Riley Duncan

I am an eighth-generation Vermonter as well as a third-generation artist and art educator . Although these particular inherited legacies are only a part of my experience, they have shaped the way I view art . In many ways I see my entry into art and later into art education as akin to taking over the family store . In 1965, my parents were living in New York City working as artists and teachers . My father was part of Anonima Group, a collaborative group of three painters who were involved in a programmatic way of paintings based on perceptual cues of three dimensions in two-dimensional space (size change, overlap, etc ). . My mother had studied art at Oberlin College in Ohio and was then teaching in early childhood education . My father was also teaching and running the evening program at Cooper Union . They had decided that they wanted to buy a piece of land in rural Vermont near where my father was from, where they could build a cabin, grow food, and spend their summers . That year they found a mixture of pasture and forest along a long ridge top in a small town called East Corinth . After purchasing this approximately one hundred and fifty acres of land for one hundred dollars an acre they began a process that eventually brought them back to the state for good in 1970 .

I was born in 1971 and was named after this town . Until I left Vermont for college, I spent my winters in school in Burlington and my summers with my parents growing food and raising animals on “the land” in East Corinth . My father was a professor of painting at the University of Vermont and my mother designed for and ran a toy company making educational blocks . I was an only child, so those long summers, as well as most weekends through the year, were a combined life of labor and secluded adventures in the woods .

In 2004, I was in my early 30’s and after having worked as an artist for fifteen years in New York I decided I wanted to go to graduate school . My undergraduate art education at Oberlin was good in most respects, but I was curious what a more focused conversation around the work I had been making would do . In the summer of 2005, I began my first of three summers at Bard . This was an initially difficult, but eventually transformative experience for me . I encountered minds very resistant to my self-perceived talents, as well as others who helped steward me through three challenging summers . Both approaches were transformative for me . By the end of that experience, I felt a much broader and more open relationship to both my own work and what it might mean to teach art . I had also joined another community of artists .

After leaving Bard in 2007, I immediately went out looking for teaching opportunities . I was able to get adjunct work teaching at Tyler for a year, but then had to take a year off to focus on an exhibition I was having at the Whitney . The next year I went back to Tyler again to teach sculpture while simultaneously teaching a Psychology of Perception and Color Theory class at the School of Visual Arts in New York . Then in 2010, after having been very impressed by a visit to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), I was fortunate to get a job teaching sculpture there . Molly McFadden and I moved down to Richmond in the fall of 2010 and ever since teaching has become a really powerful part of my life as an artist .

Over the past two summers I have brought approximately ten VCU School of the Arts undergraduate students up to our land in rural Vermont for a series of two-week classes . Using color as a narrative structure, each of these classes worked towards a final production that was shown before an audience on the final evening of the course . In the summer of 2011, the class culminated in a one and a half hour eleven-act performance called Chromotheater . In the summer of 2012, we made and screened a ten-part film, A Color Film: And Everything Like That, with sections of the film being shot in trenches live in front of the audience .

For the first summer of the course in 2011, I brought Zachary Wollard and Erica Svec, both painters from New York, up to teach this class with me . Prior to arriving in Vermont, each of the eleven student participants in the class was assigned one eleventh of the color spectrum to use in a five-minute piece that would be performed on a large rotating stage . They were asked to use media particular to their interests to transverse their assigned range of the spectrum . Like a relay, each of them would be taking over where the previous individual left off, inheriting an object or image to begin their act .

In the weeks previous to arriving in Vermont, the participants read a series of texts on both the material history of color in culture as well as the use of color in a variety of contemporary art practices . Once in Vermont, in addition to working on their projects, the participants were led through a variety of daily color exercises and experiments . For example, we had a half-day with the former Vermont State Lands Ecologist who took us through an evolutionary history of color in the landscape . He discussed and demonstrated complex evolved color relationships between plants, animals, and insects .

During the two weeks of the class, we built a twenty-foot diameter rotating stage that pivoted around a fifty foot spruce tree that we erected in middle of a field . Each participant developed an act for their section of the spectrum using props, sculptural objects, painting, video, and spoken narrative in order to perform their section of color . The final production, Chromotheater, took place at the end of the class for two plus hours in front of an audience of about seventy people from all over the northeast . 22 23 CH: When you were in high school what made you interested in going to art school, what did you expect to get out of it?

RD: I had pretty limited exposure to art at that time . I went to a kind of rural high school and only took photography classes there . Most of my friends went to other schools, and it was really through them and my older brother’s friends that I started to look into independent cinema and visual artists . I thought photography and collage were going to be the cornerstone of my experience here, but nobody was really doing those things when I got here . It was important to be confronted with that . Most students going into a BFA program are really young and there’s this slow process of everybody shedding what they came in here thinking was cool or radical . Even really mature students at that time still have so much to figure out, artistically and otherwise . At first I expected to leave with a photography degree, then painting, it was somewhere in between painting and sculpture that I actually realized I wanted to be an artist .

If anything remains the same since that time, before I was here, it would be my interest in other people . My friends and I used to make videos in high school and I curated a show of everybody’s stuff at this really great space in Charlottesville that was generous enough to let us run amok in . I don’t know how good the show was, but it was fun; we rented a moon bounce that looked like a tiger, and kids from the neighborhood would come by and play in it right outside of the gallery . I think that spirit in some way still lives on in what I do and how I approach making .

CH: Riley, I just wanted to ask you what it was that made you curious to join us for the first project in the summer of 2011?

RD: At that time I was particularly interested in the landscape, and looking for a way to confront that romantic sensibility of American landscape painting . I had been reproducing small studies by Hudson River School painters at a larger scale, which made them ambiguous and sort of vacant feeling . I was already interested in trying to access that sublime through monographs and the internet, and so I was curious to see what it may be like to actually confront that kind of landscape . All of that aside, I went into the project very enthusiastically and allowed myself to really commit to the experience in different ways and that open-mindedness ended up being much more important than whatever habits in working I had at that time . I think what was really formative about the experience was that there was really something at stake, in that a lot of people were traveling up there to see it, a lot could have – and sometimes did – go wrong, but that ultimately made for a more exciting and interesting performance .

The second summer we were much more prepared and focused; our experience of the place was really mediated by the work we were Riley Duncan, Chromotheater (Act 2 [Red/Orange-Orange/Yellow]), 2011 doing, most of which was done on computers, which made for a more honest, or at least a less romantic interaction with the landscape . CH: What kinds of expectations did you have for that class and how did that experience inform your interests/expectations for future For this class, we also constructed an elaborate subsurface outdoor kitchen where small groups of participants cooked for everyone . classes during the year back at VCU? These rotating groups of three were responsible for planning meals, shopping, and cooking for the rest of the group, for three-day stretches . The kitchen had no running water or electricity so the majority of the cooking was done directly over fire, and rainwater was RD: In the second course it really felt like we were trying to collaboratively make an artwork . We didn’t waste much time getting used for washing . started, people were motivated and busy . There was a critical intensity and so everyone strove to make a thoughtful and interesting contribution . We came having already planned, and in some cases shot, parts of our films . What was really interesting was how a lot The participants all camped in tents below our pond . They worked and prepared their acts underneath a lumber tarp tent made by one of the acts shied away from the vistas of the property, and instead drew attention to some of the darker places, like the logging paths of the participants in the course, Ian Gamble . I brought in a power generator for them to be able to use tools in this area . or interiors of buildings . Joe for example, shot the majority of his film in the cellar . I think this really affected the psychology of the finished film, as well as its making . I took that interest in spaces and their inherent influence on the subconscious back to school and to In the summer of 2012, a new group of VCU students headed up to Vermont for another two-week course . This time the course was my studio . I am also curious what it was like for you, teaching in such an alternative setting . How does that compare to the way you designed to result in a film . In addition to painters Erica Svec and Zach Wollard, sculptor Nancy Lupo joined us to assist with teaching . approach your studio courses in Richmond? Hannah Walsh and Richard Walters assisted us with the cameras, as well as video and sound editing . In addition to the five teachers, filmmaker Austin Lynch was on site for the entire class shooting a documentary about the course . Similar to the summer of 2011, each CH: It felt different in many respects . The class in Vermont was designed towards a definitive culminating production or show on a participant was assigned a section of the color spectrum that they would use as an underlying structure and transverse it in a five minute certain date . Both the performance we did in 2011 and the film in 2012 were more like mounting an exhibition . I had the idea that edited section that would become part of a larger film . We started meeting in Richmond in the spring of 2012 and many aspects of the using the modulation of the color spectrum would be a provocative structure to join disparate individuals and motivations . So, in that sets had been built in advance of that summer . way it was like a focused prompt or assignment that I might give in class . The main difference in the case of Vermont was that on a daily basis I was opening up my life more than I would back at VCU . This was both scary and liberating . Actually due to its short-term and While the participants were in Vermont they shot and edited their films as well as doing sound foley experimentation with Richard that finite nature, it was mostly very liberating . was folded into the film . We used the rotating stage from the previous summer as a screen on which to project the film . The second day of the course, we hired an excavator to dig a series of three twenty-foot long, deep trenches that fanned out in front of the stage . Each of So Riley, on a separate subject, here we are in Richmond, Virginia . We have a good encyclopedic museum in the Virginia Museum of the students was given a third of a trench to stage a shot that was performed and shot live the night of the screening . Fine Arts and will be building an Institute of Contemporary Art, but we are not in a major art center . How do you think our school benefits or suffers from its location? On the final night of the class we projected A Color Film: And Everything Like That, onto the stage in front of a large audience . At one point during each of the students’ sections of the film, the screen would go dark and a part of the trenches in front of the screen would RD: There’s a lag when it comes to certain information reaching the school . Even if you try to stay really informed, there are just less light up . Then the projection would go live to a feed of a performance that was taking place in the trench . After each of these short opportunities to see contemporary art than if you were living in a bigger art center . In a way that’s exciting because overarching trends interludes, the pre-recorded film would return to the screen . These live portions were conceived to augment the pre-recorded parts of or attitudes do not inhibit people, but that freedom can also be dangerous . I think the department would benefit from a seminar that their films . Apart from the one section of the film by participant Nick Fagan the stage remained stationary . For Nick’s act the stage was focused entirely on contemporary work and the venues/systems that orchestrate such exhibitions . These are things artists have to know rotated to reveal his film being projected over the live drumming of sludge/doom metal drummer Timmy St . Amour (from the band about; whether they choose to embrace or defy it is their own decision, but it should be an informed one . Howl) who was joined on guitar by Joe Paulk who was in the class . For most of us, there isn’t much separation between the physical location of the school, the institution of art school, our studio practices For this piece for Shifter, I decided to have a conversation with Riley Duncan, who came up to Vermont for both of these projects . and our everyday lives, which makes for a really intense, exciting atmosphere . I don’t think we would have that sense of community if Riley has now finished his final year in the undergraduate sculpture program at VCU . I have never had Riley in a class in Virginia, but we were all participating in a larger school in New York or elsewhere . If you embrace the nature of Richmond and really invest in the we have gotten to know each other well over the last two years . Like many of the younger artists I have worked closely with, the lines community of VCU Arts, specifically the sculpture department, you will get a great education . between teacher/student and mentor/friend are always on the move . RD: You lived in New York and then you moved here to Richmond? I am curious how that has affected you? Corin Hewitt 24 25 CH: I loved the fifteen years that I lived in New York . It is an amazing and ever evolving city . But when it comes to having a strong role as a teacher it is more complicated there . When I was living in New York and teaching at Tyler and SVA, I had a much more divided relationship between my studio and teaching . Here in Richmond, so many of the undergraduate and graduate students have spent time in our house . I really enjoy this more open relationship with students . It opens up authority in an interesting way . In New York we had a large community of peers, while here that community is much smaller and students have come to fill a larger role in my life . Largely this has been great, but now that we have been here for three years and we have begun to feel the odd speed of turnover of students this openness has started to feel more complicated .

In terms of my studio practice, I have had several people who are current or ex-students working with me in my studio . My only rule so far about this is that I won’t hire someone who is currently taking a class with me . I also try and avoid having assistants who may be in a future class . There are different ways that I make myself vulnerable in each of those spaces and I need to have that separation . But the relationships I have formed with other artists and students who have worked for me as studio assistants has been important . Those people who have worked for me for longer periods in the studio start to feel like extended family .

Riley, You have had me as a teacher or facilitator in the class in Vermont, as well as having worked with me in my studio . How have those two types of relationships affected you differently?

RD: Working with you in Vermont, especially given the collaborative nature of the project felt almost like apprenticing . It wasn’t an authoritative kind of instruction, but a more interactive, topical one . Some of the most productive conversations happened outside the scheduled meeting times or exercises . I had a desk with my computer set up in the back of Ian’s bus, and remember you and the other professors coming by every once in a while to the back door and talking with me about my film .

Working for you, on both of your shows Medium/Deep (for Laurel Gitlen Gallery) as well as The Hedge (for MOCA Cleveland), was informative in a different way . There’s inherently less room for interpretation when it comes to someone’s studio practice and helping in the execution of an exhibition . In a way you’re an employee, but having known your work before being an assistant and having been in conversation about both of our work through the Vermont courses, the whole experience was more meaningful than it may have been working for an artist I didn’t know .

CH: What do you think are people’s aspirations coming out of art school?

RD: It would be untrue to say that most of us aren’t hoping for some kind of commercial success . I think it’s less that people desire to be famous or well off, but really just to be as engaged as possible in what’s going on at an international level . You can have a really sustainable practice and a teaching job in a remote place, but your audience and peer group will be more limited . That’s not to say everyone wants to live in New York and show in Chelsea or the Lower East Side . There are people here who are really interested in film and performance and there are alternative - and equally exciting - venues for that . It also seems that the landscape of great art cities is expanding . You hear a lot about Iceland here . Gregory Volk (who teaches at VCU) is connected with a number of Icelandic Artists and often includes their work in his seminars . There seems to be a consistency in the temperature of that work, something more visceral or tempered that is so distinct . I saw i8 gallery’s booth at The Armory and it remained in such a positive way in my mind, particularly the works by Olafur Eliasson and Hreinn Fridfinnsson .

Do you feel like there are burgeoning places outside of New York that students should be moving to? Being someone who lived in New York for a long time, what do you think about the myth of that city within art schools and how that relates to young artists’ futures?

CH: I think artists fresh out of undergrad should try to go to the places that are most exciting and unknown to them . I don’t think that initially has to be New York or another known art center . When I finished undergrad at Oberlin I moved to New Mexico for almost three years . I initially moved there to experience a landscape that would be as foreign as possible to where I grew up in Vermont . At first, I made money by donating plasma and did temporary labor jobs . One of my first regular jobs was cleaning out an empty lot full of broken glass and condoms behind a home depot with two recent paroles . They quit after a few hours, but that left more work for me . I was able to find better work over time, working for an art crater and then as a preparator at a good contemporary art gallery in Santa Fe .

A gay Texan heiress, who spared no expense in bringing the world of contemporary art to Santa Fe, ran this gallery . Artists she showed including Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg, Agnes Martin, Francesco Clemente, and Richard Tuttle had houses out there and through the gallery I ended up picking up work from their studios and occasionally having casual conversations or even meals with them . One of the most memorable events of that period was extending an art pick-up by a few hours to watch Kato Kailin testify at the OJ Simpson Process image of stage construction for Chromotheater, 2001 . trial at Bruce Nauman’s house . Other artists such as Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Kiki Smith, Ross Bleckner, Juan Munoz and Ed Ruscha came through for shorter periods of time . Even the briefest of conversations about packing materials with artists such as these really made art feel more palpable .

That was an amazing experience, but after leaving and spending some time at the National Academy in Karlsruhe Germany, I did decide to move to New York . That move to New York was really important at the time that I did it . It allowed me to see shows first hand and immerse myself in a community of young artists who were in a similar place as I was . I found that shared purpose and anxiety really productive . There are many other international cities with strong populations of young artists . I just think it is important to put yourself in a place that is one step ahead of where you currently are . So you can aspire as well as grow .

RD: Could you talk about the community of artists that have stayed with you throughout your career? Are you still in touch with people from Oberlin? Bard? Are they still making work? Exhibiting? 26 27 CH: Definitely, I have long friendships with many of those people . In addition to those friendships, I would say that there are a few CH: While I was working on this conversation with you, I emailed a bunch of different people that I have worked closely with over other types of conversations or communities that continue to influence me . One is a group of artists that are either long deceased or the years and asked them to imagine, with unlimited access and resources, what a fantasy art school would look like for them? I got which I am unlikely to meet, but I feel a relationship with in my imagination . A few artists that fall into this realm are people like some really amazing answers . Several people described a sort of rural atmosphere like Black Mountain or Skowhegan where there is a Georgio Di Chirico, Kurt Schwitters, Juan Gris, Joseph Beuys, Ed and Nancy Keinholz and Dieter Rot . I think about and use these rotating group of short term visiting artists mixed with artists/teachers who were there for longer periods . I got a great response from artists for a kind of macro energy . Alina Tenser, an artist who is a recent sculpture graduate from VCU, who wrote about recreating the Walt Disney success model where “…the studio had 3 floors: the top was for The Dreamers - they did nothing but dream up ideas and possibilities without discussing the Then since we are talking about art in relation to places of art education, there are also a few artists that I have met as fellow students in making of them . The second floor was for the Practical bunch (they had a better name, I just don’t remember) and they tried their best school . I went to undergrad at Oberlin with sculptor Jessica Jackson Hutchins and we have stayed in good contact over the years . There to manifest a dream . While the bottom floor were the Critics who would criticize and throw it back to the top dreamers . I really like were other students such as my close friend Matt Dojny and another student named Mara Hazeltine at Oberlin whose shared focus and there being a cushion between dreaming and criticizing, not necessarily for protection but for a richer variety of good bad or whatever energy felt very important at that time . All of those people with whom I was spending many late nights in the studio shared a kind of thoughts ”. Nicole Wilson, who was a student of mine from Tyler talked about a place where there are periods of time where students commitment to what art could be that really pushed me forward . are asked to wrestle with a different utopia . While Andrew Brehm, another artist who is a VCU sculpture graduate suggested a more mercenary model where the school facilitates a system of introductions to wealthy patrons who could support the artist over the long This was also true at Bard, but as I was in my early 30’s at that time and already had a gallery and a small amount of experience under haul . Riley, now that you have been in art school for four years I am curious what your version of this fantasy school would be? my belt it was a very different series of relationships . Also, at Bard, we were only spending the summers together . This made it much more akin to a very rigorous summer camp . Separate lives during the year joining up and releasing themselves into a very different RD: I feel that the most important aspect of an arts education is your exposure to primary sources, as in looking at exciting work in its shared experience during those nine week summers . Wiffleball and dancing were nearly as important as the critiques and studio visits . intended context, sharing conversation with artists–whether faculty or visiting artists–in person and in a casual environment (as opposed The relationships that came out of that experience are broad and recurrent . I feel sure that they will continue to have a very important to strictly lectures or seminars) . It’s also important for students to learn that there are art worlds, and to understand the moments of role in my life . In fact, this interview is happening at least partially because of having met Shifter Editor Rit Premnath at Bard . intersection between the various realms of contemporary discourse, whether art fairs, conferences, symposiums, workshops, etc . The ideal art school would have an extremely diverse faculty including specialists in the many skill-based and conceptual fields . Students RD: Where do you think your impulse to teach comes from–specifically your unconventional approach with the Vermont Courses? would be able to pursue concentrations in performance, video, new media, social practice, installation, institutional critique, but CH: As I mentioned briefly in the introduction, I am one of three consecutive generations of artists and art teachers . My mother’s father everyone’s idiosyncratic education would be framed through an intense, discursive, school-wide curriculum . This curriculum would be taught art at the Bronx High School of Science in New York for about twenty years . My mother has worked as an early childhood made up of readings, films, trips and exercises seeking to discuss, critique and develop these concentrations, particularly in their relation educational toy designer and artist for the last forty years . She also worked for many years previous to that as an early childhood to the larger climate, as well as our own historical context as it’s being made . In place of the frequently inhibiting academic requirements educator . My father’s father worked in a machine shop in Springfield, Vermont by day and taught and played classical violin in the that exist in art schools–especially those attached to large public universities– students would take topical courses ranging from identity evenings and weekends . My father was a prolific painter and professor of painting for his entire life . At times this legacy had been politics to geopolitical economics . Young art students need to care more about current affairs . burdensome, especially when I was a younger artist struggling to find my own language . But now that I have been working as an artist I think it is also really important for students to have substantial facilities and space in which they can develop their practice without for over fifteen years, I have really come to see these legacies as opportunities . material or spatial restraints . I really want to find ways of teaching that aremore about propelling and continuing certain spirits of investigation than passing on Maybe this school would be on a boat, like a small cruise ship that was equipped with shops and classrooms and a kind of cafeteria specific information . I am confident I learn as much from students as they learn from me . We share very different kinds of things with situation, which could stop in port cities to attend openings, studio tours, etc . The costs would be funded by tuition, and students could each other . It’s really exciting at this time in my life to be doing that . At VCU, I’m in a place where I have a lot of support that allows have work-study jobs growing hydroponic crops and fishing, making extra income for material by selling these products in the ports . It’s me to really lead my teaching with my practice . It feels very important to me to have that be central to my life—both as a model to pretty over the top, but an idea . my students and a way to be in an active state of tension with our conversations . I worry that if I taught without my studio being at the center, I would start to become polemical . Then empathy can disappear and authority can take its place in a dangerous way . I really want RD: What about you? to be on a kind of emotional level of anxiety with the students that I’m teaching, where we’re both in states of tension with what we’re doing . This tension comes from meeting at different stages in our lives as artists and how that conversations can join and propel us . CH: Well, I feel like what we are doing here in this interview is a big part of it . Thank you Riley .

RD: Did you have professors or mentors that had lasting affects on you from your own education?

CH: Definitely . When I was at Oberlin, I had a teacher named Michael Rees . He was a sculptor in his early 30’s, who had just finished graduate school at Yale and was so full of strange enthusiasms and energies that felt new to me . He had previously studied in Germany with Joseph Beuys and had just moved out to Ohio after getting his MFA from Yale . I had him as a teacher for two classes during my time at Oberlin . He was a wonderful and anxious presence for me . Even though (or maybe because) it often felt like a kind of wild circus with him . I got a lot from that relationship . I was totally fascinated by his unpredictable energy and the sense of possibility it gave me .

At Bard, I had many great teachers who affected me and my work in various ways . Both artist Taylor Davis, and critic and writer Michael Brenson who both teach in the sculpture program there kept me focused on some very fundamental questions that continue to resonate . Taylor’s questions were more physical and material while Michaels were more psychological in nature . Also, artist Nancy Shaver was such a productive thorn in my side . She posed some of the most perplexing and difficult rhetorical problems . Things such as what it means to make an “active” vs . “passive” artwork . These questions of Nancy’s drove me nuts, but they also really propelled me forward .

RD: Is there a value system in place when looking at students’ work? Could you talk about why you may have more faith in some students potential (if you do) and how that affects your interaction with them?

CH: That is a super interesting and hard question . I think it might be more a spiritual question than one of specific modes of working . When I see those students who are really dedicating themselves to this pursuit of finding something powerful for themselves in art, I get interested . These are people who are willing to make a sort of commitment to art and just as importantly to each other and their immediate community . These are students who show up at talks, participate in the conversations, and actively challenge themselves and others about what art can be . For me it is about whom I want to really dedicate and share my time with . I look for others who want to join in this pursuit . It is really a two way street and when I see the energy I put out there being returned or even grown, I am propelled to give more . Feels kind of simple actually . CONCEPTUAL Philosophically, a concept is generally understood as an abstractionthat might derived vastly differ from experience as individual and observation. forms. use No Nietzsche’stwo To leaves differences exampleare identical, , the concept to recognize “leaf” and we may identify commonalities, applies totheir forms differences, that with share the “leaf-life”but weintent can of makingstill commonalities, linkunderstandable them through but thosethe concept commonalities, of “leaf.” A concept is therefore whether anas identifiableabstraction categoriesthat collates (of things), experiences and/or as ideas. “Conceptual” in its most simplistic form tends to be used in theproduced critique or derived to denote through that a prior “there is historical an idea behind moment–is the artwork.” nothad consciously Of or course, has them. no artwork known In that to or sense, generated is devoid all of ideas, by artwork the even artist. when the is idea–which “conceptual,” This though might is anothernormalized some have forms been way to say that of artwork all to the point artwork might of invisibility. have become derives so accepted from and It might that continues they be necessary have become to generate akin to maintain ideas, to “common regardless sense,” where this their of who conviction formative ideas that have all become artwork is conceptual, to avoid the false division between theory and practice, between thinking and doing. 28 29 Richard Kostelanetz Black Mountain College Redux with Michael Peters, Bob Grumman & Frederick Young What was important, it seems to me, about Black Mountain was the dining hall, because everyone had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. And the classes were less important than the meals. Every time that it’s attempted to make Black Mountain over again, it’s not understood that all the meals should be shared by all of the people. —John Cage, in an interview

I’d grown up with the image of Black Mountain as the premier American arts college, having heard about it first from John Cage in the mid-1960s, a decade after it closed, and then again in the late 1970s from my good friend Mary Emma Harris who was working on her book on The Arts in Black Mountain (1985) . Located inauspiciously in western North Carolina, it housed as either teachers or students such future eminences as Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Josef Albers, Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Snelson, Charles Olson, et al . Black Mountain became the subject of more books than Harris’s, each of them accounting for its uniqueness, all of which I’ve read, wondering, as have others, whether it could happen again .

The closest I’ve come to experiencing something like Black Mountain College occurred during my stay as Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in the sleepy ocean-side town of New Smyrna Beach, FL, in 2001 . The ACA, as it is called, customarily invites three established personages in any of several arts . People apply to be “associates” for three weeks . No more than ten are chosen . Most of the previous Master Artists were more conservative in their esthetic orientation than myself, which is to say, for one measure, that the Black Mountain precedent would have small relevance to them . Photos made of previous sessions with writers customarily show the associates grouped around the Master .

Mine, in Experimental Writing worked differently . At our first gathering, I asked each associate to introduce his or her work . I suggested that the general assignment for each of us was to produce something radically different from what we or anyone else had done before . A secondary consideration was that we were required to help make one another’s work better . The ACA generously made available facilities that included computers, a music-recording studio, and video editing equipment .

Tuesday morning we all met again in the small building I’d set aside for our group activities . Wednesday morning I went to the appointed place, only to find no one there . Scarcely anyone came by until 12:30, which was time for lunch . Where were they? Working with one another in several locations around ACA . On Thursday morning, only one associate joined me, mostly because he preferred working on paper, often with words and challenges provided by his colleagues . Nonetheless, at one time or another he collaborated with everyone else in the group, sometimes narrating their texts for recordings, at other times reworking their words to his own ends . I began to feel the odd man out . When the regular ACA photographer arrived during the second week to take the customary picture of the “group,” only two of my associates were there . I was less a leader than a facilitator . Instead of lecturing to them all, I advised them individually, usually to take a further step in whatever they were doing . Unlike too many other short-term creative courses, the ACA residencies are not designed to fleece savings from aspirants with modest talents and ambitions . Bless ‘em .

The group as a whole had extraordinary qualities . Though the ACA billed me as a writer, rather than a media artist (which is something I also am), all but one took their undergraduate degrees in areas other than English literature or writing—the standard certificates for graduate writing students . Indeed, most remembered negative experience with institutional writing courses .

Nearly all of these writers wanted to work directly with audio, video, and computers, some of them staying at these machines into the night . They taught one another how to use Photoshop and video-editing programs . One designed and produced an artist’s chapbook from a text that was previously just a uniformly typed manuscript . Some collaborated with the eight visual artists who formed a companion group during our three weeks there . Needless to say, all of us–masters as well as associates, visual artists along with writers– took all our weekday meals in a single refectory . The wisdom of John Cage’s advice was not lost .

All of my associates had accepted unreservedly the premise of Expanded Writing that I first articulated three decades ago—that a truly contemporary “writer” must know how to put words on more than paper . Though the associates ranged in age from 22 to 60, none regarded any of the others as esthetically unacceptable . Since they had, like myself, previously experienced situations in which their work was dismissed, this degree of collegial acceptance was an unprecedented pleasure . None had ever before experienced a situation where everyone was so supportive . All of them were knowledgeable not only in literature but music and the visual arts . Only one talked about the limitations in marketing/exhibiting/publishing their current work, promising to establish a website in which visual poetry incorporating color could be made available to anyone . 30 31 After overcoming my initial feelings of teacherly neglect, I realized that in collaboration with the ACA I had set in motion something only because ACA initially allowed me to hone a primal means to continue exploring the relation of life to art . Whereas my recent resembling Black Mountain, where, as I recall, the ambitious students likewise helped one another under the benevolent guidance of experience at the Huyck Preserve was very serious and no less fecund (albeit a somewhat lonely affair), the preserve at the Atlantic Master Artists . I, whose grandparents came from old Smyrna, spent most June afternoons at New Smryna’s nearest beach, which I rank Center for the Arts was playful, vicarious, and more interactive than anyone can imagine . My ideas of sound-imaging emerged at ACA among the best in North America . Scarcely authoritarian in temper, I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way . I’d love to try something because both the environment and the artistic species within it were so catalytic . A more apt and profoundly applicable scripter latched similar somewhere else sometime . onto my brain at ACA—like the very roots and fronds of the luscious Floridian flora—with tendril’d circuits that soldered themselves, organically, on to the convolutions of my exposed brain . And because of it, a world of various formal and algebraic inventions became Richard Kostelanetz things I could really use to my content—in pursuing an art interested in æffecting life .

To this memoir, Shifter solicited recollections from three of the “Associates.” While at ACA, I filmed aspects of the preserve’s flora and fauna (i e. ,. dead and living bugs crawling across the dance studio floor) and made a complementary soundtrack with two sticks from the forest floor = on the parallel bars of the empty dance studio; I developed my emergent sense of visual poetry via collaboration; and I worked on editing more “conventional” text-based writings . Most importantly, When I set foot on to “the preserve” at New Smyrna Beach in 2001, I had no idea what was in store for me . I swear the whole thing by talking about things with my fellow residents, I discovered algebraic secrets to give fire to my writing . Over a conversation at dinner, was, for lack of a better word, dream-like . I mean, it is a dream from which I’m still waking . Of course I was previously aware of Bennett solved a big formal puzzle that resulted in the completion of one of the two Kosti “vispo” collaborations—Dis/Sections . Richard Kostelanetz (“Kosti”); and a friend, Doug Puchowski, had loaned me a small book of John M . Bennett’s poems only a year or Namely, don’t pay for an expensive die cut; provide a scalpel and make “the reader” do it . I learned how to think about finishing so earlier, which was on a small press: Runaway Spoon . But the caressed fibers of my present being were honed during this three-week projects . Over dinner in the dining hall, in “the bunker,” and on the wooden-planked sidewalks, ideas intermingled in conversations . experience . So many things opened to me there on that 60-acre ecological preserve . I can’t remember all of the details of the three- Every day was an “experiment ”. week residency, nor is there room to fully recall what I do remember, but some of the vivid imagery, distilled as follows, is impossible Karst allmighty, I remember pulling up the Venetian blinds one morning in my room to see squirrels mating . A rhinoceros beetle died to forget: Seeing Scott Helmes with all those rubber stamps and his dark black ink pads . Seeing KS Ernst clutching handfuls of colored on my doorstep . At night, armadillos cruised the sandy plots where the wooden walkways returned to Earth . And under a sky full of pencils, pens, and paintbrushes—such an array of materials . There too was Bennett’s crazy handwriting and hearing his voice—an stars, we’d stop to admire raccoon’s stealing bags of cookies from the dumpster . Fred and I saw them and laughed, for it was so ridiculous unforgettable voice that still permeates my thinking . I think it was Ernst, who—with her arsenal of potential materials—, brought these an image to behold . Like the raccoons, I remember raiding ACA’s kitchen with Fred for late night snacks . Almost every night, animated little stickers with her, these little black letters, and she had us all “writing” on the walls . I remember Bennett spelling-out “putz storm” “ski lodge” discussions transpired (along with some drinking of the hair of the previous evening’s “dog” that had bitten us) . We called it with those little black letters on the glass door of the emergency fire hose, just outside “The Bunker”—our main gathering room . I the “ski lodge,” not because it was like some swanky basement room with bad 1970’s paneling, but was actually real wood paneling, soft remember the image of a wizard-like Bob Grumman floating in and out of the Bunker doorway like some crazy dandelion seed-pod carpeting that would hush our laughter just a bit as we’d recline into the lush upholstery’d chairs and couches of the evening . We—me, floater . Turned out, that guy was the editor and publisher of Runaway Spoon . Everything around me suddenly became a vivid, yet Josh Carr, Hesse McGraw, Frederick Young, and Patrick Greene—would talk way into the a .m . hours while everyone else was sleeping . dream-like experience of materials . I’m still exploring ideas now that were revealed to me during my stay with these other artists at the Each of these in their own right espoused tirelessly brilliant ideas and profound insights . I would often follow Pat Greene around like Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA), most of whom I was meeting for the first time . some medieval angel with a little chaliced-cup to collect the blood of the epic christalmighty, for Greene’s ideas were that profuse and I recall walking across the wooden sidewalks, slightly elevated in certain spots so as not to disturb the flora and fauna of the nature spigot-like . I laughed and learned and laughed with these guys . The camaraderie was extensive—and still exists, despite the lapse of preserve, and I remember walking with Kosti and Kosti telling me that Bennett could have easily been “the master artist” of the time . Then, as we would head back to our respective rooms from the “ski lodge” for some much needed sleep, we’d see Bennett (and the residency . But Kosti never behaved like a “master artist ”. He never wanted to control the agenda of our residency, and his “letting go” Bennettian work ethic) at work: Bennett, with the blinds of his room drawn wide open, could be seen working at a typewriter, with a resulted in something like a self-organizing cultivation from our potential chaos . What transpired was genuine respect and interest in patch over one of his eyes, while the sun was beginning to mingle with the exotic Floridian foliage of the 60-acre ecological preserve the works and ideas of others in the group, which was inspiring and invigorating . Having already begun two collaborations of visual that surrounded ACA . Although I was not witness to it, I saw Kosti, an avid swimmer, head out to the ocean for his daily swim . Two poetry with Kosti back in NYC, I think my original ideas of what visual poetry was incredibly expanded to approach what it could be, months later, there was a series of shark attacks on that same beach . Two months later, the twin towers—the “god damn alien sundials” not only from Kosti’s presence, or Grumman’s, but from Bennett, Helmes, and Ernst—all of whom would become my mentors in the of NYC—came down . My innocence has been lost again and again and again, but when I recall my experience at ACA, something years to come . Whereas I had been working with Kosti making “visual poetry” using graphic design programs, I suddenly learned from like the crucial maintenance of innocence returns to me . I cannot fully explain it, but on the most base level, something radically my fellow residents that everything was potential writing material—not solely electronic, but that visual poetry could be physical . transformative occurred there and then—something that has occurred nowhere since with such provocative and lasting impact .

When I was initially writing in my journals while making music in groups like Poem Rocket (on labels such as PCP, Magic Eye, Michael Peters Atavistic, et cetera), I would selectively parse out was potential “lyrics” for music, as opposed to what was “poetry ”. Some things that looked good in my handwriting failed when type-set . And I had spent nearly six plus years prior to my ACA experience in 2001 learning how to make my handwritten poems from journals and paper-scraps work in 12 point Times New Roman . I was getting I was the one mentioned by Richard who was introduced to Photoshop at ACA . Fellow associate Kathy Ernst was my excellent teacher . proper “poems” published in journals . But at ACA, suddenly, art and image and material—and sound!—had been liberated from the This was a key moment in my evolution as a visual poet, for prior to that I’d never used color in my work, having been too poor to old parameters . The reunification of disciplines was made tangible by the examples of Kosti, Bennett, Ernst, and Helmes—anything afford a printer, and not doing paintings because it was too costly to have them reproduced . I wanted my work to be multiples and not and everything was material, including my handwriting . For example, I loved playing around with Helmes’ rubber stamps, and ended one-of-a-kinds . up purchasing various sets of rubber stamps after the ACA residency . Helmes forever changed my approach to visual poetry simply by exposing me to his stamps and his black pads of ink . Whereas poetry and music and image-making had been separate endeavors for me Back home, I soon managed to get a computer with more storage capacity than the one I’d been using, a color printer and Paint Shop prior to the ACA residency, suddenly writing and image and sound had been re-connected . I would later explore these marriages of (which was much cheaper than Photoshop) and continued the “visiomathematical” poems I’d begun composing at ACA, and which image and sound both on my own and in later collaborations with the Be Blank Consort—a compositional-performance group formed have become my most important works . after the residency and because of the residency . I also remember Josh Carr, one of the young and brilliant residents, talking to me about moving between the electronic and the physical as moving between filters, as moving between new digital potentials and the physical One thing highly important to me about the ACA experience was simply being able to spend three weeks picking the brains of Richard manipulations of raw materials already evident in the work of Bennett, Ernst and Helmes . The “clean” and the “dirty” emerged for me and the artists he had so deftly invited into our group . But I think even more important to me was that they treated me as an equal— as two possible points of entry in the act of creating new “writing ”. not only in conversations (and shared time at the beach!) but also in our many collaborative efforts . I was from the boondocks, you see, and had never been part of any kind of artistic community . It was extremely gratifying to be with people who take what I considered I cannot fully describe—or do proper justice to—the impact of this experience because that moment “on the preserve” in the tropical my kind of creativity for granted . And a sort of “school” of ACA grads are still in fairly close touch, emailing news and work to each summer of 2001 has been extended into this present moment where I’m writing this passage now . I know that to think of Black other, and even getting into a few group shows at galleries . Mountain College via the context of my experience at ACA is only scratching the proverbial surface of the mantle, but the depth of it is something I can sense, and it thrills me to imagine it . More recently, I conducted yet another residency at another nature preserve for I was also buoyed—falsely, it turned out—by the fact that a clearly well-financed, mainstream organization like the Atlantic Center of PhD research on ecology and echolocation from perhaps the most famous of all preserves: The Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve, where the Arts, allowed someone like Richard Kostelanetz to run our little seminar on its property, he not being the kind of second-rater most echolocation and modern ecosystems ecology emerged . All moments are extended when we recall them, but my ACA experience is an such organizations–and universities and the other established forces so consistently marginalizing the new in poetry–choose for such extended moment in the sense that it has forever altered and changed the various, once disparate ways of my art “lives” so as to more a role . I dreamed that maybe we’d break into some kind of Black-Mountain-level recognition . But ACA never chose another Master fully approach a more singular sense of life (in all its biodiversity) via art . The two residencies were radically different because I am Artist like him, nor did my stint at ACA ever get me any noticeable recognition . The experience doesn’t seem to have made much a still reaching for potentials realized on the 60-acre ecological preserve of ACA . My rudimentary discoveries at ACA in 2001 allowed difference in the careers of the others in that group of ACA grads, either . me to understand the important scientific relations of ecology and echolocation to literary practice in the much later residency, but Bob Grumman 32 33 Both Michael Peters and Richard have already articulated and captured that time in ACA in the summer of 2001 in such an eloquent and detailed manner . I’d rather speak of the virtual affects I took from that experience, which continue to influence me and double to challenge current classical institutional arrests and reification—what Derrida once referred to as “auto-immunization,” in which an academic institution inoculates itself from the radical aesthetic and philosophical modalities of thought and practice, as a human body would be vaccinated from the flu . Kosti’s reflections on Black Mountain describe a mode of resistance that appeared through a random encounter of artists and thinkers—Richard served as a conduit (whether he intended it or not ). What brought me to ACA was Richard’s work—what happened was different .

What has endured from meeting Richard and that remarkable group of artists, are the continued collaborations and friendships . As Richard mentioned, we all began to experiment in mediums that were somewhat foreign to us (I can’t remember if he asked us to do this, or if we just decided spontaneously ). At the time I was a Critical Theory PhD student with a background in performance art and ended up experimenting with video and art practice–something I had never tried before and have continued to pursue since . It was more the experience of an assemblage as Deleuze and Guattari might describe it, of collaborations arising out of a conversation or random encounter with a painter or writer . Sometimes, to finish editing, I found myself hiding from colleagues wanting to chat and drink whiskey in our “ski-lodge” room where the associates would gather to talk—we’d almost always meet in the evenings . Conversely, as a PhD student, I’d find any excuse to not work on the dissertation, and would never pass up a good scotch .

In this brief response as an “Associate Artist,” what inspired me to contribute was not the question of the experience of teacher or student, as it has become less of a personal necessity to existentially address, but rather the productive affects of that memorable encounter for three brief weeks 12 years ago, which left a spectral logic that continues to haunt and open the question(s) of a radical para-institutional artistic practice all too often usurped within a classic academic and institutional model . The pedagogical, experimental and politico-aesthetic questions the editors at Shifter suggested, invoking such important thinkers as Jacques Rancière and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as a way of suggesting a frame to question institutional practices regarding interpellation and the ‘teacher/student’ relation, as forms of dissent struck me as vital, but there is little time to open up their questions .

What holds about my experience at ACA, or of the historical ruptures of Black Mountain or the exiles in Paris VII (something of critical importance to my own practice), is that the classical ‘teacher/student’ relationship dissipates . The classical institutional logic is always spoken from above through a furtive, coercive, and sometimes almost infrangible violent logic of an Academy (Plato, Kant, pick one?), disciplining and producing students and teachers as a toxin enters the physical and institutional body . As Diogenes attacked Plato’s Academy at its inception, our energy and vitality through the free flow of ideas was spent not resisting the classical institution (as the Free Speech Movement did) but instead rupture (or simply ignore) the most cynical of learning outcomes and hierarchies . It was a rare moment of experimentation in which the pressures that interpellate us back into ‘docile bodies’ were suspended—at least for those three weeks at ACA . In other words, the ontological hierarchy within institutions was simply walked away from—the constructed subjectivities of teacher and student never manifested after the first day or so .

When Walter Benjamin speaks of a “politics of art” that would be of no use to fascism, he is not speaking of an ontic artistic work, but the radical transformative materialities of subjectivities (as teacher and student fade) that would not fight or resist but instead render even the question or possibility of a classical subject impossible . Against the Greek’s concept of self, the Cartesian subject, the Subjectum and a plural Da-sein, at the ACA I found, as Benjamin did in the Arcades Project, or the revolutions of 1848 or 1871, a fidelity to such utopian flickers in aesthetic experimentation of an (im)possible institution, and the promise of something yet to arrive (“to-come”) that already speaks through us and continues to manifest itself as we take that singularity of twelve years ago into the world . As far as my experience, was it Foucault quoting Beckett who asked: What does is matter who is speaking?

