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CURATING AND THE EDUCATIONAL TURN Open Editions 45 Handforth Road CURATING AND THE London SW9 0LL United Kingdom + 44 ( 0 )20 7820 9779 EDUCATIONAL TURN [email protected] www.openeditions.com Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson ( Eds.) De Appel Arts Centre Post Box 10764 1001 ET Amsterdam Netherlands +31 ( 0 ) 20 6255651 [email protected] De Appel is supported by the Ministry of OC&W and the city of Amsterdam. Copyright © Open Editions 2010 Copyright © The Authors 2010 All rights reserved. Except for the purposes of review or criticism, no part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording and information storage or retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher First published in London 2010 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data : A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-949004-18-5 Printed and bound in Europe Open Editions / de Appel 16 Beaver Group Peio Aguirre Dave Beech David Blamey & Alex Coles Daniel Buren & Wouter Davidts Cornford & Cross Charles Esche Annie Fletcher & Sarah Pierce Liam Gillick Janna Graham Tom Holert William Kaizen Hassan Khan Annette Krauss, Emily Pethick & Marina Vishmidt Stewart Martin Ute Meta Bauer Marion von Osten & Eva Egermann Andrea Phillips Raqs Media Collective Irit Rogoff Edgar Schmitz Simon Sheikh Sally Tallant Jan Verwoert Anton Vidokle Tirdad Zolghadr Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson ( Eds.) Table of Contents 118 – 123 A Simple Turn: Notes on an Argument Hassan Khan 12 4– 139 Between a Pedagogical Turn and a Hard Place: Thinking with Conditions Janna Graham 11 – 22 Introduction Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson 140 – 147 Some Turn and Some Don’t (On Set-Ups) 23 – 31 Control I’m Here: A Call For the Free Use of the Means of Edgar Schmitz Producing Communication, in Curating and in General Jan Verwoert 148 – 156 Exhibition to School: unitednationsplaza Anton Vidokle 32 – 46 Turning Irit Rogoff 157 – 164 The Angry Middle Aged: Romance and the Possibilities of Adult Education in the Art World 47 – 60 Weberian Lessons: Art, Pedagogy and Managerialism Tirdad Zolghadr Dave Beech 165 – 173 Educational Turns Part One 61 – 75 Letter to Jane (Investigation of a Function) Liam Gillick Simon Sheikh 174 – 185 Education With Innovations: Beyond Art-Pedagogical 76 – 82 Wonderful Uncertainty Projects Raqs Media Collective Peio Aguirre 8 3 – 9 6 Education Aesthetics 186 – 194 Experiments in Integrated Programming Andrea Phillips Sally Tallant 97 – 107 ‘Education, Information, Entertainment’: 195 – 200 Introduction to The Paraeducation Department Current Approaches in Higher Arts Education Annie Fletcher & Sarah Pierce Ute Meta Bauer 201 – 216 ‘Please Teach Me…’ Rainer Ganahl and 108 – 117 An Aesthetic Education Against Aesthetic Education the Politics of Learning Stewart Martin William Kaizen 11 – 22 217 – 229 Teaching Without Teaching INTRODUCTION Daniel Buren & Wouter Davidts Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson 230 – 249 To Whom the Past No Longer, and Not Yet the Future, Belongs: A Response to a Letter 16 Beaver Group 250 – 261 Spaces of Unexpected Learning 2 Annette Krauss, Emily Pethick & Marina Vishmidt 262 – 270 A Dialogue on Art School Cornford & Cross 271 – 284 Twist and Shout: On Free Universities, Educational Reforms and Twists and Turns Inside and Outside the Art World Marion von Osten & Eva Egermann 285 – 296 School of Thought David Blamey & Alex Coles 297 – 309 Stand I Don’t Charles Esche & de Appel CP 310 – 319 Start with a Table… Charles Esche 320 – 328 Latent Essentialisms: An E-mail Exchange on Art, Research and Education Tom Holert & Mick Wilson Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson 12 Introduction 13 Contemporary curating is marked by a turn to education. Educational but rather a kind of ‘curatorialisation’ of education whereby the educative formats, methods, programmes, models, terms, processes and pro- process often becomes the object of curatorial production. cedures have become pervasive in the praxes of both curating and Projects which manifest this engagement with educational and the production of contemporary art and in their attendant critical pedagogical formats and motifs have been divergent in terms of scale, frameworks. This is not simply to propose that curatorial projects have purpose, modus operandi, value, visibility, reputational status and degree increasingly adopted education as a theme ; it is, rather, to assert that of actualisation. They include Daniel Buren and Pontus Hultén’s Institut des curating increasingly operates as an expanded educational praxis. It is Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, 1996 ; the ‘Platforms’ of Documenta this proposition — that curating, and art production more