BLACKBOARDS WERE TURNED INTO TABLES … Olivier Desvoignes University of the Arts London Doctor of Philosophy Questioning ‘horizontality’ in collaborative pedagogical art projects. May 2015 ABSTRACT Blackboards were turned into tables … Questioning ‘horizontality’ in collaborative pedagogical art projects is research based on the practice of the collective microsillons, which is developing collaborative pedagogical art projects in different contexts. The aim of the research is to explore the possibilities offered by ‘horizontal pedagogical exchanges’ and to question the very notion of ‘horizontality’. It interrogates the possibility to challenge, through artistic projects in educational contexts, the traditional master–pupils (or artist–participants, or gallery educator–public) relationship. After a presentation of microsillons’ position in the cultural ield, in particular regarding gallery education practices, collaborative art practices and the Educational Turn in Curating, a series of ive collaborative pedagogical art projects realized by the collective between 2009 and 2011 are presented. Inspired by methods such as thick description and Participatory Action Research, situations in those projects are studied where a more horizontal pedagogical exchange is sought. Paulo Freire’s relection about dialogical pedagogy serves as a starting point in this relection. Anarchist and libertarian pedagogies, as well as the critical pedagogies discourses following Freire, are used to discuss the various strategies used by microsillons. Through those case studies are discussed the ideas of the classroom as a laboratory for democracy, of content co-generation, of network-like organization, of unpredictability and of constructive conlicts. Drawing from poststructuralist and feminist perspectives, key terms of critical pedagogy (such as empowerment) are then rethought and the idea of ‘horizontality’ questioned, complexiied, presented as a utopian horizon rather than a practicable concept. Shortcomings and paradoxes in the projects’ attempts toward more egalitarian exchanges are identiied and the limitations of the term are discussed. Thoughts about ways to overcome those reservations and to avoid romanticizing ‘horizontality’ are proposed, opening to microsillons’ future projects. For Benjamin, Arthur, Charlotte & Emilie ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My supervisors, David Cross and Neil Cummings, for their commitment and enthusiasm. Everyone involved in microsillons’ projects since 2005. Catherine Queloz, Liliane Schneiter and the CCC Research-Based Master Programme, for their inspiration during the last ten years. Carmen Mörsch for her trust and support. Marianne Guarino-Huet for her intellectual vigilance and for her friendship. My parents. CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 17 1.1 ‘Horizontality’ as a horizon 17 1.2 Why PhD now? 21 1.3 microsillons 29 1.4 Positioning microsillons’ practice in the cultural ield 33 1.4.1 Gallery education 35 1.4.2 Art practices 43 a) Art at school 43 b) Collaborative art practices with interest for pedagogy 47 1.4.3 The ‘educational turn in curating’ 55 1.5 Methodology 59 1.5.1 Participatory Action Research 61 1.5.2 Thick description 65 1.5.3 Ethical considerations 71 2. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECTS 75 2.1 Utopia and the Everyday (2009–2010) 75 2.1.1 Context 75 2.1.2 Exhibition structure 77 2.1.3 Collaborative projects 77 2.1.4 Documentary section 83 a) Guiding? 85 b) Making a proit? 85 c) Empowering? 85 d) Deschooling? 85 e) Standardizing? 87 2.2 En commun (2010) 87 2.2.1 Context 87 2.2.2 Steps 89 2.2.3 Public presentation 91 2.3 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Amateur videos from 8mm to 2.0 91 (2010–2011) 2.3.1 Context 91 2.3.2 Conception team 93 2.3.3 Steps 93 2.3.4 Public presentation 97 2.3.5 Further extensions 97 2.4 La surface des choses (2010–2011) 99 2.4.1 Context 99 2.4.2 Steps 99 2.4.3 Public presentation 101 2.5 Lectures autour du graphisme (2011) 103 2.5.1 Context 103 2.5.2 Steps 103 2.5.3 Public presentation 105 3. TOWARD ‘HORIZONTALITY’ 109 3.1 ‘Horizontality’ today, in education and beyond 109 3.2 Art projects as a laboratory for a more direct democracy: anarchism in 117 Utopia and the Everyday 3.2.1 Rethinking democracy in schools 117 3.2.2 Nils Norman and Tilo Steireif’s project: bringing libertarian and 121 anarchist pedagogies into state s chools 3.2.3 Communicating the democratic dimension of a project in the 127 art institution 3.3 Generating content together. The En commun example 131 3.3.1 Generativity 131 3.3.2 Co-generation in En commun 137 a) Claiming ignorance 139 b) Time for horizontal exchanges 147 c) Working locally 153 3.3.3 Producing visual/artistic objects as a result of generativity 155 3.3.4 Thinking about the subsequent project 157 3.4 Networks as a way to horizontally conceive and run a collaborative art 159 project? The Revolution Will Not Be Televised 3.4.1 A networked conception 159 3.4.2 Computer database as a pedagogical tool? 161 3.4.3 Toward a wiki pedagogy? 