Frederick Young (see also Identity) CULTURE mightWe think of culture as objects plus the servicing, circulationcollective nodes within and discourses the networks that define of interactions, Together,them. these whichcannotin turn are identify themselves define productive. and its produce limits, us Thesenot only networks nor as whatproducers may include lie beyond; and consumers, material partly but because and also virtual, as we operate individual from within critical and culture and discursive and our ability circulation. to “see outside” A defining or from a standpoint characteristic “outside,” has to be in question. of culture is that we Broadly then, we can think of culture as the totalitya record of life of influence, as lived by any confluence, group of people, exchange, with that and “totality” theft, and we evidencedcan impossibilitymake a similar through material case to defining for the artifacts,artmaking specific process, behavior,cultures, despite dress, as its food, thisclaims would etc. Thesuggest to historyoriginality. an inside of human and culture an outsideThere is, to then,each is primarily one. andCulture/s despite are itsmuch common more porous usage and of convenience,fluid. an 34 35 Michelle Grabner with Philip Vanderhyden, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, The open-end nature of good building blocks provides opportunities for instruction in social studies—in mapping, the lay out of cities, and people’s work: socialization—in cooperation, cleanup, respect for others, and self-confidence; art and architecture—in pattern, balance, symmetry, and construction; language— in function, storytelling, planning and conceptual exchange; science—in gravity, weight, trial and error, and inductive thinking; and mathematics—in geometry, Andrew Falkowski, number, measurement, classification, fractions and much more. Elizabeth S. Hirsch, The Block Book (1984)

The action and its consequence must be joined in perception. This relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the objective of all intelligence. A child’s Elijah Burgher, Julie Weitz, experience may be intense, but, because of lack of background from past experiences, relations between undergoing and doing are slightly grasped, and the experience does not have great depth or breadth. No one ever arrives at such maturity that he perceives all the connections involved. Christopher Mcnulty, John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934) With over two decades of teaching, many of my former students have gone on to become influential artist/teachers . I reached out to a handful of these colleagues; dedicated educators and actively engaged artists, asking them to consider the problems of these intertwined Michael Velliquette, occupations . I also asked them to respond to two basic pedagogical questions: Do you employ the concept of “building blocks?” Joey Farueso, Gil Riley How do you teach the perception of “action and its consequence?” Below is a selection of beautifully varied responses, suggesting to me that Jacques Ranciere’s “conditions of possibility” are in fact flourishing in the classroom, and that these “conditions of possibility” are as resourceful and as inspired as these artist/teacher’s studio & Adam Scott engagements . Michelle Grabner

It’s bad to teach someone a technique, right? The worst thing that someone could do, would be to preemptively foreclose the process of experimentation by asking a student to unquestioningly embrace their mimetic instincts and copy their instructor . How can you disagree with that? However, (just like painting itself) the reality is harder to negotiate in practice than the principle, especially in relation to current art discourse . For example, I know that if I wanted to prepare my students to be good operators in the current art world, I should remind them to embrace a dispersed, adaptable, tinkering-oriented approach not only to materials, but also to the role an art object might play in its immediate surroundings . A painting that integrates with our current moment is always ‘just in time’: it’s provisional, appears to respond cleverly to contingencies and becomes an adaptable fragment which has both a meaningful physical presence, and can still haunt the world as spectrally as a JPEG . On the one hand, it would be foolish not to show someone new to the art world that it currently operates in this way .

On the other hand, as we teach this, we run the risk of circumscribing experimentation by falsely defining its limits . And in circumscribing these limits, what type of world do we help create? Remember “Social Practices”? The more we applied the heuristic that objects need to directly acknowledge their social role in the space around them, the more objects became props . Consequently, we have the current backlash where repressed techniques of handicraft return to fight a zombie death match against an invented foe .

The solution to a problem like this is fragile because while it’s pretty traditional, it’s very hard to reproduce: get a group of artists (students and teachers) together in a space for an extended period of time (they need to be very serious about what they do and they shouldn’t agree with one another on everything) and see what happens . It’s painful to talk about, because it lacks administrate filigree and doesn’t make a good case for it’s relevance (it seems wasteful and indulgent), but that is precisely what makes it powerful .

Philip Vanderhyden teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the 92nd Street Y, NYC

“The student of the ignorant master learns what his master does not know, since his master commands him to look for something and ro recount everything he discovers along the way while the master verifies that he is actually looking for it . The student learns something as an effect of his master’s mastery . But he does not learn his master’s knowledge ”. 1

Molly Zuckerman-Hartung teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

1 Rancière, Jacques, The Emancipated Spectator, Art Forum, March 2007, Pg 277 36 37 Recently, I keep thinking about the notion of public address . While it seems fundamentally important to encourage the development of work in the studio, it is essentially a series of private impulses and considerations; a kind of narcissism . Since we are not collectively As an artist and educator, the greatest lesson I might impart is the reminder of something forgotten but eminently present, an embodied bound up in any one historical prerogative at the moment, the range of disperse forms or styles or ideologies or attitudes or whatever knowledge that reflects back as a tangible result . Sometimes in the classroom I am like a voice recorder playing back to my students in you want to call it, confirms the self-importance inherent in “material investigation ”. As a result, this musing around often seems to real time that which consequentially appears to be self-evident . And other times, I just quietly watch as they disclose their unknown have a slackening effect on student work . It can seem really bland . secrets to themselves .

While I do believe the best work is ineffable, I notice students mystify their process way too much, perceiving no particular consequence Julie Weitz teaches at the University of South Florida, Tampa to no particular audience . I hope my students at least consider the where, how, who, when and what that establishes their private impulse, in order for it to become emphatic in its public address . While I do follow the convention of imparting large quantities of information to my classes, I find that an equally important part of my We–I’m only really talking about painters here–can only really see radical derivations through the distance it establishes from previous job is extracting from my students much of what they think they know . I look for points of closure and unconscious assumptions in their models . If I aspire to anything, it is to help students gain some initiative in this process . If one knows what they believe in, and creative and interpretive processes, and attempt to open them to other possibilities . The following are three provocations or “building establishes it through the lexicon of private and public knowledge, one may become necessary to a collective praxis . That’s what I want blocks” that I often use to challenge them to expand their practice: for my students: to be necessary . 1) It is impossible to make objects or works that are meaningless . As artists, therefore, we have no choice but to clarify our intent and We’re all performers enacting a process of subjectivity through site-specified objects that appear centripetal, but are most likely thinking, and to define what we hope to convey through our work . centrifugal . None of it’s neutral . Seen in this way, art students can take ownership of the various entanglements that construct their work and hopefully their actions will become consequential to more than themselves . 2) As artists, we use materials, objects, images and forms for both what they literally are and as a means with which to create metaphors about our experiences, ideas and the world around us . Andrew Falkowski teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 3) There are no perfect solutions to conceptual, formal, or technical problems . Some answers are better than others, but all solutions are imperfect . I came across a similar quip to Shaw’s recently, reading the opening pages of G .H . Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology . I am paraphrasing and elaborating here, but Hardy begins his extended essay by apologizing for his apology: mathematicians solve mathematical problems, Dewey’s thoughts on “action and its consequence” remind me of another point of closure that I regularly witness in the sculpture but resent discussing or explaining the discipline of mathematics . They dislike such talk in much the same way that artists often object courses that I teach . Following an initial process of conceptual and visual brainstorming, many students tend to consider their thought to critics; birds are indifferent to ornithology, etc . What criticism and teaching have in common is explanation, discussion and theory– process complete and view the remaining work as simply physical execution . As educators, many of us are guilty of reinforcing this discourse, in a word . In certain contexts, Shaw’s and Hardy’s statements ring true . In fact, I make it a point of telling my students at simplistic perspective by referring to material, process, form, and concept as if they were somehow distinct elements of artistic practice the beginning of each semester, usually in the first class, that I’d prefer to be in my own studio rather than theirs . Making does have rather than interdependent parts . The legacies of Modernism and Cartesian thought persist in how we think and speak about art (and some precedence for me . It’s a sorry state–and I’ve been there!–to talk more about work one wants to make, than the work one is in the sculpture in particular) at times, bolstering false notions that material and skill are distinct from rather than integral to artistic ends . process of making or, better still, has just happily finished . There are no consequences for theoretical actions . Rather, thought must meet However, as Dewey argued, ungrounded thought (“excess of receptivity”) and blind execution (“zeal for doing”) are insufficient by the resistance of material reality to take any real, truthful shape . themselves . Moreover, this perspective presupposes materials to be inert and passive . In Thinking Through Craft (Berg, 2007), Glenn Adamson argued that skill is not merely “a discrete set of techniques,” but rather the means through which the sculptor “engages with I am a bit of a marshmallow as a teacher–it’s a fault of mine, which I am working on–I tend to coddle, to cheerlead . The only trait I the internal forces of material,” in order to inspire, test, and shape the work . In this view, skill is a means not just to manipulate material can’t abide, about which I manage to be stern, is laziness . But I hardly dismiss talk–discourse . Making without talking is just as dreary a and impose form, but to shape content as well . prospect . Artworks are materials to which ideas, convictions, doubts, and fantasies are bound up by the artists who made them . Talk is an integral part of the process through which those ideas, convictions, etc . are unbound and shared intellectually, socially . Talk, in other To counter these reductive assumptions, I encourage students to view their materials as actors having a voice in the creation of the words, is that gauntlet through which artworks must pass, whether shyly or brazenly, in order to assume any kind of relevance or even artwork . Throughout their process of making, I insistently point to the “consequences” of their actions — the complex unfolding greatness, and value for folks other than the artist . It would be indefensible to look at a painting of a tree rather than the real thing if this matrix of material, method, form, and content . In Jane Bennett’s more theoretical terms, these consequences are the result of an were otherwise . An artwork is bracketed as something, the meaning and value of which is to be contested . encounter between “ontologically diverse actants” in which the vibrant materiality of non-human things “act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own” (Vibrant Matter, Duke, 2010) . However it is theorized, this awareness of the I think that my painting students should be familiar with Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried’s attack on Donald Judd, Rosalind Krauss’s interrelationship and interdependence of material, method, and concept compels the perceptive student to reconceive of their artistic attack on Fried, etc . I teach at an art school that is attached to an encyclopedic museum, and I think they ought to spend about as much practice . Instead of merely imposing their ideas on dull, inanimate matter, their artistic process opens into one of ongoing negotiation time in the galleries as in the studio, figuring out what they like, why they like it, and how to do it themselves . I think they should visit and collaboration in which materials shape, test, complement, or confound their expressive ends . the library on campus at least once a week and flip through new periodicals and dusty monographs alike . I encourage them to do all of these things but only really require that they make work and discuss it– with me in one-on-one tutoring sessions, and with their peers in Christopher McNulty teaches at Auburn University in Alabama critiques . On the other hand, I frequently stipulate that the individual being critiqued is not allowed to speak . I also encourage everyone to begin by simply describing what they see, the nuts and bolts of what’s available to vision, before they engage in any interpretation or I regularly teach a studio foundations survey class to non-art-majors . We look at a lot of representational work at the beginning, just evaluation . The student who is under the gun, so to speak, can hopefully glean from her peers what is actually made manifest without to get them acclimated to talking about images . Understandably, they are very confident and comfortable at first as we talk about the any discursive interference . Likewise, her peers hopefully also self-reflect on how artworks either make or fail to make meaning through imagery in direct ways—”she is doing this in this picture ”. But as soon as we take on abstraction and conceptualism, that one-to-one that process of transforming an inert thing into language . I am always anxious to impress upon them however, and this from my own relation dissolves and the conversation gets more complicated, and more interesting . I find that the use of metaphor comes in handy set of values for better or worse, that communication might be overrated when making art . In critiques, we frequently talk about the then . Instead of expressing one-to-one relations, which I sometimes refer to as “horizontal meaning,” we use metaphor to point to other “WTF” parts–the pieces or aspects of what we are looking at that we can’t explain so easily or at all . Do they have value as such? I try as angles or trajectories that meaning might be leading towards, or away from the thing . The metaphors I like to draw on, use personal best as I can to play out a dialectical relation between theory and practice in the classes I helm . experience . For instance when we read and discuss Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” we talk about how seeing an artwork for the I experienced so few intentional building blocks in my own art education, other than learning very basic skill sets, so I prefer for first time can sometimes be like seeing someone beautiful at a bar . They look really hot from a distance and you can’t take your eyes off everyone to jump in the deep end all at once . (I hasten to add, however, that I sometimes teach straight from the Bauhaus curriculum, them . But when you finally get close enough to introduce yourself, and you hear them speak they might turn out to be really awful . bracketing it as such, to point towards previous pedagogical models as well as existing sources for skill sets ). As for actions and That sort of thing . consequences, I think the two form an analogue for that process of making and talking, material creation and social intellection–that is the heart Michael Velliquette teaches at The University of Wisconsin-Madison of visual art in both its practice and its teaching .

P .S . The only Ranciere book I care for is The Ignorant Schoolmaster, because I do believe that we are all essentially self-taught, our One of the main issues with teaching young photographers is that most are only familiar with the contemporary vernacular of wayward energies as students given shape by the symbolic will (our own and those projected) of the instructor from whom we expect a photography . To help them become more sophisticated makers, I walk them through a series of principles using readings that build transmission of knowledge and skills . upon one another . Elijah Burgher teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 38 39 Truth: No single photographic image is entirely truthful, except when referencing itself–Italo Calvino

Authorship: Both the audience and the maker are responsible for recognizing that a point of view is being expressed–Plato›s Cave

Referentiality: Photographs are indexical, each refers to the photographs before it . Photography influences contemporary ways of seeing–John Szarkowski

Connotation and Denotation: An image can be built through a structured visual hierarchy–Roland Barthes

Barry Underwood teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art

I recently read an article in the New Yorker by Adam Green about the master pickpocket Apollo Robbins . In reading about the path to his celebrated virtuosity as a pickpocket, and expert on the patterns of human attention, it struck me that this is fundamentally similar to what I want to teach my students about perception . Apollo Robbins has devoted a huge amount of time to studying his field, his predecessors, and the techniques of his craft . All of this knowledge creates a deeply ingrained confidence that in some ways allows him to be completely intuitive and attentive to the specifics of any given situation . He is completely immersed in the micro-mechanics of the moment . He does not act based on assumptions or previous knowledge, but on a hyper-awareness of the conditions at hand . I want my students to be confident but not too comfortable .

Joey Farueso teaches at Texas State University, San Marcos

Paint is an excellent medium through which to see a direct consequence of an action . Act towards, against, in front of your surface . Be present . Then critique from a position of irony . Articulate to yourself and others how and why you acted as you did . Consider the judgment of others to broaden and deepen understanding .

Gil Riley teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Teaching in a high power art school (SAIC) in 2013 is a bi-polar (or binary) experience . The building blocks that one assumes are necessary for a given time period or generation have the shelf life of raw milk . It is precisely because of this radical instability that art teaching is always already the pariah and parvenu of the growing margins of education, whether utilitarian or experimental . Interiority and externalization are key ideas here–The binary code . How instructors and students creatively navigate these vectors is at the center of art education in the 21st century .

Interiors: Private art schools and/or art departments within 4 year universities The studios–the physical sites of practice for students within the various art departments . The mind/body of artist/student The void of knowledge within the mind/body of the student that needs to be «filled»–a debatable topic for sure . The default community within each school/department–critiques, cliques, dialogues, conversations, gossip, micro-constituencies .

Exteriors: The “art world” The “art market” Private art museums University art museums Private galleries Not for profit galleries Project spaces DIY Spaces Art criticism I don’t see any difference in my studio practice and my teaching . I leave no stone unturned, there are no rules and everything is permitted . What do you want to say? How and where do you get the proper tools to say it? Play with your blocks Build a foundation Put a house on it Look at yourself in the mirror as you kick the house over

Adam Scott teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago DARK/NESS When used to describe a mental state, especially “negative” states of anxiety/anguish,As a term, too it’s tainted or an artwork by association that visually with ideologies depicts these, of good and including evil, racial through categorization, use of shadow (i.e., lack of light). moralities of purity (again racialized and gendered), and “populist” assumptions about the sub/conscious. spell To it out simply: white does not mean good; black does not mean bad [see also Bad/Good]. It should also be added here that white is generally understood asthese normative are abstracted, (and is therefore supposedly invisible “neutral” in its normativity): entities, from the “blank” which all other paper/canvas, colors, including the white pedestal, black, deviate. the white Darkness, wall, the within white cube… this the white pantheon, artist; is inherently deviant. 40 41 Abhishek Hazra Zachary Cahill Somebody That I Used to Know: feat. Cassandra Troyan Lessons of Art and Debt

You said that you could let it go And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

The Summer of 2012 was marked by a massively expensive US presidential contest, record high global temperatures, and the grating ubiquity of the pop song Somebody that I Used to Know by Australian one hit wonder Gotye . Invariably this bizarro brew of heat, wealth, and pop is what we have come to expect in the United States as the corn inches toward the proverbial knee height in July . However the omnipresent texture of this particular Top 40 hit bordered on the uncanny, at least for this listener . Everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, the song followed us around: at the gas station, in the restroom, at the supermarket, the post-office, taxi’s, trains, airports, and yes, even in the library . There was no escaping Somebody That I Used to Know. It’s catchy keyboard hook was like the crocodile from Disney’s Peter Pan that had swallowed a clock whose “Tic-tock” would forecast his imminent approach . This utter inescapability must have pleased the songwriter to no end . Like Bruce Springsteen’s Bobby Jean, we can presume that Gotye’s “somebody” must have gotten the message .

Pop songs like this one, and our love affair with them, share a peculiar resemblance between the art student and pedagogues of the discipline, in that there is a certain shallowness to the relationship between teachers and students derived from financial realities . This observation is not lodged here as a lament or a critique of art education, it’s simply an attempt at a clear-eyed observation . Like the pop hits of today, education is generated by a large apparatus comprised of focus groups, risk management assessment, marketing, statistical analysis of cost benefit ratios, and other corporate methodologies that frame the experience of art school long before student and teacher 44 45 step foot in the classroom . Again, this is not a dystopic harangue about the state of art school . Others have done so already and have even annulment of the gift. 3 made delightfully trite movies on the subject 1. My aim here is to try to begin to map the qualitatively different relationships that exist between students and their cohorts vis-a-vis teachers and their colleagues and the places where these groups intersect . Un-payable debt then might be thought of as a true gift . There is no-counter offer because once reciprocity appears on the scene, as Derrida astutely points out, the gift is gone . To put it simply, the relationship between students and teachers is governed by a different order than other forms of sociality . It is an intimate broadcast situation, essentially the equivalent of the pop music relationship that exists between stars and their fans . Pop stars One might think that art represents an analogous form of debt that can’t be repaid . . I mean actual art . True,. much art today is barely art want to love their fans but can’t—not really . Students, like fans, are receivers of a broadcast . Analogously, Teachers want to love their and it is certainly not a gift . Usually it is something else, which can be bought and sold as if it were art, and the debts get settled . But art, students . In fact they may even believe that they do . And students may return that love with adulation . But it is an impossible situation . any art worthy of it’s name, resists this market economy logic . . really it moves beyond the debt situation . You. changed my life with the It is a static or “cool” relationship, here meant with all the McLuhan-esque twists implied .2The back and forth of the student-teacher film you made . . altered my thinking with that painting (yes, painting) . disrupted. my world view with that performance . that. lecture . . relationship implies that the classroom is a zone for a participatory mode of exchange, but nevertheless it is more akin to the one-way- You changed my life and I can’t get it back . we. are no longer the same . . mode of “hot” media of the radio in it’s broadcasting function . The code underlying the message of any one “broadcast” or seminar is Zachary Cahill in the values and aspirations of that particular institution that the teacher works for . Teachers are sought after because of a certain profile that represents the institution’s interests, and that profile writ large should really be read as a brand–a brand that has a constituency to answer to . So teachers and students are never on equal footing in today’s educational economy for the sole reason that education is monetized . You actually aren’t in the same boat and can never be because the money thing just won’t budge . The same is true for the The pop song opens the possibility of connection through dramatic reciprocity, hoping for a new relational landscape to be flung wide pop star, how can they hang out withsomeone who pays for their subjectivity, for their music . Birds can only flock with others in the through the promise of emotional vulnerability . This desire and need for acceptance and genuine communication leads to other forms of same financial modality . This no doubt accounts for the kind of weird-ness that both teachers and students feel when they encounter knowledge, a poetics of rejection or failure, situations where awkward dynamics between teacher and student must be navigated . This is each other outside the prescribed field of the classroom . a negotiation rather than a relationship; the terms for communication become much more hyperbolic with an increased fear of personal interaction, as any human can become a fetish object . On top of this is the fact that classrooms are like cities on a concert tour . The musician goes from town to town and encounters audiences variously electric or lame, but either way the numbers add up until you have countless emotional connections . In a similar This is the greatest fear of the pop star and the academic . For the academic, touch becomes a nearly mythical and forbidden affair, as the fashion the teacher/performer goes through a kind of multiple personality disorder; changing and being changed by each intense link of sex-money-power turns gestures of potential intimacy into acts of sexual possession . The once supportive pat on the shoulder encounter with every new influx of students . In the teacher’s case, in order for the information to flow, for art and experience to reach can quickly turn into a skewed advance according to both parties perception of each other’s motivations . The pop star relies on the the student, there is often a “mind-meld” of sorts . Nobody has yet, to my knowledge, taken into account what this means for both desperation of his or her fans hoping for a chance intimate encounter, a glance, a public sighting or fabled passing caress, but as the students and teachers . Unlike other academic disciplines where there is the intermediary of the primary source material, as say in a mania increases the intense affection becomes a reverberated broadcast, a wave of affection that the pop star and now pure fetish object, class on Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which the text is combed over line by line, a studio is involved in producing something like primary cannot receive . It is the desire of the pop star to be propelled to such heights, yet it only highlights his or her precarious seriality . Will material together . It is this toggling back and forth between “Hot” and “Cool” media of art’s education, from the seminar to the studio anyone even remember Gotye by the end of 2013? For the brilliant new professor, come the trappings of infallible respect and adoration, class, which surely accounts for the paradoxically quality of art instruction within the university setting . Long gone therefore, given but little possibility in the hope of generating a continued teacher/student discourse outside the classroom . An economy of interactions this environment, are the days of “student work,” due to the blurring that occurs from the deskilling of contemporary art and the might exist, but only for the student body and a continuing flux of ideas shifting from the artists’ studios, long nights, and shared drinks . rather newly dubbed practice of “artistic research ”. Artists are now student-researchers, and any student can be an artist . So, now the But even within that city of the classroom, the range of visibility reveals itself in shallow terms by developing new ways to intellectually pop singer and the fan are making music together–to follow the analogy–there is no cut and dried distinction to be had between the flaunt that are on par with flinging one’s panties on stage or brandishing a quick tit-flash . “Look at me! Look at me!” may not necessarily art being made by students and teachers in the art studio . Perhaps this is symptomatic of the age of social media . We are connecting but be a cry for attention, but a call for recognition . without knowing what we are doing . But is this all true? Why all these misgivings? An attempt at egalitarian exchange making way for concision, a hymn of consistence as it all comes down to time and its undeniable Let’s get back to the Gotye song then . The song itself is really about a categorical change in a relationship . A relationship, which at one relation to money . Four minutes and four seconds is all Gotye gives, and it is surprisingly all one needs . The pop song is usually vilified point was very close, but perhaps not recognized as love exactly . Still, when it’s over, both parties are left wondering what happened? for its capacity to shrink down an arc of feeling into a consumable bite size, or has the form found a way to build it’s own refrain? Were they brought together out of love or convenience? A thirst for knowledge or money? The truth is none of these things can ever be separated, they are always co-present . Knowledge (as Foucault has shown us) is inherently bound to power which is bound to money You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness (as illustrated by Gordon Gecko) which in turn is bound to family (Oikos, the Greek root of the word economy, means home) and Like resignation to the end of course one cannot think of family or home without love (or at least sex— obviously not always equivalents) . The circuit of love, Always the end money, power, and knowledge is constantly playing itself out through all the facets of our life . Why should art (and art education) be any Not just a feedback loop, as with every repetition its familiar associations within person and place begin to morph into a strange new different? It’s all a messy venture really . Maybe we can call this messiness, the life-ness of life, the inability to categorize and separate out reverberation . How can the click of the crocodile’s clock become one of promise rather than entrapment, to experience time’s pull as a through any rational means the substance of life . You’re cringing, I can tell, as this is veering towards New-Age-feel-good-pop-psycho key to a cipher other than loss? This sort of debt is not of what is owed, but of what is lost and how that might ultimately be the feeling babble territory but maybe in the final analysis the “ life-ness of life” is the core of artistic practice and as such finds a rightful home gained . The whole exchange is a little bit embarrassing but that’s ok, that’s the point . in the complex of forces that I have been trying to describe as it relates to arts education . Maybe the pop song stuck in people’s heads everywhere is not a model to be frowned upon after all . Maybe Gotye’s insistent blathering on about how he didn’t really care, but is And I don’t even need your love now singing his heart out, is a lesson for educators and students alike . Maybe one never gets over any interaction or relationship . Maybe But you treat me like a stranger our students change us more than we know, teachers certainly aspire to change their students . The teacher who “changed my life” is the And that feels so rough kind of mythic status many pedagogue aspires to, but what does that mean when someone says this about another human being? Perhaps part of acknowledging this “life-ness of life” is how we exist in this same ecosphere as artists and we are all tired in different I would offer that it has something to do with debt–a debt that can’t be repaid . You changed my life and I owe you something . But ways due to the brutality of contemporary life . To try to carve meaning outside catalogued pre-arrangements or pre-existing conditions how can one repay that? A changed life that is now categorically different . Do you go and try to change that person’s life too? That of meaning, one is likely to be ground into pulp . The un-payable debt may also manifest as a moment in time: who I was before in would seem to have an almost retaliatory violence to it . Instituting a kind of endless Maussian gift-exchange logic, in so much as for the comparison to who I am now, and that permanent distance of separation . Identifying a difference in time, and knowing what that sociologist every gift comes with strings attached . This is why Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Marcel Mauss’s notion of the gift is so distance might mean . We need this time just as much as the object of experience itself and we must use it by giving it to others . brilliant, because Mauss, for all his wonderful analysis, never actually touches on the gift itself, it’s substance, what an actual gift would Exchange is not a device of entrapment . It will not save us either, yet it derives new modes for cultivating attention to complexities in be sans the accent on the contractual aspect and it’s status as a type of bond . Derrida writes: the world . Conceptualizing the unknown expands the language of possibility . It’s the pop song that says, “I am so unhappy but really look at me how happy I’ve become out being unhappy ”. One could go so far as to say that a work as monumental as Marcel Mauss’ The Gift speaks about everything but the gift: It deals with economy, exchange, contract (do ut des), it speaks of raising stakes, sacrifice, gift and counter-gift— in short, everything that in the thing impels the gift and the Cassandra Troyan

1 I am thinking here of the 2006 film Art School Confidential. 3 Jacques Derrida, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, trans . Peggy Kamuf, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1992 . 24 . My ongoing thanks goes 2 Marshall McLuhan describes the difference between hot and cold media thusly, ”Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are to Jan Verwoert for his work and suggesting this book to me . Also highly instructive in thinking through art’s relation to the economy is Lewis Hyde’s high in participation or completion by the audience . Naturally, therefore a hot medium like radio has very different effect on users from a cool medium fantastic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, which has exercised considerable influence on my thinking on the subject .–my thanks to

like the telephone ”. in McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1964) 23 . DIDACTIC/ISM Didactic work is intentionally informative, instructive or educational,General usage whether of “didactic” by direct means is a form or through of dismissal metaphor of anything or analogy. that is information-based rather than experiential, and/or is seen to be “preaching” to those already informed. There is a presumption here of what art “should” be, i.e. primarily experiential (this of course,is learned forgets that behavior). our abilities Even though one might to experience be already and interpret informed,marginalized experience there might are be based a valid, on or already-learned oppositional even necessary subjectivities. function behaviors of having or prior experience; information, in other opinions words, that art-viewing or experience confirmed or reiterated, especially in the case of Theresa Ganz for introducing me to Hyde’s work . 46 47 Andrew Falkowski Part Time Teaching

When asked to be apart of this Shifter issue, I jumped at the chance. Teaching has been a major part of my studio practice for the last eight years. I still consider what John Mandel, Millie Wilson, Michelle Grabner and Charles Gaines had to say to me as a student on a daily basis. But, in considering my own experience, I realized my relationships, with both my teachers and my students are essentially brief and…I guess the closest word would be “professional.” No one relationship or conversation would adequately frame my experience. Bouncing between three programs at two institutions as a part-time teacher affords me a constantly changing perspective on the act of teaching, its requirements and its sustainability. My schedule changes pretty significantly every three months. Hence, I’m considering how/why/if I’m necessary in the classroom, all the time. Most likely this movement probably inhibits my ability to establish a mentoring relationship, but that’s fine. I didn’t have a mentor but I’ve had many models from which to learn. So this essay is what I consider when constructing an identity as a model.

My thoughts on teaching and studio are all bound up in the context in which I do these things . This is obvious enough, but it seems important to frame this at the outset so my thoughts won’t be misconstrued as a generalized statement . But I ask myself these things because I’m constantly jumping around and adjusting as a teacher . I’m hoping my students will reap the benefit of my doubt…

I ask a lot of questions of myself in studio and I ask a lot of these same questions to students in the classroom . It’s the perpetual dialogic focus of my praxis that forms my approach .

I privilege an analytical model of thought that strives to demystify material and conceptual processes because it took me so long to figure things out on my own . In large part this is predicated on my experience with poor studio teachers early on . They taught through played out aphorisms and ideological prejudice . It was neither critical nor practical nor relevant to my subjectivity… As a result I didn’t see what I didn’t know and couldn’t know what I needed until years and years later .

But, I’ve had the fortune to work with exceptional artist/teachers as well . In total they shaped my understanding, clarifying language (visual and linguistic) through an inquisitive semiotic investigation that pointed to the ineffable . They affirmed specificity and insight, establishing the fundamental needs of an idea .

My best teachers affirmed an articulated line of thinking, and they treated me like a peer, even though I wasn’t . And for that I’m grateful .

I value the teacher/student relationship for the simple fact that students are adults, distinct and separate from me . I like the inferences made by our mutual differences .

For some reason I make a distinction between a ‘Mentor’ and a ‘Model’ . Is the blurring of the private and professional implied in the mentor relationship? A consistent, long term friendship seems implied as well . Or perhaps there is a parental implication? Does the mentor/mentee paradigm remain vertical, where the teacher remains dominant in the exchange through access, experience, position, or student deference?

If models are considered at a distance, mentors and mentees cling to each other . If so, I am just not sure I’ve been involved in the tight knit, interwoven mutual dependency implied by the term . I prefer the concept of a model .

I’ve had brilliant models to consider, both as a student and a teacher .

It would presumptuous to say I have mentees . I do, however, have ex-students who are now colleagues . By far, it’s the best part of the job .

· What is fundamental to the development of a public art career that can’t/wont/shouldn’t be addressed in art school?

· Should painting be taught as a vocation with a slim chance of becoming some kind of cottage industry?

· Is it the responsibility of students to sort themselves out, instrumentalizing the institution for their own ends? Does this necessitate capitalizing on mentor/teacher ego?

But what is a model, really? Is it a mode of address, a vocabulary? Is it a kind of logic that affirms while challenging? Is it a model of success in some version of the market that is then valorized in pedagogy? Is modeling based on affinity? Whose affinity, the student or the teacher? Do you model a student through negation in order to dismantle the forms and concepts generally considered irrelevant by the art world at large? Is there an essential practice that will facilitate the needs of students, collectively? If so, how is it established, on the assumption that each student comes from a diverse background and body of knowledge? Is modeling, questioning, or affirming? Is 48 49 a model a form of métier/technique, providing students with ‘practical’ skills? Piggy backing off of that, is a model a form of mastery? Education is expensive . Is it my responsibility to take that into consideration and provide a service, make them literate, defined by the Is modeling forming the right temperament so students become sensitive to the twists and turns of fashion? Is modeling the institution things we can actually name? Is that a confirmation of static craft? Or is education a way to convey how things operate, conferring of a set of parameters that students have to assimilate and deconstruct? Is modeling just the establishment of license…just a series of ‘Yes agency through pitch, presence, and tone? and… ’?. The affirmation of pragmatic skills seems necessary sometimes . But does it have to be couched with the acknowledgement that trade Currently, I teach at an art school and a research university . I am constantly negotiating my relationship to these programs because of isn’t art? . . Or, is being technically proficient a liability as it can limit you conceptually . ‘Trade’ is turned into an ideological fetish . Or, the range of needs in the student demographic, and for the simple reason that I work part time . The moniker and course load changes, will teaching technical proficiency create suspicion in people with their own ideological prejudice against this kind of materiality? depending on the school . But as a part-timer, I provide a tutorial service without ‘surplus’ value (the surplus, or lack thereof, being the relative anonymity of the artist in the market at large . [I’m using Diedrich Diederichsen’s terms here]) It’s overly dramatic to call part A colleague said s/he didn’t believe in intent…does this lead to the instrumentalization of a practice…Meaning by another’s means? timers disposable . We aren’t, not totally, at least . We’re useful, interchangeable parts, with greater or less efficacy in the classroom . Is education the clarification of form as emphatic address? Which is to say, is education the practice of becoming precise? Honestly, working as a part-timer is a fine job if you can get and keep it . It’s just not a career . If I am constantly confirming what I already know in the classroom, isn’t it necessary to negate it in my studio so I can remain open to It doesn’t have much bearing on one’s ability to teach, but the real job of a part-time teacher is the transformation of their subjectivity the propositions that will push my own painting forward, and by implication, push the classroom forward? from labor to abstract capital . Is education about speeding up self-identification and establishing boundaries that determine which influences can affect, and which are I wonder if part time teachers are gadflies entangled within institutions, framed in departments but only ever representing themselves . irrelevant? While a part timer works under the benevolence of an institution or department chair, they remain essentially on the outside of the There are myriad ways in which student demographics differ . What is consistent is the need to establish a social contract with each institutional culture established . The institution may value the contributions of part time staff, it is always and only recognized as other, student in order to initiate the mutual exchange necessary for teaching . There has to be a tacit understanding that there will be some as labor . form of transformation, ideally to both parties… . Maybe the consistent mutual exchange of cultural capital is the precondition that Endlessly plugging and unplugging, I move around fervently between semesters and quarters, seminars and studios, not to mention distinguishes a mentor/mentee relationship from a teacher/student one . constantly re-addressing my relationship to the multifarious interests of each student in various programs with different wants . I assume I went to undergrad with the nephews of a famous artist . After graduation I visited my friends in New York . While there, I was invited these are the conditions that simultaneously constructed a maniacal fetish for dispersed literacy and the suppression of communication to tag a long to a dinner with their uncle . At dinner he asked me what I did . I told him and he casually mentioned an artist who did when appropriate . something similar (‘oh, like the woman who does that stuff in Times Square?’) I drew a blank and said I didn’t know her . He looked at In order to be useful, I try to consider service, individually . In order to do that, one has to reconsider one’s own body of knowledge, me disapprovingly and muttered, “Jeez, you gotta look around ”. I was cut out of the conversation the rest of dinner . It was a harsh but focusing the sources that can be of use and suppress the modes of address (visual and linguistic) that potentially invalidate the student’s clear lesson . The generosity and tolerance of ‘self discovery’ in school isn’t enough . What you don’t know won’t kill you (you can’t know work, at least initially . This lateral coexistence of private and public ethics is necessarily calibrated to affirm . It’s a way of framing, or everything, obviously) but a perceived lack of literacy can make you irrelevant in a flash . More importantly, no one will invite you to editing . The idea is to help establish a parameter by which a student can examine a position, create or define tensions and posit a form dinner . And that can really feel like a fate worse than death sometimes . that has genuine consequences . While this process should be deeply considered, it may or may not be deeply felt . As such, I wonder if it Is teaching predicated on seduction/coercion…getting people to collude? Is this the kind of ‘mirroring’ some of my more narcissistic does deny the kind of deep-rooted, invested ideological sympathies and the time necessary to bond people and make mentors . teachers required of me that I detested so much as a student? Did I utterly miss their point? Do part-time teachers work craft-services in the edu-tainment business? The ability to confirm and direct pathology was the best thing I was ever taught . By excluding other impulses, one can try to develop a Do I endemically mirror the goals of a department or proselytize as a foreigner, a free agent? clear and meaningful public address .

At the research university in many ways I act as a standard bearer for the old guard by teaching picture making to legitimatize the entire With an ever-shifting field of painting sliding into ever expanding forms of communication, mediation and viewership, the givens process of ideation to a conservative university administration and student clientele . This in turn reflects how I address my relationship continue to shrink and the propositions continue to grow . You can’t consider everything, but nothing’s neutral . to both the student and the form . While I am not in a fixed position, I nevertheless represent a traditional model: painting . Tradition If paintings coexist without the historical context that once established dialectics, radical departures, negations and re-enchantments, isn’t inherently conservative, so I look for a form of practice that constructs continuity with a historical model while tweaking it to both teachers and students have to parse out where and why a painting became . Sifting through the residue of previous use, polysemic collude with the needs and particularity of 21st century students . syntax, we can try to establish the difference that establishes one’s subjective contribution . Unlike the research university’s students (who have essentially excelled within defined academic parameters their entire lives), my art During my last meeting as a grad student, the Chair of the department said the only thing students do is show some promise, and it school’s students seem hyper sensitive to the divide between title and function, institution and the self . I generally spend weeks each remains to be seen whether they’ll turn into anything consequential…It wasn’t the grand send off I hoped for . Looking back, it was semester trying to establish trust, something more easily proffered at the research institute . probably tailored to knock me down a peg or two . But it speaks to a very simple truth: education is meaningless until its product (our It seems like there is a sub-cultural dialect, a network of power rankings embedded in peer-to-peer shorthand that valorizes or destroys students) becomes necessary to those outside the framework of the institution that educated them . a teacher’s reputation, regardless of title . I get it . I really get it . I sympathize with their suspicion… They’ll become models . Of what is the issue . Should I proselytize my view of praxis, or should I confirm what a student wants? Is education then a re-orientation of conviction based on my model as a formal/conceptual corrective?

Is my responsibility as a professional the aggregation of my own influence through exhibitions in order to confirm the basic tenets of my own praxis so I can legitimize these principles in school as a valid model? Model seen, therefore model valid?

Should I discourage someone when they desperately want to make something I know is pretty dumb, especially when it’s something they feel really strongly about?

What acquired knowledge from my own studio should be used in the classroom? Will that ruin it for me? Where is the division?

From my experience there is an unspoken assumption that participants understand the basic ideological tenets that have determined the value in the world at large (How to construct a personal praxis that can be transformed into public value is what is at issue) Some of this is pragmatic and academic, but most of it interpersonal…Weirdly then, is a canon (i e. . axiomatic behavior) alive and well, constructed by public consensus and social exchange? Are these relation aesthetics operating not as egalitarian form but as social selection? Is privilege hidden in plain sight? DISCOURSE oftenToo used to mean a “conversation,” rather than the system of generative functionsargument), one may and briefly attributes,(and simplistically) as elaborated by Michel speak Foucault. of thismix Inas networks relation of beliefs, of tothoughts customs the critique andand conventions,practices and to the artworld culturalthat systematically (for the patterns sake, here,system, of a manageable construct of imagining, a node that produces the systems discourse, formal to which languages, andthey thatspeak. is itself Into social constitutedthis broadly relationships, throughindicated patterns that outline discourse. ofone monetary may throw One may applyetc. flow, in a similarIf we extrapolate principles this description, to the formation the andartwork functioning is a nodal complex of anwithin artist, this and equally to an artwork’s viewer. EVERYDAY [THE] Focus on the “everyday” is partly driven by a desire to meld art and life.and the However, “mundane” this presumes are linked a prior separation, to a democratic or and a counter-heroic presumes thatPovera), impulse, this it runs separation the without risk of a historicizing being is in the only service a sanitized of elitism. or social stylistic While context, or this choice a more politicized that valorizing masks conservative imperative of the “everyday” normativity. (for example, of the New Topographics in photography, or Arte 50 51 Jesal Kapadia A, B, C of Pedagogy & Brian McCarthy or The Right To Be

I.

A: When does eviction occur?

52 53 B: The language of visual signification of the classroom is meant to prepare us, one would suppose, for the universal translation of our “skills” . We are bootstrap entrepreneurs, armed with the codes of symbolic and cultural capital, and a complete understanding that we are clients in a global system of exchange .

C: The difference is, as the eviction metaphor…

A: It’s not a metaphor .

C: …as the metaphor of eviction makes plain, the unique pedagogical atmosphere which is created in the classroom, in which we release our communal energies–of “time spent together,” is temporary, and subject to our “time being up ”.

A: The time is never up though: after 2 or 4 or 7 years we are face to face with the real temporal accumulation: debt.

B: As can be seen by the student-wage movements in the mid-1970’s, the demand for wages for the intellectual and affective labor of being a student, is a form of negativity which does not seem to exist anymore in neoliberal models of education .

C: Positivized: a contractual, client-model of the student production and consumption of pedagogy, naturalized and reproduced through Powerpoint, seamless professionalism and the charming charisma of the effective presentation, similar to what an architect might propose to a corporate client . All of which is assumed will be transportable to all future work contexts .

A: Meanwhile, the entire apparatus of intensive, just-in-time pedagogy, which prepares us to be separated from the very territory in which we have invested in the first place, ensures that the collective energies roused by the classroom are ultimately repressed .

B: The evacuated space of the classroom, which looks like an unused corporate boardroom . Is this a surprise?

B: That is why the classroom is empty . 54 55 II. Effective Practices for Faculty Mentors and Graduate Advisees A: The mentor-advisee relationship is, according to administrative principles, one guided by expectations .