broadly, have 11 in 2002 ; the educational leitmotif of Documenta 12 in 2007 ; the unreal- produced, undergone or otherwise manifested an educational turn — to ised Manifesta 6 experimental art school as exhibitionand the associated which the authors gathered in this volume have been invited to respond. volume, Notes for an Artschool ; the subsequent unitednationsplaza and As will become clear, this is a profoundly contested proposition ; Night School projects ; protoacademy; Cork Caucus ; Be( com ) ing Dutch : the credibility, significance and critical currency of the proposed turn is Eindhoven Caucus ; Future Academy ; The Paraeducation Department ; disputed across the texts assembled here. Indicative of this contestation ‘Copenhagen Free University’ ; A.C.A.D.E.M.Y. ; Hidden Curriculum ; Tania is Marion von Osten’s assertion that ‘we must be somewhat sceptical Bruguera’s Arte de Conducta in Havana ; ArtSchool Palestine ; Brown with regard to the ‘educational turn’ [ … ] in terms of [ … ] displacing the Mountain College ; Manoa Free University; and School of Missing Studies, real questions of knowledge economies and cognitive capitalism’. ( 1 ) Our Belgrade. Given the volume of work available for discussion in terms of purpose in preparing this volume has been to critically describe, locate, art as educational praxis, this is a very short list. However, it hopefully reflect upon, think through and, ultimately, to trouble this mooted turn indicates the broad distribution of the work under consideration. ( 2 ) to educational models and practices in recent curatorial and artistic The escalation in discursive events has also been at the centre of practice. new and experimental, though often short-lived, institutional models. ( 3 ) Initial talk of an educational turn was prompted by the widespread Adopting a counter-institutional ethos, these discursive productions often adoption of pedagogical models, as problematised through various cura- implement a durational dialogical process, along the informal lines of torial strategies and critical art projects. Discussions, talks, symposia, education programmes, debates and discursive practices have long 2. In identifying a broad list of examples, we are conscious of not beginning with a delimited category, such as that developed by Kristina Lee Podesva who proposed played a supporting role to the exhibition of contemporary art, espe- that ‘education as a form of art making constitutes a relatively new medium. It is distinct from projects that take education and its institution, the academy, as a cially in the context of museums, biennials and, more recently, art fairs. subject or facilitator of production’. Drawing on research in the Copenhagen Free Historically, these discussions have been peripheral to the exhibition, University and elsewhere, Podesva itemises ten characteristics and concerns across a spectrum of education-as-medium projects. These include : ‘A school operating in a secondary role in relation to the display of art for public structure that operates as a social medium’ ; ‘A tendency toward process ( versus object ) based production’ ; ‘An aleatory or open nature’ ; ‘A post-hierarchical learning consumption. More recently, these discursive interventions and relays environment where there are no teachers, just co-participants’ ; ‘A preference for exploratory, experimental, and multi-disciplinary approaches to knowledge have become central to contemporary practice ; they have now become production’ ; ‘An awareness of the instrumentalisation of the academy’. See Kristina the main event. However, these discursive productions are not only Lee Podesva, ‘A Pedagogical Turn : Brief Notes on Education as Art’. Fillip. 6. 2007 [ http ://fillip.ca / content / a-pedagogical-turn ]. It is also worth looking at Anton pervasive ; increasingly, they are framed in terms of education, research, Vidokle’s ‘Incomplete Chronology of Experimental Art Schools’. Notes for an Art School. International Foundation Manifesta. 2006. p. 19. knowledge production and learning. Furthermore, in many instances, 3. Examples include programmes by Maria Lind at Kunsverein München ; there is a pronounced impulse to distance these platforms from the Catherine David at Witte de With in Rotterdam ; Maria Hlavajova at BAK in Utrecht ; Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans at Palais de Tokyo, Paris ; Vasif Kortun at established formats of museum education and related official cultural Platform Garanti Contemporary Art in Istanbul ; and Charles Esche’s museum model at Rooseum in Malmö. Esche described his model operating as ‘part community pedagogies. This is not simply a reinstatement of the curator as an expert centre, part laboratory and part academy’. See [ http ://www.republicart.net / disc / ins charged with educating a public about the content of a given