165 3.5 Unpredictability as a condition for a horizontal exchange? La surface des 171 choses’ ‘U’ structure 3.5.1 Designing collaborative structures more horizontally 171 3.5.2 La surface des choses’ ‘U’ structure 175 3.5.3 Unpredictability 179 3.5.4 Unpredictability to avoid essentialism 187 3.6 Rethinking conlict in pedagogy and democracy: Lectures autour du 193 graphisme 3.6.1 On the necessity of conlicts in horizontal processes 193 3.6.2 Conlicts in critical pedagogies 195 3.6.3 Experimenting with constructive conlicts in Lectures autour du 197 graphisme 4. QUESTIONING ‘HORIZONTALITY’ 203 4.1 Deromanticizing ‘horizontality’ 203 4.2 Circulating power. About Foucault’s conception of power 205 4.2.1 To empower? 209 4.2.2 Giving a voice? 213 4.3 Non-frontal forms of power 227 4.3.1 Informal hierarchies 227 4.3.2 Pastoralism 229 4.3.3 Non-frontal authority in microsillons’ projects 235 a) The limits of horizontality within a conception team 235 b) Feeling like a guinea pig 241 4.4 Imposing ‘horizontality’? 243 4.4.1 The editor-in-chief paradox in En commun 249 4.4.2 Being there to experience a horizontal pedagogy. The dificulty 253 of forming a group for Lectures autour du graphisme 4.5 Structuring ‘horizontality’? 257 4.5.1 Repetitive outcomes: openness and lack of variety in Utopia 263 and the Everyday 5. CONCLUSION 269 5.1 State of the relection 269 5.2 Toward the next projects 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 281 APPENDICES 347 Utopia and The Everyday gazettes (four issues) 348 En commun journal 356 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised publication 364 Ceccon, Claudius, Lili (Freire, 1975: 17). 17 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 ‘Horizontality’ as a horizon 1 In 2006 we used the term ‘a horizontal approach to knowledge exchange’ Since 2005, when I founded the collective microsillons with Marianne (my translation) during an evaluation Guarino-Huet, the idea of ‘horizontality’ has come up regularly in our session at the Geneva University of Art and research.1 The ‘horizontal’ has inspired our collaborative art projects which Design (HEAD). 2 aimed at opening a space of critical and democratic exchange. See in particular: Freire (1974) and his interest in the philosopher Jaspers. In the discourses around pedagogy,2 gallery education and collaborative art See also: Shor (1992) talking about Freire and projects,3 the idea of being ‘horizontal’ provides alternatives to the top-down his importance for his own thinking. teacher–pupils (or art institution–visitors) relationship. 3 See for example the conversation: Summit, non-aligned initiatives The educator and theorist Paulo Freire is extremely inluential for critical in education culture (2007). pedagogues, critical gallery educators and artists working collaboratively. 4 ‘Narration (with the He rethought ways to learn and to teach, and thought of ways to overcome teacher as narrator) leads the students to the mere transmission of knowledge that he called ‘banking education’ and memorize mechanically the narrated content. considered as a vertical relationship. He advocated a dialogical, horizontal Worse yet, it turns them into “containers”, pedagogy in which learners would learn together with teachers, instead of into “receptacles” to be “illed” by the being considered as empty bottles to be illed.4 Freire considered dialogue teacher. The more completely she ills as essential to the pedagogical process and believed that, through it, both the receptacles, the better a teacher she teachers and learners could change.5 Ira Shor (1980: 95), who collaborated is. The more meekly the receptacles permit closely with him, summarizes Freire’s position regarding dialogue: themselves to be illed, the better students they are. […] This is the “banking” concept of According to Freire, didactic lecturing, at the heart of traditional classrooms, is education, in which the scope of action allowed antidialogical, a vertical relationship between unequals, with authority on top to the students extends only as far as receiving, and the students below, the authority speaking and the students being illed iling, and storing the deposits.’ (Freire, 2005: with oficial content. […] He distinguished ‘horizontal’ dialogue as liberating 71–72) 5 pedagogy from ‘vertical’ anti-dialogue as an oppressive pedagogy. See the introduction by Weffort, in Freire (1971). For Freire (2005: 90–91), the fundamental issue is that the horizontal 19 relationship requires conidence in the faculty of human beings to create and 6 ‘Our method, then, was to be based on 6 search together, leading to the development of a critical mind, whereas dialogue, which is a horizontal relationship vertical relationships (in banking education or in non-progressive modes of between persons. Born of a critical socio-political organization) characterize an anti-democratic climate.7 matrix, dialogue creates a critical attitude (Jaspers).