Faculty Mentors

1. Introduce their advisees into the professional practices of the discipline (i e. ,. publishing, conference presentations, etc ). 2. Provide advice and support to students as they begin teaching 3. Direct students to appropriate research policies and training related to their research (e .g ,. IRB, responsible conduct of research, human-subject protection, animal care, hazardous materials, etc ). 4. Provide a safe and secure environment for conducting research 5. Suggest pertinent bibliographical sources and approaches 6. Read and return work to advisee promptly (ideally within one month) and with useful comments 7. Are editors writ small (grammar, style) and large (structure and success of argument) of student work 8. Train students to prepare abstracts or papers for conferences and manuscripts for publication 9. Encourage students to participate in professional conferences 10. Advise students on applying for grants to support their research and writing and read drafts of grant proposals 11. Provide timely and thoughtful letters of recommendation for students 12. In consultation with the student and the chair, form the faculty committee for the prospectus and dissertation defenses 13. Meet with advisee to discuss preparing for the academic job market and alternative avenues for Ph .D .s 14. Provide support to advisees beyond graduation

Graduate Advisees

1. Have an agenda, use a calendar to organize their time and effort 2. Initiate regular meetings with the adviser 3. Make a work plan and define goals with mentor, while taking coursework and after advancement to candidacy 4. Submit best, most finished version of chapters or manuscripts possible 5. Give adviser ample time (ideally one month) to read and comment on a chapter or manuscript 6. Respond fully to adviser’s comments and critiques, including incorporating agreed-upon changes and revisions into work 7. Plan for grant writing or job applications by identifying possibilities well in advance of deadlines . 8. When requesting a letter of recommendation, provide adviser and other faculty with an updated c v. ,. a copy of the proposal or cover letter, and a memo or outline on state of work in progress; if applicable, also a list of courses taken with the faculty member as well as titles of papers and topics of presentations made in class 9. Consult adviser on significant professional decisions 10. Keep adviser informed of professional development after graduation

C: But in reality, no clear boundary can be drawn . What is done in a spirit of true collaboration has no territory . 56 57 III. A: In this seasonal life cycle of the student-identity, where without the effort to build and sustain a community within the concentrated space of the university, students will face a wall of debt as soon as they leave . Within the temporal territorial enclosure of 2, or 4, or 7 years .

A: Pedagogy is a model for collaboration, for collective visualization, possible only when we convene together . B: With the grand compensation being an arsenal of symbolic codes, meant to assuage us for the original theft…

B: And eviction occurs because we exist in a positivized, immaterial economy of client-based interactions, to prepare us for territories A: A repression of community occurs: if the concentrated form of the pedagogical environment, so vital and intimate, releases which might… collective energies, that then must be evicted .

A: …or might not… The prosecution of this eviction, and the tragedy of the broken space of community, is carried out perfectly by the client-form of the student–the form of the student as proto-worker, consumer, as entrepreneur . B: Exist . On the other side . C: What is the knot here? C: Pedagogy becomes a surplus transformed into property . A: Being together produces affection, a surplus, that has the potential to not be capitalized and separated from the community . If this process of pedagogical visualization, this affection, creates the terrain of revolution in all cases, what are the stakes of this eviction?

All forms that get institutionalized utilize this very process of collaborative energies for their own “revolution,” where the sterile environment of corporate boardrooms is also a stage for collective impulses…a méconnaissance of collectivity,a misrecognition .

© R .D . Laing © J . K . Gibson-Graham

A: Seamlessly then we move, from context to context, generating codes of symbolic and behavioral capital in a pedagogical atmosphere, B: Then this double-negative must be untied . part of a perfectly naturalized form . Transportable . Translatable .

B: What this positivized form effectivelyscreens out are the constituent inequities on which the system is built . In a world without negativity–without the wage-demand for labor exerted, for instance–the hierarchies become invisible and naturalized .

C: What pedagogical ethics can be imagined here when everything so privatized? 58 59 I V. A: “I learned something here in one night that was greater than in 4 years of undergraduate education ”.

Just as easily: “Do not forget what you have seen here,” becomes more of an imperative than a thousand lessons in an empty boardroom .

C: What, then, is our Right to Be? Or: a thousand uses for an emptied room that we simply do not see because we are not taught to .

Women . Students . Workers . Teachers . Collectives . . B: Pedagogy then becomes a cosmos of intimacy which can and should extend beyond the classroom . As teachers, and as students, we begin to see its material, even in the form of an evacuated space, ripe for reclamation! If the territorial enclosure of the university creates singularities of us, what new pathways can we open up to sustain collectives? C: Reverse engineering an eviction, through a minimal form: what we could call “reproduction” and not “production”: by not cutting If what we need to do is extract ourselves from the systematic exploitation of our capacities for analysis, and rediscover new modes of life off, rather allowing it to flow . A space of concentration, a space of subtraction . When we subtract ourselves from a dominant system being together–such as minimal forms of reproduction-of ourselves, of our lives, of our affinities, then how can the university become of thought, a whole new terrain of potential opens up . Patriarchy disappears . Equity emerges . this space of seeing where the forms for social reproduction begin to become apparent?

If this space of intimacy opens up through an institutional form designed to evict us to other contexts, always other contexts, when the emergence is always sited and here, then how do we define our right to be?

B: Our allegiance is always collective .

A: What emerges within an institutional framework can emerge anywhere .

C: If what emerges within the concentrated energies and intimacies of our spaces of convening, is an innate capacity for collectivity: when we convene in a space what needs to occur becomes apparent, we discuss and think together, we decide what to do, we deepen an analysis to the point where an idea of both human and being can emerge, to even create forms that can then carry on into any context… Thanks to Hardeep Mann and the voices from the Wednesday discussion group that has been active for the past 20 years in Mann and Jaspal Gill’s apartment B: How is this space of pedagogy different? And what sort of right naturally emerges here? located between Harvard University and MIT. The inspiration to include the concept of ‘the right to be’ comes from the women’s initiative Wrise that was formed recently in response to the Delhi Rape case and the Soni Sori case in India. Many thanks to everyone who came to the vigil at Harvard Square on C: What would its potential beauty be? What is learned here that is different? What cosmos do we create? March 8th 2013. 60 61 Adelita Husni Bey & Janna Graham

AHB: I want to start our reflection from a particular point, to use it as an initial compass . It’s the first known photographic image of a human being in a cityscape, a Haussmanian Boulevard so uncannily quiet it could be a river . The photograph is Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre’s Boulevard Du Temple from 1838 . The photograph accidentally captured an encounter . Because of the necessity of employing very long exposures, only two figures remain to testify to human presence in the city: a shoe shiner and his client . This serendipitous moment provoked by stillness and movement exalts the two shadows that are the product of a particular relationship; that of labor in a capitalist society .

The image provokes questions about how/ what we can/should teach and learn about the spaces we inhabit, in essence how we could construct a position in relation to learning and teaching within them . If the world is “out there,” to be experienced and participated in (as it is depicted in this photograph), I could choose to discuss with you the regimented trees in line, the soft focus, the purely aesthetic aspects of the scene, but instead I have chosen to draw your attention to that labor relation, which could be easily overlooked . It is this detail that I want to speak of when I look at the world; that I want to teach and that I, in turn, want to learn to see . I want to learn to ‘see’ that detail as despite later attempts to naturalize the labor relations captured in photographs, the hierarchies and social constructs that are so palpable in this isolated facet of the Daguerreotype are still operative in today’s Paris . Of course, I speak of Paris here as an abstraction, as any and every city where these conditions of labor exist .

Our position as teachers, artists, and citizens is thus to operate as critical filters who de-mystify by observing and willfully allowing certain parts of the collective imaginary to determine others while retaining the self-reflexive ability to recognize our own mystifications . As Paulo Freire so brilliantly described in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed we must recognize within us both the oppressor and the oppressed . These two figures operate dialectically in the pedagogical relationship and within the self, meaning they exist as power relations between individuals and within the individual . Freire stresses that the acknowledgement of this power relation and it’s de-mystification, cannot only be achieved idealistically but must also be addressed practically: the “oppressed” need to be provided with a toolkit with which to perceive the reality of oppression “not as a closed world where there is no exit but as a limiting situation which they (the oppressed) can transform ”. 1

Does our experience of education, curtailed by the institutional necessity of providing society with an efficient, under-paid, and over- worked workforce, offer this ‘toolkit’? Does education in and outside the arts, two very different spaces, provide distinct tools? Have historical radical educational projects provided those tools, and can we use them now? How?

JG: There are so many good questions here . I want to start with the “out-thereing” of the world that you mention . In the past number of years both representational art and abstraction have been criticized in favor of the social or relational . For me what is more interesting to consider is the ambivalence of aesthetic reading, which, as you point out, oscillates pedagogically between a kind of formalist dis- interest (how are the trees lined up etc ),. and a situated, dialectical reading practice that seeks not only to identify and analyze but to transform social circumstances . These are not only two different kinds of reading but also two different kinds of thinking . In the case of the latter, a kind of thinking with conditions, the conditions of the production of the image, of the reception of the image and the conditions of the reader’s intention . In the case of the former, a kind of thinking without conditions, that is limited to what can be seen and analyzed divorced from those conditions—bourgeois, self-exploiting/self-promoting etc . One finds many examples of this kind of thinking without conditions in endless discussions about post-Fordist labor that refuse to make their own labor practices explicitly and react aggressively and defensively towards those who do . Sometimes in the art field this ambivalence is conjured up as a moralistic choice: between formalism or formalist concerns and process;, between abstraction and the social; or and between representation and transformation . In Freire this gets complicated somewhat, first and foremost because of the assertion that you pointed out, that problem posing education must always begin from the assessment of the dialectic that underpins the reading relation the social relations that exist as we read images to begin with . For Freire, dialectical relationships are not grounds for ready-made moral judgments on about the oppressed /oppressor, student/teacher, the formalist/relationalist, but rather they compose the grounds for any investigation .

In chapter three of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire speaks specifically about the use of images, sounds or other representational material as existential condensations or reflections through which people in an investigation might reflect upon their circumstances . He describes them as codifications . The act of group analysis or reading of these images is described as de-codification . Artists and other makers of images (or representational forms, abstractions and relational forms) have a role to play in this, but they are not granted exceptional status . They are also imagined to produce material that is specifically relevant to those whose specific issues they refer to . In the process of de-codification, formal readings (trees lined up down a road) are just as important as the political or dialectical content of

1 Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum, New York, 2006, Pg 49. 62 63 the images, just as the fears and desires that are projected onto the images by individuals are as important as the analysis that is developed than, say, the very popular Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Rancière . While this text has circulated widely and with much enthusiasm by the group . The re-positioning of the act of aesthetic reading to questions of the conditions of groups in broader social contexts is in the field of art, I recently had opportunity to read it with a group of radical educators working across primary, secondary, university, slight but quite profound . It addresses your last question: whether those who spend their time reading and relishing in the aesthetic and informal educational contexts . They confirmed my own instinct that, while seductive, the lack of methodology in the text renders productions of today have learned from formalist pedagogies to buffer and “out-there” the world so well, that they have become blind to it quite romantic and cursory in comparison with the extensive body of theoretical and practical knowledge that has been produced by the contradictions and conditions of their own lives . critical education practitioners . While one does not want to use methodologies to promote a moralistic policing of people’s processes of coming together around cultural objects, not engaging in situated methodological discussions leaves us trapped in an endless terrain of In the system developed by Freire and other critical educators, it is not the formal or abstract reading itself that is the problem but rather utterances oscillating between the poles of cynicism and utopia . the conditions under which it is undertaken . What happens when abstractions, representations, images, and other codifications are made in direct relation to groups at the limits of the social, at its margins? What if those who put art on walls and deemed them significant AHB: The approaches you described in our “coming together around cultural objects” are very interesting . The idea that the analysis were held accountable to marginalized groups? What if every selection made was not based on the flimsy criteria of “what I see” or of culture and the wider process at its core is part and parcel of the same journey is particularly interesting . In “coming together around “what I like” but on what could be necessary and useful to the amplification—rather than the muffling—of social contradictions? cultural objects” (but also objects of culture) it may be important to consider other factors beyond methodology, such as producing ‘publics’ (how to produce increasing critical collectivities through radical pedagogy), and how to produce a sustainable and legitimized These questions—of the use-value of images, of the integrity of group process and accountability vis-a-vis struggle and transformation operation, which works against the grain of what I described earlier as a ‘clandestine practice’ . If these questions are not addressed at the limits of society—are the central preoccupations of the critical or radical educator . When they do come up in the field of art– radical pedagogy could remain, for better or worse, a marginal project . Here the arts could be a fruitful field, but artistic commitment which is not as frequent as we might imagine–they are often posed clumsily, and accompanied by fear and resistance . This is why the is, under current modes of production, fleeting . Grant dependency, commodification, mediation through the art-market re-package field of art has become so appealing within neoliberal processes that seek to separate thought and action from their conditions and intention and parcel commitment, while meaningful social transformation is, in my view, only obtained through the possibility of relativize social contradiction . engaging in long-term, unmediated practice . It is hard to pursue social transformation within the institutionalized framework of the professionalized artist, which can at best hope to produce projects within which to experiment with radical pedagogy as a methodology . AHB: To expand on your reflection on the conditions (and localize these conditions within a neoliberal stronghold we are both Again, dissemination, commodification, and mediation are its limitations . Yet I know history teaches us a different tale, where critical familiar with, namely London), I remember talking to you about the general shift in demands being made by university students in this pedagogy was instrumental in the success of certain progressive struggles such as the Civil Rights movement in the U .S . Can you tell me last decade . These demands pertain to what exchange-value the knowledge they were acquiring would have . There was no desire to that story again? wander and experiment, the demand being made in the humanities (which is the field I feel we can speak of) was more and more for professionalization and specialization that would provide job security . The ability, on the other hand, to detect knowledge production as JG: This is a question and indeed a struggle very near and dear to my heart . Having spent the last five years working with others in the inextricable from an ongoing critical relationship between actors within the university setting, so desperately necessary as a stipulation context of an art’s space that is both dedicated to radical pedagogy/co-research and attached to mainstream cultural institutions, I have within which radical pedagogy operates, was and is currently not supported at the level of the institution . I think here of goal-oriented experienced (and in some cases embodied) the contradictions between the core attributes of the contemporary arts community and the education, where the acquiring of knowledge becomes a purely personal investment, pushing students, or rather ‘clients’, to accrue large aims of radical education . While the question of timeframes, commodification, and “parachuting in” must not become general critiques, personal debt in order to achieve the ‘goal’ . As we have seen a return on this investment is a demand made by “clients,” who are after the fact that the art world routinely produces both heroic narratives and the relations of temp-work makes engaging in radical education all the ones who keep the university afloat post it’s forty percent public spending cut . A vicious circle . Can radical pedagogy operate, in relation to it a challenge . By studying the work of the Highlander Folk School and the Freedom Schools in the US Civil Rights especially within UK Universities, when the logic of exchange-value-education (how much is my degree worth on the open market?) movement and the revolutionary literacy movements of Latin America I have learned that sustained and committed practices that do not has long superseded the attempt at producing and acquiring a critical ‘toolkit’ which cannot be immediately monetized? shy away from methodological questions are crucial . The evidence of such processes is found in both formal and informal curricula that are negotiated through practice, debate, and re-introduction over time . The Freedom Schools—important training grounds for many This development is no surprise because the neoliberal condition is widespread and pertains to the arts as much as it does to culture at involved in the Civil Rights movements held in Mississippi in 1964—began with a curriculum conference involving representatives large . Furthermore, the underpaid and the overworked participate in their own oppression . Is theirs, and ours, really a position from from Southern African-American communities and Northern student activists . The curriculum was altered and adapted by every which this ‘toolkit’ can be reclaimed? Often, it is reclaimed privately rather than publicly through clandestine practices in the classroom . teacher and student in the movement, but served as an initial meeting point where ideas and experiences could be shared, stakes could be These take the form of citizenship studies (like entering a speakeasy during prohibition) or under the guise of socially engaged practice fought for, and people who were not meant to come together could together compose a resistant political movement . One could say that in the arts (which, as you rightly point out, is even more problematic) . This radical pedagogy only has critical currency for a few . While such ambitious and coordinated actions in radical pedagogy come about in moments that are truly life-and-death, as in the case of the there is something of value to this rhizomatic approach, are my attempts as an artist, as a teacher, and as a student to reclaim the validity resistance movements against military dictators in Latin America, or the Freedom Schools in 1964 . But it is not impossible to imagine of producing this ‘toolkit’ enough? Or do we require a more structured methodology? a movement of groups coming together across the United Kingdom in response to the Tory austerity program . This level of ambition JG: There is a lot in this with which we could continue . The question of intention, for example, has been a dirty word since Roland appeared momentarily in the education movements in 2010, when an interest in radical education was re-kindled, if momentarily . But Barthes proclaimed the “death of the author” . The author’s is only one kind of intention . In practices of critical pedagogy intention and the realities of exhaustion and endlessly moving from one project to another, often in geographically dispersed regions, can be extremely motivation for both the production and reception of words and images are of central concern and thought in relation to one another, not prohibiting factors . Where a small gap opened up under the contradictions of New Labour, in which it was actually possible to fund as the prioritization of one over the other i e. . the death of the author/birth of the reader nor the death of the reader/birth of the author . longer term more sustained investigations through both arts institutions and university research, this window appears to be closing . In They are part of what Lev Vygotsky described as the “affective-volitional tendency” i e. . the affective orientation to acts of reading, a context where resources become more limited and more directed towards conservative aims, many cultural practitioners are making making, and thinking together .2 choices between their commitments to the fleeting opportunities of an art career and the processes and communities with which they are engaged . Others, such as Michel Chion, locate a “listening intention”3 in the register of sound . In Freire’s writing, there are many references to both the affective and linguistic intentions that take place when groups come together to de-code cultural objects . He suggests that AHB: Could a long-term project, which links these different approaches within and outside the “classroom,” be an attempt to de- true communication takes place when accompanied by affective intentions such as love, commitment, etc ,. and untrue communication naturalize conditions of exploitation under neoliberalism? A de-normativization? Here, possibly unconventionally, I do not speak of takes place in their absence . While slightly reductive, most people with whom I collaborate–community activists, high school students, eradicating normativity . Norms and conventions are public and social processes, which allow for collective identification . In this respect, and others—are acutely attuned to these affective intentions of their communicative collaborators . This is not just about being nice following Georges Canguilhem4 (Foucault’s teacher), I speak of the distinction between normativity and normalization . Normativity is but a kind of recognition of deep political commitment that takes place and binds groups in practices of making images and texts and thought of as the process that allows us to establish the norm (that which is acceptable, allowed, endorsed, etc ). while normalization is the analyses and reading together . Cultural objects here take on a different character and groups are accountable for both what is made the disciplinary process that enforces the norm and renders it oppressive . A radical pedagogical project, with its tentacles reaching into and how they are read vis-a-vis their use to the struggle they are in . These affective intentions must be thought in relation to any the arts, the school, the university, must address this idea of continuous re-inscription of normativity . At the same time, it must continue methodology . its affair with criticality and self-reflexivity by perpetually questioning what is being normalized .

Many in the field of art are hesitant to speak of methodology . Freire himself was extremely skeptical of it . But he did map out some very rigorous “this-not-that’s” and sketched out some very interesting processes that are at the core of most critical education projects: JG: Yes, I’ve never used this term in relation to these processes, but I do think a kind of normativity is at stake . I think of this more things like departing from the knowledge and vocabularies in the room, committing to a critical process, putting analyses into action and more as I spend equal amounts of time in the pedagogical zones of arts’ institutions, secondary schools, and spaces of social care . and actions into reflection, and attending to power relations between teachers and students . I find this approach much more compelling Here, to use your term, a violent process of normalization is taking place in the marketization of humanities education . School slogans such as “Learning is our Business”5 are decried alongside those of leaders like Malcolm X, and accompanied by the direct involvement 2 L . Vygotsky, L . (1934) ‘Thinking and Speaking’ in Hanfman, Bakar and Minnik, eds (1962) Thought and Language . Cambridge: The MIT Press . Online version . http://www .marxists org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/index. .htm 3 Chion, M (1983/2009) Guide To Sound Objects: Pierre Schaeffer and musical research . Paris: Institut National De l’Audiovisuel & Éditions Buchet/ 4 Canguilhem, Georges, The Normal and the Pathological, Zone, New York, 1989 Chastel, Chapter II p . 89 . 5 This is the slogal of Westminster Academy in London . Academy Schools are a New Labour invention and becoming the dominant school-form in the 64 65 of multi-national corporations in the educational system . Informal and self-organized groups and pedagogies that once identified the social issues and addressed them . Now, they are placed into KPI (Key Performance Indicators) matrices in which the issues are always already inscribed by the consensus of a ruling class and rationalized accordingly . While I have in the past shied away from dogmatic or prescriptive curricula (in fact I still do), we need a much more clear and precise account of the role of a critical or radical humanities- based education to be able to produce counter-normalizations, to provide tools for exposing and responding to these contradictions so boldly asserted . While many of us toil away, without a coordinated critique and an accompanying toolkit, I am quite fearful of what the education landscape will look like in the years to come .

AHB: Your description of the school slogans is particularly poignant . It made me think back to an article describing a classroom wall of Paideia, an anarchist school in Merida, south-west Spain, which opened in 1978 . There, a collective of pedagogues has been attempting to reframe how children look at what it means to be educated . The inscription on the wall reads: “Being governed…means being surveilled, inspected spied on, directed, regulated, regimented, isolated, indoctrinated, predicated to, esteemed, valued, censored, commanded ”. There are no exams in Paideia, and the members of the school work together to both look after the building (cooking meals, washing dishes, looking after the garden, sweeping the floors), and structure the learning process (what and how should we learn together?) . Adults only exist as figures that help to deepen and guide the interests of the children . Furthermore, regular assemblies are the only decision-making body of the school . In this micro-society, collaborative practices, knowledge, and responsibility are re-framed outside notions of competition, standardization, and economic profit . The most frequent criticism is that those who attend the school find it difficult to integrate themselves into “society ”. They find it hard to accept positions where they are not allowed to question . Yet that is exactly what is revolutionary about this project . What if public education was structured on Paideia’s model? What would our society look like?

I think an interesting way to bring together our struggles both within and outside the art/education institution is to think of how to constantly advance this thought into practice . Proposing critical pedagogical methods as manners of constructing new social normativities around questions of solidarity and collective rather than individual investment . This project and striving to re-direct attention towards it, must be engaged with whilst effectively producing these models of schooling in the various fields we precariously inhabit . (see also Self) as in, “this is just an experiment.”

United Kingdom . Based loosely on the US Charter Schools, academies are state schools funded through private public partnerships wherein the private donor – by contributing $2million - influences the curricular focus of the school and its organisational procedures . Academy patrons take the form of

wealthy individuals, corporations such as KPMG or Capita and religious groups . EXPERIMENT: Invariably used as an excuse or a deflection against criticism.in contemporary art. If there is an element of investigation(as opposed to work being produced by rote), then there is also a degree of experimentation. This is practically a given EXPRESSIVE/NESSEXPRESS/ION; Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that an artwork mightartwork, “express” the emotions which we can and think thoughts of as of its an maker artifact (God-reference (in an isand deliberate): archeological another. Add as viewers to that sense we the have or no as access translation residue to that from “primary” a performance), from the artwork but source. also as All a translation. tomean our we own have that is responses, the our response and A translation the is the whole artwork’s exchange is is “meaning.” necessarily further hybridized. a hybrid form, The between fact that one text we have and access another, to our one own language responses (to a greater or lesser degree) doesn’t 66 67 Tyler Coburn & A.L. Steiner

Jan 11

Steiner,

I hope all is well . I took our dialogue as an opportunity to return to some of your teaching texts, including After the Fall: Communiqués from Occupied California and Mary Leclere’s The Question of (e)quality: Art in the Age of Facebook . There are still more that could have been pulled from your classes . I’m both grateful and embarrassed to admit that you assigned a number of authors I had not previously read, like bell hooks and Deborah Bright, who have done considerable work in developing models of critical pedagogy . Their texts have reverberated well beyond the first readings, and I often find myself retracing old highlights—now as a teacher myself . What I can appreciate, in retrospect, is how such readings brought questions about education into your undergraduate course at USC, as well as your work as MFA faculty . Your decision never seemed designed to dismantle the teacher-student relationship wholesale: you didn’t relinquish a student, in the Rancièrian sense, to “learn what he wants, nothing maybe ”. 1 I do think you might share Joseph Jacotot’s view of texts as tools of emancipation (how you define that term is another matter entirely), but rather than follow the ignorant schoolmaster in advocating for individuated education, you facilitated scales of discourse—recirculating readings, for example, through class conversations, smaller study groups, solo responses and exams—that situated each student within multiple, overlapping interpretive communities .

In my own undergraduate education, I shuttled between atomized struggles with texts and classrooms that privileged individuation through rhetorical distinction . Such competitive structures have a way of turning the university into the proving ground for a certain type of capitalist worker . While art education’s conventional emphasis on individual creativity can reproduce these structures, its oblique relation to institutional metrics may allow for less determinate use . Maybe this accounts for what happened in your undergraduate classroom, and maybe you’re just a good teacher . In any case, my experience as your teaching assistant made me want to know more about your influences and ethic—your history with pedagogy, your program for its future . This is a general place to start, so please take up the threads of your liking .

Best,

Tyler

------

Jan 1

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for getting this rolling/organized . And thanks for the shout-outs and appreciation . It’s been hard without you here . You’re inimitable .

I view pedagogy as an intra-dialogical process within a community comprised of people participating in the private and public sector as well as underground/love economies . I can only thank those who (way back during the turn of the 21st century) saw my potential as a communicator . I didn’t come into teaching as an education professional, but rather as a photo editor and visual artist who could bring “real-world” experience to School of the Visual Arts .

After receiving an undergraduate degree in Communications (McLuhan, Mander, Bright, hooks, Paik, Meyrowitz, etc ),. I spent three years working at an HIV/AIDS-service organization and inserting myself into queer and feminist activist communities . My greatest learning experiences occurred via readings, films, exhibits, lectures, performances, and participation in Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers and WAC meetings . It was through these networks of people and various mentors that I gained knowledge, got jobs, made friends, and became part of a larger community of cultural producers . As Ann Cvetkovich puts it, “historical residues, collective residues ”. 2

The pedagogical challenge for me is what information, and what forms of consciousness comprise that which we frame as artistic and/ or creative work . Work is a difficult term to define, and one that functions as the base of research and activism for W .A G. .E . [Working Artists and the Greater Economy] . We know and have read how the landscape of the worker—in terms of capitalist production and institutional structures—is in flux . And since I recognize my body within this flux, I’m both the model and the praxis within these institutions . What kind of worker am I, who am I working with/for, how are we functioning together within the systems in which we participate, and what translates amongst our bodies? I very much like Karen Barad’s theory of “agential realism ”. In her piece Posthumanist Performativity, she states: 69 “The relationship between the material and the discursive is one of mutual entailment . Neither is articulated/articulable in the absence …That about wraps up the first quarter of the e-mail I had envisaged sending, but I think it’s enough from me for the time being . I’ll of the other; matter and meaning are mutually articulated . Neither discursive practices nor material phenomena are ontologically try to address your other points and questions in follow-ups! Also, your e-mail generated some questions . First (quoting loosely), you or epistemologically prior . Neither can be explained in terms of the other . Neither has privileged status in determining the other . wrote that the “worker” is “both the model and the praxis” within “capitalist production and institutional structures”—I’m curious Apparatuses of bodily production and the phenomena they produce are material-discursive in nature ”. 3 to know how you understand “model” here . Then there’s “the mind” vs . “the brain,” which I’m tempted to map as “knowledge” vs . “information”; it seems you might be implying a social horizon for the former, and I wanted to know more . Also, the classroom: within Musings on the student or viewer’s emancipation, distilled through a queer-feminist lens, allow for a questioning of patriarchal power . and beyond art education, what will follow this “quaint and obsolete” form? Lastly, how does pedagogy enter into W .A G. .E ’s. research The proposition of one perspective or another in a school of “Fine Arts” is always speculative, and one has to continually grapple with and activism? that—the multiplicity of questions and answers that arise in the classroom and the studio are inspiring . To allow for voices to be equal, or to recognize access to knowledge as a space of agency, enlightenment, emancipation, community, privilege, liberation, etc ,. all bring such different possibilities into the institution . I used Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski’s Access to Knowledge (A2K) last semester . Best, I’ve been trying to think beyond the classroom (which will soon prove to be somewhat quaint and obsolete!), of bodies together, of the heart vs . the brain vs . the mind . Tyler

The speed at which information multiplies makes the specter of teaching feel almost absurd . Your book and thesis project, I’m That ------Angel, allowed me to appreciate this grappling—with sincerity, futility, desire, absurdity and futurity . I feel that you came into the MFA Jan 30 program from a different perspective than most of the students . Now that you’re emancipated (!), can you talk about what perspective you had coming in - what kind of artist you framed yourself as/wanted to be perceived as and how you saw the program as a conduit into teaching and establishing yourself as a pedagogical professional? I see you as someone interested in fictionalizations, critical Hi Tyler, responses and theor(h)et-orical conversations . So many things to respond to! It feels hard not to be discussing these things in person . Togetherness sometimes feels irreverent, dangerous, threatening . Best, I find the term “model” useful because of the propensity for the performance ofwork. I believe that when André Gorz wrote, “The Steiner ‘society of work’: It no longer exists and will never return… We have to learn to distinguish the contours of this other society behind the resistances, the dysfunctional behaviour, the dead-ends which make up the present…‘Work’ must lose its centrality in the ------consciousness, thought and imagination of all: We must learn to cast a different gaze upon work; to no longer think of it as something Jan 22 one has or doesn’t have, but as what we do . We have to dare to reappropriate work for ourselves,” he was describing resistance comprised as a shift translated through the gaze.11 I like how Claire Pentecost & Brian Holmes describe things like this as “sweeter affects ”. 12 I like the idea of “model” as conduit, structure, and idealized example . Being a worker perpetuates production . It was inspiring Hi Steiner, discussing different models of resistance, for instance, last year in our summer class with Eric Avila, Jack Halberstam, Robby Herbst, Karen Tongson et . al . . The MFA program itself postures within a mode of visible production, and in my time there since 2011, I’ve Thanks for this . I really appreciate how you proposed the “pedagogical challenge”: “what information, and what forms of consciousness witnessed various forms of resistance, competition, and production within its frameworks, no matter the wide range of individuation comprise that which we frame as artistic and/or creative work ”. In reading Posthumanist Performativity and parts of Access to and collaboration within the groupings . As we know, schools are organized in service of the industrialized model (ringing bells, separate Knowledge this past week, I found different supports for this position . Barad, for example, argues that “[d]iscourse is not what is said; it facilities for each production team, etc ). . is that which constrains and enables what can be said . Discursive practices define what count as meaningful statements ”. With reference to Foucault, she adds that the “‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ of knowledge practices” are not merely described but produced by discursive W .A G. .E . was birthed from the loins of desire, to simply understand our predicament better, more clearly . Most of us, including myself, practices . hadn’t even heard the term “precarity” uttered anywhere—especially in what’s known as the art world—in 2008 . Our condition as I took a couple of points from this 4. First, Barad corrects the conventional assumption that discursive practices are synonymous with cultural workers was sort of a dirty little secret . Some of us wanted to share, so I’d say that sharing is the central core of W .A G. .E ’s. linguistic expression and thus are “peculiarly human phenomena ”. 5 “Language has been granted too much power” in general, she pedagogical practice . We had/have to make people want to talk about their conditions because sharing inevitably leads to some form of argues, having assumed an “agency and historicity” that betrays an anthropocentric premise .6 Earlier models of performativity can be consciousness-raising . faulted, in turn, for upholding this premise; against Judith Butler, Barad argues that “[m]atter is not simply ‘a kind of citationality ’”. 7 Rather, the “mutual entailment” of the material and the discursive, as you’ve quoted, is also the posthuman “entailment” of the human In response to the mind=knowledge and brain=information question: yes, I am “implying a social horizon for the former” (I like when and the non-human—“iterative intra-activity” instead of “iterative citationality ”. 8 you’re tempted—what else are you tempted by?) . Your analysis implies that the mind is a collective space, which is important . But what is the relation of information or intellect or critical analysis in regards to agency, discursive practices and engagement? You asked about the perspective I had coming into art school; I suppose I’ve mentioned the above by way of response . During the application process, I had two models of learning in mind, one of which involved peers with comparable practices (i e. . research- and Best, writing-intensive) . The other closely resembled USC, with a small class size that I presumed would lessen the sharp edges of artistic Steiner disciplines—and with a student body deliberately composed of artists with ranging personal and ideological notions of practice . If the first model promised a pointed conversation set within the comfort of mutual recognition, then the latter seemed marked by the ------necessity and problem of translation, wherein the ethical responsibility to learn to speak on the terms of another can risk producing and maintaining difference . I’m reminded of Gayatri Spivak’s 1992 essay, “Teaching for the Times,” in which she warns against essentializing Feb 11 difference in the academy within a capitalist economy, encouraging the audience “to recognize agency in others, not simply to comprehend otherness ”. 9 Our actual responsibility, it strikes me, is to relate not solely through linguistic operations of translation and mediation, but to consider language’s “entailment” with matter—to consider our “entailment” with one another as also having non- Steiner, anthropocentric dimensions . Barad thus makes a significant contribution by forgoing “difference” to discuss intelligibility as “a matter of Many thanks for this and forgive my tardy reply . Tonight will be the first of the I’m that angel events in the Google Building, so I’ve been differential articulations and differential responsiveness/engagement ”. 10 headless, underslept, and overwhelmed by performance anxieties—even when I won’t be reading the text myself! There’s something There’s another aspect to the problem of translation that, during my schooling, actually worked against the hegemony of language . It’s in the project that grapples with the mind=knowledge, brain=information equations: the protagonist serves as a content farmer, issuing easy to dismiss MFA pedagogy as imparting no more than the requisite theoretical shorthand for circulation on the market (“press- routinized articles based on language peaking in Google Trends . He traffics in information and reminds (as do the A2K contributors) releasespeak”)—easy, in other words, to assume a homology between professionalization and subjectivation . Yet given that I came from that information is an object, and knowledge is a capacity . a position of already being far too trusting in, and deferential to, the force and naturalness of language, I appreciated that my educational A2K theorist Ahmed Abdel Latif delineates how “‘[k]nowledge processes information to produce ideas, analysis, and skills,’” sitting experience actually provided an opportunity to be confounded in the face of art, in the field of art, in the field of peers, alongside peers: “‘at the heart of the empowerment of individuals and societies ’”. 13 Working with a measured ambition that may owe, in part, to differentiallyand discursively and materially . The state of being rendered inarticulate—of a work’s co-present non-translatability—can the apprehension of speaking of societal empowerment from various points of privilege, angel’s protagonist begins with the trends, force a generative crisis of human agency . This is not to say that I’ve traded deference to one master for another (!), but to suggest art (its necessarily “speculative” sphere, to paraphrase you) as implicating and reminding of the agency of matter… 70 71 does something and then something else to them . If Jasper Johns and Michel de Certeau had a love child…the latter’s theory of “la perruque”—of the worker’s own work being performed under the cover of employed time—is at turns campy, ubiquitous, and irrelevant, for we now rarely experience those delineations so cleanly; and yet atop my project’s head it goes .

One of the problems I’m coming to have with I’m that angel is that it seems more diagnostic than propositional, and its beleaguered info-worker-patient may be receiving (still) more legitimation than alleviation (alteration?) from the text . His wig is wearing him, modeling him . This is part of the reason why group listening became such an important part of the piece; while the audience members may identify with the protagonist, they can also deconstruct the premise of reliability that the text, as a confessional, purports to possess . Another way of putting this (with reference to Gorz’s Reclaiming Work) is that they may come to distinguish the “subjectivity” written into the charter of the capitalist subject from those subjectivizing processes necessary for “the development of people’s autonomy irrespective of companies’ need for it ”. 14

I think that diagnosis, in this case, can be taken as a methodological choice to remain within the comfort of the known, even when, as my character says (coupling Gilles Deleuze and Max Weber) “a network is also a cage ”. 15 Tracing your references back to their source texts has helped me recognize that I’ve allowed the aforementioned apprehension of speaking on behalf of to foreclose a horizon of reciprocity that Holmes and Pentecost call “the radical imagination ”. “Those who proclaim the inexorability of market law do not only refuse to perceive its obvious failings,” the authors write, “they also try to cover up the human potential to see what is not there, to express an aspiration ”. 16

This quote brought to mind one from Capitalist Realism, which you mentioned off-handedly in our very first “professional” meeting (and which I raced home to read): “Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism . That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it ”. 17

So what tempts me? Imagination .

There are a few things that stuck in mind over the past two weeks . First, I wanted you to clarify J .K . Gibson-Graham’s notion of “systemic knowledge”—the way you unpacked it in your recent American Realness interview suggested a different notion of “systemic” than what I would expect 18. I also was curious to hear more about the dynamics of sharing, as operative in W .A G. .E ’s. practice and elsewhere in your life and work . This past week, a Fillip presentation on Intangible Economies reminded me of the importance of giving a 1 Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans . Kristin Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), contemporary shape to this activity; By choosing to share nowadays, we cast a different relief on a system that, like the city of Bellona in 18 . Samuel R . Delany’s Dhalgren, can sometimes burn for days without showing any signs of damage . 2 “Cruising the Archive with Ann Cvetkovich,” Recaps Magazine, 2012, http://recapsmagazine .com/rethink/cruising-the-archive-with-ann- Best, cvetkovich/ . 3 Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Tyler Society 28, no . 3 (2003): 822 . 4 Ibid ,. 819 . ------5 Ibid ,. 818 . Feb 16 6 Ibid ,. 801 .

7 YES—hope it went well/is going well! I’m there in cister spirit . You are Acéphale’s bane, progeny and proselytizer! Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 15, quoted in Ibid ,. 822 . 8 Ibid ,. 828 . 19 Glad you mentioned Dhalgren; I remember seeing Jay Scheib’s production of it at The Kitchen . It’s still smoldering inside me . Seeing 9 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Teaching for the Times,” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 25, no . 1 someone’s visual interpretation of Delaney (as opposed to thinking Delaney) was mind-blowing, even with its imperfections . I think, (Spring 1992): 7 . considering all the machinations and affects you’re ostensibly managing with I’m that angel, live performance overall is a generous/ 10 Karen Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and generative material for you . Society 28, no . 3 (2003): 824 .

11 As for systemic, the context I was highlighting is one of holism rather than reductionism . Opacity as the enemy of transparency, André Gorz, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-based Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999), 1 . knowledge as the salve to obfuscation--->(joyously, a synonym for this is beclouding) . As you probably know, I very much like to 12 Brian Holmes and Claire Pentecost, “The Politics of Perception: Art and the World Economy,” Continental Drift, section goes here, http:// utilize Hazel Henderson’s cake diagram (as inspired by J .K . Gibson-Graham’s writings . ). . We’re on the precipice, it is said, of the brianholmes wordpress. .com/2009/09/26/the-politics-of-perception/ . sharing economy .20 A hard sell in a privatized, profitized world . There are probably some further clues in the terms cooperative and 13 Ahmed Abdel Latif, “The Emergence of the A2K Movement: Reminiscences and Reflections of a Developing-Country Delegate,” in Access to recuperation, which are both still usurped by c(r)apitalism . We’re a naive and hopeful species despite our penchant for total destruction . I Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property, ed . Amy Kapczynski and Gaëlle Krikorian (New York: Zone Books, 2010), quoted in Amy Kapczynski, “Access to Knowledge: A Conceptual Genealogy,” introduction to Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property, ed . Amy Kapczynski and Gaëlle try to imagine us some other way . Krikorian (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 45 . All power to the imagination! 14 André Gorz, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-based Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999), 74 . Signing off with a sonic boom, 15 Tyler Coburn, I’m that angel (2013), 9 . 16 Brian Holmes and Claire Pentecost, “The Politics of Perception: Art and the World Economy,” Continental Drift, section goes here, http:// Steiner brianholmes wordpress. .com/2009/09/26/the-politics-of-perception/ . 17 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2009), 2 . 18 See “3 Questions on the Economy: Mårten Spångberg & A .L . Steiner on Keith Hennessy ” . American Realness, 2013, 61-66 . 19 See “Jay Scheib: Bellona, Destroyer of Cities,” The Kitchen, 2010, http://www thekitchen. org/event/341/0/1/. . 20 See Malcolm Harris and Neal Gorenflo, “Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation in the Age of Crisis,” Shareable, http://www .shareable .net/share-or-die . FEMINISM/FEMINIST Defined innocuously enough “a as collection of movements aimed at defining,necessarily establishing, unfinished, heterogeneousand defending project equal of political,theoretical economic,and political and social possibilities. rights for women.” May also be considered as a gender-initiated, Still an f-word in art school, and might be perceived as a failedmourning or completed movement sharply the good old pre-feminism divided across sex days, lines, “when and female with studentssurprising no acknowledgement would still of race, that get class naked” (female) or sexuality. students (actually might Still overheard), only use disparaged it within or before “feminist” by the (older sentence, male) faculty, “I’m artists not a feminist…” intruded especially to spoil to preempt the fun dismissal (also overheard). when Given their such a negative work might context, reflect notconscious thinking around gender. 72 73 Sreshta Rit Premnath & Abdullah Awad

In the Fall of 2012 I taught two courses at Williams College as an Arthur Levitt Fellow . The class titled Other Spaces: Occupying Imaginary, Virtual and Utopian Spaces combined the structure of a critical theory seminar with a project-based studio class . The syllabus proposed to engage with a variety of fictional and theoretical writing as well as artistic and performative approaches in order to consider the potential that creative practices provide in imagining “places” that do not yet exist, or that may remain foreclosed in the present, and yet accessible to our minds .

A Friday morning class with very abstract aspirations was assured a very low enrollment . Abdullah Awad was a memorable member of this small class, and our very first conversation, which, significantly, occurred in a space other than the classroom–namely a cafe–turned immediately to the structure of the teacher-student relationship and our mutual suspicions in regard to it . It became clear immediately that while each of us would negotiate with the tasks set out by Other Spaces, we would also have to contend with the relations of power and control that lie within our institutionally inscribed roles as teacher and student . I invited Abdullah to set down a conversation that we began on the day we first met .

------

SRP: Abdullah, I would like to begin by recalling an excited email you sent me before we met . “Indeed, ferocious typing does not translate well inter-semiotically, a single tyop notwithstanding,” to quote you . You said that you had just spent a year in New York working with Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant and others, and that the aims of the class lined up quite nicely with your intellectual interests . I realize now that these intellectual interests and the work you produced during the semester (which I hope we can discuss in detail later) are directly related to a journey you are shortly setting out on, with a Watson Fellowship . Perhaps you would like to begin by saying something about your initial interest in Other Spaces, without which we would not be having this conversation .

AA: Reaching Other Spaces was fortuitous . I learned of the seminar a mere moment before sending you that first e-mail, the assuredness of my interest inspired by a disagreement with a teacher the day before . The disagreement began as he and I read Jacques Rancière’s The Politics of Aesthetics, and developed opposing ideas concerning its usefulness . The disagreement, while ‘intellectual’ at first, quickly escalated as we realized that our approaches to reading Rancière implied two quite incompatible sets of philosophical commitments . So incompatible were those commitments that, as we continued pressing up against the limits of an ‘intellectual’ disagreement, the teacher began to deny the legitimacy of my interpretation not with recourse to the text itself but with recourse to the authority of the academic institution within which our roles were inscribed . A line of defense to which he returned regularly but in increasingly sophisticated terms involved: “my interpretation is correct because I have a PhD and you don’t ”.

Rancière, of course, was no arbitrary object of disagreement . The teacher’s interpretation of Rancière denied the premise that all disagreement is liberating . My reading of Rancière, however, maintained that it is precisely such denial that can be disagreed with for the sake of liberation . Thus, as I disagreed with my teacher’s denial that disagreement is liberating, he attempted to deny my ability to disagree, offering a normative account of when disagreement can take place . This exemplified most concretely how disagreement formulated by Rancière involves disagreement over disagreement itself .

In order to then exclude my disagreement in all of its forms, the teacher rendered it as illusory and imitative, declaring something to the effect of: “you illusorily believe that we are in disagreement when, in fact, you are merely imitating the rhetoric of disagreement ”. His declaration, however, replayed the initial disagreement in more complicated terms . Rendering my disagreement as illusory posited two modes of theorizing . The first is the ‘real’ mode of theorizing to which he has access . The second is my ‘illusory’ mode of theorizing . Taking recourse to the first mode, he was able to undermine the content of the second . Rancière again became relevant . The first mode of theorizing is analogous to the Althusserian Marxism that sought to explain, from the perspective of the philosopher or intellectual, the underlying otherwise imperceptible ‘reality’ to which the proletariat, living under a faux-reality, does not have access . Such positing is legitimized under the guise of ‘emancipation,’ which functions to affirm the very emancipator/emancipatee divide that the intellectual seeks to destroy, unwittingly disallowing the proletariat from taking things into its own hands, or undermining the intellectually unmediated revolutionary spirit that caused Rancière to depart from Althusser following May ‘68 . In more schematic terms, such positing transfers the sovereignty of the proletariat to the intellectual, such that the proletariat becomes an object of the intellectual’s theorizing .

The intellectual’s function, in this case, is similar to that of the teacher’s . Both posit superior access to knowledge . In the teacher’s case, an institutional hierarchy produces the categories of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ such that the latter governs the former according to nothing but the latter’s authority over the former . The teacher is able to say to the student: “You are at point A, and I will take you to point B, 74 75 However, I do believe that it is possible to push back against those institutionally sanctioned forms of power and attempt to create conditions that are conducive to some form of emancipatory learning for everyone involved .

I asked about your initial response to my course description because the stated topic and aim of my seminar was a determining factor in your decision to attend it . In other words, even the notion of making self education possible, in this instance, is circumscribed by forms of discourse, which limit the possibilities of what each class could be . I taught two classes at Williams and each drew a very different body of students . Arguably this suggests that each class created different conditions of possibility .

Some students such as yourself are directed by deeply personal questions, and the choice of courses within the university and activities you involve yourself in outside, are ways for you to address those questions . In such instances, which are woefully rare, my task is a simple one . When a student is self-directed I see my task as being one of resistance . By challenging both your theoretical methodology and your ability to actualize an idea, I hope to provide a productive resistance–one that allows you to clarify your own position through practice .

Last semester you worked on a complex project that began in response to a simple prompt, and took on a life of its own . The prompt was: Imagine a place you have never been, a place you can never be and map it exactly onto the place that you are. Could you describe your process of giving visual and discursive form to what was a very particular political position?

AA: The idea of layering a place that I cannot access onto the place where I stand inspired a turn to the symbolism of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem that, following the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947/8, became an emblem of Palestinian steadfastness against Israeli occupation . Exiled from Jerusalem in 1948, my grandfather was not allowed to visit the city, let alone return and live where generations before him peacefully prospered . The same went for his children, and so while my grandfather experienced the Dome in person, those of us born outside of Palestine were left only with an image, a memory . Considering this genealogy, I asked myself: what would it mean for the Dome to materialize in a seemingly unlikely place, the Berkshire valleys of Western Massachusetts? The image was uncanny, and, as I later walked around Williams, its idyllic purple mountains looming over these stone churches, sprawling academic buildings, and American students scurrying across well-trimmed lawns, I saw the Dome, at first in the distance, a golden top reflecting the sun from between the trees . Then, as I passed Stetson Hall, around which there was a major construction site for a new library, I saw the Dome directly in the middle of campus, majestically rising from the ground .

In the weeks that followed, I photographed the construction site, as a narrative around the Dome crystallized . What would it mean for a Palestinian (and Islamic) shrine to be built on a campus in which Zionist narratives dominate in both liberal and less explicitly racist conservative form? And so I came up with a new history of the College, which was later framed as part of an exhibit curated by the imaginary art collective, De Open Burgerstand . The text of the fictitious exhibit explained how, on account of his success in various A student passes by the Dome of the Rock on her way to class (© 2012 Boston Digital Studions) peace processes, the Israeli politician Dov Khenin (‘82) was invited to join the Williams College Board of Trustees in 2005, after which he endorsed several projects for increasing the College’s visibility in the Middle East . The majority of the Board met his endorsements which is the right place for you ”. It is only through certain institutional hierarchies that the power relations allowing the teacher to take with great enthusiasm . In late 2006, however, Khenin proposed a project that would lead to his resignation . At the beginning of the the student from A to B are produced . annual Board meeting in November, he offered a history of the Dome of the Rock . In conjunction with the Dome’s history, Khenin offered a critical reading of the Williams College Mission and Purposes Statement, which he distributed to members of the Board . He If the sovereignty of the student is not fully conditioned or subsumed by those institutional hierarchies, and if something of the student’s argued that, if the College was to remain loyal to its founding statement, the Board must critically interrogate its relationship to Israeli sovereignty persists as disagreement outside of them, then on what basis does the student give up partial sovereignty to the teacher? occupation, which has become dangerously normalized, he continued, in the American political imaginary . Khenin’s proposal outlined Outside of the authorial command to do so, there is no legitimizing framework to which the student can take recourse . There is only a plan for the College to divest from companies profiting from Israeli military aggression in Palestine, as well as apartheid policies within the command that aims to found and legitimize its law all at once . At stake in this analytic, then, if I am to risk a dramatic gesture, are Israel’s borders . In addition to the divestment, Khenin proposed building a replica of the Dome of the Rock in the place of Stetson Hall . the crises of theology and law . There is no way to decide whether to persist as disagreement against authorial command or to give up In his terms, the Dome would “symbolically highlight the necessity of joining a growing political movement… with Jews and non-Jews one’s sovereignty to the command’s authority . resisting Israeli occupation and apartheid ”.

I offer this anecdote to highlight the analytic with which I approached multiple domains of intellectual and artistic inquiry near the The text continued to explain that “the proposal caused extreme divisions among members of the Board . Five weeks of deliberation beginning of the seminar . As an alternative to the aforementioned premises for the teacher/student relationship, I was interested, for ended when the College received pointed threats from AIPAC, the largest Israeli lobbying group in Washington, and the Anti- instance, in a pedagogy that upholds the contingency rather than solidity of institutional power relations . One relevant idea is Rancière’s Defamation League, which accused Khenin of anti-Semitism in a lawsuit raised in a California state court . Following ADL’s lawsuit, ignorant schoolmaster, according to which neither the teacher nor the student knows where point B is, and in which the teacher’s aim is the Board voted 17-3 to reject the proposal . In a statement protesting the Board’s political complacency, Khenin and another Board to create, as Shifter puts it, “the conditions of possibility within which students can teach themselves,” the same conditions, I would add, members offered their resignations . Khenin is writing a book about his administrative tenure at Williams, having won the ADL lawsuit within which the teacher is also transformed . on November 10th, 2012, which had previously hindered the publication of his original proposal . With his help, we have obtained the 2006 Board transcripts, all of which are available online . We have also obtained images from the original proposal . We share them here It is against this history that I entered Other Spaces . There are multiple ways, then, of linking our first conversation at the cafe to this with Khenin’s permission ”. conversation . The interim found us conversing at new cafes and creating other spaces, the two actions of which sometimes collapsed into one and the same - a collapse that reflects a desire to create art that is in excess of its definition as such . Next to the text was a large image of the Dome in the place of Stetson Hall, as well as images of a campus map from the admissions office appropriately adjusted and Khenin’s sketch of the proposed building . A week after the exhibit was up, De Open Burgerstand

2 announced that Dov Khenin would give a lecture concerning his administrative tenure at the College . As the date of the lecture SRP: As I enact my role as “teacher” or “professor” I find myself extremely self-conscious of the very things you have brought up–the (see Instinct) fact that the authority invested in me by the educational institution overdetermines all other forms of relation that can develop between approached, it became clear that the project was becoming not only about layering one place over another, but also about the ease with myself and the other bodies surrounding me, namely students . I use the word “overdetermine” to acknowledge the fact that there are all which a complex narrative, falsifiable by a single Google search, was woven into the fabric of everyday life at Williams . kinds of complex relations of intimacy and trust that develops between members in a classroom that are hard to describe, but in the last instance, institutional power can be summoned by the teacher to control students . That unveiling the exhibit reflected a culture of political apathy provided a wake-up call for members of the audience . It is tempting GUT FEELING Indigestion? GUT FEELING Not to dismiss that the body reacts and responds, nor that intelligencehistoricized and sentience process are that literally can be investigated embodied (the beyond brain biology. is meat, after all). How we get from that physicality to visual language and tactileto form is a cultural, elaborate on this and other aspects of the lecture, which was a performance of its own, but, as I will be writing about them in detail 76 77 elsewhere, I shall focus on the effect of entering a lecture hall in which fifty or so students, professors, and community members believed consciousness as such? Illustrative is Dome of the Rock: rather than represent the plight of the Palestinian people or Israeli oppression, that the Board of Trustees deliberated, at the suggestion of an Israeli politician, whether to build an Islamic shrine instead of a library the project intertwined those conditions, which were rendered as having been already accepted, with the heterogeneous medley of in the middle of campus . Indeed, at the front of the hall was an image of a Williams student casually walking to class as she passed by visual, topographical, administrative, economic, ethical, and affective fabrics that constitute life at Williams . In doing so, it left those a giant mosque . Offering the Dome a moment of reality, especially as that reality was visually, affectively and discursively co-authored committed to such a life not merely aware of a political problem with which they might be inadvertently complicit, but actively by most members of the audience in the preceding weeks as they accepted an easily falsifiable and at times explicitly self-revealing reweaving what life at Williams means in the first place . We spoke of a similar representation/reconfiguration divide throughout the narrative, transformed the terms by which those members related to the Palestinian cause . As such, after the project was unveiled, the past year, and I am curious as to how you perceive such a divide in the realms of professional practice and graduate training . dome’s possibility lingered regardless of any member’s particular political position . That the terms were transformed allowed for an open discussion about the prospects of a bi-national solution to the Israeli occupation . SRP: Before I respond to your question I want to briefly recollect your performance that involved burning a document–a printout of a newspaper article from the ‘90’s that you had obtained from an online archive . As the paper burned, you framed your action by We may return to the Dome, but I would like to reflect on an earlier part of the conversation . That ‘even self education is circumscribed eloquently telling us how to read and make meaning of your action . I remember drawing attention to this fact and asking you about the by forms of discourse,’ as you suggest, is a central challenge to rethinking the student-teacher relationship . It means, after all, that possible distinction between an action, and the discourses it might produce . In part, I was drawing attention to what I perceived to be discourse structures even attempts to undermine structure . As such, the work between students and teachers must take the form of an anxiety on your part to guide and control the meaning of your action, and to suggest that an alternative approach may be to trust in constant negotiation, wherein not merely the content but the terms of negotiation are put on the table . The difficulty is that we can an action (or art object) and allow it to establish and produce language that exceeds what is available to you . never know the difference between negotiation and its facade . Sometimes the position of authority is displaced; at other times, it is simply hidden . What we can do is try, and be open to unraveling each trial . Artwork, whether actions or objects are also forms of discourse that may in turn reconfigure the way others–viewers, participants–think and act . However, my feeling is that descriptive language often brings an artwork into the representational register, thereby reducing Related to negotiation is the idea of working within the internal logic of a piece rather than imposing an external logic onto it, its potential to produce new forms of language through active interpretation . Your facility for language and theoretical thinking was especially as we consider that some of my pieces were the result of elaborate and self-contained conceptual frameworks . Offering points clear from the moment we met, and I wanted you to focus of the formal aspects of images, events and performance for the brief period I of resistance, as you did, from a locale that admitted to its position, left me constructively rethinking choices insofar as such rethinking would be working with you . Your map and Photoshop rendition of the Dome of the Rock on the Williams College campus may indeed was consistent within the conceptual framework at hand . While I was resistant to your resistance intermittently throughout the have provoked people to read the text that accompanied it . semester, I began to appreciate what allowing an external body to enter my conceptual framework could mean in terms of heightening the quality of an aesthetic experience . While too complex to analytically recount now, those instances of resistance and counter- In graduate and undergraduate art education the “representation/reconfiguration divide”–I would rather use the word dialectic to resistance left me both infuriated, as I took to deconstructing what I perceived as the external influence of certain points of resistance, imply that these registers are co-constitutive–is mirrored in the perceived division between theory and practice. This is quite literally and ecstatic at the way in which other points brought into play more material with which to work, re-stationing the boundaries of my established by having separate “theory” and “studio” classes, or Liberal Arts and Studio departments . PhD holding Art Historians and autonomy . Critics populate the Liberal Arts department, and the Studio department is the domain of specializations taught by painters, sculptors, ceramicists etc . Even the structure of critique often reifies this perceived division by separating and comparing the student/artist’s That process, as well as our first conversation, also instigated a new way to navigate some of the student-student relationships of intention with the thing that has been produced . which I was a part . Power relations structure that relationship in complex ways as well . While I was afraid that my critiques of other student work would be received too sharply - a not entirely unfounded presumption considering the distance I maintained from the Forms of discourse, including artwork, may take positions in relation to the world that either prescribe a mode of understanding or inadvertently disingenuous ‘I feel’ lexical primers so popular at Williams - rethinking the student-student relationship in light of our produce emotional ambiguities . I realize that I am being extremely reductive here, but I think for instance about Adorno’s critique of conversations resulted in honest confrontations with other students that challenged not only their work and my understanding of it, but Bertholt Brecht’s Epic Theater, which he claimed simplified political reality in order to be aesthetically effective . The result, he argued, also, to a remarkable degree, power relations in their gendered and racialized form . As I began to appreciate the logic of pieces that I was bad politics as well as bad art . Instead Adorno favored Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett who, he argued, attack meaning-production might have otherwise overlooked, I developed unexpected and beautiful friendships . itself .

I must say, however, that I was reminded throughout those navigations of the way in which naming relationships in certain ways You have often brought up the music of Umm Kulthum, which seems to have a particular emotional resonance for you . I also (whether student-student or student-teacher) posits a certain form of equality between the entities on either side of the hyphen, such remember the coffee and food served at Rakwé, the cafe you opened in your apartment at Williams . You also gifted me Turkish Coffee, that valuable deviations from this a priori positing were sometimes left unappreciated . I use this simplistic reading of the hyphen to which I love and continue to blend with my South Indian Chicory Coffee every morning . What is the role of these sensorially and share that there is a difficulty when it comes to placing the hyphen between two entities . How does one make sense of local equality emotionally filled articulations that seem to always exceed our attempts to make meaning of them? Furthermore, is there a way to talk or circumscribed humanism, on the one hand, and, not merely other, contradictory locales, but structural forces that condition our about them that does not fall back on the discursive apparatuses that we are familiar with, which produce intentionality and clarity in circumscription of the human? places that are indeed familiar but often inarticulable to us?

I offer these abstract reflections to tease out what is at stake in the conversation . The late liberal bourgeois genre by which we abide, AA: A few remarks . The terms you have introduced are useful for an analytic review of the performance in relation to your stated even as we undermine its traditional content considering the content of this conversation, nevertheless risks subsuming the complexity pedagogical impetus on the one hand, and my philosophical approach to the performance on the other . You posit a crucial divide of our interpersonal history according to certain proprieties . By implication, we risk romanticizing the past for the sake of narrative between an artistic action, under which we might include objects and images, and the discourses such an action produces . Schematically, closure or for the satisfaction of certain roles expected of us by the audience of art journal readers we have come to imagine . This is to studio practice can be traced onto the former and critique/theory onto the latter . In the of case of my performance, you took recourse say that, as with any history, there are moments that do not satisfy the operative narrative . to this divide in rendering the burning of the paper as “the action” and the speech acts accompanying it as “the discourse ”. Delineating the action from the discourse as such, you read my speech acts as attempting to regulate the meaning of an action that has already For instance, considering the extent to which my ‘artistic choices’ were libidinally invested, as well as the degree of my commitment entered into the world and gained some form of autonomy . The first set of questions this allowed you to ask, concerned consolidating to rendering intelligible those self-contained conceptual frameworks, my perceiving external inflections at times dramatically reversed the action’s autonomy against the perceived hegemony of the accompanying speech acts: what other interpretations could be made of the the affective dynamic between us, leaving a tangle of inarticulable and untraceable knots that likely remain in the spaces we shared . I burning paper? What other discourses are now possible after witnessing the burning? How might they differ on a foundational level with those suggested recall a performance in which I quite literally burned an object of critique on account of the way in which interpretations of the object by the discourse of the performer? The second set of questions released on account of your divide made way for your stated pedagogical were increasingly disengaged . What I wanted to highlight is the interpreter’s presumption of having engaged the same object as the one approach: in order not to require the speech acts/discourse that accompanied the action, which, as your reference to Adorno suggests, the artist created, to undermine that presumption by removing the object - in this case, a manipulated document - as a physical entity might risk heavy-handedness, how could the action itself be remade in order to signify, possibly with the help of formal techniques, to be held and touched . To borrow from Walter Benjamin’s lexicon, I favored the extinguishment of the object in a gesture of divine what the speech acts/discourse meant to signify? It is precisely this question that became the basis for our pedagogical orientation . Your violence to the mythic violence involved in breaking the object down according to an externally imposed logic, or what studio critique introducing me to certain techniques in Photoshop, for instance, despite my initial resistance to what I wrongly thought of as a mundane often entails . My performance, however, was symbolic . The document remained in our memory as a shared object, its ashes a physical skill, allowed for some experimentation that enhanced the creative direction of the Dome images . It also allowed me to think of actions reminder of the fact . It was certainly my inescapable entrenchment within a self-preserving humanist ethos that prevented a non- traditionally understood outside of discourse as fertile ground for discourse to be embedded . symbolic extinguishment of the interpreters, myself included . A maddening thought, surely . That our pedagogical relation productively unraveled as such, however, was the result of a necessary misrecognition of the performance, Nevertheless, the tension between symbolism and non-symbolism will be of great relevance to my Watson travels next year . How can the basis of which lies in a hermeneutic problem concerning the action/discourse divide . That divide, after all, allows us to speak not we conceive of aesthetic practices concerned less with representing reality than with altering or outright reconfiguring how reality merely of how certain discourses attempt to guide and control certain actions, but also of the basic undecidability concerning where the is constituted, or revealing that “pre-aestheticized” reality is made of alterable aesthetic practices that simply have not yet been given 78 79 divide between action and discourse lies . You delineated with recourse to the categories of action and discourse traditionally understood: burning the paper was an action and speaking about it during the burning was the discourse . Yet, I recognized both the action of burning and (indeed, the action of) speaking as a composite action . Speaking can only be considered part of a composite action, however, if we consider the divide between action and discourse outside of traditional criteria . Within traditional criteria, discarding the speech acts that accompanied the burning is akin to receiving an artist’s film while muting the audio, despite the artist’s insistence that the audio be turned on . As it is questionable whether the same film is being engaged if the audio were turned on, turning the audio off only dramatizes that the film is no longer a unitary object . It is worth remembering, then, the reason for my burning the paper: to destroy the presumption that it is the same object with which we were engaging in critique, to undermine the external delineation of a performance . What you describe as my anxiety (with recourse to no arbitrary noun, considering the corrective it sanctions) was my reaction to the way in which a performance about misrecognition was misrecognized . That I remarked earlier on a humanist ethos preventing the extinguishment of the interpreters themselves suggests the irresolvability of such recursive irony within the terms of a liberal arts imaginary .

I would suggest, then, that misrecognition might be theorized as the basis for productive pedagogy within those terms . After all, no student and teacher ever interact directly with one another or with the same object . I explained earlier that, as your points of resistance worked within my conceptual framework, I accepted them . No point of resistance, however, fully does this, simply because no conceptual framework is as fully contained as my previous conception ostensibly suggests . There is an impression of containment and an impression that a point of resistance might work from within it . Art evolves as such on the basis of multiple and untraceable permeabilities . The best we can do is to attune ourselves to these permeabilities, to be gentle if they tear .

Insofar as it is commensurate with the object of Adorno’s critique, rethinking the divide between action and discourse troubles the corresponding divide between art that tells us what to think and art that doesn’t . Indeed, both types of art tell us something and leave something else unsaid . The ostensible difference is a matter of a variable and externally imposed delineation between action and discourse . While this theoretical formulation might have little bearing on formal technique, it does allow us to think of art, while always in excess of itself, as uncertain of where its excess begins . Such a formulation opens up new avenues of discourse beyond the ones traditionally understood .

I would also add that a straightforward Marxist critique of the limited access to, as well as political effects of, producing and appreciating emotional ambiguity locates such production and appreciation outside the urgency of political mobilization, the necessity for which might produce art for which the criteria concerning the delineation of ambiguity/clarity are not so evident . Here, ambiguity/clarity is replaced for action/discourse in ways that allow for the application of our critique of the latter onto the former . After all, a lack of ambiguity can only be located once that about which there is ambiguity is delineated by an external critic . Such a locus, of course, variably shifts depending on how the external critic delineates where the clarity with which ambiguity is framed ends and where ‘actual’ ambiguity begins .

Returning to an earlier formulation, I can then say that, within studio critique and certain realms of the humanities, pedagogy results from the misrecognition of such delineation, wherein the teacher misrecognizes the student’s delineation, and, on that basis, is able to give advice, the acceptance of which by the student allows the student to gauge how an audience of which the teacher is representative might recognize the work, as well as to reorient the work on the basis of the possibilities introduced by (the student’s misrecognition of) the teacher’s misrecognition . (This is to bracket those student-teacher relationships in which the sovereignty of the student is more fully subsumed by the authority of the teacher such that the teacher’s misrecognition of a work becomes the occasion for the student’s identification of his or her work, with the teacher’s misrecognition ).

The recurrence of Umm Kulthum and Turkish coffee throughout the semester nicely highlights the other end of a spectrum in which minimal labor was to be performed by the artist in order to share the aesthetic experience of a certain kind of music, the smell of coffee when Rakwé opened, the community engendered by a hospitable space . The labor of the sentence I have just articulated is sensorial, simply heightening a faculty that we share not just with one another but also with those who came to Rakwé, a culture of cafe appreciation . It is a privilege to frame the experience of a delicious cup of Turkish coffee against Umm Kulthum’s affecting vibrato, and to sit back with a colorful hookah as those for whom the experience is framed variably interpret it and reflect on an object released from its creator, who comfortably witnesses the scene from a couch, hummus within reach . There are cases, however, in which such a faculty is not already shared with a teacher, or a culture, or a journal readership, in which responding without the kind of labor this conversation has inspired is a privilege not yet attained . That is the labor of my most personal art . (see Culture) IDENTITY Artists often “my say, work is about my identity.” “Identity” presumes a formationthose one resembles that and is readymade, in contrast fixed, to those one doesunchanging not) is–like memory,and even stimuligenetic the archive(a recourse of the and Self–in information.to biology is often constant made[see It flux is moreInstinct]). usefuland in constant to think Identity formation;“self,” of(formed it that as a constant, which it in relationis is experiencedalways shifting relational, to as most intimate, process responsive of identification, to mostinterior, “personal,” exterior, is where a process forms and that oftemporally-based “external” understands power are no intimatelyfixed separations incorporated between interiority and embodied, and and areexteriority. most in play. To follow Michel Foucault, the POLITICS IDENTITY Given the above complexities and misuses of “identity,” this term is bestproject left pursued out of any critique by so-called discussion “identity (see Politically politics” is (In)Correct not thedismantling) construction for some clarification). and of majoritarian, affirmation It is ofimportant marginalized dominant to note, andhowever, but dominatingthat that or the it stemslargerminoritarian from political a politics subjectivities. of critique,subjectivities It needs opposition to be(these understood andare reformulation.strategies that artwork towards “about the identity” larger project), does but notthe mean, destabilizing then, a license for “self”(and perhaps affirmation, nor necessarily “confessional” a trope; 80 81 Jeannene Przyblyski & Allan deSouza

This conversation between Jeannene Przyblyski and Allan deSouza is a response to notes by deSouza, which clarify and situate pedagogical practices within the art school . Examples of those notes are included here (in italics) as background to the ensuing conversation .

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JP:

Dear Allan,

The only way I can think to begin this collaboration is in epistolary form—salutations! Conversation seems somehow more non- coercive than a manifesto . It’s the give-and-take of the critique that I’ve always loved—the sense of beginning from a common premise with neither “teacher” nor “student” knowing quite what will happen next . It’s the very opposite of the Socratic method, where an ineluctable, causal chain of correct answers, skillfully elicited by the master, is the indicator of success, of lessons learned rather than insight mutually discovered as part of a process with no end clearly in sight .

I thought of proposing brief responses to some of your notes—the ones that resonated with me the most in my current condition of the non-teaching, side-lined art school administrator (or perhaps better, the condition of other-teaching, in the sense of insisting that learning continues to happen in extremely improvised and constrained forms and encounters, no matter what) . How does that sound?

AdS: I imagine you doing exactly that . We will discuss your responses, your critiques of my notes, how else you conduct critiques and your pedagogy in general, particularly given your experience across art, art history and administrative disciplines . Can we think of this process as itself akin to the critique, of together “bringing forth” meanings towards possibilities of practice?

JP: Agreed!

The art school’s mission should enable its students to become cultural agents, that is, producers of/within culture, rather than being simply consumers of culture. Academic programs (art history, critical studies, etc.) deal with the production of ideas and cultural knowledge as well as their critique, and thereby situate their students alongside other forms of more material production.

An art school plays roles in the production of objects (material culture/art works), of object producers (artists), of discourse production (artists/ scholars/teachers) and discourse circulation (all the previous, plus pedagogy, exhibitions, and publications), of criticism of culture and as producer of critics and theorists of culture (all the previous).

I’m being presumptuous, but this is my understanding of the relevance of academic programs within an art school. Also, I’m using certain terms like “academic” and “studio” for the sake of convenience, rather than proposing actual separations. With most university art history departments physically dislocated (during the 1970s-‘90s) from studio art departments and relocated to the humanities, academic students are removed from a direct critical relationship to art making.

It’s funny: when I began my arts education as an undergraduate at UC San Diego, art and art history existed pretty seamlessly in one department within a university largely dedicated to the sciences, with little to no separation between art criticality and academic criticality . My art theory course was taught by David Antin as a spoken performance (and he recorded each lecture for his own ends) . My “Intro to Photography” professor, Allan Sekula, had us calibrating f-stops and mixing chemicals, and also reading Foucault and Marx, as well as John Berger and, more as ironic counterpoint, John Szarkowski (in the 1970s and ‘80s he was as much an anathema to emerging post-modernists as Clement Greenberg!) . Manny Farber painted his film criticism in some alchemical way, and Eleanor Antin acted out her own art history . I thought this was normal . Artists fearlessly thought in public . They were articulate, historically-minded, argumentative, and funny.

When I got to UC Berkeley in the late 1980s, art and art history existed on opposite sides of the campus . In the doctoral program in the History of Art, I learned a lot about looking at art that was all finished, at least on the artist’s part (and the artists in question were mostly long dead—really finished) . This was serious business, and often exhilarating . So much of my sense of a visually attentive writerliness remains informed by my teachers from that time: Carol Armstrong, T . J . Clark, Michael Baxandall, Anne Wagner . But still, there was something frustrating about it, and just a little sterile . I kept wondering what was going on in the studios on the other side of campus . When I finally wandered over there, I was told that art historians knew nothing about art . This was also more than a little frustrating . 82 83 Ending up teaching at an art school was permission to put these two orphaned halves of myself back together . But that also was a little of my entry into academia (which it seems I am both condemned and privileged to inhabit for the rest of my working days) . Because I stymied, at least in the ‘90s . Art schools could be entrenched and self-policing in their own rights, no matter that or perhaps because was given to know very certainly that none of these things—working-class, Polish, Catholic, girl—were tickets to the “assimilation” they were “avant-garde” and certainly because they continue to have a long history of being embattled . A righteous wordlessness was that was demanded, expected, imposed and went without saying for some . And if I was (always) already to be held at a distance in that highly prized in some sectors . As junior faculty, this was a form of resistance that was often sometimes difficult to overcome . And yet it academic arena, then art became, for me, the site of encounter where those othering experiences of culture and subjectivity could be was the students who knew differently . stated, visualized and explored, personally and critically, in the work and the critique .

AdS: Certainly, my own art school education strongly influences and provides practical tools for my pedagogy (for example, Mary At the same time, we might be making a mistake to think that modernism had ever been completely done in by postmodernism—hence Kelly’s clearly defined methodology for critique) . But I also received and conducted hands-on training outside of formal school the always possible eternal retreat to Szarkowski and the later Greenberg and all of the “righteous wordlessness” that still clings to the settings, as a member of artist collectives that ran art and education workshops . These also provided political training, giving me more critique in some quarters . The wooden stake through that heart still needs to be secured . Its great resilience, I think, has to do with of a socially-grounded purpose for education that is not always compatible with current students’ expectations and desires . But it’s its status as a singular narrative . On the one hand the myth of that singularity (which was never true at all, but produced only under negotiating these conflicting desires—understanding those of students and not imposing mine—that seems to be the challenge and the the pressures of criticism and art history as selective discrimination) enabled post-modernism as a multifarious field of de-essentialized reward of teaching . I think this is similar to how I conduct my studio practice: there are ideas I work with that gradually take material discourses amidst which we could position ourselves, contingently and polemically, politically and provisionally . On the other hand, the form, but in doing so those forms gain their own momentum until I’m trying to keep up with their unfolding and their reshaping of absence of a dominant narrative seems to sometimes instill in students a sense of drift, or non-commitment, as if art could be “anything” those initial ideas, rather than trying to re-impose them . It’s never completely new territory or that romantic “losing of the self” since at “any time,” and not produced from a sense of cultural urgency or in a specific context . it’s more of a cumulative process, learning from one’s own past practices and the constant learning from others . AdS: I might have had the opposite trajectory in that I was never (held to be) very “good” at art when it came to particular skills, and The importance of academic programs within an art school is that they locate criticality and historicization within the realm of making. And in fact, the most common response I remember from elementary school (“has difficulty with paint”) through to graduate school (the this applies inversely to studio programs located in relation to history and theory of art and to critical studies (making in relation to criticality). latter from Paul McCarthy at my MFA show) was of surprise that I had completed a work “well” or that I had achieved whatever might Academic students learn the discursive processes involved in making artwork in order to better locate their own criticality, and studio students have been seen as markers of success . Faced with low expectations, I think I looked to more academic disciplines where I could respond learn to critically locate their own processes of making. Academic students need to be adept at looking at and addressing actual artworks, rather critically and, I admit, more polemically . than only through reproduction (this can admittedly be done at a museum); they also need to understand processes of making, rather than only encountering finished works (this has to happen at a studio or where work is being made). The art school is a primary site for these kinds of I’ve been mulling over how to respond to the incident you describe with the TA, and wondering over my reticence to do so . My engagement, and no education in contemporary art can be considered complete without these firsthand forms of engagement. own experience is rife with similar examples . It’s not that I’m past them, or that they are relegated to a “past” moment, but I continue to think through how to use such experiences generatively . Their effect, obviously, is humiliation and dismissal, even when their JP: I remember that it was a dozen years or so ago that I began to be more present at the art school where I had been teaching part-time perpetrators might claim no malignant intent or even that the whole thing is a “joke ”. But, as we know, the “joke” may be continually (I’m noticing in your text that you are naming names less than me) . I was taking on more classes and responsibility, being included in reinforced, with little to repudiate it . I’ll give one example, while being acutely aware that to speak of such things is to be seen to be more discussions and shortly to be hired to tenure . I remember very precisely the first time I encountered the term “interdisciplinary” “whining”—which is its own form of dismissal . The system I went through to get into undergrad was that you sent your portfolio used there . It was in the context of a discussion of curricular revision, during one of the many periods of economic and conceptual crisis to your first choice school . They might call you in for interview on the strength of your work, then either accept you or send your for this school, which had so often in its history positioned itself as a place for principled exceptionalism, a place uniquely dedicated portfolio on to your second choice, and so on . I got interviewed 12 times at 12 different schools over a three-year period . Each time to art for art’s sake (although the idea of the “sake of art” had thankfully expanded somewhat beyond the confines of the discourse of I would walk in the door, and each time I would register the almost “Fanonian” looks of confusion, panic or horror when the faculty modernist formalism) . One of the studio faculty maintained that the program had long been “interdisciplinary” because students moved saw this brown person walking in . Nothing about my name or my accent on the phone had prepared them for what I would look like . across media—from print-making to painting, from painting to photography, from photography to film or sculpture, etc . Having come Twelve times I was told something along the lines of, “We really like your work but we don’t think you’d fit in here ”. That was the from a conceptually-based art program (in a research university, no less), I was more than momentarily confused, arrested rather than late 1970s, and I was part of the first generation to have come from the colonies but to have grown up predominantly in England and placed in that state of heightened contingency, that for me signaled interdisciplinary thinking and practice . Wasn’t this all art, after the first such generation to go to art schools . If American students are horrified when they hear this, which they usually are, it’s partly all? And how could art signal its interdisciplinarity by its adjacency to more art? I had always thought of interdisciplinarity in terms of because they’ve already forgotten what happened within America not much earlier . So how to use such experiences? On one hand, a productive friction, constraint, resistance: the confrontation with something other than sameness that had the capacity to produce a we went through that so subsequent generations wouldn’t have to . But one still encounters such responses; in some instances they may greater illumination through difference (that Benjaminian “sudden flash” of awareness that came of the unexpected collision of images, be as blatant, in others more skillfully disguised . In my daily life now they are generally on a smaller scale . Speaking back, not just to thought systems, ways of knowing and being in the world) . Art was a set of permissions to come at ideas differently, but I was never these instances so as not to give them more substance than they deserve (hence my initial reticence), but speaking back to their enabling much interested in the ideas that only existed as and for art . cultures remains central for me—whether as a teacher or as an artist . This then leads to other questions of the most appropriate means, form, and language with which to speak back . AdS: Despite the “frustrations” you mention, it seems that you remember your education with some affection . I remember my time at art schools with more ambivalence . I always just got on with learning and making work so I don’t think I was ever looking to “fit in,” JP: I think we are very much talking about forms and modes—as we move between disciplines, institutional and cultural contexts but as a student I never quite understood the cultures of art schools . I don’t know whether it was the slacker rebellion or the rampant and even continents—but perhaps there’s some space between the “by any means necessary” polarity of overt radicalism and a quieter, careerism, or when the two oddly coalesced . You mentioned a “righteous wordlessness,” and while I know exactly what you’re referring consistent “fortitude” that may be equally radical . I’ve always thought of art and art critique as being very much for the public--leaving to, it was its particular forms that I found undermining . For example race—specifically whiteness—was naturalized to the extent where the art that people make “for themselves” to its own mostly therapeutic devices and insisting that the space of critique is public space, there was no language to address the blindness that masqueraded as “color-blindness ”. In hindsight, I think of that as so provincial, and no matter that the public might be limited and intimate and increasingly familiar over the course of the randomly imposed brackets of one that failed to engage with the contemporary world let alone my own experience . It was a self-perpetuating culture that demanded a semester . Above all, the critique is not a free “safety zone” (where anything can be said and stays in the room) but a space where risk, assimilation—and I experienced it as a form of coercion . consequence and accountability are negotiated as real social relationships in real time .

As an educator now, that experience translates into an imperative for a global scope and a consideration of multiple positions . This In that sense, for me, the teaching/critique identity is a public performance (David Antin did teach me something, after all) and the may seem such a basic premise, but I see instances where the challenges posed by postmodernism (and whatever other “posts” we may selective disclosure of what may seem private or personal experience is a part of that performance . On the one hand, this thinking was inhabit) are met by an entrenched retreat to modernism, where—to point to your example—Szarkowski might be taught as a leading just a useful way of getting over my tendency toward shyness in public (the public me wasn’t really me, even if it was selectively produced light rather than as a counterpoint . from parts of my experience) . On the other hand, it was a way of undoing the abstract and essentialized authority of the master/teacher by breaking that identity into a more composite, fallible and feeling identity, expressed as a function of language, in relation to which I’m also not advocating one approach exclusively, for example, prioritizing the “global” over the “local” but suggesting an examination students could place some part of their own composite and sometimes more emergent public selves (which is to say that students are of and engagement with both . often still sorting this out during the critique and to be honest, maybe I am too, just a little) . I think the deliberative choice of this performance is the answer to accusations of “whining”--those accusations being just another form of coercion to be resisted . JP: Well, remember that I wasn’t at an art school when I first encountered art practice . And this was perhaps why I experienced it as liberating rather than coercive . In my academic courses at the university, which I had always approached with some confidence (I was I say this in a different way below (and by saying this I acknowledge also that this conversation was non-linear and asynchronous in the a “good” student!), I had felt harshly disciplined in terms of class and gender identity . I recall one time in particular: in the first year making and that its sequential re-presentation here is somewhat of a fictionalized, instrumental performance as well, which is why I’m writing program, we were assigned to write a short essay based on Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man (this was the ‘70s, after all) . liking this mode of writing/talking so much) . I had to read my response in class, which was nerve-wracking enough for a young and very tentative aspiring “intellectual ”. When I was finished there was a long silence, and then the graduate TA observed that he had “always wondered what a working-class Polish AdS: Yes, neither my artwork nor my teaching might appear “radical” or “activist ”. No one gets naked in my classes, no one smashes Catholic girl would say about Marcuse”—and that comment was not intended to be complimentary . I recall this as the traumatic scene things (though students will show me their video documentation of such performances done in other classes) . I’m glad there are spaces INSTINCT/IVE; INTUITION/INTUITIVE INSTINCT/IVE; Shorthand for not knowing from where/how the idea arose/developed, andbe might separated indicate from any learned discussion behavior about and biology acquired and genetics knowledge or even Freudian that have become instinctual so familiar drives. that we no longer Since trace artmaking their source. This is a cultural should also practice and is hardly a survival mechanism in the biological sense, the terms “instinct/ intuition” as generalized sources for decision-making serve no usefulWhile purpose “intuition” in clarifying might be a necessary how a work or decision shorthand was made;appears so they that might one doesn’t (through always instead have individual to track leave crucial a mode of knowing genius creative or divine or a source processes of knowledge, inspiration), unexamined. it leaves open rather a tendency than to assume through knowledge the influence is somehow magical, of and engagement that it just with a broader collective, social process. 84 85 for students to do these things, but they know that I don’t think nakedness or smashing things is inherently radical . They do know that I in mind that artists are willing to maintain modernist mythologies of artistic transcendence because we benefit from them, at least in the emphasize language as a way of identifying and thinking through a complex of questions, and that the “thinking through” can be done short term . We deal with students who might have been told all their lives that “art comes from within” and that it’s all about “being within any discipline or medium (with each one having its own languages) . true to oneself ”. They might see the point of art school as helping them develop their “innate” skills into marketable ones and providing sufficient professional access to the artworld . Historicizing and contextualizing their work, situating it as a social practice rather than as Art schools, at least those that are accredited and offer degrees, necessarily involve some aspects of coercion. Admission and selection processes, inherent and hermetic might seem irrelevant unless it provides them with the necessary language to “pass”—and I mean this more as scholarships, reviews, grades (even if only Pass/Fail), graduation, etc., are all rites and structures of passage and therefore of coercion and passing as artists than passing school . discipline. Even without these overt disciplinary structures in place, the “hidden,” regulatory forces of competition, peer pressure, favoritism, cronyism, “tradition,” habit, etc., still operate if left unacknowledged Taking my cue from Kwame Anthony Appiah from his book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, we might be more successful in changing habits rather than in changing minds, perhaps with the hope that changed ways of doing things will eventually change ways JP: At the same time, I sometimes wonder whether art schools are the best place to explore the discursive and disruptive, non-coercive of thinking about them . potentials of art . Because, as you began to suggest, the art program within a university can, in certain circumstances, position itself as a space of critical alternative . The art school left to its own devices is doomed to become . just. another school . Since we live in multiply and complexly coercive societies, the school bears some responsibility to prepare students to function (and thrive) within—and to resist—these coercive, competitive arenas. This needs to be done alongside developing non-coercive alternatives or counter- AdS: Despite what I’ve written above, your question about whether “art schools are the best places to explore the discursive and practices. In order to perform these multiple tasks, the school needs to recognize and align its own disciplinary and counter-disciplinary practices, disruptive, non-coercive potentials of art” fills me with a momentary panic! Am I completely wasting my time teaching?! Am I deluded and to do so on every level of its functioning beyond its marketing rhetoric. or naive in thinking that I have altruistic motives? JP: An experiment in non-coercive teaching and learning: my current institution was founded on an interdisciplinary premise—“all JP: Don’t panic! Let me try to put it another way . Each setting has its struggles, it seems to me . The art program within a university is the arts under one roof,” with no walls in between . This premise attracted me powerfully . The institution was formed not amongst more often than not easily marginalized (those nutty, nonconformist artists!) and often under fire given today’s concerns over education departments or media within one realm of art practice/discourse, but across the visual and performing arts, still and moving images, as a “value proposition ”. On other hand, the art school, in the comforting myth of insular utopianism that it can tell itself, somehow images and sound, etc . Imagine my surprise upon arriving there and finding such rigid interdisciplinary intransigence that some students foregoes the friction of a more expansive interdisciplinarity as an array of rigorously practiced disciplines that is present in the university . almost never took classes outside their “school” (except for “liberal arts” requirements) while those students who insisted on working So rather than experiencing that productive constraint from without, it begins to turn inwards, to police itself in odd and even small between schools were literally doubled down on in terms of expectations and administratively split in two—counted as a “half student” ways . It can become a dominant (coercive) narrative in its own right . for budgetary and census purposes in each school . Upon reflection, this began to make a certain amount of sense to me: of course the most ambitious interdisciplinary aspirations might yield the most reified, disciplining of the disciplines . The friction of which we were This doesn’t mean teaching is (ever) a waste of time . But it perhaps requires even more vigilance with regard to self-awareness of one’s speaking operates as a kind of grating stasis . position within a collective discursive project of practice and critique . I’ve always felt that both my practice and my teaching were performative and specifically located; my art practice always begins with something outside myself, toward which I advance, and around This year we have begun a new project, notable for being not a project at all, but a hypothetical space in time . After substantial which I circle in very externalized, spatialized ways . And I think that informs my methods of critique . I often feel, in ways that are negotiations, all of the schools agreed to withdraw from one 3 hour block of time in the course schedule--to schedule nothing, different than some of my colleagues, that I am never trying to get inside the student—to find out who he or sheis through the work . and certainly require nothing, during this time and to make as many spaces as possible available for self-organizing student use . At Instead, I am always trying to talk with students to understand how their work sits in the world . Maybe some would say that this is the first glance, it seems as if nothing is happening . Some students complain: what are we supposed to do? Some faculty attempt to same thing . But I see it differently, and I do see it as less coercive, partly because it allows the student to have the option of re-locating negotiate: are you sure I can’t require thus and such rehearsal during this time? The students really need it, after all . themselves in the process of the conversation, and partly because it embodies and locates the audience for the work as more than an unspecified mass of passively receptive viewers . In the critique, the audience is, in extraordinary ways, speaking . But interestingly enough, in this nothingness, this lapse of frantic production that otherwise characterizes this institution, things have begun to happen . A student organizes a lecture/workshop series as research for his thesis project--it lasts only as long as he AdS: We’re increasingly required to “professionalize” our teaching and prepare students as “professionals” under the pressure of “real needs . Another holds a series of readings . A short film gets made by dance and video students and is shown elsewhere than the world” scenarios . Given that students sometimes crave singular direction, definitive answers, and leadership (as a mask for coercion), classroom . Someone takes a nap in the main gallery . This is also useful . I am interested to watch this experiment unfold . The students what roles can discursivity, disruption, and non-coercion continue to play? And how might these questions apply to our art practices? haven’t fully realized it yet, but in a place that evokes the terms “pedagogy”, “mentor” and “metier” so effortlessly and without hesitation, this is the one space opened up where the tables are turned, and the students may seize the opportunity to teach the teachers . JP: This I need to ask you more about . On the one hand, my current experience is that the students are demanding this professionalization in the face of “real world” scenarios as much as any external pressures . . . AdS: Below, as part of my “original” text, I suggest the studio critique as a non-coercive practice, but one that is nevertheless to a greater or lesser extent directed by the faculty member . I love the example you provide here of the institution stepping back to allow AdS: I agree that this demand for “professionalization” comes from all angles, including from students . And in relation to that, I want for possibilities of student-directed practices . I’m reminded of my undergrad years at Bath Academy of Art, in the west of England (a to go back to your points about teaching, like your art practice, being site and discourse-specific . I agree, too, with your pursuit of art notably Indophile school with Howard Hodgkin on faculty–so I can speculate about their acceptance of me; and their possible later and teaching as processes of exteriority, if I can put it that way . Both are processes through which a public, or publics are formed . I’m disappointment since I turned out to not be “sufficiently” Indian) . A group of students, myself included, developed a collaborative particularly drawn to the nuances you bring to the critique situation as one that negotiates “real social relationships in real time ”. Since it performance practice (with Augusto Boal, Jerzy Grotowski, and Antonin Artaud as models), and we considered it as an extension of our is a somewhat “secluded” space and one that coheres around a faculty person as director, it might also be useful to address the critique as studio practices . We even built a small theater on school grounds, and petitioned the school to have our performances assessed towards a rehearsal space where language, meaning and social relations are tested and examined . our final degrees . During our final summer while students were away, the school demolished the theater, subsequently rejected our I want to return to another point you made . I remember a faculty discussion in defense of maintaining disciplinary departments petition and insisted we make work within our “disciplines ”. That was a prime example of “that’s not what we do” coercion . (Photography, Painting, etc ). precisely because of the generative “friction” between them . I see a lot of value in that but in order for it to JP: Somehow this puts me in mind of Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed—the notion of putting an institutional structure function that way, I do think each discipline requires a pedagogy that historicizes and conceptualizes its potentials and limitations, rather under such pressure that it collapsed, even if the resultant de-pressurization was only temporary . I think of a field of monuments to than one that promotes it as a naturalized form that magically accesses and reveals the interiority of the artist . I’ve often heard, “That’s (failed) non-coercive experiments in teaching . Would that look like a reverse mirror-image of the dumping grounds for monuments to not what we do,” or, “That’s not what we’re interested in ”. If ever I were tempted to resort to anything approaching those sorry excuses, the fallen dictators of the Eastern Bloc? Perhaps we could put a certain “condemned” studio classroom of historic character there, as well then it would be incumbent upon me to first identify who that “we” might be, then examine how those practices and interests came as an architectural model of the aerospace facility where my current institution was forced to set up camp after a catastrophic earthquake . about historically and how they might be used . I agree that it requires a necessary vigilance to situate an artwork within the world or at It was in that space, I am told, that the walls really came down . The point would be both the commemoration of loss, but also a least within culture, rather than within the psyche of the student—and though we do often act as social workers, therapists, or parents, reminder of the space of opportunity that is opened up when a set of collective practices are forced to reinvent themselves, again and those are not our roles . (Lari Pittman, at UCLA, would welcome new students with a speech to that effect—though he put it somewhat again . That is our challenge as teachers, it seems to me: to understand the ways in which we must constantly move between positions of more bluntly!) disciplinary enforcement and undermining, from within . It’s this movement, I think, that really comprises the non-coercive . . . Another friction, though not necessarily a productive one, is generated by whether departments perceive themselves as skill or AdS: What a great reference . If only I’d known then of Partially Buried Woodshed . We know that all institutions go through these conceptually-based . The former might promote manual dexterity and time-tested “traditions” as the foundations through which periodic reinventions, even if the “reinvention” is so that it can appear exactly the same . The New Genres department in which I’ve creativity will proceed; the latter, derived from avant-gardist ideas, might see effective intervention in the here-and-now proceeding been teaching is exactly at this point you’ve just described . A department that prides itself on its ability and agility to reinvent itself, through ideas and actions, notwithstanding that this has become its own “tradition ”. and was–symbolically, I would say–housed in perennially temporary quarters, has recently lost those housings . Literally unhomed and I also agree with you that it’s a mistake to imagine that modernist ideas have been fully superseded by post-modernist ones . We can still displaced, but also renewed, what monument would mark its originating location at the time when it was, indeed, “new”? see their persistence and their continuing allure within the classroom and also within the artworld in general . And it’s important to keep 86 87 The critique, central to art school pedagogy, can strive to be a non-coercive practice, where desires and anxieties are “brought forth,” with the possibility of their rearrangement. The critique is the site for the production of knowledge that is localized and contextualized through the art object/event, but also an examination of that knowledge and its processes of coming into being. If meaning is constructed through the viewers’ (note the plural) encounter with the art object/event, the role of the critique is to examine that encounter and the processes through which meaning is constructed. Since that encounter occurs within a system of discourses, we also need to examine those discourses through which meaning is produced.

JP: About now I’m wondering if your original text has the status of the object of critique (the art object/event), or the voice of the “master” (the “control” in the conversation, the more impersonal authority around which we organize an evolving knowledge and awareness) . It seems to shift between these two polarities as I read and re-read, think and write . But that is the process of the critique, it seems to me: to begin to speak as yourself (the viewer/critic) in response to the other (art object/event) and then to see your speaking self, and the selves of others, outside yourself .

AdS: Hopefully less of the “master”, and more of the object to be collectively critiqued!

I’m reminded of the way Okwui Enwezor situates contemporary art in a global context of encounters within proximity (as the aftermath of colonial encounters across distance), which, “devotes itself to the critical interrogation of social subjectivity in the intersection of the self and the other ”. 1

JP: Yes, what I think is most interesting about this dialogue is the way that it caused your original text to be othered—not the “you” any longer to whom “I” was speaking, but the text that another “you” and “I” are writing around . I’m reminded of the first lecture/ performance I ever saw you do—in which you enlisted a few students to bring other voices, and hence to splinter your subjectivity as a speaking artist (if I remember it right) .

It’s about now that I think we need yet another . Okwui would be good, if he’s available . .

AdS: This original text is similar to what you were describing earlier about your art practice beginning with something outside yourself, advancing towards it, and around which you circle . If anything, this text might have been produced through me, but it’s from myriad sources and influences, and formed along multiple trajectories that include both you and Okwui as colleagues and mentors . And I’m grateful to be able to acknowledge that here .

One method of the critique is to defer judgment; it does not judge whether a work is good or bad, but it can and does examine the terms under which those judgments are made. It is primarily through that deferral that the critique can be non-coercive.

The review is inevitably a more coercive practice since it involves assessment and judgment according to the school’s mission, and is where the “standards” of the school/department/faculty are manifested: through the personnel and work being assessed, through the dialogue around it, and through the criteria being used for assessment.

These two practices together, the critique and the review (despite their overlap), involve their own identifiable sets of practices, procedures and outcomes, and provide a dialectical preparation for and critical relationship to the artworld (encompassing museums, galleries, dealers, publications, collectors, artists, schools…).

1 Okwui Enwezor, “Intense Proximity: Concerning the Disappearance of Distance” in Intense Proximity: An Anthology of the Near and the Far, ed Okwui.

Enwezor (Paris: Centre national des arts plastiques, 2012), 22 . INTENT/ION/ALITY The artist’s intention can be given varying importance:following from none at the all “death to determining of the author” and the “birth the viewer’s response of the reader and(and understanding historical) [viewer].” With the deposing process. of the of the “meaning” There artist-genius are no rules of the work. can here, We trace only comes an the some acknowledgement agency of this of variation the viewer-interpreter, of how and why we choose to discussions to collate and meaning, an emphasis whether on meaning we as viewers construction respond solely or primarily being a collective to the work, or whether we incorporate the artist’s own description and intent into our response. There are limitations–by not assessing with any approach: the artist’s stated intentions (how would we knowof experience/methods these otherwise?), of interpretation. we prioritize our own This experience might be and especially responses, and the may case possibly–by prioritizing when viewing fail to be sufficiently works from the subaltern artist’s directed intention, positionalities to new information/critique/forms we may respond to a description that are critical–is of the it work, possible of rather dominant to distinguish than paradigms to the work itself. a work from of experience its description and interpretation. (andmight the discourses limit our in engagement which it operates with and other generates)? kinds Specific of work, disposing art historical us towards onlyknowledges comfortably and discourses engaging(through with which the already we, as viewers familiarare already constructed) (the “I know what I like” of popular art-viewing). 88 89 Daniel Joseph Martinez We never encourage people to & Steven Lam hallucinate during the day

SL: I have a question about “de-skilling” and the implications skills have for artistic labor . Deskilling, if we were to crudely graft it onto a particular period could be associated with Post-Studio practice . Nowadays, I’m sensing an emphasis on “re-skilling,” the re-skilling of technological proficiencies or even a form re-skilling geared toward real world experiences, let’s say, community organizing . I wonder how we can unpack this notion of skill in relation to the art educational apparatus .

DJM: I’m not sure I would say Post-Studio was about de-skilling . My understanding from Michael Asher was that it was about the diversification skills . It was no longer the modernist model of “I want to be a painter” and therefore I’m going to study painting and make paintings all my life, but rather one that changed the equation to some degree . One had a range of ideas and was encouraged to find the best vessel to communicate those ideas . If, for example, the idea necessitated standing on one’s head doing under-water basket weaving, then one had to learn how to do that . The suggestion was that ideas were flexible and that they didn’t need to be fixed to the specificity of any one way of thinking or production . Now, today, your average artist very rarely claims to work in any one medium . Most artists are working in a multitude of mediums . Any single exhibition will include 4 or 5 different types of work and that seems to be the most common modality at this point . Do you think people are de-skilled?

SL: I think people are “re-skilled ”. I’m thinking of the pressure for institutions to reconsider what they do, the pressure to declare a particular artistic practice obsolete, the pressure to make curriculum “relevant” for the 21st Century . Education has been very good in providing students the know-how, but it doesn’t teach passion and belief…

DJM: No, you can’t teach those things…

SL: The reason I raise this issue of skill is I feel the corporatization of education has radically restructured the value of where knowledge lies . This shapes a student’s conception of the future, and that future is now focused on career opportunities . How do you push students in the right direction to be cognizant of those obstacles, and yet be invested to imagine alternatives?

DJM: I don’t disagree about your argument concerning the “knowledge factory” or “knowledge machine” or the mutation of knowledge . It is the same way in which we have mutated our food through chemically or genetically enhanced methods . The growing methods of food in this country is a very apt metaphor to think about how we grow and manipulate and genetically modify knowledge in the student vessel, and what we transmit them into . If you think about knowledge as being genetically modified, then we have to think about what it is that we are genetically modifying it for .

We know what genetically modified food is for–a longer shelf life, to make sure the pretty apple is purchased instead of the apple that is not red or shiny, so crops are able to sustain themselves through frost, disease, and insects . If we’re trying to do the same thing with people that means we are trying to develop a future work force . The question then is, and this is where class and privilege comes in, what aspects of the work force are we really talking about? Is it the “information knowledge machine” of Harvard for example, where Facebook was invented? Facebook wasn’t invented at El Camino College in Southern California by some half-Asian, half-Latino student, whose father is a gardener . What’s the difference in terms of the educational machines that we are talking about? It seems to me that we have different levels of this question that need to be addressed .

SL: I was looking at this interview you conducted with David Levi Strauss in Art Journal published in 2005 . Can we reflect on what has changed in the past decade, and what hasn’t? The text was prescient in that it pre-diagnosed the proliferation of the MFA .

DJM: In the past 10 years the direct and total impact of the market on artists and graduate programs in this country have greatly affected education . I’m not talking about the end, like actually getting a gallery, but the effect it has inside the program . If people talk about it, they do so jokingly–“well, what else should an artist do? You get out of school, get a gallery, and sell work ”. And what sells is banality . I don’t know what we expect of our artists anymore, that’s my problem .

Let me read you something you may know . It’s the 10 rules by Sister Corita1 on how to exist in an art department .

Rule # 1: Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.

Rule # 2: General duties for a student: pull everything out of your teacher and pull everything out of your fellow students.

Rule #3: General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.

1 Kent, Corita & Jan Steward, Learning by Heart; Bantam Books, 1992 . 90 91 Rule # 4: Consider everything an experiment. SL: It makes me think of a recent manifesto written by University of California students in 2009, entitled Communiqué from an Absent Future, where the student collective provocatively suggested that the concept of the university is somewhat bankrupt . The passage reads: Rule # 5: Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be “This bankruptcy is not only financial . It is the index of a more fundamental insolvency, one both political and economic, which has self-disciplined is to follow in a better way. been a long time in the making . No one knows what the university is for anymore . We feel this intuitively . Gone is the old project of Rule # 6: Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make. creating a cultured and educated citizenry; gone, too, the special advantage the degree-holder once held on the job market . These are now fantasies, spectral residues that cling to the poorly maintained halls ”. It’s a bleak and tragic future (or shall we say present), indeed… Rule # 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will leave you somewhere. It’s the people who do all of the work, all the time, who eventually catch on to things. DJM: It’s not that I disagree with that statement, but I have two issues . The first is that you could only write this from a privileged point of view . There is something about it that indicates class, or an entitlement to education . The other thing is, what are our options to Rule # 8: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes. make this situation at least amenable in the best way possible? Where’s the hope? If everything they said is true, and if we are producing people to just barely survive, or consume, then my question is why are you here? For example, I have a class coming up that has 250 Rule # 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think. students . No matter what I do, 50% of them will be on Facebook . Let’s say I’m only affecting 10% of them, and the rest just want a grade . I’m not suggesting that the problems you mentioned are not occurring, but I’m suggesting that simultaneously with these Rule # 10: We’re breaking all the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for x quantities. problems is a fundamental problem occurring with students themselves . We always look at the institution and infer then that faculty at Helpful hints: Always be around. Come, go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at the movies very these institutions are the ones who are the complete failure . carefully, very often. Save everything. It might come in handy later. There should be new rules next week. SL: I didn’t think about it that way . So we have student protesters who are putting pressure on the knowledge factory, but it’s interesting SL: That’s great . One rule that really struck me is #9 . The happiness one . You talked about class earlier . Both the privileged and under- to see their arguments in the same constellation of declarations of reform from the right wing, which say teachers are to blame . It really privileged share this overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety, buttressed by the cruel reality of a lifetime of debt . How does Sister puts the institution of education in a state of emergency when you have both left and right… . Corita’s call for happiness not seem escapist when one faces the grim reality out there? DJM: That’s right . Everyone is going to lose . Students and teachers are going to lose . DJM: I don’t think so . For example she wrote this in 1968 . She’s not suggesting, a prosaic form of being happy . It’s about being mindful SL: Can we go back to hope? I love your sense of hope . in your life, in your behavior, in the things you think, in the things you say, in the way you treat others, a purely secular mindfulness in establishing a form of contentment, even in the face of fear . There is a much deeper sense of the self . Even if the world is collapsing, DJM: Thank you, well it’s been tested over the past few years . what are we supposed to do? SL: How do you structure hope and cultivate it in teaching? SL: If we don’t know what to expect from the artist, what do we expect out of art education? Let’s take a standard MFA program, and I’m being incredibly cynical here–one that upholds a conventional notion of success–so students graduate, some get “picked up” by DJM: If there is any place where there’s hope, it’s in art . I still love art . I believe that art is still transformative . I still believe that an galleries, a few show in biennials, and a few get tenure track gigs in the Midwest, that’s considered a healthy grad school . I wonder what individual with nothing but a piece of cardboard and a marker can probably do more by themselves in a neighborhood than one can at really happens with art-school schooling . Is there a way for educational institutions to imagine something else? MoMA . I try to allow people to have a practical opinion, that the smallest gesture perhaps has as much, if not more meaning than any other gesture . I want to let people see that art is still very exciting, even in the second decade of the 21st century . DJM: It depends on the people . Departments are run by people, no how matter how messed up the institution is . If the people in the department want to disseminate information that is useful, then it becomes incumbent upon those students to be able to put themselves SL: I came across a book by Ulrich Beck where he asserts that we live in a risk society . His definition of risk society is one that deals in a position where they are listening, working, or trying to create a parallel system . There has to be a parallel system so they can steal with the aftermath of modernity and its accidents, and the whole mess of the modern project . The main challenge today becomes how everything they can steal from the people who are teaching them . can we manage those risks? Technocracy vs . big vision . Damage control vs . big belief . What does that mean for vision and belief?

SL: This isn’t exclusive to arts as it is in academia . People have success models, and these success models are what made them successful . DJM: I think there is a difference between knowing a thing and believing in something . People talk about what they know all the Therefore certain models get repeated and reproduced . In this process the casualty is creativity–institutions just replicate what works . time . Belief is more important . I couldn’t say it better than myself, but there is a Chris Kraus quote “for all the faults that exist in the I was watching a Steve Kurtz lecture, and he said rhetorically, that the notion of creativity has been hijacked not by artists but by the contemporary art world, it’s still the only place in which one can live an alternative lifestyle ”. I couldn’t have a “regular” life; I’m not sophisticated brokers and pioneers of finance . Creativity, as is known these days, resides within the “creative class ”. When you look at art built for it . I’m hardly built for this one . Do we want a regular life? It’s a question of what we want and what we believe . What do we school, the conventional one that relies on a mythopoetic narrative of being an artist or one that relies on the romance of creativity and want from this art-world? How does one want to participate, how does one want to organize their thoughts and ideas? What do we experimentation, I worry that there is not a heterogeneous field of identities for art schools . want to be, what do we want to effect? There is a difference between those who are willing and have a complex understanding of what it means to be radically progressive and actually taking the risks to do that, and those who are just liberal . The majority is just liberal– DJM: I would completely agree, because they are the new business schools . Creativity has slipped on the scale, and instead of being people constantly telling you what they know vs . what they believe . People need to believe in something . linked to imagination–an unknown product, a mysterious, and unquantifiable activity and product of that activity–it has moved the other way, and has become about new technologies, design and jobs . I have this idea, what if somebody proposed something really out However, one of the major problems is that you’ll never get five liberals or progressives in a room to agree on which direction they there? What if we just killed art schools? Eliminated all of them . Shut them down . If you want to make art you better learn how to do it, should go . I swear that’s a bigger problem than the other problems that are given attention . Getting people to agree . you better get good at it, you better figure it out, and that’s it, you’re on your own . No more degrees, no more Sotheby’s . Just shut them all down, from one end of the country to the other . SL: Why aren’t people agreeing?

SL: Ha! DJM: We lack the language because there is such an aggressive form of individualism that is put in everybody’s head as the only means by which one succeeds in the contemporary world . As soon as you engage in democracy and consensus the whole thing falls apart . I DJM: You would have a riot! don’t think you move progressive ideas in democracy . You have to be fairly autocratic and aggressive, and I mean aggressive, in applying a particular philosophy and ideology that has slipped under the radar, but surfaces in the mainstream . SL: Isn’t it weird that I agree with you, and yet we are both professional educators that work in an art school? SL: I see, more like a viral infiltration vs . structural reform . Are we proposing that the dream of universal structural reform is an illusion DJM: No, it’s not weird at all . You’ve seen something happen in your lifetime . Can you imagine the breadth of change I’ve seen from because it doesn’t consider the atomized and individualized subjectivity of people today? the time when I was in school in the 70’s? I think we should just shut them down . And if anything, get rid of everybody, and if we want to restart them, we can see what happens . It’s sort of like the Declaration of Independence . Do you know Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society? DJM: That’s exactly right . It’s a fantastic book . His notion of deschooling society is that if money can be put into an institution in order to build it up, in order to create the phenomena that we currently have, then the opposite is true, that you can completely defund everything . SL: What’s the role of education then? Do I have a classically liberal conception of education in which education is supposed to instill in people a common notion of equality, justice, and democracy? How does that get reconciled? SL: Why? DJM: Steve, I don’t think many people believe in that! For instance, I teach in the richest county in the whole United States, and you DJM: He believes educational institutions are deeply entrenched in what we discussed earlier; schooling a future work force . The only work in an institution in Manhattan . We’re only two people that believe in this, but I fear, and do not think, many people believe in

way to get back to a genuine form of education, is a combination of real life and some structure . He advocates completely starting over . INTELLECT/UAL Usually voiced as a complaint, that a work an (or artist, especially one who compiles lexicons) is too intellectual (the parental “too smart for your own good” comes to mind). INTEREST/ING A useful rule in critique is that “interesting” shouldand not on be what used terms. to complete a sentence or conversation, as in, “That’s interesting.” Period. One needs to continue the conversation, at least on what makes it interestingthis . 92 93 SL: I still believe in it, but I have to say, I’m looking for it! DJM: Many people will disagree with me, and they have, and it’s fine . If you go back to 1990 and you look at what Mary Jane Jacobs was doing in terms of trying to define the field . She starts to suggest that there is a possibility for something to take place in this space, DJM: If you don’t believe in this, then, I didn’t do my job . without even giving it a name; we can call it social space, or just public space . There was a very brief moment when there was a possibility of an additional language being generated that would have been seen not as hostile or foreign to a studio practice, but something that SL: I do believe in it, I do believe that education is a project of social transformation . artists working in a studio can all of a sudden engage in–like being bilingual . It was an opportunity to move beyond a monolingual DJM: You do? Honest? construct in terms of how we make or think about art .

SL: I do . I just think we have a form problem, not a content problem . We have a problem of governance, and the enemies are strong Is art now so subdivided that we have to identify all these different ways of thinking and canonize them, codify them, and create and pervasive–be they neoliberalism or the corporatization of educational values . We have a society that values competition over dogmatic methods to operate within them? Does one not go to school to be an artist to think outside the parameters of traditional social collaboration . We have a society that could care less about the marginalized . The stakes are incredibly high for educators, and the norms with the ambition to get to a place of social practice? No, social practice is a degree where one can learn a whole series of other academic labor force is in shambles . Tenure positions are disappearing, unions are getting crushed, and adjuncts are placed in perpetual people’s methodologies . The question of why we make things has all of a sudden become a real question . It was never a question before . precarity . SL: What’s peculiar about the MFA, say in community art, is the notion that one can graduate as an activist after enrolling in school . DJM: Maybe I have become too myopic but the real enemy is neither the institutionalization nor the instrumentalization of education, On the other hand it is interesting that a program can offer a practical set of competencies for this type of cultural activity . but, again, it’s the individual that has been conditioned to uphold a construction based on the will for individual success . I imagine DJM: If you have an activist who generally is in the field what are they doing in art school? similar scenarios are going on all over this country in every school . SL: I would imagine they believe in education, that they can inspire students to think outside the box . SL: Does that point to a crisis of value? DJM: I’m sure that’s the case, but I’m very suspicious of that kind of overt activism being labeled activism within an educational DJM: That’s right . Not only a crisis of value, but a crisis of being able to identify oneself as believing in something . One can argue that context . If you taught someone to utilize their intellect and their imagination instead of teaching them to be liberal, you would have a the left doesn’t believe in anything anymore . That’s like liberalism saying we believe in shopping, that we are selling education to set up dangerous group of people . People who are thinking fast and imagining even faster . I just don’t believe that comes from a syllabus and a market so we can get the most students . That’s terrifying to me . No one talks about race, class, gender, sexuality as subjects that need by reading texts or by looking at these artists . I just don’t believe you get inspired that way . to be addressed, no less issues of creeping inequity within civil society . SL: If we were to have that fantasy of hitting reset for the art school and to not repeat the conventional art school nor “liberal” anti-art SL: Well, don’t people believe in a civil society anymore? school, would it be possible to create an institution that can educate these guerilla activist thinkers/makers or is it one of those things in DJM: That’s a problem too! Wow, if we don’t believe in civil society, we don’t believe in values, we don’t believe in ethics, we don’t which one can’t do it from an institutional point of view as it has to be from ground up? believe in morals, we don’t believe in properly educating our children, we don’t want to instill imagination in them, and we don’t DJM: You can probably poke holes in this . If we go back before the proliferation of art schools–just go to 70s backwards . Every want to teach them about poetry . They should be reading fucking poetry; I mean what’s the problem here? What kind of world are we individual who was able to create something that people discuss within art history emerged without an institution . There was no creating here? institution for May ’68 . Nobody was reading a book in a classroom . Smithson didn’t make Spiral Jetty because he learned earthworks in However, I fully believe we cannot adopt a position of negativity . If we do, we’re in trouble . Even if the world is falling apart around a classroom . Eva Hesse didn’t get created in a classroom . Duchamp didn’t get created in a classroom . Andy Warhol didn’t get created in us, and maybe it is, and we’re just on borrowed time, it seems to me that it’s still a question of what do we do with that time . Do we sit a classroom . So what happened to the fact that we were able to do it for the better part of the 20th century and in the latter half of the in pessimism and despair or do we turn towards a more active approach that brings agency to things? I would rather build something century we all decided that we needed institutions to help us? Why is that? Everything has turned into an institution! Every time it gets with you, where we took a leap of faith and reorganize the rules in any way we chose or saw fit . Once we recognize the conditions we turned into an institution it dies . live in and we understand it thoroughly, the next thing we do is to be proactive . We should be proactive in everything we do . It’s just a SL: It’s because we need institutions to justify how social order configures itself . question of how to do that . DJM: Yes, people want to be validated . SL: I guess that answers the question of what do we demand of education? We demand that education is not just a site of knowing but a potential catalyst for strong beliefs, to create alternative beliefs, to create a sense of audacity and conviction that students can hopefully uphold and SL: But at the same time, I work for an institution, and it’s a progressive institution, and if I’m not working for this institution I hope to disseminate and from there become agents of their own change. work for another one that can be progressive . I think there can be structural and cultural change that institutions can provide . I think institutions can be apparatuses of change… DJM: Even if we only affect 10%, it’s still a high ratio . DJM: Ok let’s divide it up the way it’s currently divided up . There is a private sector and public sector . Let’s skip education for a SL: Yeah, that’s true, it could be -10% . minute . Let’s look at the federal government, a major institution . Can you identify structural changes that happened in the US federal DJM: Exactly . The bulk of students are actually just trying to figure out something about themselves and what we do with art . As artists government in the last 50 years that have been genuinely positive and constructive for the citizenry? we ask who we are, why are we here, what’s our place in the world, what effect could we possibly have, and all of this is linked to imagination . SL: Social security, right? Education, telecommunications, health care, no really… We never talk about imagination . We never encourage people to hallucinate during the day . We never encourage people to experiment DJM: You’re reaching, Steve with their ideas without feeling that they will be penalized, and that whatever they are doing does not need to meet the standards of what educational empirical models have taught us to judge people by . SL: Well I’m stuck, because in the 70s all this shit got privatized…

Imagination is a precious thing . That’s something we should be protecting at all costs . People give it over to consumerism, they DJM: Go 50 years before privatization . give it over to companies, they give it over to everyone else, but themselves . Even artists have a hard time imagining anymore . The colonization of imagination produces a neutered or controlled outcome . One can’t institutionalize imagination and create a corporate SL: Ok 1890s to 1950s? . . communication, water supply… context for ideas and not expect those ideas to be influenced by that context . You are not getting raw imagination at its peak . You’re getting something that is compromised, and that’s perhaps what’s the most disturbing: the compromise of one’s intellect and imagination DJM: Communication was handed to us by Edison, an individual and corporation… . in terms of what one wants to produce . SL: …but government put money into building the infrastructure… SL: In the past 10 years we witnessed the proliferation of other non-studio graduate programs, say social practice programs . There is a DJM: You’re talking at the ground level, like water, the phone, I mean, wow, is that it? Really? That’s my point . In a private model reason why social practice programs and non-profit institutions are aligning themselves with this particular mode of production . It’s all you can implement change . But I can’t do that at the U C. . level . I can’t affect the regents . I can’t affect the regents structurally . What about tracking cultural impact . There is a whole institutional complex that has stakes in supporting this new language, which of course has changed in the U C. . system in the past 50 years? But change can happen at the micro-level, at the level of the department or the isn’t new . We can call it a form of cultural boosterism . However, in this configuration, the studio appears to be no longer considered an curriculum, but even that change is fragile, it’s so tenuous . agent of social change, can you speak about that turn? 94 95 We’re back to belief and core values . I can do nothing but try to keep those core values in place . That’s the only way I can operate . What will happen when we’re gone, and the group that replaces us does not have the same values and beliefs?

In history we see how it is repeated, or not! For example every revolutionary group that gets killed or captured weren’t replaced by another group of people that just stepped up and took their role . That’s why they became immortalized . The Black Panthers only lasted so long . The Red Brigades only lasted so long . Shining Path only lasted so long . I’m not talking about whether or not I agree or disagree with a violent model but, generally, people do not step up in their place because the times change . Time changes . People get drunkenly seduced by everything you said in your opening statement . This is where I am not sure . This is where I have a weakness in hope . I don’t have a weakness in hope on the individual level . I’m not sure people are willing to risk what they have to risk in order to perpetuate the motion, a self-sustaining ideology . That would be fantastic if that were true . I’m not sure it’s true .

SL: What do you mean by self-sustaining ideology?

DJM: That you step in my shoes, your daughter in your shoes, so that there is always someone willing to step up, someone gets shot or knocked out, the next person steps up in the same slot . Stronger, faster, more brilliant each time .

SL: Isn’t that the role of the institution? The ideal institution would have a set of values ingrained in the halls, but if institutions have a shaky value system they cannot endorse…

DJM: No, it’s not a shaky value system . I don’t think it’s shaky at all . I think institutions know exactly what they want . They are changing their values in what they believe to be competitive with the times . Despite everything we disagree about regarding the knowledge factory, they believe they are doing the right thing . Because the right thing for them is a model of business .

SL: You mentioned the unknown, or teaching toward the unknown rather than teaching by reproducing what one knows or transmitting knowledge . Can you expand on that, the relationship between the unknown and imagination?

DJM: At a certain point, you don’t show anyone Duchamp anymore because there is nothing to be learned from Duchamp . He stops being a useful tool to help open someone’s mind to the fact that one can move in ways that are unpredictable .

I guess what I mean by the unknown is that we operate with a base of knowledge . Let’s say we are all informed . You and I go into a gallery, an exhibition, and we look at it . In less than a minute we will source it art historically and materially . We’ll understand the work’s content, its politics, and form . Everything . It just takes about a minute, because the languages that are being used are all the same languages . What would happen if we walked into a gallery and we looked at something, and we both went: “what the fuck is that?” And we look at it and both of us do not have a clue . There is no reference point . That is what I call the unknown . The reason that should be a goal is because it is the one thing everybody’s afraid of . You and I see the work because we’re curious and we try to acknowledge it . But, let’s take a critic at the NY Times . She looks at it and has the same response, and she doesn’t have any idea what she’s looking at . She will not write about that artist’s work, because it’s impossible for her to say that she doesn’t know what’s going on with that work . It doesn’t improve her professional position . The same with the curator . This person will not curate an artist’s work that they do not understand . So the most radical thing you can encourage people to do is to operate in a language no one has ever heard before . That would be the riskiest thing .

SL: Because it fails to reinforce a sense of authority, that of the critic or curator who is placed in a position to dictate, and make legible what the work means?

DJM: That’s right . Exactly . If you were willing to take the heat, you would probably make a significant body of work . But, you wouldn’t be popular, you wouldn’t make any money, and you wouldn’t get written about, and if you did, you would get trashed . See the risk? There is a huge potential in inventing a language, a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way to re-purpose art . I just think it’s a wild idea, an inspiring idea that someone would be willing to do that . And that takes imagination . : as in “I think of my work as a journey.” INQUIRY Proposes that artmaking is a practice akin to research“I photograph or is itself to find the out researchwhat something (rather than will being look research-based),like when photographed.”being of an anIt idea,can illustration ofalso a medium, emphasize of an experience of anprocess; already-formed that or a “whatquestions if…” proposition; idea.and possible cf. Garryanswers come into Winogrand’s being through comment: the making of the work, rather than the work JOURNEY Sounds profound and heroic, and is generally used as synonymoussaying, with a medieval-style “I took a bus.” quest that overcomes all manner of obstacles. In most cases, however, there is little at stake. It is so over-used, that as it’s banal as 96 97 Juan William Chávez When Moons Align: In the & Anya Liao Studio, Classroom & Nonprofit

My life as an artist used to be divided into three separate parts: my studio practice, my role as educator, and the director of a nonprofit organization . I chose to keep these components separate and dealt with them as would seem traditionally logical . Stress, frustration, and burning out always seemed to be the result . I began thinking about the energy I generate when making art in the studio and started to apply some of my practice into both my teaching and the nonprofit . Once I could digest the notion of viewing them as one collective practice, I could clearly see how all three elements benefited each other .

I developed a collective practice when I began focusing on socially engaged art projects in North Saint Louis in 2010 . The north side is an overlooked part of the city that faces many issues with the built and natural environment . There are blocks of overgrown vacant lots and crumbing brick houses that have been picked apart by brick thieves, aka “Brick Eaters ”. The City is not able to keep up the maintenance of these vacant lots, which then invites spontaneous trash dumping . Brick Eaters sell bricks on the black market for historic restoration projects in other cities . The process destroys neighborhoods, leaving homes burnt out and dangerously on the verge of collapsing into a pile of rubble . In response to this rampant vacancy, I created the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary . This proposal for the City of St Louis aims to transform the urban forest where the Pruitt-Igoe housing development once stood into a public space that cultivates community through urban agriculture . Drawing parallels between the depleting population of bees and shrinking cities, this interdisciplinary project-in-progress has the unique opportunity to reignite the conversation surrounding Pruitt-Igoe and address issues caused by urban abandonment utilizing creative strategies .

Concurrently, I began working with the Old North Saint Louis Restoration Group and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation on an intervention to regenerate a historic North Saint Louis brick building on the verge of collapsing and vulnerable to the attack of Brick Eaters . Two years in the making, we generated enough funding to completely restore the building and transform it into a community art space . The Northside Workshop (NSW) is a non-profit art space dedicated to addressing cultural and community issues in North Saint Louis with programming focused on incorporating socially engaged art and education with the goal of fostering social progress in North Saint Louis communities .

A studio practice began taking shape at NSW in the form of beekeeping and gardening . The studio was becoming a space for me to contemplate ideas for developing community-based projects like the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, which started to become a platform for educational and social programming . The classroom became more about community and collective thinking . I replaced the concept of teaching my class with encouraging my students to explore ideas together with me during class time . The intermingling of these worlds was highly influential in the development of an internship program at NSW .

The following conversation is between Anya Liao–an intern at NSW, who has been volunteering since 2012–and myself . She has contributed to the development of our programs, and has been given the opportunity to develop her own projects . Our conversation focuses on the studio, classroom, and nonprofit as environments where we work, play and learn .

–Juan William Chavez

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In the Studio

JC: Conversations play an integral role in the process of my studio practice . Thinking and working as a group is how I am able to contemplate and gain knowledge through the exchange of ideas and experiences . What plays an important role in your studio practice and how does your studio practice learn?

AL: When you’re in your own head, with your specific biases and personal narratives, it can be useful to get another perspective, especially one that comes from an opposing (or marginal, or outsider) worldview . Even if you feel like it’s wrong, talking it out may help you reinforce your own ideas . In art school there is a structure and resource of critique but it’s also really crucial to find other ways for the practice to learn . One of the main ways I do it is through a really intense collaborative practice with a close friend (we make and distribute zines and printed tapestries) and another way is this internship, which is a similarly dialogical and audience driven .

JC: It is my personal philosophy to have a conversation with anyone interested in being involved with the studio or nonprofit because it leads to meeting people with diverse backgrounds and skills, which has unlimited potential to enhance our projects . I am so thankful that you contacted us to get involved because working with you has brought so much energy to the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary project and NSW programs . You were vital to constructing the apiary and garden in the middle of a Saint Louis heat wave and a huge asset to the success of the Beautification of Vacant Space summer program where you shared your printmaking knowledge and served as a teaching assistant . Could you share your experience working on the Beautification of Vacant Space project and teaching at NSW? 98 99 AL: It’s definitely been gearing more and more towards a specific kind of involvement . When I began I was helping out with physical labor and assisting in the classroom . This grew into into a more invested involvement that now utilizes my unique knowledge and skills–including technical skills that I find really valuable in art and studio practice that are not always necessary as a part of social practice . The making of things, physical objects . That was fun for me during the Halloween event and the Delmar Divide conversation . I am always trying to think of a way that those two aspects of what I like about art can be fused . On the one hand I want to be involved in community and education, and think very critically about my involvement and how I’m participating in those environments . But on the other hand, I really like making objects and drawings . Often they are very separate practices but when they can be combined, when one can be a good tool for the other that is very fulfilling . Like right now, I’m working collaboratively on visual materials for an environmental justice group and their actions . And of course a tangible product is not always the right approach or necessary, like you have to think about if and how the visual object can be a useful tool . Just like it’s important to think about all projects holistically, as an art project, like not only how they can be viewed in the terms and confines of a printmaking, or design project, or business, or educational project . One of the things art school does teach you is constant anticipation and even trepidation about audience responses, and this is similar to constantly try and understand the community response that is a part of all NSW’s projects

JC: NSW has become a kind of studio . It has programming, but in between the programming it becomes an open space of ideas . While there’s enough space for me to conduct a more traditional studio practice, I don’t think I’ll ever set-up an easel downstairs and paint in the gallery . The backyard is not just a place that houses the bees and garden, but a space for contemplation and reflection . It’s a very different type of studio space where you can be open minded and naturally let ideas come together . The way an artist develops artwork is incorporated into the way we develop programing . And just like artwork, sometimes ideas work out and sometimes they don’t . Failure is not something we fear but embrace, as that is how we learn .

AL: That critical aspect, or hindsight, is also important . After we do a project we critique it .

JC: Reviewing what was the good and what was the bad .

Northside Workshop’s Delmar Divide conversation and Anya Liao’s table card survey AL: What can we be more aware of?

AL: I helped teach classes on urban gardening and printmaking (screenprinting) for Northside . Although I was the “instructor” in JC: In some ways, I think that is what is unique about the art school environment . Critique plays such an important role in a university some classes, I feel like those didactic teaching experiences were less interesting than the conversations from just hanging out with the setting . Somehow when you leave school, critique is gone . In the workforce or nonprofit sector, it exists in the form of a survey or students . The aspect of the class I found the most significant was getting to understand their perspective and how they were responding review . Collecting suggestions is very different from having a constructive, critical conversation . to the classes, like their experience with the subject and what it meant to them, if it was even relevant or interesting to them . There is not enough dialogue built into class structures because of a rigid teacher-student relationship, so that in this case someone whose AL: I even think in art school it is focused a little differently, because the critique is approached like an ultimate evaluation of the work, purpose in many classes is simply sitting in and having conversations helps the curriculum gain relevance; also NSW as a different and as opposed to one step in your entire praxis . The way that you make work is always a cycle of destruction and creating anew . I think new kind of, and still figuring-itself-out institutional teaching space has those very flexible possibilities . what’s missing in this kind of school structure is the idea of praxis, which is doing something and then talking and thinking critically about what you have done and then changing your approach . That form of critique is not just an evaluation of success or failure but a JC: Tell me about your studio structure and why you reached out to the NSW? space for a thoughtful pause . AL: I reached out to Northside because it is helping me fulfill an inclination I have for social practice and to be involved in understanding education, something that is becoming much more important to me than personal artistic production . I often don’t feel that the way school is structured is conducive to a kind of artistic research that is ongoing, committed, or community-based because In the Classroom it’s really focused on creating a complete tangible product for your next critique . undergrad art school encourages a specific idea of what constitutes “work” and this is created and maintained by the structure of the curriculum . The premise is that we are creating JC: I teach at a university and my interaction with the students in this environment is drastically different from the way I work with preliminary work or trying to develop work to exhibit in a gallery . Even when we are exposed to different approaches to art making, you . In the classroom, I’m sitting at a desk . I’m an authority of some sort . There’s discipline involved . the complete, authored product is still the important thing, both because the curriculum encourages it and because that is where your AL: Discipline of grades is another thing that really changes our relationship . assigned mentors’ expertise lies . Hanging out with you guys and getting your perspective on that tiny world is good because you understand my disinclination to participate in aspects of it and you’re encouraging in that respect . It’s relieving . It’s a really confined JC: Discipline of grades, attendance, people walking in late . All these things begin to drain the energy in the classroom . I feel that this setting and to be outside it every once in a while is really rewarding . setting is not always conducive to learning through art experiences . With your internship, I do not feel any of these typical pressures . We have an open dialogue about projects and programs and together we measure successes and areas for improvement . Having you work on projects and share your feedback has truly impacted me . In some ways, our relationship helps me better understand my ideas for the At the Northside Workshop studio and classroom .

JC: I would like to highlight two projects that were greatly influenced by your studio practice, the Delmar Divide conversation and AL: I agree with that . Because there’s no institutional structure, our relationship creates a nebulous space where anything can happen . the neighborhood Halloween installation . The Delmar Divide was a workshop aimed to encourage a dialogue about the racial and In the beginning the idea of the internship was a generic one, maybe based on past experiences . It developed more into a friendship, economical division in Saint Louis . The program was part of the the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts response to a video produced which I think is more effective . The generic and blunt idea of an internship is a specified exchange of knowledge in exchange for labor by BBC reporter Franz Strasser titled Crossing a Saint Louis Street That Divides Communities . Part of this programming was to host (the knowledge comes from one side of the relationship and is privileged above the labor) so that after the internship is over (a set period screenings of the video followed by community discussions in different neighborhoods throughout the city . NSW was a participating of time) the intern has acquired more knowledge (and networks) to help in gaining a position of authority . I don’t feel that solidarity can venue and invited community members from both inside and outside of North Saint Louis to attend . It was vital that participants have be built with that kind of setup . I feel that if a friendship is the paradigm, I will continue helping you without thinking constantly about an opportunity to share their opinions, but we did not want to use a traditional survey as the format . You helped us created a more what I am “getting out of it” or having a specific learning goal . It just happens, and can be unexpected and expansive . We have a lot of effective way to survey people using table cards that you designed and printed on a printing press . Each audience member received one dialogue about Northside projects and it is an active learning . I feel like a relevant part of the conversation, because I am both learning as they arrived and were encouraged to write down their thoughts throughout the conversation, which turned a boring survey into and teaching, as opposed to just contributing tedious labor . an art experience . We also invited you to create an installation for neighborhood residents to walk through on Halloween . You went JC: I agree . Friendship plays a major role in how artists receive information . Being able to call up a friend and ask “How did you do beyond our expectations with the design, and also organized a mask making station where you invited your classmates to be involved . that?” is a key element of learning . Or simply listening to each other’s experiences . I’m 36 year old; I have a certain way of looking at This provided us with the ideal opportunity to engage in dialogue with young people and parents . Both projects incorporated your things . How old are you? studio with the community . How did it feel to combine these elements with your studio practice and how did it impact you? 100 101 AL: I’m 21

JC: We have two different perspectives . In a university setting, the professor is supposed to be all knowing . Whereas, I feel that learning has the potential to be a two-way street . On one side I am sharing my experience with you about graduate school and nonprofit management, to developing community projects and programming . At the same time, I very much understand the importance of being open to learning from you and your generation . For example, when you invited me to see your boyfriend’s band play at a basement venue, I was able to be part of a cultural experience . While I’ve been to basement parties in the past, I haven’t been in that environment in a long time and it felt good to still have access to that type of artistic energy through you .

AL: Yeah, I guess an energy and idealism that can come from younger places is pretty powerful when you are talking about a fresh mindset as being an important thing to keep accessing . Students’ experiences of the classroom–whether they are middle school students or college art students–are also crucial to remain engaged with, otherwise the teaching becomes irrelevant . I feel like I get that experience from you guys, too . Your experiences give me a perspective that I’ve never had, and I can use it to think about what I do and do not want for my life .

JC: Your studio practice has had a noticeable impact on our programs and workshops, and I’m glad we can provide you with these experiences . : as in, “I like that color/shape/texture…” : as in, “What’s the work’s message?” LIKE/DISLIKE This is a standard opening gambit and exposes a typicalbut remains tendency in elementary critiques if of telling maintained us about theonly viewer’s at that tastes point and of likes/dislikes. opinions ratherLikes/dislikes than examining are also not fixed or deciphering and may change over what time the work does.and circumstances. It can be a useful entry Disliked point, artworks might have the most lasting effect upon us, and through that–perhaps irritating–effect we might come to “like” them. MESSAGE This is an unproductive, even lazy approach that bypasses theunknown, potential imminence, complexity of any etc.–into work, since a linear it reduces the “statement” unquantifiableartists (despite a viewer’s desire possibilities would put up that written an artwork of statementsartwork—excess, function instead onlythe of the onundisciplined, work the (this level of a fully is not to be confused comprehensible contradiction, with message). the If written it were knowable,multiplicity, statement containable as thethe work; and nor reducible the use of a written to that extent, statement as one means to direct a viewer). 102 103 Valerio Rocco Orlando Quale Educazione per Marte? & Mónica Ríos ¿Qué Educación para Marte? What Education for Mars?

Quale Educazione per Marte? ¿Qué Educación para Marte? What Education for Mars? is an ongoing project initiated by Italian artist Valerio Rocco Orlando in order to experiment with an alternative model of knowledge’s transmission and relationship in school .

In 2011, in collaboration with Esterno22 and the Nomas Foundation, a series of workshops were conducted by Valerio Rocco Orlando in a number of public schools in Rome . The result of this experience was Quale Educazione per Marte?, a video installation composed of different portraits, interviews and conversations among students imagining how to build a better school . The first chapter from this cycle was exhibited at the 2012 Havana Biennial and a second production, ¿Qué Educación para Marte?, has been developed with students from ISA (Instituto Superior de Artes) in Cuba . In 2013 Valerio Rocco Orlando will create a third part of the project, What Education for Mars? at the Valley School in Bangalore, after a new workshop with local high school students, in order to analyze an Indian school-system and compare it with the Italian and the Cuban models .

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According to Michel Foucault, Napoleon’s coming marks the passage from a “sovereign society” to a “disciplinary society”1 . The disciplinary society defined itself by its environments of enclosure: prisons, schools, factories, hospitals and mental institutions . William Burroughs states we have now passed into the “society of control”2, in which environments of enclosure are no longer necessary because they have been replaced by subcontracting and work-at-home jobs .

In the field of education, Gilles Deleuze saw that schooling would be carried out throughout one’s life, which he termed “permanent training”, allowing education to do away with the closed space of a classroom . Control no longer coincides with discipline . Just as on a motorway one can move forever and freely although always under a form of control, the same is true for information . This is why police press releases are called communiqués .

Deleuze asks if information is a system for the control of the passwords used in a specific society . Does this also apply to education? What about the work of art? . “It has to produce counter-information, it has to become an act of resistance . The work of art is not a communication tool and has nothing to do with communication . The work of art strictly does not contain the least bit of information3” .

For André Malraux, “art is the only thing that resists death4 ”. Art is that which resists . For Foucault power, which is an integral part in the learning/teaching relationship, is not a thing but a relationship . The same may be said about education, which may be seen not as the sum total of information, but the relationship between two or more subjects with different roles .

If we defined the spread of knowledge within the institution of the school as a relationship among different powers, what alternative model could we propose?

Quale Educazione per Marte? ¿Qué Educación para Marte? What Education for Mars? (paraphrasing the title of the exhibition Quelle architecture pour Mars? by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster), aims to look at knowledge production as an act of resistance, which the artist intends to activate together with students .

Musing on the outspreading of knowledge within the school system, in this project I intend to explore the relationships of students with teachers, the context in which both groups dwell, and their extra-curricular relationships with family and friends, thus analyzing the superimposition of public and private life on a daily basis .

Beginning in the classroom, the place where learning is assumed to take place, I explore the interstices and the corridors, the bathrooms and the courtyard, which become the special places where one can strike up a personal relationship with students and investigate what happens both inside and outside them . The meeting and the very experience of talking to each other represents an essential moment in the

1 Foucault, Michel . Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . New York: Vintage Books, 1995 . 2 Burroughs, William S . Electronic Revolution . Cambridge: Blackmoor Head Press, 1971 . 3 Deleuze, Gilles . “Bartleby; Or, The Formula,” pp . 68-90 in Essays Critical & Clinical . London: Verso, 1998 . 4 Malraux, André . The Psychology of Art . London: Zwemmer, 1949 . 104 105 creation of the work, as does the re-elaboration and reflection on the final work through the editing of the conversations and interviews . For this to be a really significant dialectic experience, it is necessary to activate not only the relationship between the artist and the student, but also those relationships among the students, so that through sharing, everyone may consciously reflect on their role within the school and thus on their position in society .

Following the philosopher of science Bruno Latour, who in his 1979 book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts studied the relationships of scientists among themselves and with their families and friends instead of analyzing scientific discoveries, my effort is to analyze the relationships among those who make up the school institution .

Foucault mused, “What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life . That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists . But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?5”

Working in Havana last year, I had a chance to meet Mónica Ríos, a 22-year-old student who was working as an intern at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam during the last Havana Biennal . Monica’s guidance was fundamental to my experience in Cuba, like Beatrice to Dante . She introduced me to the other students, helped me get a sense of the community and to let me somehow be part of it . Below is a text written by her about our experience together .

Valerio Rocco Orlando

El filósofo Bruno Latour, en su libro “Laboratory Life” (1979) analiza los descubrimientos científicos a través del estudio de las relaciones entre los científicos y sus familias . Valerio Rocco Orlando, en Quale Educazione per Marte? pretende utilizar el mismo método; esta vez experimentando sobre los modelos de educación alternativos, y, así, conseguiendo mejores resultados en el traspaso de conocimiento dentro de las escuelas . Con esta experimentación desea indagar sobre el actual sistema escolar a través de sus relaciones internas; desea llegar a una pedagogía universal estudiando y escudriñando en el sistema educativo de la sociedad, que como sabemos, es la base del pensamiento social . El resultado es el vínculo que se logra mediante la interacción entre los entrevistados y el espectador, en el cual –sin importar la geografía o el tipo de sociedad- se piensa para el futuro una mejor escuela, y, por consecuencia, una mejor sociedad . El artista ha leído teóricos de la pedagogía en todo el mundo, buscando en su compilación -y como un alquimista que mezcla para convertir en oro- una educación mejor para todos .

En el marco de La Bienal de La Habana, Valerio Rocco Orlando presenta una video-instalación que es el resultado de este experimento y diálogo con estudiantes en Roma; experimento realizado anteriormente con estudiantes de La Habana y que ahora repite en Italia . El objetivo es un diálogo mayor: contrastes, opiniones, pensamiento, pedagogía suscitar un espacio de reflexión en busca de unaverdad que pueda ser visibilizada para buscar el bien, buscar una educación que responda a intereses universales; esa educación que se ocupe no sólo de la instrucción escolar sino en el cultivo de valores humanos, y ése es un pensamiento que, en el contexto cubano, podríamos recordar del padre Varela cuando “nos enseñó en pensar”, o de nuestro apóstol José Martí –que fascinó al artista al estudiar nuestra pedagogía- cuando hablaba de “concertar el trabajo intelectual con el trabajo manual” .

Con una excelente fotografía, el video nos invita a detenernos . A escuchar la voz de las generaciones actuales, a evaluarlas, a soñar una educación que no sea “para Marte”, que sea para nosotros y para el mundo . El arte que necesita el mundo no es el lenguaje personal de un artista que el orbe debe comprender; es el artista quien con su artisticidad y capacidad de creación construye vínculos humanos para que, a posteriori, nos demos cuenta que nuestras necesidades son universales y debemos luchar por ellas para todo el mundo . La educación o escuela que soñamos, en esta muestra, es la que sueñan estudiantes de Roma y de La Habana . En cualquier geografía, ¿Qué Educación para Marte? es una pregunta que se convierte en afirmación cuando somos capaces de reflexionar, soñar, y luego poner en acción lo soñado, para que el destino de ese sueño no sea Marte .6

Mónica Ríos to be “moved” emotionally by an artwork (see Gut Feeling)

5 Foucault, Michel . “Self Writing ”. pp . 207-221 in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth . New York: The New Press, 1997 .

MOOD A common question in critiques is “What mood does the work have or produce?”the mood Since of a viewer mood (the is basis a product of color of sentience, therapy), but inanimate the color itself is not a mood. say objects that To a color suchemotional is as “moody” artworks is shorthand state, have don’t moods. rather for After its than potential sustained one produced to produce in viewing, response a mood in to the the viewer. color specific mightbeing up. But locked mood is affect generallystimulus of a prolongedan artwork–unless one is locked up with, or in, that artwork for an extended period. Such a mood change is more likely to be the effect of MOVED: Emotion is equated here with an unmediated, “honest” or “pure”engagement reaction. any overrides Yet demagogue critical knows that the faculties. easiest way to manipulate Anotherwhere understanding they an might audience feel is safely to get of “moving” them located, emotionally a viewer to a state entails that engaged is a form more unstable to of dislocation the point and where even threatening. that or displacement, 6 literally moving the viewer out of their present intellectual and/orSpanish emotional stability edited by Maricruz Alarcón 106 107 Deborah Stratman & James Benning

DS: We’re parked outside the house Henry Darger lived in at 851 West Webster, Chicago, Illinois . James, what do you like about Henry Darger?

JB: He had his photo taken on the stairs there . I think there are only two photos of him that exist, and this one was taken by a student from the Art Institute [David Berglund] who was friends with the Lerners and was visiting them . He took Henry’s picture while he was sitting out there . Not too long after that is when Henry left for the mission home . That same student helped the Lerners go into his room to clean it out after he left, and that’s when they first noticed there was all this great stuff . They had no idea he was doing all that work . But when Henry’s picture was taken, it was just because the student thought he was an interesting old man sitting out on the stoop .

DS: The Lerners were artists too?

JB: Yeah . I think the husband Nathan was . And his wife Kiyoko was some kind of art historian .

DS: So they had a room to let, and Henry happened to rent it?

JB: They bought the building when Henry was already living there . He was such an unusual guy they thought “Maybe we should get rid of him,” but then they thought, “Oh the poor guy, where’s he gonna go?” He was old, so they said, “Let’s just let him stay there until he moves to a rest home ”. And that’s what happened; maybe three years later he moved out and went to a rest home and he died not too much later .

DS: Did he make art in the rest home too?

JB: No . He left with nothing . He left everything behind . That room was his whole world for thirty-seven years . He used to live a few blocks away . When he moved he just walked down the street carrying all these drawings and things .

DS: That reminds me of that Bartleby story . You know Bartleby, the Scrivener - the Melville story?

JB: No .

DS: Bartleby’s this guy who prefers not to . He gets hired by a man to do legal copying–a scrivener . And at first he’s a great employee, but then after a while, the employer asks him to do something and he says, “I would prefer not to ”. And from there on out, that’s the only answer he gives, no matter what the question is . So you go through all these mental machinations, along with the protagonist . He’s infuriated, and then he kind of feels sorry for Bartleby, and he tries to psychoanalyze why he’s behaving that way - maybe he doesn’t have any friends - but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t work . . And all of this guy’s colleagues get really annoyed that he’s not kicking Bartleby out, but he’s trying to show some empathy .

Finally the boss ends up leaving the building, which was on Wall St, in the financial district, and moving his whole business away, because he realizes that Bartleby’s actually moved in and is living there and has entrenched himself . He’s this oddball and there’s nothing that will make him budge or comply . The boss decides he’d rather move than deal with kicking Bartleby out . Bartleby’s refusal creates this amazing wrench in the works . I guess it’s sort of a critique of the capitalist system, by choosing to opt out of it . It makes you think about what kind of stoppage it takes for us to even examine the systems we live in .

JB: Well, certainly Darger created his own world up there . That’s what I’m interested in . The way people are caught in a particular place . He had all these awful jobs, and yet he created an autonomous place for himself . He was able to make something completely different out of his life . But nobody knew about it until he was dead .

DS: Why do the particular individuals in 12 People1 appeal to you?

JB: Because they made work that came directly out of their own lives . I think they became very obsessive, but most of them created a body of work that described a different kind of life than most people have . I really like that their works become unintentionally autobiographical . Especially Bill Traylor who did all those drawings and paintings living out on the street . He painted both what he remembered and what he was currently seeing, so there was a mixture of the present and the past, but it all accumulated into something that described what his life was about; how he was a farmer, and what he learned from farming, and then how he applied what he learned from farming to looking and drawing .

1 12 People, essay by James Benning in his monograph (FC) Two Cabins 108 109 DS: I feel like it’s more than just describing a life - it’s actually making the place they lived in . DS: So you have a written correspondence with Ted?

JB: I don’t think they consciously set out to do that, but it’s what their lives led them to need . JB: I’ve talked to him through a friend who’s speaking with him regularly through letters . My correspondence with him has always been through a third party, but he directly refers to me at times . He doesn’t know exactly what the process [of making Two Cabins] is DS: …with Darger for sure . I’ve never seen that text you described . The one that begins autobiographically but then continues with about . It’s very complex, what he’s thinking about what I’ve done . 4,000 pages about a tornado . DS: What made him okay with the project? Did he ever explain why he was willing to communicate with you at all? JB: A tornado named Sweetie Pie! JB: Well, he’s only communicating on levels of revolution, of fighting against “Industrial-Technological Society” . He makes references DS: There was something in the [Ted] Kaczynski Manifesto where he talks about mental health being defined by how you behave in to art at times . But he mostly talks about his main cause, which is ending “Technological Society,” before it ends us . And it’s probably accord with a system . And if you can do it without showing signs of stress, then you’re considered ‘sane ’. I think it’s too simplistic to say a righteous thing to be fighting for because I think at the bottom line he’s right, that it will turn us into something else that isn’t too making art is just about coping, but I do lean on art as a bridge to the world; to keeping me in the world, or sane in the world . pleasant .

JB: Well it’s certainly a good tool to learn about things in a much deeper way . All of the people that I’m interested in were looking at DS: But then when he argues that you have to kill people to get noticed, so your work will be published… their life more deeply than most people do . And it all comes through their art practice . JB: Yeah, I don’t think he thinks very clearly when he says that . I think he realizes what he’s done but he doesn’t want to deal with that DS: I like that art tools are so elastic . There are all sorts of genres of people who ask questions of the world, but I feel like the tools their at all . disciplines require are more rule-bound . Artists get to make their own tools . DS: Because it’s all for the revolutionary cause? JB: Well, if it’s good art, it isn’t a pre-described language; it’s a language that you form yourself . It’s not confined by convention . JB: Yeah . His argument is that the ethical idea that you can’t kill is just a technique our government uses to control us, because they kill DS: Is that what pisses you off about [DW] Griffith? all the time, but they make it impossible for you to use that technique . And that’s pretty accurate when you think of Obama meeting every Tuesday morning with the head of the CIA and deciding which people should be killed by drones in the next month . JB: Yeah, kind of, because he was creating a language that was confining him . DS: I heard a rumor that the renegade LA cop [Chris Dorner] who was hunted down, up near Big Bear, was killed by a drone strike . DS: Tied to narrative convention… JB: I downloaded his manifesto before it was censored . JB: Well, it wasn’t convention at that time because there was no real film convention . But he was developing a language that people admire and I don’t, because I think it was restricting rather than opening . It was a language allowing him to be the most manipulative DS: I did too . he could be, and I don’t think that’s good language . JB: It’s kind of interesting . Like a lot of those kinds of manifestos, I believe about half of what he’s saying should be investigated, and the DS: So what do you feel like after… how many years have you been teaching…? 500? other half is completely crazy . Although I also believe that Charlie Sheen is f-ing awesome .

JB: I’ve been at CalArts for twenty-five years and I taught for maybe five years before that . I also taught math, and in some more DS: What is “FC’” by the way? unofficial capacities teaching people on welfare how to do bookkeeping, and at dropout schools for youth that were in trouble . JB: Freedom Club . Those were the initials Kaczynski carved into bombs . The first time he referred to Freedom Club was in a letter he DS: If the goal is to get people to make up their own language, how do you do to that? wrote to Scientific American . I actually made a film about this letter, I’ll have to show you it–it’s a little seven-minute film . He wrote the letter in ’83, but it was never published . JB: The most successful I’ve been with that is to teach people to pay attention more . To be more interested in what they look at and what they listen to . One can learn through the experience of observing in a longer and deeper way . I believe that any kind of learning DS: It was to the editor? takes work and time . One has to be really dedicated . You can learn about things that already exist through books, and become a dentist and learn techniques of how to do things, which are all valuable . But I’m thinking of learning in a much more openly conceptual way, JB: Yeah . It was about the dangers of science . At that time, the new CERN accelerator was being proposed in France and he was saying where what you learn is perhaps not immediately useful, but leads to a more creative way of thinking and finding solutions . how this is a good example of how irresponsible scientists are; that they shouldn’t be allowed to judge the danger of something .

DS: Paying attention can be such a hurdle for people today . DS: You mean the danger of it generating a black hole?

JB: Everybody says we have this faster society now, the MTV generation– which is actually long past… that there’s this quicker time . JB: Yeah, that kind of thing . But then he goes on to make really great points about how science is taking risks all the time . Scientists are But I think nobody ever pays attention . I don’t think there’s a history of it getting worse . Maybe it’s just become more noticeable . Or if making their own judgments, which are totally affected by their enthusiasm for what they’re researching . So how can they objectively it is worse, it’s by such a tiny amount it’s not worth measuring . evaluate the danger of the research when what they’re really invested in is what a discovery might lead to, and their own egos?

It would be a radical new way for society to work if everybody really took time to pay attention . We can always argue, oh, it’s so hard to Until he got caught, the FBI always though ‘FC’ meant Fuck Computers . But it was Freedom Club . pay the bills, and you’re caught up in all these things… but that’s always been true . That isn’t something new . Life is full of distractions that keep you busy to get you through the day rather than move you forward with any kind of conceptual thinking . So it takes time . FC comes from Kaczynski’s interest in The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad . Conrad’s secret agent used initials, and somehow Kaczynski You need to make time for paying attention . started to live his life through the fiction that he’d read . It was a book he read over and over, about a professor that’s searching for the perfect detonator . DS: Is that what you like about people like Thoreau or Kaczynski, in their cabins, in their solitude? That they were keyed into the world and really stuck with observing it? The interesting thing is because that letter was never published we don’t see how early his bombing campaign was tied to politics–it started from anger . But now, retrospectively, he thinks of most of what he did as a political action . Although he’s also stated very clearly JB: Yeah, but I’m also interested in that kind solitude leading to isolation . It would be great if Kaczyniski could write about the degree that he was angry and under-socialized and that it lessened his anger when he would come out violently and do things . of isolation he experienced because we all see that as abnormal, but I would like to understand more about what that’s like . Nobody’s DS: Getting back to attention… did these twelve-hour classes you do at CalArts–where you spend the day traveling someplace to look

lived outside of society that I know of as much as he has . Today he’s probably more a part of society than he’s ever been, and ironically as in, “I’m interested in nature,” or, “my work is about nature.” he’s in a Supermax prison . Now he has lots of correspondence with people on a pretty sophisticated level, which he didn’t have for so and listen–come out of frustration with getting people to do that in a conventional classroom? many years, apart from arguing with his family . JB: Yeah . And to have a class that would force me to pay attention too, so I could experience what I was preaching . Sometimes we are DS: Were you in touch with his brother? all separate . Or if we stay as a group, then we don’t talk . So we have this anti-social experience, which provides a much more focused attention span . If you’re with somebody you start talking about nonsense . Even when you’re alone, that little voice in your head starts to JB: No . That probably would be easier than getting in touch with him . say oh I’ve got to go do laundry, or I’ve got to do this… it’s hard to filter that out . MOVEMENT When looking at a static object, such as a painting or a photograph,unless, it makes for no example, sense to talk one throws about the movement. said One object can out talk of a window. about stasis, or conventions of representing movement, but there is no actual movement NATURE/NATURAL: Nature is assumed to be an identifiable category that is altogethernature thatdistinct is not affected from by humanthe human endeavor. or the “Nature”cultural. is often usedIf invention. there’s to at leastdescribe one Thething “my workcategories is about that nature,” learned we’ve of landscape. is more accuratelyfrom climate “Landscape” amended change, is, to however, “my work a it’s that addressesdepiction there is no of a separate (my) culturalsection of categoryland; understandings as a form of of representation of the it categoryis therefore a ofcultural ‘nature’ and its representation” (though few artists are likely to say this). 110 111 It’s not a matter of completely getting rid of those thoughts . That stuff needs to be integrated with the attention you’re paying, so JB: [showing me a different letter] This is my favorite letter . This is back to Ted after he’s written a letter to this small town newspaper . immediate connections can happen between what you’re experiencing and what’s on your mind that particular day . It could lead to interesting solutions to things you’re worried about or want to solve, or even bring up new questions for yourself . Paying attention isn’t DS: Wow! So they had no idea who he was? Why was he reading the Missoulian? just an activity, it’s connected to your life itself . It shouldn’t be completely abstract . JB: Because he lived there! Isn’t that great? “Maybe you could tell me a little bit about yourself ”. I wonder if that freaked him out and DS: Paying attention, as I understand it is not thinking . It’s more like absorbing . But if you’re paying attention and totally disconnected made him paranoid . from thinking, then… DS: So to him “Technological Society” means not just computers but also industrialization… JB: Well part of what I’m interested in is the idea that all of life is memory . For you to understand this sentence it’s already in the past . JB: Control society . Which is interesting because you actually heard the sentence backwards . You recall the last words first, but you somehow make sense of the sentence in the right way . You cannot understand language or see movement or see a light blinking, you can’t see any of that . It all DS: As a fellow non-cellphone user, why don’t you have one? exists only in memory . JB: I just don’t like to talk on the phone, and when I answer, it’s always to do something . If they can’t get a hold of me, I don’t have to DS: Henri Bergson! do it .

JB: Everything we see and observe is always immediately past, but is also understood from something even deeper in the past . DS: I feel like I’m too slow for the paradigm shift that came with cell phones . I’m not good at being in a here and talking into a there… Everything that’s new has to be examined from what we know up until that time . And so, to make sense of something happening now, you have to rely on all that you remember that relates to this particular moment . Then you make a value judgment on what’s happening JB: [James continues to peruse letters on his laptop] Here he’s writing his Congressman, talking about the sonic booms that are now from what you’ve already experienced . But when you start to evaluate what’s happening now, it shouldn’t just be a one-way happening over his house . evaluation; what’s happening now should also make you reevaluate what you’ve experienced before that’s making you feel the way you are now . If you don’t reevaluate, you get into a system that just reinforces prejudice . We should try to understand the origins of our value DS: This is when he was in Montana? Is there an air base by there? judgments . JB: I don’t know . And then he got a letter in reply .

My daughter [Sadie], in her very first video, absolutely addresses this . She put part of her diary in her video and there’s a passage of DS: So did he think the sonic booms were connected to control stuff? text that says, “A friend of mine was raped by a black man . Now she’s a Nazi skinhead . It’s so easy to fall into a trap ”. That’s the way this reevaluation should happen–being able to see the trap . When she did that at fifteen, I thought what a remarkable, economic set of JB: He just didn’t like them happening . He was very sound sensitive . sentences . I was blown away because it took me fifty years to get to this kind of thinking, and she stated it so simply . DS: Those are his drawings? Him inside an Eagle? What is that supposed to be? DS: I’ve been interested lately in what Interval is . I was initially thinking of it as just a gap between things; a doorway, or an ellipsis . An absence that makes the bigger thing useful, like the doorway to a house . There’s a Zen koan that says it’s upon the place where JB: Here’s the one I like . there is nothing that the usefulness of things depends . I was thinking about the interval both temporally and spatially . We had a lot of DS: Is that supposed to be him? Is he fat? conversations in class about when paying attention happens and when memory happens, and what happens if you’re denied the ability to retain what you’ve paid attention to . For instance, if you have Alzheimer’s, and you’re denied the ability to be constantly constructing JB: Look at these breasts crossed out . yourself out of memory . Though it seems like there’s still some deeper level that’s sub-memory or something, where we’ve been encoded with a certain kind of humanity . DS: But he didn’t cross out the bird with the propeller beanie…

JB: Well you don’t lose your memory completely . I think you could still perceive a blinking light . JB: See this guy with the erection…

DS: I was reading an Oliver Sacks essay about a guy who had a super short memory . He had a brain injury, or something happened to DS: [Shows me a dense grid of numbers] Oh, this is his numbers code stuff? Did you have to decode it? him where he couldn’t remember anything any more; except, if it was contained within the temporal structure of music . JB: Yeah . I had to decode it . JB: So he couldn’t hear music? DS: What system did you use? DS: No, he could . It was the only instance where he had any form of memory . He had been a musician previously, and if he started playing, suddenly the whole piece came to him . Every piece of that music was contingent on its past, but he could only recall it if he was JB: I’m trying to show you . in the middle of playing or hearing it . DS: The fat guy was the key to decoding? JB: This is a beautiful notion because I always like the idea that people who stutter can sing without stuttering . There’s something about JB: Yeah, kind of . This is the key to decoding . It’s thirteen pages . rhythms and music and art that allows us to transcend these other problems which is very hopeful for me . It’s such a good example of art being something else . Maybe that’s a bit romantic . DS: So he left instructions? What’s with the diagonal lines?

––––––––––––––––––––––––– JB: That has to do with a series of numbers that you’ll add and subtract . You’ll start somewhere, then go in this direction, then that direction, then that… So he gives an example . The third letter in is a ‘7’, which means you go to the seventh line down here . Then you DS: So that’s his [Kaczynski’s] typing? Or you retyped what you found? start adding those numbers to these numbers . And if the number’s over ninety, you don’t use it, and… there’s a whole bunch of rules . JB: It’s his . This is the actual letter he wrote to the Scientific American . Anyways, he takes you through the whole decoding of an example .

DS: How did you get the letter? DS: Why did he write that down? Wouldn’t it be in his interest to keep it secret?

JB: We own it . FBI sold it . JB: Because he wanted people to read the shit, I think . If you decode this example, this is what you get: “Yesterday I went downtown . Outside the CTA station a big fat queer asked me if he could suck my cock . He was disgusting . I will not let him do it . This morning I DS: What do you mean “we”? The collective James Benning? had breakfast . I will have breakfast every morning . I will enjoy it . My digestion is good . But yesterday I ate too much . Bla bla bla . I do not think that anyone will be able to break this code . But how can I be sure?” JB: A young artist who’s been very successful and can raise money like that [snaps], likes what I was doing, and is a big fan of Julie Ault’s . So he bought all of Kaczynski’s texts, everything, and gave it to Julie . Nobody’s seen this letter . DS: Whoa! You could do a whole psychoanalytic study just on that example . When did he start writing everything in code?

––––––––––––––––––––––––– JB: He only writes sensitive stuff in code . So you’ll be reading and it will be in English, then all of a sudden it will go into numbers, 112 113 then he’ll go back to English, then it might be in Spanish for 300 pages . the problem that I set up for myself . I don’t want to make films where I don’t have decisions . But I like the idea of taking a preexisting architecture and then finding new things to investigate within it . DS: So can he write in code at the speed that he writes in English? DS: It seems like your Easy Rider is reiterating the point about memory you brought up earlier… about being able to look back and JB: No . It takes forever . This is what I decoded and it took me ten days to decode these three pages, and I used a program to help me do reassess; what did they miss, and then projecting forward to examine how we arrive at our prejudices . it . I could enter numbers and it would add and subtract them and it would look up the final number I got . If it was 0 it would be zero . If it was 42 it would be a space . If it was 64 it would be the word “it” . If it was 76, it would be “out ”. 77 would be “over ”. 10 would be JB: Exactly . I actually think my film answers the question “What did they mean when they said, we blew it?” At least it answers it for “A ”. 11 would be “B ”. “E” would be 14… me, because I’m able to show you didn’t blow it, you really looked at something more closely this time . You really see what I wanted to see, so for me, you didn’t blow it any more . Maybe in five or ten years I’ll think I blew it . DS: So there’s no correlation between letters and numbers, it’s all just computations that lead you… DS: Then someone can remake your film . JB: Right, but first you have to subtract two sets of numbers to get to the third number . And then you needed the code to look that up . It was impossible to break . They couldn’t break it . JB: Yeah, exactly .

DS: But then they found his instructions .

JB: Yeah, he had two notebooks .

DS: What would he deem too sensitive? His targets?

JB: Here’s just an example of one . It’s about sending somebody a bomb, and about finally achieving success .

DS: Success that the person died?

JB: Yeah: “After the last raid I searched the LA Times through December and some other papers and found no mention of the bombing . I fear something has gone wrong . And since experiment 100 was failure too I was fairly frustrated and thought I was going to have to spend all winter making new, better bombs . So wrote my brother an excuse to call off my visit I was going to make to him . But since experiment 97 turned out so well,” he did kill somebody, “I will try to arrange to visit my brother after all ”. He gave himself a little reprieve .

DS: Were the experiments numbered in order of how many he had, or was it not that literal?

JB: He did a lot of experimenting in the woods . But then when he actually put the bombs out, he would call those experiments too .

DS: They were part of the same numbering system .

JB: 99 might have been creating that bomb . 100 might have been setting it out on the street and seeing if somebody picks it up and dies from it .

–––––––––––––––––––––––––

DS: Have you ever made any films where the editing was entirely a product of what the shot contained; where the rhythm came from something internal to the shot? Because in most of the films I’ve seen of yours, the rhythm is determined from something outside of the image content . Like, the shot will be the length of the roll, or you decide it’s going to be exactly one minute, or some other external logic . But do you ever make an edit where an internal logic determines the length of the shot?

JB: Well, if you look at an early film like One Way Boogie Woogie, where I decided I’d make sixty one-minute shots . I went out and made slides of different places and then I determined which sixty shots I would do . Then driving to one of those shots I might find a different place that was better than where I was going and I’d shoot that instead . I’d end up with sixty shots, and then my next task was to put them into order . That wasn’t preconceived .

Sometimes it is…sometimes I know where I want to begin and where I want to end . But if not, that’s a complicated problem because sixty shots is sixty factorial–there are millions of possibilities . So even within a preconceived system there’s still a lot of decisions to be made . There’s enough to make it satisfying that this isn’t done by a robot . There’s a lot of editing that happens . And then once the order is set, of course sound is editing too; how sound works within each shot . In all those early films, nothing was shot in sync, so I could create whatever sounds I wanted for each shot . There’s a lot of freedom of choice when you work that way .

Even though it seems these systems are completely preconceived–and in a sense they are– in another they’re not at all . There are all these other decisions that have to be made . That’s editing too . Editing doesn’t just mean sixty one-minute shots . That was a concept that came before, but it still allows for a lot of play and a lot of change .

I just finished the remake of Easy Rider. That film is completely predetermined by the original–that is, the number of shots and the shot lengths–they’re all preset . And then it became what would I represent each of those scenes by? What am I interested in? What did the filmmakers pass by that they didn’t really look at closely and that I wish they had stopped at? So it was a matter of finding my own point of view of what that original film suggested, but really didn’t show at all . Even though the architecture of the film was completely provided by the original, the point of view, and what shots I was going to do were determined by me . Which is a freeing kind of device .

One can think of structural films as being overly anal, but there’s a real freedom within them . The thing is to liberate the form . That’s ORIGINAL/ITY Supposedly a foundation for any art work; generally used approvingly,form. though occasionally used as an expression of being confused: originality(“What do you think as nonsensical, of my painting?” as not grounded in any discernable historical or aesthetic original!”)“It’s Originality prioritizes individualitysavant, over collectivity implying that or relationality, the work has no predecessor; and the that “author” it arises over the“divine” “reader.” It is not too through linked or, in the discourse case to the of the proposition “idiot,” and culture untainted of a fully but through integrated by the civilizing some wellspring self (see Self), strictures of inspiration. and to notions of of society. “genius” And or if the inspiration idiot cannot be traced back through culture, then it must be 114 115 A.K. Burns & Alexandro Segade

AKB: Maybe we should start with what we are teaching this semester .

AS: I have three and a half classes this semester .

AKB: That’s a lot, where does your practice fit into that?

AS: I’m teaching a class at Parsons which I made up, called “Public/Spectacle,” which is part of their 4D topics .

AKB: What’s the fourth dimension—performance?

AS: It’s time — being a science fiction fan that’s what I think . Last semester I was in 3D, teaching a class called “Sculpture and Theater,” looking at the intersection of the two . “Public/Spectacle” is looking at different ways that performance constructs audience . In my own practice there is a continuum from this sort of self-made music-video maker to the performer who is trying to create a community . I don’t think that’s a rupture . I’m interested in how that can all happen in the same practice . I have a lot of students who seem to be doing all those things .

AKB: I wonder what ruptures? Institutional critique and collective gestures don’t necessarily disrupt institutions, if institutions capitalize on them to ensure that their programming remains progressive . I also don’t think that inherently devalues those interventions .

Speaking of the relationship between sculpture and theater—that was a particular focus last semester in my class at Cooper Union . In “Shared Form,” I was interested in rethinking the historical narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century art through the actions of groups as opposed to individuals . I asked students to produce “in relation to” and look at collaboration as a pedagogical model . We spent the semester dissecting a Brecht play, Saint Joan of the Stockyards .

I used theater as a model for that class because the communal is built into it . They were free to interpret the acts of the play in any medium—painting, sculpture, performance… So I didn’t expect them to make “theater” per say, rather to look at how parts or individuals might relate . Since I don’t come from a theater background I was thinking that the gallery is like a stage, works are like props or performers (or both, and what is the difference? This is a larger sculptural question that I’m interested in), and the way these parts relate and are orchestrated in that space is like theater .

AS: You asked where my practice fits into this and I dodged the question . But what you just said reminds me of a song I wrote with Malik Gaines for one of our pedagogical projects:

Theater can be a model / For the forms we hope to create / Act out dissent and affirmation / Reconfigure the event as a process / Invert the hierarchical stage / The audience becomes the cast / The cast gets naked / Mandate to Participate, yeah yeah/ Each Rehearsal’s a show/ Each show is a life / Each life’s a rehearsal for a better life / If we make each show better/ Than the show we expect / Then our lives will get respect. Theater was really helpful with teaching . Theater and teaching are closely connected through the Brechtian theoretical strain and his model of the lehrstück, or the learning play . In the classroom, we can perform as part of the class, as part of the learning process, and it can have political dimensions . Which also reminds me, I’m going to Washington D C. . once a week to teach a class at the Corcoran, “Professional Practices ”. It’s supposed to help them get their portfolios together but they don’t need to get portfolios together actually .

AKB: (laughs) The greatest misconception of the art world .

AS: Andrea Fraser taught a class called “Intro to the Art World” at UCLA that I TA’d for when I was her student . That is my model for this class at the Corcoran . There are classes on the books at art schools that are professional practices courses, and whenever I get my hands on those, it’s an opportunity to do a survey of the actual realities of the art world within a much more expansive discussion that includes theory and critique .

AKB: Right, it’s all about how an artist makes a lot of choices around the opportunities that arise as they interact with galleries, museums, DIY spaces, education, writers, curators, art fairs, etc . The intention behind and outcome of those interactions actually shapes the meaning of your practice to a certain degree . Sounds like you need to have a W .A G. .E 1. talk too .

AS: I was thinking about how you and I met . We were in graduate school at the same time .

1 New York-based activist group that focuses on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a sustainable model for best practices between cultural producers and the institutions that contract their labor . A .K . Burns is one of the founding members . 116 117117 AKB: Oh right, we met in L .A . for the Wight Biennial . AS: My dad was a college professor and my mom a high school teacher, and they’re both retired . It’s a family trade .

AS: Yes, at UCLA, which I co-curated with Wu Tsang and Matt Merkel-Hess . We had all exhibited or functioned within the art world AKB: So did you always think you would teach? in some way professionally and still needed to be in a graduate program . AS: I always thought so, but like you, I first worked as a graphic designer after undergrad . I worked for various Internet companies and AKB: Even after having gone through it I wonder how necessary an MFA is for an art practice . Yet I really enjoyed that process . The it funded my ability to go back to graduate school . time, space and feedback was an evolution for me . I think that reciprocal social aspect of education is the reason I like being a teacher . AKB: I actually did my undergrad in graphic design . AS: I wanted to teach . Everyone at school knew that’s what I was there for . AS: Cool . AKB: The most unexpected part of going to graduate school was that I did not go into it wanting to be a professor . Prior to that I had been making a living as a graphic designer . I was at the end of my rope with sitting at a computer . Being back in school I began AKB: (laughs) Well sort of . . . to recognize how significant dialogue is for my practice . I would align teaching with other collaborative projects I do, like W .A G. .E ,. AS: I had been an English major, focussing on Elizabethan theater . I didn’t know what I was doing . Community Action Center and the magazine/curatorial project RANDY . Teaching is a creative process where I get to expose others to and experiment with ideas in my own work . AKB: It’s always been a personal point of contention . I literally had a breakdown deciding my freshman year, “Should I do sculpture or graphic design?” Having watched my mother struggle with multiple jobs and being a single mom, the choice didn’t feel like a choice . AS: Right out of undergrad I went to USC Film School . This is pre My Barbarian2 . Malik and Jade [Gordon] and I were all in different By my early to mid-twenties everything became very clear . I had a lot more I needed to say and do in the world than design could parts of the universe: Jade was an actress and Malik was learning to be a writer at CalArts . I saw that there were other schools that accommodate . But being a graphic designer defiantly funded my transition into art full time . seemed better suited for me, but I couldn’t figure out how to go to any of them so I just dropped out of school . We started a band right after USC, which became My Barbarian . It wasn’t a band for long but we were gigging and playing college radio . But we were more AS: I thought, “I’m out of vacation days, I’m going to go back to school and teach ”. I thought Mary Kelly would be a really good interested in performances that responded to the site than we were in forever touring the same set list . At a certain point, we were mentor in part because her Interdisciplinary Studio Program at UCLA has an academic component, and I wanted her to tell me what brought into the venues that presented performance in the L .A . art world . From there, we found ourselves at Performa and other things books to read . What actually happened was training in critique based on formal analysis, which is the foundation of my approach to in New York, then presenting work in Canada, then Europe . I realized there were things I didn’t know about the context we were running a crit . operating in . AKB: Her practice is exactly that space between artist and teacher . AKB: You kind of came into the art world through the side door? AS: She occupies both positions with total commitment . Making art and prepping for the classroom are not the same thing, but they AS: We were in it because we were invited by curators who saw us in clubs, but I didn’t know what “it” was . Everyone else seemed to can be connected . have an MFA but I didn’t . The Interdisciplinary Studio Program at UCLA had so many good people coming from it and going toward it . I spoke to Emily Roysdon who said, “This is the program that you should be in, I’m going to introduce you to Mary Kelly ”. Once we AKB: My first years of teaching were at MassArt in the foundation program, via Taylor Davis . Since there is no teaching education at met it was clear to me that it was the right place to be . Then luckily Andrea Fraser got hired that year so I had on my thesis committee Bard I had to do whatever I could, including commute eight hours to get teaching experience . I was given a lot of liberty in terms of Andrea and Mary, Cathy Opie and Stanya Kahn . how I could teach 3D foundation, but I started by copying Taylor’s curriculum . Each semester I would change things to fit my own ideas and process . I did foundation my freshman year but because I majored in design and then went to Bard, I had never taken a sculpture AKB: What an awesome line-up of art mothers! class and suddenly I was going to teach one . Learning to teach was a process of understanding my own practice and interests enough to translate and challenge others with something I felt grounded in . The way I teach also comes out of a reaction to ways I disliked AS: And sisters . Who was on your board? being taught and the things I wish I had been introduced to as a student . I transitioned into art post undergrad . I went into the world AKB: Sadie Benning, Teresa Hubbard and Taylor Davis, who is an amazing teacher and I think she is the reason I wanted to teach . and found like-minded peers . They had their references and I had other references . There’s a whole community that grew out of that 3 Watching her maneuver in a crit space and in my own studio profoundly changed the way I was dealing with my work . It was a huge exchange and that was my education . LTTR was my education . Peer-to-peer learning is complicated to translate into teaching in a gift and totally inspiring . formal university setting where power and authority are built into the dynamics .

With the Bard MFA program what they expect from you is pretty individualized yet dependent on the group dynamics that are AS: I like dynamics . reinforced by interdisciplinary critique . There’s a sense that the group is there to “break-the-horse” and your task is to rebuild yourself . I AKB: I’ve been thinking about how I “manipulate” in an educational setting, and I was wondering, do you have professor drag? think a lot of other programs cater to a kind of “mastering” of what it is you came in doing . AS: My mother is my idol because she was always a cutely dressed teacher, really good at figuring out how to buy clothes at the mall . AS: There’s some shepherding at Bard which may include asking a student to give up some part of their practice . I heard about Bard But I also dress a little younger than I am, with baseball caps and sneakers, and I chew gum . through Anna Sew Hoy, who went to this mysterious school, and then right after I graduated my first teaching job was to go to Bard and be performance faculty that summer . It was shocking because it was such a different graduate program from the one I had just left AKB: I have a uniform . Boots, clean jeans, and a button-down shirt buttoned to the top … but mostly it means not wearing my clown minutes before . I thought it was what I had imagined Black Mountain to be . pants or leather jacket into the classroom .

AKB: What is it that makes that happen there? They sequester a bunch of artists in the woods for what seems like a very calculated eight I will only wear certain things because there’s this idea that I have to maintain some kind of authority in that space . But then I question: weeks . It is literally the length of the honeymoon phase . Just as you’re going to crack from the insular group dynamics, you’re released . Is that something I believe in—the illusion of authority in the classroom? I think I’m self-conscious about this because I look young . Then you retain the love drug to go back . In a way it’s very manipulative and culty (laughs) . The Bard program maintains a fragile When I finally go gray-haired I will start wearing clown pants to class . sanity . Do other programs experience this? AS: Mimicry—that’s how we learn . That’s part of the conditioning at UCLA with teaching assistants who are chosen by professors: we AS: At UCLA they didn’t induce a hysterical euphoria . Not that that’s what Bard is trying to do, but it happens . I was wondering, do model ourselves after them . Mary Kelly has a whole signature style and she would notice if you changed yours . It meant something to you have any teachers in your family? her when I cut off my hippy hair .

AKB: Well, my grandparents were . So 1950s . My dad’s mother taught home economics and his father taught shop at the local high as in political art versus non-political/apolitical art AKB: Were you critiqued on your teaching? school in Palo Alto, CA . My other grandmother was a painter and she was the most influential adult in my childhood who shaped my path as an artist . My mother also homeschooled my siblings, although she herself was a high school dropout . Regardless she’s brilliant, AS: We got a lot of feedback . I was given the job of being the TA who trains the TAs, which meant I took a class on teaching from the an avid and opinionated consumer of information, and has always advocated the importance of self-education . education department .

2 My Barbarian is a collective consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade, founded in Los Angeles in 2000 . Their interdisciplinary 3 LTTR is a feminist genderqueer artist collective with a flexible project oriented practice . LTTR produces an annual independent art journal, performance, video, music and installation projects use fantasy, humor, camp and clashing aesthetic sensibilities to playfully reenact artistic, political, performance series, events, screenings and collaborations . A .K . Burns has been closely involved with the collective as acollaborator and contributor to politically conservative power lies in its claim to be “beyond”an imaginary politics. Even here, in past). “Political this “beyond,” art” lies art’s is also political often dismissedart.” efficacy Its purpose as a as ineffectual“future might be to participateimagining” or naïve, in (eventhat in when it thefails formationthis to changeimaginingmight or continuation society be to help sustain, or at leastmight of a politicized a beparticular deeply reflect reactionary–in and/or extend culture. issue.that However, culture.to Theeffect burdenessence political of of change, then,change is upon is not thenecessarily wider culture the (includingpurpose of “political viewers), not upon individual artworks, whose role social and historical situations . www .mybarbarian .com POLITICS/POLITICAL: On one hand, a case can be made that all art and all art-makinglies a minefield is political of presumptions in the broadestand viewer sensesubject-positions, of politics. On theand other sinceas much handas valuesanything one can are make highly a case in forthe “political contestedwork itself. as cores art”Art, of society, by beingits very civilization art aesthetic with a political choices andand humanityvisual intention. languages itself, Between art thecan two inmanifest, all its manifestations confirm, reject or has oppose intrinsic existing or political new values; implications. It would seem, then, a paradox that art’s strongest ideological and the journal since 2003 . www .lttr org. 118 119 AKB: I think because I didn’t have the structure of formal teacher training I created a tradition that on the last day of class I would have (indirectly) telling me they want to go . In some ways the authority paradigm has been turned on its head . My advanced class is the the students critique me . complete opposite, it’s more disjointed and needs that structure .

AS: Oh no . AS: That comes from experience with collaboration . When you’re working on a project with other artists, the group itself creates the structure through skill-sets and interests—what that particular group can do, can create something from, that another group can’t . AKB: Yeah, I honestly needed to know what projects were stimulating and if they felt like they were lost by the way I presented When you look at a group of people who are your students and you go, “This group isn’t actually fitting into my plan,” the instinct is to things… etc . change the plan!

AS: Good questions . AKB: But a lot of people will force people into the plan, I mean typically that’s how education works . . .

AKB: At the end of the last class I would tell them, “This has absolutely no effect on your grade… ”. But it always had this tinge of a big AS: This is where there might be a generational shift and disciplinary difference . I come from performance, where you change the plan . reveal when I would hand over authority at that moment . Also one can look at the crit space as a teaching method that develops peer-to- peer learning . Imagine if in an English class you handed your paper to each student and had to talk with each other about it rather than AKB: Another thing I wanted to touch on was our discussion about Rupaul’s Drag Race as an educational model . When Project Runway get a paper back from your teacher with a grade stamped on it . I think I really believe in critique as a productive model for learning and first emerged, I thought this is incredible TV, it captures the pathology of art school . And then, having recently been addicted to Drag love that aspect of art education . Race, Project Runway feels overly serious and dry as a TV show, reality competition or model for art pedagogy . It’s clear why Drag Race makes better TV: indulgent fantasies are so much more entertaining . But maybe that’s also why it makes for better art? They are having AS: We’re being presented as experts who can help do what exactly? more fun . It’s a competition dedicated to self-expression using body, materials, concept, and performance to create a total illusion… .

AKB: I’ve been thinking as a teacher I’m more like a guide than an expert . I have different references than they do just because I’ve AS: It’s artifice within the realm of artifice . I think of it as feminine-ism, not feminism . Fashion is connected to planet earth and drag been around longer and seen/read more—I bring that into the classroom . But because of the speed of fingertip accessible information, is like the unconscious mind . Like, “Stop it already with the feathers ”. They just keep coming, because in your imagination the feathers cultural trends proliferate in a way that is almost impossible to keep up with . Students often have a different relationship to that media never end . than I do . They bring that cultural immediacy . This is something I enjoy getting from teaching and can take back to my own practice . I think the apprentice/master model exists in a much more porous way today because of that . AKB: It’s true, they never end!

AS: The interdisciplinary space we occupy in the art world is the same in the teaching part of art . I’m teaching “Unconventional AS: Drag Race, Top Model, Top Chef—I found them useful . These students are born in the 1990s—and one thing I noticed was that long- Drawing” at Hunter this semester but that’s the closest I get to a traditional class, because there are pencils . I have to function in multiple term projects weren’t always working out the same way that short-term projects were . The classroom could be used to play a series of ways and also question my own position because that’s part of the kind of work that I make . So this authority thing is an issue . Um, high-speed educational art making games . well, it’s part of the job description . AKB: That was a problem for me last semester in the Cooper Union class because we spent the semester working on a single Brecht AKB: Yeah, I felt like I really understood that authority was useful while at MassArt . In the foundation program they don’t have grades, play . The final presentation was good, they totally put themselves into it, but the whole project got bogged down in process . The it’s just pass/fail . I entered the first semester in a utopian haze thinking, “This is great, it’s art school, why would you need grades?” spontaneity was gone . So this semester I chopped things up, I have one, two, and three-week projects . Giving grades at the end of the semester seems like an irrelevant ritual . It can be one of the weirdest things to do . AS: For performance, six-hour projects are a good way for them to learn collaborative skills and improvisation . In “Sculpture and AS: Agreed . Theater,” one highlight moment for me is “Prop Swap ”. Everybody brings in an object they could hold in their hands, and puts it on the table, and then everyone picks one and then goes off and writes a speech from the point-of-view of the object . Another person then AKB: By the end of the semester I found the pass/fail model to be an inadequate way to evaluate students . It’s so binary . I was so comes and directs the person holding the object in the performance of their speech, while the object is manipulated somewhere in the frustrated by the lack of effort from many of my students that before the last class I told them, “Every single one of you in here is going room in relationship to this speech act . to fail, if… ”. Then on the last class, it was incredible, they finally brought work in that incorporated the conversations of the semester . But I resented the fact that they essentially wanted to be parented and needed the incentive of grades as motivation . AKB: Are they performing from the point-of-view of the object?

AS: That happened to me the one time I taught at CalArts, which also is pass/fail . It’s a culture that I didn’t really understand . They AS: Not always . In “Mask Task” they bring excess materials from other classes for a workshop where they’re going to make masks . After came in really late which is supposedly okay somehow and then I had to say, “You know I’m super disappointed, I thought you kids viewing a PowerPoint presentation of 300 masks, set to music, they break into groups, and I give them these anthropological articles were going to be really creative compared to the students I teach in Orange County, but you’re the worst students I’ve ever had and from TDR [an academic journal] about how different cultures use masks . They make the masks for a couple of hours . Then they have to you’re all going to fail ”. The next day they came in with better and more engaged work, but it was never great . make scenes from a ritual away from the rest of us, so we don’t see what they do . They then show it through only one still image, which they present to the class . That’s a day of class, and in that day we do as much work as we would have done over a three-month period . AKB: Yes, what makes the culture of a school? At MassArt my biggest hurdle every semester was that most everyone entered with a These are attempts to bring theater into a studio classroom environment . I was thinking about my colleague Jade Gordon, whose MA certain level of apathy . I got really good at turning that energy around, but I always wish they would just come in the door hungry . is in Applied Theater at USC, a program primarily influenced by Augusto Boal and the Theater of the Oppressed . Theater is a social When I taught at Cooper Union, although there was a bit of an entitled attitude that came with that institution but they’re deeply practice made of games . When we came to visit your class the very first thing we did was break the group into a more visible set of parts engaged from day one . City College students are also very invested . I’m curious if it’s a difference between teaching electives and by asking questions of them and having them act out an answer . required courses? I definitely feel more passionate as a teacher when I’m developing my own curriculum and that obviously translates back to the students . What if required courses didn’t exist? Teachers would be chosen on the merit of their differences and the courses AKB: I think I’m doing some kind of strange variation on that with my classes at VCU this semester . The first work they make is always offered would be things each teacher cared deeply about . If you spent four years seeking out and learning things you were curious about, like an introduction, to me and the other students . So the first project is to do a lecture on their work—a lecture in the broadest sense, from people who were passionate about what they were sharing, I’m sure you would get an amazing education . a unique live presentation—but without showing any work . Anything but the work itself—interests, ideas and questions . Inevitably this results in actually creating a work… . AS: This semester at Parsons, I’m putting together a modular syllabus . On the first day of class I’ll workshop the syllabus with the students and see which units they want . I’m going to have a legislative process . AS: Oh, interesting .

AKB: I’m experiencing syllabus irrelevance this semester . I am teaching basic and advanced sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth AKB: In my other class they’re paired up to do studio visits with each other and then they create a work that I’m calling “mutual University . What that means is essentially whatever I want it to mean . In general I have a hard time dealing with hierarchies, so I was representation ”. Some of them are just coming out of freshmen foundation and its not like there is actually so much work to see, which challenged by how to differentiate between the two classes . Nonetheless, I went through the process and shaped each class around is fine because that’s not the important part . They have things to talk about and can share who they think they are at that moment . I was certain concepts, like the body as a basic concept in sculpture and moved into ideas like formlessness and play for the advanced classes . like, “You’re going on a date and then you’re going to make a work for the other person based on your feelings and understanding of who that person is ”. It can be a kind of romantic gesture if they totally clicked . If they didn’t, they are usually very concerned that they In my basics class, I have this awesome contingent of women including a few gender studies minors (because I attract a certain crowd) . didn’t like the other person . But then there is a lot to respond to if they look at what and why they dislike something . They are a fairly cohesive group, so when I came into crit the other day they had all decided to collaborate without my initiating it . I was confronted by an impromptu need to adapt the critique to a format that could address the work as a whole . They also started AS: I like how you remove the visual . an email chain to share reading texts with each other . I feel like the curriculum has turned into me responding to where they keep 120 121 AKB: Well yeah, it’s about their potential to make, because they have desires and ideas . Rather than catering to the idea that they should synthesize their work into some kind of statement or cohesive visual .

AS: I assign proposal projects where the narrative is often more interesting than the visual representation . I’m not that invested in how things look, but I’m not into looking at things that are boring . Sometimes I’ll look at the undergrads and see this wild energy in their work and then a set of developments that have to do with professionalization is what I see in the studios of the graduate students at the same institution .

AKB: Yes, this is a problem of art school in the age of late capitalism . Students are programed to facilitate curators, shows, resumes, and thereby sales . It’s no coincidence that the art market also multiplied in size and income over recent decades . Why do you need to be able to clearly articulate what your work is about? Sure you need to understand your impulses; sure you should be able to share that with others formally and verbally . But it should be a unique diatribe and it’s okay if it’s a skewed logic because there is nothing particularly logical about art . Art is powerful and special specifically because it’s so illogical .

The pedagogy of contemporary art school is about being able to sell yourself . That’s when art is a product that is the answer to the game . That skill is good for the market but not for art . As I’m teaching now, I wonder how students can have ideas and feelings that are translated with the clarity of intuition?

AS: What I can’t actually do is give them a gallery career . They’re not necessarily looking for what I was looking for: models of pedagogy and a way into the discourse . I can help people with that, and I have certain skills that will help them on a technical level . What I can’t really do is figure out how to make their perfect gallery show of handsomely appointed wall decor .

AKB: The question is, do they need that skill and where did they get that idea?

AS: Where do they get that idea? From the dominant art world model of what it means to be an artist—which is not something I knew about when I made the determination that I was going to be an artist .

AKB: Amen sister . POLITICALLY (IN)CORRECT Historically fluid, highly contextualized withinterms used ownby one’s both political the Left spectrum.and the Right Generallyas indications placed of social in opposition engineering to Common Sense: there’sand control; common sense pejorative, and then there’saccusatory, political denunciatory, correctness. occasionally used sarcastically about factions This lexicon might be seen as an example of political correctness.language The acronym and knowledge, PC is generally language used to and denounce culture; the “liberal thebut connections to examine agenda” of generative the that tools this with connections list which espouses. we dismantle between My focus existing on language language orthodoxies and as the thought, medium that language through have proven inadequate which and critique behavior, to investigate, is conducted is not decipher to impose and a new orthodoxy–a advance contemporary political experience. correctness– 122 123 Dan Paz & Tania Bruguera

I was a student of Tania Bruguera’s from 2007-09 . I attended the Havana Biennial in 2009 and met many of the students of Arte de Conducta, the first performance and time based art studies program in Cuba that was initiated in 2002 by Bruguera . I have also co-created the project ARTE NO ES FÁCIL with Marilyn Volkman, in which we work closely with many of the artists and former students of Arte de Conducta The following is a conversation between Tania Bruguera and myself about art and education that is grounded in this history .

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DP: So I thought it would be interesting for us to have a conversation given the nature of our relationship and in learning how to become a better teacher…

I think some of our first major experiences as artists are with our teachers . I thought a conversation on teaching would be interesting considering the direction in which my work is moving and an interview felt too over-determined, so I am calling this a conversation .

It’s also interesting that you are not necessarily affiliated with any institution, and yet you’re creating an institution out of your own practice . Immigrant Movement is seeking to do things that fit within certain institutional structures to operate against them . That then leads me to think about your teaching philosophy . So, if you were to have a teaching philosophy, what would that be and is that separate from your thinking as an artist?

TB: To start with your first comment: education begins before school, as soon as you are aware of others . Education is the moment when you know yourself as a social being, of the inescapable situation of your role as part of a society . We can almost say that formal education is a kind of training to forget this . Coaching you to find meaning in your life–which education makes clear–can only happen in a collective setting . That allows us to become students and teachers simultaneously; we learn to learn all the time and to reject all that does not enter into this process . Seeing homeless people we assume they have failed and have nothing to teach us; an immigrant who we wrongly think has nothing to tell us about ourselves, and so on with anyone we consider a social failure .

Immigrants are a big part of this dynamic, as soon as an immigrant touches foreign land with the intention to stay for a short time or permanently, they are automatically considered students by the rest of us . The problem with this is that we do not consider immigrants people we can learn from . There is a paradox where you can go to another country to see an expert but the immigrant that is working next to you, who may also be an expert, has to fight three times harder for you to recognize him/her as a person ‘to learn from’ . When I say immigrant I include here people from all social strata, cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and races, and working in all kinds of fields (from the manual work to intellectual labor) . The specific problem with these divisions I’m trying to put together is that they are based on colonial histories, racist education and prejudice in general between nations, which is something that was artificially created to make some nations more powerful than others .

On top of this, most immigrants come alone or with very weak links to a community in their new place, and inevitably those links to become a collective are related to general affiliations like religion, homeland, cultural habits, etc . But this is a forced situation . While you may define yourself as more Mexican than when you are in Mexico or more Japanese than when you are in Japan, because you are defining yourself in front of others who may only know generalities (about food, music, tourism or the news) about the place you come from . So the first educational battle immigrants have to face is not their “assimilation” into their new surroundings, but rather to teach the people they encounter in their new living place that they are complex human beings like everyone else . So the idea of Immigrant Movement International (IM International) is to empower immigrants and to educate U .S . residents and citizens . We want immigrants to be seen as political beings .

In terms of the relationship between my teaching philosophy and my thinking as an artist, I believe that political art is an educational tool . If you do political art, you are dealing with access, understanding and the dissemination of knowledge . Education does the same thing . In both cases you have to educate the people you’re dealing with in a subject so that you can have a conversation that is fruitful . In both cases there are power relations in place . Both have the effect of making you see reality differently . And that can create something beyond knowledge itself . In order to create a reaction, in order to create a consequence from your work–which is what I mean by political–you have to inform people but also give them the tools to analyze on their own .

When art gives you the answer it is propaganda, but if it gives you all the elements for you to think, it is political art and you can do something with that . I feel that my work is related to education, but there are many ways to educate and to deal with knowledge . I am very interested in emotional knowledge: not only factual knowledge or abstract knowledge, which I like a lot, but also emotional knowledge . This is why I always use the phrase transforming social affect into political effectiveness, because I feel that this is what I 124 125 want from education . Why the emotional? Because it is the unresolved aspect of yourself, it is something you have to negotiate and re- So wait, I’m curious, how was my teaching? evaluate all the time, it is not a stable element, it is changing knowledge . Hopefully your perspective will evolve . DP: Well, it was a little chaotic . However, when you were present, you were really present . It was really challenging to have you as a Does that answer your question? teacher for my first quarter in graduate school . I had all these other clear expectations in my other classes and then your class was hard to figure out . DP: Yeah . I had a thought . Can you describe your social and emotional journey up to this point? Answer that in an academic realm or as a student . . answer it however you want to answer it . TB: Now here’s the thing . I feel like a lot of the students at the University of Chicago are so wired to succeed and to please their professors for a good grade . TB: Basically when I say emotional, I mean how you process what is happening, what tools you chose to deal with a certain situation, how much of yourself you invest . . Politics has to have an emotional investment for it to be real . It is very hard to engage with a politician DP: I guess it was hard because at that point I didn’t know how to be a student . When I had your seminar I didn’t know how to who can’t show how they handle emotions and how they engage emotionally, even if that sometimes means control over their emotions . navigate the system . It was just challenging . The effective part of politics is the sensitization of people, whether an individual or the masses . When you can’t locate the emotional tessitura of a politician, that impossible location of the honestly emotional becomes distrust . This is something that goes beyond factual I benefited from you more later on, once I was comfortable in my skin within the institution . knowledge about their good or bad political decisions . You have to trust how much the person in the politician is involved and invested . I don’t know if you remember when you asked us in a seminar about our second profession . Do you remember that? My social emotional journey? I don’t know how to answer that question . It’s a continual discovery because you never have all the TB: . . information . I feel like I’m constantly learning and that I’m a socially inadequate person, I don’t know the proper rules or proper behaviors . I always have to negotiate what I should be doing (or what I think people expect me to do) and what I want to do . I am DP: Basically you said, “If you weren’t an artist, what would your second profession be?” and it was so interesting to think about how always negotiating with others . The social and the emotional is a struggle, this is how it is for everybody, a struggle to forget that we are each of us already imbued our practice with this second profession . And I think about that to this day . part of a society, which is for me the real state of freedom . As artists we tend to concentrate more on those contradictions . Politicians also concentrate on those contradictions . As artists we try to understand, expose, challenge and implement the desired state of freedom, TB: I don’t treat students as students . while politicians try to create rules and conditions to feel free . I feel like I never want to do what people want me to do . That’s the only moment I feel like I have social freedom, which is different from political freedom . The only time I can be socially free is when DP: Yeah . I privilege the personal desire over the social expectation . When I say desire I mean the personal desire to imagine social engagement TB: I mean I try to . I know there are times I have to be authoritative . But I try as much as possible to be a “teacher” while also being differently and to try to live life that way, instead of accommodating rules . somebody who wants to have a conversation with you, and try to figure out why you do things . And I feel like I always try as much as DP: There’s an interesting corollary there in your thoughts on having all the answers and your thoughts on freedom . You don’t possible to treat students as my future colleagues, which is happening right now with many of my past students . I think this is important necessarily know the right way or even that standard, but you’re just moving through it and it’s requiring you to develop your own ideas for three reasons: First, I want people to know that I respect them even if they are “in formation ”. Secondly it is a way to pressure people about it through your experiences . to grow a little bit and third, it is an attempt to give hope to people–because it is so hard, especially in the United States–that you can make it as an artist . So if I start treating you as an artist instead of as a student, you will behave and think as such and you start figuring it TB: Well you know how I teach, I improvise a lot, I navigate those spaces with as much freedom as I can . out . So you leave the school as a young artist, not just as someone who graduated and has to find a job to pay loans .

DP: Yeah . DP: Yes . When I went to art school I felt as though I had been making art for a while, though I had come to school later it was happily so . I had crossed a lot of mental struggles years and years previously, that other people hadn’t . So I felt very happy the moment I went to TB: I feel like one problem we have in society is that people have had their right to imagine another way of doing things taken from grad school . However, in all these arenas you have these “student” moments that have the look and feel of being a student . And then, in them . There is a normalization of things that should not be normal at all . your class, to not have that happen was just a hard and wonderful time, because I was also getting to know my fellow students .

DP: Like what, give me an example . . TB: But I think your group worked well, no?

TB: Like how you have to behave with people . When there isn’t any danger to the other person–all these codes are, in part, formulated DP: Yeah . I liked (and like) them a lot . We had a really good group and I feel lucky, especially in hearing stories years later of people not to place other peoples feelings above your own happiness . They do not acknowledge the intoxicating power of happiness but only its having the same sorts of bonds . restriction . I really value people who are socially awkward, or at least think seriously about what kind of relationships they want to create . TB: It is the same with the people from Arte de Conducta, they are all really good friends . I feel that for me, this is very important . When you start teaching, one of the first things you teach is not to be a selfish artist, but to have the understanding that you are part of a Recently someone was talking to me about futurity . I am a big advocate of this . I like that it talks about living the future now even if generation . It is fine that everybody tries to work towards the same goal, but it is important to eliminate this competitive attitude that a the conditions aren’t ready for you to do it . You have to allow yourself the freedom to imagine how you want things to be . Social codes lot of professors are engaged in . It is better to be peers and colleagues . are such a burden . I understand there are certain limits . I always say that laws are designed for the abnormal moments instead of the normal moments . Laws would not be necessary if education was good . Education is in part propaganda for the legal system . Education is DP: Yes . futurity . TB: Another reason why I like to treat students as artists is because I really don’t like when people treat the work students do as if One time in a small town in Germany there was an empty street and people were waiting for the light to change to cross the street . And it is not going to be important . That’s not true . I mean I grew up as an artist looking at Ana Mendieta’s works . A significant part of I asked one anxious woman: why do you need to wait? There will be no cars for the next twenty minutes . Because the light has not her production, which we see in museums and galleries, was done when she was a student . It came from her days at school in Iowa . changed . I could see her anxiety growing . I feel the same way about social behavior, how our actions are codified, even if they are not That really marked me . For example, I think the work Matthew Metzger–and yours–made in his days as a student will be shown and adequate, even if they are ridiculous . There is no need for certain behaviors at all . evaluated as his work without the “student” adjective . Would those be his or you best work? I don’t know . My work Homage to Ana Mendieta was done when I was a student and it is still a point of reference in my work and it has been studied and presented in books by And I’m the same with education, the way I teach is tailored to the place . Like at University of Chicago I needed to be chaotic . art historians . I understand that school can be a moment when you are experimenting and when you are trying new things . But there are all these relevant artists who were “kids” when they made all this amazing work . All these “kids” that are going to school now are DP: You needed to be chaotic? their same age . I think it puts pressure on the students to take their work seriously . TB: Yes, because there was so much structure, there was such a strong culture of the place . I enjoyed not knowing what I was going I always say to them, try to work now as if your work is in preparation for a solo show in fifty years . Try to do art as if you could be to do . Lets have this journey together because I don’t know what’s going to happen . I know I could only do that in such a structured proud of what you do now in fifty years . environment . In Paris where I teach, the first group I encountered was very dependent on their professors, so I obliged them to grow . as in Art Practice Each time I go back, I am extremely structured and disciplined because it can easily go the other way . There, their challenge is that they n., v. DP: How do you think growing up in Cuba shaped these ideas? have to work very hard . At the University of Chicago their challenge was to enjoy freedom a bit more, to go out of the rules for once . I also tried to not talk about any American artists . I tried to bring up people from Latin America and other places because that’s the TB: When I was growing up, it was the generation de los ochenta (generation of the eighties), and a lot of what I took from that information you didn’t have . I needed you to have the other side of the coin . time was the energy around the work . The energy was maybe more important than the work itself . The work was almost more of a PRACTICE: As a term, it switches the emphasis from the art object as an independentthat the entity artist to the does, object including as a generator thinking and manifestation and making, of discourse; i.e. towards switchesConversely, the criticized emphasis conceptual of the and artistic as the a term process-oriented. of professionalization work from only the Practice, object to everything of art, like similar musical else practice, to a dental literalizes or business practice. the habitual, “Practice” long-term doesn’t sound like nature the rebellion of learning that art through is expected doing to embody. and making. SELL-OUT While used as a critique of someone who might have abandoned theirquestionable political values, or moral such values, as Truth, it is Honesty, equally Purity…. used to Selling uphold the political artwork one’s between or the moral is often artwork worth seen as of the and selling-out; person the artistic making as the self; though criticism. not selling selling labor one Dependent one’s means in other not on selling-out other jobs is somehow less tainted. the other. A moral This term, is partly rather due than to a too-close a critical association one. (see Shock Value) 126 127 justification to have that energy, to generate an internal revolution and to allow yourself the desire for things . I am still looking for that DP: How then do you challenge your own feelings of inadequacy? in my work . This experience gave me a less pristine and less delicate relationship to form and production . I feel like my work now is less about producing art and more about generating situations . I teach with the same amount of permissibility and freedom that I give to TB:I like to be vulnerable because the student needs to be able to rebel against me . I think your group did that at some point . And that myself when I make art . for me is a success .

I am a professor that can be wrong and doubtful and ignorant, I’m a student . I don’t like hierarchies . All of my professors in Havana DP: Yeah . were non-hierarchical . You knew they were important and you respected them as artists because they were the best practitioners at that TB: It means that if you were able to confront me you will do that with other people in authority . A lot of art education right now moment, but there was always friendship . The other thing is that I believe in the class outside the classroom, the moment in which the is teaching submissiveness and complacency which is maybe a way to surrender before you event start, which later is replaced by student does not believe she is learning, the moment when the student does not believe she has to pay attention . I like this the most . other structures of power, they are later translated into the gallery or curatorial endeavors . These structures of power, you should be Going out with students to have coffee and talking . Those are the moments when I feel I can be most effective…although now you tell subverting . So I feel that if you learn that it’s ok to question and to rebel with your professor you can do it to other people . me that I made you do this exercise and you’re traumatized by it! I know this cannot be done with everything, but in my case I think it should be beyond grades . It should be about really wanting to do DP: Oh, I’m not traumatized . something amazing . TB: Exactly but you know…look, people from your class are all still friends and talking, that is what I value . Teaching for me is not just I’m not sure if it was with you guys, but I said at one point, “you grade yourselves” one or two semesters . I have a lot of problems with institutional structures . I feel my teaching is still happening now . It is sharing and it is talking together and it takes all these forms and formats . Just like the other day when we were all together catching up . I loved it . We DP: Yeah, I think that was . were in a house together and teaching was about catching up . You didn’t do it to show me your assignments . I don’t know why we did it . Maybe we just enjoy each other’s company . TB: Also, there is an ethical tension because you want a good grade but also you’re doing this in public . At the same time it is a way to tell you that you are only competing with yourself, so you have to learn how to judge and measure your own progress . DP: Imagine . I remember in Venice one year, I gave an exercise on authority, and one of the students wanted to challenge me as a professor . She TB: That is what I like . Sometimes what I am setting up are questions people cannot answer right away . And when you tell me you are wanted to have elections in the class to see if I should continue to be a professor or if she should take over . And I loved it . I said great, still thinking about those questions, it makes me happy, because that is what I want . lets talk to the director and let her be the judge . She almost fainted . I took it to the next level, where there could be actual consequences, I could get fired or at least it looked that way then . The. student presented her teaching philosophy to the class . Then I presented mine . DP: That was such a harsh critique . The director intervened to explain the philosophy of the school then everyone voted and we counted the votes and I thought it was TB: Yeah? Oh sorry . fantastic because it was the manifestation of questioning .

DP: No, no, don’t be sorry . DP: Do you think that situation could happen in the US?

TB: I always think that to value the time in school is to value intense, harsh and constructive critique with your peers, because when TB: There are very different conditions between classes in the US, Europe and Cuba . First of all, the US is extremely structured and has you leave it is rare for you have a group of friends like you guys, who can come together and still talk about work . And that is very rare a type of pressure that can almost feel like academic repression . On the other hand, the amount of money you’re paying and how many and nice . years you are going to be paying back is very clear .

DP: I feel really lucky that I can meet with these people collectively or independently . DP: All your life .

TB: I remember when you guys were about to graduate you were in panic mode . You asked me “what am I going to do now? What am TB: So the professors almost feel like service providers . The society of service is very strong in the U .S . People feel that they want I going to do!” I remember I would talk to you and Marilyn about what you could do . something for their money . It is an exchange not an experience . It is a transaction for a paid service . I’m paying so much so you better give me a good quality product . There is a kind of tension in the US around money that is the wrong pressure in the classroom . DP: That year after school was tough . DP: Do you feel like that capitalist sentiment effects you, not having grown up here? TB: I knew it was going to be tough . And my recommendation to you was to get together, to try to still meet for critiques, because I knew this was going to help you during this transitional moment . My only advice was not to disengage and not to lose the critical TB: That’s not what I want from learning . Of course you want to get something out of the experience, but immediate gratification is structure that school gave you . I was so happy when I we met the other night, and everyone was there, and you guys still meet . This is extremely problematic . Then there is this kind of codification of what you can expect in a class . what I am proud of as a professor . Not a grade or all that . It was about giving you guys a structure that can function positively for your Then again, I can only do what I do because the rest of the people are not like me . creativity . I am not a technical person, so I would never teach you how to edit a video . DP: That’s a good point, it seems like that sentiment would be more profound not having grown up in this culture, like you would have DP: Do you have any moment that you felt was a big learning moment as a student that then carried over into who you’ve become as an a different relationship to it . That makes sense . educator? TB: It changes a lot of stuff . I understand more and more . I have a friend doing amazing, activist work that she loves and she feels like TB: When I was twelve to fifteen years old, those were the most important years for me . she’s growing, but in May her loans are coming up and she cant continue doing this work . The fact that she has to stop working on We had this Professor, Juan Francisco Elso, who brought us out of the studio at school and into the countryside, trying to make us something she is so passionate about says a lot about how the “education industry” has changed from being the provider of knowledge to understand that art can be done somewhere else . I have always learned more outside school than inside . a chain that you are attached to–almost a punishment for doing the right thing .

DP: I feel like the person I became as an adult, was shaped between the ages of 12 and 16 . Those years shaped everything . Those were It’s almost a call for ignorance or primitivism . Why would anyone want 80,000 dollars in debt? I’m sorry to say that to you, I know that instrumental years in learning about myself . You have certain tenets that you live by that you can’t go back on as an artist . Being present it might be huge thing for you . That’s what pisses me off . The right thing to do is to grow and learn, so you have a better chance to be was really important to me at that age, and I believe that now . Face-time with people and friends . Figuring out a way to meet in person . happier .

TB: When we talk about education there is a point when you’re not really learning rather you are implementing stuff, you are learning DP: Right . how to position things rather than doing something new . Learning about who you are is the same way . TB: We can talk about something else . DP: Do you feel like you have any failures as a student that you think about as an educator? DP: I believe pretty strongly in what you’re talking about . That was a huge motivator in accepting the position at a city college . There’s TB: I really thought I wasn’t good at anything until I found performance . So I thought about that as a professor . To give people the this idea that it’s available to anyone . Of course, that’s an idea, it still costs money but is much cheaper than other institutions and it is space to feel that way, and then encourage them . People spend a lot of time doing what they don’t like . I put students in a very extreme public . It’s interesting for me, because I cant help but wonder if people don’t care as much there because they are paying less . situation so they have to choose . 128 129 TB: Do you feel that? Do you feel like people don’t care?

DP: I have a broad spectrum of students, from really committed students to students that aren’t invested at all .

TB: Do you think they are not invested because they are fulfilling requirements? Many times an art class is just that . So instead of getting frustrated with that, I have question . What is art for?

In art school we assume that people are interested in art, but what I like about community college is that they really highlight what art is for .

What is interesting about those schools is that, you have the chance to present other means to incorporate art into their lives . Art can be a device for many things other than a self-referencing practice .

DP: I’ve spent a good portion of time wondering what I’m doing wrong .

TB: That’s teaching .

DP: I believe in my participation in that institution . However, I need to change how I think about art and people . I feel like it’s changing me as an artist .

TB: That’s the best thing that could happen . If you were elsewhere like the University of Chicago, we would not be having this conversation . You work at a place that is not prestigious for the art world . Why is this not the dream job? Because its assumed that such a position is not going to advance your career . But what if you do something with that . What if this experience advance your art work, that is what is important and a gift, transformation instead of social positioning .

There is still this embarrassment that is inherited (especially if you’re young and you want to demonstrate that you are a valuable artist) when you are doing things in places that don’t have prestige or cache in the art world . This is so silly, it is not about where you do it– unless you want to steal the aura of the institution–but what are you doing . The only thing that matters is what kind of project you are proposing .

Do you know the KOS kids? Tim Rollins and the KOS . I thought that something marvelous happened because the artist didn’t think about his career . Instead he was thinking: How can I make art be for them?

DP: Right .

TB: That should be the question you’re asking yourself right now . How can art transform people’s lives?

DP: I have to tell you, I go into class and I don’t think about the art world . I only can think about who I can bring to the classroom that will help them understand, and help them use tools to figure out more about themselves . Because, I know the value of self-awareness .

TB: That is great . What do you want with what you are doing? Why do you care about that?

DP: I’m constantly reiterating how seriously I take the class and in a way I have to reiterate it to myself .

TB: Yeah but it can’t just be a job . The beauty of art is how free you can be . You really can decide who you want to be . They should understand the power of that .

DP: You said it .

TB: You should forget about teaching art and make them enjoy art .

DP: That’s that the thing, I enjoy art .

But I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing .

TB: I think this is a good start . (encompassing Gimmicky) SHOCK VALUE Usually used derogatorily to dismiss work that depicts contentiousgrabbing material, strategies. particularly A further implication of a sexual is that and/or violent beyond its nature, immediate with the visual implication impulse, that there such visual is little impulses or no content–all are purely surface market- or with fame-driven, no depth. This attention- correlates to kitsch, which ostentatiously celebrates surface over any presumption of depth; kitsch may be similarly dismissed as not being “serious.”In my critique experience, the term “shock value” is casually usedUsed in as a form this of dismissal, it way, is not a critical with term the but person a moralistic using it often and moralizing clarifying one. that they themselves are not shocked, but are imagining the shock on others’ behalf. 130 131 Kelly Kaczynski How to Build a Wall (in a Crystalline Wood)

PART I

“A real wall is incomprehensible. You just can’t tell when it is a room or a set of walls.” “All the rooms in my house are made with objects on casters.” “I cast my walls with space so that there is no outside.”

I find myself in a quandary: how to write about the pedagogical relationship of teacher and student given that I am corporeal . If I were a unicorn, this would be clear 1. But as I am not a mystical creature of sublime isolation but instead a social being, I am troubled by the reciprocity of teaching and learning, especially in institutional environs .A reciprocity that is often considered either strictly dialectical or mystically unified .

We have a name for a teacher that is not an educator: mentor .What is the name for a student that is not a pupil?

“How do you build a wall?” 2 “First, you have to get there.” “Well, what happens if we just start building?” “Here.”

The shift between mentor and friend is sometimes almost indistinguishable as is the shift between student and muse . I’ve always maintained that a muse is not someone who inspires, but someone who kicks me in the ass .A muse reflects what I already know to be true and makes me listen, moves me to act . Perhaps, I hope, not unlike a mentor 3.

This writing project turns to the custom of dialogue to distinguish and make indistinguishable the roles of three artists, each a mentor and muse to one of the others: Bill, Cori, and myself . 4

Cori and I met four years ago when she became my intern for a semester while she was a sophomore attending a hefty local art school here in Chicago . I never taught or attended this institution, although I have spoken there as a guest lecturer and critic .5 I’ve had many students that have come from, as well as gone on to be students at this particular institution . Cori, however, was never my student within the partitions of a classroom . I am not sure she can be called my student, but I do believe she thinks of me as a teacher . But a teacher of what? A teacher of other students .

Cori’s is an education wrapped in fellowship .As Cori and I have since become friends, I’ve found that she gathers her world in the way that she collected me .While our friendship grows out of the origins of a mentor and apprentice relationship, it primarily reflects our nature and concerns as artists and people in the world . As I watch Cori now, I am impressed with her tentacles 6 . Her many arms reach out to gather more artists in the world, some of whom I consider my own silent mentors . Cori mirrors my own desires and endeavors as an artist as equally as my fear .Across our sixteen year age span, she reminds me of truths I forget sometimes . She becomes my muse .

I’m 49 years Bill’s junior .We met in Boston in the moments between my undergraduate education and the rest of my life . I had attended a small, and what used to be a pedagogically radical, liberal arts college in Washington State . I moved to Boston so that I did not stay in my hometown of Seattle .When I graduated, I was afraid of stopping . I was afraid of not learning, of regressing to a former “self,” someone defined by my past, which at the time was only 21 years long, not unlike Cori’s past . So I moved across the country to a city filled with academies; academies filled with teachers and students that did not care about me in the least bit . Bill trusted me immediately .

Bill, an artist and architect, has fine stories . He was a constant learner and never quite matriculated fully as a student . Raised in Indiana, he was trained as an architect at a technical institution here in Chicago that celebrated the Bauhaus .After his time serving in the military, he used the GI bill to enroll in MIT where he researched new adhesives for pre-fab housing units . But instead of graduating, he met Buckminster Fuller and proceeded to build the first geodesic ray domes for a US government contract . For me, Bill’s studio was my crystalline wood 7. Bill himself was my new education . He became my mentor and I believe I became his muse .

“I don’t understand, do it anyway.” “Remember that time we stole Rauschenberg’s grapefruit?” 8 “You should let me dig a hole in your floor. It is a gift.” 9 132 133 I was interviewed for a program on a small radio station this fall on the occasion of an exhibition of my work .An exhibition of work It was the first time I made walls . However, because we were not allowed to build inside of the existing building, we constructed the that resisted as stubbornly as it adhered to the idea of thingness, being a thing 10. Radio is also not a thing but it can be made . I’m walls off site and rolled them into place . interested in the term ‘reception’ here: admittance . Note: An impossible bottle is when the object or scenario inside a container is larger than the opening and bottleneck One question from the radio host threw me: “What do you want to say to students or young artists who are just beginning?” The to which it seemingly passed through .The classic example is a miniature seafaring ship in a bottle .A Klein bottle is also question threw me because without hesitation, I answered, “Fear doubt trust .While I think everyone has it, an artist seems to carry the sometimes referred to as an impossible bottle as it is a three-dimensional representation of an infinite surface whereas the weight of doubt exponentially .The reason we doubt so much as artists, though, is because we trust ourselves equally as much .You will inside surface is also the outside surface . never stop doubting because you will always pursue your voice in the world: you’ll make things anyway . If you stop, then there is no more work ”. “The versatility of a stud gives you objects and their housing.” “I built a model after the fact.” “Why do you throw the fish back? “ “Do you want this?” “The mangroves have made themselves an island.” “That is a lot of pockets.” “I want to eat the fish.” “Make a fire.” As a teacher, I perform .As a mentor, I struggle with my faith .As an artist, I fear (which of course means I’m mouthy and talkative and I hum) . I am not sure what I do as a muse, because a muse is yours . Bill told a story about a course in architecture that he taught at Harvard years ago . Or maybe Buckminster Fuller taught the class . The class had been working, of course, on perfecting their ideas of architecture in theory and, one hopes, in practice . Bill was getting If as a teacher I am attempting to foster agency, how can I do this when my body is emptied out as a performer? I become cheerleader, bored so he told his students to make the ugliest building possible .The students came back with the most interesting work they had dictator, marm, clown, prostitute as much as I become counselor, guru, master .This is the discomfort of teaching and learning .This accomplished all quarter .The point of this story is “how do they know?” is where I would prefer to be a unicorn so that my students would see us all clearly in a crystalline wood; they would be mystical creatures too . But to capture teaching and learning in the confines of fiction like that is to remove the potency of agency .We are I teach art at a large research university in the Chicago area .The type of learners attracted to this institution are predominately called corporeal after all . “strategic learners,” they prefer and are adept at accomplishing a clear set of given tasks .While this group of students feels amply empowered to achieve their goals, they are not as confident when faced with the challenge of creating their own objectives 11. Indeed “Admission!” this is a generality, whereas I’m speaking of the amorphous group and not the individual distinguished with properties of a name like “We’re not moving .Where are we moving to?”14 Jeanne, Steve, Katie, Mike, Kelly, Cori or Bill . When Bill and Cori and I met, I was pushed forward into my future . In writing this essay, I wonder if it is precisely because of the “What is art?” indistinguishable thresholds in our relationship as mentor, student, muse, that I am able to consider my teaching practice amongst the “You have no right to talk about having less of an ego.” folds of my studio practice . The students in my classes are also agents outside of the classroom .And I believe it is in that threshold that “I asked them to describe a point.” we meet as Jeanne, Steve, Katie, Mike, Kelly, Cori or Bill . My studio is my crystalline wood and any of you can cross that malleable “It can only be a hole if it’s made.” threshold . Art is a practice inasmuch as it is a profession . (Occupation seems apt if uncannily timely .) Artists often say they make “work”, referring to the production manifest from their research .The term is used to describe the outcome but it also refers to the activity as a verb, to work .The result is the “artwork” (poiesis) while the act of production is the “practice” (praxis) .The outcome of production can PART II be plastic–a painting, an object, a material composition–or immaterial such as text, moving image, performance or “situations ”. The practice of an artist includes facility and theory surrounding the chosen discipline or craft–more than one in many cases, as the arts Things to keep in mind: are by nature interdisciplinary in that they draw directly or indirectly on multiple disciplines . More importantly, an artist’s work is Make a drawing and do the math . generated through the research and exploration of a chosen subject .Without subject, the poiesis is merely an exercise of facility or pure expression divorced from context outside the individual . Subject proffers discourse . Keep in mind industry standards . This is both useful for economics as well as aesthetics . You’ll pick up more as you go . Studs are ½” less in widths then the identification: 2x4 = 1 ½” x 3 ½”, 4x6 = 3 ½”x 5 ½”, etc . This is largely the same model of any research-based career in the sciences and humanities .The expert pursues their subject by investigating both assumed and inadvertent avenues for analysis, development, communication and evaluation . In addition, the arts Always check the lengths of your studs as the manufacturer may have a tolerance of up to ¼” beyond the stated length, which is are a field to which there is no authority (excepting perhaps, cultural discourse) . In other words, there is no boss for whom to be a lot . You may need to or wish to cut to an exact length when building your wall . Although, this rarely matters unless it is an art accountable .The artist must recognize his or her own agency . object or a tight fit . Really, you should cut it to be what you want . Sheetrock comes in 4’x8’ paired sheets that can be separated by pulling the paper tape at the top and bottom . Unlike other fields of scholarly research, the arts rely heavily on an experiential approach to learning . Empirical knowledge and subjective reasoning is folded into theory .A general course of study in the studio arts includes: 1) representation and demonstration of Measure twice, cut once . concepts and skills, 2) problem solving through hands on engagement with material and subject, 3) critique as means of understanding Always measure from the same side over, left to right or right to left . and evaluating the resonant outcome .There is an expected fourth element in the production of artworks that cannot be taught and Remember to cut so the blade is on the outside, or sluff side, of your mark . must come from the student: inspiration .While arts literacy may be developed from engaging critically with the given curriculum, taking ownership of artwork means that there is commitment with the subject internally 12. To cut the sheet rock, measure and mark your cut . Score the cut with a utility blade . To score, just cut through the paper; you do not need to go all the way through the sheetrock . Then snap the sheetrock back . It will break along the score . If you want a “Walls are malleable and permeable.” curved cut, depending on the radius of the curve, you may want to use a sheetrock saw to slice all the way through . “Your mother’s maiden name is my own.” The correct outward facing side of the sheetrock is grey, the inside is usually brown . “Use a hole punch.” The long edge of the sheetrock is slightly tapered allowing the joint compound to fill the seam while remaining flush to the I expect my students to be better than me . I have to .They are my future and my future is always my current challenge . I think to what surface . You can see this if you look and you can feel it if you touch it . I was and what I wasn’t which means I always think to what I am and what I am not . I see this in all my students and they are always When screwing the sheetrock to the frame, make sure the head of the screw just dimples in below the surface of the paper . You better than me .They have to be . can buy a special dimple for this, or just remain in control of your driver . The year before I met Bill, two of my peers and I built a room within a room in the liberal institution I attended . Both rooms–one Walls are generally constructed with the studs at 16” on center . You can, of course, cheat this if it is not considered a standard pre-existing and the other produced–had doors that opened and shut but neither room was made for one to stay still in .The first room wall . It depends on how it is being used and the kind of load it will take . was large, cavernous and without definition while the second room was intimate and self-conscious .Yet, the room we produced was If you are making a corner, you should use corner bead (metal or plastic or paper) for a clean sharp edge . 13 made to mimic or mirror the room in which it resided: both rooms were meant for transition, passage, admittance and release . Lay down the joint compound with as few passes as possible, like one pass . The more you ‘work’ it, the messier and more crumbled it gets . 134 135 Always scrape evenly off the top of your joint compound bucket . Do not ‘dip’ in like its ice cream . Keep the bucket covered even while you are using it . Allow the joint compound to dry thoroughly on your wall . You may need to come over it again as some of it may have pocketed in . Sand the joint compound with netted grit as opposed to sandpaper . If you laid the joint compound down well in the first place, you will have much less to sand . Paint can cover all the little imperfections (our eyes are amazingly forgiving) . But, paint can enhance shadows if the surface is gruff . Depending on who you are, it might be best to channel Irwin . The above tips are for indoor walls, unless of course your wall wants weather . All walls are malleable and permeable .

1 See Shifter 19: An Anamorphic Unicorn 2 A project begun by Cori Williams in 2011, the year she graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago . Cori asked a list of her former professors and myself (never her professor) to tell her how to “build a wall” . This essay is in part my tardy response to her inquiry . 3 From the statement for Impossible Bottle, an artwork that took place at Happy Collaborationists, Chicago IL, 2011 . On Saturday, May 28, Cori and I spent the day reflecting one another’s personage by creating reciprocal busts of each other . While both of us are sculptors, neither of us has engaged in this specific process of direct portraiture in the plastic arts . Each of us worked on separate busts and, every now and again, exchanged the busts to continue working . The attempt to create and re-affirm the image of one another on top of the same busts, turned into a type of memory act . We developed habits in working on the form such that instead of continually looking at each other for observational information, we began to work from the memory–where clay should be added, where subtracted–such that the busts began to look like caricatures of themselves, not necessarily in our living likeness . Our shared muscle memory made an amalgamation of our images . 4 Of course, I’m still pretending to be a unicorn so this dialogue exists in the anamorphic space between myself and their affect . 5 Throughout this essay, I mention definitive academic models: art school, liberal arts college, and the research university . I do so explicitly to include my history of a particular traverse between pedagogical ideologies and practices . While I do not find it necessary in this essay to specifically discuss these institutional practices in education, I am including mention of this traverse in that it has a huge effect on my approach and beliefs in education and specifically to education in the arts . 6 Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, lecture, on the occasion of the exhibition Painter Painter, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN . 7 Because of course I was a unicorn then too, if but spanking pink . 8 From my piece, “I once stole a grapefruit”, for Saint Lucy: One Picture/One Paragraph, an online project by Mark Alice Durant . 9 Instead, Cori dug a hole in the back alley lot of my building . The hole is still there but she is currently living in New York with the cast plaster positive of the hole . 10 Only Mirrors Exist, For Example a Tulip, 2012, a twinned exhibition or single work in two places ½ hour apart, Eastern Washington University and Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA . 11 I am conflating terms here for purposes of the discussion . The term ‘strategic’ learner is a pedagogical term used in education . I am applying it directly to a group that Robert DeBard refers to as the ‘millennials’, a current generation of learners across institutions . Millennials Coming to College . New Directions for Student Services, 106, 33-35 . 12 Excerpted from a paper I authored, Studio Practice: a Critical Account, Searle Fellows Program, Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University, 2010 . I am referencing James Elkins, Why Art Cannot Be Taught, (2001) University of Illinois Press, and Helen Klebesadel and Lisa Kornetsky, Critique as Signature Pedagogy in the Arts, from Exploring Signature Pedagogies; Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind, (2009) Stylus Publishing . pp . 99-117 . 13 A Room Within A Room, a collaboration with Katie Baldwin, Nathan Manny and myself, 1994, The Evergreen State College Library Building . The project was built as a part of a course that combined two programs, Studio Art and Engineering, in a single seminar lab . Our project was not received well by our peers . The primary feedback was that the work was too large, a lot of work, and cost too much to build . We of course did not understand this as pertinent critical feedback because we had built it (there it was) and we had paid for it (it was indeed expensive for our three pocketbooks and it was indeed hard work ). What we understand to be a simple and affective conceptual space turned into a conversation of labor and economics . Our professors were, I believe, quietly impressed with our gumption . To this day, the three of us joke about the work; we all find it significant as a kind of baseline for our practice . The work also serves as a reminder of the role of critique and its potential misdirection . 14 Banana Man, 1983, Mike Kelley and Salty Banana, 2012, my remake of Kelley’s original . SPIRIT/UAL/ITY This is not a dispute whether spirit exists or not–since thatbe is material a matter of belief–but and cease a question to be spirit. about conventions Our attempts of representation. to represent it too often By definition, follow conventions spirit of light/dark, cannot transparency,be brought into visual geometry or tangible (especially form, circles), since etc.,it would which then are representative of culture, not spirit. At best, art can convey/represent cultural beliefs about spirit, rather than spiritmight function itself. If one as does a focus believe or conduit in “spirit,” for such experiences, presumably the but spiritual in itself is not “spiritual.” or transcendent The artwork, experience in occurs this instance, in the viewer rather functions than in more the as a fetish, artwork. an intermediary The artwork to access an otherwise threatening source of power. 136 137 Ayisha Abraham & Smriti Mehra

AA: And I ask you, Smriti

Who and where are you at the moment? The event or action that sets the stage for what you are learning about? What you are standing on: the unconscious or the recent past? Personality, head/spirit connection–how do you behave in the world? Tomorrow…

I remember the small films playing as DVD’s, scattered on the surface of a large table . You wanted to resist making that single channel film . “Nomads” was your theme . Since then you have traveled, studied, and returned to teach at the very school at which you studied .

There is an impulse in you to teach, as there was in me when I started almost 18 years ago . Can I ask you, what that impulse was?

SM: The sharpest memory of my interaction with you, as your student, was the time I was working on the project with migrant construction labourers . I had come to you at dusk, almost in tears, because other faculty had told me that this project lacked the finesse and craftsmanship of my previous work . Although confident in my work, these strong views left me feeling very upset . When I confided in you, you reassured me that my path was going to take me somewhere worth going . I thank you for that day .

This is the one lesson I consciously bring to my classes . Charles McIntosh’s words come to mind: “There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist ” . I share this pedagogical strategy passionately . You pay so much attention to the context of your work that you can hear and feel the form that it desires . One must become the listener to facilitate this process of art making for I believe that the artist is incidental to the work .

AA: Teaching has always meant being in the world for me . I remember standing in an auditorium and addressing a class of 200 students for the first time, and feeling the sweat of nervousness overwhelm me . Yet, as the talk I had prepared began to flow, I remember feeling an amazing sense of aliveness that comes from sharing what I knew, and taking on the responsibility of an audience that requires ideas to be tangible, easily understood . It is about taking on the challenge of communicating simply and accessibly complicated ideas .

SM: I don’t consider myself a teacher in the way that even I understand what that role means . I enter the classroom and share what I have learned from my practice . Most often highlighting the points where my expectations were left alone at the altar . Those are my points of discovery .

AA: I also remember feeling: “this is all a performance, it’s not really me ”. It is a role I play . A play I act out . A mask I wear . And so when you descend from the platform, you may feel like someone has taken the air out of you . You can feel deflated . The elation can be momentary, until conversation percolates and spreads intangibly . And meaning can be formed, as it starts filtering into you slowly…like good Filter Coffee .

SM: Being constantly preoccupied with the question of labor that weaves its way through the subject of most of my work, the notion that I am an artist intimidates and humbles me . It’s not an easy task . It requires that I think all the time. That’s what comes with being an artist–the preoccupation with meaning . One might argue the question of choice . Did I choose to be an artist? I believe that choice is a myth .

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief . If you can separate what you do for a living from your life, I envy you . I was born a rebel .

That’s my excuse .

AA: Sometimes as an artist I fear being too literal, too basic, too patronizing . I love to read, to be open to new ideas and forms of thought . But the pressure to communicate is a burden that dilutes the deeper metaphors being alluded to in the juxtapositions of meaning that we inherently produce solitarily . 138 139 I belong to an artist collective, called BAR1 . In our conversations we have collectively wanted to make the aim of the studio space an empty vessel . Not nihilistically empty, but where emptiness can mean openness, a “tabula rasa” in which any one can leave behind their academic/institutional knowledge and start anew . So we try hard to be a collective with no prescribed ways of doing things . Rather, we are an art space where emerging artists, who ‘know’ and ‘don’t know,’ can feel comfortable walking into a performance, a lecture, or an exhibition to discover more . It is a space where one can be mentored if one wants that . Schooled or unschooled . That is the strange thing about being an artist . It is unclear whether one has ever really arrived .

SM: My yoga teacher tells me that I have the answers to all my questions . That somewhere in the back of my head resides the lessons of all my previous lives . I only need to be silent to hear them .

I cannot hear my thoughts . Try as I may, I cannot silence the anxiety that dances to the constant score of traffic . I do not recognize where I am . This cannot be the city I grew up in . I didn’t ask to grow up . I am grown up!

AA: Like drawing with water on the surface of a plate .

It reminds me of your work . Those simple drawings on the pavement with water are ephemeral, and yet they leave a mark in the form of a memory that is embodied, like the effect of humidity on the skin . The glimpse of a firefly’s short lifespan, as it lights up the dark skies and illuminates the trees of an even darker forest .

I never quite trust myself as an artist . It is in the doing and the embodiment of practice and the continuous redefining of our selves that something comes alive .

I would say that my practice has had to seep very gradually into my body . It has had to evolve, and be felt . I have had to ward off wanting to be academic, and sometimes teaching makes me feel that it is an inevitable route to an all-to-familiar structure of knowing .

By resisting it I tend to unravel myself again and again .

SM: I have very happy memories of my childhood . School does not figure in any of those memories . I am not a teacher . Sharing my practice is what I know to do . I do not feel very ‘grown up’ in the classroom, as it is a room where I learn as much as the students . I become a student . Duality is the nature of our existence .

I cannot work in isolation . So I find my voice among other voices . I cannot be but yet I find acceptance in places that I would usually never go if it wasn’t for my work taking me there . I used to believe that even a few people could change the world . I no longer hold on to that notion . The world is now scaled to size, my reality . It expands in different directions and my goal is to create disturbances . Still from video, All that is solid melts into air, 2007, Smriti Mehra I do not know what that does but there is now acceptance in not knowing. The quality of art, and this enabling, is what makes it unquantifiable . I accept that . I like to acknowledge fluidity . In isolation there is doubt . Cynicism, helplessness, fear and denial . In isolation there is no love . In solitude I find peace . One cannot speak about one without reference of the other . Duality is a necessity . SM: I echo that voice… . I like to acknowledge fluidity .

I am teaching myself to embrace complexity . I do not fight my female psyche at the expense of the egalitarian ideal . There is a difference AA: My thoughts extend to the materials I handle, and the hand/eye coordination that has had a role in completing this communication between ambiguity and vagueness, complexity and complication . I am learning to see and learning to love . Again . between the senses . But it has been a practice in which silence has facilitated this communication . I need to be alone for something to awaken . Something that words can seldom do justice to in its articulation . AA: Teaching has given me structure when I have needed it . It has given me friendship with young people, it has allowed me to share my lovely collection of books–bought and selected so carefully over years of travel and living in different places . But I have also wanted Ideas are crystallized as discussions, texts, talks, all begin to come together, synthesize and form the contours of an idea to be executed . to share what I know, and what has influenced me . Not coercively, but through discussion and critiques and literally from the front of Scribbles, copious notes, doodles, folds, and valleys . my book-shelf . This is my favorite way of teaching . To have, as it were, the shelf of resources as a backdrop for discussion . So that with the slightest reference to an idea or thought one could turn around and pull out something that provides a more articulate version of a SM: Silence has the power to sift through uncontrollable thoughts and bring up what it is that really matters . I learned this from theoretical expansion or a single evocative image . A poetic line . meditation . From watching my thoughts and emotions . It is all in passing…

SM: My fascination with my project, The Flower Chronicles, just continues to grow . It started with endless meanderings through the I distinctly remember being very disturbed in class once . I had framed an activity that resulted in my students producing work that wholesale flower market early in the morning . When I had finally completed my video “Pushpa Patha: The Flower Trail” I decided began to imitate mine . The discomfort was not from insecurity about my own work, but rather from the lack of clarity I had when I to open this space to my students . I presented the context of this market in a course called ‘Public Space and Pedagogy’ which was designed the exercise . I now design frames that encourage play . I rarely define the medium students should work with on projects . I conceptualized by Geetanjali Sachdev, another mutual friend of ours . encourage them to find what they think will work best . I encourage explorations of this nature .

I shared with my students what I knew from my numerous walks and conversations in the market . Together we explored the space AA: It is now 15 years since I started teaching at Srishti2 . I have had tremendous freedom in designing courses and executing them . again . I got to see the market differently through their eyes . One of the exercises I framed was a photo essay of a particular person or a Although I have been a part-time teacher for so many years, I hope I have left a mark somewhere . Not in the way one molds an defined space over the course of twenty-four hours . We discovered so much more… impressionable student, or creates a fan club, but in the way that a conversation can act as a link between modes of thinking and being . Some of my students are now my friends, my colleagues, my peers, and that network of friendship is what makes it meaningful . You and I have one thing in common . We love our city . We love walking through our city . You invited me to show my work in your exhibition ‘Subterranea’ at Samuha1 . The exhibition was a crystallization of one of our conversations . The final year diploma project is when a student crystallizes her learning in a single project, and for me it is a way to engage intellectually with this student . The work they do can represent the moment of a student’s life on the threshold of becoming a confident AA: I think I have resisted being a part of a club . There may have been a time when I thought that it provided the security of certainty practitioner . This project has the potential to bring together who they are as people, with what they have learnt at school . When I have a to be a part of a group that defines the way you are in the world . But no, no longer, not in the way I am now and have been for a long good student it is a very satisfying process . time .

1 Samuha was a space where, over the course of a year, artists–including emerging artists and students–exhibited their work and interacted with each 2 Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology is located in Bangalore, India . other . 140 141 I still retreat from the social context of teaching when I need to produce my own work . . so it is never an easy relationship really . It is both a synergy of experience and a cacophony of too much talking and assessing! . Being able to listen to myself and respond to a specific need that arises from within is the way that I see myself shaping a practice between the solitude of the studio and the social ambience of a classroom . And very gradually these disparate fragmented parts of oneself come together through the practice of it, and make perfect sense .

SM: Somebody said, “Ideas have consequences ”. I think it was Dostoyevsky .

Yet, I am more and my work is more than that I can communicate in words, as I am more than my mind .

That is probably the hardest battle I fight . I am not my mind . I am not my mind . I am not my mind . We live in a world that fragments us . As a woman, I have had to deal with it in relation to my body . I am more mind than body, more body than mind . What else is there? Me . Who am I? I am more than my capability, more than my weaknesses, more than my ability to communicate, (or not, as more often the case) and I am more than what my wallet holds claim to . I am a teller of stories, a mapmaker of sorts . Mapping the desires, hopes, needs, dreams and disparities of a city from my particular vantage point that has been born out of a desire to establish reference points for my own personal memories .

I am fascinated by my role as both a purveyor of information, and storyteller and like the mapmaker I am challenged to take the mundane and everyday, and unravel and reassemble its details into visible intricacies .

I have never fit in . I still don’t . I don’t want to . Ears were not manufactured like earphones . And there are many like me . I am like many . The tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief . If I choose to look I see . There are many voices . If I choose to listen they are heard . When I speak I am reassured that I am alive .

AA: I turned 50 early this year . It’s half a century . And I approached it with apprehension, and now that I am on this side of the fence, I feel relieved . It’s a strange feeling of being oneself .

I can touch someone’s life, like a feather, and then turn around, only to turn back again to see where they are now, and to observe this in relation to where I stand myself .

And how do you feel dear Smriti . You are more than 15 years younger and I write to you on the eve of your marriage; a life transforming experience .

SM: I am afraid . I have been so tentative from all the lessons from my past . I am teaching myself that I am not my past, though it has shaped me . I used to live there . It was dreary but comfortable and familiar . There were two versions of me .

One me lived in a pit, a hole in the ground . It loved the pit, but there were times it wished it could escape . The echoes of the silent screams became unbearable . The other me stood outside the pit gaping . What could I do? I tried giving me a hand . But the past was too heavy . And there was no use jumping into the pit . Many disturbing sunsets passed before me decided that the best it could do was bury the other . It was another . What could there possibly be to lose? It buried me . There was no space for echoes . The past is a palimpsest . There is no denial of it, yet it does not exist . But then a new me was born . It was the future me . It always had stress lines on its forehead . Maybe they were tattooed there . But who would go through so much pain . Not I .

Anyhow, as the story goes the day was long and seemed never ending . But since the future was just an image it died with the light . And me now plays hide and seek with the other two and as long as it remains a game and there is nothing at stake, all should be well .

My name is remembrance . I was not born my name, I was given it and it became me . I am not my name . I am not my years . Time is not my construct . Who knows how many sunsets is a person’s life?

AA: I echo “Fluid in consistency” TEXT The artwork referred to as a text; though, in the critique attowards least, less a generative to be “read” as whole. to be The unwoven, word itself teased has apart etymological in terms of its connections materiality,text is necessarily to texture aesthetics, a negotiation and textile, its social of and contra-diction context, suggests etc, previous examined texts (as in multiple are for how woven its together many speech parts acts), to form and coalesce as the in new the one. The warp implication and woof of weaving, (e.g. from Roland two or more Barthes) threads is that that intersect a to create a whole. THEORY The term theory is derived from the Greek and Latin, and meanstheory to look at is or also to contemplate, used in contrast which is the to practice. starting A familiar point of anyis critique considered reticence within (though to be “over-thinking”). not its beginning, the critique is This that since theory contrast, we can not discount is even however, antagonisticpraxis maintains prior knowledge). that itself to an As practice, a term, artificial has consequences that it inhibits upon separation, the material creativity, that and social.theory that artists is only thinking need to “do” rather thanand practice “think” is only doing, (and here, thinkingand doesn’t reflect a contemporary use of “theory” as a form of 142 143 Maria Rosa Sossai Awakening to Life

Dear Rit,

Thank you for inviting me to write an article for this issue of Shifter devoted to the relationship between art and education . It is a topic that has recently become a matter of debate not only in Italy but also abroad as educational departments of museums, art foundations and associations have been increasingly asking artists to run exhibitions, symposia, seminars and workshops, often conducted on an experimental basis . These experiences end up questioning not only the identity of the artwork itself but also the role of the artist within the learning-teaching process and, in a broad sense, the whole process of transferring knowledge .

As you know, I believe that there shouldn’t be any difference between art and education as they are part of the same creative and cognitive process . You also know that being a teacher means that education is a significant part of my life . So is my curatorial practice .

For a long time, though, I considered my roles of teacher and art critic-curator as separate aspects of my professional identity . This was a source of confusion, but eventually it took a simple act of awareness on my part to make me realize that what was causing me distress was precisely my difficulty with not being able to find a balance between these roles .

The current educational system focuses almost exclusively on the contents of the different academic subjects without paying any attention to the creativity of the students, hindering the development of their self-esteem and motivation . Even though pedagogical research has confirmed that in the age of multimedia environments such a setting is obsolete, teaching is still anchored to the hierarchical frontal lesson, a mechanical and passive activity that doesn’t encourage independent thinking or reasoning . It is a frustrating condition that has, of course, a negative effect on pupils as well as teachers .

“Certainly, art is, after all, the art of meeting . How can I advise a young artist? I think art is unteachable . One may attempt to provide a sentimental education in life and hence art,” declares the artist Alberto Garutti to Hans Ulrich Obrist . (H U. . Obrist, Interviews, Volume 2) . If art cannot be taught, what is the role of the teacher? For Garutti “this problem is solved by abolishing the student’s institutional status, which is no less intolerable than that of the teacher ”. (Ibid) . What interests Garutti is “to create a climate in which to learn, because in this way the course is self-generated . It is the same procedure that I use when I do my work ”. (Ibid) . Like in a mirror reflection, the teacher’s well being or suffering is inevitably reflected in the students’ attitudes .

I wonder what mechanisms can activate a new criticism of the educational system and encourage the transition from theory to practice . If we believe that it is only by sharing the experience of learning that democracy can be exercised in school, it would be interesting to analyze how much education has to do with the power of knowledge . The French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu faces this question through the analysis of language . Language is in fact the instrument we use to communicate ideas but also facts, determining a change of perspective: “This power of the words to give orders and to order appears absolutely magic ”. (P . Bourdieu, Réponses . Pour une anthropologie réflexive) . It is thanks to the philosophers of language, among them J .L . Austin with his “speech act” theory described in his book How to Do Things with Words, that we are able to understand how certain words, and in particular some performative verbs (“to bet,” “to request,” “to threaten,” “to congratulate,” “to welcome,” “to declare war,” “to baptize”…), when deployed with their performative function actually do things and can produce an effect .

For a while I kept wondering why most of the institutions devoted to learning would focus on reading and repeating what had been stated or read by the teacher while it is so clear that “doing” and “saying” indicate the active engagement of the learner . Being faced, during lessons, by students who were bored, passive, completely absorbed in their own affairs and in a sort of alienation that created a barrier between them and me, made me understand how remote the institution was from us . Therefore, seven years ago I decided to change my double role of teacher-curator, accepting the evidence that art is a radical educational act in itself and that artists, I believe, can also be the best teachers, unafraid and open to experiment with new perspectives .

As a result of that decision I founded—with some of my former students—the association for contemporary art esterno22, asking a group of like-minded artists to share a different approach to learning/teaching based on the creative process of the artwork . Last year esterno22 was transformed into ALAgroup—Accademia Libera delle Arti—The Free Academy for the Arts, which took over the legacy of the previous experience .

The manifesto of ALAgroup, written in 2012 by me and a group of artists, including you, was an attempt to create a common ground among art criticism, curating, artistic practice and education . Putting our thoughts onto paper was a way to share a common philosophy: the desire to offer a direct experience of how artists question themselves and life in general, deal with contradictions and face problems without necessarily looking for an answer . 144 145 In the following letter, written and published in Artribune last year, I expand on some of the issues mentioned in the manifesto, one of them being how education can become an opportunity for artists to experiment without being bound to the profit-oriented rules of the art market . The letter was addressed to all artists concerned with education:

Dear Artists,

Many of us see the division between art and education as being outdated. Artists are reclaiming their central role in the process of learning/ teaching which is seen as a space for freedom and action in the presence of human and intellectual empathy, and where a shared sense of responsibility develops into mutual recognition.

Through the introduction of flexible and innovative educational models, art and education are charged with the task of encouraging the dialogue among difference audiences, reflecting on the power of those who teach.

The “educational contract” between artist–teacher and students from every spectrum is an opportunity to foster the experience of an independent, skilled, subjective and at the same time collective growth.

It is time to rediscover the pleasure of meeting with others and to recognize our mutual creative potential, which put us in the position of generating happiness. It is crucial to understand the importance of the context, and to feel concern for the current deterioration of our social and cultural environment. This is why artists choose to fulfill their role of citizens, infusing their projects with a quality of necessity and authenticity.

We reject the exploitation and the job insecurity present in the art world, which are due to the existence of rules unrelated to creativity and aimed exclusively at financial gain. We support the creation of alternative educational models that can be experimented with by a variety of people. We call upon private and public institutions—foundations, educational departments of museums, associations, community centers, etc.—for them to endorse, promote and disseminate contemporary art through democratic channels. The objective is to implement alternative social situations together with a change of perspective that will allow the artists and the community to look beyond the limits imposed by academic rules. In order to regain control over cultural production, we review the mechanisms underlying a work of art, from its conceptual stage to its creation and dissemination.

Making art means awakening our civic sense and critical awareness through projects that stimulate conscious involvement within the community. We take a stand against a policy that reduces culture to a marginal and subsidiary role unworthy of investment as it is deemed incapable of generating employment and prosperity. We declare the end of the frontal lesson, made obsolete by recent pedagogical studies that unveiled its inadequacy in addressing the complex challenges deriving from web-based multimedia languages. The gradual reduction of venues dedicated to free experimentation affects art in multiple ways; it also pushes it towards forms of expressions which appeal to those who look at a work of art as a status symbol, equal to any other luxury good available on the market. Participants of Temporary School at Piazza Antonia Gramsci, Milan

Historical and recent experiences have proved that art and education are integral parts of the creative process. Noteworthy among them are the On a recent trip to Poland, organized by the Polish Institute in Rome, I had a chance to travel throughout the country with a group of Free International College created by Joseph Beuys and the Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (FLU) colleagues and curators, meeting artists, art critics and other curators, visiting galleries and artists’ studios . I cannot forget the time we founded by Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll; the teaching methods developed by Gina Pane; the Theatre of the Oppressed elaborated by spent with the artist Miroslaw Balka . He explained why he decided to leave his position as a teacher at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam Augusto Boal; Curating and the Educational Turn; Night School; Sixteen Beaver Group and MOMA Trade School. to return to Poland to teach at the Academy of Fine Art in Poznań and subsequently at the Academy in Warsaw: “I consider teaching a form of responsibility towards my younger colleagues [as he calls his students] . I do not see myself as a teacher . They are their own Although it would be unreasonable to fully escape from the mechanisms of the art system, we claim the right of artists to be given the chance and teachers and the task awaiting them is that of understanding their environment . We have a common interest, which is not so much opportunity to experiment and carry out their research in total autonomy. One of the most appropriate contexts for exercising such a right is the the final result but the ‘process ’. What I would like them to understand is the importance of thinking before acting ”. (Notes from a field of education, seen as an existential condition that allows a revival of knowledge based on more creative and equitable principles for all. conversation with Miroslaw Balka ).

It is only when I came across J . Krishnamurti’s writings that I fully realized how his radical way of conceiving education could prompt Rit, I would also like to recall the experience you and I shared in Milan in May 2012 . At the end of the week-long workshop we a new understanding of how to combine personal experience, knowledge, and critical theory . As Krishnamurti affirms, “We cannot conducted together under the portico of Piazza Antonio Gramsci as part of the project Nextfloor organized by the association understand existence abstractly or theoretically . To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end “Sintetico,” I wrote you this letter: of education ”. (J . Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life) . Dear Rit, So, what is education? “Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole ”. (Ibid ). . Education is therefore that vital movement consisting of every action, every second, and every relationship . The week we shared in Milan with Federica Santulli and Francesca De Luca from Sintetico and with the participants of the workshop “Temporary School” was an opportunity to experiment with something new and to put words into action. Back in Rome, I tried to draw up a In Krishnamurti’s words I found the answers to my doubts and dissatisfaction with traditional western models of learning/teaching . list of our activities: sitting on wooden pallets four hours a day we read aloud and in silence, we talked, we chatted with the inhabitants of the What has struck me most in traditional western models is that education is conceived as a set of rules separate from the life of those who square; we worked in groups for an urban renewal project of the portico, we used paper, pencil, paint, and listened carefully to each other. We are supposed to be learning . This type of learning develops knowledge mainly through words and the accumulation of knowledge, with were surrounded by sheets of recycled PVC on which, at the beginning of the workshop, we had written a list of questions; more came as a result the result that our brain is never free from what it already knows . of the discussions that followed:

On the contrary, according to Krishnamurti, the accumulation of knowledge is a limit that prevents us from understanding ourselves What is public? What is private? Is the body public or private? How important is enjoyment in education? What is learning and what activities and observing life in total freedom . This freedom encourages learning, meant as the art of living and feeling at ease with ourselves . does it imply? Must we care for a place of learning before we can transform it? In order to collaborate with each other, must we first care for each other? What happens within the space, and how do we communicate this to the people who pass through such a space? What brings us together? True learning must awaken our sense of responsibility and our intelligence in the pure observation of what is happening in the present: And what keeps us apart? What is the meaning of “learning”? Is it to acquire new knowledge? Or does it also mean understanding the people by living what is occurring in the moment, we undergo a continuous renewal of an experience . The one who observes therefore around us? embodies the essence of knowledge . In particular Krishnamurti focuses on the teacher rather than the students, encouraging their self-

analysis . Students and teachers learn together that there is a gap between “what is” and “what they would like it to be,”a gap that is often (see also Universal/ism) The proposals of the local residents were gradually added to these questions, the most common being the request for green areas but also the a source of suffering . Furthermore, education is no longer considered something belonging exclusively to the intellectual domain but is a opportunity to share knowledge, experiences, and ideas. significant part of reality . Reality, on the other hand, is often altered by the attempts to align it with pre-existing ideas . TRUTH In the critique situation we can identify one idea of truthevidence as meaning of our senses self-evident that there is a sculpture or offering inevidence, the room; even though proof,harder or here,having too, to our agree sensesmaterial on the might sculpture’s beor physical easily symbolic “fooled”). presence(we meaning can Anothergenerally or idea its affect). of truthagree,Truth, isand based say then,truthfully on shared as commonly-held symbolic given anddiscourse linguisticall the or shared culture–one frameworks (without produced which it’s through history and context.Truth, when applied to artwork, as in “being truthful” (see Honesty) or “revealing truth,” is an unreliablefictional value strategies since we can never know(intentionally if it is in fact true, or otherwise) whether ourNovels limited or whether necessarily it is a perspectivelingering contain distorts modernist elements of truthfulness it, whether mythology. the artist It might inbe paradoxically,more is order deluded,productive to be plausible whether within we tend and the to artist convincing, read as abstraction),the critique is using no matter to butexamine other how extravagant propositions the artworkto truth, their can be treatedas a imagining.work “fiction,” andof if as we are fictional, comparable not to descend Similarly, to a novel. to calls whether representational, upon an faith, artwork it is might those claims proceedindexical, from rather the conceptual than facts truth of its own materialityand/or itselfnarrative. that can These more (which, usefully can be more usefully be the subject considered of critique. as exerting claims 146 147 I thought deeply about your remark, that whatever the result of the workshop in terms of “knowledge,” the most significant aspect of the “Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process educational experience would be the group itself and its interaction with the local residents, making the group a “pedagogical sculpture.” Your spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the words acquired further meaning when I received your email from New York: you wrote that the experience of “Temporary School” had changed environment ”. (M . Montessori—Education for a New World) your idea of the relationship between art and education. The initial theoretical distance between our positions had been bridged—my belief that, at this moment in history, education is fertile ground for artists to carry out research and experiment freely, and your idea that education and art “I think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power, the only evolutionary power, the only power to free are distinct activities. It seems to me that this synthesis came during the debate at DOCVA Documentation Center for Visual Arts—in Milan, humankind from all repression ”. (J. Beuys—Avalanche Newspaper, May/June 1974) when Anna Detheridge, the founder of Connecting Cultures, said that a work of art is in itself a radical act of education. “To be a teacher is my greatest work of art . The rest is the waste product, a demonstration . If you want to express yourself Nowadays, learning has become fashionable; there are summer courses, workshops and lectures everywhere, promoted by associations, galleries, you must present something tangible . But after a while this has only the function of a historic document . Objects aren’t very foundations and museums. It would be great if so much energy and efforts were going to bring real change in the relationship between the worlds important any more . I want to get to the origin of matter, to the thought behind it… Even the act of peeling a potato can be a of art and education. I do not believe in sudden major transformations, especially if imposed from above; on the contrary I believe in the gradual work of art if it is a conscious act …” . (J . Beuys—Interview with Willoughby Sharp, 1969) and widespread work of smaller groups, because even one of these experiences can change the course of a person’s life. The German designer Konstantin Grcic recalls the teaching received by the Italian designer Vico Magistretti, his professor at You introduced me to the writings of Augusto Boal; in his book The Theatre of the Oppressed he writes that education is a powerful weapon the Royal College of Art in London, in this way: “Design is not an abstract object, it’s a dialogue, a conversation that creates and that is precisely why it should not be left in the hands of those in power. School is, in the broadest sense, wherever there are people who not ideas and then ideas are exchanged and things happen as a result ”. (H.U. Obrist, Interviews, Volume 2) only learn things but also discover something about themselves. One of our objectives was that of creating a school without walls, an experimental The Hungarian-born French architect Yona Freedman says: “My approach to science is based on the fundamental importance ground where we could overturn the vision of a society divided between theory and practice. It is only by refuting the hierarchical division of of the behaviour[sic] and the actions of the individual, totally unpredictable even to the individual himself… The. various “thinkers” (the intellectuals) and “doers” (the common people), where the former are considered higher up than the latter, that it will be possible academic subjects try to hinder language in order to maintain their monopoly . We live in a class system of formulated to create real and fair opportunities for democratic cultural growth. concepts… . My dog’s behaviour[sic] shows me a comprehensive overview without discipline . If we look at the members of an African tribe or the natives of the Brazilian forest, we see that they are at once architects, scientists, hunters and cooks ”. (Translation from Italian, H U. . Obrist, Interviste, Volume 1).

The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer writes: “Asking questions for which you know the answer is a form of deception; the desire to understand “the other” as well as his answer, is inherent to the nature of questioning ”. (Ibid) .

Seven Experiments that Could Change the World is the title of a book that I would like to read one day . It was written in 1995 by the English biochemist and author Rupert Sheldrake .

To set up a specific series of discussions with people who talk about what they have done in the past few days . This was the proposal made by the British artist Liam Gillick in response to the invitation by the Henry Moore Foundation to hold a public meeting . The Foundation has rejected the proposal of the artist .

“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem,” Krishnamurti states . I hope we shall always have the curiosity and the desire to question ourselves and push back the boundaries; it will mean that the world will continue to present us with its many surprises .

With affection and esteem, Aberdabei (Mia Fryland e Flemming Lyngse), Unfinished Symphonies, work in progress Maria Rosa Sossai

Nearly a year has gone past and meanwhile ALAgroup has continued its journey . Its current projects include a series of exhibitions and ------workshops on the science of education at Villa e Collezione Panza in Varese, and a workshop on the topics of border and otherness seen NB: The content and form of this letter was developed in collaboration with Claudia Rampelli who also translated and edited sections in their multiple expressions—geographical, political, historical, cultural, and existential—involving students from two schools, one in from the original Italian . Italy and the other one in Switzerland . All the workshops are, of course, run by artists .

In all of our activities we are interested in converting the theoretical principles of learning into experiences in the field, envisaging Bruno Latour’s notion of a pluralistic but common world, for instance, and reinventing the models of learning through artistic practice .

In the study Un monde pluriel mais commun, the French sociologist of science and anthropologist Bruno Latour suggests ways of coping with the crisis of the dogma of modern science, emphasizing the need to build a common pluralistic world where individual cultures can converse with each other . Latour’s analyses are a useful tool enabling us to interpret the profound changes taking place in the science of education where, in the last decade, a promising dialogue has begun with other value systems—especially with artistic creation— towards the formulation of flexible and innovative educational models .

Learning is in fact closely connected to the creative process, starting with the question “what is it?” that we ask in front of a work of art; the same question we formulate when we learn something about the world . Until a few decades ago contemporary art and the science of education were two separate areas of knowledge that today find a common goal in experiencing a quest for a positive contribution to life . In this historical moment the educational and the artistic experience seem to share ethical and aesthetic values, shaping themselves into two potential areas of freedom and cultural growth within a context of renewed human and intellectual empathy .

I would like to close this letter with a collection of notes, thoughts and quotes on the concept of education:

“In fact, learning is the human activity which least needs manipulation by others . Most learning is not the result of instruction . It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting . Most people learn best by being ‘with it,’ yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation ”. (I . Illich—Deschooling Society) 148 149 UNIVERSAL/ISM: There might be many things that are commonplace, but the ways we experience them andThere our is attitudes an elitist taint and responses to the use to them of this might term: and generally assuming“universal” do differ. that everyone experience, else experiences and although things that’s the not what same artists way that one does. usually On the other mean hand, when they ideologies describe and consumption their work as “universal,” of global capitalism global capitalism are the closest might we have to be a more pertinent way to examine such claims. 150